I knew it

A new study has found that bacon and other fatty foods can be as addictive as heroin or cocaine.

The study, done on rats, found that they'd eat junk food to the point of extreme obesity. They even kept eating when they were receiving electric shocks.

Researchers say fatty foods turn on "pleasure centers" in the brain, just like drugs, and overstimulation leads to compulsive consumption.

Hmmm, bacon.

Wait. What were we talking about?

Full story here.

Think yourself fat

It’s not chocolate and booze that are making me fat, it’s all the thinking.

A study in Canada has found that the more you work your brain, the more you want to eat. This is extremely bad news for a large segment of the New Internet Economy -- people who sit at computers all day, thinking about stuff. It’s not bad enough that we lead such a sedentary lifestyle. Now it turns out that the stress of mental work makes us want more food.

Researchers at Laval University reported the study in a recent issue of “Psychosomatic Medicine Journal.” (Don’t you love that there’s a publication called “Psychosomatic Medicine Journal?” I used to subscribe to it, but I thought it was making me sick.)

The researchers measured food consumption after subjects did reading/writing tasks or performed computerized tests. The study was done on 14 students (the white lab rats of humanity), who were turned loose on an all-you-can-eat buffet after performing the 45-minute tests.

Students who read a document and wrote a summary of it ate 24 percent more than students who simply rested in a sitting position during the test period. Students who did the computer test activity ate 29 percent more than those who rested.

“Those who had a more demanding mental task were more stressed and ate more,” said researcher Angelo Tremblay and, yes, that’s his real name.

Tremblay and his fellow researchers found that stress from mental work increased the hormone cortisol and also affected glucose levels, both of which can stimulate appetite.

Unfortunately, other studies have found that brainwork does nothing to burn calories. That seems unfair. Sure, our brains will spur us to visit the buffet again and again, but when it comes time to get rid of those accumulated calories, the brain can’t be bothered. It’s too busy pondering the infield fly rule or trying to remember the name of that cross-eyed kid we knew in third grade.

So what’s to be done? You already know the answer: physical exercise. Most of us don’t do enough manual labor to burn up the calories we consume; we’re too busy sitting at computers, playing Spider Solitaire. Since our brains won’t help burn calories, the only solution is to make our bodies do it through regular workouts, the researchers said.

They did find one glimmer of hope for the exercise-phobic, though that wasn’t their intention.
Because brain chemistry apparently can make us overeat, “mental work is a worse activity than simply doing nothing,” Tremblay said.

So there’s your answer. Stop using your brain so much, and maybe you’ll eat less. If you can stand to sit and stare into space without fidgeting or thinking, you’re all set.

This doesn’t explain why you run into so many stupid people who are also fat. But perhaps even a little bit of thinking is harder work for such mouth-breathers and therefore more stressful.

You’ll notice one important omission in the Canadian study: Television. Sitting and staring at TV is completely passive, but it clearly stimulates those same brain chemicals because nothing makes us want snacks more than televised sporting events. If sitting at a computer and thinking about stuff makes us fat, then sitting in front of a TV should make us HUGE. I know it’s working for me.

Anyway, that’s my theory about this new obesity study. I put a lot of thought into it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go eat. I’m starving.

Cooking for one

Sometimes, selfishness can be delicious.

Unless you live alone, you probably cook for more than one person at a time. You’re forced to take into account the others’ tastes and preferences. Sharing the meal means sharing in the compromise that is communal cooking.

But sometimes, you get to prepare food just for yourself, just the way you like it, and those are the best meals going, aren’t they?

Take, for example, one of my favorites: A breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee. This is a traditional whole-family meal, partly because it typically occurs in the morning when everyone’s more likely to be home and partly because it’s an easy meal to serve the masses.

But there’s a lot of compromise built into such a breakfast. Some people like their bacon crisp and their eggs runny, while others want just the opposite. (And you know how difficult it can be to make runny bacon.) There’s over easy vs. scrambled vs. sunny-side up. Whole wheat vs. sourdough. Fresh ground coffee vs. that sludge your father used to make.

You have be a regular short-order cook to meet all these demands. Or, you ignore the demands and cook everything however you like, with the full knowledge that this will result in complaints and upturned noses and walkouts.

The true joy of cooking is cooking for one. No one to please but yourself.

There’s no greater culinary moment than getting your eggs, bacon and toast precisely the way you like them, all on the plate together at the same time, still hot. Yum.

There’s no guilt. No backlash. No catering to the whims of a small child who will only eat “jiggly” eggs and dry toast that are not touching on the plate. No complaints when it’s over. Just one satisfied customer, who maybe even got a quiet moment with the newspaper while eating.

The mere thought of it makes me relax, makes my blood pressure go down (even while my cholesterol’s going up). Makes me hungry.

When preparing food strictly for yourself, you can take liberties that aren’t allowed around the communal pot. You can “taste-test” right off the serving spoon. You can use paper plates, or no plate at all. You can lick your fingers. Everyone knows that drippy foods eaten over the kitchen sink contain no calories.

Eating alone allows you to indulge in favorite foods normally skipped because of complaints from family members. Chili dogs, for instance. Marshmallow Peeps. Lard. You can eat a giant bean burrito without worrying about the repercussions. You can make it as spicy as you like. No one’s around to see you sweat.

