Happy Meals Are Bad, Twinkies Are Good: Welcome to the Food Wars

Or make them fat. Whatever.

How could something so happy - it's even got happy in the name! - cause so much angst? By now you've certainly heard about San Francisco banning the McDonald's Happy Meal. (Note: they actually just banned the toy from being included in meals that don't meet certain nutritional criteria but as a mother of four I can tell you that's pretty much the same thing.) You've probably also heard that a judge overturned the ban. The war on Happy Meals has grown pretty heated in the past couple of weeks and naturally, this battle has filtered down to the fitness blog world.

Last week, MizFit headed up Team Happy Meals (which, if you read her post, is not actually pro-junk food but rather pro-parental responsibility.) In the other corner, Workout Mommy started up Team Healthy Meals for all the reasons you'd expect. Would you rather be healthy or happy, people?! Me, I can't decide.

Against the ban: If you ban the Happy Meal toy kids can still get their fix (and parents their 30 minutes of playland-induced peace) by walking across the street to a variety of other establishments. There is no shortage of junk food or cheap, plastic, movie tie-in crap in this country.

Pro ban: my kids only want the Happy Meal for the toy. They will actually throw their chicken nuggets in the garbage. I know. (I circumvented this wasteful ritual by going to the thrift store and buying a huge bag of old Happy Meal toys for 1$ and then handing them out to the kids for various reasons like pooping in the potty rather than just in the general vicinity, sharing their gum with their brothers even if it was prechewed and sometimes just as a bribe to be quiet and let mommy poop on her potty and chew her own gum in peace.) So if you ban the toy my kids will never want the chicken nuggets or junior cheeseburger all on their own - yay!

Pro: I can't even remember the last time we went to McDonald's - we generally save the Golden Arches for long road trips where we stop every few hours to make an offering at the shrine of the man who invented the indoor playland, unsung hero that he is. So what do I care if they ban them or not?

Against: We have another long road trip in our future. Probably many. A free toy (even if I think it is the lamest thing ever) + a slide that smells like urine = toddler joy. God bless Ronald.

Pro: Maybe this is the kick in the pants fast food establishments needed to offer healthier choices for kids.

Against: They already do, people just don't buy them.

Against: Where does the legislation stop? We've talked before about the slippery slope of letting the government define what is and is not "healthy" food.

Pro: It's more of a gesture, a statement against childhood obesity, than anything else. We have to draw the line in the sand somewhere, right?

Against: Do we really want to make Happy Meals the forbidden fruit?

Against: Legislation targeted at fast food usually affects poor people disproportionally.

Against: It's the parent's job to decide what to feed their children and where to spend their money.

Pro: Perhaps this will spark some conversation about how to better educate parents and children about healthy eating.

Against: Children have to learn sometime how to make healthy choices and they're not going to learn that skill by having some junk food randomly banned. Less than healthy food abounds and it is okay to eat it sometimes, just not all the time.

Pro: So use this new law as a teaching tool!

Pro: This kind of food is addicting. Literally. Plus those things are so processed they don't even rot! So we need to do anything we can to keep it out of the hands of little bodies that are still forming neural pathways (unlike my brain which is shedding neurons by the second - every time I have to listen to the Animaniacs song another cell dies).

Against: So then this law is a piddly drop in the bucket - go big or go home! Hello, school lunches!

Against: Europe has tons of McDonald's (I know, I've seen them!) and Europeans are notoriously Not Fat.

Pro: Really? You know you've reached the end of the debate when someone throws in the everything-is-better-in-Europe argument.

ANYHOW. It's been a long day that started with the kids whining about having to eat whole-wheat chocolate zucchini muffins for breakfast (despite the name, they actually taste amazing) and ended with a fist fight that left two of them bloody and the baby screaming just because she figures why not, that's just what people do in our house. So help my poor addled brain decide.

Oh, and just in case your brain hasn't exploded yet, check out this new study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (see - you already know it's going to be good because it's European!) that showed that obese children ate more whole grains, fruits, vegetables and lean meats than their slim counterparts. According to the researchers, it's not what you eat but rather how good you are at portion control. Twinkie diet anyone?? (Cliff notes version: Professor lost 27 pounds by eating mostly snack cakes. AND his blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides all went down.)

