Memories of the 28th Century

I say you
ought to eat what
you will. Shove it
in your mouth any way
that you can.

from Silver Spoon
Lyrics by Paul Kantner
http://www.metrolyrics.com/silver-sp...l-kantner.html
Performance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Is2OeUZ6Sg



I had thought that dietary rules had gone out of fashion years ago, but recently I have encountered more and more dietary restrictions; mostly from people who think that certain foods are good and other foods are bad. I do similarly in jest usually with a smile on my face, I wonder why tofu hasn’t been banned, but there are people who take their preferences in foods very seriously, even when science has shown that their preferences are not especially healthy, or that what they think to be bad foods are actually the health foods.

There are some people for whom certain foods are dangerous due to intolerance, but such conditions are fairly rare; for example, studies have shown that from 0.33 % to 1.06% of people may have celiac disease, an autoimmune disease that causes intolerance to gluten, and that is one of the more common food intolerances. Even though celiac disease is fairly rare, there are many people who have decided that excluding gluten from their diets would be a good idea. Rather than going into all the details, I'll let readers look through the sources themselves. There are many thousands of online articles on both sides of the issue, but legitimate sources, such as Scientific American, appear quickly on the side of gluten free is for people with Celiac disease. And the allergy to peanuts can be deadly.

The one false food claim that bothers me most is the idea that there is something good about low-fat and no-fat foods. The science is perfectly clear that fat is good food, but many people like to deny the validity of science. I wonder why people of that persuasion don't notice that there is an innate desire for fats. I suppose that it's like the fad of drinking excessive amounts of water (that finally appears to be waning). The food processors figured out that they can remove the fat from food and sell, or use, the fat for something else, and they can sell the food for more, because it is now "Low-fat". That's rather cynical, but it probably is partly accurate.

That isn't the only food fad, but it is one of the worst; but there are worse things available, if one looks. I did a search for information about such things and found a list of the five or six worst fad diets, and the top one was "tapeworm". Apparently you can buy a tapeworm to swallow, and apparently there are people who are stupid enough to do that. The other fad diets mentioned were odd, but they appeared to be survivable.

Fortunately, there isn't all that much danger in fad diets, because the human body can produce almost anything it needs from other things. I remember reading of a guy who lived from age eleven to age eighteen on just potato chips and milk, and during that period he grew to full height, and seemed to be in good health. Regardless of that, I would suggest that people research nutrition before they start restricting their diets or eating strange things. People should also question the authority and knowledge and knowledge of people who create diets. Some people have negative reactions to all sorts of things, and a diet put together for someone with a particular condition won’t do much for people who do not have that condition.

There are several general reasons why people come in different degrees of fatness or thinness. Those include metabolism, intestinal flora, and exercise, but genes can be blamed for shape that most people are in. It may seem overly simple to blame genes, but that really is the root cause in most cases.

If you want to have some dietary rules, then choose ones that seem right for you. There’s a good chance that your desires in foods are what is healthy for you, but your dietary laws may not be healthy for anyone else. Personally, I recently converted to Pythagoreanism (see links below), because it bans the eating of beans; at least some authorities claim that it did; there were others who wrote that it did not ban eating beans or meat; I don’t know, but it works for me,. And who knows if I’m wrong. Your own dietary laws will probably be equally certain, so you can enforce them has much as you wish and ignore them when that will be more convenient. But you shouldn’t expect other people to take your dietary laws any more seriously than I take the dietary restrictions of Pythagoreanism.

If you have resolved to eat better this year, then consider eating what is best for you; either that or you can convert to some ancient religion the dietary rules of which are uncertain now.



http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoreanism/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism
tapeworm diet
http://www.everydiet.org/diet/tapewo...orms-in-humans
buy tapeworm eggs
http://www.tapewormeggs.com/