We Take the Sting Out

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Worker Bees’ Daily Bites

1) Taco Bell’s Fourth Meal Campaign – where they’re advising you to revisit mealtime late at night – is suddenly wrought with a lot of potential for humor in bad taste…and terrible puns. We’re not going to stoop to such low standards, but you can bet someone in the blogosphere will. And all because of scallions – scandalous. Clickativo. Good job, Big Agra. Way to win one for the team.

2) The intersection of morality judgments, motherhood and drugs: the debate over breast-feeding continues. The UK reports epidural drugs induce a desire in the mother to breast-feed; depending on when the drugs are given, there may be some unhealthy side effects; and doctors have concerns about another side effect: guilt in mothers who cannot breast-feed. Clickativity.

3) And the kids up at Evergreen U in Washington weigh in (sorry) on the whole Chicago-foie-gras-New-York-trans-fat fracas, which is apparently beginning to turn into a multi-city competition. Will Los Angeles (if it even notices) be the next to ban an unhealthy food? (What, no more white rice in the sushi?). Will Dallas come down on BBQ sauce? Will we start talking about “bootleg” buffalo wings? “Hooch” hamburgers? You know what the unintended consequences are of banning stuff people love: you get organized crime and mob syndicates. You’d think Chicago, of all cities, would remember that one.

Myspace, blogs, cell phones: the infrastructure exists, people. Soon we’ll see 14-year-old boys pelting city headquarters with ketchup packets on their way to deliver forbidden French fries to suburban housewives whose stressed-out husbands just have to have the hooch. Or not. Hey, we know this is absurd, but isn’t it absurd to live in a country where obesity is so out of control, cities actually ban certain foods?

The Evergreen U article suggests posting menu information instead of trying to tell people what to eat. That’s really logical and reasonable (one of the Worker Bees grew up a stone’s throw from Evergreen, and gosh, are they thoughtful people up there). But while it’s a nice idea, this food problem is way past logical. As Mark questioned last week in his musings on relative gluttony, would people really pay attention to the menu information? No one wants to be told what to do, but let’s face it, gluttony is the backbone of the American diet. So here’s the clickativity. Discuss, Apples!

Posted By: Worker Bee

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I Just Threw a Load of Veggies in the Wash

My buddy, Dr. Joe Mercola, posted a handy news bite on his site recently about the most toxic produce. The “Dirty Dozen” fruits and vegetables are responsible for about 90% of our pesticide exposure. Yum.

The following are the dirtiest – don’t avoid them, but scrub well with soap and water. Yes, soap – because food is now laundry.

- Peaches

- Apples (we’re really offended by this)

- Sweet bell peppers

- Celery

- Strawberries

- Spinach

The Doc tells us these are some of the cleaner veggies and fruits available:

- Onions

- Avocados

- Pineapple

- Asparagus

- Broccoli

Here’s the clickativity.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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A Monday Moment

Great health isn’t just about food or supplements, though everybody does tend to focus on those things. Great health is also about fitness, enjoyment of life, emotional satisfaction, and mental strength, too. Welcome to the Monday Moment: just a little gem from Mark that we’re passing on to you – because feeling good is healthy!

Monday Moment: One of Mark’s essential rules for life is forgiveness. Learn to forgive people – and not for them, either. It’s for you! That’s why forgiveness is so great: it frees up head space so you can feel good about yourself and your life. We don’t forgive others when they goof or hurt us so that they can go on living happily ever after – forgiveness is so you can live happily ever after. Don’t invest in thinking about how your boss, your neighbor or a pal has hurt you. It does take energy to learn a new habit (like letting go) but try it a few times and it will become old hat. It’s easier to feel good than it is to feel bad, so as the old Asian proverb goes, if you’re holding a hot coal, drop it!

Posted By: Worker Bee

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The Sherlock Award

My Inaugural Sherlock Award goes to Health Day News, as posted by the Poughkeepsie Journal. The Sherlock Award is given to the latest MOTO – Master of the Obvious. It’s for “breaking” health and fitness news that isn’t breaking anything except my patience. To be clear, the Sherlock Award isn’t about making fun of that news – the news is accurate. Rather, it’s about my puzzlement over reporting on things I thought were already part of the general knowledge bowl we call “Common Sense.”

This article reports that exercise can help treat depression, anxiety, insomnia, stress, Alzheimer’s, and a host of other mood imbalances, mental disorders and health problems.

It’s human nature to compare life now to life “in the good old days.” And in the good old days, it seems nobody had a shrink or took Prozac. This doesn’t mean people weren’t depressed or stressed out “back then”; nevertheless, if you believe the statistics (always a dicey proposition), a significant number of Americans have something really unpleasant going on upstairs, whether it’s trouble sleeping, dealing with stress, or feeling good about life.

Isn’t it obvious? Most of us sit in front of a computer all day. We go home and sit in front a television. It doesn’t take a genius to surmise that moving around might be something humans were meant to do. In fact, scientists know that exercise – even mild movement like walking or doing chores – releases dopamine, serotonin and all kinds of other wonderful enzymes, compounds and hormones into our bodies. Our brains are natural little medicine factories; many of the drugs created to treat issues like stress and depression or insomnia and anxiety mimic the very compounds our bodies are capable of making – when we move.

Read the article, savor their glorious triumph, and treat your body right today.

Technorati Tags: dopamine, serotonin, depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, natural cures, health benefits of exercise, MOTO, Sherlock Award, brain, hormones

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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A Word on Cheese ‘Food’

Well, a few dozen words, which apparently still can’t compete with the number of ingredients required to make cheese “food”. When a food producer has to state the obvious, I get concerned. I start thinking about lobbies, factories, manufacturing, chemicals, and processes – things that sounded fun on the Jetsons but have disturbing consequences in reality.

Maybe I’m easily entertained, but I get a real kick (more pain than humor, actually) from “foods” I see in the grocery store. Some days, I can’t even make it through the center aisles – it’s just too much. But even the dairy case can be a minefield of scientific stupefaction for which no chemistry refresher course could possibly prepare me. Case in point: cheese food.

When did the food supply become about food products instead of food? When did it become acceptable to label something meant for human ingestion as a “cheese food”? What’s next: milk food, beef food, and perhaps food food?
I grew up in Maine: lots of trees, animals, mountains, farms. I grew up with the knowledge that cheese was something that came from milk after some fairly simple processing. Something about Miss Moppet and curds and whey. These days, cheese “food” comes from a factory and includes things like “anhydrous milkfat”. Google at your own risk. And schools feed it to our kids, meanwhile, and feel good because there’s calcium in it!

It’s a mass-produced, centralized, chemical-laden world of cheese food we live in, Apples. I encourage you to be vigilant about eating only fresh foods that don’t need descriptions like “process” or “product” or, as if we should eat something that comes with a reminder, “food”.

Here’s some clickativity from a less-perplexed soul who took the time to explain exactly what goes into cheese “food”. Read at your discretion.

Technorati Tags: lobbies, factories, manufacturing, chemicals, processed food, mass production, cheese food, anhydrous milkfat, strange food ingredients, dairy

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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