The Hazards of High Protein, Low Carbohydrate Diets

The Hazards of High Protein, Low Carbohydrate Diets A young, healthy teenage girl fell to her death after following a high-protein, low carbohydrate diet for no more than two weeks. The girl, having no identified sicknesses or medical conditions, exhibited “electrolyte imbalances” along with minimal levels of potassium and calcium, which appeared to be a result of the diet according to doctors at the University of Missouri Health Science Center. These irregularities upset the “normal electrical function of her heart” causing it to stop and her to collapse (“US teen . . .”). Based on this alone, it is evident that a high protein, low carbohydrate diet is not a safe and healthy long-term weight loss program. High Protein diets are traced all the way back to the 1800s when William Banting produced a brochure including information and details surrounding the diet. He claimed the newfound diet, which consisted of meat and shockingly, sherry but no bread and very few vegetables, aided him in shedding his unwanted pounds. This is very similar to today’s Atkins diet. Originally developed in the 1970s by Dr. Atkins, it, like Banting’s idea, believes that carbohydrates are responsible for America’s obese society (Applegate 26). Dr. Atkins claimed it was possible to change carbohydrate-burning bodies to fat burning by applying the concept of high protein and low carbohydrate eating. (“How does . . .?”). Nearly ten years later, Americans concluded “fat was . . . fattening,” causing people to shift from proteins and fats to hefty serving of “fat-free and high-carbohydrate foods such as bagels and fat-free cookies.” Still people continued to gain weight and in turn blamed it on carbohydrates. So again, in the nineties, the Atkins diet … … middle of paper … …. * Kerr, Martha. “Atkins-Type Diet May Not Be So Bad For Cholesterol.” Yahoo! News. * 19 Nov. 2002. 2 Dec. 2002 <http://story.news.yahoo.com/ news?tmpl=story

Othello – the Universal Appeal

Othello – the Universal Appeal

For 400 years the audience has found William Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello to be relevant to their lives and tastes. Why? What enduring qualities does the play possess in order to ensure its continuing success?

Does the reason lie in the great heterogeneity of characters and scenes and actions within the play? Robert B. Heilman in “The Role We Give Shakespeare” relates the universality of Shakespeare to the “innumerableness of the parts”:

But the Shakespeare completeness appears graspable and possessable to many men at odds with each other, because of the innumerableness of the parts: these parts we may consider incompletenesses, partial perspectives, and as such they correspond to the imperfect (but not necessarily invalid) modes of seeing and understanding practiced by imperfect (but not necessarily wrongheaded) interpreters and theorists of different camps. Each interpreter sees some part of the whole that does, we may say, mirror him, and he then proceeds to enlarge the mirror until it becomes the work as a whole (10).

Indeed, the reader finds a wide variety of “parts” from beginning to end of Othello. This is seen in the fact of about 20 characters with speaking roles; and in their variety of occupations from duke to clown; and in the numerous scene changes; and in the differentiation in speech, actions, manners between every single individual character.

Is characterization another cause of the dramatist’s broad popularity? Harry Levin in the General Introduction to The Riverside Shakespeare finds other reasons for his appeal:

Universal as his attraction has been, it is best understood through particulars. Though – to our advan…

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… Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from Shakespeare: The Pattern in His Carpet. N.p.: n.p., 1970.

Frye, Northrop. “Nature and Nothing.” Essays on Shakespeare. Ed. Gerald Chapman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.

Heilman, Robert B. “The Role We Give Shakespeare.” Essays on Shakespeare. Ed. Gerald Chapman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.

Levin, Harry. General Introduction. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974.

Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos.

Wilkie, Brian and James Hurt. “Shakespeare.” Literature of the Western World. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.