Consider this a friendly warning... this song will be stuck in your head FOREVER! I saw this video clip about a week ago. It was posted by The Soup (pretty much the only show I watch). And anytime my mind had a chance to wander since then, it's popped back into it.
It's pretty much the most amazing combination of a great PSA (public service announcement) involving a stuffed chicken, a dance crew wearing MC Hammer's favorite pants who only know how to do the Kid'N Play move, and a sweet folk singer who seems a little creepy hanging out at the playground with no kids.
For the past few years I've been pretty disgusted during some of my trips to the grocery store. It's not the particular store or the food selection, it's the fact that starting around age 6, my first born started asking for brand name food items. I don't mean he wanted the Cheerios instead of the Tastee-o's (or however your spell that generic knock-off) - he was asking for crap food items by brand name.
"Mom I want Pepsi."
"Mom I want Dr. Pepper."
"Mom I want Mt. Dew." - AHHHHH
If I routinely allowed any of those, then it would have been understandable, but I don't! In fact, at this point my husband and I don't really drink soda, and haven't for a few years aside from an occasional diet Dr Pepper. Where was this coming from? Pepsi? Had he had this at a birthday party somewhere? No, all the birthday parties he attended seemed to have soda in pitchers. Mt. Dew?? Seriously! Why does it seem that my now 8 year old is hard-wired to ask for a soda he's never even tried, which has got to be the worst of the worst for him?
Is this a test? Is someone from the Commission on Dietetic Registration sending him scripts to read at the grocery store in hopes of catching me? Are there hidden cameras at the store hoping to catch me at a weak moment? Well, if so they can go watch someone else because I've perfected my eye-rolling and my firm "not in this lifetime" responses.
So I thought this would continue on, with every horrible-for-you food that was offered at the store. Yesterday I got a pleasant surprise that really warmed my heart. I had loaded up the boys and their bikes to go help a friend finish sanding her from porch railings and paint them so her significant other would have to eat his words ["she's never going to finish this"] when he returned home from a trip. :)
We worked for a while and the boys got hungry. She eats super healthy too... actually I think she has me beat by a mile in that regard. So she made this most delicious chicken salad for us, and a sandwich for the boys using up some of the white bread that had only been purchased for recent house guest. My 8 year old thought this was great since they have to suffer through 100% whole wheat bread consistently at our house. I grumbled a bit and commented that, "...I like your healthy bod and I want to keep it that way. If I didn't love you so much I would shove Spaghetti-O's in your face and not care." ...wait for it... here's when my most fabulous moment arrived....
"What are Spaghetti-O's?" AHHHHHH!!! Success! He really has no idea! I was so giddy. While I totally get that some parts of the country start their babies on this staple before they even introduce mashed up bananas, it's got to be one of the worst things to feed your child. And acting as though it's nutritious in any way is just ridiculous. Hold up! Oh, wow they must be nutritious (insert: eyes rolling and most sarcastic voice you can imagine) they have added Calcium. Ugh. Here was my 8 year old brand whore with no clue what it even was! Happy mommy/Dietitian moment.
I did go on to tell him that crap like that wasn't even fit for animals, as evidenced by the Beefaroni incident on Seinfeld. Ah, I don't think Seinfeld references will ever get old for me.
The first part is just the feeding of the Beefarino, but the second video is the effects. Horrible video quality, but seriously couldn't find another clip of it. :(
Today's blog is a bitter rant. And it's directed at a particular weight loss shake, who shall remain nameless. It's not their fault that so many people are drawn to their claims of rapid, long-lasting results. It's ours for being so quick to believe them. I loathe these products. They foolishly spit on my profession as if our recommendations for moderation are unnecessary and unsubstantiated. They make you believe that consuming real food is passe, and the new era of slim bodies start with a blender and a few carefully chosen chemicals.
Each shake provides 90 calories. If you mix it with skim milk that brings you up to 170. So lets pretend that you only drank two shakes per day and then had an average dinner of 600 calories. That's not even 1000 calories for the day!! There's no miracle potion in the shake mix, it's just simple math. If you are consuming less than you are expending in energy, then you will lose weight. Now I will say that if someone handed me a meal to eat for breakfast and lunch and then told me I was on my own for dinner, I imagine having the plan and those particular guidelines would help me to stick to it. But where does personal responsibility enter the equation? They aren't teaching you how to eat healthy. They aren't even teaching you to eat! They encourage liquid meals!! Don't we have teeth for a reason? Are you aware that part of how our brain senses satiety is by how much it smells and chews a food? So with this in mind, is that shake appeasing the brain when you don't chew the shake nor does the coldness of the shake encourage a lot of aroma? Not so much. What about nutrients? The shake is sweetened with sucralose (Splenda) and has a few select vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. So if we drink the shake and it contains beta-carotene, then it's the same as eating a carrot (or other Vitamin A rich vegetable) right? Well what about the other 500+ carotenoids that the carrot contains? Aren't these important too? Can't get that in the shake.
