Who knew cookies could be good for you?

The war on food continues with new ammo! I just found an advertisement in my Sunday paper for Whuno Cookies (http://www.whonucookies.com/) and they appear to be the latest thing since sliced bread.

These cookies, which suspiciously resemble Oreos and Chips Ahoy, are packed with fiber, calcium and vitamin C. The ad, in fact, tells us three cookies can provide "as much fiber as a bowl of oatmeal, as much calcium and vitamin D as an 8 oz glass of milk and as much vitamin C as a cup of blueberries." Isn't that fantastic?

Now, rather than eat oatmeal and blueberries and drink a glass of milk, you can scarf down three delicious cookies and be good to go, because we all know eating nutrition packed cookies is better for you than eating real food. It's so much easier to grab a couple of cookies than to sit down to a bowl of oatmeal and blueberries.

Of course, these nutritious cookies are aimed at kids, or parents of kids who want better nurtition for their children. We all know kids prefer cookies to spinach or oatmeal, in fact I know a lot of adults who prefer cookies to spinach and oatmeal, but does it really make sense to replace those foods with specially designed cookies?

The ingredients list for the cookies is suspiciously missing from the website, so I can't be sure, but I have an inkling there will be a lot of things in the cookies you won't find in the natural foods they replace.

The food industry constantly bombards us with replacements, things we can consume instead of real food that will supposedly act like real food where it counts [nutrition, taste] and not act like real food in the areas we fear [calories, fat]. I understand the concept of wanting to replace some of the junk kids like to eat with better choices - hey, if your kids are going to be eating cookies anyway, why not give them more nutirtious cookies, right? The only down side is, you're fostering a taste for cookies when learning to like real food will serve them better in the long run.

Have the milk and the oatmeal and the blueberries instead of a designer cookie. Who knows, maybe you'll be better off.

Eating Plan, plan to eat!

Part III of my Trouble losing weight? Lose weight series

I went to the dietician yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to speak to someone who was intelligent and knowledgeable. It’s funny how what a supposed doctor can tell you about weight loss while they’re looking at your blood work is very different from what a dietician can tell you about how to take better care of yourself.


Here’s some of the differences between doctor/PA and dietician:


PA: Cut bread out of your diet

Dietician: Eat two slices of whole grain bread with breakfast and lunch. You need carbs in your diet.


PA: Insulin resistance will turn into diabetes, you must lose weight.

Dietician: Insulin resistance doesn’t always turn into diabetes. You can improve insulin resistance.


PA: Keep a food diary.

Dietician: You don’t need to keep a food diary.


PA: Cut out snacks between meals.

Dietician: You must eat a morning, afternoon and evening snack.


PA: Avoid cheese.

Dietician: With your low cholesterol you can certainly have cheese.


PA: Switch to skim milk.

Dietician: Drink 1% milk, it has less sugar than skim milk.


PA: Change your life to accommodate your diet.

Dietician: Let’s create a food plan that fits into your life.


Now, armed with some sensible and doable ideas to tweak my eating habits, I hope to improve my health, not just drop pounds while I starve myself in order to fit into an ‘ideal’ weight category.

My ultimate advice: Trouble losing weight? Lose your doctor, and find a medical professional who understands health.

Trouble losing weight?

Doctor solution: Lose weight

I'm disgusted right now, having just come from a follow-up visit with my psuedo-doctor, [a physician's assistant, since, as a woman, I don't rate seeing an actual doctor].

I visited three weeks ago with a couple of concerns: a feeling of generalized anxiety, a fluttering in my chest at times that made me anxious, a tiredness, a feeling of being overwhelmed, an inability to lose weight despite numerous 'healthy lifestyle changes', and just a general not well feeling.

Psuedo-doctor's first step was to prescribe vitamins, calcium supplements and Claritan [for a mild sinus irritation.] She then ordered blood and urine work, which I went for and today I went back for the results.

Well, my bad cholesterol is amazingly low!
My good cholesterol is also low. [How do you fix that? More exercise!]
My blood sugar is a little high [egads, I'm pre-diabetic - so now no other symptoms or concerns are of any importance. I could have had a broken leg and it wouldn't matter - I'm overweight and I have high sugar [9 points above normal] so therefore nothing else is of any value other than I LOSE WEIGHT!

Hold on, wasn't an inability to lose weight despite years of dieting and lifetsyle changes ONE OF MY COMPLAINTS?

