Government Cheese

Liquid Candy: "The Antithesis of Healthy"

2007-03-12T17:29:00.000-04:00

Vitamin enriched soda pop merely diabetes in sheep's clothing

But is it as Good as the Risotto?

2007-03-06T18:02:00.000-05:00

I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore

A biotech company in California (surprise) is developing the latest in so-called "Frankenstein Foods": A species of rice that contains human genes. The reason? Since the grains contain the same proteins found in mother's milk, it will make the rice easier for young systems to control diarrhea.

Ventria's website features a press release extolling the virtues of adding Lactiva™ and Lysomin™ to rice-based electrolyte solutions.

Apparently, the Sacramento-based company has created synthetic versions of the human-gene proteins lactoferrin and lysozyme, and developed a method of infusing baby rice seedlings by innoculating them with bacteria containing the proteins. They have recently been approved to grow acres of this GMO crop in Kansas, to a loud, expected outcry.

The real flaw in this plan? Rice-based foods a pharmeceuticals are no better than any grain-based food. And conducting lab experiments to make rice more digestible is like mixing a neutralizing agent into gasoline so you can drink it safely. What's the point?

Put Your Arms Around Me Like a Circle Round the Son

2007-02-28T18:05:00.000-05:00

A Brit mom overfeeds her son until the nanny state takes him away.

What do you expect of a parent who would rather give in than deal with a whining, begging kid?...

"If I didn't give him enough at teatime then he would just go on at us all night for snacks and stuff," she told ITV.

Connor McCreaddie is ready for McD's

Don't Clone A Cow, Man

2007-02-23T16:14:00.001-05:00

French Paradox

2006-03-27T19:01:00.000-04:00

It’s been a while

The cloned piggies are back in the news, and, like we suspected, they are good for you.

In what appears to be an effort to save Omega-3 rich fish from over-harvesting, geneticists have spliced a gene that makes “good” fat from a tiny, bacteriovorous soil nematode called Caenorhabditis elegans, into the nucleus of a fetal pig cell. The result is a healthier slab of bacon: Pork meat that is more Omega-3 and less Omega-6. Mmmmm.

The other other white meat

I love the concession that “…no one knows what their meat tastes like…” How long before we find out? “Hmmm, it’s a bit like pork, but with a piquant undertone of worm... Tastes like chicken.”

Porchetta Picatta, Anyone?

2005-10-31T18:41:00.000-04:00

Not Your Mama's Italian Pork Recipe

We can add these piglets to the field of cloned cows and sheep.

Question: Can cloned pork ever be considered kosher or halel? Discuss.

FDA May Say ‘Yea’ to McDNA

2005-10-06T17:54:00.000-04:00

Two All-Beef Petri Dish Cultures, Special Sauce…

In a follow-up to an earlier posting, we present this article about the current state of agri-cloning.

Apparently the entire industry can be traced back through mitochondrial chains to John Fisher, an enterprising man who, not satisfied with the lowly ‘Boar Semen Merchant’ on his resume, became president of a company called Prairie State Semen, Inc. …Or, “PSSS”.

Not sure where that other S comes from. They “collect” on Mondays and Thursdays, so be sure to order accordingly.
They’ll send you your prize boar semen UPS Next Day Air.
Better hope Brown doesn’t mix it up with your next order from Swiss Colony.

You can’t make this stuff up.

But as alarming as the idea of eating cloned meat and milk can be, (they call it the ‘yuck factor’), the truth is almost all farmed food eaten today is the result of purposeful genetic selection, careful pollination or grafting, or some other human meddling.

Eventually we’ll get used to it.

The WaPo article concludes with a quote from grocer Mark Nelson: “If the public doesn't want to eat Velveeta made from cloned milk, it ain't gonna happen."

Think on that. A grocers’ advocate is using scare tactics to remind his shoppers how natural and wholesome Velveeta is.

Previous: Meat Me in the Lab

Assembly After Lunch

2005-09-26T17:33:00.000-04:00

This troupe is entertaining kids and teaching them how to eat right at the same time.

A New Image

2005-09-19T17:33:00.000-04:00

Hey, kids, check out our new picture:

hat tip: Blogger John "J-Walk" Walchenbach, who thinks 'Government Cheese' would make a good name for a 'blog.

PA Presents a PANA-cea for Portly Pupils

2005-09-15T08:38:00.000-04:00

Pennsylvania joins four other states to weigh its students

The Health Department of the great Keystone State has instituted a new policy this year: Every school nurse will administer a body mass index test (height-to-weight ratio) and then inform the apparently dubious parents of their kid’s score, and explain where that score sits in relation to his classmates. Implied are the misconceptions that

A) an arbitrary number of one’s BMI correctly labels one as “obese”, and

B) that the kid’s folks don’t have a clue that junior is packing on the pounds unless of course the Nanny State sends a letter home.

What is the point of sending home a letter to parents that their child is clinically “obese”?

Firstly, a BMI “grade” does you no good when the criteria fluctuate from city to city around the globe: Some cite the magic number ‘30’, some use the 85th percentile, others the 95th. A percentile depends on the rest of the group, like grading on a curve.

Secondly, the parents know that their kids are big, and either they care or they don’t. But a note from teacher isn’t going to change anything. And chances are the parents are fat themselves.

Does PANA, the Pennsylvania Advocates for Nutrition and Activity, the group behind this plan, actually imagine one of their students going home with his 4.6 hours of daily homework in his backpack, and handing a letter from the school nurse to his busy, detached, also-fat, two-income parents? And then does someone on that panel envision one of those parents stopping, setting down the TV dinner and slipping the oven mitt off one hand while quietly reading this epistle their child has just stuck into their other? Then sitting down with that “Honey, we have to talk” tone so frequent in after-school PSAs?

Who are these parents? Presumably the same people who don’t realize their car is dirty until some prankster scrawls “Wash Me” in the caked mud on the rear window.

“Oh, dear. My daughter is obese. I thought she was just big-boned. She seems normal compared to her friends. I wouldn’t want her to be anorexic. I’m proud that she doesn’t allow her self-image to be tainted by those waifs in the fashion magazines she reads while she chomps on licorice whips and soda pop. Let’s all go out to the Big Country Buffet and discuss this over dinner.”

And what, we ask, is worse: Sending home something as meaningless as the letters, or “giving parents the option of not receiving the letters.” So explains Nancy Alleman, school nurse. I wish the electric company would adopt such a policy, and let customers choose whether or not we want to receive bills.

Nurse Alleman makes sure those naughty little girls get squeaky clean. And just who do those man’s legs belong to in the mirror, and what is he doing in the girls’ lavatory?

Dr. Reginald L. Washington, a Denver pediatrician and big-wig in the field of pediatric obesity, is more sensible about the problem: "To say, 'Here's a piece of paper and the world will be right,' is foolish." True, but what value and power is possessed by ‘a piece of paper’ called a report card, or a med school diploma?

