I'm super-proud of my better half and her blog -- but more than anything else, this video makes me wistful for a functioning kitchen and a home that isn't wrecked.
(By the way, this video's just the latest segment on the "caveman diet" that San Francisco's CBS affiliate has produced. Check out the other videos here, and stay tuned for two more segments this week about the Paleo lifestyle.)
“The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations and she's proud of the fact that her food is fucking bad for you. I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it is okay to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks."
Deen appears to have been waiting for an opportunity to monetize her diagnosis. She’s inked a deal with Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical giant that provides her with diabetes medication. Deen announced today that she and her family are going to start appearing in ads for the company.
But aside from pushing drugs, Deen’s not planning to make any dietary changes, other than curbing her sweet tea addiction.
When asked about whether she will make a change in how she cooks on her show, “Paula’s Best Dishes,” Deen didn't give a direct answer, instead encouraging viewers to practice moderation.
“Here’s the thing, you know, I’ve always encouraged moderation,” she said. “On my show, you know, I share with you all these yummy, fattening recipes, but I tell people 'in moderation... You can have that little piece of pie ...'"
"I have always eaten in moderation," she said. "You know, people see me on TV two or three times a day and they see me cooking all these wonderfully Southern, fattening dishes. That’s only 30 days out of 365," she said. "And it’s for entertainment. And people have to be responsible. Like I told Oprah a few years ago, honey, I’m your cook, not your doctor. You are going to have to be responsible for yourself."
Oh, yes. Moderation and personal responsibility have worked out REALLY WELL for Deen. After all, thanks to diabetes, she's landed a lucrative deal with Novo Nordisk! She can still eat "that little piece" of Savannah High Apple Pie as long as she gets free insulin and Victoza injections from a pharmaceutical company! And best of all, she can continue to reap the benefits of peddling ridiculously unhealthy food while admonishing her fans to "be responsible for yourself" and gobble down pills! WIN-WIN!
Let’s be real: Type 2 diabetes can be prevented. Regularly chowing on sugar -- whether in the form of Twinkies or Deen’s Deep-Fried Cheesecake, causes insulin resistance and keeps glucose in the bloodstream -- which in turn forces the pancreas to crank out even more insulin to deal with the blood sugar, which in turn causes more insulin resistance, and on and on. The vicious cycle doesn’t end as long as we continue to poison ourselves with sugar. Taking drugs doesn’t fix the underlying problem; it just manages the symptoms.
(Want more information about the sugar-diabetes connection? Read this article over at Mark’s Daily Apple, or check out my Paleo guide.)
I don't think Deen's "the worst, most dangerous person in America," but she can’t simply be dismissed as a kook with a taste for gross food, either. She has a large following, and is prominent enough to influence hordes of television-viewing home cooks -- many of whom are the primary food gatekeepers for their families. By announcing that diabetes can and should be handled with drugs rather than dietary changes, Deen’s made herself the willfully oblivious poster child for America’s diabetes problem.
The Georgia Children’s Health Alliance is running an ad campaign against childhood obesity called Strong4Life, which recently ignited a firestorm of controversy.
The print ads depict glum-looking overweight kids with captions like "He has his father's eyes, his laugh, and maybe even his diabetes," "Fat kids become fat adults," and "Fat prevention begins at home. And the buffet line."
And the videos in the ad campaign are equally stark and in-your-face, like this one:
"Horrible! As a 42 year old woman who struggled with anorexia as a teen and now a mother of a 6 year old girl who is taller and thicker than the average children her age and gets picked on by all ages including adults with inappropriate comments you have no idea obviously of the damage this will do with the ad. You will hurt more than you help. Self esteem is built with smiles and no pointing."
Others say that the ad campaign fails to offer any solutions -- other than to shame kids into losing weight.
But the Strong4Life campaign has responded with cold, hard statistics. Children are getting fatter -- and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one-third of American kids today are overweight or obese. Georgia ranks second in the U.S. for childhood obesity, with over 1 million overweight kids.
The organization’s research found that 50 percent of people surveyed didn’t recognize childhood obesity as a problem. What’s more, 75 percent of parents with overweight kids didn’t acknowledge their child as having a weight issue.
I agree that an awareness campaign isn't enough -- pointing out a problem does no good without offering concrete solutions. But as a first step, perhaps a cold splash of water in the face is exactly what's needed here. After all, the whole "self esteem is built with smiles" thing clearly isn't working.
Then again, without parents injecting their kids with mega-doses of self-esteem, we'd be bereft of awesome reality shows that feature pint-sized beauty queens from Georgia:
The video above is kind of scary-awesome. (Emphasis on "scary.") My favorite line: "A dolla makes me holla, honey-boo-boo!"
What say you? Are these ads unduly harsh and cruel? Or just what the doctor ordered?
[The researchers] tracked the marital happiness of 169 newlywed couples. The couples indicated their height and weight and then independently and privately completed marital satisfaction questionnaires every six months for four years.
