Edward Wyatt of The New York Times writes that Ryan Benson, who lost 122 pounds to win The Biggest Loser's first season, has gained the weight back and "thinks he has been shunned by the show because he publicly admitted that he dropped some of the weight by fasting and dehydrating himself to the point that he was urinating blood." Indeed, show officials have tried to keep other former contestants from talking to the press, and trainer Jillian Michaels says, "Contestants can get a little too crazy and they can get too thin. [...] It's just part of the nature of reality TV." However, Dr. Charles Burant of the University of Michigan says "the nature of reality TV" may not be compatible with the nature of, you know, health:

I have had some patients who want to do the same thing, and I counsel them against it. [...] I think the show is so exploitative. They are taking poor people who have severe weight problems whose real focus is trying to win the quarter-million dollars.

The gimmick of many reality shows is to take something that usually happens slowly — like finding a spouse or losing a large amount of weight — and speed it up for the benefit of the audience. Producers shoehorn whole periods of people's lives into a handful of TV hours, and it's no wonder that they squeeze out a little blood in the process. Gawker's Hamilton Nolan says that rather than watching The Biggest Loser, overweight people should "eat a few hundred calories less than you burn every day; exercise for no more than an hour five days a week, with a sensible mix of interval cardio workouts and basic weight training; lose a couple pounds a week; continue until satisfied." But for a lot of people, it isn't really that simple, and it would be kind of nice to see a TV show that promoted Health At Every Size. Jill at Feministe says, "a real show about health - where in the end there would still be some healthy fat people and some healthy thin people and some healthy in-between people - would make really boring TV," and she may be right. The truth is, what entertains us is rarely what's good for us, and the subtext of Jillian Michaels's statement is that the nature of reality TV is to exploit suffering and pain.

I don't want to be all get-off-my-lawn-y — really, criticizing reality television is so passé it's almost retro — but I will say that back in the days of scripted programming people only pretended to do things that were bad for them. Now we get to watch real people — people who, in the case of The Biggest Loser, probably feel marginalized by society — abuse themselves for free. It's probably too late to turn back the clock on this phenomenon, but it's not too late to call it what it is: a cheap way of exploiting the vulnerable. Not to mention a shitty way to lose weight.

On ‘The Biggest Loser,' Health Can Take Back Seat [NYT]
Shocker: "The Biggest Loser" Promotes Unhealthy Weight Loss Practices [Feministe]
Biggest Loser: Basically Killing Fat People For Your Amusement [Gawker]

Researchers asked 5,893 people, 54% of them women, to choose their present body size and ideal body size from a chart depicting nine human figures. The discrepancy between the two was used to measure how satisfied the participants were with their bodies. Two to three percent of the subjects overall chose an "above-normal" size as ideal, but close to one in 10 obese people apparently felt that their size was normal and healthy.

However, say the study authors, 35% of obese people who felt this way had high blood pressure, 15% and high cholesterol, and 14% had diabetes. Time to freak out, right? If these people only knew they needed to lose weight, they'd be so much healthier. Except according to lead study author Tiffany Powell, these problems occurred at comparable rate in obese people who did feel like they were too fat. They just occurred along with a "healthy" dose of guilt.

The study did reveal a few benefits of "knowing you need to lose weight." Those who wanted to drop pounds were more likely to have seen a doctor in the past year (and yearly checkups are smart for many people), and also more likely to exercise. But since neither exercise nor going to the doctor has been proven to result in weight loss, isn't it time we stopped using fat-shaming to force people into these behaviors? Couldn't we find some way of promoting a healthy lifestyle that doesn't start with classifying people as abnormal?

Some Obese People Perceive Body Size As OK, Dismiss Need To Lose Weight [EurekAlert]

Although Mo'Nique has lost about 40 lbs, she was quick to grab her belly and say she still had her "girl." Then Ellen declared Mo'Nique in posession of a "sexy big kitten head."

