Verdigris

[Porter]

It would be hard for Captain Neutronium to maintain a secret identity.

[Annie Subjunctive]

He has to craft his secret identities using relativistic principles.

"No, ma'am, you're not revolving around me... I'm revolving around you!"

[Doorknob]

Actually the world revolves around Admiral Protonium, Captian Neutronium is just a sidekick though he may be completely unaware of it.
 
AJ

[Uchiha Itachi]

No, "protonium" would not be a very dense substance, I'm afraid.  If you try to condense it, it tends to explode.

The actual animal fat contained in food tends to contribute heavily towards a feeling of satiety in European peoples.  I've never in my life been able to finish a whole bag of potato chips on my own unless it was the 4 oz. snack sized variety.  American's tend to eat large quantities of food that are relatively low in fat, then go on diets.  If you go on a starvation diet a few times, your satiation impulses are permanently affected because your body assumes that it could be subjected to another starvation period at any time.  So then you just get fatter and fatter because your body is always trying to prepare for what you'll do next time.

And then you get gastric bypass surgery.  If you survive, your body desperately attempts to re-enlarge your stomach to the proportions needed to digest the quantities of food it thinks it needs to survive these assaults on primary survival basics like food and not having knives chopping up vital organs.  Then you need another gastric bypass and this time your body gives up and you die on the table for sure.

[Porter]

I think my body got permanently warped by being in starvation mode for over a year while I was on my mission.

[Trisha]

I have somewhat more faith in the body's ability to heal itself if the same bad habits and nutritionally empty foods aren't reverted to.  We are designed to go on low calories in the winter, but due to our food supply we have lots of calories.  Also, we'd need to be willing to pork up in the fall if we want the weight to come off in the spring.

The French do smoke a lot, which apparently reduces appetite or something.  They walk more, and they just generally have smaller portions- which would go with the european fat/satiety claim that I would like to read more about.  [snark] And don't they drink wine or the blood of virgins instead of water?[/snark]

There are two other satiety mechanisms- stomach size interacts with the glutamic receptivity, which is why MSG fills you up.  Bypass surgery relies on this, but the fat (CCK) reception isn't helped.  The other is the Insulin-->seratonin synthesis, which is the pathway that takes 20 minutes.  And all of these pathways can be blown out by just overriding them regularly.

I think the trouble with American dieting is that each diet has a safety valve or a cheat.  If people follow only one diet, great.  But most are following a constellation of different diets with overlapping cheats.  Also, processed food is manufactured and marketed with a Darwinian dynamic.  The more of something you can sell, the more successful you are and so the drive is only to sell more and not to avoid killing people.
 

[Uchiha Itachi]

It's a bit like the publishing industry that way, eh?  90% of new books are bought by people who have never read an entire book in their lives, therefore 90% of new books being published are aimed at the non-reading public.

[Porter]

90% of new books are bought by people who have never read an entire book in their lives

I find that statement unlikely in the extreme.

[FLR]

It's possible.  Readers get books from libraries or steal them from their parents.  People who buy new books are frequently buying gifts.  90 seems a bit high.

But it applies insofar as I bet 90% of junk food is bought by people who are currently trying to lose weight.

[Annie Subjunctive]

Well, it is true that 90% of statistics are made up on the spot.

[Uchiha Itachi]

With the rise of the internet, that figure has risen to about 99%.

At the same time, I think that the figure I gave above tends to vary depending on how you define "read", "book", "bought", "people", and so on.

What I really meant is that most new books these days are designed to sell at least some copies to people that don't actually read books.  Modern books are mainly for decoration, like in The Great Gatsby only with less class.