Dr. Washington, who apparently phones in all prescriptions

Teachers seem to think that ‘a piece of paper’ with a number on it, black-and-white results of a test, be it a BMI score or an SAT score or a spelling quiz grade, are irrefutable law (until some dissatisfied parents ask that their school system administer its teachers a standardized test).

Please be reminded that this government-implemented “solution” would be unnecessary had not the government-implemented dietary guidelines created the problem to begin with.

9/11 Remembered...?

2005-09-11T11:10:00.000-04:00

I suppose it’s a myth that the Mainstream Media is liberally biased.
I suppose it’s possible I have become a grumpy old man who looks for things to complain about.
One can expect that on this, the fourth anniversary of our country’s darkest day, the MSM might downplay their memorial editions, their retrospectives, maybe even omit any photos.

But this morning’s front page of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s [only] newspaper, is conspicuously lacking: Other than the date, the only mention of “9/11” is this article blaming the Federal Government for its reportedly horrible job of sending billions of dollars to New Orleans.
Guess I’m just getting old.

Thank goodness for Malkin.
There are still real reporters out there.

Katrina Stories

2005-09-07T21:43:00.000-04:00

On The Bandwagon

Reportedly there are "tons" of bloggers linking to this posting, so here's one more. As we go to print the rather unbelievable accounts are as yet unconfirmed. With hope, this posting will be updated with a notice of its invalidity.
This may or may not be the time or space to get political about the catastrophe of New Orleans. But if you're sick of hearing the bungling politicos harangue President Bush for everything, from ignoring 'global warming' thus causing the big hurricane, to goofing off on vacation, fiddling while Rome burned, read this piece by Jim Geraghty on the hilarious blame game. I read Anne Rice's open letter over the weekend and had a bit of trouble feeling much sympathy. This helps.

NOTE: Regular readers of my 'blog....(my little brother always chuckles when I begin a sentence with that phrase)... may have noticed my absence for most of August. I've been busy, but hope to maintain my [somewhat] regular postings.

Atkins Belly-Up?

2005-08-01T17:41:00.000-04:00

Not So Fast

After the 2003 death of its founder and namesake, Atkins Nutritionals, Inc., had to file Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection.

This might be due to the fact that the Atkins diet has been treated as a fad, a quick weight loss, temporary crash diet. As anyone knows who has ever followed Dr. Atkins’ principals of low-glycemic carbs balanced with moderate amounts of protein and fat, (a) the diet works, and (b) all body fat lost will be re-gained upon the diet’s abandonment.

Low-Carb is a lifestyle, a philosophy, even a religion to some. It’s an entire paradigm shift in one’s relationship with food and with the earth that provides it, in one’s sense of history and kinship with past generations of relatives human and pre-human, and with the Creator who put it all there.

I believe this is the “problem” with the Atkins diet: No one actually reads the book, but everyone knows about it.

Everyone has heard some frumpy woman in the lunchroom at work say something along the lines of: “My neighbor’s friend’s daughter-in-law did the Atkins diet and lost 20 pounds in 3 weeks for her reunion… I lost 14 pounds on it once for my cousin’s wedding. It’s easy, just eat all the meat and cheese you want, but don’t eat any bread.” After a month of ketosis, the dieter binges on pizza and Coke and bounces back to her corpulent self.

But if one actually takes the time to read one of the late doctor’s books, read his magazine, or visited any of the newsgroups on the ‘Net, one would learn that Atkins is a life-long choice. It is a new way of seeing foods for their macro-nutrients: Rice and pasta are no longer staples, they’re garnishes. Bread retires its title as Staff-of-Life and becomes little more than a condiment, reborn in the shape of croutons. Forget about soft drinks.

So it’s no wonder that the company, having invested too much energy and money in recent years competing in the convenience foods market of snack bars and TV dinners, finds itself over-extended.

Let us just hope that this re-organization actually will “not affect its day-to-day operations.”

Meat Me in the Lab

2005-07-12T18:24:00.000-04:00

…and see what’s on the slab

OK. Scientists think they are able to grow small amounts of meat in a lab. Without the animal. Just the meat.

Imagine a Petri dish full of cloned beef which can simply be plopped onto a bun. Yikes.

What do the butchers think about this? What about kosher butchers? Is kosher a genetic determination? Find the perfect kosher specimen and simply clone its flesh for centuries. Sounds like a union grievance waitin’ to happen.

Sci-Fi Reality

There is a movie out this summer called The Island about a colony of cloned people who don’t know they’re clones. They are waiting around for their original progenitors to need a kidney or liver or cornea. It looks like a remake of a B-movie I saw at a drive-in back in the ‘70s called Clone.

The new version looks better, (not a difficult achievement), but the story’s the same: Rich people form a secret company that takes care of their clones at some sort of camp-slash-lab.

There’s another ‘70s movie (am I dating myself?)
called Coma in which a similar secret lab kept brain-dead people alive in a morbid organ farm.

One can’t help but think of these movies, these science fiction movies about humans that are farmed for their organs and tissue, when one reads of this proposed meat farm.

No, not farm as in farm,

...but farm as in lab.

Gnarly. With a G.

The Sick, Sad Truth

So. Aside from the moral implications, how is this healthy?

Well, for starters student Jason Matheny thinks they’ll be able to manipulate the meat to produce a healthier food:

"For one thing, you could control the nutrients. For example, most meats are high in the fatty acid Omega 6, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems. With in vitro meat, you could replace that with Omega 3, which is a healthy fat.”

Forgive me from asking this seemingly simple question of a doctoral candidate, Jason, but, can’t we control the nutrients now? By feeding livestock their natural diet, grass, we produce such a healthy meat. It is only through the corner-cutting of agri-business that we produce cows that are too fat and too slow and too full of Omega 6 fatty acids.

Sorry, Jason, but controlling the nutrients is not exclusive to “in vitro” meat.

If you’ve got the time, here’s a journal article in a PDF format.

The sad part is that this scenario will probably become reality someday. The sick part is that it will be widely accepted.

There is one glimmer of hope:

“The paper even suggests that meat makers may one day sit next to bread makers on the kitchen counter.”

That’s a good omen: My bread machine got retired and put in permanent basement storage years ago.

We Are All Britons Today

2005-07-07T18:02:00.000-04:00

Our Hearts Are Across the Pond.

The War on Terror is by no means over. There is still a very real threat, despite what the anti-war crowd says, to the entire free world. Not just lower Manhattan. Madrid learned this. Today London did too. Who’s next?

Will the French finally alter their policy of appeasement only when the Eiffel Tower is a smoldering mass of twisted steel? Imagine a Europe without it. Or a Rome without St. Peter’s or the Coliseum. Or Toronto without the CN Tower.

Hitchens has called 7/7’s attack “Anticipated”.

It is certainly not the first time. And sadly it won't be the last.

Who’s next?