Why, yes, it was.

What does the psuedo-doctor say? Here's a brief, disheartening transcript between me and the skinny little medical robot:

Her: You should cut out starches, pastas, sweets, white bread, white rice etc,.

Me: I explained to you already that I've done that. It made no difference.

Her: I'm sending you to Weight Watchers, people have lost 70 or 80 pounds on that. You should go with someone for moral support.

Me: I've been on diets since I was 17. They DO NOT work. I've counted points, calories, fat grams, etc. I've cut soda, white bread, salt etc. out of my diet and seen no weight loss.

Her: It's not just for weight loss, it's for a healthy lifestyle.

Me: I'm doing healthy lifestyle changes. They're not making a difference.

Her: How often do you exercise?

Me: I was doing it every day, it made no difference.

Her: But how about now?

Me: I'm TOO TIRED to excercise. That's my problem!

Her: Well, you can't just give up.

Me: Why not? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting diffrerent results is the definition of insanity.

Her: I can send you to a dietician. Maybe they can tell you something you're not doing.

Me: Fine. Whatever.

Her: I'd like to see you in three months and let's see if we can get that weight down, because we don't want you to become diabetic.

Me: I thought it wasn't about weight, it was about a healthy lifestyle.

Her: I'll see you in three months.

Me: No. You won't.

Got milk? Oh no!

I’m of two opinions on this article by Paul John Scott at DETAILS – one, kudos for an article that highlights the controversial truth that diets don’t work and calorie and fat restriction are not the answer to long-term weight loss. A raspberry for the tired cliché that you can blame your weight on one thing – [ur doin’ it wrong] by drinking skim milk.


As someone who was taught from an early age to revile whole milk, I’ve often wondered if my relationship with dairy products has been a good one or a bad one. Years of lactose intolerance led me to avoid milk for a long time and feel guilty about it. ‘Milk does a body good’ you know. Learning about milk’s dark, dirty secrets – the hormone and antibiotic abuse – assuaged a lot of that guilt and allowed me to reduce milk to nothing more than an occasional cooking ingredient. [Ice cream doesn’t count in my book – I don’t care what it’s made of].

Regardless of the findings of any study, I don’t plan to add milk [whole or skim] back to my diet in a big way because the dairy industry is, for the most part, vile. I don’t see legions of skimmers making the switch either because our society is too terrified of fat to embrace whole milk again after decades of believing it was the root of all evil.

I wonder how long it will be before whole milk makes a comeback as a weight loss secret.

Collected WTFery

I’ve been too deeply immersed in preparing to move to blog on a regular basis, but I have collected a couple of interesting tidbits to share.

The first entry in the WTF column comes directly from TD Bank [aka America’s Most Convenient Bank]. I don’t want to cast aspersions on any one financial institution, since I have an inkling they’ll all be doing this soon, but I can only speak for certain about TD Bank.
My husband and I both received a little flier from them the other day informing us that as of January 2009 [yes, that’s more than a year ago, but they’re just telling us now] “if you received more than $600 in ATM Surcharge Reimbursements you will be sent a 1099-Misc form.”

Translated into plain English this means: You know all those times we happily reimbursed you for the exorbitant fees we and other banks charge you to access your money from ATMs? Well, now you have to pay taxes on it.

Essentially, they take your money, they give it back and they charge you a tax on it. So money you should never have had to pay out in the first place, is now considered income.

What I really love is how it’s retroactive to 2009, meaning that if you’ve already paid your 2009 taxes [and let’s see – most of us have], you may have to make an adjustment once they get that 1099 out to you.

The next entry comes from my favorite source, health and wellness news.

Apparently The Journal of Urology is touting diet soda as a preventative for kidney stones. Researchers have concluded that citrate, an ingredient found in some sodas [lemon and citrus flavors], may help reduce the risk of kidney stone formation. Citrate can be found in non-diet sodas as well [not colas, though] but the researchers, ever health conscious, are quick to remind patients that the extra calories they get from regular sodas pose a health risk [obviously one more serious than cancer causing artificial sweeteners, but we won’t go there.]

What boggles me is, why would doctors decide that diet soda would be a better, healthier source of citrate than say, actual citrus fruits? Oh, right, fruits contain sugar and calories, therefore making them bad for you, where artificially sweetened and colored carbonated water contains no sugar or calories and is therefore a health food.

