"Costco as much as anything else is why the land of the free and the home of the brave is also the trough of the tub o' lard," says Frank Bruni in a NYTimes article called
"Hard Truths About Soft Bodies." Bruni laments the myriad of studies that look for other reasons ("microprocessing," he calls it) for obesity than simply overeating. He sees the Costco mentality as symptomatic: people find their inner Gargantua
excited by the industrial-sized packages in which Costco stuffs foodstuffs and are unable to refrain from stuffing themselves as well. I agree with Bruni that, with some notable metabolic exceptions, for most people weight loss and weight maintenance
are primarily a matter of motivation and self-discipline. If I have flab around the middle--and I do--it's because I'm not willing to pay the expensive physical price (fewer calories ingested, more energy expended) necessary to eliminate it.
But here's the thing:
Don't blame Costco for singing its siren song ("Sooo-eee!") so seductively.
Costco actually makes possible a kind of return to those pioneer days when once a month Pa would hitch the team to the buckboard, round up Ma and the kids, and head to town to hit the general store and load up on large quantities of supplies (50-pound sacks
of flour, sugar, and salt, bolts of gingham cloth) which would be hauled home and rationed out for use as needed. The adults would marvel at the occasional new product ("What will they think of next?") and the kids would line up to get a free stick of
candy from the proprietor. Today, families jump into the mini-van and drive five miles to a warehouse that could shelter a number of Lear jets. Dad fights for a spot in the crowded 10-acre parking lot and the family troops into the warehouse pushing
a couple of mammoth shopping carts, the kids anticipating the many free samples (a sip of a new organic fruit juice, a bite of a new lobster-stuffed ravioli) that demonstrators hand out at the ends of aisles. There will be attention-drawing specials
near the entrance--luggage, maybe, or patio furniture, or Waterford crystal, or a jet ski, or a 32-square foot gun safe (only $799) for the Kalashnikov they're going to pick up at a neighbor's yard sale later in the day. No, those things weren't on their
shopping list, and, yes, they are impulse items, but the family can simply "ooh" and "naah" instead of "ooh" and "aah" and walk on by, touring the store clockwise, pausing to look at their favorite areas--electronics, jewelry, books, clothes, tools, sports
equipment, wine--before entering the cornucopia utopia of the food section. Sure, they have to buy a netted sleeve of three cantaloupes instead of just one, a five-pound plastic container of grapes instead of just a medium-sized bunch, a 12-pack of muffins
or Danish pastries, a 12-pack of frozen salmon, a 10-pound pack of flank steaks, a dozen lamb chops, a five-pound box of Honey Bunches of Oats, a six-pound pack of whey protein powder, a two-pack of Skippy crunchy peanut butter in 48-ounce jars, 27 ounces
of Ghirardelli chocolate squares, an 18-cup box of Greek yogurt, a two-pound carton of butternut squash cubes, a case of stewed tomatoes, a 40-ounce package of prepared polenta in a spicy Italian sausage sauce, 500 tablets of Vitamin C, a four-pound bag of
trail mix--but large quantities mean lower prices. Large quantities mean frontier thriftiness. It's simply a matter of repackaging. Put one cantaloupe and a pound of grapes in your countertop fruit bowl and stash the remainder in the extra
fridge-freezer in your garage. Slice the muffins and pastries in two, tuck them into baggies (save the baggies for reusing after eating the goodies they contained), and pop them into the extra freezer. Put the flank steaks into separate packages
and freeze them. Put the lamb chops in packs of two and freeze them. The salmon fillets are already in separate wrappers; just toss the box into the freezer. Park the yogurt in the extra fridge beside the squash cubes. Leave the polenta
as is and make two meals of it, one of them a reheated leftover. Put the C in the medicine cabinet. Stash the tomato cans in the cupboard. Ditto the trail mix--simply eat it out of the resealable bag a small handful at a time. Dip into
the cereal, protein powder, and chocolate as needed. Above all, resist the temptation to eat more than you need just because you now have a large supply of tasty treats. You can buy a tub o' lard at Costco, but you don't have to become one.
