FRACTURED FAIRYTALES

Once upon a time there was a quite chubby little girl named Goldilocks.  Goldilocks had the unfortunate habit of wandering away from home in search of cream puffs.  One day while on her puffy quest she became lost in the woods.  She was crying and hungry and trying to find her way home when she came upon a charming cottage. "Maybe they will have some cream puffs",  she thought.  She knocked on the door but there was no answer, so she pushed the door open and went in.  

She was very tired from her wandering.  There were three chairs in the room.  A great big one, a middle sized one and an itty bitty one.  She tried out the itty bitty one, but it was too small.  Then she tried out the middle sized one, but it also was too small.  But the great big one was just right.

She sat in the great big chair and noticed that there were three cream puffs on the table.  A great big one, a middle sized one and an itty bitty one.  First she ate the itty bitty one, but that was not enough, so then she ate the middle sized one.  This wasn't enough either, so she ate the great big one.  

Now even Goldilocks was stuffed, so she wandered into the bedroom and there were three beds.  A great big one, a middle sized one and an itty bitty one.  Remembering past experiences, she opted for the great big one right away and fell fast asleep.

Well, who should come home to their little cottage but three bears.  A great big one, a middle sized one and an itty bitty one.  They had been out for a walk before eating their dessert and were looking forward to their cream puffs.  

"Look", cried the itty bitty bear," my cream puff is all gone" .  "Look" said the middle sized bear, "mine is gone too".  The great big bear growled, "Who ate our cream puffs?"

They looked in the bedroom and there,  in the great big bed, they found Goldilocks, with cream still on her face.

So they ate her instead.

The moral of this story: If you're going to steal cream puffs from bears, make sure you have a get-away car handy and, for Pete's sake, don't take a nap first.

                                                                   

      DIET MISTAKES THAT WILL
               KEEP YOU FAT               

Unrestrained, unhealthy eating and uncontrolled weight gain are not good for our bodies.  Lets face it, the chances of you or someone you know wanting to get diabetes, high blood pressure, a heart attack or any of the other diseases and maladies that may be the consequences of being overweight are slim.  We all know, well most of us, the importance of maintaining a healthy diet and weight, but sometimes we need to be reminded.

I'll tell you right now that these 7 diet mistakes were part of my daily eating routine (there were actually a lot more), in fact I still find myself struggling with a few.

We all need to stop expecting perfection from ourselves and others; we are all perfectly imperfect after all.  We will make mistakes; what we have to work toward is minimizing them as much as possible.  So here are seven of the most self-destructive errors that contribute to a flabby middle.

#1  Too many liquid calories

If you subscribe to the notion that "liquids don't count, they go in and then out", you might be surprised to learn that Americans get 21% of their calories from beverages.

Specialty coffee drinks, fruit and energy drinks and alcohol are some of the biggest calorie offenders.  Alcohol may be the worst because drinking relaxes our willpower.  After a couple of drinks, eating half a pizza may not seem like such a bad idea.

#2 Skipping meals to cut out calories

Not eating regularly throughout the day slows down your metabolism, making it harder to lose and easier to gain.  

#3  Not drinking enough water.

Water is essential for burning calories and plays an integral role in nearly every biological process in the body. 

When we're not well - hydrated our metabolism drags.

#4 Waiting for the Diet Fairy to swoop down, twang you with her magic wand and "poof" your extra pounds away.


Umm, what are you smoking?                                      

#5  Eating too little

Mistake #2 talked about intentionally skipping meals to cut calories; here we are talking about not eating enough or often enough.


Our bodies are built to help prevent starving when there's not enough food to go around.  Your body perceives any drastic reduction of calories as a threat of possible starvation and rapidly adjusts (slows) its metabolism.


#6  Mindless eating - if it's not on a plate it doesn't count


Unless you're keeping a food journal you probably don't have a clue as to how much you really eat.  Unknowingly putting hand to mouth or "eating amnesia" accounts for the large consumption of calories that have little to no nutritional value.


#7  If you exercise, you can eat anything


Just because you exercise regularly doesn't mean you can feast on garbage food all the time without worrying. Exercise won't benefit you much if you stuff your body with crap.


Exercise alone is not enough, you also need to maintain a healthy, balanced diet.

Don't believe #4.   There really is a Diet Fairy.  Anybody who doesn't believe in the Diet Fairy probably doesn't believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa.  Geesh.                 

NANO WHAT?

     The wonders of modern science are truly mind-boggling.  First we had GMO, then we had BPA and now -tada!- the purveyors of our foodstuffs proudly present - NANO!

     As you know, in our blog we have beaten the heck out of GMO and stated our aversion to all things Monsanto, and then we jumped all over plastics and can linings and BPA.  Bloody but unbowed, science has now snuck in the back door with a science fiction staple - nanoparticles.

     Nanotechnology, that geeky mad scientist vision of the future, has now invaded the food industry.  While we may not thrill to the idea of tiny robots scurrying about our bodies, poking their teensy noses into every cell and molecule, we can at least see the possibilities of their being useful in a medical sense.  In our food - not so much.

     Few, if any, studies demonstrate the safety of nanoparticles in food, yet nanomaterials are making their way into our food supplies.  Currently the United States has no labeling requirement for products or packaging containing nanomaterials.  The FDA has stated that nanomaterials cannot generally be regarded as safe.  Ingredients that are GRAS (generally recognized as safe) at the macro level may not be safe at the nanoscale.

     Their small size allows nanoparticles to go places in the body that larger particles cannot.  Whether you inhale 'em, eat 'em or rub 'em on your skin, once they get in you they can penetrate cell walls and pass into the lymph and blood system.  From there it's a hop, skip and jump to bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen, liver, heart and they're even small enough to cross the blood brain barrier.  

     A laboratory study showed titanium dioxide nanoparticles in the white powdered sugar that coats Dunkin' Donuts Powdered Cake Donuts and Hostess Donettes. (See Slipping Through the Cracks: An Issue Brief on Nanomaterials in Food http://asyousow.org/health_safety/nanoissuebrief.shtml.)

     Back in 1966 a classic sci-fi movie was released called Fantastic Voyage.  To save the life of a diplomat, a group of doctors and scientists in a submarine were were shrunk down to the size of a bacterium and injected into the diplomat to "make repairs internally".  This is actually the cutting edge of medicine today (not tiny scientists - nanobots).  Amazing - and no prob.  Years of research and countless studies enabled such breakthroughs.  Unfortunately, when it comes to what goes into our foodstuffs, the attitude seems to be "Oh, wow.  A whole country full of lab rats.  Let's throw this out and see if anybody develops anything interesting."

      If you needed still another reason to avoid processed foods, think about this one.  Pleasant dreams.