So, there you go. You can drink to your health, while you write out that check to Uncle Sam to pay taxes on your ATM rebates.

Some kind of nut

I’ve been trying hard to eliminate candy from my diet – not chocolate per se, which my research [and my own personal belief system] lists as a health food – but the readily available snack type candy that contains nothing more than empty calories.

That being said, I could not resist picking up a couple of single serving bags of Coconut M&Ms the other day. My husband has been talking about them since he first heard they existed so when I saw them at the local Walgreens, I couldn’t resist.

I ripped open one of the small bags as soon as I got home tried some. Cocunut M&Ms come only in white, green and brown – I imagine to evoke the tropical hues of the coconut – leaves, shell and meat. I’d have included a pale beige for sand and a bright blue for an island sky, but that’s just me.

As expected, the M&Ms are overly sweet, but they definitely taste like coconut. That’s quite an accomplishment considering that while the nutrition information warns they may contain both peanuts and almonds, there is no trace of real coconut anywhere in the package.

They’re good, but fortunately for me, not good enough to blow my new health-centric diet for. I could live without them. I wonder how could they might be though, if they actually contained coconut.

A better lesson in eating

The Sunday newspaper had a small sidebar article about how studies have shown that kids who brown bag lunch to school have a lower incidence of obesity than those who eat school lunch.

I can't say this is really a surprise - considering the average school still offers grease soaked pizza squares and chicken nuggets with french fries as a typical meal choice. The salads are tiny, the fresh fruit is usually bruised and unappetizing and cookies and sugary juices can be purchased on the snack line which is often a lot shorter than the queue to get the day's hot meal. Is it any wonder the kids who eat cafeteria food are heavier than those toting balogna sandwiches from home?

It's another failure of a well-meaning system that can't get out of its own way. I recently read about how some school systems are banning home made treats from bake sales - partly to limit their own legal exposure in cases of allergic reactions, and partly [and more publicly] to make a stand for healthier snacks. Pop-tarts and bagged Doritos made the list of 'approved' items to be sold at bake sales while Mom's cupcakes and brownies are out.

It makes a sick kind of sense, not because kids are better off eating Pop-tarts and Doritos, but because an angry parent can sue Kelloggs or Frito-Lay if their child has a bad reaction to a pre-packaged snack, but if their child doesn't know any better than to scarf down Mrs. Johnson's walnut brownies when they have a severe nut allergy, the school coffers are at risk. I imagine this is why a lot more school food is also prepackaged. Mrs. Field's cookies and Domino's Pizza have built-in liabitility insurance, don't they?

I wonder how these studies fit into the national past time of blaming parents for their kids' obesity? If it becomes widely known that school lunch makes kids fat, will Boards of Education all over the country start making bottled water less expensive than whole milk and cutting off the endless cookie supply at the snack line or will they simply brow beat parents to go back to packing lunches so they can't be sued for contributing to Junior's weight problem?

Do you juice?

I've been trying to figure out if juicing is a good idea or not. I've looked at juicing machines [and they're not cheap] and read a lot about the benefits of making your own juice from fresh fruits and vegetables.

Every source I've found agrees that commercial fruit juices are BAD with a capital BAD. They have too much sugar - many are supplemented with high fructose corn syrup and actually contain very little real juice. Making your own juice seems like the answer to getting all the nutrients from these foods in an easier way, plus you get something to drink besides water or green tea [unsweetened tea is my staple drink but even that gets boring now and then].

I've been making some of my own citrus juice - grapefruit and orange and to me it tastes just as sweet as anything I can buy, but I've also read that juicing removes some of the benefit of the fruit. You need the fiber of the fruit to counteract the sugar in the juice otherwise you're just wasting your time.

I'm beginning to think maybe juicing is something to do for fun once in a while when you want a treat, but it may not be a daily staple of a good diet.

Any juicers out there? What do you think? Has juicing helped your health or your waistline or is it just a good way to increase your produce bill?

To fish or cut bait?

Since I’ve started researching nutrition, I’ve come across tons of information about the benefits of fish oil. Book after book and website after website tout the role of fish oil in heart health as well as its efficacy in helping to treat high cholesterol, depression, anxiety, AHDH, low immunity, cancer, diabetes, inflammation, arthritis, IBD, AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, eye disorders, macular degeneration and ulcers.

