…and bad manners besides.
During last week’s episode of Dr. Who on BBC America, I was treated to a commercial for a miraculous new weight loss product called Lipozene.
According to the commercial, Lipozene is the answer for people who have had problems losing weight and finally want something that works. Oh goody!
I decided to look up Lipozene and find out what the hype was all about – the very hype that the Lipozene people don’t want us to believe.
I won’t post a link to the Lipozene site, but I will tell you that Lipozene claims to be an ‘all natural remedy’ used for generations in Japan that ‘acts as a sponge in your intestines.’ That’s so much better than all those nasty lifestyle changes that can be damaging to your system.
Don’t worry, Lipozene has no side effects! It’s been clinically proven to work and best of all, if you come across any complaints or negative reviews on the Internet don’t believe them because [and here’s a quote]:
• Many people who submit complaints to these supposedly unbiased review sites say they were ripped off or that the product didn’t work. The fact is that most of them never received the product because their credit cards were declined, or they never ordered it in the first place. Our customer service department has done the research to prove the facts behind these Lipozene complaints.
Yep, anyone who has a bad report about the product, probably never really bought it in the first place! They’re just lying. Isn’t that rude?
Obviously you can trust someone who tells you all complaints about them must be lies. So there you go. A new and effective way to lose weight, safely and naturally. Stock up while the lies supplies last!
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Got side effects?
I was leafing through the September 19th issue of People magazine, and halfway through I had to ask myself if I was looking at an entertainment magazine or a medical journal. Every few pages, I was bombarded with another drug ad, and not just little blurbs, but three-page spreads designed to entice readers to ‘talk to their doctors’ about medicines that ‘could be right for them.’
What shocked me even more than the size of the ads were the lists of side effects they all included. Once again, I have to ask myself, is the cure [or the treatment] worse than the disease?
Here’s what I found:
A three-page ad for Focalin XR – for ADHD –this drug is for children over age 6 – and the side effects include sudden death, stroke and heart attacks, increased blood pressure and heart rate, slowing of growth in children and [among many others] nervousness.
A three page ad for NuvaRing – for birth control – one of the side effects is weight gain and in addition you should worry about blood clots, stroke, heart attack, breast cancer, gallbladder disease, liver tumors and inflammation of the pancreas
A three page ad for BOTOX ® - nothing like injecting yourself with botulism which can cause life threatening side effects
A three page ad for Enbrel – for plaque psoriasis – a host of side effects include: tuberculosis, fatal blood problems, heart problems and new or worsening psoriasis
A three page ad for Seroquel XR – for depression – side effects include weight gain, seizures, neuroleptic malignant syndrome and cataracts
A two-page ad for Boniva – for osteoporosis – the ad includes a correction about misleading information in previous ads – side effects include severe jawbone problems, osteonecrosis [that means bone death], spasms, numbness and thigh bone fractures
Is it any wonder Americans are so sick? We’re being bombarded with drugs to fix our problems, all of which can cause serious other problems, not to mention the same problems we’re trying to get rid of.
What shocked me even more than the size of the ads were the lists of side effects they all included. Once again, I have to ask myself, is the cure [or the treatment] worse than the disease?
Here’s what I found:
A three-page ad for Focalin XR – for ADHD –this drug is for children over age 6 – and the side effects include sudden death, stroke and heart attacks, increased blood pressure and heart rate, slowing of growth in children and [among many others] nervousness.
A three page ad for NuvaRing – for birth control – one of the side effects is weight gain and in addition you should worry about blood clots, stroke, heart attack, breast cancer, gallbladder disease, liver tumors and inflammation of the pancreas
A three page ad for BOTOX ® - nothing like injecting yourself with botulism which can cause life threatening side effects
A three page ad for Enbrel – for plaque psoriasis – a host of side effects include: tuberculosis, fatal blood problems, heart problems and new or worsening psoriasis
A three page ad for Seroquel XR – for depression – side effects include weight gain, seizures, neuroleptic malignant syndrome and cataracts
A two-page ad for Boniva – for osteoporosis – the ad includes a correction about misleading information in previous ads – side effects include severe jawbone problems, osteonecrosis [that means bone death], spasms, numbness and thigh bone fractures
Is it any wonder Americans are so sick? We’re being bombarded with drugs to fix our problems, all of which can cause serious other problems, not to mention the same problems we’re trying to get rid of.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Draw your own conclusions
That’s what this article by Sarah Klein at Health.com basically expects of readers.
