European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - May 31, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                I by sue Reilly los Angeles daily news f your car is sporting one of those bumper stickers that says no fat  Don t Park in Iron of Roberta Pollack Seid. She has had in with no brain Guys who have to inflate their Heads every morning passing judgment on women in general and women who Don t Diol themselves to death in particular. Seid. Author of the new Book never too thin Prentice Hall pros. $19 95 is sick of Tat jokes fal angst. Lat preoccupation fat related illnesses and ear of Lal the Book is not being sold at stars and stripes bookstores she would like the world to know by Reading her Book thai everyone does not have to have nor should they have hollow Cheeks and a Scarlett 0 Hara s Waistline Seid insists you can be too thin in spite of what the Gloria Vanderbill types say you can never be too thin or Loo Rich Skinny is not Beautiful it is just Skinny not everyone should be or can be. Slender it s in the genes. Too thin is not even healthy and her Book quotes some loading health experts As Well As general practitioners on this Bey Point nol everyone is going to agree with her. But Seid is on a crusade the american Public she said is negatively obsessed with Lal. No lat is a now religion according to Seid fal people Are paid less thought to be less healthy As Well As grossly undisciplined mentally unstable Lazy and unfashionable. They Are also thought to be a lot closer to death than their skinnier Brethren it s dangerous  the slender University of Southern California professor was once so obsessed with fat that she can Tell you How much she weighed on her wedding Day. On the Day she got her . In history on the Day she looked Down and decided being obsessed with her weight was ridiculous. She gets agreement in part from or. Reubin Andres clinical director of the National Institute on aging and professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. According to Andres the too thin illnesses of bulimia and anorexia Nerosa continue to be a serious National health problem. But additionally he Points out that the people who live longest which he says implies that they Are the Healthiest Are those 30 and older who Are slightly to Uslan tally above the metropolitan life insurance co. Tables for Ideal weight. The implication i draw from that said Andres is that insurance weight tables May be suitable for teen agers and people in their Early 20s, but they Are unrealistic unsuitable and suggest a weight too Low to be healthy for those Over 30." Seid cites the work of leading obesity authorities at the Rockefeller Institute who say that some people simply were not meant to be slender. According to an Institute study of women in Over eaters Anonymous these women looked healthy but had symptoms of women with anorexia Nerosa. Their fat cells were shrunken their pulse Rales and blood pressure were abnormally Low and they Wero always cold. In addition they were burning 25 percent fewer calories than their height and weight indicated they  in other words according to Seid they were Semi starved. I did t mean to be a revolutionary when i started out writing this Book she said but the More i got into the subject the More i realized How the medical profession food Industry women s magazines fashion Industry among others have banned together to put Forth the idea that you have to violently exercise and half starve yourself to death to be healthy and it Seid said the extreme thinness that is such an obsession today would have been considered grotesque during most periods of history the kind of emaciation that we idealize today would have been considered the precursor of death although Seid s text is filled with scholarly evidence that being too thin can be dangerous to your health and that actuarial studies show that those who Are pleasantly plump live longer she is More concerned with Quality of life than with death. I remember having my whole life consumed with being thin she said. I used to get up before Dawn to get to the gym to do aerobics. I would be terrified if i had to miss a session. I thought pigging out was eating two chocolate  then one Day my husband told me i was too thin. He said it was t attractive. I noticed that All the women in my exercise class were practically cadaverous. It really started me  Seid said that while she knows that obesity is also dangerous she Hopes her Book will help women understand that it is not unhealthy to be five to 20 pounds  that is not a hideous disfigurement she says. She said it is More important to be Happy and comfortable than obsessed with constantly losing weight or keeping it off. Thinness in t ugly if that s your body Type but neither is being plump. Why should the majority of people whose genes dictate that they will carry More body weight torture themselves so that they will look like the 5 percent of the population that is normally thin Etma As if we Don t have enough to worry about i read a Story Tho other Day that said the United slates will need 20.000 now math and science teachers next year and no one knows where they re coming from. As a woman who once wrote the Bank a Check to cover an overdraft. I Don t even understand the question i think what we be got in America is a math crisis. We be got people who win a lottery and have no idea How Many zeroes they be won. We have people running around with a full deck of credit cards with not a clue Aslo How much interest they have to pay on Tho unpaid balance. We re inundated with news programs that talk about health and drug statistics $2.4 trillion budgets and savings and loan deficits. There s an entire Eastern Seaboard Lull of people who can t figure out that when they Call someone in Tho Mountain Standard time zone they have to subtract three hours. My husband is pretty Good at math. Belore we were married we sat around and talked about the genetic Nightmare of any children to might have together. The worst scenario we could imagine was what if our daughters had his legs and my math ability what if our sons had his hairline and my math ability we nearly broke off the engagement. Our worst Nightmare materialized. I watched in horror one Day As i asked one of the kids to Divide a Cupcake equally with his brother. On one Side of the knife were two crumbs that he shoved grudgingly across the table. The genes had been passed. Math wizards Are always telling us How much fun numbers can be if it is so much fun then How come i thought the film Wall sired needed subtitles ii Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas can t make numbers look like fun no one can remember what happened when they tried to get this country to speak metric the Only thing that remains of that dead language is a Box of poppy seeds on my spice shelf that reads 28 Grams. Occasionally i will discover my husband laughing with Louis Rukeyser Over a Mutual funds joke Only my husband would know when to laugh. I think what we have to do is to bite the Bullet and get Back to the basics of mathematics. We must learn How to Factor in $2.4 trillion with read my  we must learn How to pronounce Isaac Asimov. We should let the Dollar fall before we make our vacation plans since irs people never have the same answer we should shop around until we find the lowest estimate. When our children charge us More interest on a loan than the credit Union we should Cut their allowances. Where have All the financial wizards gone when i asked my husband that question he said most of them Are serving  c 19a9etmaoombmk Page 16 the stars and stripes wednesday May 31,1989