By S.L. Wisenberg
One day Snake slithered around Eve’s neck and whispered, I have seen the best food of all. God saves it for himself and the angels. Just peek in that building.
There are specifically religious diet programs (Diet, Discipline and Discipleship) and diet books (More of Jesus, Less of Me; Help Lord–the Devil Wants Me Fat!) that take on original sin, weakness, and the devil directly. I’m more interested in the debates and beliefs in secular bibles–best-sellers by lay healers.
These poles are recognizable as the traditional opposites: soft versus hard; instinct versus–as they say in academe–the authoritarian, civilizing phallus; desire versus discipline; id versus superego. Of course most things in life are hybrids. Weight Watchers has always emphasized portion control, but at the same time provided a list of “unlimited” foods such as celery and mushrooms. Fergie promises in newspaper display ads that on WW you can eat anything advertised in that newspaper. And there’s Dean Ornish’s best-selling Eat More, Weigh Less–perhaps a reference to the old punch line about eating less and enjoying it less, which refers to earlier dieting promises of eating less and enjoying it more. On Ornish’s plan, you give in, to an extent. You don’t have to resist temptation. There’s no counting, weighing, or measuring. Eat all you want from the trees and the vines and the earth. Well, as long as it’s fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and most legumes, and not the fruit of the olive tree or its oil or any other oil or nut. You may eat “whenever you feel hungry and until you are full (but not until you are stuffed).” (Stuffing herself is the constant dieter’s problem in the first place.) And, says Ornish, you should exercise. Find something you like, he says matter-of-factly. Of course you will like some kind of exercise.
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The popular high-protein diets, such as those set out in Protein Power and books by doctors Atkins and Stillman, are mirror images of the high-carbohydrate/low-fat diets of Ornish, Pritikin, and others. On these diets, you may eat all you want (or almost) of the high-protein and high-fat foods that traditional dieters have long eschewed, or sneaked: bacon, fried eggs, pork chops, steak, cheese. The diets differ in the proportion of carbohydrates they allow–from virtually none to moderate percentages–and in the amount of fat. They all promise that if you follow the instructions you won’t be hungry.
The perfect diet, say the gurus, was in the past. We must learn from our ancestors, recent and not-so.
Antidieter Lynn Donovan–dancer, singer, actress, painter, writer, and a Scorpio (with Virgo rising)–doesn’t look that far back in her book. She’s found a model of prelapsarian eating right in New York City. “I know a little boy,” she writes, “two and a half years old, who is well on his way in the project of learning to eat. We had lunch together in a coffee shop once after a shopping expedition. We both consulted the menu, and he stopped me when I read something about salad. When it was served, I let him pour on his own dressing–and he did pretty well. Then he ate the lettuce, picking pieces out one by one with his fingers. This went on for some time. Then abruptly, he spit out a leaf, one just like all the rest, and he removed it delicately to the edge of the table. His attention turned to some bacon and crackers. I was impressed. I had witnessed the precise moment of ‘enough’ lettuce.”
