It would appear that the ready secret to successful weight loss is nothing more inventive than deprivation. By contrast in this overall dieting scheme there is a less impoverished point to which one may succeed where quantity is not an issue. Basically any vegetable dish (which I predominantly prefer to serve raw unless minced into a plain soup with chicken broth, white vinegar and fresh basil). The avoidance of cream, butter, cheese, oil, peanut butter, bread and sugar constitutes the next essential in any diet other than the Atkins Diet which I found to be a prescription for unwelcome and irremediable constipation.
Like most irresistible attractions, food is insinuated by a pattern of deceit and misrepresentation. Make no mistake food is a retail commodity and sales matter to the suppliers. If you pay attention to the marketing of food – whether at the source in the grocery store or at table in a fine dining restaurant – presentation is everything. Whatever the mooting you can bet it is designed to target your wallet. It is as much a deception as Coca Cola derives from association of its brand with youth and vigour – the product of additives and sugar mainly.
The medical profession is quick to suggest that “eating disorders” (a dreadful slight of one’s favourite carrot cake or butter tart) are primarily an intellectual malfunction. This to me is an inductive leap of the first order. For one thing the jump from bliss to mental incapacity – if indeed the circus event were true – has so far produced no sustainable medical knowledge sufficient to qualify as edible control. The conversation surrounding psychotic appetites is endless but the referee is totally lacking. Seldom is the gluttony or anorexia nervosa acquainted with advertising bombast. Instead the real culprit is dismissed as “mere puffery”.
In legalese, puffery refers to an expression of opinion by a seller that isn’t made as a representation of fact. It may be a salesperson’s exaggeration about a product’s quality that isn’t a legally enforceable promise. Or it might be an ad that claims a company’s product is superior, as Black’s Law Dictionary explains it. Think of a dealer who says a car “drives great,” or a beer commercial with the slogan “less filling.”
For all the toxic mortgage-backed securities and structured- finance garbage that Moody’s rated as AAA, I never imagined Moody’s would use the word puffery to characterize the principles it brought to the job of grading investments that wind up in the portfolios of retirement funds and money-market accounts. It would be like the pope revealing that his belief in God was just fluff, or Mister Rogers complaining that small children were awful to be around.
My conclusion of the matter is that the victorious rendition of dieting is but an imitation of man’s natural instinct and fodder; that is, the native grasslands and overwhelmingly hay-like menu for horses and cows. In a nutshell: If it tastes good, it’s bad for you!