Good stuff to watch…

Hey now!

On Hulu right now, there are two really good movies that everyone should see.

The first one is Super Size Me, with Morgan Spurlock, which if you haven’t seen yet…  Have you been under a rock?

Although I have seen it, I enjoyed watching it again.  There were a lot of good scenes that I had forgotten about.  Sure it’s a bit extreme just to prove a point that some may not even think pertains to them, and people say that “of course the food made him feel like crap because he ate so much of it.  It’s fine in moderation!”  The people that think this way are forgetting that just because someone doesn’t eat a bad food everyday doesn’t mean they will be immune to that foods effects on the body, it will just take longer to occur than a concentrated McD’s binge like Spurlock’s.  The thing is that study after study has shown that the more fast food a person eats, the likelihood and quantity of diseases becomes greater and greater, and it doesn’t take as much of the poor foods to increase their chances as they would like to believe.  It’s really not much different than slowly getting lead poisoning from steady long-term exposure.

As a side note, Spurlock also has a TV series called 30 Days in which he or other people commit to experiencing a completely different lifestyle for 30 days.  Some examples include Morgan and his wife attempting to live on minimum wage, a homophobic straight man living in the gayest part of San Francisco, and an atheist living with a Christian family, etc…

The second movie is The Future of Food.  I’ve only started this one recently and finished about half of it.  So far there are some startling points about how large companies can have patents on seeds and even legally force farmers to grow (or not grow) specific crops and even particular strains of those crops, which in turn largely influences what food producers bring cheaply into our food cupboards.  It’s just one of those movies that everyone should see, if only to be aware, but potentially to help influence their choices which can in turn support or not support certain industries. 

That reminds me of a new movie called Food, Inc. that just came out.  Check out the trailer:

I really like the point made that I’m casting a vote for a particular food company or type of food each time I put something into my grocery cart.  If we stop giving votes to the big industries that are making us sick and fat, either they won’t be around much longer, or they may start to change the way they operate.

Here’s another trailer:

McDonald’s says to “moderate, not eliminate”

I'm sure McD's was part of his diet of moderation

A friend pointed this out to me the other day…

McDonald’s website has some pretty interesting (and predictable) frequently asked questions and answers.

Here’s my favorite:

 

Frequently Asked Questions About McDonald’s USA Food & Nutrition

Q: Can McDonald’s food be part of a healthy, balanced diet?

A: Yes. Many nutrition professionals agree that McDonald’s food can be part of a healthy eating style based on the sound nutrition principles of balance, variety and moderation. One key to a healthy diet is to moderate, not eliminate, favorite foods because eliminating foods is rarely successful long term. In fact, the American Dietetic Association says all foods can fit into a healthy diet and what’s most important is eating a balanced diet over time, rather than focusing on any one food or meal.

McDonald’s varied menu and range of serving sizes make it easy to fit our food into a balanced diet and to create a range of meal combinations that fall within recommended guidelines for calories, fat and other nutrients.

McDonald’s would no sooner consult “nutrition professionals” (whatever the hell that means) than they would hire professional writers to answer questions like this in such a vague and McDonald’s-centric point of view.  OF COURSE the answer is yes.  Was there any doubt?

OF COURSE they wouldn’t condone eliminating anything from ones diet.  Why would they?  If anyone were to do such a thing, I wouldn’t be surprised if fast food was the first thing to go!  As I’ve said before, anyone who argues that moderation is a better choice than elimination of something that many would agree is not the best choice is only doing so because they can’t let go of their cravings.

As for the menu selections mentioned that fit into a balanced diet, take a look at their meal suggestions that:

…many nutrition professionals agree can be part of a healthy diet based on the sound nutrition principles of balance, variety and moderation.

Notice that most of the meal suggestions feature either a small juice, milk, or diet soda as the beverage.  Also, you won’t find a quarter pounder on there anywhere…  or a big mac, or a bacon cheeseburger (the items in which they spend most of their advertising on).  Fries are mentioned once, as a small size, with the following asterisk: 

*To reduce sodium, French fries may be ordered without added salt

I would love to hear of someone trying that while in the drive-through.

Don’t Let Your Health Take it in the Back Door

Times are tough.  People are losing their jobs!  Most of us need to pay more attention to where our money is going because of the uncertainty about the near future.

When disasters happen, people often say:

Well, at least we’ve got our health.”

I think people need to make sure that they really believe that, and are not just saying something that sounds good to make themselves feel better, like they are attempting to look on the bright side.

Being healthy, and maintaining health should always remain a priority, and we should be especially diligent about paying attention to that in hard times!

I always think it’s rather odd when people I know brag to me about how inexpensive something they ate, or are about to eat, was.  This doesn’t seem like something I would want to brag about.  

Think about it like this:  What’s the most common thought that someone has when discovering that a material possession they have that has broken, was inexpensive and/or cheaply made?

I guess you get what you pay for!”

Indeed!  

Shouldn’t this phrase have ten-fold meaning when talking about food???

When I hear someone bragging that they bought a food product or a meal for “x” amount of money, and it seems relatively pretty cheap, I just CAN’T HELP but think about all of the resources that it took to plant, grow, harvest, produce, package, transport, market, and retail that item or meal, and wonder how it is possible that anyone is making any money off something so inexpensive!  They do it by cutting costs every way they can, and often that means providing a sub-par product.  Cutting costs when it comes to something I’m going to eat, does not sound good to me.  