Low-GI Diet Helps Make Babies

2005-06-28T17:40:00.000-04:00

Less Toast, More Eggs

A diet of primarily low-glycemic carbohydrates, such as fresh vegetables and fruits, has been found to boost fertility. At least it did for Jools Oliver, wife of TV celeb chef Jamie.

The fetching Briton and her hubby have popped out two babies, only after Mrs. O changed her diet.

We’ve known this for years, but the mainstream is finally catching on to the fact that the body’s hormone levels can easily be controlled by keeping blood sugar and insulin balanced. Here is a batch of data demonstrating the effects low glycemic index carbs can have with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).

I’m a bit confused: The article, bootlegged from the London Telegraph, tells us that scrambled eggs and toast are low-glycemic. Toast? Maybe in England, where dry white toast might be the healthiest carb on the breakfast table among crumpets and, um, spotted dick.

I’m certainly no fertility expert, but I’d say if you’re trying to balance your insulin, stay away from the toast. Have some fruit with your eggs.

But it seems to have helped keep Mrs. Oliver busy.

Dictator Does Doritos

2005-06-21T17:59:00.000-04:00

I guess we are torturing them after all.

I’ll be the first to say it: Saddam Hussein’s prison conditions are indistinguishable from those of the Nazis, Pol Pot’s killing fields, Stalin’s gulags…or even that hell-on-earth, Camp Delta, Cuba.

The former Iraqi president is being executed slowly, his pancreas and liver murdered one corn chip at a time. Sure, he asks his captors to bring him a bag. But do the imperialist dogs have to be so cruel as actually to inflict the helpless man with their orange triangles of death?

It’s been a while since I’ve made a meal out of an entire bag of chips, but it’s hardly what one would call prison food. Especially for the likes of the ‘Butcher of Baghdad’.

Crunch all you want.
We’ll buy more.

Reports also tell us Hussein wipes his food tray and washes his hands quickly after being touched. He is described as a germ-phobe, but this is the first time in decades he’s had to eat his meals without the peace-of-mind of a food taster. The man has lived in fear of being poisoned.

Nonetheless, he polishes off a family size bag of nacho cheese flavor tortilla chips in ten minutes. Surprised he doesn’t suspect that the bright powder on his fingertips is ‘agent orange.’

It’s only a matter of time before so-called human rights advocates protest America’s cruel acts of junk food addiction being perpetrated on their prisoners. Perhaps Bob Geldof will campaign for a menu of alfalfa sprouts and tuna salad. At least slap the California warning label on the bag.

Asked a “drive-by caller” to the Rush Limbaugh show today:

“Who’s eating better these days on the island of Cuba? Guantanamo detainees or Elian Gonzalez?”

Betcha Can’t Eat Just One

2005-06-18T11:17:00.000-04:00

Left Coast Buttinskis Save Lives

Californian health ‘advocates’ apparently aren’t satisfied with their existing Nanny-State regulations, and are trying to slap warning labels on bags of chips. Cancer warning labels. On potato chips.

Cali’s Prop 65 requires warnings on all products that contain trace amounts of carcinogens, and acrylamide is one such chemical that the World Health Organization has found in some commercially-processed, starchy foods.

OK. But what about everything else in chips that’s been proven unhealthy?
These hippies can’t see the forest for the acrymalide.

A health professional who claims to be an ‘advocate’ of the public health and who enjoys the resources of the WHO studies and who has the Governor’s ear has a responsibility to find better ways to feed the people.

This measure, if effective, would only serve to punish the “big corporations” (which is the real goal of any activist, after all) who manufacture snacks by requiring the addition of warning labels. It’s an expense, but also an attempted deterrent.

Canada requires graphic warnings
on cigarettes that take up half
the area of the package.

The efforts of these attorneys, if they really cared about the public health, and if they really wanted to reduce the profits of snack giants like Frito-Lay and Proctor & Gamble, would be better spent encouraging the people to give up processed and starchy foods altogether. With hope, Governor Schwarzenegger will be more practical.

Vetoed, As Predicted

2005-06-15T19:08:00.000-04:00

Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell Vetoes SB 1309

As asserted in this column earlier, Connecticut’s Junk Food Bill was flawed in that it was based on bad nutrition myth. While any measure to limit junk food consumption by our children is a step in the right direction, much state-mandated “advice” such as this Bill, or as the USDA Pyramid, simply provides another means of escape from personal nutrition responsibility.

And, when that advice is full of incorrect data and legendary assumptions, its intended recipients suffer. The bureaucrats make money, the lobbyists retire early, the doctors publish best sellers, and all while another generation of kids grows fatter and lazier.

You can always expect an AP staff writer to blame the “big corporations” for the failure, never to admit something proposed by a Democrat politician would fail on its own merits:

“Soft drink companies lobbied fiercely against the bill. Williams said about $250,000 was spent to lobby against the legislation.”

That’s State Senate President Pro Temp Donald E. Williams, Jr., Democrat, who feels that the veto is the “biggest blunder” of Governor Rell’s administration.

Sen. Williams, left, who, when he isn’t saving your children from you, is saving owls’ habitats.

Rell explains why she agrees that “…the bill usurped the role of parents…”, that she prefers to keep such decisions within the realm of home: “It is my hope that local boards of education can take the guidelines developed by the department and tailor the guidelines in such a way that they meet the needs of the children and parents…”

Keep it local. Let the government make some decisions for us, but don’t let a bunch of bureaucrats and lobbyists make all of them.

New Jersey’s Junk Ban

2005-06-13T18:38:00.000-04:00

We’re still keeping an eye on Connecticut’s Bill 1309, banning some junk food from the state’s public schools.

The Bill is a welcome good start, sure, but it is flawed. There is a misconception that because high-fructose corn syrup, which is still less than half fructose and mostly glucose, is packaged in a nippled bottle with a picture of a sweaty ballplayer on the label that it is somehow healthy.

The latest word is that Gov. Rell, above, will veto it.

Developing…

Now New Jersey is the latest of some dozen and a half states to attempt to enact a junk food ban. Never one to mess around, the Garden State proposes to be a bit stricter than Connecticut:

Under the New Jersey plan, soda, candy and foods listing sugar as the first or principal ingredient will be banned from school cafeterias. Snacks and drinks with more than eight grams of total fat per serving and two grams of saturated fat will be banned, and cafeterias will have to restrict amounts of foods with trans fats.

Paleolithic readers might not like that limit on saturated fat, but remember that ‘snacks and drinks’ in this case most likely means dairy fat and transfatty hydrogenated crap like corn chips and yellow, plastic nacho cheeze (with a Z).

Jersey’s is the better plan here, as they would ban all soda pop (even diet), and “sports” drinks. Only water, milk, and 100% juice. And this means everywhere at the school, vending machines, after-school activities and events.

