Nurses: Pass on the Freebies

In the immediate wake of Star Wars Day and Cinco de Mayo, it may have escaped your notice that today was National Nurses Day. But don’t fret: National Nurses Week runs through May 12, so go celebrate by giving your favorite nurse a high five.

But once your excitement dies down a bit, stop for a moment to ponder the slings and arrows our nurses endure to help keep us healthy -- including irregular hours, night-shift work, physically and mentally draining responsibilities, and lack of sleep. (Two of our mighty 5 a.m. crew members are nurses, and I'm amazed at how they’re able to blast through CrossFit workouts before heading to the hospital for their shifts.)

All of this excess cortisol is taking its toll on the nursing profession as a whole. In May of 2008, the Journal of American Academy of Nurse Practitioners published a study of “the incidence of overweight and obesity in nursing professionals,” and found that 54 percent of the five thousand nurses surveyed were clinically obese or overweight. More than half of these nurses also stated that they “lack the motivation to make lifestyle changes” despite their excess weight.

Thankfully, Sprinkles Cupcakes, Dunkin’ Donuts and Cinnabon are here to save the day.

According to its Twitter feed, Sprinkles handed out free cupcakes to nurses today.

On Monday, Dunkin’ Donuts is delivering thousands of free donuts to hospitals AND giving away sweet, sweet beverages to nurses.

Cinnabon’s even more generous, offering free sugar bombs to our nation’s nurses all week long.

Did you notice that only purveyors of sugary, grain-based desserts are "celebrating" Nurses Week by giving away their products to nursing professionals? Is it just a coincidence that the manufacturers of the #1 source of calories in the Standard American Diet are trying to shovel their evil concoctions into the mouths of our health professionals?

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I suspect that these junk food peddlers know exactly what they're doing. It's no accident that they've decided to target an industry full of people whose high stress levels have triggered insatiable sugar cravings: They know full well that  nurses are particularly susceptible to sugar binges due to their elevated cortisol levels. And so these companies have decided to leverage Nurses Week as an excuse to distribute free samples and get more folks hooked on their dietary crack.

Well played, sugar-pushers. Well played.

[Previously: Cupcakes are Evil]

Happy Turkey Day!

Got your gluttony pants on?

But seriously: Please don't eat this tonight. Or this. Or this. This might be okay, though.

Link Dump

There's a bunch of stuff on the web that I've been meaning to share, but I've been too lazy busy to do it. I doubt I'll get around to devoting a full post to each of the following links, so I might as well dump 'em here your reading/procrastinating pleasure:

1. 50 Ways to Cut 500 Calories a Day

My favorite is Number 34, mostly because I already do this (but also because my father-in-law once told my wife to tell me to cut it out):

Tap your foot. Your skinnier friends are probably fidgeters, who burn up to 350 calories a day just by tapping their feet or being restless. Try it for a few days. Walk around while you’re on the phone, or tap out a tune with your hands or feet (in the privacy of your own office, of course).

2. Watch "Supersize Me" For Free

FreeDocumentaries.org has a growing list of full-length documentaries for your viewing pleasure -- but nothing beats watching Morgan Spurlock gain 25 pounds and suffer liver damage after a month of ingesting McDonald's "food" exclusively.

3. Taco Bell's Drive-Thru Diet

Speaking of fast food, Taco Hell's marketing its "Fresco" menu to dieters who are determined to lose weight as long as they can still keep their daily appointment with a Burrito Supreme and a fistful of hot sauce packets. I love that Taco Bell's legal department forced them to put disclaimers on everything, pointing out that the "Drive-Thru Diet" isn't actually a diet. It's "not a weight loss program," Taco Bell confesses. Fresco products "are not a low calorie food," and the results achieved by its spokesmodel Christine "aren't typical." But it's catchy, and it worked for Subway! (Until Jared got fat again.)

4. Ad Age: What The Weight-Loss Biz Has In Store For 2010

I love the fact that Ad Age includes not just Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers in its round-up of "some of the bigger players" in the weight loss industry, but also Planters, Jell-O and Dunkin' Donuts. Why Dunkin' Donuts? Because it's going to make egg whites available in its breakfast sammitches (which, of course, you can wash down with a 630-calorie Chocolate Chip Muffin). And why Planters? Because like Jon Gosselin, Mr. Peanut's taking up yoga.

5. The New Age Cavemen and the City

Thanks to Boingboing and Yacine for pointing me in the direction of this article, which describes hipster paleo enthusiasts in New York City who eat "large quantities of meat and then fast[ ] between meals to approximate the lean times that his distant ancestors faced between hunts," and exercise by "scooting around the underbrush on all fours, leaping between boulders, [and] playing catch with stones." Why? "[T]o replicate how a prehistoric person might have fled from a mastodon," of course.

We went to a dinner party last night where we ate tons of meat from a variety of different animals -- all cooked over open flames in an outdoor wood-burning fireplace. Does that count?