Rudd Sound Bites

Starving Yourself for Eternity

by Katherine Stevens

I love New York magazine’s recent article on the Calorie Restriction diet. Makes me want to try Quorn, which if I understand correctly, is a slime mold that can taste like chicken. And who knew soy was linked with dementia? So glad I didn’t fall for the whole “tofu is good for you” ploy.

But the great thing about the article is that the author decided to try out the diet. He literally starves himself for his art and for us, his esteemed audience. The CR diet, which its followers seem to think will bring eternal life, involves eating just enough to avoid death by packing lots of nutrition into the least number of calories one can consume and not, well, die.

Time for a lifestyle change

by Katherine Stevens

For some, the problem of obesity is tied to the problem of feeling trapped. Desk jobs have replaced hard labor as the most common kind of work for you, me, and most Americans. We sit in a chair in front of a computer each day and then go home and sit on the couch in front of a television at night. An hour of running at the gym on a treadmill going nowhere while watching CNN is not going to make things better. There have to be alternatives, and I have recently made it my task to find some.

No cupcakes for you

by Katherine Stevens

I have read two articles recently about the ban of birthday cupcakes from health-conscious classrooms. One school had the birthday kid select his or her favorite book to read, and the kids all had less-sugary snacks.

The cupcake issue is an interesting one. I never had cupcakes because my birthday was around the beginning of the school year, and either I just missed it or too many other things were going on for my mom to deal with it. Besides, we always had a cake at home – sometimes two if we had one for the family party and one for the regular party. Besides, then it would be up to me to figure out if this, finally, was the year when we were too old to bring in cupcakes. How was I to know, so the cupcakes never materialized.

Hip to Measure Waist-to-Hip

by Katherine Stevens

The ban of models with a Body Mass Index (BMI) under 18.5 from Madrid’s Fashion Week sparked an interesting debate on this blog and all over the world: is BMI the right way to identify whether someone is at a healthy (or unhealthy) weight? 

BMI doesn’t tell the whole story because BMI numbers are associated with “underweight, normal, overweight, obese,” which basically tells you how to feel about your body image (are you normal, or not?), but not necessarily how your health is.

Spain's model behavior

by Katherine Stevens

I’m still a bit stunned. According to the London Times and the AFP, this year’s Pasarela Cibeles, the major trade fashion show in Madrid, will require all catwalk-strutters to have a minimum BMI of 18. According to the World Health Organization, anyone with a Body Mass Index of less than 18.5 qualifies as underweight. Which means Gisele Bundchen, at 5’10’’ and 130 pounds, would only just make it. Heidi Klum, despite her many pregnancies, might not. Kate Moss would have her coke-riddle body booted out. And while this show might not attract such waifish supermodels, the fact that they would not be allowed in is in itself a commendable thing.

Back-to-school chefs need a remedial class in Health 101

by Katherine Stevens

It’s that time of year again when hordes of columns and articles and newscasters use trite phrases like, “It’s that time of year again.” The kids are being dragged back to school, which means, apparently, you have to start feeding them again. And, according to the Food Network, not only do we have to make them meals, the meals have to be “healthy.”

Good marketing in the news media has nothing to do with advertisements

by Katherine Stevens

Two Sundays in a row The New York Times has splashed your favorite topic and mine across the cover of its swank little insert, the Times Magazine. Last week the Times gave face-time to the theory that the obesity epidemic might be about more than eating lots of junk whilst sitting at a computer all day. This past Sunday, however, they threw a pretty photo of leafy greens sprouting out of the most unlikely vase – a Lay’s potato chip bag sans the brand’s name. The feature article this time? The overhaul of school lunches in an attempt to cut off obesity at its childhood knees.       

Bean sprouts and the single girl

by Katherine Stevens

The vegetable industry has hit a home-run with baby carrots, celery sticks, and chopped lettuce packaged in small containers and plastic bags—perfect for a quick, healthy snack or addition to a brown bag lunch. But when you step back and look at the big picture – the long stretch of the vegetable aisle – you see that the majority of produce is left out in the cold. Case in point: bean sprouts. A single gal can only eat so many bean sprouts at a time, but sadly, I have yet to see a container of bean sprouts with my lifestyle in mind. When buying bean sprouts, one has to buy them in bulky, family-of-four amounts. It is only fair to say that the bean sprout industry discriminates against lone wolf sprout consumers like myself.

The United States of Corn

by Katherine Stevens

Alaskan oil production just plummeted, and I feel fine.

Why? Because we have to reduce our dependence on oil. It’s not a renewable resource. End of discussion. There are alternate ways of producing energy and all the other oil byproducts we depend on.

And you know what is a renewable resource – one America has in almost sinful abundance? I’ll give you three guesses. You probably just ate some.

That’s right.

Corn.

Weapons of mass consumption

by Katherine Stevens

The power to starve oneself is great indeed. When there are few other ways of falling on one’s non-existent sword, simply refusing to eat seems to be a functional method. When my great-grandmother was suffering from dementia and eking out her last days at a nursing home, she chose to starve herself. She’s not alone; self-starvation, also termed "silent suicide," is a popular method among the old and the infirm.

Aw, Nuts!

by Katherine Stevens

Forget about obesity.  Consuming even the smallest quantities of food can be a hazard these days. Hell, just smelling it can kill you. 

According to medical experts, the number of kids born with allergies to peanuts is going to double in the next 5 years – and nobody can explain why. At the boarding school where I am teaching this summer, we can’t have peanut butter – period. Because one kid has milk allergies and another can’t eat white legumes, signs in the dining hall abound, warning against the dangers of cross-contamination. This was never an issue when I was in high school, and I’m only 22.

Early Overdosing: An Extreme Idea for Extreme Times

by Katherine Stevens

Maybe too much of bad thing can, in fact, be a good thing.

Between my mom and Colson Whitehead, I am absolutely convinced that the best way to lose one’s love of ice cream and other sweets is to work at an ice cream shop as a teenager. My mom worked at Howard Johnson’s and can only muster an occasional craving for coffee or mint-chocolate chip ice cream, other sweets even more infrequently. Colson Whitehead, on the other hand, gorged himself on ice cream during the three summers he worked for the local ice creamery, and now he doesn’t eat dessert. Thrusting one’s right arm into an ice box day in and day out and overindulging in all-the-scoops-you-can-swallow seems to me the best way to fight a sweet tooth and fight it early.

A world without couch potatoes

by Katherine Stevens

If I were to make a movie about food – and, according to the New York Times, food movies are about to become as omnipresent as Lindsay Lohan – I would develop a disaster/time travel film centering around potatoes.  Imagine a world without potato chips and French fries.

Sideshow Food

by Katherine Stevens

Everyone, prepare your gag reflexes. In Sauget, Illinois an independent baseball team has started serving bacon cheeseburgers between slices of a Krispy Kreme doughnut. This, per a USA Today article from last week about the things this country has done to cheeseburgers. Other cheeseburger concoctions to make you lose your lunch? Cheeseburger fingers (courtesy the poorly named Advance Food) and cheeseburger egg rolls (it’s all about the Bennigan’s, baby).

Big Meat

by Katherine Stevens

Turns out a new biography Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair is out and I didn’t know about it until I was nearly done writing this column about the meatpacking industry. Thanks, USA Today! 100 years after Sinclair gave us The Jungle, we have to wonder how far have we actually come in ensuring worker and animal rights at meatpacking plants.