The title presents one hypothesis – that the Super-Moms [or women striving to be] can become miserable. That’s a no-brainer. We’ve all known for a long time that society’s expectation that a woman can be a perfect employee and a perfect mother at the same time is damaging to everyone involved. The article, of course, presents this like it’s news.
What’s interesting is, as you read the article you find that the first line:
Working mothers are less likely to be depressed than stay-at-home moms, a new study suggests.
Which sounds like the antithesis of the title, is contradicted by the results of the study.
The women who supported combining motherhood with a career had a greater risk of depression later in life than those who thought women should stay at home to raise kids.
In fact, the young women who were the least likely to support the idea of blending home and work life had the fewest depression symptoms when they were actually working moms at age 40.
[Emphasis mine]
So, to follow so far – Super-Mom wanna bes are not happy, but working mothers are happier, except for those who think being a working mom is a good idea. Ultimately women who don’t think mothers should work are less depressed later in life when they DO work.
Say what?
This is why the results of studies conducted by graduate students don’t really need to be published. Or then again, maybe the study draws some amazingly pertinent conclusions which Ms. Klein simply couldn’t communicate effectively in her article.
Either way, I’m confused. The article concludes that it’s best to accept the fact that you can’t do it all and not to feel guilty if you’re a working mom.
Thanks for that, because all those guilty-feeling working moms out there can now rest easily. We all know the best way to make someone feel better is to tell them to feel better.
I really don’t mean to attack the author here, but it stuns me how often these health articles contradict themselves and draw conclusions that anyone with a modicum of common sense has known for years. While a study that reinforces the conclusions of other studies may be helpful, presenting it with contradictory conclusions based on the same study is not.
My overall conclusion: Reading health articles on the Internet is bad for your health.
The title presents one hypothesis – that the Super-Moms [or women striving to be] can become miserable. That’s a no-brainer. We’ve all known for a long time that society’s expectation that a woman can be a perfect employee and a perfect mother at the same time is damaging to everyone involved. The article, of course, presents this like it’s news.
What’s interesting is, as you read the article you find that the first line:
Working mothers are less likely to be depressed than stay-at-home moms, a new study suggests.
Which sounds like the antithesis of the title, is contradicted by the results of the study.
The women who supported combining motherhood with a career had a greater risk of depression later in life than those who thought women should stay at home to raise kids.
In fact, the young women who were the least likely to support the idea of blending home and work life had the fewest depression symptoms when they were actually working moms at age 40.
[Emphasis mine]
So, to follow so far – Super-Mom wanna bes are not happy, but working mothers are happier, except for those who think being a working mom is a good idea. Ultimately women who don’t think mothers should work are less depressed later in life when they DO work.
Say what?
This is why the results of studies conducted by graduate students don’t really need to be published. Or then again, maybe the study draws some amazingly pertinent conclusions which Ms. Klein simply couldn’t communicate effectively in her article.
Either way, I’m confused. The article concludes that it’s best to accept the fact that you can’t do it all and not to feel guilty if you’re a working mom.
Thanks for that, because all those guilty-feeling working moms out there can now rest easily. We all know the best way to make someone feel better is to tell them to feel better.
I really don’t mean to attack the author here, but it stuns me how often these health articles contradict themselves and draw conclusions that anyone with a modicum of common sense has known for years. While a study that reinforces the conclusions of other studies may be helpful, presenting it with contradictory conclusions based on the same study is not.
My overall conclusion: Reading health articles on the Internet is bad for your health.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Back with a vengeance
I’ve seriously neglected this blog for a lot of reasons, chief among them the feeling that it was becoming just a place to rant and I wasn’t sure how much negativity I wanted to spout into cyberspace.
On the other hand, I do need a place to vent about things that irk me, especially the things in cyberspace that irk me. So I’m back.
What got me started on the need to vent was this puff piece I stumbled across by Susan Cheever of SELF magazine, who opines that being nice can make people fat, because apparently her lack of assertiveness resulted in weight gain and therefore everyone should learn to be mean in order to lose weight.
Like most of the media-drugged masses, Cheever thinks she’s found that simple trick everyone craves in the race to weight loss. She’s noticed that the nice people she knows are overweight, the jerks are skinny – hence, ipso facto, being nice must make one fat.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Isn’t it?
She goes on to explain how learning to say ‘no’, and subsequently being a bit rude and self-centered shaved 25 pounds off her, and also got her invited to fewer parties. I suppose it’s better to be thin than to be liked.
