Daily Archives: 16 June, 2012

Chris McCandless and his Alaskan odyssey

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In 1992, Chris McCandless was found dead by some moose hunters in the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley, marking a tragic end to an extraordinary journey across the American landscape. Jon Krakauer’s wonderful book Into The Wild—and its deft new film adaptation by writer-director Sean Penn—reveals a young man of inspiring vision and dogged contradiction, driven at once by his angry rejection of consumerist society, his despair over personal betrayals, and an infectious love of the natural world.

McCandless remains a controversial figure; when Krakauer first published his story in Outside magazine, many wrote letters saying he deserved his fate for heading half-cocked into an unforgiving environment. Tempting as it might be to dismiss McCandless as a hare-brained hippie, he’s not so easily reduced, and Penn does well to honor his slippery nature, even as he’s clearly awed by his grand adventure.

Working with the great French cinematographer Eric Gautier, Penn follows McCandless’ zig-zagging trail through the more remote outposts in the continental United States, from a grain operation in Carthage, South Dakota to the geographical accident that is California’s Salton Sea.

Christopher McCandless - Into the wild

Christopher McCandless – Into the wild

Played by Emile Hirsch, who never quite connects to the role (perhaps by design), McCandless began his journey shortly after graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, when he gave away his $25,000 savings to charity and drove off in his beat-up Datsun, looking for adventure.


Inspired by authors like Thoreau and Jack London, he tramped around the country with minimal resources, popping up occasionally to work odd jobs, but only to scrape together the materials he needed to survive on his own. His ultimate goal was to make it up to Alaska, but a few months after heading off into the wilderness, a couple of critical mistakes cost him his life.

Chris Mccandless magic bus

Chris Mccandless magic bus

Though structured in chapters that evolve from McCandless’ rebirth to death, Into The Wild still has a loose, unmoored style that’s perfectly suited to a life lived on the fly. Penn could stand to be fairer to McCandless’ parents, whose rocky marriage was at the root of his anguish, but other characters are vividly sketched, especially an aging widower from Salton City (beautifully played by Hal Halbrook) who came to see him as a surrogate son.

There’s a bittersweet quality to McCandless’ story that Penn captures intuitively: His death was a tragedy, since his sojourn in Alaska was by no means a suicide mission, yet his journey was fulfilling, too, because he saw and experienced things that most spend their sheltered lifetimes avoiding. In Penn, himself a restless seeker and world traveler, he’s found a kindred spirit.

Low-carb diet risks

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Diets that favour cutting right down on carbohydrate foods and encourage fat consumption aren’t effective long-term and raise cholesterol levels.

The popularity of low-carb diets for weight loss is causing a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease, according to new research focusing on the eating habits of the Swedes. Back in the 1970s, Swedish researchers became aware that people in the north of the country were more likely to suffer with cardiovascular disease than those elsewhere.

In fact, for men, the risk of heart disease was among the highest in the world. For this reason, in 1985, a programme to educate the public about healthy eating was commissioned to help reduce the risk of heart disease in the population. The programme has been ongoing and researchers have used the data to find out how dietary habits affect cardiovascular risk.

Now, researchers from the Umeå University, Sweden, as well as the University of Gothenburg and the National Board of Welfare, have reviewed the information gathered via the programme and found that after six years there was a reduction of fat intake of 3% for men and 4% for women. People also ate more low-fat spreads rather than butter. So educating the public about healthy eating had had a beneficial effect.

Cholesterol

Cholesterol

But after 2005 levels of fat, and particularly saturated fat, began to increase, eventually rising above original levels. Why? The low-carb diet craze had begun to take hold and people were cutting back on carbohydrates while eating a greater proportion of high-fat foods. Cholesterol levels increased along with the higher fat intake, despite the fact that cholesterol-lowering drugs were now also more readily available.


“With the focus entirely on losing weight rather than eating healthily in order to lose weight, it’s easy to see how people might be enticed by a very low carb diet,” says registered nutritionist Dr Carina Norris. “Weight loss can be quick when you eat larger amounts of protein and cut back drastically on carbs, but not paying attention to your fat intake can be a recipe for disaster.

Not only will your cholesterol levels rise, you’re likely to simply put the weight back on once you start eating normally again. Your body needs carbohydrates, just as it needs the beneficial kinds of fats, but it needs them in healthy amounts – around 312 g per day of carbs for men, 250 g for women; and 91g per day of fat for men, 73g for women.”