Practical Suggestions

This is actually a picture of the restaurant. I do not like telling people what to do. This may come as a shock to people that know me, as I am somewhat opinionated. But while I may express my opinion that the Chicken Pot Pie at the Daily Grill at LAX is great, I will not be upset if you order the New York Steak sandwich. (BTW I did this myself last week when I took my wife to the airport. What a miss steak.) 

But as the saying goes, you can't beat something with nothing. So in this spirit let me offer a suggestion on a first step that one can make to try to improve one's diet. I hope you watched the video Food, Inc I embeded on the blog before Youtube canned it. If so, you should be thinking about how to improve your eating habits. (If you missed it you can get it on a physical DVD from Netflix.) 

Drink water. Yes, I know the dangers of water expressed in the poster on the right—and remember that most people who die have consumed water in the previous 24 hours. But water is a great product, and cheap. What restaurants do is try to keep prices as cheap as possible and avoid crossing psychological pricing barriers like $9.99. But no one really notices that your soda costs $2.50. If there are two soda drinkers, and you eat out twice a week, that is $500 a year.  At the end of this year would you rather have a bag of junk silver worth $500 or some very expensive urine excreted over the last year? Of course if you instead buy coffee at Starbucks you have not gained anything.

How dangerous is soda anyway? Here is one estimate:

Researchers reported Tuesday that they have linked 180,000 obesity-related deaths worldwide to sugary drinks, including about 25,000 adult Americans.

Overall, 1 in 100 deaths of obese people globally can be blamed on too many sweetened beverages, according to a study presented at an American Heart Association scientific conference in New Orleans. Mexico leads the 35 largest nations in deaths attributable to over-consumption of sugary drinks, with the United States third. Japan, which has one of the lowest per-capita consumptions of sugary drinks, had the fewest sugar-related deaths.

There is however a big problem with this study: they are guessing. But is there anyone anywhere who thinks that soda drinks are “good” for you? They are at best neutral, and then only in modest amounts. Coke was originally sold as a “patent medicine”—and contained cocaine. (Nine milligrams per glass, according to some sources.) Once the cocaine was eliminated in 1903, it really was not a big deal. So what if you had 8 ounces of Coca-Cola at a drugstore a few times a month—that was not enough to harm you. But think about it. Gradually a few times a month became a few times a week. Eventually that became for many a few times a day. Also gradually the amount in a bottle, itself an innovation, went up—from 8 ounces to 12 to 16 to 20. The new 16.9 oz bottle is an attempt to raise prices, without appearing to raise prices. It is not as successful as they want. 

This cannot be good for you. 

So you should drink water instead. This is no doubt a worrying trend to "the powers that be." So naturally they are introducing something called fruit water. 

I am not sure of the meaning of this photo. Will Coke make you younger?The Atlanta-based company confirmed Monday that it would introduce a line of zero-calorie, carbonated, fruit-flavored waters called “Fruitwater” starting April 1. The drink will be part of Coca-Cola’s Glaceau unit, which makes other pricier bottled waters such as Vitaminwater and Smartwater.

Unlike the zero-calorie version of Vitaminwater, which is made with the natural sweetener stevia, Fruitwater will be sweetened with the artificial sweetener sucralose, best known as Splenda. It will not contain any fruit juice but the bottle notes that the drink is “enhanced with nutrients,” a reference to its B vitamins, magnesium and zinc.

Wonderful. Well, at least it is a diet product. Nothing wrong with that right? I can only say that as an experiment of one that diet drinks have not helped me one bit. Why is this? I have this feeling that the sweetness is fooling my body into doing things that cause me to gain weight. Is the sweet taste causing me to produce insulin? Is this dropping my blood sugar and making me hungry? I have no idea, but I am suspicious. 

Dr Kaplin comments:

A word of warning, he also is against milk. But the argument here is convincing. 

I have had this unfinished post in my drafts area for some time—ever since I reviewed Dr Kaplin's book. But I decided I needed it to sit a while until I could experiment on myself. I have not had a Diet Coke for some time. I have not noticed a significant difference except that things that did not use to taste sweet now do so. Maybe it has not been long enough. What is the most interesting to me is that I have not missed it at all. That alone is reason enough to keep it out of my diet. 

Would you wear this shirt as an honor? I am not saying that I will never have another Diet Coke. Traveling might be an issue, although it is not so far. Nor am I saying I will not buy a beverage in a restaurant from time to time. The $.65 ice tea at the local Greek restaurant seems a bargain. 

Is the soda you drink good for you? A little here and there is not harmful, but I used to drink at least 64 ozs. a day. The thought of it today makes me cringe. What are you doing right now in terms of what you eat and drink that would make you cringe if you thought about it? I bet you already know the answer. The question is, will you act on your knowledge? 

Comments

[Eric Anderson]

Food, Inc. probably isn't available to view online, but the director is interviewed at this link, and he gives a summary of the movie's themes, along with some selected clips.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1143263943
(24 minutes)

[Positive Dennis]

It was available for a few weeks onYouTube until they canned it.