"Yale" news and stories

That's the latest theory on why we're so fat: we're addicted to food.

Now, if by "addicted" they mean "I need to eat it in order to survive," then yeah, I'm "addicted," but I don't think that this is true for most people. Not only do people eat too much in general, but they eat too much of the wrong foods, don't exercise and go on diets that ultimately fail. However, I think the theory is a twisting of the word "addiction." To compare it to drug addiction is strange. After all, in a normal, healthy situation, we don't need cocaine to live. We do need food and drink, so I think they should focus their research on something else.

There is a meeting at Yale's Rudd Center this week to explore this theory more.

Yesterday I posted about how much I like Big Night, and I was pleasantly surprised to see I'm not alone on that.

Another food flick that's worth spending some time with is the 1988 movie Mystic Pizza. Sure, it's got Julia Roberts fairly early in her career, but it's got two other actors who never get the props they're due: Vincent D'Onofrio (the guy from Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Ed Wood) and Annabeth Gish (whom you may remember from the later seasons of the X-Files).

How to describe it? Hmmm ... sort of a coming-of-age movie where the local pizza (our three heroines work at the pizzeria) does some magical things.

I shudder to think how this was pitched to the film execs ("think chick flick  meets pizza flick set in the Northeast ... no, no, not the de-industrialized Northeast, the quaint Northeast!"), but I'm glad it exists.

Have you even wanted to pick just one food and eat it all day long? That, in very basic terms, is the gimmick of the Flavor Point Diet, a new weight loss strategy by researcher Dr. David Katz of Yale University.

The diet is based on the theory that we are overloading our palates with different flavors and are consequently so interested in them that we are never satisfied. According to the analogy given in the book, if we tempt ourselves with a taste of something, we will never be satisfied until we have a lot of it. The more flavors we allow ourselves, the more flavors we will want to eat. Dr. Katz says that by focusing on one "flavor intense" food each day, cravings can be overcome.

The diet calls for having a different flavor each day - pineapple on Monday, apple day on Tuesday, thyme on Wednesday, and so on. The sample menu for Apple Day calls for such meals as a smoothie for breakfast and an apple fennel barley salad for lunch. The total calorie count of the day is under 1500 and though the diet specifically claims that it involves "No Measuring Portions" and no restrictions on what you can eat, it still calls for 1/2 cup of applesauce for the snack. Another menu calls for a "snack" of 5 crackers, with no lunch on that day. The 6 bran pretzel sticks and 1/4 cup cottage cheese that serves as a snack on thyme day is another that sounds as though it involves both counting and measuring, even if its not specifically calories.

This diet is nothing new. It's simply the common sense of not eating too much disguised with a weak attempt at flavoring.