More About Interpreting Food Labels

Okay, as another object lesson, here's the ingredients for another drink, one very popular, at least 'round here, where--amazingly, to my mind--moms often buy it for their kids under the mistaken impression that it's like buying their kids "juice." Remember, by law, ingredients are listed in descending order. Whatever is listed first is what there is the most of, okay?

Water

Corn syrup

2% or less of each of the following: concentrated juices (orange, tangerine, apple, lime, grapefruit)

citric acid

malic acid

ascorbic acid (vitamin C)

thiamin hydrochloride (vitamine B1)

Natural flavors

modified cornstarch

canola oil

sodium citrate

cellulose gum

sucralose

sodium hexametaphosphate

potassium sorbate to protect flavor

yellow #5

Yellow #6

Mmmm, mmmm, MMMMMMM!!!!!! Doesn't that sound yummy? Well, maybe to the uninitiated. Let's talk. First of all, let's see if we can't put everything--the amount of everything--in perspective. Look at that third line. Isn't that telling you that except for water and corn syrup--to which we'll get back in a minute--none of the ingredients make up more than two percent of the drink? Sure looks that way to me. So, being very generous, let's assume that there's two percent of everything, which would be ludicrous, nobody's going to make a drink that's 2 percent vitamin B1, right?

Still...there are fifteen ingredients after water and corn syrup, so that's a maximum of thirty percent, meaning that, at minimum, this tasty beverage is seventy percent water and corn syrup. The reality is that hardly any of those fifteen ingredients is likely to amount to even one percent of the total volume of liquid, so it's really much more likely that this stuff is 85 or ninety percent water and corn syrup, and that's being generous. It might be 95 percent or even more.

Now, that's bad, right off the bat. The water's not bad, of course, but corn syrup...

Corn syrup deserves a special circle in culinary Hell. It is a sweetener, obviously made from corn, and it is cheap, partly because the growing of corn is federally subsidized. It is a nutritional nightmare. If you deliberately wanted to make yourself fatter than--well, fat--and wreak havoc with your insulin mechanism, this is one of the means by which you would choose to do it. It is vicious, nasty stuff, not something you want to put in your body if you can reasonably avoid it.

So, right off the bat, just after the first two ingredients, you can tell you're basically drinking sugar water. Yummy.

Concentrated fruit juices? Okay. That might not be so bad. You just have no clue how much you're getting here. Remember, it's two percent or less. Could be next to nothing.

Citric acid and malic acid? Added to give the drink that citrus-y tartness.

Vitamin C? Very cheap to make. Putting it in the drink allows them to put "Vitamin C!" on the label, which makes the ignorant feel like they're buying their kids something healthy. Same thing with the B1.

Natural flavors? What the heck is that?

Cornstarch. Anyone who's done a reasonable amount of cooking knows what the cornstarch is there for. It's a thickener, so that this concoction pours out of the bottle more like juice and less like water. It's also starch, that is, it'll fatten you.

Canola oil? There are some scare stories circulating about canola oil. As far as I'm concerned, it's just oil, probably added here to improve texture.

Sodium citrate? More tartness.

Cellulose gum? Added to improve texture. Remember, they want this stuff to look like juice.

Sucralose? Basically chlorinated table sugar. It's an artificial sweetener. Like having a bucketload of corn syrup in it didn't make it sweet enough already.

Sodium hexametaphosphate: in all honesty, I have no idea why this is in here. It has a variety of uses, one of which is apparently as a water softener!

Potassium sorbate: a preservative.

Yellow #5 and Yellow #6: artificial colors, fairly obviously added to make this sugar water look more "orange-y."

And there you have it. The bulk of the story is told in the first three lines. It's basically sugar water with a few cheaply-made vitamins and flavorings and some gunk to make it pour more like juice. Practically guaranteed to make you and your kids fatter than you ever wanted to think about, at least if you drink it on a regular basis. Drink this stuff regularly, and you can pretty much bet on fighting obesity, and maybe someday, heart disease and diabetes, too!

The pitiful part is that you can buy this stuff for about 2.75/gallon, and you can get Wal-Mart reconstituted orange juice for about 3.25/gallon. You'd put up with crap like this to save fifty cents?

Let's Learn How to Interpret a Dang Ingredients Label, Shall We?