Some buildings are said to “rely” on the extra income of peddling junk food, but that’s tough. The schools are going to have to figure out that they can turn a profit selling something more wholesome at a ball game. Complaining that a concession stand can’t capitalize on selling healthier snacks like fruit and pita sandwiches and fresh juice is like saying no one’s going to pay a couple hundred more for a car with seatbelts in it.

It may be true that demand has more power than supply when it comes to teenage appetites. And I’m sure a cocaine dealer says he doesn’t have to ‘push’ his product; it just sells itself. But the school snack bar is not the place to conduct such an experiment.

Of course, the article lets us know some people don’t like the junk food ban, like 13-year-old Malcolm Jones, who says “it’s whack” that they took his pizza and fries.

Like the Connecticut Bill, the NJ Law calls for the implementation of stricter rules over the next couple years. But whereas Connecticut legislators seek to require each local school system form a “School Wellness Committee”, all public and private Jersey schools, those receiving federal funds for subsidized meal plans, must all comply with the same rules.

There are ways around it, of course, which we’ll see when the new rules go into effect. For instance, there seems to be no ban on what a child can bring into the school himself. The more enterprising kids might try their hand at peddling chocolate bars and potato chips on the playground. A “brown bag” lunch may well replace the “dime bag” as the schools’ most controlled contraband.

But I think I prefer what New Jersey’s doing to the Connecticut proposals.

And any law that is deemed “whack” by a 13-year-old must be a great law.

Joe Biden: Plagiarist, Taliban Travel Agent

2005-06-06T17:45:00.000-04:00

He lost his longshot presidential bid back in the ‘80s when Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.(D-Delaware) was exposed for stealing others’ writings and passing them off as his own.

(Making stuff up may have disqualified him for Prez, but Biden is now poised for a stellar career over at Newsweek, The New Republic, CBS News, the NYT…)

He long ago joined ranks with the enemy, becoming a favorite of the Left’s efforts to poison the earth with white flour. Biden strengthened his position over the weekend with this arrogant, flippant remark about Guantanamo Bay:

"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world."

Propaganda? Recruiting? I have to say, Biden has it right. No, not for the reasons he wants to be, but he’s right: There is no better recruitment tool than the news of the cushy treatment al Q’aeda detainees receive in Gitmo.

As many bloggers and milbloggers have pointed out, notably the divine Ms. Malkin, the United States is going out of its way, “--to a fault, I believe--”, to accommodate the religious sensitivities of the radical head-chopping, castrating, baby-bombing militants being held at the detention center in Camp Delta, the U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.

A Gitmo detainee is tortured by being forced
to read a letter in Arabic.

Detainees are provided not only with outstanding medical care, usually found only in wealthy developed utopias like Cuba, they are given Halal (that’s the Muslim version of kosher) meals, they are called to prayer five times a day, they are given mats to pray on those five times a day, kufis (prayer caps) to wear those five times a day, special low sinks for washing their stinking feet, and, uh….they are given Korans.

They are given Korans (yes, the same Korans that were allegedly defiled by interrogators) by detention guards who are careful to handle the Korans properly (that is, with both hands, wearing gloves).

So, compared to the hell-on-earth these men came from back home in Afghanistan or in Iraq, yes, Gitmo is a picnic. All these tales of the fine care these terrorists receive may indeed be "the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting." Or, as a travel agent calls it "pretty brochures."

Senator Biden better shut up or thousands more will sign up for this Caribbean summer camp.

A Conn Job?

2005-06-02T19:04:00.000-04:00

Here’s one to keep an eye on.

Connecticut state legislators last week passed a bill that, if signed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell, would ban junk food from the Nutmeg State’s public schools’ cafeterias and vending machines. Bout time, right? There is a childhood obesity epidemic to fight, and we're losing.

The (Republican) Governor is balking, however, trying to maintain control of such decisions in the hands of local boards.

If enacted, Connecticut’s would be the strictest such junk food ban in the nation, not only banning sugary, empty-calorie snacks from school lunches, but also requiring twenty minutes of daily physical activity outside of gym class.

Sound like good news?

Depends.

It Takes a Village to Tell You What to Feed Your Kid

Here are the parts I don’t like.

From Section 2 (b): “Each local and regional board of education shall establish a School Wellness Committee…”

Parents need be wary of child-rearing-by-committee.

Section 3 (a) allows only Water, Milk (“including, but not limited to, chocolate milk, soy milk, rice milk and other similar dairy or nondairy milk,”) or pure fruit Juice or drinks that are no less than half real fruit juice.

Water and juice sound OK. The Paleo-nutrition community has countless data on the dangers of dairy and soy, and rice milk sounds like it should have a Budweiser label.

Politicians being how they are, the State’s House debated for eight hours and, bowing to the pressure of all the soft drink companies who lobbied against the bill for obvious reasons, decided to allow diet soft drinks and sports drinks.

Diet soft drinks contain artificial sweeteners which are known to cause an insulin reaction in the drinker the moment he tastes the sweetness on his tongue. This phenomenon, called the ‘cephalic phase of insulin release’, causes more harm to the diet pop drinker than if he drank a good ol’ Coke Classic, so explains nutritionist Dr. Tanya Zilberter:

Sweet taste, even coming with artificial sweetener, raises glucose concentration in the blood before the food has a chance to be digested. Why? Because your body knows that eventually, it will have all the carbs you've swallowed and it doesn't wait until it that happens. When the sweet food is real, the carbohydrates eventually get into the blood... Nature never counted on us inventing artificial sweeteners. Being fooled, your body reacts rather vindictively: it forces you to want more sweet food plus eat more next time, no matter what food you agree to have.

There is enough scientific study that should convince the school boards that diet soda is not any healthier than regular pop.

But they also decided to allow insulin-stimulating high-fructose corn syrupy “sports” drinks, or, as they put it, “electrolyte replacement beverages containing no more than forty-two grams of added sweetener per twenty ounce serving”, to be sold at events after the regular school day ends, at least a half hour after the bell rings. Sheesh. Maybe they should try first to keep kids from drinking alcohol after school hours, then gradually move into Gatorade.

No, I’m afraid on this one I must agree with the bill’s Republican opponents, for instance Sen. Judy Freedman of Westport who just hates “the thought of the state coming in and saying, 'We're going to become the parent authority now’.”

Or Sen. John McKinney of Fairfield: "You're not going to stop childhood obesity by letting them drink sugar-free soda all day long."

No, you’re not.

Bill 1309’s dissidents could merely be under the influence of the soft drink lobby, but they have it right. Removing the junk food and the pop is essential, but don’t think you can make Johnny jog for a half hour, then throw him a glass of Bosco or Tab, and expect to see any results.

How Do You Think Mark Felt?

2005-05-31T18:27:00.000-04:00

So now we know...

“I am Deep Throat.”

“I am Deep Throat!”

“Sit down, boys...”

And now we know. (Yawn)

The man whom Nixon passed over for the appointment to FBI director got his vengeance on his Commander-in-Chief by playing cloak-and-dagger games with a coupla cub reporters.

