In article ,
Marengo wrote:

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 16:29:05 -0600, Bill O'Meally
wrote:


But those studies report group outcomes. Every plan has its own rare,
shining success stories as well. Sometime, a diet just clicks.
Perhaps the remarkable diversity of the human organism — whose various
sizes and shapes (double chins, giant thighs and all) are so clearly
driven by such a vast array of different appetites and genetic cues —
simply means that it is foolish to expect a single diet to serve all
comers.

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
His wife could eat no lean.
And so between them both, you see,
They licked the platter clean.

-- Nursery Rhyme

:-D
---
Peter

"Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science
of Diet and Health"
by Gary Taubes
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-...nce/dp/1400033
462/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271102831&sr=1-1
(Available at better libraries near you)

370 OBESITY AND THE REGULATION OF WEIGHT

.. . . the Johns Hopkins physiologist Chandler Brooks reported that his
albino mice become "definitely obese" after VMH (ventromedial
hypothalamus) lesions, and that they gained six times as much weight per
calorie of food consumed as normal mice. In other words, it wasn't how
much these mice ate that determined their ultimate weight, or the number
of calories, but how these calories were utilized. They were turned into
fat, not used for fuel.

.. . . When physiologists began studying animal hibernation in the 1960s,
they again demonstrated this decoupling of food intake from weight gain.
Hibernating ground squirrels will double their body weight in late
summer, in preparation for the winter-long hibernation. But these
squirrels will get just as fat even when kept in the laboratory and not
allowed to eat any more in August and September than they did in April.
The seasonal fat deposition is genetically programmed‹the animals will
accomplish their task whether food is abundant or not.

What may have been the most enlightening animal experiments were
carried out in the 1970s by physiologists studying weight regulation and
reproduction. In these experiments, the researchers removed the ovaries
from female rats. This procedure effectively serves to shut down
production of the female sex hormone estrogen (technically estradiol).
Without estrogen, the rats eat voraciously, dramatically decrease
physical activity, and quickly grow obese. When the estrogen is replaced
by infusing the hormone back into these rats, they lose the excess
weight and return to their usual patterns of eating and activity. The
critical point is that when researchers remove the ovaries from these
rats, but restrict their diets to only what they were eating before the
surgery, the rats become just as obese, just as quickly; the number of
calories consumed makes little difference.
--
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw