Oh, the sacrifices I make for you!
More than a year after first viewing the Linkmania listing for Dr. David Reuben's Quick Weight Gain Program (Crown Publishers, 1966), your ob't servant finally tracked down a library copy of this tome to read and review. Don't believe this was a sacrifice? ("Hey, Wilson," I hear you say. "Isn't weight gain your bizness?) Trust me: it was.
Reuben is best known as the author of the sixties best-seller, Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask), which inspired the Woody Allen film of the same name. Since that august work, the good doctor has apparently been cranking out weight loss books ( e.g., The Save-Your-Life Diet), though this is his first instance of turning the focus in the opposite direction. Nice to see a doctor acknowledging the common sense truth that you can be too thin; it's a pity that the message has been packaged in such a stodgy format, however.
I tend to space out when reading medical material, so don't ask me how much of the background info in Reuben's tome is accurate. He tends to repeat the au current myth that the sole reason all fat people are "overweight" is because their bodies don't tell 'em when they're full - which calls into question much of his other bariatric expertise. He did give me two terms - opioid feeding drive (the source behind our urge to eat RIGHT NOW!) and organoleptic (food that attracts all your senses) - to use in future stories, however, for which I'm grateful.
Reuben's style tends towards the huckstering hard sell of late night teevee. He peoples each chapter with patients who bemoan their ultra-thin state and serve as exemplars of the point he is trying to make. His basic thesis can be reduced to one sentence, however: eat lotsa calories. Reuben's weight gain diet is just a flip of weight loss calorie counting, with eager gainers checking out each food item's caloric content in favor of the big numbers.
Don't worry about fat content, he asserts, flying in the face of conventional "wisdom." This is a short-term diet designed to last six months at most - six months of avid fat consumption won't hurt you. (But how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've realized how much tastier fat is, eh?) He thoughtfully provides several chapters of high-cal menus: my fave part of the book. Even the stodgiest prose won't ruin a collection of recipes.
Reuben's Weight Gain Program may be bogus and dull, but it's the only diet book I'll be reading all year. You think Woody'd be willing to tackle it in his next movie? I know I'd buy a ticket. . .
April, 1998
Copyright 1998 - Oakhaus Designs
---Wilson Barbers