DanMargarita.com

Everybody wants a "quick fix" and is willing to latch onto whatever bizarre diet or scheme comes along. Rather than bother with something as simple as eating properly and getting even a moderate amount of exercise, Americans would rather have their stomachs stapled, purge themselves or eat an unhealthy-healthy diet.

What is perhaps the best-known diet craze, The Atkins Diet, is under fire by a man suing Atkins promoters, claiming that after two years on the low-carb, high-fat diet his arteries became clogged and he almost died. At this point I am reminded of what Albert Einstein once said----"duhhhhh."

Well, he could've said it.

I'm no dietician but it's been pretty well established that high cholesterol doesn't exactly do wonders for the arteries.

A friend of mine lost 35 pounds when he had his gallbladder removed. Presumably, he didn't have a 35 pound gallbladder, but after realizing that eating unhealthy foods caused him severe abdominal pain, he switched to a healthy diet which in turn helped him lose weight.

However, that does give me an idea for the most radical diet fad yet----having internal organs removed! If you're completely lazy, why bother with frustrating and tiresome things like eating right and exercising when a surgeon can remove those useless organs?

Besides the gallbladder, another needless organ is the appendix. Frankly, an appendix in a book is more useful than the one inside you. It doesn't serve any function except to possibly become inflamed and rupture, causing peritonitis which can kill you if the organ is not removed in time.

People have had kidneys and parts of their stomachs and livers removed and been able to live a comfortable life.

What people find most ironic is when a proponent of healthy lifestyles dies at somewhat young age. You may recall Jim Fixx, author of "The Complete Book of Running" dying of a heart-attack while jogging at age 52 (it should be noted that he had a family history of heart disease). Linda McCartney, promoted a line of vegetarian food products and died of cancer at age 56. Yet somehow, Rolling Stone's guitarist/songwriter/walking corpse Keith Richard has spent a lifetime chain-smoking, drinking and taking drugs and still maintains a pulse.

Who says life is fair?

Stomach stapling has become a more common form of weight loss for morbidly obese people. Of course those who don't care may opt to have another stomach stapled on.

The procedure uses staples or stitches to close off part of the stomach to about the size of an egg (thank you, CNN), which is pretty ironic since it would make them perfect candidates to start the Atkins diet of which the egg is a suitable food.

For those who would like to exercise, there are no shortage of products being advertised on TV. The Bowflex commercials seems to be on somewhere, sometime at every hour of the day.

Americans seem obsessed with having rock-hard abs with so many commercials for products designed to give you "six-pack" abs. The makers of these products are obviously aware that they can cash in on the fact that so many Americans have "half-keg" abs.

Well, all this talk of food has made me hungry.

The most important factor for me is that it tastes good.