Cutting costs results in salmonella and e-coli contamination.

Cutting costs results in unsafe food temperatures during transportation.

Look…  Modern transportation, refrigeration, and manufacturing has provided us with more and more food products daily, and at lower prices.  This of course can be a good thing too!  Produce is available year-round in most places.  To me, that is convenience food.  

I’m certainly not made of money, and I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be frugal at the grocery store too if we’re concerned about money.  I’m just saying that maybe we should put a little more thought into it when picking our battles over what to spend our money on.  Food choice is an important battle to think about.

The Idiocy of Idiots

I just have to bring this up…

If you’d like a good laugh, you’ve got to check out the comments in an old post of mine.

The post is called:  Stop stealing food from the hungry!!

In that post, I first mention an article in which some estimates show that the number of overweight people in the world has surpassed the number of people that don’t get enough food.

Of course, me being me, I make a ridiculous joke that fat people are literally stealing hungry people’s food.  I then PURPOSELY feature two photos of kids, one of an actual fat kid, and one photo of two (probably African) children with distended stomachs.  The purpose was to mistakenly label both photos as fat kids to make a point.  The point is that it’s kind of sad that the real fat kid is being fed a ton by his parents, with no regard for his health, while there are millions of starving children around the world that really are starving.

No, I’m not trying to reiterate the old saying that your mom used to tell you at dinner…  “Finish your plate!  There’s people starving in Africa!!!”

It’s different than that.  It’s more like “DON’T finish your plate because there are people starving”.

I don’t know.  I certainly have no idea how to go about getting starving children the nutrients they need, so I’m not going to speculate on that.

HOWEVER, I will speculate on how the real fat kid god fat, and how he can get un-fat.

Anyway, read the comments.  Several different people threaten to have my blog shut down because I am an idiot for mistakenly labeling the starving children with big bellies as fat, despite the fact that I say in black and white that one photo features the effects of malnutrition.

It’s just amazing.

The most recent threat was to sue me.  It cracked me up.

Bacon Flavored Lube?

This has got to be an April fool’s joke, right?

From the makers of Bacon Salt, featured on their blog:

As many of you know, we’re huge bacon lovers here at J&D’s. We now make Bacon Salt, Baconnaise and Bacon Lip Balm.  That last one seemed like a stretch at first, but now that bacon has successfully made the jump from food to personal care, we’re pushing it even further.

With that said, we’re happy to introduce our newest product, baconlube™. It’s not for sale yet, but we’re looking for early product testers to put our “Everything should taste like bacon” tagline to the test.

I won’t make this an official “Ode to Bacon”, because I’m suspicious.  We’ll see if it’s still there tomorrow.

 

***UPDATE***

It was an April Fool’s joke.  Check it out…

MOVE OVER *skinny* Bachelor: Here comes FAT-chelor!

The producer of shows such as The Bachelor and other reality TV crap has teamed up with Fox again to bring us a new kind of dating/elimination/survivor-esque/drama-filled/over-hyped/so-far-removed-from-real-life show.

This time, on the heels of the huge popularity of such shows as America’s Biggest Loser, they’re bringing us a “bachelor” type show featuring average people  (Lest we’ve forgotten, the average in the U.S. is to be at least moderately overweight, being that one is actually in the minority if he or she is not overweight or obese).

Enough of these shows featuring “attractive” people falling in “love”!  Who wants to see that?

BRING ON THE BBW’s!

Fox has begun casting for their new show called More to Love:

“For six years, it’s been skinny-minis and good-looking bachelors, and that’s not what the dating world looks like,” says Fox’s Mike Darnell.

“Why don’t real women — the women who watch these shows, for the most part — have a chance to find love too?”

Haha!  Yes indeed.  I wonder if Darnell means the kind of love where you don’t act yourself when you’re around potential “love” candidates because you have a camera following you around and are being watched by millions?  Why can’t real women find this kind of “love”?!?  What a shame.

On the other hand, I suppose just as The Biggest Loser is unrealistic for most people, it can still be inspiring for us “normies”.  I can imagine some normies that have been estranged to the dating world due to some negative self-talk being inspired to get out there again, and perhaps feeling a little better about themselves.  In that respect it can be a good thing.  Or said person could have the opposite opinion of the show, and watching it would make themselves feel worse.  Really it would all depend on the viewer’s state of mind.

“It may be a little controversial,” Darnell says,”but I think it will mostly be positive. This is so simple and so obvious, yet it has never been done.”

“We want to send the message that you can be the size you are and still be lovable.”

I’ll definitely be checking it out.  I’m curious what the producers think a “real” person looks like.  They may accidentally prove to us that being fat doesn’t make you any more “real”, it just makes you fat.  Apparently if you’re not overweight you’re not real.  

I can’t wait to find out what the fat acceptance feministas have to say about this.

[via here & here]

Ode to Bacon: Part 8 (update)

Bacon lover Mike J. Nelson, from MST3K, that promised to dedicate himself to a month of consuming only bacon…

…has revealed that he didn’t really do it.

Check Ode to Bacon: Part 8 for the update.