May 11th, 2007
Food is the devil!
Remember a few years ago when Nabisco introduced the "SnackWells" line of cookies? They were touted as low-fat, no guilt treats and they flew off the shelves! At the time no one was really paying attention to the fact that they had almost double the calories (from sugar) as their higher fat cookie peers. That was the low-fat fad of the American diet. Then Dr. Heart Disease, er um, Atkins came around and said don’t eat sugar, we should only eat meat and for gods sake, don’t eat fruits and limit your vegetable intake. People tried that, lost weight but found it difficult to maintain a high protein diet. The last remaining Atkins hold-outs fell off the wagon a year or so ago. Off to the next fad….
As an aside, being a vegetarian, I have never really encountered a situation or restaurant where I haven’t been able to eat something…during the Atkins craze, my diet was much more flexible than the meat and cheese people. When we would go out to lunch, I found that I was pretty much able to go anywhere to eat, whilst the Atkins folks had few choices. For example, have you seen an "Atkins Pizza"? It’s all the meat toppings and cheese in a box. Delicious.
Tom Philpott over at grist.org has a good article on all these food phobias. Back in the 1970′s everyone freaked out about butter and switched to margarine, the little partially-hydrogenated "butter spread" that turned out to be worse for us than eating butter itself. His point is that everything taken in moderation is the way to go. I agree wholehearted and believe this also applies to meat, and going veg one day a week can help moderate its consumption. There is no need for such extreme swings in our diets. When it comes to eating…common sense tends to be the best diet.
Author Information - During his spare time Eric writes for and maintains wannaveg.com. For his day job he works for an electronics company in San Diego, CA. Eric has been a vegetarian for about 10 years and believes that going 'green' and reducing meat consumption go hand-in-hand. 
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That is fantastic.
I was stuck on the fat free craze for a while.
Fat Free Yogurt (fake and missing the protein AND the helpful bacteria that you eat yogurt for)
Chips- that make you have horrible stomach issues
Cookies- that didn’t fill you up you ate so many of them you got a stomach ache and ate too many
No meat- as in no chicken, no beef, no fish and no healthy replacement
In an effort to diet, I didn’t lose weight until I started running so much which made this diet unsustainable. It showed me how the body NEEDS so many of these things. It isn’t about cutting out fat and/or all sugar or depriving yourself of things that actually fill you up and leave you satisfied…it is about moderation and a healthy attitude to what your body needs and craves to fuel your lifestyle.
And we (Americans) just eat too much food anyway. Portion size, choosing the right things to eat are the key to a healthy diet. Exercise is just as important also. Good comment Meg.
Olestra…that was the stuff in chips that made you shit your pants. I was trying to remember the name of it.