Welcome to another installment of “10 Words or Less,” in which I ask brief questions of interesting people and request brief answers from them in return. Today’s participant is the co-producer, co-director, and writer of “Carb Loaded: A Culture Dying to Eat,”  a film that came out Oct. 1. We spoke on Oct. 3, and you can find a video version of our conversation here. Please remember: “10 words” is an intention, not a limit, so please, no counting. If you think it’s easy, let’s see you do it.

Name Lathe Poland
Born when, where Carson City Nev., winter 1973
Where do yo live now? Fairfield County, Conn.
Occupation Filmmaker
Family composition "Married 17 years with amazing wife, just the two of us."
An early formative experience “Learning [in junior high school] that food could trigger migraines for me had a pretty big impact on my view on nutrition.”
Your first paying job “You’re going to love this one. I dotted chocolates at a chocolate factory [pause] which actually connects to the previous answer I gave you."
Wisdom you retain from that experience "Find work that you actually love to do."

We recorded this interview Friday, Oct. 3, two days after the film's release. Poland and his partner, Eric Carlsen, financed the film, which looks at how America feeds itself and the effects thereof, through Kickstarter. As regular readers know, I'll be following up this post with an edited text version of the interview sometime in the next week. But for now, our conversation just as it happened...

A guy cold-called me the other day, essentially asking for a link to a graphic his organization created about diabetes, hoping to "get this conversation outside of just the diabetes blogosphere." I said sure.

Part of his idea was that I would share what I learned from reading the graphic, but there wasn't much. Apparently, stuff I think anyone knows isn't as widely known as I'd have thought. Stuff like:

Beth Mazur, over at WeightMaven.org, gave voice to moderation in her recent post, and I left a comment that I reprise here. She wondered whether it was worthwhile to look at one's diet as an investor might, hedging against uncertainty by being, say, "part paleo, part vegan." "Crazy, or crazy like a fox," she wondered.

Ugh! Crazy like a crazy person! (Sorry for the knee-jerk passion.) 

Part paleo, part vegan is neither, no? Same with the others.

I avoid celebrity news like the plague it is, but I found a couple of angles to discuss in this story about Miley Cyrus, which popped up on a Google Alert I have running for mentions of eating disorders.

The gist is that Cyrus has lost weight, forcing her Sunday to address rumors that she has an eating disorder. According to that impeccable source Us magazine, she tweeted,

This time, it's the National Eating Disorders Association targeting a campaign against child obesity in Georgia. 

Back in April, it was the website Sociological Images, attacking the same campaign for the same reason, that it shames children. This morning's press release leads off...

Part 1 Part 2 (this one) Part 3

I have a strong reaction when I hear nutritionists and/or registered dietitians say that wouldn't advise a client to give up any foods, because that would be deprivation and no one sticks with deprivation.

I apologize in advance, and again reiterate that I'm not a registered dietitian or any other kind of clinician, but those people, in my opinion, don't know what they're saying. (You can judge for yourself whether I do.)

I don't know much about Deepak Chopra, other than that he's established himself as a brand on matters involving personal health. That is to say, I've heard of him, and perhaps seen him on TV talk shows, and whatever impressions I have of him are neutral-positive.

So where to begin! How ‘bout: Yes, it’s true that I do have antipathy toward many nutritionists and registered dietitians, because too often I’ve been advised, or heard friends advised, to eat moderately, without ruling out any foods — because the advisers think that advice is sound for everyone, and it’s not.

I spent my day yesterday about 45 minutes from my home, driving from gym to gym to leave notices of my speaking engagement in support of “Fat Boy Thin Man” in that region about three weeks hence. (6:30 pm., Ames Free Library, 53 Main St., North Easton, Mass.) The response was very enthusiastic, except for one guy who seemed not to care where I put the poster because, I’m convinced, he was going to remove it as soon as I was gone.