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.
Fear of the Void, Frasier’s Waistline, and the Art of Reduction
Lately, a recurring theme in my thoughts and conversations has been reduction.
By “reduction,” I refer to it less as a reference to quantity or chemistry, but as an idea. More specifically, the common idea of “cutting back” on specific elements of daily life in order to improve its overall quality. If someone talks about "cutting back, it is usually means that they are reducing some form of expenditure or consumption to see an increase in some other area of life. At a basic level, it's the most sensible way to streamline and improve life: to have extra time, you must do less. To have more money, spend less money. To improve your weight, eat less.
What I find interesting about reduction in practice is the way in which people often miss the point of the concept entirely, confusing reduction with exchange, or even addition. Sometimes people have such unquestioned assumptions or misconceptions that they actually add elements to their lives in misguided attempts to achieve some form of minimalism. You don't have to look any further than people's smart phones for proof of this point--how many separate "productivity" apps can one person use before the returns become diminished to nil?
My favorite example of the reduction-through-addition confusion is in a classic episode of Frasier. In the episode “Frasier-Lite,” Frasier and his coworkers at the radio station enter a group weight loss competition. At their second weigh-in, they discover that their team is heavier than when they started. Frasier, with his ever-present glass of sherry and penchant for gourmet cooking, is identified as the weak leak.
“How can that be?” Frasier sputters in indignant disbelief, “I added a salad to every meal!”
That scene makes me laugh just by writing it out, because Frasier’s glaring misconception sums up many of the innate confusions people operate by on a daily basis. It is my belief that true reduction is hard for many people to understand because it is simple in theory, but uncomfortable in practice. It is easy to say that something needs to be given up. Actually giving something up is much harder. I think this has to do with the human fear of change, but I think it can also be defined a more specifically as fear of a void.
We are confronted every day by choices. It doesn’t matter if we want something to eat, watch, buy or do; we can be guaranteed of multiple options to choose from. For a culture, this is a double-edged sword. Positively, it is an indicator of wealth and success. Negatively, it betrays an entire culture’s over-reliance on material elements at the expense of objectivity, critical thinking and spiritual fulfillment.
Why else would weight loss or budgeting be so complicated? At their core, they both concepts can be condensed to a single sentence apiece: Spend less. Eat less. Entire bookstore shelves could be replaced by single placards if a perceived need to fill all empty spaces did not exist. If the basic concepts were better understood, individuals' methods of implementing them would cease to be a reliant on the systems and advice of others, and would instead be expressions of personality.
This is extremely apparent when I listen to people talk about time management, then watch how they go about doing it. Everyone wants more time, but as soon as they liberate some space in their schedules, they immediately seek out something new to fill the void. After striving and cutting back activities to have "a moment's peace," the reality of being alone with one's own thoughts is suddenly too terrible to bear, and the void must needs be filled. Western cultures in particular often perceive voids as a symptom of idleness or of having a lack of constructive activities. In reality, extra time for one’s own self can be a wellspring of creativity to benefit the areas in life where meeting goals and fulfilling obligations is important. Creative people find creative ways of dealing with problems. They are valuable no matter where they work or what they do. And yet we deny ourselves the ability to be comfortable in silence or solitude.
We need to be comfortable with margins. We need to embrace the void.
This same concept applies to weight loss, the area in which many people, like Frasier, often choose what they think is the "least worst" option when, just maybe, the best option was never even thought of. As such, reduction inadvertently becomes addition.
“I added a salad to every meal!”
“Yes, but you didn’t decrease the size of your meals!”
This is a personal theory, but I firmly believe that the United States labors under culture-wide acceptance of false dilemmas. In situations where the individual must choose between a set of options, they often forget to check and see if they have to choose one of those options at all. Perhaps there is another option that they haven’t been shown yet. Or, perhaps the situation is not so dire that they have to choose anything at all, and can safely reject what they are offered and create their own paradigm for better living.
Easy example:
“Plain chips, or sour cream and onion?”
“No chips for me, thanks.”
Another:
“Regular or diet?”
“Water.”
One more:
“Let’s not spend too much on food; which is cheaper: Joe’s or Charlie’s?”
“Why don’t we just eat at home?”
Not every void must necessarily be filled.
Choosing the “least worst” option is not the same as reducing consumption.
Choosing only from the palette of options offered to you by others is never the same as making your own decisions.
Don’t be coerced. Don’t be fooled.
Let your decisions always be your own, and don't be afraid of a void. Learn the Art of Reduction.
Eating paleo and shopping in my sleep: "Free the Animal" reviewed.
Writer, blogger and entrepreneur Richard Nikoley is one of the more colorful and unique characters in the paleo blogosphere. He and I are very different people and I don't agree with him on everything by a long shot. The posts on his blog, Free the Animal, are blunt, confrontational, often delivered with unabashed profanity...but they are also downright entertaining. His take-no-prisoners attitude, especially pronounced when met with stupidity or bad reasoning, often provides much-needed doses of reality for the paleo community, whose information-cycling bloggers often seem to exist in a grass-fed and organically-pastured netherworld of online pontification.
The past year saw my own transition into a paleo-style diet and lifestyle. What began as a gradual series of minor lifestyle changes in an effort to lose weight, (portion control, cutting out soda, etcetera), led to deeper study that went beyond weight loss and into the ideas surrounding “ancestral” health. By the time Nikoley released the printed version of his take on paleo living, Free the Animal: How to Lose Weight and Fat on the Paleo Diet, I was already a grain-free, fifty pounds lighter, Vibram-wearing stereotype and I doubted the book would contain information that I hadn’t heard before from one source or another. However, I enjoy the blog and respect the man enough that a purchase of the print edition of Free the Animal was justified.
