volumetric eating??

or is that just a fancy name for something very simple? a week or so ago i caught sanjay gupta on CNN telling an anchor about a new healthy eating concept called "volumetric eating." no doubt a writer somewhere had come up with the term to make some money out of what was once a mother's advice: don't stuff yourself!!

to back up this "theory," and to add a dash of the exotic to this scientific brew, gupta described the japanese concept of "sohara hachibu," which he translated as "80% full."

i had to laugh. my taiwanese mother in law lives by this very maxim, in chinese, "bafen bao." who would have thought that this prosaic but sensible guide to eating would become "volumetric eating"?

i would call this whole process of re-packaging and exoticizing "volumetric verbiage." and it is all driven by the profit motive. after all, if gupta just gets on TV and says something as sensible as "don't eat too much," well, who is gonna watch? people are going to be either annoyed or bored, or both. but with the mysterious "sohara hachibu," a nagging reminder is magically transformed into an ethereal eastern philosophy.

volumetric my arse!