One of the yeah-but questions I’ve received frequently in emails is “But what about the Asians?  They eat a lot more carbohydrates than we do, and they’re not all fat and diabetic!”

I usually reply that while it’s true that Asians eat more rice than most Americans, they don’t match our consumption of sodas, pasta, muffins, ice cream, pancakes, cereal and Little Debbie Snack Cakes.  Their total carbohydrate consumption may not be higher than ours, and even if it is, they don’t still consume nearly as much sugar.

I’ve tried without success to find recent statistics on what Americans eat vs. what the Japanese and Chinese eat, but perhaps those figures wouldn’t be relevant anyway.  After all, diabetes is becoming a huge problem in China, so we can no longer point to them as an example of people who eat a high-carb diet without becoming diabetic.  My guess is that as their incomes rose, they began buying more sugary foods.

I did, however, manage to find some data from the late 1990s, when the “Asians eat a lot of carbohydrates but don’t become fat or diabetic” opinion was probably more accurate.  So let’s look at what the data tells us.

According to an article in the Journal of Hypertension, here are (or were) the macronutrient intakes among men in Japan, China, the U.K. and the U.S:

Calories per day
Japan:  2278
China:  2347
UK:  2470
US:  2609

Percent calories as carbohydrates
Japan:  52.3%
China:  61.8%
UK:  46.6%
US:  48.4%

Percent calories as sugar
Japan:  15.8%
China:  7.1%
UK:  17.9%
US:  24.3%

The first thing that jumps out at me is that even in the late 1990s, American men were getting nearly one-fourth of their calories from sugar.  Yeesh.

Plugging the figures above into Excel, here’s what we get for carbohydrate and sugar consumption:

Carbohydrate grams per day
Japan:  298
China:  363
UK:  288
US:  316

As I suspected even before I ran the numbers, Japanese men do not (or did not in the late 1990s) consume more carbohydrates per day than American men.  However, Chinese men do.  So why weren’t the Chinese afflicted with diabetes in the 1990s?  Well, take a look at these figures:

Sugar grams per day
Japan:  90
China:  42
UK:  111
US:  158

In the 1990s, at least according to this study, Japanese men consumed slightly fewer carbohydrates overall than American men and significantly less sugar.  The Chinese consumed more carbohydrates overall, but only about one-fourth as much sugar as American men.

The figures for women are similar.  I won’t go through them all, but here are the numbers for carbohydrate and sugar intake:

Carbohydrate grams per day
Japan:  253
China:  295
UK:  221
US:  231

Sugar grams per day
Japan:  87
China:  39
UK:  92
US:  117

I think the message is clear:  American got itself into a big ol’ health crisis largely by consuming too much sugar.  If you’re metabolically healthy and enjoy rice, fine.  It probably won’t hurt you.  But if you want to remain metabolically healthy, stay away from sugar.

Interesting news from the past week or so …

Yet another “meat kills!” study

Dear nutrition researchers –

We get it, okay?  Seriously, we get it.  We know that you can conduct observational study after observational study and produce statistics showing that people who consume a lot of processed meat are more likely to get heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc., etc., etc. than people who don’t.  If we took a survey, we’d probably find that more people know about that correlation than know the U.S. is 16 trillion dollars in debt.  We’d probably also find that most people are more worried about processed meats than the ticking debt-bomb.  So congratulations.  You’ve done your job.  You can stop now.  Really.  Please.

But of course, they won’t stop.  They’ll keep producing essentially the same study over and over and over.  The latest “meat kills!” study hit the news late last week.  Here are some quotes from just one of the gazillion articles that appeared online.

Too much processed meat tied to premature death

Eating too much processed meat like bacon and sausage could increase the risk of premature death, a study of nearly half a million Europeans suggests.

The study of people in 10 European countries who were followed for an average of 13 years. In that time, there were about 26,000 deaths.  People who consumed more than 160 grams of processed meat a day — about two sausages and a slice of bacon — were 44 per cent more likely to die over the course of the study compared with those eating about 20 grams.

“The results of our analysis support a moderate positive association between processed meat consumption and mortality, in particular due to cardiovascular diseases, but also to cancer,” Prof. Sabine Rohrmann from the University of Zurich and his co-authors concluded in this week’s issue of the journal BMC Medicine.

