A friend just started a diet called the F-Factor: a low-carb, high-fibre programme a little like the Atkins diet, but revolving around “eight Scandinavian crackers a day”. It’s not a new thing – its inventor, Tanya Zuckerbrot, has been running her Manhattan diet clinic for almost a decade. But the F-Factor book is powering back up the charts this month because it is the regime we have to thank for Megyn Kelly – Fox News presenter, Trump-vanquisher and unlikely heroine of the hour, who is also quite thin and likes to talk about why.
Every few years a new iteration of the diet industry comes along that, as reliably as hemlines and house prices, tells us something of the age we live in. The Paleo diet is finally starting to wane, and in its place comes a slew of raw detox diets, smoothie cleanses and, I see, something called the Bone Broth Diet, which is doing very well in the US and promises to erase your wrinkles as well as help you lose weight. (Who knows, if it’s as miserable as it sounds, perhaps it works by throwing the rest of your life into joyful relief.)
The F-Factor, when you look into it, is more like a branch of life-coaching than a diet. You can buy the book and make the recipes. Or, for $10,000, you can access the premium service, which comes with a raft of counselling sessions, a walk-through of your local supermarket with a dietitian, and a home visit by someone who will go through your cupboards and confront you with the half-finished jar of Nutella you’ve hidden, the curve of a spoon mark still in it.
It also offers 24/7 access to Zuckerbrot herself, should you find yourself in a dieting emergency. For example, if you’re in a restaurant, you can call her in a panic and she will scan the menu online and tell you what to avoid. This service genuinely exists.
There are, you might think, cheaper and more sensible ways to decide what to eat; but one of the hallmarks of gym and diet culture at the moment is having a person on hand to hold you accountable. Meanwhile, I tried one of the crackers this week and it wasn’t that bad; like industrial Ryvita. Worked well as a vehicle for peanut butter.
Shamed by my instant sofa
For most of us, the pendulum swings wildly between self-denial and self-indulgence. When I first moved to the US nine years ago, the most decadent thing I could think to do was to ring the deli at two in the morning and ask for a can of Coke to be brought to my door. (I never actually did it; I was far too hung up on what the delivery man would think of me. But the idea that I could do it boggled my mind.)
How old-fashioned that now seems. Door-to-door delivery is the universal standard; the premium service is delivery inside a two-hour window, which is what the Amazon Prime Now app promises within certain zip codes in Manhattan. You’d think it would only cover a small list of items, given the price of warehousing in greater New York. But no. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I recently bought a child’s pink, Minnie Mouse-branded sofa, which arrived at my door 90 minutes after I ordered it. I’m inclined to eat bone broth for a week to atone.
Honestly? I prefer hello
Overheard on a cell phone yesterday, a woman who started her sentence with the word “honestly”, intoned as a question in a way that could only spell trouble for whoever she was talking to. It is one of those openers one uses when trying to contain rage within a shell of civility. “Don’t take this the wrong way”; “Can I just say?”; “I’m not being funny, but”; and, the mother of all passive-aggressive intros, “with respect”, which is only ever followed by a piece of monstrous impertinence – the empty calories of human exchange.
