Headline: Good Calories, Bad Calories, or the nature of belief...

Stumbling upon a blog post pointing to Quirks & Quarks, I listened to an interview with Gary Taubes, a science writer promoting his latest book - 'Good Calories, Bad Calories'.

Basic premise - that the medical profession has been proclaiming unscientific crap on the nature of weight gain and loss. That calorific intake and output (ie excercise) do not in fact have sufficient scientific basis as to be the core factors in weight gain / loss (or so Gary theorises).

While I don't have the background to agree or dispute his argument, I do wonder about the paralells in the Software industry.

We too, spend a lot of time and effort making changes without first studying the situation, devising metrics to determine the possible success or failure of proposed changes to solve proposed problems.

Instead, we're driven by the propaganda of the manufacturers, telling us that the next version is better, the new language, toolset etc will be faster, without having time to truely benchmark those claims in our contexts.

Returning to weight loss, I've noticed that I'm much more likely to lose weight when I'm in Zurich, than when I'm in Sydney. I'm doing a similar amount of exercise, and I think I'm eating a similar amount and mix of foods. This makes me wonder what is fundamentally different in the foods we eat here...

I suspect, the main difference is the bread. Bread in Switzerland is much fresher, and isn't made with preservatives, and theres much more variety in flour types in Europe.

Sounds like buying a new oven for our flat, and learning to bake bread is going to be important.