[Reedley, California; October 21. Image via Getty]

REEDLEY, CA - OCTOBER 21: Seventeen year-old Marissa Hamilton (L) and her friend Mary Healy sprint during a timed one mile run during fitness training at Wellspring Academy October 21, 2009 in Reedley, California. Struggling with her weight, seventeen year-old Marissa Hamilton enrolled at the Wellspring Academy, a special school that helps teens and college level students lose weight along with academic courses. When Marissa first started her semester at Wellspring she weighed in at 340 pounds and has since dropped over 40 pounds of weight in the first two months of the program. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16 percent of children in the US ages 6-19 years are overweight or obese, three times the amount since 1980.(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

• Speaking of Palin and "broad", the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner is really sorry for calling Sarah Palin a "broad" in a front-page headline. In their defense, it was a pun ("A Broad In Asia"), but editor Rod Boyce has apologized for printing "offensive language." • The Guardian reports there has been a sudden increase in the number of female headteachers, who often make over £100,000. However, although 70% of elementary school heads are women, the few men who do work with young children are more likely to be in senior management positions than women. • According to a recent survey, swearing is "so common" in the UK that one in three Britons claim they hear a curse word every five minutes. Maybe we're just foul-mouthed Americans, but that doesn't sound that bad. • Researchers have found that your personality type may influence your success at weight loss. This sounds totally obvious, but they also claim that more optimistic people have a harder time keeping weight off. • A new study has found that taking anti-depressants early on in pregnancy may increase the risk of giving birth to a child with a heart defect. Researchers note that the risk is still relatively small, and that Zoloft, Prozac and Celexa carry a higher danger than other drugs. • After a "disastrous marriage," Robina Niaz started Turning Point for Women and Families, an organization that helps abused Muslim women in New York. She says domestic violence is no more common among Muslims than non-Muslims, but that cultural norms can make it harder to confront. • 10% of homeless veterans are now women, and their numbers are rising — many suffer from PTSD resulting from combat or sexual assault by other service members. • If new vaccination and screening programs are implemented, some say cervical cancer could disappear within 50 years. • Tufts University has instituted a new policy instructing students not to have sex while a roommate is in the room, or to allow their sex lives to affect a roommate's "privacy, study, or sleep." Translation: don't be an asshole. • Susan Atkins, follower of Charles Manson and killer of Sharon Tate, has died of brain cancer at the age of 61. • Women have long been barred from serving on submarines, supposedly because space concerns make separate bathrooms impractical. But now an admiral thinks that should change. • Hugo Chavez says "I laugh when I see people from Fox News" that President Obama smells like hope. • A new study has found that gay parents are just as fit to adopt as heterosexuals. Children raised by same-sex couples had no more emotional problems than those raised by straight parents. •

Although Krieger, who tells his story in the New York Times magazine, has never worried much about his weight, their comments make him understandably self-conscious.

After borrowing a Winnie-the-Pooh scale from a neighbor under the pretext of weighing "something," I stood facing my bathroom's full-length mirror and mounted it. Above Pooh-san's serene, smiling face and the overflowing honey pot he held in his paws, the red digits on the scale's display climbed and flashed and finally settled. I was 21 pounds over my "official" weight.

But contrary to what he thinks, this isn't the tragedy - or the grievous insult - he's imagined. A friend clues him in.

"Oh, yeah," he said, "when I first came to Japan I couldn't believe how women teased me about being chubby, poking me and whatnot." But he said he figured out that it wasn't a put-down or an insult but actually more of a playful thing. "When they say a man has gained weight, it implies he's got someone new in his life," he said. "Some woman is feeding him and making him feel comfortable enough to let himself go a little. It makes him look healthy, because he's happy."...My Japanese tutor later told me that there's even a term for this - shiawase butori, "happily plump." It took me a while to get used to the concept, but over the next few weeks I began to think of my augmentation not as fat but as the stateliness of a bon vivant who defiantly shows the world he can suck the marrow - and the fatty tuna - out of life without fretting about caloric content.

