>Paul Bragg, 91, claims that his lifeguard's physique was the result of two hours of daily exercise at Honolulu's Waikiki Beach and his special diet. He eats natural foods—fresh fruits, vegetables, seeds, but little meat and no salt; he plans to live to 120.
>A California farmer who markets produce supposed to be "organic"—free of insecticide and chemical fertilizer—is known to spray his crops at night to protect them from insects and himself from his customers' wrath.
> A young Chicago secretary looks up from her fourth salad of the day with a frown. "If you eat right," she says, "you're supposed to want to jump up and down even if you have a gimpy leg or are mentally retarded. Only it doesn't work out that way. I mean, I eat the things I'm supposed to, but I don't feel any healthier."
>Lyn Duddy, a New Yorker who writes music and lyrics for television and nightclub acts, once weighed 268 Ibs. He is now down to about 170 and hopes to stay there thanks to an unusual regimen that permits him to eat heavy cream, dressings and certain other rich food, but allows almost no fruit, cake or candy.
> Dr. Arthur Simon, a Beverly Hills, Calif., physician who specializes in the problems of the overweight, worries that any further Government crackdowns on amphetamines, which are used as appetite suppressors, may curb his practice (see following story).
In their own way, these people are part of a mounting U.S. obsession with food. Whether they are simply trying to get thin, or whether they are pursuing health or even salvation through diet, Americans are perhaps more preoccupied than any other nation with what to eat, what not to eat, how to eat and even when. It seems that the American kitchen has become a battleground as people in growing numbers rebel against the American way of eating. If the methods are sometimes dubious, the cause is worthy. While a small minority in the U.S. is still underfed because of poverty, the huge majority packs away enormous quantities of edibles. The superficial cost is low; Americans spend less of their disposable income on food than any other nationality. The real cost is horrendous, because many of the affluent are shortening their lives by committing caloric harakiri.
Disagreement. Among the principal weapons are excessive salt and an overabundance of sugars and fats, which fill the stomach without fulfilling all the body's nutritional needs. The dietary death wish is acted out according to lifestyle: by habitual snacking, by gorging on gourmet treats and rich desserts, by a heavy reliance on processed foods and the no-breakfast, lunch-on-the-run schedule—or all of the above. Even when they eat a sensible variety of foods, Americans and citizens of other prosperous nations tend to eat more than their bodies consume in physical activity, given the sedentary habits of the post-agrarian era.