The Fasting And The Furious

I have yet to see any installments of the long-running Fast and Furious movie franchise, although my son and I recently agreed we probably should. There is, however, a much longer franchise that I’ve been watching closely throughout my career: the fad and folly franchise, devoted not to fast cars, but fast weight loss and promises of high-octane health, achieved magically and without effort.The variations on the theme of quick-fix solutions for excess adiposity or deficient vitality are nearly as endless as they are inevitably useless, or nearly so.  If any had worked, why would we need the next one? If none has ever worked, what are the odds the next one will?Be that as it may, there is a “new” one on the marquee at the moment. I put “new” in quotes for two good reasons. First, we have known there is no truly “new” thing under the sun since Ecclesiastes. Second, that is more true of weight loss than anything else. Standard operating procedure in the weight loss space is to wait out the 20-minute attention span of our culture, and then re-peddle repackaged leftovers as new.Do you really think your favorite health guru personally discovered the harms of excess sugar in her/his basement last Wednesday?  Actually, they figure in the writings of Hippocrates. Jack LaLanne warned emphatically of them some 70 years ago. They have been prominent even in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans for 40 years. Did you think Dr. Atkins really came up with a new idea ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news