The Rooney Diet

(CBS)  A weekly commentary by CBS News Correspondent Andy Rooney. It was first broadcast on Oct. 26, 2003.

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I've been going into bookstores recently looking for my book - that's what you do when you write a book.

I can't find mine. All I can find are dirty novels, cookbooks and diet books.

Year after year, cookbooks and diet books are the biggest sellers. How not to eat it, once you've learned how to cook it.

To sell a diet book, you need some crazy idea of what to eat. Or not eat. Here's a Peanut Butter Diet book. The Ice Cream Diet book. The Bikini Diet.

None of these books agrees on what you should or shouldn't eat. The Atkins Diet has been popular for years. Atkins made nutritionists mad by saying you can eat just about all the fat you want as long as you don't eat many carbohydrates - sugar and bread. I like Atkins because I cook with butter.

The Scarsdale Diet was a popular fad for several years. It has a chart in here indicating what you ought to weigh.

It says a woman 5 feet 4 inches tall ought to weigh between 110 and 123 pounds. If you're a 5-foot-8-inch man, Dr. Tarnower said you should weigh between 137 and 153. I'm a 5-foot-8-inch man man who weighs between 205 and 206 pounds. According to him, I should be 6 feet 6 inches tall.

Dr. Phil has a new book out. Looks good, but I'd be afraid Dr. Phil's diet might make me bald.

The Pritikin Diet. Everything is non-fat milk in these diets. That's why kids aren't drinking milk any more; it tastes like fat-free dishwater.

They all have charts listing things you should eat, like half a piece of celery or 4.5 grams of apple sauce. Is there anyone who knows what a gram of applesauce looks like?

This is the most popular book this year. The South Beach Diet. There are some surprises in here. He has a list of foods to avoid and one of them is an apple. Maybe that's because apples are bad for the doctor's business: "An apple a day keeps the doctor without pay."

You've all seen the diet ads in the back of bad magazines. Before … After.

She took Hydroxycut to lose weight...before...midpoint...after. Boy, she's had that bathing suit a long while.

If I really wanted to lose weight, I know what I'd do. I'd cut my eyebrows.
Written By Andy Rooney