This self-indulgent freedom is particularly thrilling to guys. Given the chance to dine solo, guys generally go straight to The Forbidden Zone of the worst possible food choices.

I ran into a friend in my neighborhood supermarket recently. This man’s entire shopping haul consisted of a six-pack and two large bags of pork rinds.

Me: “Wife out of town?”

Him, beaming: “How did you guess?”

Of course, it’s easy to fall into a rut if you’re pleasing only yourself. Another friend told me his wife had been out of town for several weeks and, “I’ve been living on ham-and-cheese sandwiches.” Not the healthiest choice, perhaps, but I’m sure they were made exactly the way he likes them. Runny, with extra lard.

Treat yourself to a little selfish pleasure. Whip up a meal for you and you alone. Have it your way.

Caution: Too much self-indulgent food can make you “jiggly.”

Washtub abs

Most of us like to believe that we’re physically fit, or at least fit enough to get through our everyday lives without serious injury.

It’s easy to maintain that belief when everyday life involves nothing more strenuous than oozing off the sofa and going to the kitchen for more pork rinds. But once in a while, we’re required to actually do something physical -- such as lifting luggage into an overhead bin or tying our shoes -- and the resulting aches and pains prove that we’re kidding ourselves.

I exercise almost every day, walking miles on our Dreadmill and lifting tiny dumbbells (by their ears). But if I try something physically demanding, such as yardwork, I quickly find that I’m not fit at all.

My wife and I moved a seven-foot-tall palm tree from one area of our property to another. It took a couple of hours of surprisingly hard work, including a lot of shoveling and squatting and cursing. I expected to be fine after recovering from the initial heatstroke and mud bath, but hahaha on that. The next morning, every muscle between knees and chest, including some I didn’t know I had, rose up in revolt. For days after, I shuffled around the house like a geriatric German shepherd with bad hips. Even my fat hurt.

Clearly, my time on the Dreadmill hadn’t prepared me for actual physical labor. I might be fit enough to walk a couple of miles without keeling over, but I was unprepared for digging and crouching and yanking on stubborn tree roots.

Which brings us to a recent study by the American Council on Exercise. The ACE study encourages older folks to do “functional” exercise that emphasizes moving muscles and joints together in ways that mimic real-life needs, rather than just lifting weights or walking, which use the same isolated muscles over and over.

(Anybody else think it’s more than a coincidence that ACE is also the name of a brand of bandages? Maybe that’s just me.)

The study, done at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, used 48 volunteers between the ages of 58 and 78. All already participated in a fitness program because of various health problems related to cheese consumption. (Note to Wisconsin readers: Just kidding about the cheese!)

The researchers randomly assigned participants to a group doing functional exercises or to a control group that stuck with “a traditional exercise program of walking and aerobic dance,” according to an ACE press release. The 12 functional exercises, performed three times a week, included moves such as “wall push-ups, lunge and chop, and squat with diagonal reach.”

At the end of the month-long study, the researchers found that those who went through the functional fitness program showed greater improvements in lower-body strength, upper-body strength, cardio-respiratory endurance, agility, balance and shoulder flexibility than the control group.

Participants in the functional exercise group celebrated their gains by beating up the aerobic dancers. (Kidding again!)

ACE said it was hoped that the study would encourage people to incorporate functional strength training into their workout programs so they can “safely and effectively perform their various activities of daily living.”

Good advice. I plan to try some of these functional exercises to see if they help strengthen my muscles and increase my flexibility. Perhaps they’ll even prepare me to do physical labor, assuming the occasion ever arises again.

For sure, the next time my wife suggests that we transplant a tree, I’m doing the “lunge and chop.”

Pillage people

Here’s the leading cause of obesity in America: Grocery Day.

All across this great country, we citizens waddle into gigantic supermarkets once a week and spend way more than we should on way more groceries than we should buy. We cart these goods home, then immediately pig out on them, sampling all the richest, sweetest, highest-calorie foods.

We’re bloated after this unofficial feast day. About the time we recover, the cupboards are bare because the kids and their friends have eaten everything, and we do it all over again.

Once upon a time, when people still walked places, they picked up only a few groceries at a time from corner markets. Enough for tonight’s meal, tomorrow’s breakfast. They ate less and they walked more and, guess what, fewer of them were fat.

Before widespread refrigeration and international food transport, shoppers were limited to what was available from surrounding farms, to what was in season. Not a lot of choice, but people also didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about whether their tofu or their mango should be kept in the fridge.

As SUVs and suburbs and side-by-side Frigidaires took over the landscape, people started treated Grocery Day less like a safari and more like a stockpiling raid. No longer hunter-gatherers, we became swooping hordes of shoppers, repeatedly pillaging the small village of Safeway, amassing so much loot we need large wheeled carts to haul it all away.

At least that’s the way I like to think of it, when I’m picking over the artichokes with the snowbirds on a Thursday afternoon. I lead a rich fantasy life.

Because we have two strapping teen-aged boys at our house, I buy lots of groceries every week, so many I barely can fit them all into one cart. The groceries fill the cargo hold and back seat of my Ford Lemonstar minivan.

When I get home, my sons help me haul the booty into the house, oohing and aahing over the Oreos and Cocoa Puffs they find in the bags. We work as team, putting away the groceries, then we launch into an individual competition to see who can eat the most the fastest.