Blah, blah, blah.

I took a peek at the full study and was tempted to do a full analysis, but concluded I may as well just cut-and-paste from my posts on other “meat kills!” studies – because this is the same kind of crappy study as all the others.  So here’s pretty much all you need to know:

• It’s an observational study and therefore essentially meaningless.
• The data is based on food-recall questionnaires, which are notoriously unreliable – and in this study, different questionnaires were used in different countries.
• The scary-sounding percentages (increases risk of death by 44%!) turn into small numbers when you look at the actual difference.
• The people who consumed a lot of processed meat had worse health habits overall:  more likely to smoke, more likely to drink heavily, more likely to be overweight, less likely to eat vegetables, etc.  In other words, we are (once again) looking at the differences between people who are health-conscious and people who aren’t.  Since we’ve all been told for the past 40 years that bacon and sausage are bad for us, health-conscious people are more likely to avoid processed meats than I-don’t-give-a-@#$% people.

The researchers claimed they “teased out” the processed meat consumption specifically, but frankly, that’s not possible.  They can adjust for factors included in their data, such as smoking and BMI, but there’s no way they gathered data on every variable that can affect health — such as the fact that people who eat processed meats typically eat them with a nice, big serving of white flour and probably a soda as well.

‘Nuff said.

We eat less, but we’re fatter

So much for the belief that it’s all about the calories.  According to a study that hit the news recently, we’re eating less, not more:

U.S. adults have been eating steadily fewer calories for almost a decade, despite the continued increase in obesity rates, according to survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Researchers, whose findings appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, analyzed trends since the 1970s and found that among adults, average daily energy intake rose by a total of 314 calories from 1971 to 2003, then fell by 74 calories between 2003 and 2010.

“It’s hard to reconcile what these data show, and what is happening with the prevalence of obesity,” said co-author William Dietz, former CDC director of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, to Reuters Health.

“Seventy-four calories is a lot, and as I said before, we would expect to see a measurable impact on obesity.”

Okay, this is interesting, but I have the same complaint here that I did with the first study:  how do these researchers know exactly how many calories people are consuming?  Unless the Department of Homeland Security has been spying on all of us and tracking every morsel we eat, I find it difficult to believe that they know for a fact that our calorie consumption has dropped by 74 calories.

That complaint aside, I could have predicted (and did) the reaction of the so-called experts.  They of course believe our bodies are like simple engines that can only respond to a slight decrease in fuel by tapping the reserve tank.  So as soon as I saw the headline, I knew the explanation for the calorie equation not working as advertised would be that we’re exercising less.  Yup.  Take a peek:

Experts said it’s possible more time is needed to see obesity rates respond to changes in calorie intake. It’s also possible that Americans have changed their eating habits but are still not getting enough exercise to burn the calories they do consume. Or, the surveys may simply be wrong.

It takes more than a decade for a reduction in calories to stop the rise in obesity rates?  Seriously?

“If you cut back on calories by 100 calories, you’ll plateau 10 pounds (4.5 kg) lower,” but you’d only see about half of that progress over the first year, said Claire Wang, who studies energy intake and expenditure at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

No, if you’re hormonally driven to get fatter and you cut your intake by 100 calories per day, your body will just adjust your metabolism down to make up the difference.  That’s why the “eat less and move more” advice fails over and over.  It doesn’t address the root cause of the problem.  If we are getting fatter while consuming the same or even slightly fewer calories, it’s a matter of what we’re eating, not how much.

Intermittent Fasting sweeps the U.K.

Now here’s a plan that might actually address the root cause of the hormonal drive to get fatter.  A popular TV doctor in Britain has apparently created a frenzy for intermittent fasting:

Visitors to England right now, be warned. The big topic on people’s minds — from cabdrivers to corporate executives — is not Kate Middleton’s increasingly visible baby bump (though the craze does involve the size of one’s waistline), but rather a best-selling diet book that has sent the British into a fasting frenzy.

“The Fast Diet,” published in mid-January in Britain, could do the same in the United States if Americans eat it up. The United States edition arrived last week.

With an alluring cover line that reads, “Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer,” the premise of this latest weight-loss regimen — or “slimming” as the British call “dieting” — is intermittent fasting, or what has become known here as the 5:2 diet: five days of eating and drinking whatever you want, dispersed with two days of fasting.

