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  #1   ^
Old Wed, Jul-30-03, 13:03
gotbeer's Avatar
gotbeer gotbeer is offline
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Plan: Atkins
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Default "Moderation, often described as the way to a slim figure and longer life..."

Searching for 'Just Right'

Moderation, often described as the way to a slim figure and longer life, is a tough sell in an age of supersized meals.

By Arthur Hirsch Sun Staff Originally published July 30, 2003


link to article

"Moderation in all things"

- Terence (Publius Terentius Afer), 190-159 B.C.


Imagine Warren Thrweatt's surprise. The Baltimore man is standing at the Golden Corral buffet on a Sunday evening about to load his plate with a scoop of mashed potatoes, to be puddled with gravy, the better to accompany the considerable helping of chicken, the cabbage and the macaroni and cheese - and here comes some bozo with a question.

Excuse me, we're doing this story on, well, moderation. ...

"Well," says Thrweatt, a 46-year-old man of average build, "you want to stay away from me."

And he laughs. And why not?

For $8.29 Thrweatt might have ordered one appetizer at some stylish downtown place, not including the tip, of course. Or he could come here to Rossville Boulevard, to this suburban shrine to economies of scale, where for $8.29 folks may endlessly select the carved pit ham or roast beef, the sizzling choice-cut sirloin, pulled barbecue chicken, Bourbon Street chicken, fried chicken, meatloaf, Kentucky-style fish fillets, fried okra ...

On and on it goes, as it surely must, considering the crowds that pile in every night to pile it on.

Moderation? Nice idea, but what exactly might that mean?

"Exercise some restraint," says Thrweatt. "Exercise your self-control."

Asked about his plans with respect to the Golden Corral dessert buffet - an array of more than a dozen items, including banana pudding, Boston cream cake and German chocolate cake - Thrweatt responds negatively in pantomime, patting his very slight swelling at the belt.

Ah, the limits of human possibility.

In the midst of anecdotal and statistical reports of a national obesity epidemic, there comes the question of moderation. With America's customary grandiosity inspiring excess in everything from food portions to vehicle size to foreign-policy discourse, the ancient nudge toward a golden mean can seem almost radical.

Surely the temperate recommendation stands out in a forest of diet books promising wondrous new cures. The selection conjures the spirit of an old medicine show: The Glucose Revolution, The No-Grain Diet, Good Fat, Bad Fat, The Age-Free Zone, Potatoes Not Prozac, The Fat Flush Plan.

Note the absence of such titles as Live the Moderate Moment! or Blazing the New Middle Path.

While the notion of moderation may not be sexy enough to sell books, it does appear in advice emanating from sundry official sources.

In a 2002 statement, the American Dietetic Association rejects the extreme-diet approach, saying, "If consumed in moderation with appropriate portion size and combined with regular physical activity, all foods can fit into a healthful diet."

In its 2000 dietary guidelines, the U.S. Department of Agriculture advises, among other things: "Choose a diet that is low in saturated fat and cholesterol and moderate in total fat"; "Choose beverages and foods to moderate your choice of sugars"; "If you drink alcoholic beverages, do so in moderation."

Last December, New York magazine published a piece on the new (or is it the "new new"?) Atkins diet craze gripping Manhattan in a frenzy of "killer"-carb paranoia. At the end, the writer brings on an eminent figure in the field, Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, to play Voice of Reason. Willett suggests taking a tip from the Mediterranean diet: some vegetables in olive oil, a little fish, a little wine, a little pasta.

"You can envision the ideal, moderate diet if you just place yourself in Rome and walk down the piazza," Willett says in the article.

So, moderation it is. That settles the matter, yes? Suspend further health and nutrition studies, and studies of the studies that often seem to only advance public bewilderment?

Maybe not. Moderation may be an old reliable concept but perhaps not abundantly useful.

"I think it's different for everybody," says Tonya Estep of Baltimore, approaching the Golden Corral buffet with empty plate at the ready. "Everybody has a different appetite."

Dan Geelhaar, a rotund fellow who is in the midst of trying to lose weight, had the courage to visit the Golden Corral. He says he stuck to his regimen, assembling a salad with no dressing and one slice of ham on top. That's it. Oh, and a slice of cherry cake that he shared with his mother.

So what does moderation mean to him?

"For me, it's what I eat," says Geelhaar, in town from Atlanta visiting his family.

