Gulliver's Travels

When I was a child I read Gulliver’s Travels many times, and while the best known parts and the ones most frequently filmed are the voyages to the land of little people and giants, my favourite, (because I was a horrid little swot) was always the third part, the voyage to Laputa, especially the satires on scientific endeavour.

CRON is for me like a voyage of discovery, in which I have visited strange places, encountered some remarkable people and heard many theories. And I still have a long way to go. How often have I seen people new to CRON write in and ask for a handy guide as to what to eat, or even a diet sheet? There is no such thing. Even those who have been practising CRON for many years disagree about how it should be done. In fact as far as I can see the only two things all CRers agree upon are that you have to restrict calories and get all your nutrition. If you fail in either of these you are not doing CRON. As to whether the proportion of protein should be high or moderate, whether for or against supplements, for or against artificial sweeteners, for or against exercise and if so how much and what kind, tofu or not tofu, the CR Way vs. the MR Way, - debates rage and will probably continue to do so for some time. The whole field is in a state of flux, and meanwhile, the beginner finds some very convincing material on nutrition published in books or on the internet and follows it only to find out that either the writer is not regarded as an authority by the CRON community or the research is last year’s (or even decade’s) and has been superseded by new material. Even when research is current not everyone agrees on what weight to give it and if the experts can’t agree what chance is there for the rest of us. Now that the society archives are much easier to search, however, time can be well spent trawling through them to find recent entries on subjects of interest, but the threads must be followed through since what one posting says authoritatively can be shot down in flames by the next one. I read the mailing list every day and try to understand as much of it as I can. This does lead to the interesting situation when someone I know mentions a press article which gives a half-baked potted version of some nutritional information only to have me reply – ‘well, of course that is very simplified and not entirely accurate because what the original research actually said was...’ etc etc. That’s when their eyes glaze over and they edge towards the door. In the 18 months since I began I have learned a great deal, (by layperson’s standards only, of course!) and am still groping towards finding my own way. The teaspoon is poised, but which end will I choose to break my egg? And it has to be an individual thing. It’s not one size fits all, far from it. We are all built differently. My Lilliputian CRON will not be the same as another’s Brobdingnagian CRON, even though ultimately we all aim to be a high functioning struldbrug.