For the record, I would never recommend eating and drinking “whatever you want” on those other five days, but based on my own n=1 experiments, some intermittent fasting here and there does promote fat loss.

A typical fasting day consists of two meals of roughly 250 to 300 calories each, depending on the person’s sex (500 calories for women, 600 for men). Think two eggs and a slice of ham for breakfast, and a plate of steamed fish and vegetables for dinner.

It is not much sustenance, but the secret to weight loss, according to the book, is that even after just a few hours of fasting, the body begins to turn off the fat-storing mechanisms and turn on the fat-burning systems.

Not exactly the strictest form of fasting, but I can see why it would work.  The doctor’s prescription for the (sort-of) fasting days is a low-carb, low-calorie diet.  A clinical study conducted in Britain awhile back showed that going low-carb just two days per week spurred more weight loss than a calorie-restricted diet.  Here’s a quote from an article about that study:

The researchers followed 88 women for four months. All the women were at high risk for breast cancer based on their family histories. One third of the women were put on a Mediterranean-type diet that restricted calories to about 1,500 per day. A second group was told to eat normally most of the time, but two days a week to cut carbs and also calories to about 650 on those two days. The third group was also to cut carbs two days a week, but there was no calorie restriction on those days.

At the end of four weeks women in both of the intermittent dieting groups had lost more weight — about 9 pounds — than the women who ate low calorie meals every day of the week — about 5 pounds.

Women in the intermittent dieting groups also had better improvement than daily dieters in the levels of hormones — insulin and leptin — that have been linked with breast cancer risk.

I haven’t read The Fast Diet (and probably won’t), but after reading the NY Times article last week, I’ve done the mini-fast three times (including yesterday), limiting myself to three or four eggs for breakfast and another three or four eggs for dinner.  Easy peasy.  I barely felt a stomach grumble.  I don’t know if I lost any weight because I don’t own a scale.  But if you’ve been afraid to try intermittent fasting because you can’t imagine going without food for a full day, this mini-fast method might be worth a shot.

Ketogenic diet promoted for treating cancer

I’m not religious, so I don’t follow the Christian media outlets, but I must say, the Christian Broadcasting Network seems way more open-minded on health topics than most of the mainstream media outlets.  Readers have sent me links to CBN articles or videos on low-carb diets, on the benefits of vitamin D, etc.

This one goes back to December, but I just became aware of it:  an article and video about how ketogenic diets may be useful for treating cancer.

Meats, eggs, coconut oil, a warning to avoid sugar and grains and margarine, plus an assurance that all that saturated fat will not, despite popular belief, cause heart disease.  I love it.

Morgan Spurlock’s ex-wife now an ex-vegan

If you saw Super Size Me, you know Morgan Spurlock’s girlfriend at the time (later wife, later ex-wife) fed him a “purifying” vegan diet after his all-McDonald’s diet. (And it took him six months to lose 20 pounds on that diet.)  She was known as a vegan chef for many years.

Now she’s had her own Lierre Keith moment and declared that she’s no longer a vegan.  From her blog:

I thought many of the world’s problems could be solved if more people ate this way. We could end hunger if we fed grain to people instead of cattle. We could end global warming if we reduced the fertilizer, trucking and refrigeration required to produce meat. We could end the obesity epidemic.

What I ate aligned with what I believed.  And that was that. But then, a few years ago, something began to shift.

My body started craving the “bad” stuff. Namely, meat.

It used to be that, when a friend ordered a burger out at dinner, I was slightly (though quietly) disgusted. But I started noticing a different reaction.

Instead of disgust, I started to salivate.

The impulse to order salmon instead of salad with tofu at my favorite restaurant was overwhelming.  And, for me as a vegan, it was confusing, too.

At first, I thought: “I must be mineral deficient. Or maybe I need more concentrated protein. I’ll eat more sea vegetables. I’ll just add more nuts and hemp seeds and drink more green juice. Then the cravings will stop.”

I denied these cravings and tried to “talk my body out of them”.

It’s this part of her post that was bound to rile up the vegan zealots:

I began to see my cravings for animal foods from a different angle. It wasn’t immoral or wrong. It just was.

