Diet Myths and How to Profit from them

First off, a confession: This review is totally biased, petty and unfair. I am reviewing a book I haven't read based on comments the author has said. And I am doing it in a way that she doesn't really get a good rebuttal. That's wrong, wrong, wrong. And it's just the sort of thing she would do if this was a study on the success of low carb diets or the failure of low fat diets. It would be better to give it a fair read and a fair review, but that's just not my style. If only there was a foodie zealot that could take this on... but I digress.

So, since I didn't read (and have no plans to read) Diet Myths That Keep Us Fat: And the 101 Truths That Will Save Your Waistline--and Maybe Even Your Life, I'll just make pot shot comments on Nancy Snyderman's Today Show appearance (where no one was there to take an opposing viewpoint to her. How convenient.) Let's begin, shall we?

Now, just an observational bit I've noticed: On the whole, doctors really just do not have a whole lot of nutritional training. It's just not on their radar. If they can't cut it out or give you a pill for it, then it isn't medicine. And nutritional "science" ... doesn't have a whole lot of science at all going on. Historically, they've made a whole bunch of conclusions mostly based on correlations. And while correlations are interesting... they just don't prove causation. I'll make those same mistakes here, but I'm just an irritating guy poking fun. I don't even own a lab coat.

Nancy actually sort of agrees with the whole "doctors don't have much nutritional training" bit but explains that she knows what she is talking about because she has been fat before. Hmmm. I'm not so sure that's a qualification. If I've had a heart attack before that doesn't make me a heart specialist. In fact, her argument is sort of counter intuitive. I personally have never had a real weight issue. Shouldn't that make me more qualified in nutrition? It should.

Now, I have to admit that in this particular interview, she didn't go all postal and blather about eating low fat.... but she's done that before, so I'll hold her to it here. How did she say she gained weight? She "lived on vanilla wafers and saltines." Hmmmm. Sounds high carb to me (and low nutrition.) Coincidence?

How did we American's start getting fat? Well, according to Nancy it's because in "post World War II we learned how to preserve food so crackers replaced fresh bread...." [In her defense, she does mention other causes... but I got a saltine stuck in my throat with this one.] We learned how to preserve food post WWII? Honey, crackers date back to at least the Old Testament. Jews still eat unleavened bread at passover. That's a frickin cracker, okay? Canning was invented in response to a war, but just not the one you mention. It was the Napoleonic wars (late 1700's, early 1800's). Dried meats and veggies go back to pre-history. Sausage goes back to at least 589 BC. They've been pickling stuff in China since the dawn of time. What the hell are you talking about?

Some things that did happen in food history since WWII are:

• invention (and later subsidy) of high fructose corn syrup (1957).
• invention of hydrogenated oils in the 1890s led to use of "healthier" margarine in 1937 (actually due to scarcity, but later promoted for "health")
• USDA recommended dietary allowances (1941) and its food pyramid (1988).
• USDA manipulation of food economics by subsidy and restriction (1933 to the present).

Now, correlation isn't causation... and I have presented no hard evidence based on these things. But at least I presented correlation. At least I am not pulling stuff out of my ass and presenting it as fact.

Nancy also mentions she doesn't believe in denying certain foods (even though she has historically been a fat phobe and a "oh my god eat low fat or die" idiot) and says it's okay to go ahead and have dessert for dinner every now and then. (Emphasis mine. She is seriously talking about replacing real food with dessert.) And I am sort of on board here. I mean: self denial creates some sort of silly self defeating ritual, where you deny, deny, deny, GORGE. But there's always room for dessert. The sugar/fat combo, while delicious, is a sure short circuit of the body/brain mechanism. And eating them alone with little to slow down their absorption is a sure road to heart disease, obesity, diabetes and a whole host of other maladies. Just eat real food with enough protein/fat to fill you up. Then, occasionally allow dessert -- you'll find room for it.

So what's her diet advice? "No food restrictions. Eat 1200-1500 calories a day to maintain your weight." What you talkin bout Willis? First off, it is ridiculous to talk about calorie intake without talking about calorie burning. They're related. If you exercise more, you have to eat more. If you don't... not only are you doomed to failure, but eventually you're going to shut down and go into starvation mode. But what's seriously idiotic here is the recommendation of 1200 to 1500 calories for maintenance. You're a loony. 1200 calories might be a maintenance diet for a 50 year old woman that weighs 100 pounds, but otherwise it's insane unless you are one of those low metabolism starvation diet folks. (Okay, I exaggerate a little. It's what I do.) The basal metabolism (i.e. just sitting, breathing and pumping blood) for a normal person is more than that assuming no exercise whatsoever. If you don't believe me, calculate yours yourself.

Look, this is sort of a religious war (and by that I mean, the low fat side is worshiping something they can't prove and can't see). But if you really want to lose weight or control disease, stop demonizing fat and start looking into insulin response.

Origins...

My apologies if this has been done already. I'd hate to hear "It's a Ziggy."

Return of the son of the loan shark

I am about to defend a bunch of real assholes -- no not in government, in the private sector. But sometimes you have to do it. You sometimes have to defend the porn theaters, Klansmen and Nazis in order to protect free speech. In the same regard, you have to protect the pawn shops, payday loans and credit card companies in order to protect a free economy.