It’s not intentional. But all that sudden variety is irresistible. Even if we try to avoid a pig-out, there are usually some treats lying about, simply because there’s not enough cabinet/fridge space to store everything, and it’s hard not to graze.

If there are teen-agers around, the snacks and sweets are the first things to go. So if we parents want a crack at an Oreo ourselves, we’d better pounce on Grocery Day. After that, good luck.

Of course, we can’t eat all the groceries in one day, no matter how we try. Not a whole minivan load of them. So the second day, we’re hard at it again, trying to consume all the grapes before they go bad and the last few marshmallows before someone else eats them. By bedtime, we can barely walk.

Consumption tapers off as the week wears on and choices diminish. Everything that’s left is either good for you or requires preparation more elaborate than a zap in the microwave. We survive on frozen food and random sandwiches.

The boys wander away in search of sweets and fast food pilfered from friends. Mom and Dad find themselves nibbling plain saltines in front of the TV because that’s all that’s available.

Time to go pillaging again. It’s Grocery Day.

A world too small for such a man

My mantra for middle age: Every day, in every way, I am getting fatter and fatter.

I diet (sort of). I exercise (a lot). Every day, I step onto the bathroom scales and groan.

I am not what doctors call "morbidly obese." More like pathetically obese. It's just sad the way fat accumulates on the body of a middle-aged man who gave up smoking a few years ago and took up Oreos instead.

One look in the mirror raises a number of questions: When did my hips become wider than my shoulders? When did my waist measurement leave my inseam in the dust? Where did my belt go? Oh, there it is, hiding under my paunch. Sneaky devil.

I know I'm not alone. News reports regularly scream that America's the fattest country on earth, that we're killing ourselves with our own mouths. We're all so concerned about obesity and health, we can find solace only in another snack.

"Middle age" apparently refers to body location rather than simple chronology. You pass 40, and your middle shows its age by ballooning up as it never has before. This so-called "spread" is the curse of adulthood.

("Middle-Age Spread" sounds like a ranch, one that extends from Armpit Valley to Bad Knee Junction, passing the mustard-stained slopes of Mount Belly and Lardbutt Heights along the way. Yee-haw. Git along, lil hoagies!)

I was already a large man before I became a large, pear-shaped man. I'm six-foot-five, and rarely a day goes by that I don't hit my head on something, which may explain my many mental "issues."

Because of my height, I already bought my clothes at "Big-and-Tall" shops. I used to shop in the "Tall" section. Now, in middle age, I need the "Big" part, too.

With this widening has come more frequent painful encounters with the door jambs and sharp edges of my everyday world. A few years ago, I only worried about hitting my head. Now, I worry about snagging a hip on a cabinet corner. I tuck my elbows against my sides when I go through doors. I'm usually sporting a bruise somewhere.

The world isn't designed for the big and tall. Countertops and light switches and sinks always are the wrong height. Beds are too short. Doorways are too narrow. Bucket seats? Don't make me laugh.

Worst, of course, are airplanes, which are designed by elfin workers at Boeing who get their revenge on the world by torturing us big guys. (You might not know this, but "Economy" comes from the Latin words for "pinch my fat with your armrest.")

Recently, I rode in one of those small, turboprop planes formally known as "puddle-jumpers," and was forced by dire need to squeeze my very large self into its very small bathroom.

I got in there all right, facing the correct direction, etc., but when it came time to emerge, I had a problem. I was wedged so tightly, I couldn't move my arms. Which meant I couldn’t release the door latch. Which raised the very real possibility that I would remain in that fiberglass coffin until someone got me out with a blowtorch. By exhaling and pivoting just right, I managed to get free, but there were a few panicky seconds when a headline flashed before my eyes:

Middle-Aged Fatty Trapped in Airplane Loo

God, the humiliation. Only one way to beat that rap -- blame someone else. So I pictured this headline instead:

Trapped Fatty Sues Airline; Nabisco Named as Co-Defendant

Ah, that's better. Let's eat!

Holiday diet tips

The annual Holiday Eating Season -- which runs from Thanksgiving to Valentine's Day --officially begins this week, and that means trouble for those of us trying to lose weight.

Banquets and booze, potlucks and pastries, desserts and delicacies all gang up on us this time of year. Here a cookie, there a brownie, everywhere a cheese log. This abundance makes it nearly impossible to watch your weight.

(An aside: Isn't "watch your weight" a weird euphemism? I have no trouble watching my weight. It's right here in front of me. The problem is trying to watch anything beyond it -- my feet, for instance. If we need a euphemism for dieting, maybe we should call it "looking for feet.")

You can't escape the annual cornucopia, but you can find ways to manage your diet. Rather than counting every calorie or battling every temptation, use your imagination to set limits. Play little mind games with yourself, so you can pass up certain treats and keep your overall consumption within reason.

For example, some people allow themselves the freedom to indulge in holiday meals with loved ones, but skip desserts. Others eat only desserts, though this is not recommended. A handful go on the "all egg nog, all the time" regimen, a form of liquid diet guaranteed to result not only in weight gain, but probable arrest.

Here are some other creative dieting suggestions:

--The Alphabet Diet. Pick a letter of the alphabet and pledge not to eat any food that contains that letter in its name. Say, for instance, that you choose "R." Then turkey and risotto and cranberries are out for the holiday season. However, you could eat all the blintzes you want. Obese people might want to "up the ante" and select several letters. Caution: A vowel-free diet can result in medical problems.

