The M&M's website is not safe for kids!
I told them I was eleven.
While researching material for the fitness ebook I am currently writing for Kindle, I pulled up the M&M's company website a minute ago to check some nutrition information. To my surprise, it has an age lock!
On a hunch, I screencapped the page. Then I put in my date of birth, but changed the year. According to the Mars Corporation, I was an eleven year-old boy. As such, I was too young to be a participant in their "responsible marketing" of sugar-coated sugar to American youth via "toys and games."
Between HBO's Weight of the Nation ringing its bell and Mayor Bloomberg capitalizing on the publicity with the NYC ban on large sodas, the entire snack food industry is on edge right now.
Heck, even Alec Baldwin is weighing in on the fun,
I didn't intend to post a second entry today, but I just found this little tidbit way too entertaining not to share. I don't generally follow the news, but I am writing about health and fitness a lot these days and the fact that it took a well-publicized documentary to kickstart this sudden hysteria interests me greatly.
I had a film teacher in college who talked about working for the California Department of Transportation in the 1960s (yeah, he was old). His job was to assist in filming informational shorts about automobile safety.
Every film included elaborately staged crash tests in which dummies were mercilessly hurled through windshields and slammed into steering wheels. The air was thick with statistics and numbers, chosen specifically for their capacity to frighten viewers into wearing seat belts and stopping completely at every intersection.
"But," Dr. Karimi said, with an air of disbelief which had not waned in fifty years, "no matter how much damn information we threw at them, the statistics never changed! People still got into accidents and acted stupid all over the highway." He took a deep breath and looked up at the class again. "I learned...one thing...from that experience. You can't sell safety. You can tell people how bad something is and show them exactly what will happen, but people will still do whatever they want to do."
You can't sell safety. And you can't sell health. Government initiatives can throw as much money as they want at the issues of obesity and public health consciousness, but people will continue to eat whatever makes them feel good. And, to stir the pot even more, America is built on the ideals of free enterprise. What happens to other laws when a mayor can ban something as insignificant as a soda cup? I don't want to veer into a slippery slope fallacy, but laws do set legal precedents...
If people want it, companies will make it. If companies make it before the people think of it, people want it all the more. It's an interesting cycle that is very telling about our culture.
On that note, there are some excellent blog entries which I would like to recommend. I don't know if the moon is full or not, but today was a great day for paleo bloggers.
I wrote a few lines ago that people will eat what they want to eat. J. Stanton's latest post on Gnolls.org, beautifully titled Why Are We Here, And What Are We Looking For? Food Associations And The Pitfalls Of The Search For Novelty helps illuminate exactly why we become so attached to certain foods, good for us or not.
Concluding our contemplation of the government's attempting a nationwide stomach-stapling through "reform," Richard NIkoley (whose book I recently reviewed) just blogged about how the government is not great hope for our nation's health--healthy people are. He also included a superb video. Check it out at Free the Animal: Paleos & Primals: YOU are the Key, not Disney or Michelle Obama
Be healthy. Be blessed.
True accomplishment.
It has always been my firm believe that entertainment and advertising reflect culture, and are not the root of it. Causation is hard to prove, but the correlation between films and television shows and the eras in which they were/are produced is never a coincidence. The entity known as Hollywood has a long history of providing escapism during wartime, asking questions of society during periods of cultural shift, and providing a creative outlet for those on the margins of society.
Then there's advertising. Right now, smartphone advertisements seem to be the clearest indicator of what people associate with social power. This ad in particular makes my blood boil with annoyance:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzTy9_xS1yA&feature=youtube_gdata]
What does this commercial say? How do the characters relate to each other?
- A hierarchy exists wherein the better individual is determined not by what they do for others, but by how fast their phones receive information.
- Notice also that fast access to information does not spur them on to do anything with the information except hold it over the heads of their neighbors.
- These individuals are recipients and consumers. They are not action-oriented people. Their usage of technology does not signify any real accomplishment on their part; they use the scientific advancements made and maintained by others as the basis for a misguided sense of superiority.
This is probably an unnecessarily reactionary response, but smartphone and wireless carrier advertisements seem to sum up where we have arrived as a culture. We do less, we move around less, we think less and read less. Our smart phones and back-in-a-flash data plans give us near-instant access to a literal world of information via the internet, but if pop culture is any indication, we use that access for little more than looking at kittens on youtube. Like the man and woman in the commercial above: we stay in one place, we receive and we consume.