Of course we shall. I have repeatedly been struck by the number of people that think they're eating or drinking something good for them, but are actually consuming utter garbage, and I am convinced that often it's because they either have not looked at the label or have no idea what it means. So let's take a look, at, say, the label for a certain popular, allegedly healthy drink, which shall remain nameless except that I've got a family member that thinks it's the bomb. I have to admit that I don't have a bottle of the stuff in front of me, but I did read the ingredients label last time we had some in the house, so I swiped the following from a website elsewhere once I recognized it. I'd link, but that would involve identifying the drink, and I'm more interested in learnin' ya somethin'.

Filtered water
Concentrated Fruit juices (pineapple and mango)
Malic Acid
Concentrated Purple Carrot Juice (Color)
Natural Flavor
Acesulfame-Potassium
Sucralose

There is also a separate part of the label that shows "medicinal ingredients":

41mcg Chromium Polynicotinate
137mg Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid)
450mg Garcinia Cambogia Rind Extract

Okay, the first thing you need to know is that by federal law, an ingredients label lists ingredients in descending order, that is, whatever's listed first is what it has the most of, and so forth.

What's listed first on this "healthy" drink?

Oh, that would be "water." More water than anything else.

Then "concentrated fruit juices." How much? You don't know, do you? But I would suggest to you that anything that pours out of the bottle with the consistency of water, as this drink and so many like it do, doesn't actually have a boatload of fruit juice in it. I mean, you've seen fruit juice pour out of a bottle, haven't you? Looks a little bit thicker than water, doesn't it? This stuff ain't like that. It's very thin. Probably not much fruit juice in there.

Then there's "Malic Acid." It does occur naturally, but bank on it, when it's added to food, it's being done so that it has a tartness to it. How do I know? Simple. Googled it.

Then there's a little bit of color. How much does it take to color a bottle of what is almost certainly mostly water? Probably not much.

Then there's "natural flavor." What the heck does that mean? No one knows!

Then there's Acesulfame-Potassium. You thought it was some sort of vitamin or mineral additive, didn't you? 'Cause it said "potassium?" Got ya. This is a sweetener. It is abundantly sweeter than regular sugar, but apparently there hasn't been all that much testing done on it. Again, how do I know? Googled it.

Then there's sucralose. What the heck is that? Mmmmm--basically chlorinated table sugar.

Okay, so far, we've figured out that this stuff is basically heavily diluted fruit juice with some "natural flavor" and artifiical sweeteners. Remember, they're marketing this stuff as somehow being healthy. What makes it healthy? The diluted fruit juice? The coloring? The tartness? The "natural flavor?" The artificial sweeteners?

Probably not. Maybe it's the "medicinal ingredients?"

What the heck is the chromium polynicotinate doing in there? Well, apparently chromium is supposed to play a role in carbohydrate and fat metabolism, and some people think it might help you lose weight. The science is inconclusive, to say the least, and if you're trying to lose weight, I'd suggest that you focus heavily on what this guy has to say instead of trying to do it by adding more chromium to your diet than your body is likely to be able to use.

Now: vitamin c, or ascorbic acid. 137 mg of the stuff. Well, vitamin c is good, isn't it? True dat. It's also cheap, which makes it popular with people trying to make their products sound healthy. 137 mg is also about what you would get eating two cups of cantaloupe. Now, let me ask you: do you really think that God designed your body to need the amount of vitamin C you get in two cups of cantaloupe every time you drink a bottled beverage? Probably not? I would certainly suggest not. And since what vitamin C your body doesn't absorb exits your body pretty quickly, this is, frankly, pretty much a waste of space. The only reason it's there is to sucker you into thinking you're drinking a vitamin pill.

Okay, what the heck is the last thing, garcinia cambogia rind extract? An alleged appetite suppressant, that's what it is. Saying that appetite suppressants are probably not the best way to lose weight is understating the matter considerably.

And you're paying a buck and a half per bottle for this stuff at the convenience store? In the name of health?

Cheez louise. Develop some curiousity and learn how to read a label. Consider this an introductory lesson.

Sadly, I Suspect This is True

Mark Hyman says:

We complain of not having enough time to cook, but Americans spend more time watching cooking on the Food Network, than actually preparing their own meals. In his series Food Revolution, Jamie Oliver showed us how we have raised a generation of Americans who can’t recognize a single vegetable or fruit, and don’t know how to cook

I hate to say it, but that really is how it's beginning to look to me.

