During a conference on obesity in Bainbridge Island, Wash., a couple of years ago, the organizers invited Jack LaLanne to come before us Saturday night and be interviewed for our benefit, after which he accepted questions from the audience. (The story I wrote for the Associated Press is here, at my other, former blog.)

To start the session off, our host showed this video, which prompted a sustained, full-throated ovation from the attendees:

The video is only about three and a half minutes, but if you don't want to take the time, its magnificent moment is when he connects alcoholism with "sugarholism" — it is the point of his message — decades ahead of today, when the physiological effects of refined sugar on some people still haven't been accepted even as a solid possibility, never mind the fact of life it is for so many.

I do remember the LaLanne of the vintage seen in the film, though to me, as a kid who liked playing sports but liked food and watching TV a lot more, he was nothing more than a passing curiosity on a much less crowded dial.

Today, I think of him as a prophet of fitness utterly committed to living his own truth no matter how strongly the clamor and clatter of prepackaged, processed, modern life would have led him away from it.