Banner Graphic, Volume 17, Number 16, Greencastle, Putnam County, 19 September 1986 — Page 4
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THE BANNERGRAPHIC, September 19,1986
lifestyle
Local needlework club marks 75th anniversary
The Greencastle Needlework Club will celebrate its 75th anniversary with a tea and needlecraft exhibit 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 20, at the Second Baptist Church, 545 E. Jackson St., Brazil. Organized in 1910, the club is one of the oldest black women’s clubs in the area. Mrs. Mary Bridges served as the first president. Mrs. Charlotte Kyle, a third-generation member, is
Calendar of events Saturday The Greencastle Elks Club will have its 20-20 banquet and dance at 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 20. All paid-up members and partners are invited to the banquet. Elks members and wives are invited to the dance. I Sunday The Putnam County Republican Women’s Club will sponsor the Republican Picnic at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 21, at shelter house No. 1 in Greencastle’s Robe-Ann Park. The public is invited to attend and meet the party’s candidates. Those attending are asked to bring a covered dish and table service. Meat and drinks will be furnished by the club. Monday The Democratic Women’s Club will meet at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 22. Place and program to be announced. Boston Club will meet at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 22, with Myrle Day and Helen Goff at Asbury Towers. Miriam Durham will present the program. Tuesday The Civil War Round Table will begin its fall and winter season with a meeting at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 23, in Room 120 of the Julian Science and Math Center on the DePauw University campus. Hugh Henry will review the major military engagements in Virginia that led to Antietam. Doors will open at 7. Wednesday The Twentieth Century Club will have a luncheon meeting at noon Wednesday, Sept. 24, at the home of Mrs. P.S. Godwin. Chapter I, PEO, will meet at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 24, at the home of Mrs. Hugh Glock. Thursday The Greencastle AA group for non-smokers meets at 8 p.m. every Thursday at Peace Lutheran Church, 218 Bloomington St., Greencastle. Friday The Beech Grove United Methodist Church smorgasbord and bazaar will be Friday, Sept. 26 at the Putnam County Fairgrounds community building. Serving will begin at 5 p.m. As a substitute for the October meeting, members of the Heritage Preservation Society will attend “The History of DePauw’’ program to be given by Dr. John Baughman, Dr. Clifton Phillips and Dr. John Schlotterbeck at 10 a.m. Friday, Sept. 26, in Meharry Hall of East College.
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the current president. The non-profit club has contributed to many social services and charities over the years, including the TB Association, Heart Fund, Red Cross and the Mental Health Association. Members have regularly visited the Putnam County Home and Putnam County Hospital. The public is invited to attend Saturday’s tea and exhibit.
Every year, new diets and new products
Mania for thinness a $lO billion industry
By N.R. KLEINFIELD c. 1986 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK “Thousands of Women Get Back Girlish Figures on Incredible Super Diet.” ... “New Medical Breakthrough! Lose Up to 50 Pounds Without Dieting.” ... “All the Figure Toning of 3,000 Sit-Ups Without Moving an Inch.” On and on go the advertising siren calls, sounding the wonders of a mammoth and bewildering industry that thrives on the American obsession with trim waistlines. The chance to make dollars off diets has attracted a remarkable assortment of businesses, from solid corporations such as Ciba-Geigy and Carnation to fly-by-night enterprises with box-number addresses. Some of the products are preposterous, like the pajamas that purportedly melt off pounds as you sleep. Some are dangerous, like the notorious tapeworm pills of years ago. But neither scandals nor deaths nor fears of being duped seem to dampen the consumer mania for thinness without pain. And, ironically, the very fact that so many weight-control products ultimately leave people as tubby as ever guarantees the vitality of the diet industry. “Everything is go,” remarks the ever-upbeat Charles Berger, the president of Weight Watchers International, one of the most successful weight-reducing companies. “Our research shows that over 60 percent of American women are dieting at some point in a year and that number seems to keep edging upward.” Various market researchers estimate that Americans spend more than $lO billion a year on diet drugs, exercise tapes, diet books, diet meals, weight-loss classes, fat farms and devices like body wraps. Roughly SBOO million alone goes for frozen diet dinners and entrees. More than S4OO million is rung up for services and products carryi g the Weight Watchers name. Another S2OO million worth of nonprescription diet pills are sold annually, plus an estimated $l5O million worth of lowcalorie powders that are taken in place of regular meals. Uncountable millions of dol’ars are showered on diet books, videotapes and health club memberships. Every year brings more weightdefeating products. Concoctions incorporating fiber seem to be this year’s dazzler. Several large pharmaceutical companies ScheringPlough, to name one have budgeted millions to promote their diet offerings. Others, including Eli Lilly and Groupe Servier, are spending fortunes on research into prescription drugs for the truly obese. What’s more, numerous companies are now paying for diet programs for pudgy workers. Wendy’s International, the fast-food chain, recently put its corporate employees through a five-week dieting regimen based on the Rotation Diet, a highly popular diet that involves eating a lot of fresh produce, poultry and fish. It crows that the 109 employees shaved off a total of 750 pounds.