Hat tip: Carla.

Maybe Your Fat Friends Are Leading You Down the Wrong Path

Read it and weep, those of ye wearing the relaxed-fit jeans:

Americans will keep growing fatter until 42 percent of the nation is considered obese, and having fat friends is part of the problem, researchers said on Thursday.

The prediction by a team of researchers at Harvard University contradicts other experts who say the nation's obesity rate has peaked at 34 percent of the U.S. population.

The finding is from the same group, led by Nicholas Christakis, that reported in 2007 that if someone's friend becomes obese, that person's chances of becoming obese increase by more than half.

They now think this same phenomenon is driving the obesity epidemic, which will climb slowly but steadily for the next 40 years.

You may wonder why I harp on this every so often.

Again, I'm not trying to pick on people for being fifteen or twenty pounds overweight. That's not such a big, hairy deal, not as long as--and this is important--you are otherwise fairly fit.

But people that are fifty, sixty, even a hundred or hundred and fifty pounds overweight--they are killing themselves, and are partly responsible for killing the country's budget as well.

One of the smartest things that Mike Huckabee ever said--remember, Huck used to be amongst the ranks of the quivering fatties--was that lifestyle represents about eighty percent of the cost of health care in this country. I haven't ever looked it up, but my day-to-day working experience makes me quite willing to believe it. Over and over and over again, I deliver and install medical equipment, almost without exception for people whose complexes of medical conditions are directly related to their weight and/or smoking too many cigarettes (I will admit that I'm not convinced that an occasional cigarette is all that big a deal. However, hardly anybody ever smokes an "occasional" cigarette). COPD, diabetes, bad knees, bad backs--you name it! Obesity even makes asthma worse.

Younger fatties--you people that are in your twenties and thirties, but are already seventy or eighty pounds overweight--please believe me, you have absolutely no idea what sort of medical hell awaits you.

I have said for years that though I am, in principle, opposed to federally-funded medical care programs, the reality is that if you could deny services to people who've literally eaten themselves into a state of ill health, cruel as it sounds, there would, in fact, be plenty of money to help the people who've been crippled in car wrecks through no fault of their own, the people who contracted some loathsome disease that no one could possibly have seen coming, etc.

The pitiful thing is that avoiding obesity is so darn simple. I can flatly guarantee you that--barring some weird genetic abnormality--if you do these two things, you will never get huge:

1) Don't eat very much crap. Don't ask me for a detailed definition. In general, "crap" is anything with a bunch of empty calories and/or transfats in it.

It floors me that people indulge in complicated calorie-counting and "points" schemes. It is totally unnecessary. Just don't eat very much crap and the calories and so forth will take care of themselves, okay?

2) Move. Get some exercise that at least mildly stresses your musculature and heart and lungs. You don't have to run marathons, just be reasonably active, dadgummit.

A Widdle Bit Atfay, Are We?

If so, read this. Heck, read it even if you ain't carryin' an extra ounce. Here's a short snip:

Latest figures confirm the ridiculous: three out of four of you will be ‘overweight or obese’ by 2020. To gauge perspective: there are now more ‘fat’ people than ‘white’ people in America. Perhaps our bigots of the future will swing their hatred away from ‘race’ to the slim and healthy.

The shrinking minority are, indeed, the shrinking minority.

Stupid? Welcome to a population who know less about what they put into their mouths than they do about, well, take your pick…celebrities or cars or American Idol or iPhones? Animals have the intelligence to know what to eat and to never get fat (except the ones fed by humans). Yet that simple challenge, gaining nourishment without destroying the body, is beyond your capabilities?

OK, I know what you're thinkin': "How heavy are you, Mr. Wiseacre?" About fifteen pounds too heavy, and gradually shrinkin'. Excellent pulse rate and blood pressure. The "gradually shrinkin'" part is due almost solely to gradually just paying more attention to what I cook at home.

Diet and Heart Disease

You gotsta read this 'un.

Hat tip to Shannon at Nourishing Days.

Sanchin and Blood Pressure

I was discussing Sanchin (I should note that Sanchin is not part of the RyuTe curriculum) with someone the other night, and heard the "sanchin-makes-the-blood-pressure-spike" story.