--The Face Diet. Vegetarians often say, "I don't eat anything that has a face." This could be a good approach for holiday dieters, too. However, you might want to amend the rules to specify that really ugly faces don't count. You could, thereby, still eat turkey.

--The Repulsion Diet. When faced with the usual huge array of holiday foods, most people can identify one or two items that they simply can't stand -- such as gelid cranberry sauce or creamed spinach or oyster dressing. Load up your plate with your least-favorite things. Pretty soon, you'll find that you'd rather go hungry.

--The Rah-Team Diet. Cut down your sports-related noshing by eating only when your favorite team is winning. Warning: This season, fans of the San Francisco 49ers could starve to death.

--The Denture-Free Diet. If you wear false teeth, take them out before holiday meals. This will limit you to mushy stuff, and cut down your caloric intake. This method could help your loved ones lose weight, too, because watching you will turn their stomachs.

--The Battle-Axe Diet. If you can't stand your mother-in-law, be sure to sit directly across from her at every family gathering. That ought to kill your appetite.

--The Hangover Diet. "Tie one on" the night before every big family meal. True, booze is full of empty calories. But you won't want any yams the next day. Trust me.

Using such imaginative approaches, you can find a diet plan that will get you through the Holiday Eating Season.

If nothing works, tell yourself that obesity is the direct result of a happy, abundant life. Count your blessings and give thanks.

Personally, I'm thankful that I no longer need to worry about spilling egg nog on my shoes.

Sneezing off the pounds

Hello, friends. Today, I bring you great news about an AMAZING NEW DIET plan that could allow you to lose five pounds in a single week!

I know you've heard this sort of thing before. We're all deluged by advertisements touting the latest diet fads and spouting incredible results that only the most gullible and desperate dieters would ever believe. But my diet plan is different because it REALLY WORKS!

In only one week, with virtually no exercise, you can drop unwanted pounds and get back into those jeans that have been too tight for the past six months. You can look trimmer and feel better about yourself. You can amaze your friends and family.

I'm a perfect example of how this new diet plan works. In only one week, I lost five whole pounds. I had to cinch up my favorite belt by an entire hole! And, so far, I've kept it off!

How did I do it? I caught my first cold of the winter. After a week of misery, I got on the scales to find that the pounds had MAGICALLY DISAPPEARED.

That's right, friends. Without even trying, without breaking a sweat (other than those feverish, sheet-soaking night sweats), I dropped some of the excess weight that had been plaguing me for months. Now, whole new worlds (as well as whole sections of my existing wardrobe) have opened up to me. I feel like a new, if slightly weaker, man!

My amazing new Winter Cold Diet is so simple you won't even believe it. It's EASY! All you do is catch a passing virus. Then, for the next seven to 10 days, you'll find that you have NO APPETITE AT ALL! Even your favorite foods will hold no appeal for you. You'll find that everything, even sinfully rich chocolate and fattening holiday sweets, tastes like cardboard.

The Winter Cold Diet can be pursued in the privacy of your own home. No embarrassing weigh-ins in front of other dieters. No puffing at the gym in front of svelte young weightlifters who sneer at your decrepitude. In fact, you can do it without leaving your bed!

With the Winter Cold Diet, there are no special foods or drinks to purchase. All you'll want is water, and lots of it. Maybe some chicken soup. And lots of over-the-counter cold remedies to dry out your runny nose, calm your coughing fits and help you sleep around the clock.

Best of all, the Winter Cold Diet is ABSOLUTELY FREE! Nothing to buy now, nothing to buy later. No salesman will call.

You can pick up the Winter Cold Diet virus most everywhere AT NO CHARGE. There's plenty to go around. Co-workers will willingly share it with you. Perfect strangers in public places will gladly sneeze some of the virus right over to you. Heck, your children have probably brought the virus home from school. It's likely in their rooms RIGHT NOW!

Granted, the Winter Cold Diet does have certain side effects. During the diet, you'll feel really rotten -- headaches, dehydration, body aches, congestion, sore throat, coughing, etc. You'll go through a lot of Kleenex. All your hacking and spewing will disgust your loved ones. You won't accomplish anything, except a lot of excess sleeping, and you'll likely miss work.

But hey, as any of us fatties will be quick to tell you, that all seems a small price to pay to LOSE FIVE POUNDS! In a WEEK! Whoo-hoo!

Try the amazing Winter Cold Diet today! Pick up a virus! As if you have any choice.

The housework diet

Trying to lose weight? Now we know you can scour away those excess pounds.

That's right, cleaning your house counts as exercise. Depending on how hard you work, standard chores like laundry and mopping can burn up to 250 calories an hour, according to a recent article I read somewhere.

(It doesn't matter which article. These days, every magazine and newspaper and website is glutted with advice about diet and exercise. Everywhere you look, ominous ads and articles blare that we're being killed by our own waistlines.)

Whether you buy into the obesity panic or not, 250 calories an hour is nothing to sneeze at. I know from my expensive Dreadmill, which has more electronic readouts than the space shuttle, that it takes me about 40 minutes to burn that many calories if I keep a steady pace, walking to nowhere. Turns out, I could've saved my money and simply scrubbed stuff for exercise. I'd be just as fat, I mean fit, as I am now, and my house would be cleaner besides.