Bernstein, left, with by-line buddy Woodward, during the leaner but bushier years. Don’t you miss those fat neckties?

And now the world knows the answer to the decades-old mystery.
Bradlee over at the Post has confirmed Felt's claim but Carl Bernstein stuck to his guns Tuesday after Felt’s announcement:

"With all our confidential sources, we agreed not to identify them until their death," he promised, speaking for himself and partner-in-crime Bob Woodward. "Nothing has changed that. No one has released us from any pledge. It is our intention not to identify Deep Throat until his death."

Raise your hand if you care.

UPDATE: Win Ben Stein's Wisdom

The one-time Nixon employee offers some perspective:

WHAT WAS NIXON'S CRIME?

Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible?

He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?

Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.

That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon's kharma.

Hat tip: Kitty Litter

UPDATE #2:

Stein follows up again.

Hat tip: L-Dotter Dreadnaught

But How Do They Know?

2005-05-28T12:07:00.000-04:00

The article seems innocent enough if you can get past the lede. It begins:

"A group of researchers from Israel has discovered that rats exhibiting the signs of depression..."

Stop.

There a million jokes running through my head, most beginning with something like...

"How can you tell when your Israeli rat is depressed?"

"How many Jewish exterminators does it take..."

"This rat walks into a shrink's office..."

Rats. Depressed. Rats. Depressed!

What, they can't seem to find the gumption to press that lever for one more food pellet? They don't run on their wheel? They give up their search for the cheese halfway through the maze and slump into a dark, quiet funk of rodent angst?

Seriously, this article is what we need more of: Hard studies from the legitimate medical research community demonstrating a solid relationship between essential fatty acid balance and mental and physical health. And there is more serious exegesis over at the Fish Oil Blog.

In the meantime I will continue to take my fish oil pills, and hope the vermin can find a way to cheer up.

Hat Tip: Marshall Sontag

Food Fight in the School Cafeteria

2005-05-25T17:37:00.000-04:00

It certainly isn’t news that America’s public schools serve unfavorable food in their cafeterias, nor that many offer vending machines selling crap. In need of the extra income, many schools have resorted to installing fast food franchises right in their lunch lines. Do we really want a lunch menu that feels it must compete with fast food outlets and junk food machines?

Competition is healthy, of course, but parents need to enjoy a monopoly when it comes to feeding their offspring. Is the Free Marketplace the ideal laboratory for the social experiment we call our future? As our society increases its access to fast, cheap, garbage chow, it is time for parents to reclaim the public schools as one of their children’s few remaining nutritional havens.

True Story:

When I visited my son’s middle school last year for a band concert I was appalled at the hand-scrawled sign taped to a soda machine in the lobby of the building:

NO POP SALES DURING SCHOOL HOURS.
BEFORE 7:30 AND AFTER 3:30 ONLY.

Imagine my relief at the assurance that the youngsters were only allowed to drink Coke before 7:30 AM!

Sometimes the junk slips past the hall monitors in less obvious ways. This article by Andrew Stark in Policy Review discusses the strings attached to the money from which many schools benefit through private advertising. Each morning millions of children in 12,000 schools are a “captive audience” to the closed-circuit cable magazine “Channel One”. The ten-minute daily cablecast has replaced those morning announcements that greeted most of us through that brassy squawk-box.

The controversy, Stark explains, is in the fact that the teen-oriented cable show contains two minutes of commercial time which is sold to sponsors who know they can reach a teenage market that spends 57 billion dollars of its own money annually. Spots peddling everything kids buy, like sneakers and cereal, video game systems and high-carb drinks, are disguised as current events human interest pieces and pseudo-educational science experiments.

Schools benefit from what is a reciprocal deal: Channel One provides the free television monitors and satellite dishes, and the ten minutes of infotainment, in exchange for two minutes’ of the children’s attention, of the teachers’ time, of the classrooms’ integrity. To most schools, famously strapped for valuable supplies, this means $17,000 worth of free A-V equipment, and to many teachers, a welcome 12-minute break in their lessons.

But something is kind of creepy about the arrangement. What would Orwell say? It’s all a little Big-Brothery, don’t you find? Would you accept this arrangement at home? “Let us pump free cable TV into your living rooms. We’ll supply the TV, the cable, the entertainment, and, oh, yeah, a couple commercials too.”

Certainly, there are few school systems that would not benefit from the free equipment. Stark also describes how poorer schools accept Channel One at a rate six times more than wealthier systems do. And there are few American schoolchildren who are not exposed to ten times the amount of commercial broadcasting at home.

School is Supposed to be Good for You

But the point is that school time should be different than after-school time, and different from free time at home. Schoolwork is different than the chores our kids are expected to complete at home. And school lunches ought to be different than what a teenager would eat at the malt shop after school.

School cafeteria chefs need to cook more like cafeteria chefs and leave the chicken nuggets and French fries to the shopping mall food courts.

If you were competing with MTV for your teen’s attention, you wouldn’t be evenly matched. Nor would your parental advice stand any chance against your kids’ I-Pod. So why would you expect a fair fight if your child was given the opportunity to choose between what you were serving for dinner and what he could buy with his allowance at his favorite burger hang-out?

Is there a such thing as a parent who makes a pot roast or a casserole every weeknight, dishes it up, and then offers it to her children along with the option of KFC popcorn chicken or a Big Mac? Do you prepare a fresh garden salad from scratch, top it with a grilled salmon filet, and then hold it over your family’s dinner table with a Monty Hall-like offer, “Now, Junior, you can take this healthy meal I’ve prepared myself OR trade it in for the Wendy’s Value Meal Carol Merrill has behind Door Number Two.”?

Or would you install a Pepsi machine in your kitchen, or allow a candy rack on your sideboard, and offer your family the choice of chocolate, soda, or chips instead of your homemade meals?

This is exactly what our schools’ cafeterias do on a daily basis. More wholesome, if somewhat unappealing, balanced lunches are served in the same space as pizza, corn chips, and chocolate bars. Cola nuts, un-cola nuts…Will you choose wisely?

Time For A Quiz, Class

Kris Axtman of the Christian Science Monitor asks,

Given the choice for lunch, most children would choose:

A. M&Ms and a Diet Coke.

B. Meatloaf and steamed carrots.

'Duh,... That’s a no-brainer.'

(CSM, May 16, 2002)

The story celebrates Elaine Hime, a Houston mother, and my new hero. When she learned her son Jackson ate only chocolate and soda for lunch every day, she started running a twenty-dollar cafeteria tab from which her seventh-grader could deduct his lunch money, only for “ordinary food”. This is a wonderful parent.

Margo Wootan of the bloated Washington PAC called the Center for Science in the Public Interest explains that 98 percent of high schools in the U.S. are forced to exploit their students’ weakness for junk food-stocked vending machines, the profits from which are spent on supplies like sports equipment and band uniforms, books and computers.

