One man’s meat can be another’s poison

The trouble with living off the fat of the land is that one ends up living in the land of the fat. With growing obesity worldwide, dieticians and nutritionists are increasingly in demand by those seeking the cause of their corpulence. The conclusion seems to be that the problem of portliness is not so much that one has too much on one’s plate, literally and metaphorically, but what one has on one’s plate.

The recent findings of a joint team of epidemiologists from King’s College London and the Harvard Medical School suggest that there is no such thing as a one-size-fit-all diet. The weight of all flesh seems to differ from person to person, and any given nutritional regimen that works for one individual need not necessarily work for another, even if the two happen to be identical twins.

The scientists have discovered that while genes can account for about 70% of one’s propensity to gain or lose weight, the balance 30% depends on one’s specific constitutional makeup. When Hamlet wished in vain that his ‘too, too solid flesh would melt’, the melancholic prince might have done well to consult a nutritionist who could have devised a designer diet for him, which presumably avoided Danish pastry. That all is grist that comes to the meal is suggested by the story of the stout chap who, declaring that no diet worked on him, was eventually forced to eat his words, and nothing else.