The article encouraged readers to find ways to squeeze more exercise into their housework. For instance, use time while you're waiting for the microwave or the coffeemaker to do stretches. If you have a two-story home, alternate activities between upstairs and downstairs so you get a free Stairmaster routine between chores. Sweep instead of vacuuming. Chop veggies with a knife rather than using a food processor, the article said, or do dishes by hand rather than in the dishwasher.

Those last suggestions made me say, "Whoa." The only way chopping veggies will help you lose weight is if you cut off a few fingers. And I'll do dishes in the sink when they pry my dishwasher from my cold, dead hands.

But, mostly, I like the idea of house-cleaning as workout routine, and I've dreamed up more exercises you can use to shed those unwanted pounds:

--Grout Stretch. Try scrubbing the bathroom grout after you've dressed for the day. You'll be forced to s-t-r-e-t-c-h across tubs and shower stalls so your clothes won't get wet and gunky. Keeping yourself suspended on toes and fingertips, while one free hand scrubs like crazy, burns more calories than Marine push-ups.

--Kitchen Race. If you have teen-agers in the house, try to supply food faster than they can eat it. You can cook, serve and load the dishwasher all at the same time, trying to keep up, but their appetites still will win.

--Toilet Bowl Bulimia. The more disgusting the toilet bowl you're cleaning, the more likely that you'll lose your lunch. Works best in households where boys reside.

--Television Scavenger Hunt. You can walk for miles, trying to find the remote control, all while bending and stooping and getting that heart rate up, up, up. Cursing can be aerobic, too.

--Rearranging Furniture. Moving heavy sofas and chairs is a good workout, and can help your home attain a "new look." Also, you'll be forced to clean the floor where the furniture formerly sat because it's covered with dust bunnies, loose change and escaped M&M's. Caution: Eating the old M&M's negates the calorie-burning effect.

--Stubbed-Toe Dance. A night-time event that frequently follows Rearranging Furniture.

--Climbing the Walls. Another exercise most common in homes equipped with teen-agers. Remove cobwebs while you're up there.

So, get cleaning and get fit, America. A sparkling home and a slimmer you awaits.

If that's not incentive enough, try rewarding your efforts with M&M's. Look under the couch.

Autumn chill

Here's how I know it's time to go on a diet: While putting on my belt, I think, "Ooh, that buckle's cold."

I'm laying off the chocolate, immediately. Winter's coming, and I don't want icicles on my overhang. Brr.

Facts + food = guilty pleasures

Remember the good old days when the closest thing to consumer information on a food product was "Open Other End?"

Not anymore. Now, all our packaged foods are covered with so much frightening information, it's a wonder we eat them at all. The government-required "Nutrition Facts" labels, such a boon to dieters, have taken all the fun out of noshing.

Maybe that was the whole idea. When an entire nation's bombarded with daily alerts about the Obesity Epidemic, perhaps the powers-that-be thought it would be a good idea to put us off our feed.

Naturally, it hasn't worked. The Nutrition Facts, which seemed so valuable and shocking when we first started reading how much sugar was in a bowl of Froot Loops, have become old hat. I suspect most of us don't even notice the labels anymore, and they wouldn't affect our eating habits if we did.

When you're craving a bowl of ice cream, you won't be stopped by such trivial obstacles as calorie counts or fat content. You'll by golly have a bowl of ice cream, if it kills you (which, over time, it just might).

Even the scariest warnings won't stop us from enjoying ourselves. Generations of cigarette smokers are proof of that.

All the Nutrition Facts (and tobacco warnings) really accomplish is to make consumers feel guilty. If you consistently read the Nutrition Facts on everything you eat, you'll worry over every morsel you consume. Plus, you'll suffer from eyestrain.

As I write this, I have before me a box of raisins, your standard lunchbox fare, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Could anything be healthier than a box of raisins? Nature's own dried fruit, full of iron and potassium and dietary fiber.

Let's examine the Nutrition Facts, which cover one entire side of the raisin box. Calories: 130 (Ouch.). Calories from Fat: 0 (Good, good.) Total carbohydrate: 31 grams, or 10 percent of the carbs you're supposed to consume in a whole day. Excuse me? That's right, 10 percent. The sugar in these sweet treats make them absolutely forbidden on most diets. Dang.

Sometimes, the Nutrition Facts are amusing because they state the obvious. On the raisins, for instance, the label says, "Ingredients: Raisins." Check any bottled water and you'll find, "Ingredients: Water" and a full Nutrition Facts breakdown, even though all the numbers are zero.

A bag of pretzels in my pantry says "Fat Free" in big letters on the front, but the ingredients on the back include "canola oil," which, the label admits, "adds a trivial amount of fat." You've got to love that. That's what I'm telling my doctor next time he puts me on the scales: "It's OK, Doc, that's just a trivial amount of fat."

In my latest feeble attempt at dieting, I bought some "Fat Free SnackWells Devil's Food Cookie Cakes." Just a little treat to keep me from chewing my fingernails back to the first knuckle.

You'd think anything with the words "cookie" and "cake" right there on the label would be bad for you, no matter how "fat free" they might be. And they probably are. But the Nutrition Facts show that two "cookie cakes" have less sugar/carbohydrates than the healthy box of raisins. Which do you think I'll eat?

If you guessed "both," then you are correct. Because when it comes to nutrition, I want it all.