When asked his thoughts on moderation, associate restaurant manager Rodney Johnson says: "That's one thing we do not have. We have a lot of things."

The Golden Corral might not encourage light eating, but neither do other American restaurants.

A short walk down Rossville Boulevard toward Belair Road stands the International House of Pancakes, where you don't have to go any farther than the vestibule to notice IHOP appears to be sanguine about the obesity question.

There in full color hangs a poster advertising the company's latest promotion of "New Super Stackers," giant sandwiches heaped with meat and cheese, mushrooms, onions, peppers, tomatoes and mayonnaise, looming in the photograph like something from a science-fiction movie. According to IHOP spokesman Patrick Lenow, the sandwich weighs just about 1 pound.

While the question of how portion size influences eating is hardly settled, several studies suggest that people eat more when more food is put in front of them.

In the March/April issue of Nutrition Today, Pennsylvania State University nutritionist Barbara J. Rolls reports that in studies involving portions of macaroni and cheese, sandwiches and packaged foods such as potato chips, adults ate up to about a third more when they started with larger quantities.

The "clean-your-plate" ethic - generally encouraged by parents - also seems to figure in the matter.

"People eat in units," Rolls writes. "That is, if they are offered a food that comes in a preportioned unit, such as a cookie, most people will eat the whole cookie."

That might not bear on moderation or weight control, except that Americans are cooking their own food less frequently while portions in restaurants and sundry packaged foods have been ballooning since the 1970s.

One reason is price competition, as "profits for most food items rise consistently when manufacturers increase product size," says an article published last year in the American Journal of Public Health.

For that article, New York University nutritionists Lisa R. Young and Marion Nestle weighed at least two samples of ready-to-eat portions of foods, including chain-restaurant burgers and fries, bagels, soda, muffins and chocolate-chip cookies.

Except for sliced white bread, each portion was bigger than the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration definition of a portion. Sometimes a lot bigger. The muffin was triple the USDA definition, the chocolate cookie seven times the USDA recommendation.

"The key to moderation is portion size," says Noralyn Wilson, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

Obesity continues to advance as Americans spend about $33 billion a year on weight-loss products. Evidently, it's not money well spent, says Wilson, urging folks to "re-examine the old saying, 'Moderation is the key.' "

Yet, moderation is a relative term. In the age of the 7-Eleven 64-ounce Double Gulp and the IHOP Super Stacker, what meaning can it possibly have?

Not so much, says Suzanne Havala Hobbs, a dietitian with the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 1992 she published an article in Vegetarian Journal in which sundry authorities on food gave many different answers about what moderation means to them.

In an interview, Havala Hobbs expresses some skepticism about the term, not least for the way she feels the food industry tends to use it as a cover to encourage potentially unhealthy habits, such as drinking sugary sodas. Under "Soft Drinks and Your Health," for instance, the National Soft Drink Association's Web site says: "All foods and beverages can fit into a healthy diet, and experts agree that sugar - in moderate amounts - has a place in a healthy diet."

In America, 2003, a culture in which more is seldom less, moderation may be a reassuring idea, but Havala Hobbs says, "It has essentially no meaning that's going to help anyone eat more healthfully."

Some attempts have been made to marry program to principle, drawing on elements of the classical sense of moderation as a way of life and thought - absent the moral and ethical implications. Perhaps most famously, Weight Watchers International - celebrating its 40th anniversary this year - encourages members to cultivate eating habits that will cut weight and keep it off. Ben Garber, a member and local "ambassador" for the organization, says moderation is a governing idea.

"We apply it more in terms of flexibility," says Garber of Reisterstown, who lost 60 pounds in 2001 on the program of food apportioned on a point system. With the help of many low-calorie substitutes, members may eat much of what they want, but in controlled portions.

The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan, first published in 2000 by Penn State nutritionist Barbara Rolls and Robert A. Barnett, also offers a way to bring some precision to the moderate approach. Much of their emphasis is on satiety and how one can have that feeling while reducing calories. Choosing foods high in water and low in fat is one element of the program, as these tend to be filling, but less "energy dense," as the writers put it.

"Volumetrics is not really a diet at all, but a new way to choose satisfying, lower-calorie foods," the writers say.

