An impure weight-gaining heart

Some time ago, I saw a report about a new diet approach on the TV. The idea behind it was that certain foods act as "appetizers," stimulating the body's hunger for more food. The imbibing of empty, tasteless calories would trick the brain into substituting the memory of a tasty, weight-gain-inducing food that serves as an appetizer. In order to reduce weight, the idea is to avoid those foods to control your appetite.

I imbibed 1/4 cup of edible oil so as to go through its motion, but I found something strange happening. That much oil does tend to curdle the stomach, so I wound up associating the taste of grapes, and at times ice cream, with feeling ill. Believe it or not, the memory of the grapes began to taste bad.

So, I've bumped into a variation of said diet, which may have an ironic efficacy. Edible oil is about 80 calories per 10 ml.; imbibing 1/4 cup of it means taking in 1000 calories at one shot. You'd think that this strategy would be awful for a diet, but the associated stomach-curdle may very well make it a good one, long term. I seem to have lucked in to an approach that's similar to the one traditionally used to get boys to stop smoking: "you're staying in your room, without meals, until you've smoked the whole pack."

Incidentally, I have a full, 2 L bottle of edible corn oil that's explicitly rated at 8 calories per ml. This means that the entire bottle has 16,000 calories. It cost me three bucks, implying that I got 5,333 calories per dollar. Sugar goes for a buck per kg while on sale in the same store. At 4 calories per gram, you get (at a sale price) 4,000 calories per dollar. So, it looks like edible oil, not sugar, is the food product that gives you the most calories per dollar spent.


Despite this report breaking this month's format, here's a weight report on me anyway: 231 pounds, right after drinking down the oil.