And that's a fact.

Dear Diary: I'm fat

In all the hysteria over the health threats posed by obesity, one group of at-risk Americans have gone overlooked -- those of us who work at home.

Telecommuters, home-office types and housespouses face daily diet dangers dire enough to make Richard Simmons sing basso profundo. We're home alone (or, worse, with the kids) all day. The food's right there in the kitchen. No one's watching . . .

Many of us find ourselves gradually inflated by unhealthy meals and round-the-clock snacking. A few pizzas here, a six-pack there, the occasional fistful of chocolate, and, next thing you know, your kids are spray-painting "GOODYEAR" on your abdomen while you nap.

Dieting experts say creeping weight gain results when people don't watch what they eat. These experts recommend that dieters keep a daily diary of everything they consume, so they can be alert to dangerous trends.

Such a diary can be revealing, and often surprising, to us at-home workers.

For instance, if you're very busy at your desk, you might not even notice that you've scarfed down a pound of peanut M&Ms, worth 27 bazillion calories. Heck, you might not have even tasted them, depending upon your level of distraction. But your body will remember every calorie. Especially your hips, which neither forget nor forgive.

How to set up a diet diary? It's best to keep it simple, recording on lined paper each morsel consumed each hour of the day. Use the following example as a template:

DAY ONE

7 a.m. -- Coffee.
8 a.m. -- Coffee.
9 a.m. -- Coffee.
10 a.m. -- Omigosh, I forgot breakfast. A cinnamon-raisin bagel with "light" cream cheese. More coffee.
11 a.m. -- Mid-morning snack of a healthy apple. Apple unsatisfying, so chased it with nine ounces of peanut M&Ms.
Noon -- A healthful lunch of a salad with low-fat ranch dressing, one serving of cheese and some baby carrots. For dessert, one 16-ounce bag of potato chips dipped in low-fat ranch dressing.
1 p.m. -- Nothing. So there!
2 p.m. -- Early afternoon snack of low-fat cookies. Bad news from corporate headquarters forced me to eat entire box. Not my fault.
3 p.m. -- Mid-afternoon snack break with the children, consisting of three Popsicles.
4 p.m. -- Need something to cut that sugar high. Twelve ounces of pretzels. Fat-free!
5 p.m. -- Time for a few quiet moments before dinner preparation begins. Six handfuls of peanut M&Ms and two glasses of wine.
6 p.m. -- A few little tastes from various pots while preparing dinner. Nothing much. Really!
7 p.m. -- Dinner with the family. Healthful broccoli, more salad, pasta, French bread, butter, more wine. Lots of calories, but the kids were begging for spaghetti.
8 p.m. -- Favorite old movie on TV can mean only one thing: Popcorn!
9 p.m. -- A few peanut M&Ms while getting the children ready for bed.
10 p.m. -- Bedtime snack. A healthy glass of milk. And 14 Oreos.
11 p.m. -- Can't sleep. Aren't peanut M&Ms a natural tranquilizer? Eat just enough to nod off . . .

DAY TWO

7 a.m. -- Awake to find M&M bag empty and pillow smeared with colorful stains. Time for coffee.

So that's how a diet diary works. Keep track of your intake every day, and you'll have a record to use, years from now, when you sue the snack companies for making you fat.

Summertime foods

I've sworn off cooking, at least for the summer.

It's too danged hot to eat big, wholesome meals, much less cook them. Why heat up the kitchen when the whole family only wants Popsicles anyway?

I tried to keep my family on the nutritious path. I sweated through every evening, cobbling together healthy food-pyramid meals. How did my family react to such culinary enterprise? I don't know. I couldn't get them away from the cooler vents long enough to come eat.

On those rare evenings when we did gather for the traditional family dinner, my traditional family proved to be ingrates. Picture this: I'm setting out a big dinner, one that features boneless pork chops that, admittedly, hadn't browned up very well. As I sweatily present this anemic tour de force, my two sons say, in unison: "Pork -- The Other Gray Meat."

This sounded suspiciously rehearsed, one of their little jokes, but at that moment I received an epiphany. Here's what it said: Stop cooking.

My wife, who thinks it's a sin to turn on the oven between Easter and Thanksgiving, heartily agreed with this plan. We stocked the house with picnic food -- fruit and snacks and lettuce and cold cuts and ready-made potato salad. We eased the rules about gathering for communal meals. Summer, we announced, was now a food free-for-all. Everyone fends for himself.

The result? Our house has become an around-the-clock, all-you-can-eat buffet.

There's always someone eating around here. Always someone preparing food. Always someone else (me) cleaning up afterward. We've become a production line of consumption, working around the clock to keep the food coming. I'm thinking of installing a conveyor belt in the kitchen.

Partly, this is the result of having two growing boys in the house all day during the summer. They eat non-stop to fuel their ever-expanding engines. I'm twice their size, but they consume twice as much as me, then complain there's nothing in the house to eat. We buy so many groceries, the supermarket clerks send up a cheer when they see us arrive.

We can keep up with the shopping -- barely -- but there's no way I can prepare meals fast enough to keep the boys sated. Not if I ever plan to work or sleep again. So my sons have been preparing most of their own food this summer, eating only when they're hungry (an estimated 22 hours a day) and falling into a pattern of perpetual grazing.

