Letters to the Editor

     The letter to the editor is a miniature literary form like the haiku, and one more transient than the blog post. I have written a great many over the years; no-one taught me, I believe that no university or technical college teaches the art that I have acquired "by doing".
     When you write to the editor you are constrained in time; your letter must be promptly relevant to a published letter or article. You are constrained in subject; you must rehearse the points raised and your own must be relevant to them. You are constrained in space to a paragraph or so, and you are equally constrained in style. Admittedly a smaller newspaper which I read in Tauranga has taken to publishing text messages with all their barbarous orthography intact, but a letter to an august organ such as the New Zealand Herald, with a circulation of over 500,000, must be a regular English prose composition (though if you can't quite manage that but still have something to say, the sub-editor may be generous with their aid).     
     Grandstanding, quirkiness, abuse, bare-faced flouting of logic, use of the word teh, substituting $ for S, multiplication of the letter K, obscenities, gratuitous offensiveness, and all the other tools of the blogger's trade will not be countenanced by the ladies and gentlemen of the press.
     My recently published letter was in response to one on the subject "Tackling Obesity" by one Peter Davis. It was reasonable enough and noted as I have done the sad decline in our once-great nation's health. The writer wondered if our armed forces might one day run out of healthy recruits. My first impulse was to respond that, obesity epidemic or not, the New Zealand defense forces will always be able to find the 18 or so recruits they need each year from a population of 4,405,200 at last count. However, I decided to drop the cheap joke to focus on a better target, a reference to eating too much and not exercising enough as causes of obesity. Really one can build a great deal around a light slap at this notion.
     This is my letter as it was published on Monday, May 13th:

    Peter Davis is right to insist that the social and health costs of the obesity epidemic require action. 

    Any measures taken should first increase research, while in the interim promoting the most successful overseas interventions, at present low-carb and ancestral diets, and developing them to suit New Zealand's needs. 

   It is presumptuous to say that obese people have eaten more and exercised less than others. First, such behaviour does not always result in obesity. Secondly, if I weighed an extra 45kg I would automatically be exercising a great deal harder than I do today just to go about my life, and this would probably require extra nutrition.
    Perhaps it is the declining quality of food - particularly the substituting of cheap starches, sugars and oils for nourishing fare - which is more than anything responsible for the declining quality of health in this area.

Yours Faithfully,

George Henderson

And this is the letter as I sent it. I am including this version so you can appreciate how lovingly the sub-editor refined and polished my points, erased my mistakes, and improved upon my style, still slightly imperfect after all these years.

Dear sir/ma'am,

Peter Davis is right to insist that the social and health costs of the obesity epidemic require action. To avoid making things worse any measures taken should first increase research, while in the interim promoting the most successful overseas interventions, at present low-carb and ancestral diets, and developing them to suit New Zealand's needs. It is presumptive to say that obese people have eaten more and exercised less than others. Firstly, such behaviour did not, and does not, always result in obesity. Secondly, if I weighed an extra 100 pounds I would automatically be exercising a great deal harder than I do today just to go abut my life, and this would probably require extra nutrition, especially if the food available was of poor nutritive quality.
Perhaps it is the declining quality of food, i.e. the substituting of cheap starches, sugars and oils for nourishing fare, that is more than anything responsible for the declining quality of New Zealanders' health in this area.

Yours Faithfully,

George Henderson

Notice that, as New Zealand went decimal in 1967, a fact I had forgotten due to my excessive reading of U.S. diet books and blogs, my reference to a round 100 pounds was converted to a rather clunky 45 kilos.

What I believe distinguishes this letter from my earlier published efforts is the sheer number of concepts I was able to address. Unintended consequences ended up on the cutting room floor, but I was able to retain

- scientific research as the proper basis for policy decisions

- the paramount effectiveness of low-carb and paleo (without claiming that current options are perfect)

- a subtle reference to "The Native Diet"* T.V. program and other local initiatives

- a Taubesian dig at CICO

- a reference to empty calories (food quality)

- a swipe at the 3 Paleo devils, grains, sugars and oils, ignoring the expected whipping boy, my buddy fat.

And really, that's enough to be going home with.

* "The Native Diet is a concept derived from traditional Māori eating, activity and the 1920′s research of Dr Weston Price, who after visiting 14 indigenous nations including Māori, concluded the western world must look back at the traditional diets of these people groups for the future health of the next generation. Price advocated prohibiting processed foods from diets of Americans, something that has not been followed up."