1,000 Posts! Vital Omega Winner

The winner is commenter #14, Zariu! Thank you for being an MDA reader and enjoy the Vital Omegas!

Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful comments. Our readers really keep us motivated to continue to bring quality health and wellness information to the blogosphere. Long live MDA!

1,000 Posts!

That’s right. We’ve posted our one-thousandth blog post! (Actually, 1,065. We were so busy writing one-thousand sort of came and went without us even noticing.) We would like to use this as an opportunity to thank all of our readers for enjoying the ride with us. (Thank you!) It has been a labor of love – one we hope to continue for many more thousands of posts.

We’d also like to take this occasion to revisit all of the things we’ve been ranting about. Since October ’06 we have covered everything from diabetes and the American healthcare system to fats, food, and fitness. View the Best Of and Most Popular Posts to reminisce, and check out some of our personal favorites if you are looking for even more nostalgia:

Announcement!

Five days of Mark’s Daily Apple isn’t enough, you say? You’ve spoken and we’ve listened. If you haven’t already noticed we are now bringing content to all of our dedicated Apples (that’s you!) seven days a week! Check back this (and every) Saturday and Sunday for more rants, raves, heated debates and healthy living tips. Have a wonderful weekend!

Vote Yes on Proposition Mark’s Daily Apple

Presidential primary politics is really heating up! With recruitment efforts at an all time high we’ve been inspired to jump on the bandwagon and do a little recruiting of our own.

Pumping out health and nutrition information day-in day-out is a labor of love. But just like politics, without voter participation and turnout everyone loses. So we are asking you to get behind us and help us take Mark’s Daily Apple to the next level!

Why are we asking for your support?
There are a couple things at work here:

1. In order to be able to continue to bring free health advice and news to everyone we’ve got to keep traffic levels on the rise.

On a related note, and more importantly:

New Nutrition Labeling System Still Has Flaws

New nutrition labels are in the works for a 2008 unveiling. There are some terrific improvements over the current labels. A particular problem I’ve long had with the existing labels is that the numbers are based upon the assumption that you’re following a 2,000 calorie-per-day diet. That’s too much for many women, not enough for many men, and irrelevant for many growing kids. And yet nearly every food and food product in America is measured and judged as if we were all virtually identical and weighing in at 150 pounds. Who actually takes time to adjust the nutritional values for their particular weight, BMI, and body fat percentage? Moreover, how many Americans are even aware that when they see “15% fat” on a label, the food carrying this label is not 15% fat? It seems, in fact, to be the perfect recipe for ambiguity – and obesity. If I wanted to obscure accurate nutrition information – because why would we ever want to present what’s inside on the outside – I’d come up with some imaginary standard and convoluted comparisons, too.