I have read/heard this story many times. I think it is given credence by a pretty fair number of Okinawan Goju Ryu practitioners having given up the ghost relatively early in life. It has a superficial appearance of validity.

Goju Ryu emphasizes Sanchin, and a lot of Okinawan Goju practitioners have died young, sometimes of something heart-related. Makes sense, and yet...

I never heard the same thing about Japanese Goju Ryu practitioners. Maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but my understanding is that Yamaguchi Gogen lived to a ripe old age. As far as I know, Yamaguchi Gosei hasn't croaked yet. I haven't heard of any problems with Sanchin-related blood pressure problems from the local Goju crowd.

And, too, Isshin Ryu uses Sanchin. There's a famous photo of Arsenio Advincula practicing it. I swear, he looks like his muscles are going to bust right through his skin.

I believe he's in his seventies and doing just fine. Could be wrong about his age, but I'm fairly sure.

Chito Ryu uses Sanchin, too. Never heard any stories about Chito Ryu practitioners dropping dead from blood pressure problems.

Morio Higaonna still seems to be going strong. Toguchi Seikichi was an old man when he died. And...is Eichi Miyazato still living? I'm not sure. He's an old man if he is...

In short...

I've never been convinced that Sanchin is a problem for most folks. Not that it would matter a whole lot to me, personally, as at least at this point, I do not practice the kata. But I might sometime. My instructor still practices some Goju Ryu kata, amongst them Tensho (although, due to his deteriorating health, he does it without the restricted breathing, the "lion's breath," as he calls it), and I rather get the feeling that he would teach me Tensho if I asked him, but that I had better learn Sanchin first. So it might happen. But I digress...

The more I look into it, the more I can't help but notice (Goju folks will have to forgive me!) that a lot of those famous Goju Ryu practitioners may have been fearsomely strong, but they were also blessed with...

...well...

...fearsomely big bellies...

...they're finding out that belly fat is a killer, you know...

At any rate, if you poke around the net a little bit, you find things like this quote from a forum ("Carl" speaking), emphasis mine:

Your question, "Is Sanchin dangerous to practice?" is a very good question. This argument has been going on for a long time. It really all depends on who you talk to. I once performed an experiment where I wore a blood pressure cuff while doing pushups and while performing Sanchin. Well, guess what. My blood pressure was higher while performing pushups than while performing Sanchin kata. And believe me, I wasn't holding back while performing Sanchin kata. People say that the oldtimers died young from performing Sanchin kata. I think this is hogwash. Remember, they simply didn't have the health care and nutrition we have today.

and this small study--yes, there's actually been a study!--which I think pretty much settles the question.

Sanchin Kata was performed in the Isshin-ryu Karate method for the purpose of the study. Isshin-ryu is a combination of Shorin-ryu and Goju-ryu Karate style created by Master Tatsuo Shimabuku. Each participant of the study performed Sanchin Kata on a real time EKG (Electrocardiographs), similar to a stress test, for the duration of the Kata. Blood pressure and pulse checks were performed both manually and mechanically at 30 second intervals during the performance of Sanchin, as well as at one minute intervals for five minutes both pre and post exercise. Prior to commencing the study it was determined that a physiological baseline should be established as a basis for comparison. This was done by having each participant of the study receive an EKG and blood pressure check while at rest, and while squatting 70% of their own body weight for three sets of 12-15 repetitions.

The 1997 Sanchin study performed and compared in the manner described above showed no significant physiological functioning difference between performing squats and performing Sanchin Kata. According to Dr. Seufert,

Based on this study I don't find the practice of Sanchin to be any better or worse for someone than the performance of any other strenuous activity, but, as with any exercise program, participants should consult their own physician prior to starting. Results showed an increase in both blood pressure and pulse in both exercises, however the increase was almost identical. Their where times during the performance of Sanchin that the EKG was unreadable due to muscular tension, but overall it was within normal limits for every participant involved.

And there you pretty much have it: Yes, Sanchin raises the blood pressure--about the same way that lifting weights does. If you're not going to have problems lifting weights, you're probably not going to have problems doing Sanchin. As this Dr. Seufert suggested, you might want to check with your doctor. And of course, you will want to get decent instruction as to how to do the kata. I have seen people--or, more accurately, seen video of people--doing it in such a way that merely watching them raised my blood pressure.

Just sayin'.

