Shaking Things Up

Do you have a low boredom threshold?

I sure do. I was on the Atkins plan for six of the past eight months, and did well with it but got boooorrrredd. So I switched to South Beach, but mostly maintained with that and besides being booorrrreeedd, I am not ready to be in maintenance so the past two months have been kinda "waisted."

So, yesterday I got out my dogeared copy of Jonny Bowden's fabulous Living the Low Carb Life, browsing for something to relieve my dietary boredom.

I should note here that it's not that I get bored with the food I'm eating. I get bored with whatever STRUCTURE of plan I'm following. I succeed best when I can get somewhat obsessed with whatever I'm doing. When my obsessiveness wanes, so does my attention span. This is not necessarily a good thing but it is a character trait I seem to have had my whole life and I figure I might as well use it to my advantage instead of letting it consign me to a life in the Lane Bryant lane, if you know what I mean.

So, I start reading again, and I'm struck both by what a fabulous book this is--my buddy Jimmy Moore has called this a must-read for low carbers and I have to agree--but also by how many little variations there are on low-carbing.

This time, I started zoning in on the GO-Diet, the Goldberg-O'Mara diet plan, which has recently been reformulated as the Four Corners plan. It's a low-carb plan with its own little twist, has the Jonny Bowden seal of approval, and sounds like it might be something to keep me obsessively entertained for a while. I've ordered the book, and will report on it in a few days when it arrives. (Whatever did I do before Amazon Prime came along!?)

Cancer Cautions

Always, and I mean ALWAYS take these kinds of stories with a grain of salt, but it's always interesting to see what people are writing about when you see a screaming headline like The top five cancer-causing foods.

In this case, it's actually quite interesting from a low-carb standpoint.

The "worst foods" list was based on the following "worst-offenders" in terms of links to cancer:

#1 SUGAR. And with it, refined simple carbs such as refined grains. Sugars feed tumors. And man oh man is it addictive.

#2 PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED OILS, aka Trans Fats. I thought this list made an interesting comment about food labels and trans fats. Ever wonder at how quickly companies were able to comply with the "no trans fat" rules? The good old FDA deigns that anything .5 g or less is the same as 0 as far as labeling is concerned. So food manufacturers are simply changing portion sizes to be .5 so they can claim to be "trans fat free."

#3 ACRYLAMIDES, cancer-causing agents produced when starchy foods are grilled or fried.

#4 NITRITE AND NITRATES, carcinogens added to processed meats such as hot dogs or bacon that acts as a preservative and gives food that "fresh" reddish color.

Given those four elements, then, the site lists these as the worst offenders in cancer-causing foods:

1. Hot dogs. The Cancer Prevention Coalition recommends that children not eat more than 12 hots dogs a month....I'm sorry but that's a LOT of hot dogs. Do kids eat that many hot dogs? Anyway, look for hot dogs without sodium nitrate in the list of ingredients.

2. Processed deli meats and bacon. You can also find uncured bacon now; again, look for sodium nitrate and if you see it, walk away.

3. Doughnuts. Trans fat, white flour, sugar, acrylamides. Need I say more?

4. French fries. Sigh. Trans fat, simple carb, acrylamides.

5. Chips/crackers/cookies. Trans fat, white flour, sugar. See the note above about serving size. Apparently, that's how Girl Scout cookies got around the trans fat problem this year.

Interesting stuff!

The Plastic Diet

Now here's a story that'll make you want to give up bread. Seems imported grain products (wheat gluten, corn gluten, corn meal, soy protein, rice bran and rice protein) have been found to be contaminated with the same melamine thought to be poisoning our pets. Melamine--as in cool colored plastic plates from the '50s or these snazzy dishes from Pier 1. Said grain is being used in everything from bread to baby formula, according to the Reuters story.

One of my favorite phrases that stuck after the Katrina debacle here in New Orleans was Gen. Russell Honore's contention that reporters who kept asking the same questions were "stuck on stupid."

So here's another stuck on stupid moment. According to the Reuters report, the tainted pet food wasn't all destroyed--it was sold to pig farms as food for porkers in North and South Carolina, California, New York, Utah and possibly Ohio. That pork chop you're eating might not just be on a plastic plate--it could be a plastic plate. The FDA recommended we not eat melamine-tainted pork, but said the "health risk is minimal."

Easy for them to say. Bet you won't see any pork on the FDA officials' plates, at least not from the affected farms. And why, if the food is poisonous to cats and dogs, would it occur to anyone to put it into the human food chain?

And not only that, but the FDA appears to be protecting the names of companies who have imported the tainted grain products.

Stuck on stupid.

Will Sing For Food

Interesting story in today's LA Times about singing--specifically, how the act of singing can cause our body to release feel-good oxytocins, similar to sex or, I imagine, a big pile of Popeye's Chicken.

