Not my typical post

... but it was too hilarious to pass up.  Sometimes I feel like this truly is the world we live in.
 
 
MY NAME IS DAVE AND I'M A CARBOHYDRATIC (or, carbohydrolic?)

I probably shouldn't admit this to you younger readers, but when my
generation was your age, we did some pretty stupid things. I'm
talking about taking CRAZY risks. We drank water right from the
tap. We used aspirin bottles that you could actually open with your
bare hands. We bought appliances that were not festooned with
helpful safety warnings such as, "DO NOT BATHE WITH THIS TOASTER."
But for sheer insanity, the wildest thing we did was - prepare to be
shocked......... we deliberately ingested carbohydrates.

I know, I know. It was wrong. But we were young and foolish, and
there was a lot of peer pressure. You'd be at a party, and there
would be a lava lamp blooping away, and a Jimi Hendrix record
playing. And then, when the mood was right, somebody would say: "You
wanna do some 'drates?" And the next thing you know, there'd be a
bowl of pretzels going around, or crackers, or even potato chips, and
we'd put these things into our mouths and just EAT them.

My only excuse was that we were ignorant. It's not like now, when
everybody knows how bad carbohydrates are, and virtually every
product is advertised as being "low-carb," including beer, denture
adhesives, floor wax tires, life insurance and Viagra.

Back then, we had no idea. Nobody did! Our own MOTHERS gave us
bread! Today, of course, nobody eats bread. People are terrified of
all carbohydrates, as evidenced by the recent mass robbery at a
midtown Manhattan restaurant, where 87 patrons turned their wallets
over to a man armed only with a strand of No. 8 spaghetti. ("Do what
he says! He has pasta!")

The city of Beverly Hills has been evacuated twice this month because
of reports - false, thank heavens - that terrorists had put a bagel
in the water supply. But as I say, in the old days we believed that
the reason you got fat was from eating calories," which are tiny
units of measurement that cause food to taste good".

When we wanted to lose weight, we went on low-calorie diets in which
we ate only inedible foods such as celery, which is actually a
building material. The problem with the low-calorie diet was that a
normal human could stick to it for, at most, four hours, at which
point he or she would have no biological choice but to sneak out to
the garage and snork down an entire bag of Snickers, sometimes
without removing the wrappers.

So nobody lost weight, and everybody felt guilty all the time. Many
people, in desperation, turned to disco. But then along came the
bold food pioneer who invented the Atkins Diet: Dr. Something
Atkins. Dr. Atkins discovered an amazing thing: Calories don't
matter! What matter are carbohydrates, which result when a carbo
molecule and a hydrate molecule collide at high speeds and form tiny
invisible doughnuts.

Dr. Atkins' discovery meant that as long as you avoided carbohydrates
you could, without guilt, eat high-fat, high-calorie foods such as
cheese, bacon lard, pork rinds and whale. You could eat an entire
pig, as long as the pig had not recently been exposed to bread. At
first, like other groundbreaking pioneers such as Galileo and Eminem,
Dr. Atkins met with skepticism, even hostility.

The Celery Growers Association hired a detective to - yes – stalk
him. His car tires were repeatedly slashed by what police determined
to be shards of Melba toast. But Dr. Atkins persisted, because he
had a dream - a dream that, some day, he would help the human race by
selling it 427 million diet books. And he did, achieving vindication
for his diet before his tragic demise in an incident that the autopsy
report listed as "totally unrelated to the undigested 28-pound bacon
cheeseburger found in his stomach."

But the Atkins Diet lives on, helping millions of Americans to lose
weight The irony is, you can't tell this by looking at actual
Americans, who have as a group, become so heavy that North America
will soon be underwater as far inland as Denver: Which can only mean
one thing: You people are still sneaking Snickers!! You should be
ashamed of yourselves!
 
 
I unfortunately haven't found the orignal source to be able to site this very funny quip.

FDA issues diet pill warning

The following FDA warning, revised Jan 8, 2009, is not exactly a "food for thought" post... but it is related to healthy weightloss and dieting. Just remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And in this case, it can be downright dangerous.
 
FDA Expands Warning to Consumers About Tainted Weight Loss Pills
 
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expanding its nationwide alert to consumers about tainted weight loss pills that contain undeclared, active pharmaceutical ingredients. On December 22, 2008, FDA warned consumers not to purchase or consume 28 different products marketed for weight loss. Since that time, FDA analysis has identified 41 more tainted weight loss products that may put consumers' health at risk.
 
An FDA analysis found that the undeclared active pharmaceutical ingredients in some of these products include sibutramine (a controlled substance), rimonabant (a drug not approved for marketing in the United States), phenytoin (an anti-seizure medication), phenolphthalein (a solution used in chemical experiments and a suspected cancer causing agent) and bumetanide (a diuretic). Some of the amounts of active pharmaceutical ingredients far exceeded the FDA-recommended levels, putting consumers' health at risk.
These weight loss products, some of which are marketed as "dietary supplements," are promoted and sold on various Web sites and in some retail stores. Some of the products claim to be "natural" or to contain only "herbal" ingredients, but actually contain potentially harmful ingredients not listed on the product labels or in promotional advertisements. These products have not been approved by the FDA, are illegal and may be potentially harmful to unsuspecting consumers. 
 
"These tainted weight loss products pose a great risk to public health because they contain undeclared ingredients and, in some cases, contain prescription drugs in amounts that greatly exceed their maximum recommended dosages," said Janet Woodcock, M.D., director, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, FDA. "Consumers have no way of knowing that these products contain powerful drugs that could cause serious health consequences. Therefore FDA is taking this action to protect the health of the American public."
 
