They call it "Food Porn", the modern cooking show.

The folks at Food Network figured it all out. When they first started broadcasting, their shows were not particularly compelling. They mostly copied the same techniques used when Julia Child was doing her show. Then they figured out that it was as much about personality as it was about food. Eventually, they started introducing new camera techniques that made the shows a sensual delight.

At this point, people in the US spend more hours watching cooking shows than they spend cooking. I don't expect everyone to agree with me that Ina Garten is incredibly sexy, but apparently Giada is universally appealing. A post I did in April 2008 about Giada DeLaurentis and her new baby continues to be bring us a steady stream of traffic from search engines.

Plans Change

Actually, I kinda enjoyed watching Julia Child getting egg shell fragments in the food and the Galloping Gourmet knocking over bowls of ingredients. They reminded me of my experiences in the kitchen, where the military truism no battle plan survives contact with the enemy holds sway. I start out following a new recipe, and end up making substitutions, either because I don't have the ingredients or because I get inspired.

And back before my hip went south, and I was able to do woodworking, I loved watching Roy Underhill's Woodwright's Shop television show on PBS. My late first wife and I made a game of it, guessing how far he would get into a show before he cut himself. It was a virtual certainty that he'd get blood on anything he made.

Letterman's Right About Diets

Last night on Letterman, Jamie Oliver guested. It's not the first time he's appeared - IMDb lists five other appearances - but he thought it was the oddest appearance he'd ever done on a TV show. He wanted to demo cooking skills, as an annoucement of his new television show, and David Letterman wanted to talk about Kirstie Alley's appearance last week, where Letterman pretty much called her new weight-loss scheme a scam, not that he was singling out Kirstie's plan; none of them work.

Kirstie's having trouble with her guest appearances. When she was on the Today Show, Meredith Viera asked her if her diet was connected to Scientology. Seems like an innocent-enough question, but any question related to Scientology seems to strike a raw nerve with the devout (or is it deluded? Opinions vary.) She was ranting about anti-Scientology bigotry before long.

But Is It Bigotry?

I'm not sure if you should call it bigotry. Technically, bigotry is "stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own" but there are lots of people who are fairly tolerant when it comes to various Christian sects, Judaism, Islam, Druidism, Ba'Hai, etc., but find Scientology to be objectionable, calling it a con game rather than a religion. L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer, told people at an SF convention in the 1950s that if someone wanted to get rich, the way to do it would be to found a religion, and what do you know, a couple of years later, he founded Scientology.

They've had struggles getting officially recognized as a legitimate religion in the US, in Germany, and elsewhere. Their "auditing" process resembles a carnival fortune-teller's gimmicky apparatus, leading to some lawsuits by unhappy former followers. They've also really POed the mental health community by asserting that there's no such thing as mental illness. (The newest version of the DSM, the diagnostic manual of the mental health trade, is due out soon; there's a joke going around that Scientology is going to be listed as a mental illness.)

But if Scientologists are sensitive about their religion, and mental health professionals are sensitive about Scientologists, they have nothing on those who are pedding weight loss programs.

The Diet Scam Industry

Back in the 1930s, the story goes, the key to success as a door-to-door salesman was to say to every woman who responds to the knock on the door, regardless of age, "Excuse me, miss; I'm from the Fuller Brush Company, and I need to speak to the lady of the house. Would you please call your mother?" These days, the key to success is to say to every person, regardless of body size and shape, "I can help you, too, lose those extra pounds."

Except that now there's finally a break. Nutrition scientists in other countries, especially the UK, have asserted for 30 years that body fat is an organ that helps you deal with stress, and that you gain weight because you are stressed. There's no such thing as "agreed science" - science is, after all, grounded in skepticism - but that's been the consensus of nutrition scientists in the US as well for 15-20 years as well.

Diet Promoters Can't Do Math

For most of the last century, diet promoters have been arguing whether it's the amount of calories you consume, or the amount of fat grams or carbs that you eat that matter, but pretty much all of it has been based on the theory that what you eat, minus what you use in your physical activity, results in weight gain or loss. The nutrition scientists know otherwise. That mathematical formula, you see, ignores the fact that most of what you consume does not get used up in physical activity nor does it contribute to weight gain. Instead, it gets flushed down the toilet.

There's a new study from Princeton, however, that shows that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) causes you to gain more weight than sugar does. That's contrary to the what the witch doctors at the American Dietetic Association have been insisting, and the ads from "SweetSurprise" (the Corn Refiners Association) are promoting. As Joe Biden would put it, "this is a big fucking deal."

Corn Syrup Is Evil

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," says professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."

The Princeton group set up an experiment with rats getting all the chow they wanted. Some got all they wanted of a sweetener syrup, either HFCS or sucrose for 12 hours a day, some got 24 hours of HFCS, and some got no syrup at all.

The Results

There wasn't any difference between the four groups in the total calories being consumed. That's consistent with studies others have done of people - generally, people eat calories in proportion to their lean body mass. Since the rats were as identical as they could manage in starting the test, it makes sense that they'd consume the same number of calories.

However, after six or seven months, the rats getting HFCS had gained considerably more weight, more abdominal fat, and elevated triglycerides, compared to those getting sucrose, or getting only chow.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
abdominal fat - corn syrup - David Letterman - diets - door-to-door sales - fat organ - Food Network - food porn - Galloping Gourmet - Giada DeLaurentis - HFCS - Ina Garten - Jamie Oliver - Julia Child - Kirstie Alley - mental illness - Meredith Viera - PBS - Princeton - Roy Underhill - Scientology - stress - triglycerides - Woodwright's Shop