Don't tune out just yet. I am well aware these guys are the ugly underbelly of the financial world. I am well aware that they charge outrageous interest rates. I am well aware that often it is the poor and uneducated that get caught up in all this -- though I can surely say I've seen more than my share of college educated middle class folks driving their Lexus and sipping a caramel macchiato while they stuff their big wad of credit card receipts into their Coach handbag.

The fact is: like it or not these companies provide a service by providing (often unsecured) risky loans to people that want them. And while none of us outside the legal profession probably read the 8 pages of fine print reduced to the size of a 3x5 card for easy storage, we pretty much know what the deal is. We get something, we pay more later. And I will argue and argue and argue and argue until I turn blue in the face that this is an irrational way of going through life, but just like I don't want to outlaw your church, I don't want to outlaw risky credit.

But that's just what House Resolution 1608 and Senate Bill 500 propose to do. They would cap interest rates at a pretty gosh darn freakin high rate of 36%. But think for a moment: what would that do? Obviously rates above 36% exist, or they wouldn't even be discussing this. Obviously there is a demand for loans at that rate. So illogically, let's cut the supply, shall we?

I'd like to point out here... again... what happened with the housing industry. Oh, there was lots of stuff that went on. (Read this for a detailed, annotated history.) But the gist of it is: in a lovely human gesture to save the poor and less educated, the government encouraged, cajoled and sometimes forced loans to be made at interest rates below market value. Result? Calamity. Housing and banking will take years to recover and the folks that were being "helped" are now in worse shape than they ever were.

I'm not saying that closing a few pawn shops will crash the economy further. What I am saying is that the more you restrict the risky credit, the less options are available to exactly the segment of the population you are trying to help. We are already seeing banks retracting credit and reducing credit limits. This is for their own protection. They've been overextended for a long time now. They're trying to fix themselves. Restricting this will only prolong their agony or ensure their failure.

And when you move the "fair" credit to the pawn and payday loan market, the results are much more ominous. If you think these guys are scum, think for a minute what they're going to do if you don't pay: wreck your credit, pester the living crap out of you, sell your hocked power tools and make you miserable. The alternative lending sources for the same segment of the population is going to be Uncle Vito. He's more likely to burn down your house, threaten your kids or break your kneecaps. (Oooh, a good excuse for universal health care!)

In short, the left will do to finance what the right would like to do to abortion and mind altering drugs. This sort of short sighted law does not squelch demand. It just makes it riskier for the supplier -- creating higher dangers for everyone. This bill isn't about protecting consumers from unreasonable credit rates. This bill is about launching the careers of a bunch of new loan sharks.

Suze Oh-Man!

This is really a geek rant, but before I get off on that bit... when the hell did Suze Orman go all soft? She used to be a hard ass, tell-you-what-you-need-to-hear chick. Now she's all "poor you. It's the economy." This is the same chick that ranted and raved when folks bought more house than they could afford and leveraged it with some god awful interest only loan.... Now she's feeling all sorry for those folks. But like I said. This is a geek rant.

So its "Green Week" this week and Suze has all these ever so helpful tips from her viewers -- how to save money and save the planet. One viewer calls in and says she is teaching her child to be green by turning off all the lights for one hour every day. And low and behold, she's saving $40 a month by doing just that! That's awesome. That's terrific. That's great. That's also a big load of crap.

Let's just take a look at this, shall we?

• $40 a month savings by turning off the lights for one hour a day
• that boils down to $1.33 a day
• assuming $0.1202 per kWh (which is what I pay, and our rates are known to be a little high)
• that means 11.0026 KWh savings a day (or 332.78 KWh a month)

Holy frickin moly. That's a lot of lights burning in an hour. Consider a standard CFL with 100w equivalent burns 25w. (She's saving the planet, remember, she MUST be running CFLs.)

Given one bulb for an hour is 25 w/h and she is saving 11,002.6 w/h -- she is turning off 440 lights. If you're burning 440 lights at in your house at any given time, your problem isn't with lighting. She's either full of crap, has a house the size of Home Depot or she's got a marijuana farm in the basement and she's turning off the grow lights.

Teabagging, post script

[This is a post script to Teabagging. If you're reading this top down, you might want to read that first.]

Wow. I just read Janeane Garofalo's rant on tea party supporters:

"It's not about bashing Democrats, it's not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. And there is no way around that. And you know, you can tell these type of right wingers anything and they'll believe it, except the truth."

Oh Janeane. I had such a crush on you. Why do you have to end it with us this way? So, the logic goes "if you disagree with a black man, you hate black men." According to this logic, I disagree with Hilary Clinton. I hate all women. Oh, and let's throw "carpetbagging Yankees" in there as well to stir up trouble. I disagree with George Bush. I hate all white men. I did not much care for Alberto Gonzales, thus I obviously hate all Hispanics. I really detest and fully disagree with Kim Jong Il and I guess that means I hate all Asians. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really sets me off sometimes, showing, I am sure, my pure unfettered display of unilateral hate of all Muslims and Middle Easterners. I have never found a love of the taste whale blubber, which obviously shows contempt for the Inuits. I've never spent any time reading Perez Hilton's celebrity gossip drivel and obviously this is my latent homosexuality showing which creates my internal strife and makes me violent towards all gays and lesbians.

If there was divisive, bile spitting, prejudiced hatred with no rational thought going on, I assure you it was in categorically crying "racism" over "disagreement." The truth is that if someone can have a peaceful disagreement over the policies made when a black man was in the white house -- that alone is a positive sign of the changing times.