98 percent! Think of that. Have you ever accomplished a success rate of 98 percent of anything you attempted? When’s the last time a high school enjoyed graduating that majority of its students? Imagine even a 98 percent attendance rate! Our schools can’t seem to pass 71% of their students, but they’re batting .980 in the sugar series! Three-fourths of middle schools, and nearly half of our elementary schools also have candy and pop machines.

Ms. Wootan, Part of the Problem

“We recognize that schools are facing financial pressures,” concedes Wootan, “but it would be very shortsighted for us to fund our schools at the expense of our children’s health.”

Waddya mean ‘would be’?! Don’t use the subjunctive mood with me, lady! It is shortsighted.

It is criminal. It is not something we would suffer in our own homes, and it is not something we should allow in our schools’ cafeterias.

Big Fat Liars, Part 2

2005-05-17T13:59:00.000-04:00

In our last episode we learned that the MainStream Media are just now coming around to admitting the fact that our government has been feeding us the wrong stuff for decades (literally and figuratively). My contention was that they were just waiting for the Democrats responsible for this mass poisoning to get to safe ground so they can rip into the Bush administration. (Taubes’ article ran in the NYT Magazine in July of ‘02.)

The MSM aren’t interested in criticizing something unless they can somehow blame it on the Republicans. (Take for example the issue of sexual harassment: During Clarence Thomas’ hearings, the issue of a superior inviting a subordinate out socially was treated like an archaic institution of torturous oppression that had to be dragged to light and destroyed. But for some reason, in less than a decade, Bill Clinton’s rape victims were snubbed by a dismissive media who were no longer interested in what someone does in his private life.)

Have a Coke and a smile.

So now that a Republican sits in the Oval, it is safe for the Times to print a story describing how, years ago, the U.S. Government pontificated ill advice which led to a thirty-year period of weight gain in America. The media’s implication is that Bush and Cheney are killing us on purpose. The truth is that it was a Democrat who sought nutritional counsel, a Democrat who proposed those fallacious recommendations, and a Democrat who made it policy.

With the exception of Republican President G.H.W. Bush, who appointed future Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the mostly cosmetic position of Chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and who oversaw the introduction of the USDA’s first “Food Pyramid” in 1992, it has been liberal Dems who have aided and abetted the public poisoning of the last four decades.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s Peace Corps helped send America’s bounty around the world, delivering tons of niacin-enriched farina to protein-starved under-developed countries. Was it a good thing? Certainly, little bad can be seen in the generosity of the American people giving away food. But we could ask if any of those cultures are better off today, having survived for two generations thanks in large part to western grain shipments.

Kennedy’s plan was to export the goods America had to offer in an effort to strengthen our image with our would-be adversaries. Billions of dollars' worth of American food has been given away in the name of humanitarianism to our sworn enemies over the decades, and what have we to show for it? I mean, besides Ground Zero? So gloriously has America’s image flourished internationally that when generous Americans yet again donated millions in supplies to victims of the recent tsunami disaster, there was a rumor that relief workers had to make sure no U.S. flags were worn on their sleeves, lest they would offend the delicate feelings of the gentle practitioners of the religion of peace. We couldn’t dare let the beneficiaries of our exported culture believe that we were exporting our culture. That would be mean.

Kennedy apparently had the idea that if we gave free food to the U.S.S.R. they would no longer try to annihilate us. True to liberal tradition, he was wrong. The cream-of-wheat had no sooner left the dock than Russia began building nuclear missile silos on the island nation of Cuba. Kennedy’s solution to the stand-off was to stop sending free stuff to Cuba. For the four-plus decades since, Cuba’s Marxist-Leninist self-proclaimed President-for-Life Fidel Castro has sulked about America’s stubborn refusal to send Havana more free stuff. If only we’d end our ‘blockade’ against our socialist neighbor, Castro’s people could be free to, well, try to destroy us again.

“Please don’t kill us and we’ll give you some rice.”

JFK’s Food For Peace Program: It’s Not Just for Foreigners Anymore

After helping the Nanny State solve the problems of world hunger, McGovern was awarded for his success and was assigned the task of properly feeding his own people. McGovern’s committee was very successful achieving their goal: Using tax dollars to deliver fattening, artery-clogging, insulin-stimulating bleached flour and hydrogenated vegetable shortening to America’s poor urban and rural communities.

The poorest among these target areas was, and still is, Native peoples who generally as a race carry a genetic propensity for insulin sensitivity. There is a tribe in Arizona 50% of whom are diabetic. Some studies show that some tribes of Native Americans, Inuit and Native Alaskans who live beyond the age of 45 acquire Type II diabetes at a rate of between 40% and 70%. McGovern’s brainchild sent them free white flour, shortening and sugar. The only protein included in Uncle Sam’s care packages was powdered milk.

Admittedly, McGovern’s war on domestic malnutrition was one of the most successful programs to come out of Washington, despite its shortcomings cited above. By the mid-Seventies the Committee was preparing to wrap up their work, having succeeded in their endeavors. Of course that would mean dozens of federal employees would have to be reassigned or let go from their positions. But before they cleaned out their desks, they decided that America also had a weight problem they could fix.

McGovern: Poster Child of Insufficient Funds

Time was running out for the task force so they had to work quickly, had to take a couple shortcuts. At the time, and for a short time, McGovern and his wife were on the Pritikin Program, a severely low-fat, high-carbohydrate plan. The Committee decided to create a set of recommendations based on their boss’ diet, and then to assemble a panel of experts, scientists, doctors, nutritionists who would be asked to validate the merits of this low-fat plan. The estimated cost of such a thorough, well-supported study came in at a billion dollars. So they cut corners.

A panel of consultants were chosen who, it was understood, already agreed with the Committee’s low-fat thesis, and would quickly sign off on it. A couple days’ worth of neat, cosmetic hearings cinched it. Nick Mottern, a newspaperman with a penchant for labor advocacy, was selected to write the paper.

Of these shoddy hearings, Dr. Barry Sears writes, “It’s only in the murkier areas of nutrition…that consensus conferences are organized by the government to approve its actions.” (The Omega Rx Zone, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 155.)

We Americans have, as a people, been growing fatter for the past thirty years. Coincidence? No. Not at all. As Walter Willet, Harvard Medical School’s Public Health Dept. chair, is quoted by Taubes, “Something else bad is happening.”

Summary For The Not-Yet Bored

So. Democrat President Kennedy hires liberal Democrat failed candidate McGovern to study poverty in the world, and allocates millions to implement McGovern’s plan to send all the wrong food all over the world. Democrat President Johnson tasks McGovern to form a committee to eradicate malnutrition in the country, and allocates millions to give away for free the same wrong food to poorer Americans.

