The World According to Chuck

Oh man. Read this interview.

OK, you won’t. Fine. FINE.

This touches all of my sensitive areas and makes me all tingly. Because it AGREES with me, of course. Or I agree with it.

First, it slaps down that bugaboo about set points. You know. We’re supposed to be a certain size, a certain weight, and there’s not much we can do about it. If you’re fat you’re supposed to be fat, sorry, eat some more, live a little.

Nonsense, and taking a look around us proves it. How come we’re fatter than we used to be? How come some people are fat all their lives and suddenly lose the weight and keep it off? How come some people are opposite? We don’t need no stinkin’ set points.

Secondly, it points the finger appropriately, if you’re into finger pointing. And no, it’s not that we’ve become lazy, sedentary slobs. We’re probably more sedentary, but this myth that keeps crawling around that we were all (pre-1980s, anyway) kids who played all summer long, rode bikes and ran like marathoners is smug and stupid. Kids still ride bikes. Kids still, when they get a chance, sit on their butts and play games or read books. More sedentary, sure. On an evolutionary, society-wide, massive obesity-increasing way? Don’t see it. It’s the food.

And it is, too. Blame capitalism or the government or your neighbor or whatever if you’re into blaming, but that’s the culprit. Corn, too, and mostly. Corn syrup. And much bigger and cheaper portions.

Mostly, though, the tingles come from this guy’s take on humanity, which is, essentially, that DUH WE ARE CREATURES OF HABIT. And we need to be. Or needed to be.

We like sex so much because that’s how we perpetuate the species. We like food so much because we need to eat to survive, and we like tasty food because it focuses our energy and memory on remembering where that stuff is.

Used to be.

Now there’s plenty of food, at least in this part of the world, and we eat chocolate chip cookies and get ourselves a serious chip habit, reinforced every time we take a bite (drooling right now).

Sorry. Just really love this article.