Quotable Sanity on Germs and Calories

"Despite all the controversy about diet...a calorie is a calorie is a calorie."

--Dr. Ernst Schaefer of Tufts University in Boston, who led a study that found that restricting certain food groups is not an effective weight loss approach, as quoted November 9 by Reuters.

"Phobias are irrational fears, wrought of the union of dread and misunderstanding...The makers of antibacterial products are fond of the word 'germs.' It is purposefully vague. Do they mean bacteria? Viruses? Both? Neither? Because the idea is simply to connote contamination. These products are as much about cooties as they are about viruses or bacteria...Contamination is in many ways a psychological construct."

--from the November 9 _New York Times_ article "Germs, Germs Everywhere..." by Mary Roach