In some ways, this playful attitude towards weight seems counterintuitive in a culture that, in the last few years, has instituted government-mandated weight standards to combat the spread of "metabo," or "metabolic syndrome." Eating disorders are on the rise amidst young Japanese women and in general a western attitude towards weight has followed close on the heels of western beauty ideals - and western junk food. But does this acceptance of shiawase butori extend to both sexes? Would a woman comment on another woman's weight gain with the same levity? I'm really interested to know - because hereabouts, while a man's gut is perfectly acceptable (some would say, fashionable!) and a man's ego can, in the popular imgination, survive a jibe at his physique - such a thing would be absolutely verboten if addressed to a woman, an implicit condemnation. When we talked about the alleged "gut trend" in young men, readers were quick to point out that such a fad would never be sanctioned amongst women; is the dichotomy as stark here? Is this attitude indicative of healthy acceptance - or ingrained double-standards? This is a charming piece - but it leaves me wanting to know more of the story.

A Weighty Matter [NY Times]
Eating Disorders on the Increase in Asia [Dimensions]
Japan, Seeking Trim Waists, Measures Millions [NY Times]
Changes In The Physiques Of Japanese Women [My Nippon]
Metabolic Syndrome May Affect 1 In 3 Japanese [WhatJapanThinks]

Earlier: New Trend: The Gut

Writer Neal Justin is trying to make the point that the rash of plus-size TV shows — Drop Dead Diva, Dance Your Ass Off; Ruby, More To Love and The Biggest Loser — are getting great ratings, and writes: "Fat is suddenly fabulous, at least on TV." Not in real life! In real life it's still totally gross, okay?

But what Justin wants to know is why. Why would people want to watch shows with plus-size characters? He writes, "Why this appetite for fuller-figured personalities?" But it almost sounds like: Why would you want to watch fatties?

You'd think, since according to one study, "adult obesity rates increased in 23 states last year," it's about American audiences seeing a reflection of themselves.

But Paul Telegdy, who oversees NBC's reality programming (including Biggest Loser) says: "I think it embraces a concern and a worry that keeps a lot of Americans awake at night." Hear that? You're lying awake at night, afraid to get fat, which makes you watch The Biggest Loser.

Yeah, I'll just go ahead and say: Bullshit! If you're watching these shows, it's because there's drama, and a human story. We love a personal story, and if it's personal, it's universal. Even if you've never been overweight, you can understand the range of human emotions showcased on these programs: Frustration, heartbreak, dedication, triumph. As Loser host Alison Sweeney says: "[The show] strikes at the heart of the human spirit.You see people being able to overcome this obstacle that seems insurmountable. Miracles can happen."

And honestly? It's not like plus-size, overweight, fat or large people all live sequestered from society. In many cases, they're your mom, your dad, your aunt, your uncle, you, me. It's not strange that people are interested in seeing plus-size people on TV; it's strange that up until now, plus-size people have been mostly ignored on TV.

A Growing Appetite for Plus-Size Personalities [WaPo]

As Time's John Cloud writes:

The basic problem is that while it's true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn't necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.

Cloud cites a study from the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE (PLoS is the nonprofit Public Library of Science). The study, supervised by a colleague of Ravussin's, Dr. Timothy Church, chair in health wisdom at LSU, randomly assigned into four groups 464 overweight women who didn't regularly exercise. Women in three of the groups were asked to work out with a personal trainer for six months; women in the fourth group were the control and were told to maintain their usual routines. The results?

On average, the women in all the groups, even the control group, lost weight, but the women who exercised - sweating it out with a trainer several days a week for six months - did not lose significantly more weight than the control subjects did.

Cloud supposes, jokingly (?) "The control-group women may have lost weight because they were filling out those regular health forms, which may have prompted them to consume fewer doughnuts."

Of course, exercise has its benefits: Enhancing heart and circulatory health, helping prevent disease, improving mental health and cognitive ability. Cloud points to a study released by the University of Alberta a few weeks ago which found that people with chronic back pain who exercise four days a week have 36% less disability than those who exercise only two or three days a week.

But weight loss is a different issue. As is self-control. Cloud explains:

Many people assume that weight is mostly a matter of willpower - that we can learn both to exercise and to avoid muffins and Gatorade. A few of us can, but evolution did not build us to do this for very long. In 2000 the journal Psychological Bulletin published a paper by psychologists Mark Muraven and Roy Baumeister in which they observed that self-control is like a muscle: it weakens each day after you use it. If you force yourself to jog for an hour, your self-regulatory capacity is proportionately enfeebled. Rather than lunching on a salad, you'll be more likely to opt for pizza.

