Carrot Juice Is Murder

Yesterday on my blog post about reducing Soda consumption my friend and fellow blogger Eric Anderson at Universe of Lies said that he was OK because he drank carrot juice instead of Soda. I am not so sure this is true as Carrot Juice Is Murder. 

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? 

Depressing, Isn’t It?

Looking at the world it is easy to get depressed. Everything is tinged with corruption. Food, money, bodies, minds, news, and the whole population are all over-processed. 

Look at the Cyprus bank crisis: money is over-processed. Look in the mirror: are you over-processed? Are you watching the Kardashians? Benny Hinn? Fox News?  Is your mind over-processed? 

The system, The Man, "the powers that be," or Babylon as the Bible calls it, thinks itself immortal and immune. Revelation 18:7 tells us what she thinks:

In her heart she boasts,
    ‘I sit enthroned as queen.
I am not a widow;
    I will never mourn.’

But we as Christians know the ultimate outcome as the next verse in Revelation tells us:

⁸ Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
     death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
    for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.

If we are in Babylon we will suffer along with it. Verse 4 tells us:

“‘Come out of her, my people,’
    so that you will not share in her sins,
    so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
⁵ for her sins are piled up to heaven,
    and God has remembered her crimes.

My main purpose of this blog is to understand that we cannot avoid being in Babylon, but we can avoid being of Babylon. Babylon is extremely intrusive. To paraphrase the radio cartoon character Chickenman "It's everywhere. It's everywhere." One of my proudest blogging moments was a comment by fellow blogger Eric Anderson at Universe of Lies. Commenting on a post about the Agricultural Industrial Complex he said, "Only Dennis would see Babylon in a chicken sandwich—and he is right." 

Yes, even food is over-processed, and it is depressing that there is not a whole lot that can be done about it. Yes, there are a few things you can do. Cook your own food. Know your food. Grow your food. Eat with thinking. It is depressing because most people will not bother. I have lost over 30 pounds mostly by just writing down what I eat in an e-journal called MyFitnessPal and thinking about my food choices. Do the best you can. 

Do you think I am exaggerating the problem? If so watch this documentary, Food Inc. If anything, I have not talked about it enough. But be warned, unless you are doing a lot more about the food you eat than most Americans, you will be depressed too.

Are Animals a Part of Sustainability?

In contrast to the sustainability lecture I posted last week, this speaker takes a different approach.  Joel Salatin is the owner of Polyface farm. Rather than shun animals as Bittman implied last week, all the while saying he was not saying that, Salatin incorporates them into his farm. Unfortunately this lecture does not allow us to see the slides.

I wonder how many of those that advocate sustainability actually know anything about farming? Salatin does. What he says, based on my ten years of ranching, make sense.

On a personal level, since I live on a rock, I need a greenhouse.

Salatin is an enjoyable speaker and well worth your time.

Blood Sugar Solution

Here is my Amazon review of The Blood Sugar Solution by Mark Hyman.

This is a difficult book to review as, in my opinion, it hovers between three and four stars.

If this is your first foray into the "eating bad carbs will kill you" school of dietary advice, then I do recommend it. There is a lot of truth in that school and this book is a reasonable presentation of that theory.

I have wondered for some time about the value of various artificial sweeteners. Am I setting myself up for failure? I want to thank Hyman for the best presentation I have yet seen about the problems associated with these products—even sugar alcohols promoted by many. He has convinced me to dramatically reduce these products in my diet.

Here is a quote from his book:

In another alarming study, rats offered the choice of cocaine or artificial sweeteners always picked the artificial sweetener, even if the rats were previously programmed to be cocaine addicts. The author of the study said that, “[t]he absolute preference for taste sweetness may lead to a re-ordering in the hierarchy of potentially addictive stimuli, with sweetened diets… taking precedence over cocaine and possibly other drugs of abuse.”

This is really thought provoking.

Why then so I only with reluctance give this book 4 stars? There are three reasons.

I do use some supplements. But most are a waste of money. If eating the diet he recommends is so good, why do we need to buy his expensive supplements? I suppose if one believes in the diet, yet for some reason does not follow it, then these supplements might be needed. I suppose that our food infrastructure is so messed up we need supplements. I suppose that his expensive products are better than everyone else's. I suppose. (I have used some of his products.)

I also felt that some of his statistics seemed a little suspect. He said that the average TV viewership was 9 hours a day. A quick google showed that a BLS government estimate is 2.8 a day. I have seen higher estimates of 4 hours. But when you see such an overestimate that fits the narrative the author is promoting you have to wonder what other "facts" he is massaging.

He begins one section by talking about the distortions in the food business caused by government subsidies and interference in the food marketplace. He is quite correct in this. It should be abolished. He then points out the marketing power of the food giants, as well he should. His solution is to increase government interference in the market. It made me wonder if he had actually read the earlier information he wrote in that same chapter.

So while I so modestly recommend this book, I suggest reading it with caution-but then again isn't that true of any book?