The universe "Diet"
by Roberta Rossetti

Feasts have just passed by and now Carnival is approaching with its bulk of delicious “Frappe” and “castagnole” threatening, once again, our already uncertain figure.

So here we are again facing the fatal question: how to keep ours figure despite all these temptations?
The answer could seem easy: renouncing all the dainties and beginning to follow a slimming diet.
It’s exactly from here that the first difficulties start; how to choose the right diet that allows to lose weight in the fastest way, to never put it on again, not to be ravenous and that won’t create unbalances and damages even worst than those caused, especially to our psyche, by our “extra kilos”
How to extricate ourselves among the myriad of diets proposed by doctors, magazines, tv, friends and so on?
Just to make some examples, there is the 3 days diet, the 4, 5, 10 days diet, the Scarsdale, the grape-fruit diet, the balanced one, the vegetable soup diet, and the astronauts one, the Atkins, the dissociated, the potatoes one, the Zone diet and the Weight Watchers.
How to understand which one really fits ourselves and which one we will be able to carry on at least for a certain period?

The message that the experts are now sending to the consumers is that the fastest the diets are, the more they could have negative effects on our organism, in fact as soon as we give up the diet we put on again the weight lost and something more, too.
Nowadays, on the contrary, the alimentary regimen is really in fashion: it means to choose a way of feeding ourselves, apart from the problem of losing weight, aiming to reach and keep steadily the psycho-phisical wellness.
Even in this case, however, the choice is not easy; American nutritionists, trustee of the knowledge regarding the right nourishment, contribute in creating confusion. In 1992 the famous “food pyramid” was defined indicating which nourishments were necessary for our physical wellness, which ones were important, which ones were only to eat occasionally and which one were to be absolutely avoided.
Well, the ten years ago pyramid foresaw a wide base of carbohydrates and vegetables, with sweets and fats crammed in the peak, among the foods absolutely to avoid.
Now american scientists have completely revolutioned the Pyramid, overthrowing our deep-rooted believes.
The new “pyramid” confine among the nourishments absolutely to avoid, pasta, rice, bread, potatoes and red meat (as well as sweets, obviously), that is to say the base of our feeding. The new “pyramid”, instead, promote whole cereals, vegetables, vegetable oils, dried fruit, fish and white meat.

There’s enough to feel bewildered; what can we do now? Adapt, with heavy renunciations and sacrifices, our feeding to the new “pyramid” and then after maybe some years discover that even this “pyramid” was not the right one and we have to start again everything.

Maybe we could start from those that now seem to be certainties: sweets are absolutely to avoid as well as all the simple carbohydrates and if these last join the notorius hydrogenated fats (i.e. sweet snacks and similar), better not to eat them; fish is certainly good for ourselves unless it contains (as sometimes “happens”) mercury, “white” meat as almost everybody knows is to prefer to the red one, but how can we manage with chickens stuffed with chemical feeding?

In conclusion, for sure the new “food pyramid” will raise debates and, waiting that someone will finally discover the secret of eternal thinness, we keep on fighting everyday with the mirror, the scale and the desire of eating, one shot, an entire “Sacher Torte”.