This strikes me as somewhat questionable, as I — and most people I know — tend to be quite loathe to "undo" any work put in at the gym with high-calorie snacks. But this working-out-makes-you-eat movement even has conspiracy theorists!

Steven Gortmaker, head of Harvard's Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity says, "If you're more physically active, you're going to get hungry and eat more." He's suspicious of the playgrounds at fast-food restaurants. "Why would they build those? I know it sounds kind of like conspiracy theory, but you have to think, if a kid plays five minutes and burns 50 calories, he might then go inside and consume 500 calories or even 1,000."

In any case, the key seems to be not to be total sloth and a lead a sedentary lifestyle but just to keep on moving. Cloud writes:

Many obesity researchers now believe that very frequent, low-level physical activity - the kind humans did for tens of thousands of years before the leaf blower was invented - may actually work better for us than the occasional bouts of exercise you get as a gym rat. "You cannot sit still all day long and then have 30 minutes of exercise without producing stress on the muscles," says Hans-Rudolf Berthoud, a neurobiologist at LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center who has studied nutrition for 20 years. "The muscles will ache, and you may not want to move after. But to burn calories, the muscle movements don't have to be extreme. It would be better to distribute the movements throughout the day."

Of course, since none of this is conducive to working a desk job (blogging for a living included) we're gonna add: Good luck with that.

Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin [Time]

Earlier: Does Exercise Make You Hungry Instead Of Thin?

This year television has seen an increase in shows featuring participants and stars who look more like the viewing public […] Amy Introcaso-Davis, senior vice president of original programming and development at Oxygen, said dance and diet are two areas of interest for younger viewers of the channel, so combining the two made sense.

For a nation grappling with obesity, Introcaso-Davis said, there is a hunger for such shows.

Get it? A hunger?

Introcaso-Davis also says: "If you have five pounds to lose or you have 150 pounds to lose, it's something you think about all day long," she said. "You take a bite of cheesecake and you think 'Should I be doing this?'" First: Not every every person with five or 150 pounds to lose is sitting around eating cheesecake. Medication, genetics, thyroid issues, metabolism… there are so many reasons a person may be overweight, and it may not have anything to do with cheesecake.

In any case, France also spoke with Esther Rothblum, a professor of women's studies at San Diego State University and co-editor of the forthcoming anthology The Fat Studies Reader. She says: "Most people feel too fat in this country and are made to feel very unhappy with their bodies. So by portraying somebody who weighs so much more than they do, it's almost a way to make the audience feel like 'I could look worse' or 'At least I'm not them.' "

But Introcaso-Davis claims that people find the DYAO contestants "relatable." So which is it: Do audiences look at overweight people on TV and think, "That could be me"? Or do they think, "I'm glad I'm not that bad." Does plus-size TV inspire or disgust? The answer may be: Both. In the "Sound Off" section of this CNN story, there are two comments. The first, from "Tamara":

I think these shows are great....I actually would like to go on Dance your Fat A off[sic] or the biggest loser.....

The second, from "Matt"

Yes, lets make it socailly[sic] acceptable to be obese. That will be good for our society! (rolls eyes)

They can air all the shows they want on obese people, I still won't date one.

Plus-Sized TV Shows Find Big Audience [CNN]

Right before this happened, there was footage of rehearsal, in which her dance partner demanded, "let me see your MILF face."





Classy, it is not. Then again, most reality shows aren't. But between the close-ups of the contestants eating, the public weigh-ins, and the insane costumes, it just seems like they're treated with an utter lack of dignity. Maybe that's expecting too much, but I saw a ReTweet on Diablo Cody's Twitter which read, "You never see Skinny People Eat Your Weight Soul Train Scramble Board Celebrity Challenge." It just feels like the overweight are being portrayed as buffoons, one of the oldest tropes in the world.

