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Passage Twelve Heres a familiar version of the boy-meets-girl situation. A young man has at last plucked up courage to invite a dazzling young lady out to dinner. She has accepted his invitation and he is overjoyed. He is determined to take her to the best restaurant in town, even if it means that he will have to live on memories and hopes during the month to come. When they get to the restaurant, he discovers that this ethereal creature is on a diet. She mustnt eat this and she mustnt that. Oh, but of course, she doesnt want to spoil his enjoyment. Let him by all means eat as much fattening food as he wants: its the surest way to an early grave. They spend a truly memorable evening together and never see each other again. What a miserable lot dieters are! You can always recognize them from the sour expression on their faces. They spend most of their time turning their noses up at food. They are forever consulting calorie charts; gazing at themselves in mirrors; and leaping on to weighing-machines in the bathroom. They spend a lifetime fighting a losing battle against spreading hips, protruding tummies and double chins. Some wage all-out war on FAT. Mere dieting is not enough. They exhaust themselves doing exercises, sweating in sauna baths, being pummeled and massaged by weird machines. The really wealthy diet-mongers pay vast sums for health cures. For two weeks they can enter a nature clinic and be starved to death for a hundred guineas a week. Dont think its only the middle-aged who go in for these fads either. Many of these bright young things you see are suffering from chronic malnutrition: they are living on nothing but air, water and the goodwill of God. | 