Now, there's good news and bad news here. I love music--I mean REALLY love music, but I can't sing. Well, not in tune, at least. Kind of a wavering warble, if truth be told. And if I'm standing next to someone who's singing even more off-key, I unconsciously follow the leader and sing even worse.

But if singing relieves stress and causes us to handle stuff better, then we are less prone to stress eating, yes?

The only time I'm alone--ever, these days, which is why I'm so nuts--is in my car. So I'll become one of those wildly gesticulating, ridiculous looking drivers as I sing my way to work and back.

Shuffling my iPod, here's today's 10 tracks at random.

1. Graham Parker--You Can't Be Too Strong
2. Célédé--Road to Lizdonvarna
3. Aaron Neville--Louisiana 1927
4. The Band--The Weight
5. Dave Dudley--Six Days on the Road
6. Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer--41 Thunderer
7. Jethro Tull--A Small Cigar
8. Bob Dylan--Ain't Talkin'
9. Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros--At the Border, Guy
10. 4Him--Be Thou My Vision

Looking at my shuffle list, all I can say is, you gotta admit I'm versatile.

Junkfood Science

With apologies to the fine blog of that name. But if you read a lot of reports from new studies being done in weight loss and nutrition--and how often they contradict each other--you learn to take everything with a grain of salt. No, wait. I think this week salt's really bad for you again. Regina, over at Weight of the Evidence has been doing some deconstruction of conflicting science.

I do no deconstruction here, just a roundup of recent headlines, for whatever they're worth...

• ANOTHER FAT GENE: Scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have found a "relative" of the anti-aging gene "Klotho" that works to help lower glood glucose levels in the fat cells of mice, making it a "novel target for developing drugs to treat human obesity and dibetes." Sounds like another magic pill in the works. Oh boy.

• A recent report in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that high levels of symptoms of depression -- such as irritability and sleep problems -- are associated with an increased risk of development of type 2 diabetes. Gee, Einstein. Depressed people can be stress eaters, and stress eaters rarely binge on broccoli (okay, I know, I do have a reader who binged on brussels sprouts, and she is my hero!).

• Duke Medical Center researchers have concluded that obesity increases employers' workers compensation costs. Seems obese employees are more likely to file workers' comp claims. Hmmmm...I haven't taken a sick day in more than three years. Maybe I should throw myself down the stairs and take some time off.

• Researchers at the University of Calgary have found that consuming a single high-fat meal makes a person "more prone to suffer the physical consequences of stress" than those who eat a low-fat meal. They found "shocking" the difference between the stress responses of a group of students eating a McDonald's breakfast as opposed to students who had dry cereal with skim milk, cereal bars and nonfat yogurt. “It’s been well documented that a high-fat diet leads to artherosclerosis and high blood pressure, and that exaggerated and prolonged cardiovascular responses to stress are associated with high blood pressure in the future," said researcher Tavis Campbell. "So when we learn that even a single, high-fat meal can make you more reactive to stress, it’s cause for concern because it suggests a new and damaging way that a high-fat diet affects cardiovascular function.” So, were these students all of exactly equal health and genetic background to begin with? Did the "shocking" results persist beyond 30 minutes past the given meal? How many students participated--400 or 4? Yawn.

• New baby foods are being developed in England that contain supplements of hunger-suppressing leptin, so feeding your baby the new foods will ensure that he doesn't grow up to be a big fat slob. Since such early exposure and prolonged exposure to leptin supplements is untested, however, he might turn out to be a very thin guy with three horns. But he won't be fat.

Blah Blah Blah

I'm fighting the serious blahs these days. My job has become almost unbearable at times, filled with a plethora of chores I abhor (most of which could be completed by a trained monkey), and home is about as bad, with my live-in senior adult having a lumbar fracture and needing more help than usual. I feel as if someone has their hand out to me 24/7, wanting something and wanting it now--and while I'm at it why don't I do x, y and z too. And when am I going to get ABC done?

So life really sucks right now.

No wonder my evil twin Bingy is fighting to get out.

Season's Greetings!

I apologize from the get-go--this has nothing to do with health, diet or weight loss, except for a very tenuous tie to exercise at the end. But it's a facet of life in New Orleans that I feel I must share.

You know, most people have four weather seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter) and a number of holiday seasons (Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.).

But we in New Orleans have four weather seasons (early summer, summer, hellacious late summer, and winter), a couple of extra holiday seasons (Mardi Gras, Jazzfest) and are fortunate enough to have a number of critter seasons as well, and we're in the middle of one right now.

No, it's not termite-swarming season. That starts in about a month, during which time all exterior -- and, if you're smart, most interior -- lights must be doused in order to prevent the huge hordes of madly swarming termites looking for new homes to visit yours.

