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Instant gratification, and other long-term success stories

By G.D. Maxwell I need a diet. Not a lose weight diet, although a tad off the sides and a bit off the front and back wouldn’t hurt. But then, that’s what summers are for, aren’t they? I need a get rich diet.

By G.D. Maxwell

I need a diet. Not a lose weight diet, although a tad off the sides and a bit off the front and back wouldn’t hurt. But then, that’s what summers are for, aren’t they?

I need a get rich diet. A ‘sure-fire’, no deprivation, easy as pie, effortless, lose weight in your sleep through subliminal messaging, ice cream is good for you, Orwellian white is black kind of diet. It’s not that I need to get rich any more than I need to lose weight. It’s just that there seem to be an endless number of people – North Americans – who will do anything to both lose weight and prove P.T. Barnum was right. It makes me feel downright shiftless to passively sit here and not take advantage of… er, help them.

With the weight of the media behind the tsunami of social pressure to make obesity the new child pornography, it seems fat has further split an already divided public into two distinct groups – those dieting and those growing rich off the fat of the land.

And let’s face it, if the Atkins diet can fly, anything can. The Atkins diet is to nutrition what Santa Claus is to Christmas. Come to think of it, Atkins himself bore a striking resemblance to the Jolly Old Elf when his heart finally couldn’t beat through the blubber surrounding it anymore and he went to that great Steakhouse in the Sky a few months ago.

Yeah, I know. He didn’t really weigh 257 pounds; he swelled up before death. He was retaining water. He was big-boned. Aliens had bored through his tympanic membrane and were reproducing in his upper intestine. Whatever. At least Jim Fixx died with his running shoes on. I’m pretty sure Doc Atkins hadn’t seen his feet since the Reagan administration.

Yet, miraculously, something like half of North America is on an Atkins or Atkins-inspired, low-carb diet and half of the rest are giving it serious thought and might go on a low-carb diet as soon as they finish the gallon of ice cream – low-fat – they bought earlier this week. Now, I’m pretty sure half of North Americans wouldn’t know a carbohydrate from a carburetor but they do know this: they can eat as much steak as they want, never touch fruit and veggies and LOSE WEIGHT as long as they stay away from bread and pasta thanks to Dr. Atkins.

This, of course, reminds me of my ill-fated Timbits and Blue Diet, my last foray into the get-rich-quick world of diet mongering. My marketing slogan – Timbits and Blue: Not Just For Breakfast Anymore – seemed catchy enough. And God knows there has never been a pairing quite like Sour Cream Glazed Timbits and Labatt’s Blue for combining high-energy taste treats and patriotism, but except for modest success on the Prairies, that idea never really took off.

True, it was more restrictive than its predecessor, the Stand-Up Diet, which was also only a modest success for reasons that escape me. The premise of the Stand-Up Diet was you could eat whatever you wanted as long as you stood while eating it. It was based on the scientifically proven principle that food dropped right into your colon as long as it got a good head of steam behind it and the laws of gravity weren’t suspended while you were eating.

I mean, does that really seem any less preposterous than a diet predicated on a completely unbalanced selection of high-protein, high-fat foods to the exclusion of other basic building blocks?

North American markets saw almost 800 new "food" products hit the shelves in the past year. North America needed 800 new food products almost as badly as the world needed 800 new weapons manufacturers.

Unilever, a company that makes food and near-food products, along with detergents, plastics, industrial chemicals and for all I know over-stuffed furniture, possibly all in the same factory, rolled out a number of these new food products, including a number of "low-carb" offerings. Like every other food manufacturer, Unilever has jumped on the Atkins’ bandwagon and, like every other food manufacturer, is taking advantage of the regulatory no-man’s land that currently exists – the time between a fad catching on and government regulators defining what nebulous terms like "low-carb" or "reduced-carb" actually mean.

Since such terms are undefined and unregulated, and therefore meaningless, this period of time is what marketers generally refer to as the Golden Period.

In one of Unilever’s press releases, tucked in amid the pandering-to-the-masses nonsense, two items jumped out at me. Among the company’s "low-carb" offerings were a new variant of Skippy peanut butter and Ragu spaghetti sauce.

It struck me as admirable Unilever would go to all the trouble of reducing carbs in Skippy. Traditional Skippy has, after all, seven grams of carbohydrates in a serving. Low-carb Skippy has but five. Utilizing the Magic of Small Numbers, one can safely advertise new low-carb Skippy as serving up 29 per cent fewer carbs than regular Skippy without once cracking a joke about elephants and peanuts.

I don’t know how many fewer carbs low-carb Ragu has than regular Ragu since I consider any pasta sauce coming out of a bottle a travesty.

But the irony of even dreaming up low-carb peanut butter and pasta sauce is surpassed only by the absurdity of anyone using it. What exactly do you spread low-carb peanut butter on? Or ladle low-carb spaghetti sauce over?

I don’t know whether the Bush administration’s War on Civilization or the gullibility of North American consumers is greater reinforcement for my theory that evolution works both ways.

But the latter has gotten me thinking about dusting off my get-rich-quick idea of holding Start Smoking Seminars™.

The premise behind Start Smoking Seminars was simple. There are so many people in our midst, so many people who have failed so miserably at whatever they’ve tried to do in their lives, so many people desperate for, nay, crying out for even a modest brush with success in a sea of failure, it would be heartless to keep them from having the chance to finally succeed at something they started.

Finally, here’s a sure-fire, success-guaranteed endeavour they can embark on. Something they can start, finish and bask in the warm glow of complete and utter success. In two days, just two days, I can guarantee they’ll start smoking and keep smoking. Imagine the glory. Imagine the pride of being able to finally display a hand-engraved Certificate of Completion, a Diploma if you will, a self-esteem boosting, suitable for framing parchment attesting to their stick-to-itness.

Hey, don’t knock it. It offers a much greater chance of long-term success than a low-carb diet.