1957 was a momentous year in American culture. Wham-O introduced the Frisbee. Dr. Seuss published The Cat in the Hat. The Brooklyn Dodgers moved from New York to Los Angeles, a betrayal that Steven’s Brooklyn-born father is still bitter about. On the political front, Congress authorized the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention to inconvenience Americans by conducting a yearly survey of their health and lifestyle.
The pattern the CDC has since established is to publish new statistics monthly. The media then takes those figures and converts them into alarming headlines. Numbers showing that obesity continues to trend upward become, “Average American Now Shaped Like Michelin Man.”
The pattern the CDC has since established is to publish new statistics monthly. The media then takes those figures and converts them into alarming headlines. Numbers showing that obesity continues to trend upward become, “Average American Now Shaped Like Michelin Man.”
Fact: The Michelin Man made his first appearance in a French advertising poster in 1894. The original Michelin Man smoked cigars, wore pince-nez glasses and was made up of narrow segments designed to be reminiscent of bicycle tires. To our eyes he looks like a pompous, overweight Egyptian mummy. The Michelin Man also had a name: “Bibendum.” That name is still used, but only by advertising executives and designers of crossword puzzles.
Bibendum has since undergone numerous, Michael Jackson like transformations. In the early 1900s, he briefly turned black. Somewhere along the line, he quite smoking and had his eyes fixed. In 1998, the Michelin Corporation slimmed him down and gave him more definition in his chest and shoulders. Speculation at the time pinned the fitness overhaul on the fact that in Spain, the word “Michelin” was used as slang for “belly fat” or “spare tire.”
Normally we don’t go quite this far afield in our adjunct facts. But we think it’s fascinating that as industrialized countries have grown more obese, the Michelin Man has grown visibly slimmer. If current trends continue, Bibendum will sprout six-pack abs on the exact same day the last person on earth develops Type-2 Diabetes.
The latest CDC Health Brief was published under the dreary title, Calories Consumed From Alcoholic Beverages by U.S. Adults, 2007–2010. Obviously, the first question that comes to mind is, why stop reporting numbers in 2010? The brief was released last month. It can’t possibly take two years to input surveys. If it does, we just found a new rallying cry for the grouchy old men who troll Internet news sites for opportunities to post angry comments about government waste and inefficiency.
The conclusions of the Brief were summed up in the first paragraph. “The U.S. adult population consumes an average of almost 100 calories per day from alcoholic beverages.” The competition among the media was stiff, but Men’s Fitness magazine spun the most panicky headline: “The Cost of Drinking: 10 Extra Pounds of Fat a Year?”
Our response is twofold. First, we think it’s important to acknowledge that the 100-calorie number is an average and therefor meaningless. Allow us to offer the following analogy: if the population of America is split evenly, 50% men and 50% women, than the average American has half a penis. Averaging drinkers and non-drinkers makes about as much sense. If you throw back a couple of drinks, you are very likely taking in more than 200 calories per day. Unless you also have a crappy diet and refuse to exercise, this is not a problem.
The conclusions of the Brief were summed up in the first paragraph. “The U.S. adult population consumes an average of almost 100 calories per day from alcoholic beverages.” The competition among the media was stiff, but Men’s Fitness magazine spun the most panicky headline: “The Cost of Drinking: 10 Extra Pounds of Fat a Year?”
Our response is twofold. First, we think it’s important to acknowledge that the 100-calorie number is an average and therefor meaningless. Allow us to offer the following analogy: if the population of America is split evenly, 50% men and 50% women, than the average American has half a penis. Averaging drinkers and non-drinkers makes about as much sense. If you throw back a couple of drinks, you are very likely taking in more than 200 calories per day. Unless you also have a crappy diet and refuse to exercise, this is not a problem.
Fact: Most Americans have a crappy diet and refuse to exercise. According to the American Heart Association, the average American eats 22 teaspoons of sugar a day. This represents 355 completely empty calories. This number may have improved with New York City recently banning Big Gulps and schools removing soda machines, but it is unlikely to have changed materially. America is still a long way from kicking its sugar habit.
The empty calories don’t end there. Fast food restaurants generate an estimated $173 billion in sales per year. We assure you that these sales are not coming from side salads and apple slices. Americans also consume over $6 billion in potato chips ever year. Pretzels, corn chips, Cheetos and other similarly high-calorie, low-nutrition foods are likely sold in similar quantities, but they unfortunately don’t publish industry sales numbers.
Very few people make any effort to burn through those excess calories. According to the CDC, only one in five Americans exercises. Or, since the CDC loves averaging, the average American gets only 17 minutes of exercise per day. Shockingly, this includes as exercise walking across a parking lot from your car into an ice-cream parlor.
The CDC “100 Calorie” Brief and all of the editorials that followed it make the assumption that the calories in alcohol are additive. In other words, they assume that people will make no other changes to diet or exercise beyond adding a few drinks. Under this theory, the calories in alcohol are like the rainbow sprinkles on a banana split; they are excessive and unnecessary. DYC is based on very different assumptions.
We are not in denial about alcohol’s calories. The whole point of DYC is that if you want lose weight while continuing to drink, the calories you consume in alcohol must be burned and/or offset. We are also adamant that these calories be eliminated without sacrificing the quantity of food eaten or daily nutrition. Fortunately, the American diet makes this easy.
DYC is a simple diet. The calories in alcohol are offset through a combination of exercise and exchanging high-calorie, low-nutrition foods such as added sugars and simple carbohydrates for lean meat, fresh fruit and vegetables. There is no need to count calories. Eat according to the rules of the DYC Food List and your calories will be reduced. Follow our Exercise Recommendations and your calorie burn will skyrocket. The end result is that you will have no problem burning through a few hundred calories in wine, beer or tequila.
We are not in denial about alcohol’s calories. The whole point of DYC is that if you want lose weight while continuing to drink, the calories you consume in alcohol must be burned and/or offset. We are also adamant that these calories be eliminated without sacrificing the quantity of food eaten or daily nutrition. Fortunately, the American diet makes this easy.
DYC is a simple diet. The calories in alcohol are offset through a combination of exercise and exchanging high-calorie, low-nutrition foods such as added sugars and simple carbohydrates for lean meat, fresh fruit and vegetables. There is no need to count calories. Eat according to the rules of the DYC Food List and your calories will be reduced. Follow our Exercise Recommendations and your calorie burn will skyrocket. The end result is that you will have no problem burning through a few hundred calories in wine, beer or tequila.
Where the CDC sees disaster, we see vindication. 100 calories a day is not a public health emergency. Instead, it should be viewed as the baseline for number of calories a drinker needs to burn and/or offset each day. The good news is that eliminating even a couple hundred calories per day from the average American diet is about as difficult as finding enough sand on a beach to fill a teacup.