In fact, I came to believe that trusting your body, living your truth, whether it be vegan, part-time vegan, flexitarian or carnivore is all inherently good.

The reaction from the vegan zealots was predictable:  she wasn’t it doing it right, ya see. (Really?  A vegan advocate, chef and author wasn’t doing it right?)  Or my favorite:  she was never really a vegan, ya see.

One of the books Jamieson wrote was Vegan Cooking For Dummies.  Given the reaction to her announcement, I’d say that title was more appropriate than she imagined at the time.

Interesting items from my email inbox …

Dear Parents:  Your Kids Are Fat

Let’s file this under the category of we’re from the government and we’re here to help:  schools in Massachusetts are now sending letters to parents informing them that their kids are overweight.

Schools in North Andover are trying help students dealing with obesity issues, but some families say the schools are going too far.

Cameron Watson, 10, isn’t just a strong athlete; he’s also a tough fourth grader who didn’t let a “fat letter” sent to his home get him down.

“I know I’m not obese so I didn’t really care about the letter. I just crumpled it up,” Cam Watson said.

The letters were sent to plenty of homes throughout the Commonwealth.

The Department of Public Health says 32 percent of our students have a Body Mass Index that shows they’re overweight or obese, and the letters are supposed to be a helpful tool for parents.

The “helpful tools” in this case are the government officials who believe these letters have any positive effect whatsoever.  Do they really think the letters will result in conversations like this?

“Johnny!”

“Yes, Dad?”

“You’re too fat!”

“I am?  Why the heck didn’t you say something about it?”

“Well … I didn’t realize you’re fat until your school told me.”

“Wow.  I didn’t either.  Are we stupid, Dad?”

“I’m afraid so, Johnny.”

“So what do we do about this, Dad?”

“Well, you stay in school and I’ll try to read more books and–”

“No, I mean what do we do about me being fat?”

“Uh … I don’t know.  They haven’t told me yet.”

But of course, we know what advice the school will give:  more of the same eat less/move more nonsense that’s already failed.  Of course, it doesn’t help that the schools are serving meals like this (picture supplied by a reader who works in a school):

A roll, mashed potatoes, pasta, an apple and strawberry milk … all in one meal.  Yup, that’s your government-approved school lunch.

Now why the heck are so many kids fat?

Dear Person:  YOU’RE TOO FAT, YOU LAZY @#$%!!

Letters to parents may be enough to turn around the tide of childhood obesity, but we adults need stronger medicine, according to a bioethicist:

Unhappy with the slow pace of public health efforts to curb America’s stubborn obesity epidemic, a prominent bioethicist is proposing a new push for what he says is an “edgier strategy” to promote weight loss: ginning up social stigma.

Daniel Callahan, a senior research scholar and president emeritus of The Hastings Center, put out a new paper this week calling for a renewed emphasis on social pressure against heavy people — what some may call fat-shaming — including public posters that would pose questions like this:

“If you are overweight or obese, are you pleased with the way that you look?”

Callahan outlined a strategy that applauds efforts to boost education, promote public health awareness of obesity and curb marketing of unhealthy foods to children.

But, he added, those plans could do with a dose of shame if there’s any hope of repairing a nation where more than a third of adults and 17 percent of kids are obese.

“The force of being shamed and beat upon socially was as persuasive for me to stop smoking as the threats to my health,” he wrote. “The campaign to stigmatize smoking was a great success turning what had been considered simply a bad habit into reprehensible behavior.”

That same pressure could be applied to overweight people, perhaps leading to increased efforts by people to eat right, exercise  — and actually succeed in losing weight, Callahan argued.

Dr. Callahan, the people who beat up on you for smoking were clearly in the wrong.  They should have beaten up on you for being an arrogant ass.  Shaming and beating up on obese people socially will only cause them stress, which will raise their cortisol levels, which will make them fatter.  Then you’ll want to beat up on them even more.

