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Hi I i -- I wished they would make up their minds. These doctors of diet, these gnomes of nutrition, these philosophers of PHAT. It seems that almost daily one reads an article that says former things thought to be good for you, now no longer are and vice-versa. We've gone through wheat germ, oat bran, seaweed ex- tracts, various vegetable oils and even shark oil on our way to glowing health. [ remember one day sitting in a dietician's office being shown little bits of plastic meats and vegetables - presumably to indicate the size of the portion I should be eating. Ata stage in this show and tell, the merits of margarine over that spread we all love were glowingly extolled. 1, with secret glee, handed her an article that had appeared that very day, stating that there was no advantage in eating margarine including the non-hydrogenated Canola oil kind over butter. She wasn't to blame. Changes are occurring so rapidly in our knowledge of food that one should always take the latest answer to our weight problems with a grain of salt, unless you are on a sodium-reduced diet. We in a developed country seem overly conscious of weight and since going native in a third-world country is neither appealing nor possible for many of us, we have become diet freaks. Valerie read an article to me the other day that said the female super models ideal size is 5' 8" and 125 Ibs., a gauntness that every woman seems to envy. It didn't say anything about male models, but we have all seen the muscular flat-stomached lean men that grace the pages of catalogues. I give them only cursory examination as [ go looking for the pants with elastic or otherwise expandable waists. , I really don't consider that I'm much too heavy and charts we see that list age, frame, height and ideal weight confirm my feelings. My only problem is that I'm 6" - 8" too short for the rest of me. I once had a problem with being too light. Now mind you I was only 13 years old at the time. [I had signed up to go to Army Cadet Camp in Valcartier, Quebec for six weeks in the summer. One of requirements was to be 125 Ibs. I tried to gain, I even went around thinking heavy thoughts - to no avail. It didn't matter since they never weighed me and I spent an enjoyable time away from home RS living in an army barracks and going on leave' to Quebec City. Being too light has never been a problem for me since. I used to gain weight on the weekends and then through the week lose it again on a lunch diet of Limits biscuits. Some of you may remember them; they were a sandwich cookie made primarily of carboxy methyl cellulose (wow) which swelled up as you drank tea or coffee and made you feel full. It is still an ingredient in a number of diet powders and pills. As I got older there was a tendency to gain weight and thus one would go into a series of "fad diets". I've tried lots of them - the grapefruit diet, the Scarsdale diet, the carbohydrate diet, the drinking man's diet and the Valerie diet. My favourite was the carbohydrate diet because for snacks you could have things like avocados and pickled pigs feet. The drinking man's diet was probably good too only I find my memory of it is quite vague, except for a rosy glow as I try to remember it. The Valerie diet was a good one. We were going to Europe for 5 weeks and decided to trim down. In accordance with the book "Fit for life" we ate nothing but fruit until noon and for supper had those frozen diet entrees of 250-300 calories. It worked fine. So you ask, what's the point of these discussions since everyone's experiences is probable the same as mine. I can think of 3 possible reasons. First, we are on another diet, the Cleveland Clinic diet which is full of stuff like broccoli, cauliflower, beans and beets and coupled with no alcohol. It seems to be working well, although would you believe it our Doctor recommended that 2 -3 drinks a day are beneficial. Second, I had a feeling that a solution for some weight problems could be found locally. After George Underhill's article in the last Mirror, I spoke to him at the Carnival breakfast over juicy sausages, scrambled eggs and pancakes with syrup and butter. If he would do the cooking for you it could be an answer. He agreed he would be willing to discuss an arrangement with any interested parties. Third and last, regardless of your concern over weight just remember that we tend to look with affection on people that are hale and hearty. The reason for this is | think best summed up by William Shakespeare as he had Julius Caesar say in the play by the same name. 'Let me have men about me that are fat; sleek headed men, and such as sleep o'nights; Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much; such men are dangerous.' It's given me a lot of comfort over the years. - John A. Jackson