Hmmmm, "great tasting variety for just $2 a meal". Well I'm pretty sure that doesn't include all the items you might want to add to your shake. If you plan on concocting one of the recipes, it's going to run you more than $2 and it's also going to raise that calorie level. I do like how the youtube video for this product runs through a dozen or so different foods, claiming you would have to eat a 3-15 of each of these to get the same nutritional value of a shake. Last time I checked a lot of foods have a large variety of important nutrients, not just one as this video would have you believe. For example cheese is not just a good source of Zinc, but it also has calcium so why are they suggesting that you also need to eat frozen yogurt to cover the calcium? They showed bran cereal and bread for different nutrients, then later indicate all the prunes you need for fiber - but show no indication that you got fiber from the cereal and the 15 slices of bread. How are people supposed to learn to eat a healthy variety when they are purposefully misinforming consumers so they can sell their product? It actually made me think of an old Saturday Night Live commercial from back in the Phil Hartman era, for "Colon Blow" and "Super Colon Blow" where they were showing the number of bowls of fiber cereal you would have to eat to get the fiber benefit of theirs. If a product was truly impressive, then it wouldn't need to over-sell itself like this.
What are you going to do when you stop? Are you going to drink these shakes indefinitely? Now, yes, I have not signed up so I cannot see behind the curtain to see what fabulous exercise and diet tips they are providing. I just cannot stand to see so many people getting caught up in this sort of multi-level-marketing product. I mean honestly, if they really just wanted to help people with weight loss and healthy changes, they wouldn't be encouraging rapid weight loss like this with the added appeal that you can get your program for free if you sign up your friends.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 (aka MST3K) was something I started watching when I was in college, forever ago. For anyone who has never come to appreciate or even seen MST3K, I'm literally weeping for you. It's hilarious. The gist of it is this guy who was a janitor is selected by scientists to be sent into space. Then the mad scientists perform this experiment on him just to see how much he can take before he cracks. They make him sit with these robot friends (that the janitor built) and watch horrible movies. In order for him to endure these movies he and his friends make witty/super sarcastic comments the entire time. This is the place I picked up rare phrases like "the elusive male camel toe" and I honestly believe it was a big part of what prompted my rapid slide into a long life of sarcasm.
Okay, so what could one show, with so little redeeming value possibly teach anyone?
1. You have to be able to think on your feet. You can't walk around with your every thought and comment mapped out on a power point presentation. Hello?? Life will happen and screw up your whole master plan. You have to be able to process things fast. MST3K taught me this, because that one guy and his robots were coming up with comments pretty fast. Sure they were probably well scripted, but I'm just going to ignore that fact.
2. Quick wit is not something that a humorous person can be without. I've met a lot of people that took a long time to get a joke, and/or rarely had a comeback. If you are lacking in the area of wit, I highly recommend at least learning to appreciate it in others. If you are doing something that is causing your wit to run slow, please please please get a tune up. Nothing worse than a day that just drags by with witty remarks that enter your brain too late and thus are wasted.
3. You have to continue to learn. Okay, I might be stretching a little bit here, but humor me on this one. So, if you have a running commentary about a movie and one of the most "prominent" parts of the movie is the main character's seemingly painted on pants, you are going to have to come up with new ways to describe the nut hugging jeans or else your audience will get bored. Expand that vocabulary!! You don't have to use big words that no one has ever heard of to sound intelligent, but you do need to use a variety or else you start sounding like a toddler. Also, I don't believe you can ever know too much. The moment you stop learning, you stop growing.
4. If you are stuck in a crappy place where you don't want to be and no way to change your situation, you might as well make the best of it. Hello!! Here was a guy who just wanted to mop the floors at the mad scientists' factory, and instead he was sent into space to watch horrible movies!! He found that he could joke around about how bad the movies were. So can't we all try to find the good in our situations too?