Dr. Callahan is described in the article as a “trim 82-year-old.”  In other words, he’s never been fat and has no flippin’ idea what he’s talking about.  I wrote about his weight-loss theories in a previous post, so I’ll just repeat myself:

Boy, if only someone with Professor Callahan’s deep understanding of what causes body-fat accumulation had been around when I was becoming an obese adolescent, I would have remained lean.  When we had to play shirts vs. skins in gym-class basketball games, it just never occurred to me to feel ashamed of my fat belly, love handles and boy-boobs.  If the naturally-skinny boys in my class had cared more about me (and been armed with Professor Callahan’s insights), they could have helped me out by calling me names like Lard-Ass, Fat Boy, Pudge, Booby Boy, Porky Pig, or Butter Butt.  I now realize that with their kind-hearted acceptance of me (and the one other fat kid in class), they were inadvertently acting as enablers.

So to all you obese people out there who are happy with your bodies, it’s time to look yourself in the mirror and feel ashamed!  Don’t wait for Professor Callahan’s ideas to catch fire and inspire some do-gooders to shame you … be pro-active and take responsibility for shaming yourself.

But if we only exercised more …

Our friends down under, who have already been advised by their government to exercise to prevent obesity, are now being told to exercise even more:

Australians are now being advised to exercise for up to one hour a day, up from 30 minutes, because of the higher number of calories we’re consuming.

At least 60-90 minutes of activity a day are required to prevent weight gain in previously obese people, according to new official dietary guidelines released today.

Australians have also been told to cut their consumption of white bread, high fat milk, hot chips, take away food and cakes and biscuits amid warnings 85 per cent of males and 75 per cent of women will be obese by 2025.

The nation’s peak medical body the National Medical Research Council says we need to eat more vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, fish and low fat dairy products.

Yes, if only everyone would set aside an hour per day for exercise and stop drinking high-fat milk — just like our grandparents did back in the days when few people were obese.  (You all remember how Grandma drank her skim milk before heading to the gym for an hour, don’t you?)

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it at least twice:  when government programs fail, government officials interpret the failure as evidence that they should do the same thing again – only bigger.

One way to avoid high-fat milk

What, you mean don’t like low-fat milk?  Well, how about if we sweeten it up for you?

Two powerful dairy organizations, The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), are petitioning the Food and Drug Administration to allow aspartame and other artificial sweeteners to be added to milk and other dairy products without a label.

The FDA currently allows the dairy industry to use “nutritive sweeteners” including sugar and high fructose corn syrup in many of their products. Nutritive sweeteners are defined as sweeteners with calories.

This petition officially seeks to amend the standard of identification for milk, cream, and 17 other dairy products like yogurt, sweetened condensed milk, sour cream, and others to provide for the use of any “safe and suitable sweetener” on the market.

They claim that aspartame and other artificial sweeteners would promote healthy eating and is good for school children.

I dare you to read that last sentence 10 times in a row while fighting the urge to bang your head on your desk.

Here’s how we get kids to drink milk:  STOP TAKING THE FAT OUT OF IT.  The last thing kids need is more sweet food to pervert their taste buds.

Wrong interpretation of an otherwise interesting study

You probably saw the headlines this week about a new study touting the benefits of a Mediterranean diet.  Here are some quotes from an online article:

Pour on the olive oil in good conscience, and add some nuts while you’re at it.

A careful test of the so-called Mediterranean diet involving more than 7,000 people at a high risk of having heart attacks and strokes found the diet reduced them when compared with a low-fat diet. A regular diet of Mediterranean cuisine also reduced the risk of dying.

The findings, published online by The New England Journal of Medicine, come from a study conducted right in the heart of Mediterranean country: Spain.

A group of men and women, ages 55 to 80 at the start of the study, were randomly assigned to a low-fat diet or one of two variations of the Mediterranean diet: one featuring a lot of extra-virgin olive oil (more than a quarter cup a day) and the other including lots of nuts (more than an ounce a day of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts).

While lots of research has found benefits from the Mediterranean diet, many of the studies have observed what people have eaten and looked for associations. One of this study’s strengths is that it randomly assigned people at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease to diets that stood to help them.

The study was stopped early (after a median follow-up of 4.8 years) because the benefits from the Mediterranean diet were already becoming apparent. Overall, the people consuming the diets rich in olive oil or nuts had about a 30 percent lower risk of having a heart attack, stroke or dying from a cardiovascular cause.

The Mediterranean diet has become a politically correct alternative to the low-fat diet because of this commonly-held opinion stated in the article:

The Mediterranean diet is rich in fish, grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables. The diet is low in dairy products, red meat and processed foods.

