No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
–Albert Einstein
Anymore, I can’t resist the ads that pop up on my screen inviting me to investigate some surefire way to lose weight. I almost always know what I’ll find, and I’m always excited that it might be good fodder for the blog. Since I’m regularly researching health news now, the ads come fast and furious no matter what I’m doing.
Plus, I like to blow up online calculators.
Eat butter first, and eat it last, and live till a hundred years be past.
–Old Dutch proverb
What to do about dairy? Some people love it, some people hate it, everyone wants it on pizza. Vegans won’t touch it while Paleos claim it’s too new a food to safely eat. Some are sure it makes them gain weight or at least feel temporarily bloated, yet many Europeans consume it like candy and seem to enjoy both good health and healthy body weights regardless. Some people groups, such as the Chinese or Vietnamese, have rampant lactose intolerance; yet some societies–like the Mongols, Tibetans, and Masaai–have or do subsist largely on dairy and are strong and healthy. Some scientists claim that it will give you cancer and cause gut leakage problems, while others swear that it’s the best and healthiest way to get your Vit D and calcium, and may even protect your from cancer. One study tells you it will spike your insulin and derange your metabolism; another will tell you that it protects from diabetes.
Continue reading Dairy, Dairy, Quite Contrary
The reason is that you eat too many foods that are high in “calories,” which are little units that measure how good a particular food tastes. Fudge, for example, has a great many calories, whereas celery, which is not really a food at all but a member of the plywood family, provided by Mother Nature so that mankind would have a way to get onion dip into his mouth at parties, has none.
― Dave Barry
How are we all feeling today? In the Christmas spirit?
Well, never fear. A number of helpful news agencies have published some gobblitigook that will pull you out of that mood as fast as you can say Kris Kringle.
There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
–Unknown
After the catastrophe that was yesterday’s loss of all my writing (catastrophe to me; relief to some.) I am going to try again on the subject of idiocy that gets thrown about over the holidays.
Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.
–Laurence J. Peter
You knew it would happen. Thanksgiving is over, and now we must be subjected to a slew of articles about how to lose that holiday pound. Some of this advice is even packaged in implications designed to make you feel guilty: if you/us big fat Americans didn’t eat all this meat and all this fat at the holidays and get all fat and lazy and gorge yourselves/ourselves on fat and meat the whole world would be a better place.
I used to moderate a weight loss community and we had this whole Weight Watchers trend a while ago and 20 women or so joined it. Only one that was 270lb or so was told to eat above 24 points… Everyone else was supposed to eat under 24 points. 24 points is 1,200 calories, so they were supposed to eat less than where most starvation diets begin.
This summer I met a number of people doing Weight Watchers.
I also met a number of people doing Weight Watchers for the second, third, fourth or fifth time.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
I had intended to write another post about information from the last Scientific American article. I also plan another recipes post. But my attention was drawn last night to this article, and the stupidity involved was so spectacular that I couldn’t let it pass without a comment.
It really makes me depressed, and what makes me depressed isn’t the behavior of the McDonald’s patrons. Instead it’s the spectacular ignorance of human nature displayed by the designers, analyzers and reporters in question. It’s so stupid that I sat here for a few seconds just now trying to decide if I even had the heart to discuss it.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.
–Albert Einstein
I picked up an issue of Scientific American while in the airport recently. I’ve gone to doing all my travel reading on electronic devices, for convenience. But, inconveniently, there are those long periods on flights when one cannot use electronic devices, even if they aren’t cell phone capable and have everything about them that transmits turned off. I’m very tempted at this point to go off on a tangent, but I’ll show some rare self-restraint and come back to the main point. Continue reading I’m an American, Scientifically
It is easy to confuse a fantasy for a reality.
― Duop Chak Wuol
For your reading pleasure, a deconstruction of an insane article on Health.com, by Tom Naughton
Vegetables are interesting, but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.
–Fran Lebowitz
I spent some time this week with The Vegetarian. I just met her, but I think she’s due her own capitalized title. A lovely person and not at all evangelistic about her food choices. Credit where credit is due, after all. She doesn’t do it because of any religious or ethical scruples, but because she believes it to be the best way to avoid cancer. But when you’re eating butter, oil, and steaks, and she’s eating chips and salads, one of you is bound to notice something. We didn’t argue or even really discuss, but we did briefly explain our opposing views.
She got where she is by reading, if I recall the title correctly, The Food Revolution. In another post we’ll take a look at that book, but for now let’s go paradoxing, shall we? It’s a little like parasailing, only not at all.
I would like to promise it’ll be fun, but as I’m now in a plane at 38,000 feet crossing the entire United States–and we are currently over North Dakota–I’m afraid we’re shockingly short on fun. And room. And food. Thank goodness I don’t need to eat every two hours, because I don’t have $17 to shell out for a tiny box of “food.”
Ask Me How It Happened 