The next issue (Oct 3) of Woman’s World, already available many places, has a lovely cover story (pp. 18-19) about the Shangri-La Diet with the funny title “Instant Willpower!” The article is very accurate and reasonable but I have a few comments.

“Lose 7 lbs a week!” (cover and p. 19). Average weight loss is 1-2 lbs/week.

“Makes your body release stored fat!” (cover). Clever. I would have said something plodding like “lose body fat.”

“Roberts says refined walnut oil and light olive oils are best” (p. 18). Refined walnut oil is hard to find. I buy Spectrum refined walnut oil at Whole Foods. The Spectrum Organics store locator will find stores that carry Spectrum products but not all carry refined walnut oil. In Berkeley, most don’t. You may want to call ahead.

“When reading scientific journals to prepare for a lecture, Roberts had a eureka moment. . . Turning this interesting idea into practical weight-loss advice took lots of trial and error. . . . In short order, he was 35 pounds slimmer” (pp. 18-19). I lost 35 pounds using sugar water, not oil. It took three months. The turning point in going from theory to practice was a strange experience in Paris, described in the book. Also crucial was Emily Mechner’s observation that if my theory was correct, flavorless oils should work as well as sugar water. All in all, though, this is a good summary.

[to make this plan work even better] “Stick with your normal foods” (p. 19). No, I think the diet works better if you start eating foods that are new to you — foods with unfamiliar flavors.

“Avoid flax, unrefined walnut and extra virgin olive oils, which have strong flavor, says Roberts” (p. 19). You can drink these oils if you close your nose (using a noseclip for example) while drinking them. That will eliminate the flavor.

In an interview, Seymour Benzer, the great Caltech biologist, told a story that I think explains a lot about medical-school research, including UCLA medical school professor John Ford’s complaint about The Shangri-La Diet:

Harold Brown [president of Caltech 1969-1977] made himself quite conspicuous by . . . trying to develop a medical school relationship. . . . His idea was for Caltech to pair up with UCLA to make a medical school. We would do the first two years of basic education of the medical students, and afterwards they would be guaranteed two more years of clinical experience at UCLA. And then they could be doctors. . . . In the Biology Division, it went over like a lead balloon: Why should we be knocking ourselves out teaching these guys, and then they go away elsewhere and don’t even do research — they become doctors? What’s in it for us?

Some things are hard to learn by reading. Saul Sternberg, now a professor of psychology at Penn, once spent a quarter at Berkeley and was around when Stanford grad students and faculty in cognitive psychology came up to Berkeley to present their research. One of the grad students told Sternberg about a reaction-time experiment she had done about mental something or other (mental rotation?) in which the conditions compared varied in what the subject saw. Sternberg pointed out that it would be better to keep constant what the subject sees. This is the beginning of wisdom in the design of cognitive psychology experiments, but you won’t find it written down anywhere.