Our journey through American one upmanship continues today with a look at weight loss schemes.
2. I Swear I’m Just Retaining Water
At the end of the millennium, Americans had won one Cold and two World Wars, plus we evened out Korea/Vietnam with Iraq 1/Grenada. We had earned some relaxation and economy-sized sandwiches (see below). By 2002, the good ol’ U.S. had packed on some extra weight—so much so that we had obviated the need for normal sized seating on an aircraft.
Now seating 19 passengers
Berated by “health experts,” “doctors,” and Tony Little, Americans considered their options. Should we exercise? Eat less? Go for expensive liposuction? Certainly not. Americans, when faced with adversity, always innovate. It’s something else we steal from the Germans. When our Teutonic forebears faced adversity in the form of hunger, thirst, and the Maginot line, they invented sausage, beer, and Belgium.
The first foray into easy weight loss were weight loss supplements. An important fact: as long as you label something “supplement,” the Food and Drug Administration really doesn’t care what goes into it. Hence: fen-phen. This marvelous concoction promised to cut your appetite, kick-start your metabolism, and leave you free to watch that entire CSI marathon. Sadly, the no-fun brigade in Washington thought that a few cases of catastrophic heart failure were enough to keep us from looking trim.
“You’re dead to me, FDA. I won’t even take off my sunglasses to say it.”
Deprived of our chance to have better living through chemistry, Americans opted for technology. By attaching electric diodes across the body and receiving a series of mild shocks, the body is “tricked” into thinking that you’re actually moving. In principle, it is identical to the Rejuvenique, which combines Man in the Iron Mask, de Sade, and Michael Myers.
Imagine this for your stomach. Except the only thing that’s killed is your low self-esteem!
Unfortunately, both of these required some effort on our part. You still had to regulate your diet with fen-phen, and the electric shock treatment might make you sweat. (What is this, communist China?) Thankfully, the FDA is on its way to finally opening the path to avoirdupois nirvana by approving a “couch potato pill.” Yes, you can finally win the war against your body by fooling it into thinking that you have a metabolism and a social life. Best of all, the pill doesn’t require you to regulate your diet—you could grind it up and drink it out of a milkshake!
“I’m a weight loss man, you see”
1 year ago
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