What we're currently enjoying is Buckmoth Caterpillar Season. If you aren't lucky enough to live in a place with lots of oak trees where these critters like to live, let me tell you about them. They're big--about the size of a finger--and are covered with poisonous spikes. Even the slightest touch will cause you, the toucher, to have your affected body part puff up like a blowfish, turn red, and burn for hours. Some years, they are so bad that people walking down the sidewalks carry umbrellas because, yes, they fall out of the trees on your head and, believe me, this is not something you want to experience. My eldest furchild, Irish Terrier Shane, stepped on one last year and I thought she was dying. I know she stepped on it because I grabbed her up to see why she was crying and latched onto the darned thing myself. I also cried. We cried together. It was a bonding moment.

Buckmoth caterpillars do provide a great source of exercise, however, as they are very noisy and colorful when stepped on. There's an audible POP and then orange goop oozes out of their bodies while bright neon green seeps out of their heads. I believe my personal-best buckmoth-stomping record is 10 squishes in 30 seconds.

Think of it as a sub-genre of Buck dancing. With color.

Saving Chocolate

Ironic that since chocolate has proven to be so good for us, now the FDA is about to cave to demands from the Grocery Manufacturers of America trade group that the definition of what qualifies as chocolate be changed.

Currently, in order for chocolate to be, well, chocolate, it must meet certain FDA criteria, namely that it be derived from cocoa beans and use cocoa butter.

According to the folks at the Guittard Chocolate website, the grocers trade group has petitioned the FDA to allow chocolatiers to change the way chocolate is made, substituting cheaper vegetable oils for cocoa butter and using milk substitutes rather than milk--and still call it chocolate.

I rather imagine the result will be that most chocolate will begin to taste like those nasty wax chocolate rabbits that, of course, none of us ate this past Easter. But you know the ones.

It doesn't mean quality chocolatiers like Guittard will begin making shoddy chocolate, only that the standards of the industry will be diminished and the market flooded with cheap, nasty-tasting faux chocolate.

See's Candies and Guittard are asking people to protest to the FDA and tell you how to do so here. The deadline for public comments to the FDA is April 25--next Wednesday.

There are some pretty fine sugar-free chocolates out there, even some (thank you Chocoperfection) not made with evil, nasty maltitol.

Help save chocolate!

Proud to be a Southerner

Because we know our way around a dinner plate--as this map shows.

But this is not going to be a funny blog entry about redeye gravy and chitlins. Because I'm on a soapbox this morning.

The folks over at CalorieLab report that the State of Mississippi is considering funding weight-loss surgery for its obese citizens.

Turns out, as the above graphic from CalorieLab shows, that Mississippi leads the nation in the number of its citizens deemed morbidly obese and they are calculating the cost of obesity to the state's overburdened healthcare system.

Whoa there, Nellie.

I have no doubts that obesity, diabetes and other "co-morbidities" contributes to a state's healthcare costs.

But in my mind, there's a bigger culprit out there that should be addressed. At the risk of sounding like a socialist--because I'm not one--I firmly believe poverty is the biggest factor impacting healthcare costs.

Now, there's some overlap here, because many studies such as this one have shown a link between poverty and obesity. Face it--what are the cheapest foods at your grocery store? Let's see. Noodles. Potatoes. A virtual plethora of ultra-cheap cookies.

But which came first, the poverty or the obesity? Or can you separate the two?

I think you can. I live in the poorest state in the country. I live in a city with the largest percentage of citizens living in poverty in this state--it is a situation that has been exacerbated by Hurricane Katrina, where our poor and disenfranchised people were satellite-beamed around the world for everyone to see. And a lot of them were obese, yes, and a lot of them were not.

But the majority of them were poor, and they do not have health insurance. Right now, with our charity no-insurance-needed healthcare system still in ruins, providing healthcare to folks who can't afford it--fat and thin--is breaking us.

If Mississippi's healthcare costs are onerous, they should look first not at how many fat people are waddling around their state but at how many poor people are eating what they can afford and then burdening the healthcare system.

I don't have any solutions here--I'm sure there are those of you out there with socialized medicine who could tell us the problems fraught with that system.

But let's identify the real problem here and not the easy target. Buying a lot of people weight-loss surgery thinking it will relieve poverty-induced stress on the healthcare system is just nuts.

Okay. Off my soapbox now.

Dying to be Thin

Whenever I think I'm becoming too food-obsessed I only have to read something like this story about a young "normal-sized" woman who decides to try and become a size 0. She actually doesn't lose that much weight but descends quickly into bulemia and a warped body image. Makes me wonder if volunteering for such an assignment didn't mean she had a warped self-image to begin with. Scary stuff, though!