On Apr 19, 2004, at 7:59 am, Theola Walden Baker wrote:

> On the Biography channel last fall there was a program about Jean 
> Nidetch,
> founder of Weight Watchers.  It said the original WW diet was a low 
> carb
> diet Jean had picked up at the New York Health Dept.

I didn't know this, or that there are WW followers eating a low carb 
diet.  My experience of WW is a girl I know who basically eats everyday 
western food but less of it than she did before.  She once stopped me 
in a shop when I was buying a bag of pistachios and told me there was 
too much fat in them and that "Weight Watchers say that all fat is 
bad".  Mind you I found this on the "Carbs Scorecard" off 
www.weightwatchers.com:

> Convenience and packaged foods, such as boxed dinner entrées, contain 
> refined grains, highly processed ingredients, and usually, a fair 
> amount of sugar. They're a good way to grab a meal, if you're on the 
> go.

So it looks like the carbohydrate (and micronutrient) advice is as 
shaky as the fat advice.

This is the real bone I have to pick with WW- the attitude it gives 
towards food, treating everything as a "point".  I had a meal with this 
girl that her nan cooked for us, and she refused a sauce which had 
onions and carrots in because it was "unnecessary extra points".  In 
both cases she apparently had no concept of the nutritional value of 
food but reduced it to a number.  (Atkins dieters do the same with 
carbs.)  I think a big obstacle to widespread healthy eating will be to 
teach people how to measure the benefit of food in more than one 
dimension.