We have lost touch with what it is to accomplish things that are meaningful and real. We don't produce. We don't wield as much interpersonal influence as we should.
Technology and mass communications are supposed to be tools for culture, but they have themselves become culture.
“We need to know who we are and if we have what it takes. What do we do now with the ultimate question? Where do we go to find an answer? In order to help you find the answer to The Question, let me as you another: What have you done with your question? Where have you taken in? You see. a man’s core question does not go away.”
- John Eldredge, Wild at Heart
Intermittent fasting and the myth of "three squares a day."
Scenario #1 Standard American Life
I wake up in the morning and start my day with a bowl of cereal, toast and a glass of juice.
At noon, I eat a sandwich with chips and a Snickers bar for dessert.
At 3pm, I'm hungry and focusing on work is difficult, so I eat another Snickers and wash it down with a cup of coffee.
For dinner at 6pm, I eat a "real meal" of meat, vegetables and a dinner roll. A piece of leftover cake follows for dessert.
I go to sleep and repeat the sequence the next day.
Scenario #2
I wake up in the morning and start my day with some eggs and salsa or a leftover piece of meat from the night before.
At noon, I have a salad with grilled chicken strips, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I eat a few squares of dark chocolate for dessert.
At 3pm, I'm feeling a bit peckish, so I toss back a handful of nuts.
For dinner at 6pm, I eat meat, vegetables and some fruit as a garnish or a dessert.
I go to sleep and repeat the sequence the next day.
Scenario #3
Primal Blueprint + Intermittent Fasting
I wake up in the morning. I ate a big meal the night before, so I drink a cup of coffee and decide to wait until I'm hungry to eat again.
At noon, I'm hungry for lunch, so I go out to my favorite restaurant for a bunless hamburger with plenty of onions and mushrooms on top, served with a side salad or some mixed vegetables. A few squares of dark chocolate round out the meal to satisfaction.
At 3pm, the fats and proteins in the burger are satisfying enough so that I am not hungry and can work through the day without loss of focus.
At 6pm, I'm hungry but not ravenous. Dinner is another arrangement of meat and vegetables, light portions.
I go to sleep and repeat the sequence the next day, with variation in schedule and meals skipped based on hunger.
Which of these makes the most sense? The latter two are obviously the more healthy choices of food, as well as in which order the meals are consumed, i.e., starting the day with protein and fat instead of simple carbs...but what's all that nonsense about skipping meals?
Question for your Sunday: Why do we eat three meals a day? Do we eat because we're truly hungry, or because a government-recommended diet high in simple carbohydrates has conditioned us to want three meals a day?
America has an epidemic. It isn't obesity or diabetes or heart disease; those are symptoms.
The epidemic is herd mentality. Blind acceptance of a status quo.
A USDA stamp on a box does not make a food nutritious or ideal as an energy source. It simply means that it has the required amount of certain ingredients or "fortifications" to make it passable to be sold to consumers. 60 Minutes aired a piece several months ago that showed how companies actually engineer processed foods to have the same qualities as addictive or controlled substances. Pre-made food bought in colorful boxes is created specifically to manipulate you into feeling hungry sooner, desire that taste again, and buy more. Think about that.
Healthy foods, that is to say, whole foods, meat and produce, raised or grown without additives, are where true nutrition is to be found. They provide necessary fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals for human life. And most importantly to the human experience, they provide satiety.
When your food is satisfying and provides your body with what it needs to replenish cells and nourish your muscles and organs, there is no reason to eat, unless you are hungry. The problem is, food is so easy to procure in our culture that we often forget what hunger actually feels like, resulting in snacking and overeating. One reason for this is the Western attachment to the idea of three meals a day, and the oft-repeated mantra that breakfast is somehow the most important meal of the day.
However, if your meals are complete and provides actual nutrition, you might not really be hungry first thing in the morning. If so, don't eat! Alternatively, if you are hungry in the morning and eat breakfast, and the satisfaction from breakfast stays all the way until the lunch hour, do you really need to eat lunch?
This applies to any meal, or more than one meal. Modern life often requires a lot of time spent being sedentary, either working behind a desk or, in my case, spending time sitting in a college lecture/regurgitate-lecture-on-paper environment. The assumption that we need to constantly replenish the very minor caloric expenditure of sitting is just silly.
