AROUND the time that Netflix released an entire season of “House of Cards” at once, so that viewers could gorge on all 13 episodes, a friend sent me a plaintive e-mail about the way that foodie-favored restaurants give her no option other than gorging.

She misses salads. (Yes, it’s possible. Really.) She’s nostalgic for healthy sides. In one place where she recently dined, she ordered kale, only to find that it was fried and, adding insult to artery, pummeled with candied pancetta. In another place, slivers of pastrami accessorized an unsuspecting salmon. She encounters bacon on brussels sprouts, bacon in sundaes and martinis, bacon, bacon everywhere, along with marrow and liver and lard.

“It’s all or nothing,” she wrote, flagging a dichotomy: cooking in trendy restaurants has never been fattier, while the trend of “cleansing” with a severe regimen of liquefied fruits, vegetables and nuts has never been hotter. Feast or famine. Binge or beet juice.

I turned from her lament to the front page of The Times. It reported the accidental death of someone participating in the X Games, a magnet for “extreme athletes,” as the article called them. The word “extreme” stuck with me and struck a chord. We compete extremely (look at Lance). Work out extremely (look all around you). Eat extremely. Watch extreme amounts of whatever we’ve decided we love, which we love in extremis. Even our weather is extreme: superstorms, Frankenstorms, snowmageddons.