That’s the thing for me… When it directly affects other people, then I tend to have a problem with it if it’s damaging behavior. If it just affects you, have fun, you’re a big boy/girl and you can take the consequences.

Smoking and driving affect other people, lots and lots. Thus.

People are equating freedom with smoking again in the comments. You’re one of them. I have a problem with this. See, the person who is doing the smoking is not the only one affected.

I grew up in a smokers’ household. That’s right, plural. Both parents. Chain. My brother had constant ear infections, and both he and I had to have tubes in our ears the year I turned eleven. It’s possible the cigarettes weren’t to blame, but it’s also possible they were.

And the fact remains that the smoke coming out of the end of the cigarette is completely unfiltered and contains not only nicotine, a drug, but also all manner of nasty stuff that’s not good for anyone to inhale–that is mitigated by the filter somewhat for a smoker, but not at all for anyone not doing the smoking.

You want freedom? Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. I have the right to not be forced to inhale a drug against my will. If I can’t even go out in public without some yo-yo blowing smoke my way at the bus stop or in a restaurant (and I promise you, the “non-smoking section” is a joke–smoke travels on air, and air goes everywhere!), how is that freedom? I’m supposed to live under house arrest because you were dumb enough to cave in to peer pressure when you were [insert age here]? I don’t think so.

This is one of those things I *will* harp about, here or anywhere, especially now that I live with an asthmatic in the house. I was willing to put up with this before he came along and especially before I had kids. Having kids and dating the asthmatic (when we were dating) really opened my eyes.

Damn… If you don’t care about the folks with healthy lungs, you might keep in mind that asthmatics don’t have I CAN’T EFFING BREATHE tattooed across their foreheads in neon pink ink. You don’t know who’s standing (or seated) near you when you light up. I’ve known an asthmatic smoker in my lifetime, but most of them aren’t that suicidal.

And the thing about driving around wasting gasoline just for fun… after the Gulf disaster, that’s just tacky. I love driving too, but I don’t love it more than marine life, sorry, especially since if that all dies out I’m gonna die out too. I would love to be able to afford a hybrid or an electric car (I know, they have their issues too), and it pains me to see people who can afford them blow them off. (If you can’t, ignore that part.)

It also pains me to see this lack of civic consciousness which, legend has it, far more of us used to have. I guess the standard libertarian excuse for its decline is that since the government started trying to be everything to everybody, nobody has any reason to be civic-minded anymore. Whatever. I thought we were all our own people and capable of thinking for ourselves. Then again, I see just as much begging for government handouts from the right as I do from the left–it may mostly be for propping up the military and the church, but it’s still there.

OK, enough ramble.

But your post about saturated fat, that I like. Like it matters, but there you go. Everybody has their blind spots, I guess. No big.

I have no problem limiting smoking in situations where people can’t avoid it. But I very much object to governments telling bar owners they can’t allow smoking on their own property. If you don’t like smoke, don’t go into that bar.

As for the right begging for just as many handouts as the left, I oppose most handouts — the kind of corporate welfare that goes to companies like ADM is an outrage. I want a smaller military dedicated to protecting America, not Japan or South Korea or Saudi Arabia. But even at its current size, the military doesn’t suck up nearly as many tax dollars as so-called “entitlement” programs. (Love that term … yes, we’re all “entitled” to live off our neighbors.) I’m not sure what you mean by asking for money for churches, so you’ll have to explain that one.

That’s what is so frustrating about the anti-saturated-fat hysteria: we’ve made food so unsatisfying, people end up eating way more of it. Then we blame them for over-eating.

I think you’ve solved the mystery of why French fries in Turkey tasted so much better than anything here. About fifteen years ago when I was there (and not eating low-carb then) meals often came with a garnish of a few French fries (maybe 6-8 fries, not the mountain of them you get in the States), and they were delicious. I bet they were fried in a real, natural fat. Turkey offered the best cuisine I ever had, by the way (and I lived in France for a while). It would be worth living there just for the way the oranges tasted. Even truck stop food was sublime!

