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We’ve met the enemy and it’s attached to the hand holding our fork. Ultimately, each of us is responsible for what we and our children eat. But, try as we might, we show no signs of decreasing our collective pants size. Studies show that four out of five gym memberships are rarely used. We shunned sugar in favor of artificial sweeteners and got a universe of products doused with high-fructose corn syrup, now seen as possibly linked to cancers and also causing more intense addiction to sweets. The low-carb diet fad crashed when the regimen was linked to anxiety, binge eating, and even kidney failure. New research hints that cutting calories might be fruitless; the fatter we are, the more our fat-acquiring metabolism goes into high gear and hogs even more calories.

The villain “is calories, it’s fat, it’s carbs, it’s gluten,” sighs Amy Bentley, an associate professor of nutrition at New York University. “I think people are just trying to find some concept they can use to reduce the amount of food they’re eating.”

Good luck with that