But maybe I'm wrong, and what's going on in the clip below is actually uplifting:

The study divided 2,407 overweight and obese people into three groups: one got $60 if they maintained a 5% weight loss for a year, another paid $100 but got it back if they kept off the 5%, and a third got $20 for staying in the program, regardless of weight loss. Losing weight is hard: the $20 group lost an average of just 1.8 pounds, while the $50 group dropped 1.4, and the $100 people 3.6. And 76.4% of participants dropped out by the end of the year.

The study authors say that people willing to risk $100 were likely motivated to lose weight no matter what, and that in general the monetary incentives were ineffective. But is the sheer difficulty of weight loss the only factor here? Perhaps money just isn't as strong a motivator as other concerns, like health, the social stigma of being overweight, a culture of dieting, et cetera. Perhaps monetary rewards aren't as effective as, say, an exercise program or nutritional counseling. Or perhaps some participants came to feel insulted by being paid to lose weight.

An interesting parallel is a North Carolina program that pays teen girls not to get pregnant. To enroll, the girls must meet requirements including having a sister who got pregnant as a teen. Once in the program, they get $7 deposited in a college fund for every week they don't conceive. The program also teaches about abstinence and contraception. Of 125 girls who have stayed in the program for six months or more, director Hazel Brown says only six have gotten pregnant or dropped out for other reasons.

In both cases, the monetary aspect is kind of strange — especially paying such a small amount to potentially underprivileged teenage girls seems somewhat condescending. It seems possible that the sex education is what really keeps the girls from getting pregnant, and that the money is just an incentive to get them to show up for the program. It makes a certain amount of sense that teenagers, whose decision-making skills aren't necessarily well-formed yet, would be swayed such basic incentives as $7 a week. But for adults, the social pressures against being overweight are already so intense that a little money may not make a difference. And for some, the ability to lose weight and keep it off may have more to do with biological and sociological luck than with motivation. One of the study authors tells the Times that, "there is surely some amount of money that would persuade most people to lose weight." But successful weight loss may be less about "persuasion," and more about learning the right techniques — and being fortunate enough to have these techniques succeed.

Behavior: Money Not A Motivator In Losing Weight [NYT]
North Carolina Program Pays Girls A Dollar A Day Not To Get Pregnant [FOX News]

Cankles are the fastest growing "aesthetic affliction" in the United States… even ahead of other bathing suit killers like Muffin Tops, Saddle Bags and Moobs. Millions of people across the country are currently affected by Cankles and millions more are "at risk." In fact, it is estimated that if current trends continue, by the year 2012 Cankles will surpass Love Handles as the number one aesthetic affliction in the world.

Gold's Gym has created saynotocankles.com to raise awareness for this growing epidemic and provide information and resources for those affected. If you or a loved one is suffering Cankles…we are here to provide the support you need.

This is supposed to be hilarious.

Listen, no one disputes that that obesity is an epidemic and that exercise is good. But what point is there in mocking someone's "aesthetic affliction"? What if you're big-boned? Should you shave down your fibula?

Luckily, Gold's Gym talks to Corry Matthews, "a Virginia-based trainer and member of Gold's Gym Fitness Institute." (Not a doctor.) He says: "Even if you're in great shape, fatty deposits around the ankles are difficult to shrink."

Great. So what's the point again?

Gold's Gym Addresses 'Cankles' [BusinessWeek]

Related: SayNoToCankles.com [Official Site]

At the start of the show, contestants entered a house where filming took place and found two cabinets: One called "EAT" — filled with nuts, fruits and vegetables — and one called "CHEAT," filled with cookies and doughnuts. Most went right for the cookies, immediately.

While there will be a doctor, nutritionist and trainer on hand while the contestants are participating, the producers made sure to air plenty of footage of the contestants snacking, and even included home video of them eating.

But even weirder was the actual dancing. With strange cover versions of popular songs playing, the contestants were made to wear unflattering, skin exposing ensembles — not that they should wear muumuus! — but every dancer's outfit had cut-outs through the body; and one man's shirt was sheer. They were hideous. And a few of the routines were cringe-inducing in their cheesiness.