After nearly eight years of ‘research’ and nothing to show for it, Republican President Ford reminds McGovern that something productive is actually expected, and he had better come up with some nutrition recommendations before his committee is disbanded. For a whopping 2 days they hear testimony, then hire a labor-union propaganda journalista to ignore the scientific data and write his infamous report, “Dietary Goals for the United States”. Fifteen years later they would unleash the ‘Food Pyramid’, along with more confusing government mandated nutrition labels, an expensive bit of bureaucracy trumped only by its reincarnation in 2005. (See my earlier post, below).

During this period, Robert Atkins, a doctor presenting a contrary recommendation to the public, was ridiculed. Congress actually sat him down like a kid in front of the principal’s desk to explain himself. He did; they didn’t take heed.

Now we know better. The government surely knew all along, and so Republican President Bush is to blame.

The frustration caused by the McGovern’s arbitrary low-fat recommendations is dealt with in various intensities.

William Stone III types:

Via Unconstitutional, immoral policy, government is making us fat. It teaches our children lies about how to stay healthy. Its policies encourage health industries to advise and promote lifestyles that are actively unhealthy.

Low-fat dieting is a fairy tale. It is a myth. It is an urban legend. It is an old wives' tale. It has no more scientific basis than the Flat Earth Theory.

Yet, massive parts of our lives -- education, food production, nutrition, medicine,exercise, legal practices, government agencies -- are entirely based on it. …

…Government's notions of what constitutes a healthy diet turn out to be complete fiction. The only way to solve this problem is to remove government from health policy forever.

Kind of radical, Stone, but we hear you. We want to do something about it. Even the MSM wants to. But it’s proven very hard to un-ring McGovern’s bell. Willet is also quoted by Sears: “You really need a high level of proof to change the recommendations, which is ironic, because they never had a high level of proof to set them.” (Ibid., p. 156)

Don’t ya think?

Big Fat Liars

2005-05-13T13:47:00.000-04:00

One of the problems with being an Internet blowhard these days is that there are so many other, smarter people who have already written exactly what you want to say.

Here is a comprehensive, if rather wordy, article by Gary Taubes originally published in the New York Times, AKA the so-called “Newspaper of Record”.

Publication in the Times doesn’t necessarily mean the article is entirely factual, of course, (although it is), but its presence on the Old Gray pages is significant in that the MainStream Media finally woke up to the success of low-glycemic diets.

Actually my money says they realized Lo-Carb plans like Atkins and The Zone work considerably earlier than they reported, but, like the Coalition’s success in Afghanistan and Iraq, the NYT and the rest of the MSM could no longer ignore the elephant in the headlines.

Maureen Dowd is, or looks like, one of the millions of women who have not eaten bread since the mid-nineties. She and her cohorts were sharing their low-carbohydrate secrets with each other, privately working on future juicy news stories that would criticize the overgrown federal government and its unnecessary spending, its departments that not only have it all wrong and that spend millions of tax dollars on bad research, but that are actually killing Americans.

As Taubes writes, “…[T]he public health authorities told us…to eat precisely those foods that would make us fat, and we did.” Stop the presses! The people have a right to know!

But that was the ‘Nineties. Those, alas, were the Clinton years. What could the compliant media do about it? The scoop of a lifetime would have to be shelved until the Democrats lost the White House.

Yes, MoDo & Co. had to wait for a Republican administration, one worthy of their scorn, before the NYT would expose even a small department within the U.S. Government as presenting falsehoods to the American people. When Clinton was in office, the Justice Department incinerated over seventy citizens in Waco, Texas, and sent storm-troopers into a private Florida residence to rip a crying, frightened child from the arms of his loved ones in order to ship the kid back to a slave state, and the liberals reported that the Clinton administration was protecting family values.

The Republicans manage the budget now. Now it is time for the media to uncover all that is corrupt and dangerous in the government. When they are not busy throwing around words like “quagmire”, “unwinnable”, or “murky”, the MSM will run an article like Mr. Taubes’, accusing of treachery yet another cell of the deceptive Bush/Cheney/Enron/Halliburton death machine.

The low-fat, high-carb conventional wisdom the above-linked article criticizes was presented to an American public nearly thirty years ago, designed largely by a failed politician, the biggest loser in major party Presidential electoral history, and the most enemy-appeasing, tax-and-spending, radical-accommodating liberal Democrat in our lifetime, George Stanley McGovern.

(Yet don’t hold your breath for the NYT headline, “McGOVERN LIED, KIDS DIED”.)

McGovern: Poster Child of Defeatism

Yes, people, George McGovern. The one-time Democratic Party’s only hope for complete socialist surrender, whose only campaign promise for the Presidency was that he would wave the white flag and run away from our allies in South Vietnam even faster than any of his opponents.

Like Kerry and Edwards, McGovern, and his running mate Robert Sargent Shriver, must have failed to “get their message out” because he only won the District and one state (Massachusetts, not even his home state of Tennessee, uh, South Dakota) versus Nixon’s 49.

So overwhelming was Nixon’s 1972 sweep of the nation’s electorate, liberals insisted it was fixed; like O.J.’s DNA evidence, such an unbelievable amount was, well, unbelievable. (They would do the same in 2000, but, for some reason, did not bother to recount Cook County ballots in 1960)

The Washington Post had to run a series of stories about a bungled wiretapping perpetrated against the Democrat National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate Hotel by some low-rent wannabe spies who were purportedly hired by Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (CReEP), and tied their investigation together loosely in an attempt to prove that the Republicans cheated on the election. If the White House could be linked by a money trail to the break-in, the poll results of Nixon’s extreme victory could be explained as subterfuge rather than what it was, the voice of the American people enjoying open elections in wartime.

Yes, that’s it. Voters did not turn out that November to elect the more stable, if somewhat flawed, sitting President who had promised to regain some of America’s dignity by honorably wrapping up our involvement in the U.N. action in southeast Asia, our obligation to an ally.

Voters instead must have gone to the polls to elect the South Dakota Senator who had served as J.F.K.’s Special Assistant, who had poisoned the world’s poorest cultures with cheap American white flour pap, hydrogenated shortening and powdered milk, who had promised to “bring the boys home” despite the fact that over eighty-five percent of the American people favored the war, and despite the certain fall of an ally to an enemy totalitarian regime.

Voters instead were disenfranchised, their ballots manipulated, substituted. The election results were so skewed it was obvious the other guys must have pulled a fast one!

(Had the Watergate break-in succeeded as planned, had the DNC leadership been bugged, their secret strategeries discovered by CReEP, and counter-measures effectively been implemented into Republican campaign tactics, does anyone really think that McGovern’s defeat in ’72 would have been any less humiliating? If he had doubled, even quadrupled his votes, would it have made a difference? And if so, do not let us forget that the break-in was foiled. If a 17-to-520 loss is how you do when you disarm your opponents’ secret weapon, imagine the results if you don’t catch them red-handed!)

So the reason the election results did not reflect the opinion of the oligarchic editorial boards of the Times and the Post must be, can only be, that those mean Republicans cheated.

The MSM has been brainwashing their audience with this fiction ever since.