It sounds like a wonder drug – well, not actually a drug. Let’s call it a wonder-substance since it can be had over the counter without a prescription.

The supermarket vitamin aisle is overflowing with fish oil – in fact this past week my local store had an entire endcap devoted to large, colorful jars of the enormous amber capsules. They were on sale so the price was right – the only thing stopping me, aside from the sheer size of the pills [I could probably find a whole fish smaller than some of the capsules] was of course that I recently read information discounting everything that’s out there about the benefit of fish oil.

Insert a big sigh here.

I'd just picked up the book Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, MD which for the most part enforces a lot of what I’ve been learning about the subterfuge practiced on us by the food industry. Dr. Fuhrman advocates a diet rich in fruits and vegetables which makes sense, but on pg. 127 he opines that fish oil can actually ‘decrease the activity of the immune system’ and may have a role in liver dysfunction, citing that much of the oil in those jewel-like amber capsules may in fact be rancid.

He also believes eating fish in general [another health tip promoted heavily everywhere else] isn’t as good for us as we’ve been lead to believe thanks to elevated mercury content.

Once again, information overload wins the day. I’m not saying I believe Dr. Fuhrman over everyone else, but it’s interesting and disheartening to find yet more contradictory health information. If everything we eat is bad for us – then why not just eat anything we want?

I suppose that’s exactly what the food industry is hoping we will do.

Get ready for the McDiet

I just came across this glimpse into the absurd – apparently Weight Watchers is planning on teaming up with McDonald’s to promo some of the fast food giant’s menu options as being health conscious.

Fortunately this is taking place so far only in New Zealand where the Weight Watchers logo will premiere on some selected menu items including Chicken McNuggets.

This one definitely has me perplexed. Weight Watchers certainly does advertise that you can successfully eat out and still lose weight, which I have to respect, since in the real world, you can’t [and don’t want to] always cook at home. Sometimes you need to go out, sit back, relax and let someone else serve you and clean up after you...but it does boggle my mind a bit that a company dedicated to teaching people how to eat right in order to achieve and maintain a healthy weight would endorse any type of deep fried fast food.

It’s not just calorie and fat content that govern whether a food is healthy or not – and anyone who’s seen Super Size Me in which a man literally endangers his life by eating nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days knows there’s a lot more stuff in chicken nuggets than just chicken.

Granted McDonald’s has been jumping through hoops trying to convince the public that its food isn’t all bad, and that there are healthy options on the menu for those who know how to choose their meals carefully, but this just seems like a sell out on Weight Watchers’ part. Maybe things are different in New Zealand, but the battle of the bulge is fought daily here in the states and McD’s is a general in that war. In the world of healthy eating this strikes me as a bit treasonous.

Bored by chocolate

Yes, you read that right. I’m official bored with chocolate and I’ll tell you why.

I read too much about it.

A couple weeks ago I ordered The Healing Powers of Chocolate by Cal Orey. I thought it would be fun and informative and give me lots of good excuses to eat my favorite food. I had visions of curing all my common ailments with a Hershey Bar or pound or two of good ‘ol Jersey Shore fudge.

As it turns out, according to the author, who also penned The Healing Powers of Vinegar and The Healing Powers of Olive Oil, chocolate can cure a host of complaints from acne to weight gain. You could probably convince me that chocolate is not responsible for pimples [who doesn’t want to believe that?] and that chocolate in moderation will not make you fat, but the extensive list of ills found in the chapter titled ‘Home Remedies’ also includes much less believable items such as Economic Stress and Universal Emergency. When an author has to reach for stuff like this to fill up a list, her credibility hits the skids as far as I’m concerned.

Overall the book is a lighthearted look at how awesome chocolate is. I can’t argue with that, and yes, I certainly agree it’s not the root of all evil as so many diets would have us believe. But after slogging through the first 200 pages, I’m pretty much done with my journey through chocolate’s healing powers. I should have given up on page 71 in the middle of the list of herbs that can be added to chocolate. The author includes Marshmallow [the plant Althaea officianalis] for its ability to sooth a sore throat or an upset stomach. That’s cool. But she lists dark chocolate topped with marshmallows as a way to get this healing effect. Um...marshmallow may be a plant with curative powers, but marshmallows are made of SUGAR. They might make you feel better because they’re yummy, but they’re not herbal.

My take home message from the book is something I already knew: Chocolate is not bad for you. My life without chocolate would be much less happy and much less healthy, so I’m not ever giving it up...but I can do without the book, thanks.