Dear Abby : Foolish to worry about being too fat, too thin
DEAR ABBY: Why all this commotion about being too fat or too thin? Ten or even 20 pounds one way or the other shouldn’t make that much difference. It seems foolish to worry, even for reasons of health. There are no guarantees how long we’ll endure in spite of determined efforts to keep fit. Perhaps it’s just as well that we don’t know when we are going to be physically challenged. I am 60 pounds underweight due to a terminal illness. When I was healthy, I was a beautiful, shapely, well-proportioned young woman with extraordinary legs that caused men to walk into parking meters. At first I was devastated to consider that people would react with horror on seeing my skinny, meatless, bony legs. Actually no one noticed. I keep repeating a quotation of unknown origin that I would like to
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The slimness business, though, has its ugly side. “There are always people out there trying to make a buck out of fraudulent diet products,” says Dennis Myers, the chief of the Food and rug Administration’s over-the-counter drug branch. “It’s a continuing problem. There’s always someone one step ahead of us dreaming up the next crazy thing to knock off pounds.” For many large Americans, the road to slenderness is paved with diet pills. These multicolored capsules have mushroomed into one of the biggest parts of the diet world. Not surprisingly, Weight Watchers scoffs at the idea of pills. “We think they’re medically unsound,” Berger says. “They provide temporary weight loss and then you gain weight faster than you lost it.” The comment both ruffles and amuses Edward Steinberg, vice chairman of the Thompson Medical Co., long-time kingpin of diet aids. “We were there before Weight Watchers,” he said. “We wonder if they’ll be there as long as we are.” In fact, he claims some people use Thompson’s aids to keep to their Weight Watchers regimen. “How about that?” he said. Thompson, which had revenues of $137 million last year, boasts something like a 50 to 60 percent share of the appetite suppressant and nutritional meal replacement markets. Almost any drugstore or mass merchandiser has a rack labeled “Appetite Control Center” packed with Thompson helpings. The company’s big brands are Dexatrim capsules, which sup-
MB
Abigail Van Buren
share witn you: Each day is made special By what we can give it By how we accept it Then how we live in it. ACCEPTING IT DEAR ACCEPTING: A sober-
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posedly kill hunger, and Slim-Fast, a flavored powder that, mixed with skim milk, produces a meal substitute consisting of roughly 200 calories. Dexatrim, which came out in 1976, has been the top-selling diet aid for years. Of late, though, some consumers and doctors have complained about hyperactivity and other reactions to phenylpropanolamine (PPA), its key ingredient. Steinberg says that the reactions “could have been the result of any number of other factors and other medications.” But the FDA, which in 1982 declared PPA safe and effective when used in moderation, says it is studying further test results. Slim-Fast has endured its own turmoil. The product, which made its debut in 1977 some 18 years after Mead Johnson’s Metrecal first brought the concept of liquid diets to public attention enjoyed good reception until its sales plunged in the wake of the liquid protein scare of the late 19705. The government forced all liquid protein products off the market after they were implicated in 59 deaths. The publicity turned consumers off on all liquid diets, even those like Slim-Fast that were not protein- based. Then, in the early 1980 s, the Cambridge Diet, a liquid meal invented by a chemist at Cambridge University, captured the public’s attention. Thompson took advantage of the reawakened interest in liquid diets to mount a big marketing push for Slim-Fast, which sold for less than Cambridge and, Thompson says,
