Maximum Fit Magazine

You might want to read an article in this weekend's New York Times magazine that questions the current American dogma re the evils of fat. It suggests that the problem may be refined starches and sugars instead. I did not say that eating fat causes any trouble, but I know that cutting on high fat items in food is the easiest way to lose weight in the long term. There is little danger of nutrient deficiencies, if you do not try to eat fat-free. The low-carbohydrate (Atkins-) diet on the other hand seems to be dangerous to your heart. Not to mention that anybody who gets their nutritional advice from the New York Times deserves what they get. Virtually all science reporting in mainstream newspaper is junk science , spoon fed by quacks to science-ignorant reporters who wouldn't know a quark from a photon.

our most popular foods.' Or we've just gotten better at measuring vitamin and mineral content. Have you ever *SEEN* state of the art testing equipment from 1951? High school labs today have better equipment! Furthermore mineral contents, let's say iron, can not be highly variable at all as the plants would die immediately. But even the high iron spinach myth survived for decades. Popeye must be the culprit. Karl M. Syring

So, are there stories with obese future humans?  (Aliens don't count.) And if not, why not?   It seems like the kind of future issue that someone would have explored. The only Asprin MYTH, Inc book, I can remember reading has a planet full of overweight sports fans - or so they think, actually the race has split into the fat sports fans and the really incredibly fit p_layer_s.  It was obviously meant to spoof today's couch potatoes. Recently in Analog there was a story about aliens who give us a space drive but no instructions, turns out you have to be fat to run it - somehow it uses your fat and at the end of the trip you're thin. There's an Orson Scott Cart short story, Fat Farm

It is no demonization of fat. The human body normally does not convert carbohydrates to fat, thus you can only get fat if you eat fat. On the other hand, it means that uncounted numbers of humans have been subjected to the horrors of calories counting, which makes no sense at all. Simply say NO to fat. But if you use up 2000 calories daily, and eat 2100 calories, what happens?  You are saying that if you eat 2100 of carbs & protein, you won't add any fat. But if those 2100 calories are 2000 of carbs & protein, and 100 of fat does your body burn the 2000 and store those 11 grams of fat (9 lbs/year)?  That's 5% fat, where 30% is often considered a 'low-fat' diet. By 'Simply say NO to fat' do you mean 'Eat a 0% fat diet'? [I have no particular ax to grind.  I lost 30% of my weight by the 'eat less and exercise more' technique and have kept most of it off for over a decade.  I am not up on the current scientific thinking of mainstream medical researchers, nor the primitive superstitions they held last year.  Nor _your_ diet plan that the establishment doctors are trying to supress so they can rake in the big bucks for angioplasties, nor _his_ crackpot quack fad diet from a book he found on a supermarket checkout stand.]

Simply say NO to fat. But if you use up 2000 calories daily, and eat 2100 calories, what happens?  You are saying that if you eat 2100 of carbs & protein, you won't add any fat. But if those 2100 calories are 2000 of carbs & protein, and 100 of fat does your body burn the 2000 and store those 11 grams of fat (9 lbs/year)?  That's 5% fat, where 30% is often considered a 'low-fat' diet. By 'Simply say NO to fat' do you mean 'Eat a 0% fat diet'? No, that would possibly bring you vitamin deficiencies. Karl M. Syring