Grains, fish, fruits and vegetables … heck, the USDA could almost get behind it.  Just one little problem:  people who’ve lived in the Mediterranean assure me the local diet is also high in pork and saturated fat.

I looked up the dietary protocols for this study.  All three groups were told to limit their consumption of red meat – no more than one serving per day for the Mediterranean dieters, and no more than one serving per week for the low-fat dieters.  There’s no way you can conclude from this study that cutting back on red meat improved anyone’s health.

The low-fat dieters were also encouraged to consume at least three servings of bread, pasta, rice or potatoes per day.   The Mediterranean dieters weren’t told to consume grains at all.

So the headline for this study shouldn’t be Mediterranean Diet Saves Lives.  It should be Grain-Based, Low-Fat Diet Fails … Again!

Faced with this evidence, the USDA will of course continue recommending a grain-based, low-fat diet.  And then the schools required to follow that advice will send letters home to parents telling them their kids are too fat.

Baby Boomers Living Longer, But Sicker

The baby boomers are the first generation raised to fear arterycloggingsaturatedfat! and told to eat a grain-based, low-fat diet.  So let’s see how they’re doing:

As each generation gets older they like to think that they are healthier than the previous generation, however, the baby boomers are now unable to confidently make this claim.

The new findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine, in a study conducted by a group of researchers from the West Virginia University School of Medicine.

The study revealed that a portion of the baby boomer generation, specifically the 78 million Americans who were born in the post-war baby boom from 1946 to 1964, were less healthy than most of their parents.

Historically, the baby boomer population has been labeled the “healthiest generation”, due to their long life expectancy and their ability to take advantage of the newest medical care and public health campaigns.

However this label may no longer apply because studies are now showing that baby boomers have more elevated levels of certain conditions than the previous generation, including:

• obesity
• high cholesterol
• diabetes
• hypertension

Key findings the authors pointed out:

• 7 percent of baby boomers used a cane or other device to help them walk, compared to 3 percent in the previous generation.
• 13 percent of baby boomers have a type of limitation in their ability to complete daily tasks – like going up steps or mowing the lawn – compared with 8.8 percent of those in the previous generation.

Like I’ve said before, if your fifty-year-old grandfather could be transported through time to face the average fifty-year-old today in a fight or any other physical contest, I’d bet on Granpda every time.   The Greatest Generation gave birth to the Sickest and Fattest Generation, thanks in part to our government subsidizing and promoting a grain-based, low-fat diet.

Faced with this evidence, the USDA will of course continue recommending a grain-based, low-fat diet.  And then Dr. Callahan – a trim 82-year-old – will yell at the baby-boomers that they’re too fat and ought to be ashamed of themselves.

As the baby-boomers might say:  and the beat goes on …

Here’s one of those experiences that makes me happy to be living in the sticks:  Earlier in the week, Chareva looked out our dining-room window and told me she could see a couple of turkeys in our side field.  I grabbed a camera and went out to get a shot, sneaking up as close as I could without spooking them.

She could see two turkeys from the window, but there actually a dozen of them milling around in the field.

I don’t know why seeing turkeys on the land makes me happy, but it does — and I haven’t even taken up hunting yet.

Here’s something I found while digging through boxes and organizing my files over the holidays.  The picture below is from around 20 years ago.  The guys in my old band and I got together for a reunion — we hadn’t played together in 10 years, so we set up in the keyboard player’s living room and recorded ourselves playing some of our old favorites.

I was still a big believer in the dangers of fat in general and saturated fats specifically in those days.  I lived mostly on pasta, rice, potatoes, Grape-Nuts with skim milk and whole-grain bread.  I also ate Egg Beaters instead of real eggs.  I didn’t drink sodas or eat candy.  In fact, I didn’t consume sugar at all.  I knew sugar was bad.

You can see how well that diet was working for me.

We’re preparing to leave for our holiday trip to Illinois, where it’s currently raining ice, according to my mom.  I hope that stops before we hit the road tomorrow.

I’m giving myself a week away from the programming job when we return to Tennessee so I can get organized for the new year.  I’ve got a ton of audio and video files (raw footage from Fat Head, my songs, speeches, cruise roast, etc.) scattered haphazardly across multiple external hard drives, so getting those arranged in some kind of logical order is tops on the list.

