Just Thinking
April, 2023
Kam Zarrabi

There is a growing shortage of the diabetes drug, Ozempic, after the news spread that the users might also lose some weight. Using a powerful diabetes medication with all its side effects to lose weight is almost as crazy as another method used about a hundred years ago: swallowing the live head of a tapeworm kept in a capsule, dispensed by a local apothecarist, and letting that awful parasite grow inside the intestine, then taking medications to get rid of it once the desired weight was achieved! That is not an urban legend; my own grandmother, I have been told, had done that back in the 1890s, and she wasn't the only nutcase who had used that method for losing some weight.

Most of us who have visible reasons to lose some weight might try any promising way to get rid of that blubber around our midsection: I know I would. But being a normal human being, ignoring the beckoning sight of luscious creamy pastry or the mouthwatering aroma of sizzling bacon doesn't come naturally.

So, health conscious dietitians and food production entrepreneurs have collaborated to come up with various methods of helping us less-than-physically-fit souls lose weight while satisfying our craving to indulge in all those bad things. We now have bacon made of what might be sawdust and cardboard, which looks and tastes almost like the real thing, or hamburgers perhaps made of a mixture of vegetables and tree bark that has been spiced up to taste almost like fatty beef patties cooked in real lard. We have fat-free Half & Half, and soon, perhaps, fat-free butter and cooking oils!

But how can we escape from the Sisyphean cycle of endlessly attempting to lose weight only to regain it back over and over again? Advising us to just avoid eating tasty foods that we crave is as effective as suggesting to an alcoholic who wants to overcome the addiction it to consider refusing to drink!

The real question is: Why do things that taste so good, so bad for us? Has it always been like that?

Let's go back to the pre-historic times when our human hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in caves and had to chase and catch their food for supper: That had to be an exhausting, energy consuming hard work day in and day out. They also needed the sudden bursts of energy on demand to fend off predators and fight their rivals over shelter, food or mates.

Archeological evidence shows that life expectancy of our distant ancestors seldom exceeded 25 or 30 years. Simple exhaustion, accidents and diseases took their toll shortly after they had reached their peak of physical fitness and productivity. The ones that had evolved to develop a taste for fatty energy rich meats and bone marrow, as well as sweet sugary calorie-laden foods had, without question, a survival advantage over any rivals that had remained basically vegetarians.

Whether through scavenging or hunting, fat and protein-rich meats and calorie-laden fruits and nuts provided our struggling ancestors with the bursts of energy that enabled them to master the game of survival as the dominant species. They never reached the age when obesity, diabetes or heart disease and many other problems that we face these days became of any concern to them.

We have inherited those genes along with some others that generate innate proclivities in all of us, proclivities that have for countless millennia proven advantageous for the survival of our species. Of course, not all those genetically ingrained traits have to do with our dietary preferences.

All living species on earth share two fundamental characteristics: the urge to survive, and to procreate. That goes for the single cell amoeba all the way to us humans. Every living thing today on this earth owes its existence to its ancestors' success in their struggle for survival, and their ability to produce the offspring that repeated the same cycle.

So, we see animals competing and fighting over territory, food, or the right to mate; and so, of course, has been our own species' pattern, with one caveat: Even though we are genetically programmed to follow our animal instincts, we do have to cope with our more recent (archaeo-anthropologically speaking) cultural constraints. The urge for overindulging in fats and sweets, for example, hasn't gone anywhere; it is in our genetic code. However we, or at least some of us, understand the benefits of suppressing this urge in order to look good and live a healthier and longer life. Of course, "living a longer life" to what end is a question that seems too stupid to even ask; and yet, it is a valid question, at least philosophically speaking. (Some 1,200 years ago, the polymath, Omar Khayyam, said in one of his quatrains: Since the fate of us mortals is eternal nothingness, make what's at hand as fun as possible.)

Similarly, the drive to appear sexually attractive and appealing is well illustrated by the highly successful global fashion and cosmetics industries. This natural instinct is so powerful that, long past the age of potential fertility, lusting after some sexual other remains alive. Just as we have come up with dietary substitutes to overcome an unhealthful urge, we also have effective alternatives to deal with this culturally unethical desire.

However, long before the human societies grew large and complex enough to require the establishment of constraints against certain very natural urges that were deemed uncivilized or countercultural (The Seven Deadly Sins, for example.), our predecessors' small communities and tribes used today's taboos to their great advantage. So, much that is unacceptable in our modern world was quite the opposite as a vital part of the genetic package that we have inherited from our distant ancestors.

Now, don't get me wrong: We do continue to engage in violating our own cultural and societal taboos whenever it is to our advantage and when we can get away with it. To do this we resort to the fine art of deception or hypocrisy by creating self-deluding rationales for our actions. My February column dealt with that in some detail.

Finally, since I started writing about losing weight, I have some suggestions beside the obvious for one of the Seven Deadly Sins; gluttony. Instead of planning a vacation to Rome, London or Paris to wine and dine in luxury, book a tour to Somalia, Sudan or Yemen to see how many thousands or millions could beat starvation if they had access to the leftover scraps of food we throw away so casually every day. Such a trip might be an awakening experience; and I am not suggesting that we should package our leftovers and ship it to Yemen to help feed those emaciated babies; that is not even feasible. Besides, the leftovers can be converted into compost or even organic fuels for our own use, anyway. As an Old-World expression goes: The lamp that lights up your own home should not be donated to any mosque!

It would also help if television commercials for those appetizing dog and cat foods also showed, on a split-screen, the homeless folks scavenging through dumpsters for something to eat. Of course, we prefer to believe it is their own fault; the fault of their religion, upbringing, laziness or incompetence, etc. As compassionate humans, though, we can only pray for them if it makes us sad to see their suffering. In such instances we believe that prayers do actually work, and besides, it doesn't cost us anything!