Next: McGovern: Poster Child of Insufficient Funds

Happy Birthday, Twinkies

2005-05-11T13:31:00.000-04:00

"They've endured."
Indeed.

'Super Size Me' a 'Flawed Premise'?

2005-05-10T18:44:00.000-04:00

So sayeth the death peddlers, AKA the Center for Consumer Freedom, a smoke-filled backroom coalition of burger barkers, sugar pushers and cancer pimps.

“Protecting consumer choice,” declares their masthead, which is what smokers say when their co-workers cough and fan the air. “Promoting personal responsibility…” Responsibility, that is, to choose what we like to buy, watch, ingest, advocate. Amen to that. Sort of.

The slogan of this self-proclaimed group of freedom fighters is not new; it is what the tobacco lobby said when they were dragged before Congress in a wrist-slapping hearing that resulted only in the death of Joe Camel, what Larry Flint sang to the cameras, and what Howard Stern says to the listeners who claim to be offended.

My goal is not to vilify tobacco or shock radio or dirty magazines or even fast food. George Carlin has a joke about the two buttons on the radio: One to change the station, and the other to turn it off completely.

My point is that the junk food and chain restaurant industry has resorted to the same cant as notorious carcinogen producers, narcotics providers and pornographers.

The piece I linked to is this powerless coalition’s attempt to laugh off Morgan Spurlock’s popular, successful, entertaining and scary 2004 documentary "Super Size Me".

You’ve doubtless heard of it, but the movie is one man’s attempt to test McDonald’s defense in a lawsuit (which they won) filed by a couple obese teenage girls. The girls claimed to have been victimized by the hamburger giant’s food and slick marketing; McDonald’s said the chicks could have shown some restraint. Um, no, that’s what they should have said. McDonald’s said the girls probably would have gotten fat anyway, that they were genetically predisposed to corpulence, and that a patron could enjoy their food every day and not gain weight. Spurlock ate only from the McDonald’s menu for his three meals a day, no more, no less.

The movie proves that eating a typical fast-food meal (Spurlock only ate a ‘supersized’ meal when it was offered, about a dozen times) causes an otherwise healthy person to gain body fat at an incredible pace and suffer less visible maladies including depression, a liver condition only theretofore observed in alcoholics, and a diminished sex drive.

OK, so rent the DVD before you read the above-referenced back-pedaling apology by Richard Berman, executive director of the CCF.

It is too easy to pick apart his review line by line as nothing more than a series of babbling excuses from a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, the McDonaldland Cookie jar. But a couple deserve parsing:

“It's not a documentary at all.” Tell that to the AMPAA and to Sundance who nominated the film and its director in that category. Tell that to Michael Moore. Tell it to CBS.

Berman contends the film “is a lesson in why obesity lawsuits are so frivolous.” He repeats the mantra we’ve heard for decades whenever anyone has tried to stop automakers or power plants or pharmaceutical companies from murdering us. ‘They only care about making money, those John Edwardses and Erin Brockoviches. Don’t trust them.’ "Spurlock,” he says, "…laughs all the way to the bank.”

An interesting character in the film is Don Gorske, a 6-foot tall man who holds the Guinness Record for eating thousands of Big Macs, several every day. Nonetheless, he is a fit 180 pounds with moderate cholesterol. Berman points out that Gorske's apparent normal health is proof that the source of calories consumed is immaterial, that a certain metabolism will be unaffected whether “…the calories come in the form of Big Macs or brussels sprouts.”

*Sigh* I need some fries.

It is notable that Berman spends the first half of his article pointing out Spurlock’s resume includes an MTV show in which contestants were dared to eat odd things for cash prizes, and so we are to assume that all subsequent efforts by the man are merely another attempt to get rich by daring himself to eat stuff.

It’s enough to make one wish Mr. Berman might have a few profit-making skeletons in his professional closet, a concept once aversive only to Marxists.

Stay tuned.

Republican Governator Takes Food From Children

2005-05-10T08:52:00.000-04:00

But in a good way.

The New USDA Food Pyramid

2005-05-09T17:48:00.000-04:00

When that golden advice rains down from the government, it pours. They recently revealed this "new" Food Pyramid:

I mean, like WTF are we supposed to do with this?! We've been griping how long now for the USDA and Heart Association to do something about the dangerously arbitrary old pyramid that was thrown together by McGovern's ad hoc committee, and this, this is what they come up with?!

What are we supposed to eat? What are we supposed to tell our kids? (Didn't the Monica Lewinski scandal cause enough uncomfortable dinner table questions for us parents?)

Why is the Milk stripe so much wider than the Meat/Beans stripe? Why is Meat thrown in with Beans, or at least without chili powder and a bay leaf?

And why, friends, why, after the research of the last decade, does the first stripe, the big fat orange Grain stripe, remain the biggest recommendation, to be eaten "in relative abundance"? And the Oils the narrowest?

Click on the Headline Link above for an informative bit of cutting edge journalism.

Among its highlights:

"At first glance, consumers might find the USDA's graphic puzzling, since there's no explanatory text or pictures," said Sonja Tuitele of Wild Oats Markets, a chain of natural food supermarkets.

Hmmmm.... Does the Wild Oats Markets sell, oh, I don't know, Grains?

And this gadfly:

"It doesn't try to jam everything into a graphic that people don't understand," said registered dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner of Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Wellness Institute.

[emphasis mine]

Yes, indeed, the new graphic is easy to understand without all those scientific facts "jammed" into it. Oy vey!

Of course, of course:

...Many food companies are embracing MyPyramid. For example, General Foods said it will put the graphic on 100 million boxes of Big G cereal brands.

I bet they will. Just as sexy women are placed in beer advertisements, and those cool R. Crumb cartoons were printed on LSD blotter paper, so will the new Hyperinsulinemia Rainbow be plastered on cartons of Cap'n Crunch. Maybe they could have toy syringes and blood glucose meters inside every box.

I am, perhaps, even more annoyed by that androgynous Marcel DuChamp-esque humanoid figure dancing up the staircase, pointy appendages clambering their way toward the vanishing summit. O, to be there when he/she falls over the other side of the multi-hued ziggurat.

No, strike that...What is most distressing is the amount of my tax dollars and mandatory 'donations' confiscated from food producers by the government to pay countless employees for several years, which resulted in this crap. Not to mention the obvious impropriety of hiring those food producers as consultants:

Critics have raised questions about Porter Novelli, the firm that helped create MyPyramid. Porter Novelli has food companies as clients, but both the firm and the government said the MyPyramid work was handled separately, so there was no conflict.

Oh, well, if they say there was no conflict over at the Potemkin Dietician Labs, I guess it's true!

The nutrition-conscious would do well to ignore this coloring book approach to consumerism altogether, and chow down on a nice thick salmon steak tonight.

It's OK to be Fat.

2005-05-06T17:33:00.000-04:00

It's true! The government says so.