"Do you know how many points two small bourekas are?"

Six, according to this fascinating article about Israeli teens on Weight Watchers. While Israeli kids risk getting blown up when they go to cafes, it seems they face a more mundane risk as well: Globally, "Israel is in ninth place in the proportion of children who are in danger of becoming fat."

You can learn a lot about a culture by reading its diet articles. France seems to be worried about the influence of paquets de chips (i.e. American influence) and the evil food industry, whereas Israel has other concerns: "Niv describes the situation in the kitchen of her home during the past year: 'First of all, there is hardly anything sweet. After that, if I used to have two corn schnitzels after school, and a bowl of chicken with a side dish or pasta, now I have only two corn schnitzels or a bowl of pasta. That's all I can have.'" I don't know what corn schitzels are, but they sound substantial. (Niv, the supposedly fat girl whose photo accompanies the article, is thin by Chicago standards and more or less average by Manhattan ones.) And then, after a class trip on which a the teen lost weight, seemingly through dehydration: "She just didn't feel well, so she ascended Masada in the cable car and did not walk down the Snake Trail. Yes, and for two days she ate nothing. Now Niv stands on the scale and Riki Ashin writes 1,000 grams less on the card. A whole kilo got left behind in the desert."