In a hunter-gatherer society, or at the very least, a society that is not dependent on grain agriculture (something that wasn't necessary until humans started congregating in cities and found it necessary to sustain large populations with cheap, bulk crops), food isn't always readily available. That is why primitive cultures who still hunt and gather instead of rely on farming for their food sources tend to be incredibly healthy until "heroes from the West" descend to "civilize" them.
If you're not hungry at one of the culturally prescribed 8am/12pm/6pm meal times, do yourself a favor and just wait. The idea that "one size fits all," that something terrible will happen if you skip a meal, is just silly. What you put into your body is an individual experience, and should be a conscious choice. If you're not hungry, no one has the right to make you eat.
Every now and again, I like to go twenty-four hours without consuming food. I'll drink some black coffee (no sugar) or tea, but I give my body time to reset. It accelerates fat-burning, it sharpens my mind through consequent ghrelin production and restores insulin sensitivity. And when I am between meals, I try not to snack; my liver needs a break now and again. This comes in handy on long flights, where the unapologetically disgusting food served on airplanes actually does more to discourage one from eating.
But, perhaps most importantly, it makes me appreciate food. You have to eat properly before you can skip meals properly. When you eat real foods like meat, fowl, fish, vegetables, fruits and nuts, your palate becomes much more sensitive; the act of enjoying a meal when nobly hungry takes on special significance.
When you choose to set your own schedule, you are no longer one of the herd. Your relationship with food changes. Instead of mindlessly shoving back lab-engineered, factory-assembled crap every few hours, the food experience becomes just that: an experience.
I am fasting as I write this. I indulged in a large meal of Indian food yesterday, liberal helpings of chicken and vegetables topped off by an indulgence in the heavenly Indian dessert gajar halwa. I haven't been hungry since, so I haven't eaten. It's been almost twenty-four hours now, and I feel fantastic. I am awake and alert; the words are flowing freely as I write.
Respect yourself. Respect your food. Eat when hungry or not at all.
Further reading:
- Mark Sisson's "Why Fast?" Series [Mark's Daily Apple]
- I Am a Ghrelin Addict [gnolls.org]
- Intermittent Fasting: A Beginner's Guide [Art of Manliness]
- The Flavorists [60 Minutes Excerpt - Video]
Thrill of the Chase
I hate writing research papers. It's tedious, there's an unstated expectation for the verbiage to be high and lofty, I can't use the phrase "high and lofty," and my proclivity to use the Oxford comma is looked upon with suspicion and disdain.
However, I love research. My inner journalist loves the thrill of finding new information and putting it to constructive use. I love it when Google Books turns up an obscure gem from an hundred years ago. I love it when reading source material which spawned plays and films yields a rich and diverse crop of expanded thoughts and ideas. I love how the preliminary process of compiling a codex of bibliography is always a good excuse to turn on a few episodes of Frasier while I browse databases and mark down the resources to which I will return.
I have also become enamored with oral history projects. Interviews. Storytelling. There is a certain magic that happens when someone lets down their guard and freely shares memories and stories with people who, wonder of wonders, actually give a damn about things they went through years ago. A moment is shared and, for a brief moment, a group of individuals can experience the oral tradition of pure storytelling. The raw power of the spoken word should make us tingle in the marrow; the ability to form and use words to pass on stories and experiences is hardwired into our DNA. The cave paintings in Lascaux don't exist in a vacuum. The absence of written words should not be equated with the absence of narrative and experience.
When one takes into account the innumerable events which every individual in the world experiences on a daily basis, then considers just how few of them are written down in their entirety, it is almost startling just how little will be remembered from individuals' lives if people don't talk to each other and share their recollections. This is one reason I am striving to find my way to a career in documentary filmmaking. I regret so much that I didn't spend more time with my grandparents before they passed. There were always moments; like sudden flashes of lightening, when conversations following a family meal would finally veer away from the present, and stories (often hilarious vignettes from my family's Deep South heritage), would be shared. I miss those people, and now that I am older and have enough perspective to fully appreciate what they were sharing, I miss those times more every year.
I often get the feeling that the rest of my life is going to be one long mea culpa for not spending more time listening to the departed.