September 24, 2004

"Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway" Diet Book Hits Boomers

Author Exposes Exercise, Diet Industry 'Dirty Little Secret'

The timing couldn't have been better. First Waistband Books published it's new diet book Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway. Then two days later the Journal of the American Medical Association published a group of scientific articles that show that regardless of your age, you can derive new health benefits from exercising and eating right.

"We had no idea those medical articles were coming out," said Edward McPhail, the Eat Right author. "They certainly support in a dramatic way the point the book makes."

McPhail said he decided to write the book, which he refers to as EREDA (pronounced err-ee-da), because "it was high time somebody told the baby boomers the truth, that however hard they try they aren't going to escape death. That fact is the dirty little secret that the diet book and health club industries try to hide from the public. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with it."

Some book reviewers seem to agree.

Writing in The New York Times, Minnie Tasley called EREDA "a refreshing slap in the face and just in time, too," adding that "some of the stories of people who did everything right when it came to exercise and eating but still died are a real wake up call for anyone who expects to live to a ripe old age."

Waistband publicists report that the magazine Post-Modern Gourmand is planning an issue devoted to McPhail and EREDA, with a picture of the book on the cover and several inspirational stories inside about people who have embraced McPhail's ideas. It will also include a group of recipes for dishes that can be prepared in 15 minutes or less and that adhere to McPhail's EREDA guidelines.

McPhail and Waistband Books are hoping that the JAMA articles will do the same thing for Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway that a medical research report in the New England Journal of Medicine did for the late Dr. Robert Atkins, inventor of the Atkins Diet. Atkins' high fat, low carbohydrate diet had fallen from favor until the NEJM research report appeared. It said that people who followed the Atkins Diet lost weight but didn't compromise their health with their high fat intake.

The article is largely credited with sparking the "low carb" diet craze.

Harvard sociologist Erdmore Lemmon, who devoted the last 35 years to study of the baby boom generation, said that books like Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway represent the next step in the social evolution of the boomers. "Just like everything else with the 'me generation', they won't give in gracefully to the idea that despite what they do they're going to die. They think they're entitled to live forever. There's a lot of money to be made by marketers who figure out ways to capitalize on this."

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