I've never changed my basic attitude towards the Diet Police, or the futility of governments to try to mold public behavior. This particular rant of March 9, 1997 is particularly zingy.

I am impressed with just how little government decree can do to change anything. It is fashionable these days to promote low weight, low fat, “healthy” living. But the latest skinny would seem to indicate that there are more overweight Americans than ever before. Despite all the spandex-clad 20-ish sprites jumping up and down on their Stairmasters, most people just aren’t going along with the current fad. But the fad gets all the attention. So I look around me and see quite a few young people in particular who are just too damned skinny, who look undernourished in fact. They’re buying into the fad. But in the 19th century, fat was considered healthy. We are assuming we know more these days about diet and cholesterol and all that stuff and therefore we’re right and they were wrong. They didn’t live as long as we do.

But there is no particularly positive role model to follow in these slenderizing fads. The people themselves have a tendency to be patronizing bitches. When it comes out of the mouth of a government official like Donna Shalala I want to run in the kitchen and scarf down every high-fat item I have on hand just to spite her. And then there’s the simple fact that this is a country populated by a hell of a lot of Anglo-Germanic people, who have a tendency to be refrigerator-shaped. We aren’t living in France or Mexico with these Gallic/Hispanic types who have small bones and speedy metabolistic rates. Living in a hot climate they need to burn it off fast, stay as unencumbered as possible. But the Northern types who are built for living in the cool northern forests—fat is a good thing. So in a lot of ways we’re also fighting against the very ethnic makeup of the country. You don’t see a lot of fat Hispanics or Asians. But you do see a lot of fat Germans, Britons, Danes, Russians, and so forth. I wonder if the poll-taking pundits have worked up any breakdown on weight by ethnic groups. Oh, they must have. God knows they’ve taken polls on just about everything else, so why not this.