Full article and listing of the 41 products:
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2008/NEW01933.html
 
 

Take some advice from a toddler

We are all born with the intuitive knowledge to eat when hungry and stop when satisfied.  Think back to when you were a child (or, if that is too long ago, think back to when your children were very young!).  Until "rules" are imposed by mom and dad, we govern our intake purely by instinct.  Children often have to be told to eat at mealtimes because instinct says that we do not need to eat yet if we are not feeling hungry. Before we "learned better," we ate the parts we liked best and stuck our tongues out at the rest; we did not feel guilty about eating one food vs. another food because it was fattening or sweet; we stopped when we were no longer hungry, even if the plate was not empty.  As adults, we know it is important to make healthy food choices that nourish our bodies, but beyond that, why did most of us lose touch with our innate ability to eat only when hungry and stop when satisfied?
 
It is learned behavior to eat when not hungry, to feel guilt or shame about our food choices, and to eat beyond satiety.  It can be unlearned as well.  It is true that self-monitoring--telling yourself that it's not ok to eat an entire bag of cookies for dinner--is an important skill.  However, it does no good to vilify certain foods and declare them "off limits".  This only makes us want the food more!  And then, consuming it results in negative feelings.  We feel like a failure because we ate a piece of cake even though we know we "shouldn't" eat sweets.  We feel so badly about ourselves that we resolve to try harder to adhere to a strict diet regimen. Next time we give in, we feel even worse.  It's a vicious cycle. And how many of us eat things we don't even really like because it's on our plates?
 
Wouldn't it be so much better to eat what we wanted, when we wanted, and never feel guilty about it again?? 
 
This is what a "normal" eater does.  You know, the naturally thin person that everyone hates!  The one who never seems concerned with dieting, is happy to indulge occasionally, and maintains a healthy weight.  They might eat the pizza and leave the crust.  They might scrape the icing off a cupcake, lick the fork, and toss the rest.  If this sounds like the way a child eats, you would be right!  Most children are excellent intuitive eaters until deregulated habits become ingrained in their behavior.  Normal eaters know that any food, in moderation, can be part of an overall healthy eating plan.
 
The secret is to eat when hungry, stop when satisfied, and, since we are all adults here, listen to your "inner grandmother" when it comes to nutrition.  You know, things like, "Eat your veggies before you have dessert", and "Two cookies are enough, dear."  It really is that simple.  Now, normal eaters do occasionally eat when they aren't hungry and continue past satiety.  They might enjoy popcorn at a movie, or celebrate a promotion with a fancy 6-course dinner even though they stopped being hungry long before dessert.  These types of behaviors are the exceptions and not the norm.  In general, they wait until they are hungry to eat, eat as soon as possible after noticing they are hungry (rather than starving themselves until some arbitrary point in the future), and stop eating when they are no longer hungry.  This means stopping when satisfied--not full. Adults often eat to the point that they are so full they feel physically uncomfortable.  Have you ever known a toddler to do this??  No! They stop eating at the point that their body no longer signals hunger. Normal eaters also eat what they like and leave the rest. 
 
Don't believe that intuitive eating can lead to weight loss or maintaining a normal weight?  The following article profiles Steven Hawks, a professor of health science, as he gives traditional "diets" the thumbs down and "intuitive eating" a nod of approval.  It helped him shed 50 pounds--painlessly and normally.
 
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/01/11/profile.hawks/

Danger in diet soda: All things in moderation

No, not it's not the formaldehyde myth, or a lecture about aspartame.
 
The "danger" I speak of has to do with the correlation between diet soda and obesity.  That is, those who consume larger amounts of diet pop have been found more likely to be obese than those who consume lesser amounts--even when compared to people who drink regular, non-diet soda.
 
The reasons are multi-factored, but the basic danger lies in the misconception that it's ok to drink large amounts of diet soft drinks with no ill-effects because they have zero or very few calories.  While they may indeed be calorie-free... and perhaps even caffeine-free and low-sodium... it's still not a "healthy" alternative, folks.  Water is the best way to go.  Fruit or vegetable juice is a nice option, as is milk (all have potential for lots of nutrients and vitamins, but be mindful of calories).  Diet pop has no redeeming qualities.  We just like the way it tastes.  The sweet taste itself can be detrimental to our healthful intentions by increasing the desire to continue consuming more and more sweets (it's classic conditioning--the more sweets you regularly ingest, the more you crave in your daily diet).
 
The notion of moderating the consumption of "diet" versions of things does not just apply to soft drinks.  The argument can be made that any "light" or "low fat" or "low carb" version of any food product lulls the consumer into a false sense of security with this label. We consequently tend to overeat a product that in some cases, when over-consumed, is worse for the body than the original product (such as trans fat found in margarine).  It may also be less satisfying than the original; another reason we eat more.
 
Now, before I make it sound like I'm condemning all things "L-I-T-E": I do drink diet pop, and I do buy skim milk and low fat cream cheese.  I am not suggesting that diet foods are evil.  The key is in moderation; being aware of the tendency to over-consume these products, and evaluating on a case-by-case basis whether you want the "real thing" or a "diet" version. 
 
The following article links consumption of diet pop to metabolic syndrome and obesity.  As always, I highly recommend you do your own research and make your own decisions. I can honestly say that I have noticed, prior to reading any articles on the topic, a connection in my own life between times when I've made an effort to limit my consumption of diet soda and times when I have not, and my cravings for sweets of other kinds throughout the day. 
 
http://www.getfitslowly.com/2008/02/12/the-dangers-of-diet-soda/