Same here, actually. I feel like instinctual cooking - the ability to be creative with food and come up with your own food ideas - is becoming a lost art. I am really intuitive in a kitchen - I can look at someone's pantry and fridge and figure out several dishes that could be made out of what's there. I've always been able to do it even when I was little, without requiring much adult guidance. Basically at a certain age my folks gave me a stool to help in the kitchen and I just kinda went at it. But it seems like a lot of people now have almost zero concept of coming up with their own meals, or being able to figure out what's healthy and what's not. A friend told me that in college, her freshman dorm mate thought that instant mashed potatoes was a "health food."
There is no good diet pill. Something that might work in the short term will ruin your health and you will have a miserable life in your later years. Here's a great diet that will keep you young, healthy and trim and is very simple: whole grains, beans, veggies cooked and raw. You can eat all you want of those except avacadoes. You can also have very small amounts of fruit and nuts and seeds but avoid oils and especitally fried foods. You need to take B complex and a multi mineral supplement along with it.
If you need to take supplements to make up for what you're not eating.. i wouldn't say its a very good diet.. imho also Extra Virgin Olive Oil is very healthy.. its been known to prevent colon cancer.. it helps prevent heart disease by lowering LDL(bad cholesterol) levels and raising HDL(good cholesterol) levels.. and most of the fatty acids in olive oil are mono-saturated
All Alli really does is make oil come out of your ass (anal leakage) if you eat too much fat. What I don't like about that is that fat is not necessarily the enemy when it comes to gaining weight. It's usually just too much food in general combined with not enough movement. People need to just learn to develop a stronger will power. What helped me a lot in my weight loss was keeping a journal of what I ate through the day to keep myself in check. I kind of "trained" myself into better eating this way (I basically followed a nutrition plan I designed myself based on my own studies of nutritional science). That, combined with rigorous and regular exercise (I shoot for an hour a day and try not to miss a workout unless I'm sick or injured) is what it takes. I have a very unforgiving metabolism so I pretty much have to stick to something or I easily gain weight back. It takes will power, but I'd rather do that than have grease come out mah bum.