Nutrition experts tell us it's healthier to eat this way, noshing several mini-meals throughout the day rather than sitting down to one or two big honking grubfests. This, no doubt, is an evolutionary mandate. Our caveman ancestors hunted and gathered all the time, just to scrape together enough calories to live another day. Our bodies still haven't adapted to caloric abundance or the availability of TV dinners.

I suspect our caveman ancestors didn't bother about sitting at a table or cleaning up after a meal, and our sons have adopted that pattern, too. Food consumption no longer is confined to the kitchen. If you're eating on the fly, what's to keep you from flying around the house?

The natural consequence is a house littered with crumbs and paper cups and apple cores and Popsicle wrappers. All the time I've saved by not cooking goes into clean-up. Somehow, I got demoted from chef to busboy.

But at least I'm not standing over a hot stove.

Dieting at your desk

Americans are obsessed with their diets and spend billions every year on how-to-lose books and "lite" foods and various other snake-oil remedies. In an attempt to cut off a slice of that action, we now present the Easy Diet Plan for Home-Office Workers.

Millions of people now work out of their homes, sitting alone at computers all day, while the refrigerator is right there, humming its song of seduction. A diet plan for these workers should be a lucrative hit on the market. Get in on the ground floor!

With our Easy Diet Plan, we reveal the secrets to good nutrition known only to those who work at home. It's all about calories, friends. Consuming 'em and burning 'em. But unlike other so-called diet plans, we don't insist that you count calories all day or worry about every little thing you feel like stuffing into your mouth.

No, with the Easy Diet Plan, we teach you that some foods, depending upon how and where they're eaten, have no calories at all. Our research among at-home workers -- who tend to be a peculiarly gourd-shaped people -- has found they are convinced of this Proven Fact, and their eating habits reflect a superstition bordering on religious fervor.

You probably know the most common tenet of this dieting belief system: Food eaten while standing over the kitchen sink has no calories. This dieting maxim is so widespread there are websites maintained by its followers.

What you learn from our Easy Diet Plan is WHY eating over the sink is preferred by anorexics everywhere. It's the Drip Factor. Crumbs and spills from your messy food drip into the sink, carrying calories with them. Clean-up is a snap, and all those nasty calories are whisked away down the drain. Time for dessert!

Research has found many other such exceptions to biology, and they're all revealed in our Easy Diet Plan.

For instance, did you know that food eaten at your mother's house has no calories? It simply doesn't count! Doesn't that make you want to go visit Mom?

Here's one that especially important for home-office workers: Food eaten at your desk contains no calories. How can this be, you might ask? We don't know. But we firmly believe it to be true.

Coffee, that home-office staple? No calories. Even if you load it up with cream and sugar and that frothy stuff people wear in their mustaches. No calories. Not a one. Coffee is a stimulant, people. It burns up calories. If anything, you should drink more of it. Right now. Go get some. Faster, faster.

Food dropped on the floor? A caloric freebie. Of course, for reasons of food hygiene, you should always follow the Five-Second Rule. If the food's been on the floor more than five seconds, it's probably acquired too many high-calorie dust bunnies to be safely consumed.

Here's another Proven Research Fact: Any food you can eat without benefit of a napkin has no calories. No, really. This is why so many of us home-office workers wear relaxed-fit jeans all day. We wipe our hands on our pants. With blue jeans, you can't even tell. For days.

Food items too drippy or otherwise messy to be eaten at the desk or without a napkin should, of course, be eaten over the sink. It's simple logic, friends.

If you work at home, you can eat light, quick meals (over the sink) several times a day rather than sitting down to the dining table for three hearty, calorie-heavy meals. This so-called "grazing" method is recommended by dietitians and snake-oil salesmen worldwide.

By "grazing," some at-home workers have been known to eat upwards of 15 light, nutritious meals a day! And they don't gain more than twenty, twenty-five pounds per year. Try applying your calorie math to that!

By carefully monitoring your frequent snack-food intake and the geography of your dining habits, you, too, could enjoy the benefits of the Easy Diet Plan for Home-Office Workers.

Sign up today!

Watching what we eat

These days, we pay way too much attention to food.

You can hardly open a newspaper or watch television without being bombarded with information about food. It's become a national obsession, and some of us are ready to choke on it.

The food wars are fought on two fronts. On one side is the steamroller of news about foods that are bad for you. On the other is the national fascination with fancy meals prepared from exotic ingredients you can't find at the store. Most of those ingredients, it should be noted, fall into the category of "foods that are bad for you."

All this conflicting information results in people wandering supermarket aisles, overwhelmed by uncertainty and misguided ambition. We'd like some eggs, but they're bad for us and must be avoided. We'd like to create an colorful quiche like we saw on TV, but the recipe requires eggs.
Such clashing desires result in a zombie-like paralysis. Night of the Living Hungry.

Complicating matters is the fact that health news changes every few minutes. Scientists say steer clear of red wine and olive oil if you want to live past 50. The next week, they say red wine and olive oil prevent heart attacks and must be consumed immediately. Then a competing herd of scientists warns that red wine and olive oil should only be used for bathing . . .

Is it any wonder we're confused? We’d just like to sit down and eat something without concern over whether it'll kill us. According to the latest obesity statistics, the majority of us are doing just that. In fact, we're apparently eating everything but the family cat.