For My Fat Friends, Relatives, Acquaintances, and Church Members

Yeah, I know. You think I just called you "fat." Not really. You're the one who decided the title included you, aren't you? Well, now that you've admitted that there's an issue, let's talk about things for a minute.

Why am I interested in this subject? It's really pretty simple. I know what's going to happen to you. It's not that I'm psychic or anything, it's just that I do a lot of work with old people, and I can see what kind of shape you are going to be in twenty or thirty years down the road if you keep up the crap that you're doing now. If Alzheimer's doesn't get you (and yes, you can lessen your risk of Alzheimer's via some lifestyle choices) and cancer doesn't get you (and yes, you can lessen your risk of cancer via some lifestyle choices), if you're fat and out of shape, in your old age (maybe sooner!), you are very likely to suffer from unnecessarily bad knees, poor balance, some form of diabetes, COPD, high blood pressure, brittle bones, and general frailty. I am not exaggerating in the slightest. I see this constellation of conditions all the time. Please believe me, you don't want to wind up there.

I know you already know that. I know that you've tried and failed to get fitter, or you've wished you could find the time, or you've been planning on getting started--next week, or next month, or whatever. I'm not trying to condemn you. And I hope you don't think that I'm telling you that you have to get boot-camp skinny and fit to avoid all these illnesses. I'm not. An extra ten or fifteen pounds or so (depending largely on your gender, height, etc.) isn't that big a deal as long as you are otherwise reasonably fit.

It's the people that are seventy, eighty, more than a hundred pounds overweight that concern me.

Used to be, most of those people were at least in their fifties. You can easily understand how it might happen. You live in the United States, after all, not one of those third-world countries where the day's activities consist of finding enough twigs to roast your supper of grubs and berries. Here, there's food everywhere. I know office personnel who keep candy bowls on their desks, for cryin' loud, just for the sake of passers-by! Under circumstances like that, it is easy to understand how a person could pick up five pounds a year from 25 to 65, and wind up, at retirement, a hundred or more pounds too heavy. But over the last decade or so, I have seen more and more young people--thirty and younger--that are grossly overweight. It is mind-blowing that anyone could gain that kind of weight that fast. Here is a brief explanation of how it might be done, and perhaps some insight into how you might avoid the same fate yourself, or go from being seventy pounds overweight to, say, fifteen. Just for example.

You can find a lot of places on the web that will tell you all about calorie requirements--here, it says that the "average" man needs about 2500 and the "average" woman needs about 2000. WebMd says that according to their formula

...a 25-year-old man who exercises 30 to 60 minutes every day with moderate or vigorous activity should eat about 2,800 calories a day, while a sedentary 65-year-old woman needs just 1,600 calories. An active 45-year-old man needs 2,600 calories, while an active woman of the same age needs 2,000 (also for 30 to 60 minutes of exercise each day).

I didn't go to the trouble of looking up how many calories a 45-year-old couch potato needs, but I'm pretty sure it's not 2,800 for men and 2,000 for women. How many people of any age do you know who are getting 30 to 60 minutes of exercise every day? Before you answer that question, let me suggest to you that people who are getting that amount of exercise typically know more people who are getting regular exercise, and vice versa, so your own lifestyle will probably skew your answer a little bit. And let me also suggest that walking around your workplace at a normal pace and that playing with small children isn't really "exercise" in any meaningful sense.

Okay, now that you've come to your depressing conclusions about whether or not you or anyone else you know is really "active," let's look at some other numbers:

calories in a 20-oz bottle of pepsi=250
calories in a candy bar--200-300
calories in a plain donut--185
calories in a 12-oz latte--120-200
calories in a slice of fruit pie--200-300
calories in a can of beer--150
calories in a chocolate-chip cookie--130
calories in a serving (3/4 cup) of captain crunch--109
calories in a large french fry--500
calories in a double cheeseburger--650
calories in a slice of pepperoni pizza--290

So, let's see how your day looks--and hope that you don't say to yourself, "Has he been watching me?"

You go to bed late because you've been watching cable tv, or reading some reactionary, right-wing redneck's blog. You get up later than you should. You are in a hurry. After getting yourself together in the bathroom, you stagger to the kitchen and wolf down a big bowl of your kids' breakfast cereal. There is no way that is 3/4 cup. It's at least 1 1/2 cups. That's 218 calories, assuming you didn't scoop sugar on it, which of course you do, and off the top of my head, that's about 50 calories a teaspoon, and you use two, so that's 318 calories at least, even before you get out of the house.

