This book is also the outcome of my experience as a political operative and transparency advocate in Washington, D.C. It discusses politics, and while I do draw from my experiences as a consultant to Democratic campaigns and causes, I attempt to be even-handed with my discussion. My goal is not to convince you to be a liberal, or a conservative, but rather to close the gap between you and your government by giving you some insight about what is really going on in Washington.
Like any good diet, the information diet works best if you think about it not as denying yourself information, but as consuming more of the
The more I researched the parallels between our food consumption and our information consumption, the more strongly I came to believe that this isn’t just a fancy metaphor. It’s real. Conscious consumption of information is possible. We can (and some already do) pay as much attention to the information we put into our heads as we do to the food we put into our bodies. Much like a healthy food diet, a healthy information diet has consequences that not only can reduce stress but also may help us live longer, happier lives.
Chapter 1. Lessons from Obesity
“What we know about diets hasn’t changed. It still makes sense to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, balance calories from other foods, and keep calories under control. That, however, does not make front-page news.”
William Banting learned the hard way that you are what you eat, and as a result, he invented what we know today as the modern diet.
An undertaker from Great Britain, Banting found himself suffering from “failing sight and hearing, an umbilical rupture requiring a truss, and bandages for weak knees and ankles.” He reported not being able to walk down stairs without help, or to touch his toes. He went to see many doctors for his various conditions but claimed that, “not one of them pointed out the real cause of my sufferings, nor proposed any effectual remedy.” The real cause of Banting’s suffering wasn’t that he couldn’t walk down stairs, it was that he was obese.
After he started losing his hearing, he finally sought specialized medical attention and found himself in the care of “the celebrated aurist” Dr. William Harvey. The physician put him on a diet inspired by a lecture he’d heard about treating diabetes: five to six ounces of meat or fish three times a day, accompanied by stale toast with cooked fruit. Beer, potatoes, milk, and sweets were not allowed. Alcohol was, though: four to five glasses of wine a day, a glass of brandy in the evening, and sometimes even a wake-up cocktail in the morning were called for.
Banting reported losing 13 inches off his waist and 50 pounds of weight over the course of a couple of years. It was only then that Banting realized that he had been treating symptoms, not the root cause. Once he fixed his diet, his other problems went away. He could walk down the stairs again.
We’ve known that obesity is bad for a very long time. In the fourth century BCE, Hippocrates, called the father of medicine by Western scholars, wrote, “Corpulence is not only a disease itself, but the harbinger of others.” And the Bible is filled with warnings about overconsumption. Proverbs 23:20–21 says, “Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.”
However, for thousands of years, obesity was usually a disease affecting only the most affluent. Food— especially the delicious, calorie-dense stuff—was simply too expensive for the average person to obtain. Few could afford to be fat, and thus being so was often considered a way to display one’s prosperity.
Then a great technological shift happened, much like the one that we faced in the second half of the twentieth century. New technology and new techniques increased our food supply. The steam engine, crop rotation, and the iron plow revolutionized agriculture in Europe between the 17th and 19th centuries, alongside a variety of sociopolitical changes, including the rise of the merchant class. The food supply became more abundant, and access to it improved. Obesity was no longer just for a fortunate few.
It was in this context that Banting decided to share his results with the world. In 1863, he published Europe’s first modern diet book,
The medical community treated it as old news. Their critique wasn’t an assault on the idea, but they questioned why Banting’s letter was so popular in the first place. Similar works had been published prior to his, but they were written by physicians, for physicians.
In the fourth edition of his letter, Banting spends upwards of seven pages defending himself against a medical fraternity that disputed his story, claiming that he must not have sought the attention of particularly good doctors if it took him that long to get well, or worse, that Banting’s recommendation of four meals a day would cause more corpulence. His response:
“My unpretending letter on Corpulence has at least brought all these facts to the surface for public examination, and they have thereby had already a great share of attention, and will doubtless receive much more until the system is thoroughly understood and properly appreciated by every thinking man and woman in the civilized world.”
A Modern Epidemic
Banting was right about all the public attention—the commercial success of his pamphlet helped create an industry of diet books, coaches, and consultants. His documents are preserved online by the Atkins Foundation, the organization dedicated to Robert Atkins, who would come along more than a century later and encourage people to go on a very similar low-carbohydrate program.
But neither Banting nor Atkins, nor any of the thousands of others, solved the problem of obesity. In recent years, it has run rampant through America.
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta provides annual data on a state-by-state basis regarding our obesity epidemic. Figure 1-1 shows what obesity looked like in 1990.
While the CDC does not have data for five states in 1990, none of the states for which data was collected had obesity percentages higher than 14%. Figure 1-2 shows what that same map looks like with data from 2010.
In 20 years, we went from an obesity rate no higher than 14% in any state to an obesity rate no lower than 20% in any state, and an obesity rate higher than 25% in most states. Twelve states—Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia—now have obesity rates greater than 30%. Moreover, our obesity rate is accelerating; we’re getting fatter faster than we were 20 years ago.
What has happened?
