“More people are overweight than undernourished.”

I think that part of the reason for the "obesity epidemic" is that people are BOTH.  Over the last 100 years (and especially the last 40), Americans have been told to eat the most remarkable collection of garbage imaginable; no wonder people don't have a normal appetite anymore.

At the end of the 19th century, it was fashionable to have a little "meat on your bones" and it was considered attractive.  Not absolutely OBESE, like poor William Banting, but plumpness was definitely a good thing.  It made one look healthy.  In his early low-carbohydrate book, "Eat and Reduce," Dr. Victor Lindlahr recalled the showgirls of this era being downright ... big.  He credits the First War and its aftermath for the social conditions which encouraged us all to shed our furbelows and want to slim down; things haven't significantly changed in that department.

Lindlahr's diet was different from Banting's in that it restricted calories, not just carbohydrate-rich foods.  Still, those foods were REAL; nutrient-dense meats, eggs, lots of vegetables and moderate fruits, and he allowed saccharine in one's tea/coffee if desired.  If he banned butter, at least he didn't encourage margarine.

The second war did more damage, in my opinion.  In Europe there were real food shortages, and the switch from normal choices to make-do's that were actually available is thoroughly understandable.  In America the situation was just plain flakey.  I STILL don't understand the rationing situation; granted, the food-supply was screwed up by the "dustbowl" thing, but i find it hard to believe that it was THAT damaged.  If there was enough food here before, why did it require that much MORE food just because our young men were eating it in a different venue and wearing a uniform?

Whatever the cause (profiteering comes to mind), people were encouraged to consume less meat, eggs, butter and so on, and more "fillers."  There were even drives to collect used cooking fats for the war effort.  All the "Allies" (as well as the Axis, i'm sure) became used to eating crap -- it may have been an unpleasant change, but it was considered patriotic in America and it was unavoidable in Britain.

At any rate, this seems to be when ordinary Americans started eating garbage on a large scale.  Convenience foods began to be popular in the oh-so-modern 1920s, but the advent of television encouraged it beyond anything seen before.  The work of the junk-food-manufacturers and their advertisers has only gotten more sophisticated and insidious since.  People now believe snacking to be a normal and necessary activity ... with a drink constantly at one's elbow all day.

J Stanton has described and explained only too well how eating foods which provide incomplete nutrition promote obesity and weakness; additions from me are unnecessary.  (If you somehow have missed it, go to gnolls.org and look at the left-hand column for links.)  In a nutshell -- it IS VERY possible to be overweight and undernourished.

It's all about eating products instead of FOOD.  No one food is making the whole world fat -- not even fructose -- but the tendency to eat products seems to lead in that direction.

forward again, and backward in a different way

Still being "perfect", and my weight is down from the original number by 2.4# -- yes!  :-)  After dinner last night, though, i had my first craving;  i REALLY  wanted to put cream in a cup of  decaf for dessert.  I settled for a big spoonful of coconut butter instead.  It was the fat my body wanted, more than the lovely, creamy, sweet dairy product, i'm sure -- filet mignon is just too darned lean, but that's what my appetite called for.  I cooked the parsnip as i would Carrots Vichy, but without the added sweetener, and ALMOST added some ghee, but restrained myself.  Yum.

I may start following the recommendation of the author of "The Shangri-La Diet," and take a couple of tablespoons of bland-flavored oil a day, in place of my beloved cream.  I'm STILL deeply doubtful of his rationale, and i'm thoroughly convinced that some of his reasoning is flawed, but it seems to work for a lot of people. 

Often, tried-and-true techniques work for reasons that we don't understand yet.  Much as modern science "knows," there are a few glitches in how it filters down to everyday life, and it has also gotten to the point that there's SO MUCH known, that a lot of good stuff has been forgotten in favor of the latest discovery or refinement.

One of my favorite bloggers, Chris Masterjohn, presented us with a stunning article yesterday, discussing how the body can manufacture glucose from fatty acids, that mainstream textbooks declare this to be impossible, and that this information has been around for more than half a CENTURY and is absolutely undeniable -- and largely disregarded.  This has impact on low-carb eaters and the compromises they make.  Mind you, most of the scientific world is convinced that what's in a textbook HAS to be true....

 (Chris Kresser also dug up some sound, old information on choline, http://chriskresser.com/why-you-should-eat-more-not-less-cholesterol that's going to affect diet in my household!) 

I have an OLD diet book that belonged to my grandmother, and in my younger days of fighting weight gain i read it and tried it.  Apparently, it was one of the earliest low-carbohydrate diets to achieve a good deal of popularity, spread through a radio show in the 1930s.  Dr. Victor Lindlahr, "Eat and Reduce"!  :-)  He had some interesting tricks (like a recommendation to hang around your house naked, to speed metabolism), but it was principally a very low calorie, low fat diet, and therefore unsustainable.  He mentions the actual first low-carb diet book author, William Banting, but gets the "facts" wrong.

So when i get on an everything-old-is-new-again kick -- and i can almost promise that i will -- there's a reason for it.  Besides, i'm a reenactor and living-historian, too.