When you do get out of the house, you realize that you haven't had your caffeine fix, so you stop at Starbuck's or Quik Trip and pick yourself up a latte. A 12-oz one is 120-200 calories. Does anyone ever actually get a 12-oz latte? And while you're there, you might as well get a donut. A plain one is about 185 calories.

About two and a half hours later, it's time for your morning break. Time for a Pepsi. A 20-oz bottle is 250 calories. Have a chocolate-chip cookie with that? Mais oui! Another 130 calories.

A couple hours later, it's time for lunch. Considering that "all" you've had to eat is a bowl of cereal, a donut, and a cookie, you're hungry. You go get a combo meal at the burger joint. The double burger is 650 calories. The large fries are 500 calories. A 20-oz drink is 250 calories, but of course, that's the "small" size these days, so you've got a 32-oz frosty beverage for about 400 calories. On the way back, you pick up a candy bar--about 250 calories--for your afternoon break.

Of course, you are feeling a little bit waxed by the time that afternoon break rolls around. You need some caffeine. Pepsi has caffeine. There's another 250 calories.

You are in a hurry for dinner. You certainly didn't put anything in the crock pot, so you need to pick up something fast. How about pizza? You eat three--no, four--slices of pepperoni pizza at 290 calories each. More pepsi? No, it's time to relax. Have a couple of 150-calorie beers. Finish up with a slice of that pie that's in the fridge for 250 more calories.

Okay, let's add that up:

cereal--318
latte--120
donut--185
Pepsi x 2--500
cookie--130
burger, fries, and drink--1550
candy bar--250
pizza--1160
beer x 2--300
pie--250
------------------
total--4763 calories

And the pathetic part is that really, in terms of total volume, you maybe didn't eat that much! You might very well look at that and say to yourself, "But that's not that much. Any perfectly normal man could easily eat that much in a day. Maybe he'd be eating hearty, but that's not exactly eating like a pig, either." And you'd be right. It's not the quantity of food and beverage that you ate--it's its nature. It's pretty much all empty starches and trans fats. It is, in fine, crap. You spent your day, probably quite unwittingly and almost certainly unintentionally, eating crap.

Eating carbohydrates triggers a hormonal response—insulin secretion—that signals our bodies to accumulate fat. This is why the fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be. Sugar, flour and other refined carbohydrates produce an exaggerated version of this response, and so are particularly fattening.

I highly recommend you read the whole article. There is more to the science of weight control, diet, and health than "don't eat carbs," of course, but this article will still be an eye-opener for many people.

When you don't get enough sleep, you produce more of a hormone called ghrelin, which stimulates your appetite. In other words, if you don't get enough sleep, you want to eat more. And guess what--in that state, you're much more likely to want to eat useless crap.

And, lastly: exercise. You do not have to run marathons to control your weight and be reasonably fit, but you do need something that helps you maintain your muscle mass--which is important in terms of burning calories and leveling out your blood sugar, don'tcha know--and when it comes right down to it, the "best" exercise is the one that you will actually do. Personally, I recommend karate, but you might want to try running (if you actually run, instead of plod, it's actually kind of fun) or Praisemoves or something.

There you go. Hope that helps.

What Really Makes Us Fat?

'Tis as I suspected: there will be people reading this blog who feel the need to make a few, ah, shall we say, "lifestyle changes." I will publish more and more stuff dealing with certain of these over the next several months. Not that I pretend to be an expert, God knows, but I have a few peculiar advantages over some folks due to the hideous mistakes and boneheaded errors I've made over the years sheer grace of God that has been exhibited in my life.

For starters, for those who are interested, read this. You will not regret spending the time, I promise.

Just Keep It To Yourself, Okay?

Your "health" problems, that is. When I listen to people gripe and moan about how awful they feel, and how they go and go and go to the doctor and never seem to get better, I almost always find myself thinking the same cotton-pickin' thing:

Will you shut up about that? You don't get any kind of regular sleep, you subsist wholly on utter garbage for food, you don't get any exercise, you smoke cigarettes, you have no spiritual life--just exactly what would you expect to feel like, but hammered dog squeeze? Geez louise, get a grip, willya?

Not that I personally know anybody like that, of course.

Breakfast in a Flash

---

Another old post.