*****
TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz warns that diet sodas "may boost your risk for diabetes, heart disease,
and extra pounds." Is the culprit the drink itself? No, he says. "One reason diet sodas may backfire in an overall diet is that it's easy to justify rewarding yourself with a cookie or fries or a second slice of pizza because you've eliminated
hundreds of calories by choosing diet beverages over regular drinks." In addition, "it turns out that artificial sweeteners flood your taste buds with sweet flavors but don't light up satisfaction centers in your brain the way real sweets do. So
cravings build. Artificial sweeteners may also ramp up your body's response to real sugars and carbohydrates--spiking levels of blood sugar. This is where the frightening news of their link to metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes, and diabetes comes
from."
But here's the thing:
To avoid imbibing calories, there are only two alternatives: drink
water or diet soda. Drinking water is the ideal healthful solution. No argument there. But if you want something more interesting than water while still avoiding calories, diet soda is the drink for you. If, as Dr. Oz suggests, some
people can drink regular soda fully aware that it is calorie-laden and discipline themselves not to consume extra fries, cookies, or pizza because that would mean taking in too many calories, a drinker of diet soda should be able to exercise the same discipline.
Will power is will power. At the very least, the drinker of diet soda should be able to limit his "bonus" caloric intake to whatever number of calories he saved with his diet drink. Further, surely artificial sweeteners provide enough satisfaction
to light up the pleasure center of one's brain at least a little. Mine may be a dim bulb, but I know that with a diet drink I'm enjoying a sweeter sense of pleasure than I get from water, yet at the same time I experience no craving for the pure sugar
of regular soda. As for blood sugar levels spiking when I take in real sugars and carbohydrates after having drunk diet soda, I have no physical sense of this. My cells may be going on a sugar-high spree, but they are not telling me about it.
Further, my frequent blood tests have not revealed that I have diabetes or pre-diabetes. And how many daily diet sodas does it take to damage one's health, anyway? Is one diet soda a day going to turn you into a sweet-craving diabetic?
Two? Five? And if we're going to guzzle in huge quantities, aren't sugared sodas even more dangerous? Can one seriously argue that drinking five sugared sodas a day is better than drinking five diet sodas, because five diets would leave you
unsatisfied, craving even more--10 maybe--and would spur you to ingest hundreds more calories in fries, cookies, and pizza by way of compensation for your saintliness in drinking the diet stuff, and would consequently cause the levels of your blood sugar to
spike, turning you into a diabetic, whereas five regular sodas would not? Dr. Oz, sir, I think your warning is humbug.
*****
Conclusions drawn from studies on soda drinking and soda drinkers abound these days. One such appears to show that a fluctuation in calories imbibed sways political leanings. In an experiment, students responding
to questions after drinking Sprite Zero showed more support for social welfare programs than did students who had downed full-calorie Sprite. "There is a clear logic behind peoples political opinions. But it is a logic adapted for ancestral circumstances,"
says Lene Aaroe, a soda yoda from Denmark, implying that, from earliest human history to the present, it is personal deprivation, not ethical insight, that determines political views.
But here's the thing:
It's certainly believable that empathy can stem from personal experience. Those who have faced poverty are probably more likely than not to
favor social programs like food stamps and unemployment benefits to combat those problems. Yet aren't many of the strong, vocal advocates for social programs persons who do not suffer, and have not suffered, from the problems the programs are intended
to alleviate? Is it not more likely that such advocates are persons who, while not suffering themselves, can understand the sufferings of others and whose insights tell them that social wlfare programs are humane and may also contribute to the stability
of society? Does the soda study prove that deprivation is the key to achieving empathy? No. Would society be improved if everyone were forced to experience deprivation for some portion of their lives? Not at all.
*****
A recent survey published in the NY Times reveals that 87% of Americans are "very happy" or "pretty
happy." However, the survey makers found the 87% figure cause of alarm because it ranks the United States 17th in happiness among all countries, behind #1 Denmark and several other northern European countries as well as Canada, Israel, and Japan.
But here's the thing:
If we are unhappy because we are not 100% happy, if we are jealous because nothing
is rotten in Denmark, probably our expectations are too high. The Constitution guarantees us the right to the pursuit of happiness but does not guarantee that complete happiness is achievable for everyone--or even anyone. Whatever the conditions
that make for happiness might be--standard of living, equality of economic and political opportunity, physical security, freedom from various kinds of discrimination--the chances are that residents in the 16 countries ranked ahead of us are simply willing
to admit that they have it pretty good and to be content with what they have. We Americans, on the other hand, apparently will not be happy until we are happier than everyone else.