Though some of the contestants were energetic and enthusiastic (see: Trice, above), the overall experience of watching them have "forced fun" — being trussed up and made to dance in a spotlight in front of an audience and judges — left this viewer with a bad taste in her mouth. (And don't miss the part where a judge subtly tells this woman she'd make a good pole dancer.)

Dance Your Ass Off [Oxygen]

Study author Susan Roberts defines "sensible" as no less than 1,200 calories a day for women, down from the 1,500 typically advised for a slower diet. In her study, those who tried to cut their calories down to this lower level had lost about the same amount of weight after a year as more conventional dieters, despite the assumption that crash dieting would cause binging and rebound weight gain. Roberts adds that "disinhibited eaters," those who easily break their diets when presented with the opportunity, "did really badly" on the more moderate plan. She says a dramatic change may be easier for some people than moderation, and "the trouble with slow diets is people tend to feel they are getting nowhere and give up. Fast keeps you excited and feeling like you're making progress."

Unsurprisingly, this crash dieting research has its detractors. Fat Is a Feminist Issue author Susie Orbach says, "diets depend on failure. They need to fail, otherwise there would be no repeat customers." And eating-disorder consultant Dr. Peter Rowan adds, "even a sensible weight-loss diet can trigger an eating disorder in someone who is vulnerable, but there is evidence to suggest that the more severe the weight loss, the more likely the diet is to trigger an eating disorder."

Even if crash dieting is more "effective" (i.e. promotes more sustained weight loss) than previously thought, we're not sure we can get behind the idea. Times writer Olivia Gordon describes her days of crash dieting thus:

I had a green salad and no cake for dinner on my 16th birthday. I lived through "Smashgate," a regime of Smash mashed potato, for days, until I realised that it was about 10 times as calorific as I'd thought. At university, it was all about calorie counting - anything from 700 to 1,200 calories a day. In my first job, I worked through a haze of starvation on the simple but deadly "stone in four days" plan. I picked Thursdays for the first night of a fast, so I could offset dinner hunger pangs by late-night shopping at Topshop.

Gordon says that with Roberts's new research, "we could all be about to head back to the weird world of crash dieting" — but we'd still rather have cake.

Can Crash Diets Be Good For You? [Times of London]

The trend started in 2004, when Kraft introduced their 100-cal packs of Oreo Thin Crisps (they also introduced an infuriating commercial to promote these cardboard wafers), Wheat Thin Minis and Nabisco Mixed Berry Fruit Snacks. The next year, Kellogg and General Mills followed suit. Kraft's individually packaged bags of cookies and crackers sold extremely well: more than $75 million in sales in their first year (a figure that does not include Walmart sales).

In the past year, however, sales of the mini-packs have drastically fallen. Although Kraft maintains that its products are still selling well, dollar sales of Kraft's Nabisco 100-calorie Oreo Thin Crisps fell 30.5%, and other items show a similar trend. Some believe that the 100-cal packets are over:

Tom Vierhile, director of product launch analytics for Datamonitor, said the segment has run out of steam. Vierhile's research shows that there's still a lot of products on the market making the 100-calorie claim-190 were introduced last year and 68 have come out so far this year, but they may be too late to market. "This has been a big trend the last couple of years, but has dropped off this year and at this point it looks like we're going to come in below where we were last year," he said.

It seems that most people have realized that 100-calorie packs aren't at all useful. They don't taste as good, they fill our landfills with useless packaging, and they provide servings that are way too small to sate most cravings. Phil Lempert, a food analyst who calls himself the "Supermarket Guru," says that one reason the 100-calorie snack craze has fizzled is due to the ability of "newly frugal customers" to measure servings by themselves.

Furthermore, it appears that the strict portion control imposed by 100-calorie packs may not actually work for weight loss. A study conducted last year found that participants given 100-calorie snacks while watching TV ate significantly more than those who were handed a regular-sized bag. Brand Week also points out that portion control dieting may be on its way out, to be replaced by the already annoying weight loss buzz word "satiety."

