Wellness Content. Less is More

I'm trying to gain weight. I lost 4 kg during my December illness, and the healthy foods of the (now customary) January purification aren't helping me regain any of it. Ordinarily, I’d hit the biscuits and bacon, but I've felt middle-age catching up with me over the last few years. I've decided to stick with clean eating — and a little wine.

How the hell does one cram the food in? Once you've removed the fatty and sugary (and yummy!) stuff, the sheer bulk of food that constitutes enough calories is stomach-expanding. Small wonder people are turning to powdered meal replacements instead of fresh ingredients.

I'm not against that, by the way. I'm technically a scientist, of sorts — albeit a fairly rubbish one — and I'm absolutely in favour of science-based solutions to nutritional problems. Genetically modifying crops, for example, can help them survive the vicissitudes of weather, soil health, and pests. And lab-grown meat could alleviate the burden livestock places on the climate, as well as free up vast amounts of land. This would be a boon to densely populated countries like mine.

Don't get me wrong. I realize the risks, and I fully support science being constrained by caution and ethics. But if you're the kind of person who takes antibiotics instead of waiting for gangrene to kill you, then you have to accept science's role in every other aspect of life. Including its already dominate role in the food you eat.

Take a look at the nutritional information for most breakfast cereals, for instance, and you'll see they're fortified with additional vitamins and minerals; the grains in those cereals relied on the use of fertilizers, and probably pesticides too; those products, as well as the cereal itself, was moved by shipping and freight; and the harvesting was certainly mechanical. Science is the reason we don't starve, at least in rich countries.

There is nothing objectively wrong with using powdered meal replacements to meet nutritional needs. But there is something horribly toxic in the culture surrounding them. In my effort to gain some mass, I've watched some awful YouTube videos. "Do this one exercise to gain muscle fast". And "The one food you shouldn't be eating". And "Repeatedly dip your head in ice-water for explosive gains that will make other men tremble and force women to build shrines to their uncontainable lust towards you". (That last one wasn't the real title, but it is accurate for the nonsense in the video).

Type fitness into YouTube, and you'll be hit by thumbnails of impossibly toned women and shredded men. These people must spend every waking minute obsessing over the finest details of their physiques — and their nutrition, hydration and sleep, and carefully planning out their steroid injections. They appear way beyond genetically blessed, and certainly like they're failing to enjoy the non-gym dimensions of life. That's not healthy.

The full breadth of life is for living. Travel, socialize, sleep with a stranger, drink too much, fall in and out of love, read Kafka and pretend you enjoyed it, tell a boss what you really think. Make memories, good and bad. Exercise and play sports, and eat well — that's part of the journey — but don't make it your identity. And never — and I really do mean never — pour wine back into the bottle.

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