---

I'm trying to take better care of my health. Lately, I've become fond of this breakfast because it's good for my circulatory and digestive systems and chock full of vitamins and it's cheap and easy.

The first thing to do is to get a few bags of frozen fruit. Wal-Mart sells little bags of whole, frozen strawberries, bags of sliced peaches, and bags of blueberries. Take these, chop 'em up into small pieces, stuff 'em back into their bags, and throw 'em back into the freezer. This is a big time saver later on.

Pick yourself a nice, high-sided microwaveable blowl and dump a suitable quantity of Wal-Mart-brand pan-toasted oats into it--for me, it's one cup--and the appropriate amount of water according to the package directions (You can adjust up or down on subsequent days. I don't even bother to measure the water anymore; I just eyeball it). Nuke this for two minutes, then add honey to taste (start with a tablespoon and adjust) and chopped fruit as desired. Stir for about thirty seconds. The fruit will thaw and the oatmeal will cool off to just the right temperature. You could add some chopped pecans if you feel really adventurous.

Eat that and drink some black coffee, which is loaded with antioxidants, and you'll be fit to face the day. Assuming you've already gotten your morning workout in, of course...

A Truly Excellent Post on Government Health Care

The whole post is good. Please read it.

Money quote:

If you allow yourself to be dragged into discussions about effectiveness, or the lack thereof, of various public options -- you have fallen into the trap of having a discussion about how best to "fix" the "system."

No.

You do not want a health care "system." If the "system" is broken, you do not want to fix it or tinker with it. You do not want to give away the argument to your opponents that a system -- albeit a better-operating system -- is what we all desire.

No.

What we desire is liberty. The freedom to choose. Domain over our own bodies. Our selves.

That is what America stands for. That is what the first Americans fought and died for. It is the very essence of the American character. And it is what these people will destroy if they bring in public health care.

Hat tip to the inimitable Tyson Wynn.

The Gadflies are Often the Interesting Ones

I know; like you haven't got enough stuff to keep up with online already. But here's an interesting blog, Junkfood Science, which I found via a link on Pond'rings, that some amongst you might enjoy.

Anyone who's paid serious attention knows that health and diet science has a certain element of groupthink to it; it wasn't that long ago that "low-fat" was the big, hairy deal. As a result, large numbers of people (and now they really are large) felt free to eat whatever they darn well pleased, as long as it was "low fat," and they bolted down enough calories to fuel a racehorse, and now, you go down to Wally World, and the number of people, many of them fairly obviously under forty, who are carrying around a whole 'nother person on their bodies, is just mind-numbing.

And in the meantime, the long-term studies have indicated that as far as length of life was concerned, total fat content of the diet just wasn't that big a deal. But hardly anybody knows that.

There's a whole lot of opinion on the subject of diet, physical fitness, and body weight, and I'm not trying to write a magnum opus on the subject here. Personally, I tend to take everything with a grain of salt. During the mania about "high-fat" diets, I couldn't help but notice the occasional article about the Irish--I mean, they apparently butter their margarine, their fat intake is so high--but their incidence of heart disease is lower than ours. Ah, but guess what? They walk all over the island!

Okinawa, last I heard, had the highest average lifespan on the planet. Diet? Typically Japanese, that is, fish, vegetables, rice and the like. Exercise? Again, from what I understand, lots of walking, and of course, you can't ignore the omnipresence of karate there.

Healthiest diet on the planet? Judging from the results, a lot of people think it's the Mediterranean diet--again, lots of seafood, veggies, fruit, some cheeses, and enough olive oil to drown a goat.

Okay, you get the idea. I'm open to well-thought-out critiques of the prevailing wisdom when it comes to health, and personally, though I'm pretty well convinced from my work that a combination of being seriously overweight and inactive really will hurt you, I also think most health risks are overblown. A few extra pounds doesn't appear to be that big a deal; nor does an occasional cigar or pipe (I don't smoke either anymore, in case you're wondering); having a beer won't bother most people, and some wine actually appears to be good for you, though as a Southern Baptist, a lot of people would have me ignore that.

As far as I can tell, if you obey two simple rules, the odds are in your favor:

1) Don't eat obvious junk. At least not much.

2) Stay, for cryin' out loud, fairly active.

Cheez louise. You'd think this wouldn't be that hard for people to understand...