Calorific terrific: trimming the fat off Look magazine


Image credit to Ambro


Happy Sunday morning, Vagendistas, and I'm here with one of those stock photos we all know and love - women laughing with salad - to illustrate how much fun just not eating can be in this day and age, according to Look magazine. The couple above are clearly having a veritable comedy-fest/feast with their tiny bowls of leaves and their prominently placed still water, but it misses one important point about eating lettuce with low-fat vinaigrette for your evening meal: salad is shit.

Look magazine has got hold of that old 'source' that everyone's talking about these days, and quoted him/her saying that Demi Moore ('DEFIANT DEMI: I Won't Go To Rehab') survives on 'less than 500 calories a day.' Now, you may have mistakenly wandered into thinking that Look doesn't support this sort of thing, through all the hyperbolic wording and mock-shock didactics (culminating in the line: 'We just hope Demi gets the help she needs soon.' Hands up who's feeling warm and fuzzy inside?)

But, it seems, YOU'D BE WRONG. Because buried near the back of the magazine is a feature that rather frighteningly calls itself 'Life Consultancy.' The 'Nutrition' section takes pride of place in this feature, filling the entire first page (before less important things like 'Finance' and 'Love' share a third of the next one.)

'Nutrition' compiles your favourite takeaway meals - pizza, Chinese, fish and chips, and Thai - and shits all over them. The basic idea is how to pack in as few calories as possible if you must move for a second away from the salad bowl and be put in that awkward social situation where you're expected to actually Eat Something. How to get the most out of your pizza by getting the least out of it, or some other awful idea like that - which is ironic, considering how much unnecessary bulk makes up Look magazine and how easily it could be trimmed down (by removing everything.)

Basic summary, for the busy lady:

Pizza - I know from personal menu-perusing (but not experience in ordering) that Pizza Express does some snappily-named little 500 calorie pizza with a token bit of salad in the middle. However, Look's 'nutritionist' recommends that you eat A QUARTER OF A PIZZA instead, coming in at only 296 calories, perhaps to avoid having to throw some up later.

Chinese - get a 50 calorie starter, and then, if you must, get a main, but it'll set you back 300 calories.

Fish and chips - Look makes the ridiculous suggestion that you might eat the fish without the chips. If this is what we have come to as a people - a nation of BRITISH.PEOPLE - then I have nothing more to say here.

Thai - 50 calorie starter, then ginger chicken is OK at 300 calories, although if you're really dedicated, Demi-style, to slimming down, then go for the 120 calorie tom yam gung. And if you don't feel full after that, YOU'RE JUST NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH.

Wowza.

I have to go and read Tolstoy over a burger and chips now, because Look magazine has left me with serious intellectual malnourishment.