Going Organic

I’ve been reading Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About by Kevin Trudeau and it’s doing a lot to erode my confidence in the food and drug industries. One thing I’ve taken away from the book so far is the benefits of organic food.

Up until now I have to admit I looked at ‘organic’ food as something that was just more expensive than regular food. Living on a budget in one of the most expensive counties in the USA, it’s tough to fill up a shopping cart with enough food for 84 meals [3 meals x 7 days x 4 people] and not go broke. Like most hunter-gatherers I know, I’ve been trained to shop for bargains and get the most bang for my buck, so if a dozen regular eggs cost $1.88 and the organic eggs cost $2.49 – guess which ones I’m going to buy? When regular lettuce is on sale for $0.99 and organic lettuce is 2 for $5.00 the regular has to win. I never wanted to pay more for something – especially something that might not taste as good.

Then I read the book, which describes how the food industry loads everything with chemicals [even produce] in order to make it look better, taste better, grow bigger, and make people hungrier. Yeah. That last one gave me pause too. It sort of makes sense. I’ve often felt addicted to certain foods – the potato chips that promise ‘you can’t eat just one’ – maybe there’s more to that slogan than meets the eye. Candy that calls to me, cookies that disappear in a few days...I often feel like I can’t stop eating something even though I really don’t feel hungry. I used to think it was my own dismal lack of will power, but now I’m starting to wonder if it’s not an industry-engineered reaction to the food itself.

In response to this alarming information, I decided to start small and replace a couple of items in my cart with their organic counterparts. This week I bought organically grown romaine lettuce and I made a killer Greek salad from it. I also splurged on organic eggs [not the specially formulated omega-3 eggs that I sometimes buy, but regular certified organic eggs]. In each case these items were slightly more expensive than what I normally buy, but I feel if I’m reducing even by a little bit, the amount of unnecessary chemicals my family and I consume, it may be worth the price.

Do you buy organic food? Would you if it were the same price as regular food? If you do eat organic some or all of the time, do you think the changeover improved your health?

I’ll let you know if I feel any different after eating some organic food – even if it’s only peace of mind in knowing I’m cutting down on my chemical intake it may be worth the extra cost.

Flip Flop on Fat

I came across this article the other day at MSNBC.com discussing the role of saturated fat in heart disease.

We’ve been told for years that fatty foods are the culprit in most of our woes – less fat means lower cholesterol which means a healthier heart. It sounds like it makes sense.
So how can this quote be true?

“researchers found no clear evidence that higher saturated fat intakes led to higher risks of heart disease or stroke.”

If a high fat diet isn’t really an indicator for heart disease, then what is? I’m not trying to suggest we should all be increasing our intake of saturated fat, or that we should run to our doctors who have been touting low-fat diets for years and say “Nyah nyah! I’m eating all the pork rinds I want now, doc!” But maybe all those years of guilt over preferring a steak dinner to a salad were for naught.

Sure the salad is better for you, but maybe the steak isn’t really clogging your arteries like we’ve been led to believe.

Here’s another telling quote from the article with regards to the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

“there was no difference in the risks of heart disease and stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fat.”

Interesting stuff. If it’s not food that’s elevating the risk of cardiovascular disease in our population as a whole, what is it? Stress maybe? That’s one I could believe. Maybe we’re all too worried about what we can and can’t eat.

Isn't it just business?

I came across this article about the Coca-Cola company managing to charge more than twice as much for half the amount of soda and calling it an innovation.

Let me start by saying, soda is bad. As a long-term cola addict [notice I didn’t say Coke addict] I had a rough time giving up the fizzy blend of sugar and caffeine that took the place of coffee in my diet. You can’t really win with soda – it’s either full of sugar or it’s full of diet sweetner, so the best thing for everyone is to avoid it all together.

That being said, I still defend a soda drinker’s right to get some value for their money.
Apparently the company is now marketing smaller cans of Coke, 7.5 ounces as opposed to 12 [or 8]. This is healthier – less high fructose corn syrup or less chemical sweetners is good. Since all ‘health’ foods are more expensive, it stands to reason people would be more than happy to pay more for less.

That’s just business, right? Can we blame the company for trying to increase their profits by offering less product at a higher price and marketing it in such a way that consumers think they are getting a better deal? I’m drinking less soda — that will help my health in the long run, right?

