Oral Gratification Out of Control

Current studies, along with a startling glimpse of Anna Nicole Smith, confirm our observation that obesity is so rampant in this country that it can almost be considered the norm. Concurrent research is pointing toward overmastication as the prime etiology of most TMJ problems and intractable love handles. We are obsessed with food. It functions nicely as nutritive Xanax and at the same time is the essential ingredient in all social intercourse.

We don’t eat because we’re hungry, but because it’s time, or because food is constantly displayed on TV with only occasional interruptions for the programming. Food can be clearly heard importuning from the fridge, "Turn on the light, let’s party down!"

Actually, we rationalize, there is nothing better to do and there is so much food, we owe it to the farmers to help reduce the glut. All this in spite of the fitness craze now in its third decade and the millions of dollars spent on diet foods. The exhortations of Suzanne Somers flogging the Thigh Master and the chimera of the six-pack abs are apparently not enough. The lip service given the fat-free diet also features lips wrapped around anything that tastes, smells, looks or feels good.

All the gondolas in the supermarket are accompanied by frowny citizens intently studying the percentage of calories derived from the fat in the foods they are about to purchase. The wheels of rationalization turn audibly in their heads. To aid them and us in this determination, the government has dictated that the nutritional value of the product be listed prominently on the package. This has the same effectiveness as cancer warnings placed on cigarettes because the amount is expressed in grams. In this country, the metric system has met with the same popularity you would experience upon learning the Osbourne family has moved in next door.

As a result, except for the scientific community that can at least pretend to grasp the concept, nobody has any idea of how much or what a gram is. Telegrams we know; cablegrams, sure, but the gram without a prefix is an entity completely outside our frame of reference. Look it up and find out how many grams are in a pound if you feel guilty for not knowing, but you’ll forget it moments later without hesitation or regret.

You might accept that a milligram is one-thousandth of a gram, but you can’t say that easily without lisping like Sylvester the puddy-tat. You could perhaps agree that a kilogram is a thousand grams, but does that mean you could hold that much in your hand or would you need a forklift? See, you don’t know! If you could hold a thousand grams in your hands, then a gram couldn’t amount to a hill of beans, could it? That’s what we think, and that’s what the mayonnaise and potato chip manufacturers, for example, are slyly encouraging us to believe. Mayonnaise contains only 12 grams of fat, they assure us in the sincere manner of a used car salesman sliding quickly over the fact that the car has 200,000 miles on it. They are hoping you won’t notice the small print on the label casually mentioning that the 12 grams of fat occurs in each and every tablespoon of the dressing. Potato chips have only 10 grams of fat per serving, they state in the same reassuring manner you’d use with a patient about to get an injection. And how much is a serving? It’s one ounce. Six chips? Eight? Who would know? Nobody at our house, where a 12 ounce bag of chips in the presence of two adults lasts no longer than five minutes -- much less in the grimy paws of children and adolescents.

Further deliberate obfuscation of an already murky subject occurs when the agency in charge of Consumer Obfuscation decides to subdivide its fat report into saturated, unsaturated and polyunsaturated categories. They know they are on pretty safe ground here, because the same people who can’t get a fix on a gram are going to come up equally clueless with all this saturation information.

We think the surgeon general, who may be too busy advocating the use of birth control devices to pay enough attention to more practical matters, should require warning labels to be placed on these products stating that the contents will go directly to the hips, supersaturating those areas and bypassing normal routes.

Laboratory tests with rats, while conceding that these animals in their natural state seldom wear form-fitting outfits, indicate that continued use of the product by a human consumer will require her to shoehorn herself into Spandex pants at considerable risk to her self-esteem. Then there is the additional possibility of laying out upwards of $4,000 for services rendered by professional fat removers wielding large suction hoses.

We dentists have shamefully neglected our responsibility here. What’s the question most often asked us? "How soon can I eat on this, Doc?" Like they can’t wait, haven’t chewed anything for an hour and loss of oral gratification is threatening to unhinge them. Regretfully, our traditional response has been, "Don’t chew on that side for four to six hours." Or, "Don’t chew anything hard, fibrous, tough or sticky at lunch (or dinner) today." As guardians of the oral orifice and professional people wearing serious white coats upholding our pledge to care for the health of our patients, our response should have been, "Don’t chew anything for six months, or better yet, never."

We concede that this may be an unworkable suggestion much like "be sure to floss every day." Even if implemented, dedicated trenchermen would soon figure out how to get their mass quantities of food transdermally, by I.V., or incorporated into suppositories. In the meanwhile, we see no harm in returning the word "gram" back to its proper definition of the female half of one’s grandparents.