At least, I think I purchased it.
The exact event of my ordering the book remains a little hazy in my mind. I remember adding it to my Amazon.com wish list, then waking up one morning to an email confirming an order for it. There were extenuating circumstances--it was late in the semester and school was keeping me up at odd hours; I’ve come to expect occasional blackouts during such periods. However, in this case I suspect that a larger game might have been afoot, for upon my telling the 140-character version of this story on Twitter, I received a response from the man himself:
Hmm...well played, sir.
The apparent dubiousness of the purchase aside, I would like to share my opinion on Richard’s book, and how it measured up to my expectations.
The book is quite literally a printed compilation of Nikoley’s blog entries about the paleo lifestyle; compiled and printed by the ebook publishing company, HyperInk. In the interest of reaching a broader audience, Nikoley’s trademark colorful vocabulary has been toned down considerably, but his personality remains strong, as does the communication of his ideas without the extra saltiness.
The book has fourteen major sections, each of them easy to read and digest:
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Paleo, Primal, Ancestral Lifestyle
- Chapter 2: Your Inner Animal
- Chapter 3: The Standard American Diet And Other Diet Health Disasters
- Chapter 4: Fat Is King
- Chapter 5: The Cholesterol Con
- Chapter 6: Natural Disease Prevention
- Chapter 7: Eat Like A Caveman
- Chapter 8: The Power of Fasting
- Chapter 9: Evolutionary Exercise And Fitness
- Chapter 10: A Primal Weight Loss Plan
- Chapter 11: Recipes And Supplements
- Chapter 12: Success Stories
- About The Blog
The information in the book is solid and presented cohesively, as can be expected. But instead of giving away all of the information it contains, I would like to hone in what I felt set it apart from most literature about ancestral living. Unlike the path taken by most paleo nutritionists, Free the Animal does more than provide yet another treatise on insulin spikes, omega-3s and fat-protein-carbohydrate ratios; Free the Animal presents the paleo lifestyle as common sense.
Yes, Nikoley discusses nutrition and biology; yes, he discusses the psychology of food and intermittent fasting. But unlike the professional gurus who go to great pains to overawe readers with a doctoral dissertation’s worth of facts, statistics and observational studies, Nikoley’s book lays out the paleo lifestyle and its guiding philosophies in a refreshingly relatable way.
For paleo newcomers, I would honestly recommend Free the Animal as the starting point before moving on to the lengthier works of gurus like Robb Wolf or Mark Sisson. It isn’t that Richard Nikoley or Free the Animal are a “better” choice; to the contrary, most other paleo nutritionists provide much more detailed information, and longer and more colorful books to boot. But the main reason I loved Free the Animal was its no-frills, straightforward presentation. Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint changed my life last year, but I have to admit that its sheer amount of information scared me to death when I first picked it up.
By comparison, Free the Animal is both more and less of an assault to those readers who are just beginning to be interested in paleo nutrition. It is more of an assault because Nikoley does not suffer fools lightly and pulls few punches as a communicator. But Free the Animal nevertheless remains extremely relatable. Ever chapter presents its subject(s) through more than just the interpretation of impersonal data; Nikoley relates the impact of ancestral health, nutrition and fitness to everyday life. By attaching it to concrete ideas like personal appearance, productivity and a healthy sex life, the impact of the paleo diet takes on a significance beyond buzzwords like “burning fat” or “building muscle.”
So, is Free the Animal worth purchasing?
If you are already eating like a caveman, chances are you won’t learn anything new. However, if you want good introductory material in your lending library, this is a great book to keep around. And if you need a gift for “one of those friends” who complain ceaselessly about their weight while stubbornly continuing to fill up on empty and processed food products, Richard Nikoley’s Free the Animal might provide the necessary shot in the arm.
Free the Animal (Blog)
Purchase “Free the Animal: Lose Weight and Fat on the Paleo Dietl” on Amazon
Proof my business card!
As I continue to rebrand my online presence, I am also changing up my business cards. Part of this is because I want to seek out a different kind of business (editorial and journalistic as opposed to the last couple of years' focus on glitzy portraiture), and also because I am simply exasperated with the reaction I receive when I give my current business card to older prospective. They see featured headshot of my good friend Kimber Lee , and their first remark, either out of an attempt at humor or just missing the point, is without fail: "that ain't you." Eh, I just put it down to a generational gap.
Be that as it may, I want to avoid such problems in future conversations by choosing an image which has broader appeal and is more representative of the travel and journalistic photographs which have typified my portfolio choices for the past couple of years.
As part of this process, I want your help proofing this new card. Be brutally honest and let me know if there is anything I left out, or anything unique that you feel should be incorporated.
For taking the time to help, I offer many, many internet high-fives. Thanks in advance!
New Hub: "All Natural," and other grocery store misnomers.
If you are a Starbucks fan, you will enjoy this post.
Today's entry links to an article I published on HubPages. The subject is food marketing and its use of vague terms like "fortified" and "all natural" to promote some foods over others. What do these terms even mean?
Is "all natural" really natural, or just a game of semantics?
Are whole grains and multi grains are really as healthy as they are purported as being? And what about fiber? And is a "healthy" smoothie really better than something from Starbucks?
The article is a bit lengthy at about 1,500 words, plus links to supplementary sources and supplementary material, but if you are interested in nutrition and its relationship to culture, you will enjoy it.