Oh, to be as good of a writer as those who write for the New Yorker. Oh, to be able to review 3-4 books in the same article, while also making pithy points.
Here are some terrifying (!) citations from this article on obesity and books that discuss the subject:
“Today, soft drinks account for about seven per cent of all the calories ingested in the United States, making them “the number one food consumed in the American diet.” If, instead of sweetened beverages, the average American drank water, Finkelstein calculates, he or she would weigh fifteen pounds less.”
“ According to the federally supported National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the bagels that Americans eat have in the past twenty years swelled from a hundred and forty to three hundred and fifty calories each. If, as Wansink argues, people are relying on external cues to determine their consumption, then the new, bigger bagel is sneaking in an additional two hundred and ten calories. For someone who is in the habit of eating a bagel a day, these extra calories translate into a weight gain of more than a pound a month.”
I want to start a website called the “Half-Portion Revolution” — or a site with a better name but featuring the same idea. It’ll be a food and restaurant blog where we visit local cafes and restaurants and ask for half-portions for half to 3/4ths of the price. The larger dream? That people would have the option of eating less if they didn’t want to straddle that uncomfy divide between be wasteful and disobeying their internal mother (“finish your plate!”) and overstuffing themselves.
Because I always have leftovers. And because so often we eat more than we should.