ing thought. Sometimes being reminded of our mortality can cause us to re-examine our priorities, and possibly rearrange them. Thank you for sharing. * * * DEAR ABBY: Breast surgery is a bust indeed! I submit one man’s observations for what they’re worth: I am over 60, and during my lifetime I have made love to a number of women whose breasts have ranged in size from Dolly Parton look-alikes to “eggs over easy.” One woman had a pair of 38s obtained by implants. Unfortunately, they were hard as rocks, and caressing a rock during lovemaking is a big turnoff. Ladies, your reaction to being caressed is vastly more important
was tastier. Slim-Fast’s sales rocketed, and have remained high. Cambridge Plan International, the producer of the Cambridge Diet, meanwhile, collapsed into bankruptcy, citing competing products and admonitions from medical researchers about the dangers of the diet. Now it looks as though demand for appetite suppressants and powdered meals is again slackening, at a time of spirited competition. Ciba-Geigy’s Acutrim tablets and Menley & James’s Dietac have taken Dextrim on, while Slim-Fast now has to battle against the likes of Carnation’s Do-It-Yourself Diet Plan, another meal replacement product. The result is that last year, privately owned Thompson’s sales plunged 31 percent and its earnings fell 47 percent. Steinberg says that diet aid sales this year are even with 1985. The company has been bringing out new renditions of its established products to try to seize more business; for instance, it introduced Dexatrim 15 Hour, which releases PPA over a 15hour period, enabling dieters to get by on fewer pills. Thompson also is hedging its bets. It now markets things like sleep aids and contraceptives, too. Two young French schoolgirls are chatting. “Your mother is so beautiful, so slim,” one says. (English subtitles translate for American viewers.) “Does she eat?” The friend laughs giddily and says that sure she eats, but she also takes Fibre Trim. That’s the fancy commercial pitch for Fibre Trim, a six-year-old Danish concoction that has been the best-selling diet aid in Europe and Canada. The tablet’s fibers expand in the stomach, cutting down on the space available for naughty things like candy bars, and thus curbing hunger. Since last January, the product has been marketed in the United States by Schering-Plough, the big pharmaceutical company, which has budgeted $26 million to make sure everyone knows about it. “A lot of people weren’t happy with the products on the market because of side-effects, or because they don’t like having to mix some powder into a milkshake when everyone else is having a steak dinner,” says Sharon McGee, a senior brand manager at Schering. “People also are becoming more health conscious, so the fiber aspect is a big plus.” Schering is especially pepped up because test results disclosed that 43 percent of the people who bought Fibre Trim had never tried any diet aid before, implying that an alluring new product can significantly expand the diet market. As yet, it’s murky whether a fiber pill will help chubby consumers lose weight. Thompson Medical, at any rate, is taking no chances, and has brought out its own product, called Fiber Full. “The public is bombarded with information about fiber, particularly from the cereal people,” says Steinberg. “It’s natural that they are interested.”
than your shape. Satisfying sex has nothing to do with your measurements. If you don’t leave your breasts alone, I will. ONCE UPON A ROCK, SEABROOK, N.H. DEAR ONCE: I am sure many of my more modestly endowed women readers will find your candid observations both enlightening and encouraging. Women considering breast augmentation surgery should be advised of all possible negative results. * * * (Problems? Write to Abby. For a personal, unpublished reply, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Abby, P.O. Box 38923, Hollywood, Calif. 90038. All correspondence is confidential.)
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