Here are my three parting words of advice: fight food fads.

You don't have to take this advice on nutrition, although it will be my last. I am retiring and returning to my husband Ace's home state of Washington.

So, like the aging quarterback who wants to summarize all he's learned on the field, I will share what I've learned from chefs and restaurateurs, dietitians and just plain great cooks: Our bodies want balance, moderation and variety.

	Asian Food Pyramid Click images for larger versions.
	Latin American Food Pyramid
	Mediterranean Food Pyramid
	Vegetarian Food Pyramid Click photo for larger image.

Sure, we may lose weight on The Zone, before we zone out; we may have dropped a few pounds eating grapefruit; and we may even have slipped into those tight slacks after a couple of weeks eating enough cabbage soup to feed a Third World city. Any diet works -- we just can't keep it off. Yo-yo dieting, here we come.

Maybe more important, although we may occasionally bolt down a fast fix over the kitchen sink, this isn't what Mother Nature -- or Mom and Dad -- intended. Our hearts yearn for fine food, well-prepared and enjoyed in a congenial setting with family and friends.

They don't call food a comfort for nothing.

Trouble is, we Americans often have too many meals that satiate, but they don't satisfy. As I've joked since I became your food editor, first for The Pittsburgh Press and now the Post-Gazette, I am suspicious of food that has an ingredient list longer than the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. I can tell you now: I wasn't joking. If you have to squint to read what's in your dinner, it's probably a bad dinner.

Unfortunately, too much of a good thing can also be a bad thing. We gain weight. We go on a fad diet. These diets come around as regularly as the tides, and then we get a tsunami of manufacturers trying to sell things, some of it of limited value.

More than a year ago, my husband, Ace, and I flew to Rome where I attended what I came to think of the "Pasta Fights Back" conference sponsored by the Boston-based Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust, a think tank that is associated with the Mediterranean diet, which includes grains (such as pasta), olive oil, fruits and vegetables, some dairy, seafood and the occasional treat of red meat. At the scientific conference, there was a lot of talk about the glycemic index and how foods that are low in the index are what we should be eating.

Finally, exasperated, one participant asked, "Does this mean we're never going to eat white bread again?"

He was right to feel frustrated. Whole grain bread is great, but centuries of svelte French women, with baguettes under their arms, can't be all wrong. No -- food has to be put in context. Pasta in excess can put on the pounds, but it remains an inexpensive food that is a wonderful carrier of nutritious foods, such as vegetables, lean meats and even the occasional creamy cheese sauce -- in moderation.

One diet doesn't fit all, either. Asians aren't going to give up their rice, Hispanics aren't going to spurn tortillas, Italians aren't going to ban macaroni, and neither am I. Anybody who thinks chocolate will be a thing of the past is wrong, and we don't need the latest "study" to tell us that chocolate is "good" for us. Of course it is! Why else are those endorphins coursing through my veins?

My theory is that it's better to have one bite of something you enjoy -- say, a Hershey's Kiss -- rather than eat your way around it with rice cakes and apples and end up unsatisfied. Better to eat the Kiss, savor it, sigh, then go for a walk. A long walk.

And if there's one thing I have learned as a food editor it's that I don't eat bad food. In Rome at the "Healthy Pasta Meals" conference, there was no bad food, though there may have been too much good food.

And that's the rub, says Sara Baer-Sinnott, who gave a talk on the history of fad diets. (Let me insert here that if any diet works for you long-term, go for it.)

The latest ones -- low-carb a la the late Dr. Atkins and its pretty stepsister, the South Beach diet -- were kind of, as Yogi Berra would have said, a deja vu all over again fad diet.

Sara, who grew up in Mt. Lebanon, says she's been on a few fad diets herself. Haven't we all? We should know better, too. (I did have one high school friend who was genetically disposed to being skinny. "They told me after I had my twins that I would gain weight. They lied.")

Judy Dodd, a registered dietitian, is a longtime Pittsburgh friend who loves good food as much as I do (I'll never forget our animated discussion of eating beignets in New Orleans). She joked she has the body type of a woman who was meant to "give birth to her baby in the field and keep right on working."

Skinny we may never be, but there is such a thing as not carrying so much weight that it's an albatross to working hard and having fun. (Truth in reporting demands that I reveal here that I have gained three pounds while I've been saying goodbye.)

Sara admitted she had succumbed to fad diets herself. "I will say I tried a number of fad diets. When I was a sophomore in college, I was going to be a bridesmaid, so I went on the Stillman diet and lost 30 pounds. I think I went on the grapefruit diet, too."

After that wedding-inspired weight loss, you can guess what happened.

Sara's changed her tune and her way of eating (never say die-it) since she married -- "My husband runs every day and seems to be able to metabolize food quite well" -- and became the mother of "two growing children," a daughter and son, now teens.

In a telephone interview, Sara said she was once "pretty overweight. I was eating bad food, then in college, I drank a lot of beer. I didn't know a lot about healthy eating, what some people learn intuitively."

Home on Christmas break, she had a regimen of sorts: "the beer and Christmas cookie diet."

Slowly she got to a reasonable weight. Five-foot-3 and slim today, she said she probably weighed 30 pounds more in college.

At food events, such as the Mediterranean conference, "I usually eat half what's on my plate. I don't do formal exercise, but I have a very active dog I love, a Rottweiler, and I walk her for at least half an hour a day."

She weighs less than her dog. Not everybody can say that.

Sara attacks both sides of the equation, which are food and exercise. "I love steak, but nobody needs 16 ounces, so I save it for two other meals."

Which brings us to her definition of a fad diet: any food plan that eliminates one group of food. Like low-fat and high-carbs or the reverse.

Fad diets "demonize macronutrients, like low carbs or low fat. It's a trick to get yourself psyched to do it. It's a game."

It's a game we seem to be winning, then many of us fall with a crash. And that's why we ought to avoid them. Yes, we lose the weight. Yes, our underwear fits again. Then, out of boredom, we cheat a little, then more. Soon we're right back where we started -- and a little more besides.

There is one last fad diet I keep coming back to. It was invented by a dietitian, too, albeit tongue in cheek. It's Mim Seidel's Hot Fudge Sundae Diet. "Every day, you eat this great hot fudge sundae -- superpremium ice cream, whipped cream, nuts, the works," she said. "I will make sure it's 1,000 calories, and you will lose weight."

It's about calories, she said, it's always about the calories. Still, when Mim comes out with her best-selling diet book, remember, you read it here first.