<p>Another precocious Princeton student.
From Yesterday’s NY Times:
…But Ms. Marie had the right idea, some experts said. College should be about making wise choices and developing healthy eating habits. And that is where Daphne Oz, a junior at Princeton from Cliffside Park, N.J., comes in.</p>
<p>To help her peers navigate the Circean lures of college dining halls and late-night study breaks, Ms. Oz has written a book, The Dorm Room Diet (Newmarket Press), to be released on Sept. 6. The easy-to-read guide has a simple philosophy behind it: If students know nutrition basics, they will make healthier food choices.</p>
<p>Ms. Oz, 20, is the first to admit that she has no credentials in health or nutrition; her major is Near Eastern studies.</p>
<p>Her qualifications include the fact that her father is Dr. Mehmet C. Oz, a cardiac surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, who has taken her into his operating room to show her the fat-clogged arteries of his patients. And at the Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood, N.J., she wrote a high school research paper on teenage nutrition and lobbied for healthier cafeteria food, she said.</p>
<p>But what Ms. Oz lacks in credentials, she makes up for with a transformational story of a self-described former chubby girl made cute by laying off the cookie dough and laying on the cardio. While some of her classmates pigged out, she lost 10 pounds during her freshman year, she said. She did it by relying on vegetarian entrees and salads at her dining hall, snacking on grapes, nuts, baby carrots and semisweet chocolate bits, and eating high-fat foods and sweets only occasionally. </p>
<p>Ms. Ozs own metamorphosis from an unconscious consumer of white bread, bagels and huge plates of pasta to an alert eater who views food purely as fuel forms the backbone of the book. </p>
<p>If I give you the right information, and if I tell you my story as important, then anyone can make the transformation, Ms. Oz said.
If I can get to you now, I can help you create healthy habits that will last the rest of your life, Ms. Oz said.</p>
<p>For all its well-intentioned talk of good eating habits, however, the book does occasionally equate fat not only with unhealthiness but also with unattractiveness. The introduction, for example, starts off with a fable about a hypothetical student at Fat U., whose chronic reliance on junk food results in a face full of dark circles, puffy eyes, zits and a belly hanging over the pants that used to be your fat jeans. Meanwhile a student at an imaginary Fit U., who forgoes pizza and candy bars, has wide eyes, not a blemish in sight, and no trouble getting dressed in the morning because every outfit looks great.</p>
<p>Sometimes with young people you have to play on their vanity, said Ms. Oz, who described The Dorm Room Diet as a healthy eating plan and not an ode to thinness."</p>