Americans absorb all the admonitions to watch what we eat, then we watch it go right in our mouths. Even foods with zero nutritional value, snacks so fattening they should be glued directly to our hips, get wolfed down with only the barest inkling of guilt. After all, we tell ourselves, scientists will inform us any minute that Twinkies prevent cancer.

The flip side to all this dithering is food as entertainment. Have there ever been more cooking shows on TV? Celebrity chefs with hilarious names like Emeril and Nigella whip up sizzling dishes composed entirely of ingredients that are -- not to get too technical here -- exceedingly nasty, and we watch with such rapt interest, you'd think it was the Super Bowl.

(That there's such a job description as "celebrity chef" says something's gone very wrong in this country. Chefs shouldn't be seen or heard. They should be hidden away in the kitchen, working their magic with eggs and red wine. It's bad enough that every talkative waiter seemingly wants to be our friend, regaling us with intricate descriptions of food origins. Now we have to be pals with the chef, too?)

There's even a food slang. Cooking shows are known as "food porn." People who stand in line at fancy restaurants or obsess over complicated recipes are called "foodies," just as people who obsess over heroin are dubbed "junkies."

Some foodies spend thousands of dollars on rare truffles. Others eat disgusting fare such as quail eggs or sashimi or oysters (also known as "slime on the half-shell") in an attempt to tickle their ever-more sophisticated palates.

Exotic food has become the latest way of displaying one's wealth and superiority. Tobacco, alcohol, drugs and sex all have been declared health hazards. Food's the only bad habit we have left.

Most of us refuse to take sides in the food wars. We ignore equally the health alerts and the exhortations of the foodies. We waddle into the supermarket and buy the same items every week. We manage to exist from day to day without truffles or quail eggs.

For all the attention paid to food, the bottom line remains that most of us eat what tastes good. Yes, it's too fattening. Yes, it's slowly killing us. And, yes, it shows we're not foodies with refined palates. But we've got to eat something and it might as well be something we enjoy.

So eat up, America. I recommend the free-range Twinkies.

Weight loss dross

Americans have never been fatter, and things aren't getting any better now that we spend all our time on the sofa, watching election coverage on CNN and wolfing down comforting Oreos.

As Americans, we know that the way to address a thorny problem such as the inability to button one's jeans is to throw money at it. The American Society of Bariatric Physicians reports that we spent $467 million on prescription weight-loss drugs in 1996, as well as an additional $32 million on over-the-counter drugs and an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion on formal weight-loss programs endorsed by former British royalty and has-been actresses.

(The American Society of Bariatric Physicians, whose 2,200 members specialize in weight-loss treatment, planned to provide more up-to-date figures, but a new all-you-can-eat buffet opened down the street, and the doctors haven't been seen since.)

Dieting is a huge industry in this country, which makes the typical American think: How can I tear off a piece of that big chunk of money?

That's the precise reason I've developed new dieting strategies for our overweight citizens. A sampling of these approaches follows free of charge, but I expect to soon develop special medications, foods and exercise plans that should generate, oh, $1 billion a year.

But first, let's discuss qualifications. You're probably saying to yourself: Who does this guy think he is, giving diet advice? I have a wide range of experience in gaining and losing weight, and I have a wide range of sizes of jeans hanging in my closet to prove it. Lately, I've lost a few pounds. Not enough that people keep saying, "Have you lost weight?" No, my loss is more subtle than that. But my clothes fit better and I can hardly wait to get on the scales in the morning.

So now you're saying to yourself: Wowee, what could be this guy's secret? First, let me admit that I was aided in my weight-loss program by a nagging cold that hung around for three weeks, and which made all food taste like mud. Secondly, I've been getting a lot of exercise, doing household projects such as painting and mowing. This unaccustomed physical activity has, on many days, left me too tired to chew.

Most importantly, I've been fixing all the meals around here lately, and nothing will put you off your feed faster than your own cooking.

Perhaps such approaches will help you shed unwanted pounds. But if they don't work, then you should try one of these special diet plans:

--The Small Plate Diet. If you use smaller plates at mealtime, you'll eat less. Each plateful will hold less, so when you're on your third helping, you've really only eaten enough for two people. Once you've mastered that, you can move to even smaller plates. Pursued to its proper conclusion, this diet eventually will mean you're eating off a coaster.

--The Over-the-Sink Diet. Everyone knows that food eaten while standing over the kitchen sink has no calories. Therefore, you should try eating all your meals there. And you'll dirty up no plates at all.

--The All-Sugar Diet. Dietitians will tell you too much sugar is a bad thing. But overdoses of sugar give you untold amounts of energy. You'll soon find yourself sprinting madly around the house, burning up those empty calories.

--The Cigarette Diet. Every time you feel like eating, smoke a cigarette instead. Sure, this diet will kill you, but you'll leave behind a svelte, young corpse.

--The Salsa Diet. No, not salsa as in dancing. That would be an exercise program, and we all know how Americans feel about exercise. This diet requires the eater to saturate every meal in the hottest salsa available. Skipping meals soon will seem like a more attractive option than sucking on a fire extinguisher for dessert.

--The George Washington Diet. Instead of spending exorbitant amounts on dieting schemes, skip a step and just eat your paper money. Money is full of fiber and special dyes, but it's low in calories. Eat enough one-dollar bills and, not only will you not want other food, but you'll be unable to tell a lie.

And then you can stop lying to yourself about losing weight.