Of course, the flip side is, someone who was used to drinking 12 ounces of soda may buy the 7.5 ounce product, but once they’ve downed that tiny can, what’s to stop them from popping open another and ultimately drinking 15 ounces of soda instead of 12? Fifteen ounces, by the way, that costs more than twice as much per ounce. So much for the calorie control aspect of the Coca-Cola ad campaign.

I have no problem with non-consumable items that come in tinier sizes because they’re more convenient to carry around. I know I pay more for that little travel size tube of toothpaste or bottle of mouthwash – and how hard is it really to pack the full-size version right from the medicine cabinet? That’s paying more for less and thinking it’s a good deal. I don’t mind grabbing a little bag of pretzels or chips at a convenience store when pound for pound the full size bags are cheaper because I don’t always want a full size container of some snack food. Why should Coca-Cola be any different?

Do you think a product designed with portion control in mind is a good thing or just a gimmick? If they called these little cans of Coke ‘travel sized’ would that make a difference? I think the problem here lies not in the size of the can, but in the idea that drinking soda from any size container should be viewed as a healthy lifestyle choice.

Or Vice Versa

Agghhh! It’s becoming a theme here, don’t you think? Medical/nutritional advice that contradicts itself is everywhere – sometimes you can even find contradictions right in the same article.

I found this article over at Health News about after-meal bloating. Not the most entertaining topic, I know, but one I find concerning. I was interested in the list of foods that are supposed to help curb that overfull, gassy feeling after meals.

The article recommends these: Bananas, mangoes, spinach, nuts, asparagus, melons, and tomatoes because they are high in potassium and an amino acid called asparagine. Okay. Sounds like a plan to me. I was all set to stock up on green veggies and tropical fruit until I got to the second page of the article and found this quote:

You may want to try staying away from common foods that do not digest well within the system (cauliflower, broccoli, leafy greens, beans, corn, cabbage, and nuts)

Hello? So, do I eat nuts to get more potassium which will help curb bloating or do I avoid them because they don’t digest well and cause gas??? Isn’t spinach a leafy green? Help.

What could is a nutritional self-help article that tells you to one thing and then not to do the same thing? Do the authors of these articles think people won’t notice?

I’m beginning to wonder if good health is just a hit or miss sitch. Do this to feel better – unless it doesn’t work, then do the opposite.

Does anyone really know what’s good for us?

Tap, tap, tap...or bottle?

During dinner the other night my son asked me, “Is tap water bad for you?”

Good question. Really good. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer him, because like so many things today, the answer is muddled by all the information out there.

This article at ReadersDigest.com gives some of the poop – I mean scoop on bottled water versus tap. Or maybe, more accurately – the tap water that comes out of the tap and the tap water that comes out of a bottle. It seems that a percentage of expensive bottled water doesn’t actually come from those pastoral mountain springs, filtered by rocks and dirt like water is supposed to be. Some of it comes out of pipes at the water bottling plant. Yum!

Now, at my house, we’ve been drinking bottled water for years. The reason I started paying to bring home three to four plastic gallon water jugs every week from the supermarket was because I was told the unseemly history of the pipes in my house. They’re old. Like – made of lead old, and that lead can seep into the water and cause lead poisoning.

For me, that’s reason enough to spend $0.75-$0.89 per gallon for something to drink. Even if it just comes out of copper pipes, at least it’s better than what I’m getting out of the sink. We still brush our teeth with town water, which fortunately in our little boro is not fluoridated. The pets drink tap water. Maybe that’s the reason they’re a little...you know...nuts? I don’t know, but I’m not taking any chances.

In addition to the lead thing, bottled water just tastes better, I think. And I was fine with that reasoning. Lead aside, I’m willing to pay for water that tastes good. [Not that I don’t pay for tap water mind you, but it’s a whole lot less.] Now I find out that while the water in my bottle might be only slightly healthier than what comes out of the tap, the container it comes in could be leeching harmful chemicals into it. The thought of getting cancer from my bottled water makes drinking something flavored with rocks and dirt seem more appealing. Heck, it makes the lead seem more appealing.

So what’s the solution? Is tap water bad for us? I told my son it was okay for him to grab a gulp from the water fountain at school after gym. Better than passing out from dehydration. Now I have to ask myself the question: Is bottled water better or worse than tap? Tap? Tap? Tap?