What’s interesting is that Cheever let’s her readers in on the real reason for her weight problem in the beginning of her article. It has nothing to do with her kindness or sensitivity, but her dysfunctional family attitudes about food and weight.
Everyone is so busy blaming obesity on the wrong things – we’re too nice, we have fat friends, we watch too much television, we eat too much fruit, blah, blah, blah. Let’s face it, we all know the real reason the population is gaining so much weight – it’s because the diet industry wants us to. How would they make billions of dollars if we were all as thin as they promise us we can be?
Diet books, diet shakes, diet gurus, diet reality shows – all encourage dysfunctional eating. Lose weight, gain it back, starve yourself, gorge yourself, strip out nutrients from your diet, overeat to compensate, fill yourself up with pills and shakes and bulking agents, rice cakes and Slim Shots, and when you gain it all back, someone else is there to tell you the only reason you failed was because you did it wrong and you just have to follow THEIR diet plan for lasting success.
I’m tired of it all, so the gloves are off. I’m done being nice – not because I expect it will help me lose weight [it won’t] but because there needs to be a counterpoint to all the blathering about how easy it is to lose weight if you just know the right thing to do or the right way to be.
On the other hand, I do need a place to vent about things that irk me, especially the things in cyberspace that irk me. So I’m back.
What got me started on the need to vent was this puff piece I stumbled across by Susan Cheever of SELF magazine, who opines that being nice can make people fat, because apparently her lack of assertiveness resulted in weight gain and therefore everyone should learn to be mean in order to lose weight.
Like most of the media-drugged masses, Cheever thinks she’s found that simple trick everyone craves in the race to weight loss. She’s noticed that the nice people she knows are overweight, the jerks are skinny – hence, ipso facto, being nice must make one fat.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Isn’t it?
She goes on to explain how learning to say ‘no’, and subsequently being a bit rude and self-centered shaved 25 pounds off her, and also got her invited to fewer parties. I suppose it’s better to be thin than to be liked.
What’s interesting is that Cheever let’s her readers in on the real reason for her weight problem in the beginning of her article. It has nothing to do with her kindness or sensitivity, but her dysfunctional family attitudes about food and weight.
Everyone is so busy blaming obesity on the wrong things – we’re too nice, we have fat friends, we watch too much television, we eat too much fruit, blah, blah, blah. Let’s face it, we all know the real reason the population is gaining so much weight – it’s because the diet industry wants us to. How would they make billions of dollars if we were all as thin as they promise us we can be?
Diet books, diet shakes, diet gurus, diet reality shows – all encourage dysfunctional eating. Lose weight, gain it back, starve yourself, gorge yourself, strip out nutrients from your diet, overeat to compensate, fill yourself up with pills and shakes and bulking agents, rice cakes and Slim Shots, and when you gain it all back, someone else is there to tell you the only reason you failed was because you did it wrong and you just have to follow THEIR diet plan for lasting success.
I’m tired of it all, so the gloves are off. I’m done being nice – not because I expect it will help me lose weight [it won’t] but because there needs to be a counterpoint to all the blathering about how easy it is to lose weight if you just know the right thing to do or the right way to be.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Less sugar, less real?
Have you seen the ads for Tropicana's new juice drink, Trop 50? My special favorite is the one where a bunch of 'real housewives' are trying to convince their friend that 'gooder' is a word – because the new drink she's serving them tastes 'gooder.'
That was my first red flag. Let's confuse people with bad grammar and they won't realize we're selling them junk.
The idea behind Trop 50 juice drink is that it has 50% less sugar than regular fruit juice. It comes in several flavors, such as orange and apple and pomegranate/blueberry. What struck me is the idea that you can have less sugar in something that is not supposed to have added sugar to begin with. Let's face it, fruit juice has sugar/carbs but pure fruit juice doesn't contain 'sugar' the same way soda or Kool-Aid contains sugar. But the ad campaign sort of plays on the idea that less sugar is added to the juice.
When you look at the nutrition information provided at the Trop 50 website you see the 'sugar' in Trop 50 comes from stevia or purevia – or Reb A – a plant based sweetener which is becoming popular because it doesn't have to be called 'artificial'.
So, essentially, Trop 50 has 50% less sugar [carbohydrates] than regular pure fruit juice because a sweetener has been added to it. It may not be an artificial sweetener but it's still an additive. This makes me wonder how they removed the 50% of sugar [carbohydrates] from the juice in the first place. It seems to me that basically they're taking half the juice used in a regular container of juice and replacing it with sweetened [no calorie] water, then fortifying that with vitamins and such.