Controlling for factors such as depression, income level, and education, the study found that husbands were initially more satisfied in their marriages if their wives had lower body mass indexes (BMIs) than their own and initially less satisfied if their wives had higher BMIs than their own. Wives were more satisfied over time if they had lower BMIs than their husbands and less satisfied over time if they had higher BMIs than their husbands.
The researchers stress that women don't have to be stick-thin: "It's relative weight that matters, not absolute weight," said Andrea Meltzer, the lead author of the study. "It's not that they have to be small." They just have to be smaller than their husbands.
HealthZone, the Toronto Star's health news site, just published an article on "The Best TV to Watch While You Work Out." (It's a Canadian site, so I believe the proper pronunciation is "Work OOT.")
The author explains:
I belong to a cut-rate gym with lots of outlets. Each location has at least one bank of television screens mounted in front of the elliptical and bike machines. This is nice in theory, and it’s better than nothing, but oftentimes three out of four screens will be showing the same thing (usually something totally uninteresting like an “E! True Hollywood Story” on Tawny Kitaen, better watched at home with a bag of chips), and to change the channel involves begging one of the gym attendants to do it for you while concurrently risking the ire of the person on the next machine over who really was caught up in Tawny.
Which is why I frequently go out of my way to visit a branch that has televisions actually mounted right on the workout machines, and a couple dozen channels for me to choose from.
Have we really gotten to the point where a health publication must acknowledge that people won't exercise unless they're able to locate a globo-gym with individual TV screens attached to the cardio machines? Can we no longer squeeze any exercise into our schedules without tethering ourselves to a television?
Hate to say it, but I think the time has come for us to kill our TVs.
Unless, of course, this is a strictly Canadian phenomenon -- in which case, please pass me the remote.
I'd like to say that this is a signal that Paleo's finally moving into the mainstream, but I've never heard of "First for Women Magazine" before (which is probably for the best, given its eye-bombing, migraine-inducing cover designs). Then again, I'm so out of it that I had to Google "Eva La Rue" before learning that she's a TV star.
There is so much wrong with this slanted article in Time Magazine about the Paleo lifestyle, it made my head hurt. But I shouldn't be surprised; this is, after all, the same publication that put Ancel Keys on its cover and fed his low-fat, high-carb message to the masses.)
I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Hopefully, ABC's Nightline feature on Paleo (airing tomorrow night and featuring both Art De Vany and Robb Wolf) won’t be quite as smugly dismissive and uneven. Set your DVRs.
[UPDATED: The Nightline segment didn't run 'til March 1. You can view it here.]
Is it really that hard to pronounce the word "Paleolithic"? And is it truly necessary to crack a joke about your male co-anchor "looking at another man awfully closely"?
Sometimes, you just need to get fat. Especially if you're Chris Pratt, who plays chubby slacker Andy Dwyer on "Parks & Recreation," and your job depends on getting and staying doughy after a summer of (gasp!) physical fitness.
In this slideshow, he lets us in on his weight gain tips.
My favorite of the bunch: "'If you see something, eat something.' This is key -- I cannot stress enough how important it is to eat many things."
The good folks at Re-Nest want you to know that there are lots of advantages to having a home gym that’s “both handsome and healthful,” such as: “[y]ou can watch television to make the time pass quickly during your 20-40 minute cardio” and “you are comfortable and completely at ease.”
YES! FINALLY! That’s EXACTLY what I want when I'm exercising: Complete comfort and ease! While watching TV to kill time!
Here’s Re-Nest’s recommended shopping list for starting your very own super-chill home gym on a budget:
That bench makes me want to put on some Coldplay and curl up in a Snuggie with a soothing cup of fucking chai latte. It does not, however, make me want to work out. I daresay that if you plan on using an upholstered ottoman in place of an exercise bench, you’re pretty much committing to either NOT sweating or investing in a Costco-sized pallet of Scotchgard.
Don't get me wrong. I’m not saying you have to accumulate a crapload of equipment to outfit your home gym. But if you have $400 burning a hole in your pocket, and you want to buy some stuff to enable you to ACTUALLY WORK OUT, consider these options instead:
A pull-up bar. This time, let’s splurge on something nicer – let’s go for the StudBar. $139.45
Olympic rings – prices on Amazon range from $39.95 (for rings by XFit Equipment) to $84.24 (for EXF Rings – I have a pair and love 'em)
A kettlebell. Kettlebell King -- the cheapest KB seller I could find online -- sells them for about a buck per pound. For our purposes, let's start with a 35-pound kettlebell. $34.65
"No carbs," he said. "I have cheated a couple times, but basically no carbs, not even a cracker. No bread at all. No pizza, nothing. No corn, no beans, no starches of any kind. Egg whites in the morning or like, Greek yogurt, cut some fruit."
Carey's also no longer diabetic, and attributes this to his new approach to eating.
"I'm not diabetic anymore. No medication needed," he said. Another benefit: "I like being skinny. I was sick of being fat on the camera. Really, I just got sick of it."
