I posted the following in my journal, and I thought that people who are following how the media treats (or does not treat) low carb might be interested in it, so I am copying it over in this forum:
There was a long and very disappointing article in this morning's Washington Post Magazine about overweight in America. The article focuses on three women. The first woman, who they spend the most time discussing, is on Weight Watchers with her husband. She is also trying to force her teenage daughter onto Weight Watchers, although by the end of the article she realizes that is a bad idea. The poor woman has been on Weight Watchers eight times previously and each time gained back all the weight she lost and more; however, this time she is convinced it is going to work. The second woman is a doctor who has decided to be happy, fit, and fat. She gave up dieting years ago and has stabilized at a size 22 for the past 10 years. The third woman had weight-loss surgery, lost a lot of weight, and can eat "only small portions of meats, cheeses, eggs, and vegetables, virtually swearing off bread, pasta, cakes, and most sweets with refined white sugar." There is absolutely no mention of low carbing anywhere in the article and no mention of the fact that what the weight-loss surgery patient (the only one to successfully lose a lot of weight) is eating is a lowcarb diet.
Compared to the New York Times Magazine article last summer which got me started low carbing, this article is a disgrace. It offers no help to anyone facing a serious weight issue. Its only insight into why American's have been getting fatter is that, "We eat more and exercise less." There is absolutely no long-term data out there supporting the statement that Americans exercise less -- the government only starting collecting exercise data recently. Do they really think that adults today exercise less than the adults of the 1950s and 1960s? I was born in the 1950s and grew up in the 1960s and I certainly don't remember adults of that era exercising.
I would guess that anyone who read this article and was struggling with a serious weight problem, threw up their hands in despair. Certainly reading what the poor woman is going through with Weight Watchers would not provide any hope to someone who started out like me -- over 350 pounds. If I read this article last July when I was desperate and my health was failing, rather than the article in the New York Times Magazine that seriously discussed low carbing, I would have headed straight out for weight-loss surgery. And, if I had had weight-loss surgery, from everything I read I may have lost weight a little more quickly than I have done, but I probably would not have been nearly as strong, fit, and healthy as I am now. I also could have died from the surgery or spent the past year struggling with major complications from the surgery.
I am thinking about writing a letter to the editor of The Washington Post, protesting the irresponsibilty of running an article like this without mentionining low carbing. The Washington Post Health section, which appears every Tuesday, has also regularly taken an extreme anti-low carb stance. They have an article every Tuesday about tips for losing weight and they reject all low carb tips. This is irresponsible journalism.
If anyone wants to read the article, it can be found at :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...-2003Mar26.html
I am not going to post the whole article here because I do not think it is worth wasting a lot of time reading.
I encourage other people who take the time to read this article to also think about writing a letter to the Post.
Washington Post Magazine article on why Americans are getting fatter
Liz!
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