Etiquette Humor and Dieting in 1969

Dieting and Exercising? Table manners burn very few calories, so eating properly is not considered good exercise. Polite? Yes. Good exercise? No... — “The amount of energy expended in wielding a knife and fork probably is about the same as that required to depress typewriter keys. It may therefore be assumed that eating burns about 56 calories an hour. If that figure is anything like accurate, we can see at a glance that, eating is a very poor way to lose weight.”

THE LIGHTER SIDE

WASHINGTON (UPI) - It is well known that the only way to avoid gaining weight is to balance your intake of calories with the calories you burn through exercise and other activity. The ideal arrangement would be to burn as many calories eating the food as the food itself contains. Then we could forget about jogging, skiing, karate and all of those other silly exercises. Unfortunately, however, it is very difficult for a person to expend enough energy eating to offset the calories he eats. In this respect, we are victims of good table manners. 

Emily Post and other etiquette arbiters have imposed standards that demand a certain amount of restraint in the way we consume our victuals. I have never seen any figures on the number of calories the average person burns during a meal. It has been calculated, however, that a person burns about 56 calories an hour while operating a nonelectric typewriter. The amount of energy expended in wielding a knife and fork probably is about the same as that required to depress typewriter keys. It may therefore be assumed that eating burns about 56 calories an hour. If that figure is anything like accurate, we can see at a glance that, eating is a very poor way to lose weight. 

A single slice of mince pie consumed in a matter of minutes infuses us with more calories (450) than we burn during the entire dinner hour. The solution to this problem is to develop a more vigorous method of dining one that requires us to use vast amounts of energy while partaking of viands. Going back to the old hoarding house style would do it. You very rarely saw a fat boarder. But it is doubtful our present concept of civilization would countenance a return to the raw savagery and violence that existed around boarding house dining tables. 

A more humane approach would be to have everyone take nourishment under the conditions that prevail at cocktail parties. As a conservative estimate it may be assumed that the average person burns 5,280 calories an hour fighting off starvation at cocktail parties. The food he gets during the squandering of that amount of energy probably contains about 98 calories. If we adopted the cocktail party system at home if, in other words, we had to snatch our food off passing trays and eat it from tiny plates while milling around in congested areas absorbing blows to the ribs from errant elbows obesity would soon be a thing of the past. We might drink ourselves to death, but we would die skinny. — By Dick West, 1969

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