Writing in a similar vein are Dr. David L. Katz and Maura Harrigan Gonzalez of the Yale Prevention Research Center in Connecticut. Their 2002 book, The Way to Eat, also describes an undiet weight-control method. "The reason why the concept of moderation is so hard to sell is because it's telling people what to do, not how to do it," Katz, an epidemiologist and director of the research center, says in an interview. "It's a little like telling people, 'Well, the air quality is bad today, breathe in moderation.' "

The book gives specific instructions on how to stick to a diet that draws 60 percent of calories from mostly complex carbohydrates, 20 percent to 25 percent from fat, 15 percent to 20 percent from protein.

You guessed it: lots of plant-based foods. In other words, a variation on the old food guide pyramid endorsed by the USDA, a proponent of moderation.

Aristotle, who famously affirmed a temperate path, would probably approve. Before there were fad diets and miracle weight cures and the Golden Corral and the Super Stackers, there was the Nicomachean Ethics, which Aristotle wrote in 350 B.C.:

"Drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it. So too is it, then, in the case of temperance and courage and the other virtues."
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  #2   ^
Old Thu, Jul-31-03, 01:45
GaryW GaryW is offline
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Posts: 85
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 277/223/180 Male 71
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Location: California, USA
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Interesting how the ADA spokesperson oversimplifies it by claiming merely that "The key to moderation is portion size,"
I disagree. The current plan, for example, for Nabisco to make their Oreo's smaller isn't going to stop most people from just carfing down that many more smaller Oreo's than their current medium-sized ones to compensate... just like some of us naturally have the problem with in eating high carb foods... there's little in the way of appetite regulation with those foods.

On the other end of the scale (pun intended) part of my Atkins Dieting includes regular visits to a buffet, where I enjoy a variety of low carb food. It's that reason that I go... the variety of veggies, salad items and meats. And as you know, the natural appetite suppression of low carbing solves the problem of moderation - even at an all-you-can-eat buffet. It's a shame the above article's author who wrote it didn't mention that as one avenue of moderation, going to the more physiological source of the problem, rather than trying to deal with it from a more end-of-the-chain psychological override approach to psyching oneself out/into moderation despite physical carb-induced cravings/hunger signals poor humans to do!
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  #3   ^
Old Thu, Jul-31-03, 10:48
fviegas's Avatar
fviegas fviegas is offline
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Posts: 79
 
Plan: Dr.Dahlkvist/PP/IF
Stats: 154/133/138 Female 170 cm
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Location: Switzerland/Portugal
Talking LC is KEY to moderation

After having tried the Zone and lost 10 kgs, and after that
trying vegetarian,raw and atkins currently I can say that
high-protein and/or high-fat diets (atkins and zone for me)
are MASTERS at moderation.
When you have high-carb foods its like a car without brakes,
the food does not have a built-in trigger to stop eating!
When I have a piece of cake or pizza or white bread I can't stop
at just one! It is truly amazing !
When I eat low carb I have chicken and nut salad, with plenty
of chicken and nuts and thats it. I'm satisfied and wont think
about food again for three to four hours. To me this is magic.
THIS IS MODERATION! Only possible with a diet that
SATISFIES you, and gives you a STOP-SIGN when it is
enough. Of everything I've tried only protein and fat give you
these triggers.
There are ESSENTIAL aminos and ESSENTIAL fats but no
ESSENTIAL carbs. And the key to moderation is enough ESSENTIALS
in your meal.
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  #4   ^
Old Thu, Jul-31-03, 11:50
Skamito's Avatar
Skamito Skamito is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,315
 
Plan: Atkins (Pre-Maintenance)
Stats: 160/135/130 Female 5'5"
BF:35%/28%/22%
Progress: 83%
Location: New York, NY
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Not to mention that some people have an almost impossible time with "moderation" of sugar and other high carb foods because of body chemistry. When will people recognize that some people's bodies are just not built for just a little insulin surging?
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  #5   ^
Old Thu, Jul-31-03, 11:58
tholian8's Avatar
tholian8 tholian8 is offline
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Posts: 3,364
 
Plan: CAD-ish
Stats: 232.5/199/168 Female 5'2"
BF:no/earthly/clue
Progress: 52%
Location: London, UK
Default

It's easier for them to blame it on stupidity and failure of willpower, than to admit they've been giving some people REALLY bad dietary advice for 30 years, even while the low-carb approach was known and being used with success in certain populations (epileptic kids, some diabetics).
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