I could drink half a glass of pure fruit juice and half a glass of water and get the same amount of 'less sugar' as I can from drinking a whole glass of a juice concentrate that's fortified with an added [but not artificial] sweetener.
My question is, do you think it's 'gooder' to get less sugar/carbohydrates by actually getting less juice?
That was my first red flag. Let's confuse people with bad grammar and they won't realize we're selling them junk.
The idea behind Trop 50 juice drink is that it has 50% less sugar than regular fruit juice. It comes in several flavors, such as orange and apple and pomegranate/blueberry. What struck me is the idea that you can have less sugar in something that is not supposed to have added sugar to begin with. Let's face it, fruit juice has sugar/carbs but pure fruit juice doesn't contain 'sugar' the same way soda or Kool-Aid contains sugar. But the ad campaign sort of plays on the idea that less sugar is added to the juice.
When you look at the nutrition information provided at the Trop 50 website you see the 'sugar' in Trop 50 comes from stevia or purevia – or Reb A – a plant based sweetener which is becoming popular because it doesn't have to be called 'artificial'.
So, essentially, Trop 50 has 50% less sugar [carbohydrates] than regular pure fruit juice because a sweetener has been added to it. It may not be an artificial sweetener but it's still an additive. This makes me wonder how they removed the 50% of sugar [carbohydrates] from the juice in the first place. It seems to me that basically they're taking half the juice used in a regular container of juice and replacing it with sweetened [no calorie] water, then fortifying that with vitamins and such.
I could drink half a glass of pure fruit juice and half a glass of water and get the same amount of 'less sugar' as I can from drinking a whole glass of a juice concentrate that's fortified with an added [but not artificial] sweetener.
My question is, do you think it's 'gooder' to get less sugar/carbohydrates by actually getting less juice?
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Eating like a dog
I love my dog…and I'm sure most dog owners do adore their pets, but I have to wonder if we're being hoodwinked by the pet food industry into thinking dog's need gourmet food.
Last night I saw a commercial for Cesar's dog food – it's a fancy food for smaller dogs, so it's not something I normally buy for my Dalmatian. The brand offers a new line of 'canine cuisine' [in other words, dog food] called Bistro which includes flavors like Steak Florentine, Tuscan Stew and Chicken Primavera.
In addition to the usual 'canine cuisine' ingredients such as meat by products, some vitamins and meat flavoring, these fancy little feasts contains tomatoes, carrots, pasta and spinach. Sounds tasty, doesn't it?
Not that a dog could tell. I've seen my dog eat a rock. So I don't think flavor is really chief among his concerns. He certainly could care less about carrots, tomatoes and spinach and generally wouldn't be too interested in eating those things if I served them by themselves. He would eat pasta, I'm sure. But then dogs tend to like carbs.
I have to ask myself, who are all these fancy ingredients really for? Dogs, as a rule, don't have discerning palates. Meat makes them happy, and a nice crunchy biscuit now and then, but spinach and pasta? Do dogs really need vegetables and enriched wheat products for optimum health?
You can't convince me those trappings aren't just to make dog owners feel like they're giving their pets something more than the usual slop that comes out of a 'canine cuisine' can.
Last night I saw a commercial for Cesar's dog food – it's a fancy food for smaller dogs, so it's not something I normally buy for my Dalmatian. The brand offers a new line of 'canine cuisine' [in other words, dog food] called Bistro which includes flavors like Steak Florentine, Tuscan Stew and Chicken Primavera.
In addition to the usual 'canine cuisine' ingredients such as meat by products, some vitamins and meat flavoring, these fancy little feasts contains tomatoes, carrots, pasta and spinach. Sounds tasty, doesn't it?
Not that a dog could tell. I've seen my dog eat a rock. So I don't think flavor is really chief among his concerns. He certainly could care less about carrots, tomatoes and spinach and generally wouldn't be too interested in eating those things if I served them by themselves. He would eat pasta, I'm sure. But then dogs tend to like carbs.
I have to ask myself, who are all these fancy ingredients really for? Dogs, as a rule, don't have discerning palates. Meat makes them happy, and a nice crunchy biscuit now and then, but spinach and pasta? Do dogs really need vegetables and enriched wheat products for optimum health?
You can't convince me those trappings aren't just to make dog owners feel like they're giving their pets something more than the usual slop that comes out of a 'canine cuisine' can.
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