by
Mitchell R. Weisberg, MD
Board Certified Internal Medicine-Master Psychopharmacologist
Founder and CEO;
OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE MD LLC
My fellow Humans, the time has come for us to discard the word diet from our global vocabulary. As a physician, whose duty is to protect and promote the health and well-being of other members of my species, I have taken it upon myself to perform last rites for this mortally wounded word.
Examining its derivation, from the Greek words, diatia, way of living and diaitasthai, to lead one’s life, diet entered our world with boundless potential and the noblest of intentions. How ironic that we are banishing a word, whose original meaning, we should emulate as a means of surviving the epidemic we are now facing. However, in the process of commandeering it solely for its own profit, the Diet Industrial Complex corrupted its namesake, rendering diet more a way of depriving than a way of living, and leaving an Obesity Epidemic in its wake. Their corruption began a mere century ago, climaxing in a fury of commercialized chicanery in recent decades. As a tragic result of its corruption, diet has become yet one more example of guilt by association; associating with the likes of Grapefruit, Cabbage Soup, Low Fat, Low Carb and Cleansing. Conspicuous by their absence from this list of perpetrators are the snake oil salesmen and women who reaped hefty profits from their campaigns of deception. By its falling in with such a crowd we may no longer utter, hear, read or print the word, diet without self-deprivation coming into our minds. Sadly what was for thousand of years an inspiring four letter word has been rendered just another four letter word.
The demise of diet can be viewed as the collateral damage of the war waged by our species against what was, ironically enough a byproduct of our evolutionary success; an ample supply of food. For us to wage a battle against food, at least in hindsight, seems like mal-adaptive behavior since, in biological reality, food has been the sole financier of all human endeavors over the entire two million years of our species existence. Scarce since the dawn of humanity, within just the past century, food has become abundant on our planet due entirely to human ingenuity. According to The World Health Organization (WHO), as recently as 1990, obesity eclipsed hunger on our planet for the first time in human history. It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that the Obesity Epidemic is simply the cost of doing business in return for all of humankinds’ evolutionary successes. However, this is a preposterous conclusion, since the trajectory on which it is currently traveling, the Obesity Epidemic will affect 100% of our nations population by the middle of the current century. What is more, writing it off as an inevitability is tantamount to our failing to name the chief perpetrators of the Obesity Epidemic; allowing them to continue carrying out their clandestine operation within our midst. I am referring to the very industry that greedily perverted the word diet for its own profits; profits that promise to grow in perpetuity, as long as their well-organized conspiracy of propagating their mis-characterization of the word diet as some compulsory masochistic ritual we must perform if we want to achieve true salvation from our sins of excess. They hypnotize us, the masses, into believing that they alone hold the proprietary rights over these rituals, and that we too can get them when we are willing to pay the price financially, physically and emotionally. They guarantee success, all the while knowing that woven into the fabric of their program’s design is a certain and highly profitable cycle of failure. Then they dupe us into blaming ourselves for failing at what is after all a program designed to fail from its inception; a program for achieving health and wellbeing, diabolically rigged as if a carnival shell game; all set up for the purposes of justifying their raison d’être and to exponentially increase their ill-gotten gains.
Every week 10 million viewers look on while morbidly obese “contestants” torture and denigrate themselves while vying for the honor of being, The Biggest Loser, rendering all other contestants, ordinary losers, each of whom believe they personally failed, and leave the show in tears and disgraced. We need not look any further than such obeseploitation to see that it is none other than the members of the Diet Industrial Complex who are most culpable for our nations Obesity Epidemic and for the untimely demise of the word diet; a word whose original meaning was life itself. Regardless of its own innocence, the die has been cast, and this ancient word must forever be laid to rest. Take comfort knowing that sacrificing this word is the first step towards our mission of removing the formidable obstacle that is the Diet Industrial Complex. For only after we collectively eradicate this scourge from our midst will we be able to return to what was, after all, the original meaning and intent of the word diet; a way of living and to lead one’s life.
Diet, RIP.
Mitchell R. Weisberg, MD, MP
Internist-Psychopharmacologist
Founder-CEO and Personal Physician at:
Optimal Performance MD
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