100-Calorie Packs Pack It In [BrandWeek]

Related: 100-Calorie Snacks Are The Downfall of American Civilization
100 Calorie Packs Turn Women Into Crazy, Screaming Lunatics

The company that manufactures Hydroxycut, Iovate Health Sciences Inc, has already started recalling the product. According to Linda Katz of the FDA, "The FDA urges consumers to discontinue use of Hydroxycut products in order to avoid any undue risk. Adverse events are rare, but exist." The Hydroxycut website has already been changed to redirect to "Hydroxycut Information," which currently shows information regarding the recall. [Reuters] [Hydroxycut]

Are you guys familiar with "Hungry Girl?" Apparently she's huge. Because, you see, Hungry Girl, aka 43-year-old Lisa Lillien (profiled in today's Washington Post) plays to people's basest natures. Specifically, women's.

The Hungry Girl empire of website and bestselling cookbooks is based on the supposition that real women love pink, love sugar, and can't follow a "real" diet, and, rather than promoting healthy food or exercise, provides less-bad alternatives to Cheesecake factory recipes like Cap'n Crunch chicken and junk food. As the article puts it,

As foodies seek eco-revelation in the local and organic, Hungry Girl speaks the language of chips, cake, cereal, breakfast sausage, taco shells, easy noodles. By doing so, she acknowledges something we all know about ourselves: For all our slow-cooking, sustainable gardening ambitions, we are a nation of snackers.

Accordingly, HG gives ratings and real nutrition information on SnackWell's and alleged diet food, tips for eating out, as well as those recipes. Lillien, who's struggled with weight, lost 25 pounds herself on her plan and sees herself as the "best friend" who can help others. Now, on the one hand, if people want to lose weight and improve their diets, more power to them and anything that helps them achieve this is good. And obviously she's onto something: Hungry Girl has 700,000 subscribers to its daily e-mails, and Lillien employs a staff of nine. If she raves about a diet cookie, sales go through the roof; her pans can spell, if not doom, trouble. Clearly her "just us girls who need treats" approach makes people feel better than judgmental, "snobbish" (as she would say) and unrealistic dictates about fruits and vegetables.

The drawbacks are obvious: the nation's diet needs to be changed, and this isn't the way to do it. This isn't Lillien's responsibility, nor even that of the women who've been helped by her lo-cal danishes. But it's somewhat dispiriting to see this taking hold as the Next Atkins. It seems to reinforce the worrisome idea, already propagated by critics of Alice Waters and her ilk, that good, healthy food is a class issue, when it should be one of availability and price. Take Lillien's words:

People are hypocrites," she says. "They say 'shop the perimeter of the store, never eat anything that's not organic,' but it's B.S., because people can't live like that forever."

This idea, that healthy eating's fiction that salt-and-sugar of the earth types can't attain, is not just patronizing but polarizing, as much so as Berkeley-style militancy.

The diet divide is further pointed up by a piece in The Daily Beast on a Harvard-approved, "hi-brow diet" for the smart set.

The Instinct Diet functions at the nexus of biology, psychology, history, and nutrition, and deals with the sine qua non of successful dieting-we don't want to feel deprived and we don't want to feel hungry. Using her background as a foodie and her philosophy that a diet must address our five basic food instincts-hunger, availability, calorie density, familiarity, and variety-Roberts' dieting program is focused on reprogramming hunger away from the needs of our early ancestors (who ate whatever they could get, whenever they could get it) and toward the reality of modern life (the constant availability of tasty, fatty foods). In this way, the diet addresses the fact that feeling satiated is a complex brain function, and that food instincts are really just an outdated survival mechanism that makes us fat. This is the Instinct Diet's Darwinian element-helping us evolve to meet the reality of supermarket aisles packed with 36 varieties of cookies.

In other words, it's the antithesis of Hungry Girl. And, in its way, just as polarizing, just as larded (ha!) with gratuitous notions of class and intelligence, and, ultimately, just as problematic. In the absence of getting rid of dieting altogether, we wish we could strip weight loss of these dueling stigma: high-brow and low-brow, elitist and realistic. Take the morality out of food. We may have common evils; this should not be one of them.

www.hungry-girl.com
'Hungry Girl' Has Found the Way To a Snacking Nation's Heart [Washington Post]
The Diet That Shrinks Smarty Pants [Daily Beast]