I recall the meals in Italy and Spain being exceptional as well when I was on my honeymoon. That was way before “Fat Head,” so I didn’t think about what kind of fats they were using, but I bet I was tasting real food cooked in real fats.

I’m willing to give up foods I used to love — chips, pizza, sourdough bread– to go low-carb, which still allows for a lot of tasty food. But if I had to live on something like the Ornish diet to stay healthy, I think I’d choose to live a shorter life and enjoy it.

We’re currently in the Los Angeles area, where mosquitoes are the second-rarest species, after Republicans. But soon we’re moving to Tennessee, and as I told my wife, we’ll have to re-acquaint ourselves with humidity and mosquitoes. I expected to be treated like a 24-hour diner on my evening walks. Perhaps not.

Speaking of the CSPI, I think most of their energy is directed at abolishing eating pleasure in general. It’s a “puritanical” mission against good tasting food. It’s not just saturated fat that they’re after, but also salt and artificial sweeteners. They can’t have salt in food to make it taste good, and god forbid one can have a sweet treat without any calories. It strikes me much like Taubes describing the obesity epidemic in sinful terms, where obesity is a problem of gluttony and sloth, not of hormone disregulation. For the CSPI, getting pleasure from eating food and not having negative consequences (and as the low-carb diet writers have shown, very likely positive consequences) is heresy (not sure that’s the right word…). The guy from CSPI would probably get along real well with Sylvester Graham or John Harvey Kellogg, who seemed to advocate high-carb vegetarian diets to curb sexual appetite. Seems like another possible reason to stay away from such a diet.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. In “Fat Politics,” Dr. Eric Oliver writes that health issues, especially weight issues, involve a lot of Puritan thinking: being thin and healthy is a sign of virtue, and virtue is a matter of denying yourself bodily pleasures. I remember, after reading CSPI’s long list of sinful foods, saying to my wife, “Gee, it must a real blast to go on a dinner date with one of these people.”

Somebody better warn Spurlock’s wife about the vegetarian diets and sexual appetites. As you’ll recall, in Super Size Me she blamed saturated fat for their diminishing sex life. I guess that explains why hunter-gatherers never produced any children.

I’ve found a few decent restaurants around here. I’ll order a steak, pork chops, salmon, etc., along with a salad and extra vegetables instead of potatoes. But it’s easier to stick to the good stuff at home, and my wife has become quite the steak chef.

Yup. Vegetable oils are lousy for frying. No taste, no good crunch, no satisfying feeling afterwards.

I loved your movie and love the website also. I’m embarassed to admit that I subscribed to the CSPI newsletter for 20 years–a major part of my youth was spent trying to lose weight–eating the skim milk and rice cakes and skinless chicken breasts they recommended–and feeling always hungry & depressed, and never losing the weight! I feel so much better now on low-carb–I was able to stop the antidepressants I took for 20 years, and the weight is slowing coming off (I don’t think it works as quickly for us post-menopausal women as it does for you guys . Gary Taubes is one of my heros, too–I got to speak to him when he gave a talk at a medical worshop in my area, and I stuttered like a schoolgirl with a crush.

I’m an RN, and I teach diabetes education. I’m constantly at odds with the registered dieticians I work with, who sit down with each patient and cheerily say “let’s go over your diet and make sure you’re getting your carbs in!” I try to impress on the patients how it’s the sugars & starches that raise their blood sugar, and hope they remember that. But you know, if I tried to teach them the real low-carb way, and contradicted all the dieticians (and the doctors who send in their patients), I’d get fired. Gary Taubes is right in trying to change the whole paradigm with the medical professionals–until it changes from the top down, even we believers lower down the ladder can’t do much.

Thanks again for you very entertaining, and very informative, movie and website.

It’s a shame when you have to ignore your doctor’s advice in order to stay healthy. Mine (not the doctor in the film) recommended a lowfat diet because my cholesterol was “elevated” at 203, with an HDL of 61. I of course ignored him.

It breaks my heart to think of all those diabetics out there, getting worse by following the advice they’re given. But congrats for fighting your own little rear-guard action, and for getting off the anti-depressants. Like Mike Eades told me, after the lowfat diet became the rage, a whole lot more people started seeking treatment for depression.