I’ve also got research papers and links to research papers scattered across three computers and in different folders on each computer.  Since one of my goals for the year is to finish the book and companion DVD Chareva and I have outlined, I need to get all those papers together, review them, and organize them by topic.  I also need to at least start thinking about the roast I’ll be delivering for this year’s low-carb cruise.

One project I already completed is an updated version of Fat Head, which will be available soon.  I cut about 8 minutes from the film and added a section at the end explaining how my diet, health and life have changed in the past three years.  I’ll provide more details when the new version is actually available.

I’ll resume regular posting in January.  In the meantime, I’m re-posting the dietary version of “A Christmas Carol” that I wrote last year.  Happy Holidays, everyone.

How Tiny Tim Got McScrooged

ZZZZZZ. ZZZZZZZZ.

“Woooooooh! Woooooooooh! ”

ZZZZZ – !!

“What? What’s that noise? Is somebody there?”

“Yes, Senator McGovern, somebody is there. And I’ve come for you. Woooooooh!”

“Hey! Enough with the Wooooooh stuff, okay? I was a bomber pilot in the war. I’m not afraid of ghosts.”

“You will be. Woooooooh!”

“Oh yeah? Well, if you’re a ghost, whose ghost are you?”

“Richard Milhous Nix—“

“AAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHHH!!!!”

“Geez, calm down, George. I’m not here to hurt you.“

“Well then, what the heck do you want?”

“To deliver a message. Let me make this perfectly clear: Three more ghosts will enter your room tonight.”

“Ahh, your White House plumbers are back in action again, huh?”

“Not spooks, George. Ghosts. And you’d better pay attention to what they show you.”

“Fine, I’ll pay attention. Now go away. I have nightmares about you as it is. Didn’t even win my own state, for the love of–”

“Okay, I’m going. You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore. Woooooooh!”

“Three more ghosts … bah, humbug! Just a bad dream, that’s all it was.”

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

“Geooooooorge! Geoooooorge!”

ZZZZZ—

“Now what? Who is that?”

“It’s me, George. Teddy Kennedy.”

“Teddy! Great to see you! What are you doing here?”

“I’m the Ghost of Government Past.”

“A ghost? But you’re all wet.”

“I drove here.”

“I see.”

“Come with me, George. We need to visit your past. There, look down. See?”

“Hey! That’s me, conducting my hearings on the Dietary Goals For America! Aw, boy, Teddy, weren’t we a bunch of optimists back then? So sure of ourselves, telling everyone else how to live right.”

“Indeed, Senator. You really put the ‘govern’ in McGovern, George.”

“Yup. We were so full of promise, always trying to do some good.”

“Yes, George, your intentions were good. No matter what else you see tonight, remember that: your intentions were good.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Huh … ”

“Something wrong, George?”

“I kind of forgot about this part. ‘A senator, unlike a research scientist, doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for every last shred of evidence to come in.’ Did I really say that?”

“Yes, George. But like I said, your intentions were good.”

“Of course.”

“I have to go now. Some of us are getting a game of touch football going. Have you ever tried that with ghosts you can’t actually touch? It’s weird. Goodbye, George.”

“Ted? Ted? Ahhh, I knew it. Back in bed. Just another weird dream. I really should get some sleep…”

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

“Hiya, George!”

“WHAT THE—Jerry? Jerry Ford?”

“The Ghost of Government Present, at your service!”

“Jerry, why are you here?”

“Well, the previous Ghost of Government Present had to resign, so—”

“No, no. Why are you here, in my bedroom?”

“Oh, right. I need to show you something. Come on, follow me. Down there. Take a look. ”

“Who are these people, Jerry? Why are you showing them to me?”

“That’s the Cratchit family, George. They’re having dinner.”

“Yes, I can see that. But why is the mother crying?”

“Because some government officials are threatening to take away Tiny Tim and send him to a foster home.”

“Which one is Tiny Tim?”

“That one.”

“Wow. Look, Jerry, I feel sorry for parents and all, but maybe they shouldn’t have nicknamed that kid ‘Tiny.’ He’s a blimp.”

“That’s why the government is threatening to take him away, George.”

