good article in today's Washington Post

[Guest guest]

Into Our Stomachs and Out of Our Minds

By Sally Squires

Sunday, July 28, 2002; Page B03

Oh, how our ancestors must be laughing.

Here we are in the 21st century, surrounded

by more cheap and plentiful food than has

been available since the Garden of Eden, and

Americans are still struggling to learn how to

eat. The latest national nutritional drumbeat --

the essentially laughable idea that limitless

Porterhouse steaks, giant dollops of butter

and carefree portions of other saturated fats

will make us slim and healthy -- shows just

how far off course we have gone. We may be

aging, but we're still playing with our food.

How did we get so out of touch with this basic part

of life? What happened to the simple joy of

eating? And why do so many smart people, bombarded

with information, feel so helpless and

befuddled about food?

As ridiculous as this seems in an era of far

scarier health threats, it's not a problem we can afford to

ignore. While heads may be spinning lately about

the dangers of hormone replacement therapy, the

truth is that obesity will cause more heart disease

and cancer than a little extra estrogen. Expanding

waistlines are linked to nearly 300,000 deaths a

year in the United States.

Americans today live in a culture of excess in a

nation firmly committed to a large and powerful

agribusiness complex. Inundated by nonstop food --

and diet -- advertising, we overindulge and

then turn to self-help books or the latest weight

loss fad -- anything to avoid facing the fact that we

seem to have lost the ability to think

realistically about what we eat and what it does to us..........

continued at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8184-2002Jul26.html