RANT
- Move over Dennis Miller--I've Got Some Things
To Say About Health, Fitness and Nutrition.
You might laugh, you might get angry and you may
not agree with me at all but I've got some stuff
on my mind that I need to get out that I think
you'll appreciate.
|
Rant
#1 - Why Does Everything Makes Us Fat Or Causes Cancer?
It
seems like we can't eat or drink anything these days
without being told it'll make us fat or cause cancer.
We
try to eat canned tuna to eat less fat and we get mercury
poisoning. We eat fruit and vegetables for the vitamins
and fiber and the pesticides give us tumors. We eat
chicken and we get mad chicken disease and now farm-raised
salmon will give you swine flu. Wine is either good
or bad for you depending on whether you eat it with
cheese or with crackers!
What
ever happened to the good old days when we got fat from
eating too much pie and we got sick from eating too
much paint off the walls? Now I hear you can get cancer
from worrying about getting cancer.
Rant #2 - Low-Carb Beer
Do
beer companies seriously believe that they can get people
to believe that they're selling diet beer? With all
their talk about who has 1 gram less carbs in a tablespoon
than the other, they seem to forget that it's actually
the ALCOHOL in their product that makes you fat!
Not
only does alcohol basically snuff out your fat-burning
enzymes, it's also preferentially stored as fat and
seriously messes up your body's production of muscle-building
hormones such as testosterone.
I
guess saying "low-carb" does sound better
than saying "watered-down." Next they'll be
adding caffeine and Gatorade to it and be calling it
"high-performance beer."
Rant #3 - "Nutrient of the Week" Bandwagon
Marketing
Did
you hear? Froot Loops are now healthy because they contain
added calcium! They contain added calcium because someone
decided to add a big bag of chalk to the sugary goop
they make it out of. You can now feed it to your sugar-crazed
A.D.D. kids with a clear conscience because it's now
healthy for them because it has CALCIUM.
I'm
waiting for the day when a clever marketer takes a piece
of plain blackboard chalk and sells it as a "Calcium
Stir Stick" for your coffee.
I
also just love it when a product that's been around
for 30 years suddenly proclaims it's now "fat free"
or "low-carb" even though it's always been
and everybody knows it. "Fat Free" or "Low-Carb"
water is not the revolutionary product it's made out
to be.
But
what really takes the cake are vitamin companies that
proudly jump on the nutrient bandwagon crying "See!
We've had it all along!" when their pills are so
tightly compressed and unabsorbable you can still read
the brand stamp on them when they come out the other
end (I have it on good authority from a certain Port-o-Potty
specialist I know)!
Rant #5 - Making Low-Carb Foods Out Of Foods That
Shouldn't Be Low-Carb
Orange
juice just shouldn't be low-carb. I don't care what
they say. If I want low-carb orange juice I'll add my
own water instead of paying the juice company to add
it for me and charge me extra for the privilege. That's
all I have to say about that.
Rant #6 - Trying to Pass Unhealthy Foods Off As Healthy
Pork
Rinds Lite - now with 25% less fat, sodium, cholesterol,
lead and cyanide.
Even
if you take some token percentage of the bad stuff out
of a bad food, it's still going to be a bad food. It's
like buying reduced fat lard - it's still lard. It just
has a nicer name now. Anyway, it's so easy to reduce
the fat in a serving by making the serving smaller,
what's the point? Who's going to sit down and eat just
3 cheese doodles?
When
I eat a food I know is bad, I know it's bad but sometimes
I'm just going to eat it anyway. I'm not an idiot. I'm
not going to sue you for making unhealthy food. Nobody
is putting a gun to my head to eat it. I don't believe
for a second that slightly reducing the "perceived
naughtiness" of a food somehow now makes it "healthy."
So please don't try and sugarcoat this delicious garbage
unless it's for flavor.
Rant #7 - The Amazing Diet Patch
The
only way you'll lose weight with the Diet Patch is if
you put it over your mouth. 'Nuff said.
Rant #8 - Expensive Urine and Other Supplement Bashing
There
are doctors even to this day who believe that taking
vitamins will only result in expensive urine. They believe
that you can get all the vitamins and minerals you need
in a balanced diet. Unfortunately, the only balanced
diet some people get is when they're trying to carry
3 dishes to the table in one hand.
Jumping
straight to prescribing costly drugs to mask symptoms
to people who are probably just desperately in need
of basic nutrition is the epitome of expensive urine,
in my opinion.
And
then there's creatine. You may remember the buzz a few
years ago when some of the "don't-confuse-us-with-the-facts"
media jumped on a story about the deaths of some high
school wrestlers. They were taking creatine to improve
their performance so obviously it must have killed them.
It certainly wasn't because they were taking long steam
baths in rubber suits and exercising intensely without
drinking adequate water in order to desperately make
weight for a wrestling meet. It must have been the horrible
supplement that did it because nobody has ever died
from catastrophic dehydration or heat stroke, right?
Let
me clarify - there is nothing dangerous about creatine.
It's a natural substance already found in your body
in quantity. It's found in every piece of meat that
you eat. The only way creatine could hurt you is if
someone drops a bucket of it on your foot.
Supplements
only seem to make the news when somebody has something
bad to say about them, regardless of whether it's true
or not.