“They’re taking him away for being fat? What is this, the old Soviet Union?”

“There’s no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never be will be under a Ford Administration!”

“Uh, Jerry–”

“Sorry. But I still don’t see why that line got everyone so upset.”

“Jerry, why don’t the parents just encourage Tiny Tim to lose some weight?”

“They’ve tried, George. They’ve tried over and over. As soon as they realized he had a weight problem, they put him on a strict low-fat diet with plenty of grains. Cereals with skim milk. Sandwiches with lean meats. Pasta, potatoes, rice. Crackers and fruit juice for snacks. No eggs, no cream, no butter. Just like you recommended, remember?”

“Well, if that didn’t work, they should have tried just feeding him less. I mean, come on, Jerry—”

“They tried that too, George. They’ve gone from doctor to doctor, and they always get the same advice: put him on a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet. Poor Tiny Tim has spent half his life feeling hungry, but getting fatter anyway.”

“Bah, humbug. If they were truly following my advice—”

“They did follow your advice, George. But since Tiny Tim is still fat, the government health experts assume the parents are lying. That’s why they want to take Tiny Tim away.”

“But this can’t be! My intentions were good! Please, Jerry, tell me there’s still some way we can … Jerry? Jerry, where did you go?!”

“I’ve got to go, George. The previous Ghost of Government Present called and told me he needs a big favor of some kind.”

“Jerry, wait, I can’t see the family anymore! What happened to Tiny Tim? Jerry, come back! I promise I’ll do better if you just give me another chance!”

“There you go again.”

“Wha … Ronald Reagan?”

“Yes. Although I’m currently starring as the Ghost of Government Yet To Come.”

“This is a complete nightmare!”

“Well, now, that’s what they said about Bedtime for Bonzo, but I think over the years the critics have come to appreciate—“

“Ronnie, please, I need to know what happened to Tiny Tim. Take me back to the family.”

“Too late, George. You’re in the future now.”

“Then take me to the family now … I mean, here in the future.”

“You sure you want to see that, George?”

“Yes, Ronnie. I must.”

“Okay, come along with me. See? There’s the family, sitting down for dinner.”

“But Tiny Tim’s chair is empty! Did he … did he …”

“Die? No, George. He lost weight, his blood pressure went down, his glucose stabilized, his kidney function returned to normal, and he started concentrating better in school.”

“Then where is he?”

“The government took him away, George.”

“But why?”

“Well, take a good look at the family dinner table, George.”

“Steak, broccoli, butter, some kind of cream-based dessert … wait, where’s the bread, Ronnie? The pasta? The potatoes? They’re eating way too much fat.”

“That’s why the government took Tiny Tim away, George. The Cratchits stopped following your advice and Tiny Tim got better. But the government doesn’t like it when people stop following your advice, so they took Tiny Tim away.”

“But I never wanted any of this to happen, Ronnie! My intentions were—“

“—were good. Yes, I know, George. There you go again, assuming good intentions mean good results. Like I always said, sometimes government is the problem.”

“I refuse to believe this is my fault, Ronnie. It can’t be.”

“Then you need to ask yourself a question: People have been following your advice for 40 years. Are they happier now than they were 40 years ago? Are they leaner than they were 40 years ago? Are they healthier than they were 40 years ago? Are kids concentrating better than they were 40 years ago?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then George, maybe it’s time you just admit your advice was wrong. I’ve got to go now. I’m expecting Nancy to join me any minute.”

“Ronnie, wait! Don’t go! Ronnie, please, I want to go back! I want to go back!”

BUZZ-BUZZ-BUZZ-BUZZ-BUZZ-BUZZ-BUZZ!!

“Wha? My own bed … 7:00 a.m. alarm … so it was all just a dream! There’s still time.“

CREEAAAAK.

“Excuse me, young man! Up here!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you know a family with a boy named Tiny Tim?”

“Yes, sir. They live just down the road.”

“Here, I’m tossing you down a hundred-dollar bill. I want you to go out and buy the biggest, fattest turkey you can find and take it to Tiny Tim’s house.”

“Will do, sir.”

“And some ham. And some bacon. And some eggs and butter. And a nice selection of green vegetables. Can you do that?”

“Of course, sir. Right away, sir. Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas to you, young man. And may God bless us, every one!”