Are you in favor of legislation that would make junk food harder to buy? Does it make a difference if the food is intended for and marketed to, children? What do you make of the Norwegian study results? Did the Twinkie Diet blow your mind as much as it did mine?

Marie Claire Says TV Show about "Fatties" is Socially Irresponsible

This Dr. Phil poster may be a joke but many people are serious about their cruel comments.

Marie Claire has done it again! After the article that rocked the food-blogging world (which was nasty, sneaky and unfair... and also made some very valid points that I am still thinking about) last month, the lady mag is back in fine foot-in-mouth form with a new article titled "Should Fatties Get a Room (Even on TV)?" that claims to explore whether programming starring happy fat people is "disturbing" and "implicitly promoting obesity." Their unsurprising fashion-mag answer: yes and yes. (Which I find hilariously ironic considering their main complaint about the food bloggers is that they promote unhealthy ideals with their obsessive food restriction and exercise. Apparently you can't win unless you spring forth from the womb perfectly formed.)

I don't watch TV. If you didn't know that explicitly you have probably guessed it from how culturally clueless I am. And yet I do remember one thing from hazy college TV-show obsessed days (Holla Felicity and America's Next Top Model!) and that is this: You don't mess with Sookie. Gilmore Girls was brilliant and not just because I couldn't decide who I wanted to be more - Alexis Bledel or her "mom" Lauren Graham as they were both so witty and adorable. All of the characters on the show were funny, relatable and entertaining. One of the standouts on the show Sookie, played by Melissa McCarthy, who was a chef, a spitfire of a best friend and a comedienne in her own right. Oh and did I mention she was a bit chubby?

Well the (un-Kirstie Alley) fat actress has a new show out called "Mike & Molly" about an overweight couple who meets at Overeaters Anonymous and falls in love. Typical schlocky sitcom hijinks ensue and the show would probably have barely shown up on the radar if it were not for Marie Claire blogger Maura Kelly's post on how a show featuring two obese people in love is disgusting. In her own words, "So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room - just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair."

Wow, did she really just say that out loud? Yep. And she continues with the tired I-have-a-fat/gay/black/grinder monkey for a friend trope, "Now, don't go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump. I'm not some size-ist jerk. And I also know how tough it can be for truly heavy people to psych themselves up for the long process of slimming down. (For instance, the overweight maintenance guy at my gym has talked to me a little bit about how it seems worthless for him to even try working out, because he's been heavy for as long as he can remember.)"

Oh well if you know a fat janitor then it's totally okay! She goes on to tell obese people that if they just try hard enough they can lose the weight writing, "But ... I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It's something they can change, if only they put their minds to it." and then giving overly simplistic, albeit true tips like "eat more fresh and unprocessed foods" and "visit your local YMCA." Yes, it really is that bad.

But now that I've pointed out the egregious error - and it is as easy as falling of the curb to jump on Kelly, heck half the Internet is (the other half is too busy arguing over whether Christine O'Donnell is a moronic constitutional illiterate or a nuanced legal genius) - I feel inclined to point out that she's really not the problem. Many, many people feel this way. Remember Anna Wintour being horrified at the Mall of America not by the fact that Forever 21 sits right next to Prada but because she thinks all Midwesterners look like "little houses"? Most people just don't say it out loud. Kelly is the whipping girl because she wrote it in black and white (and doesn't have the entire fashion world at her back).

Jezebel points out that, to her credit, Kelly tries to atone in the comments by saying her remarks are lingering effects of her previous history of anorexia. "Though I don't think of myself as anorexic any more, being freaked out by obesity to the insensitive, even cruel, point that I was is certainly a vestige of the anorexic mindset; maybe so was being righteous about how easy it is to lose weight. (Because once I lost an extreme amount of weight, of course—about half my body weight—etc.)." I can personally attest to the mental havoc that eating disorders wreak. Not only do you have no concept of what you as a person look like, you really don't see other people accurately either. And the crazy doesn't go away just because you start eating again.

So I don't fault her for thinking these thoughts - she is just parroting the cultural zeitgeist of body-hate - but I think we should focus on the larger issue of challenging the validity of these thoughts. For me I don't care whether or not obese people are "gross" to watch kiss or more expensive to insure or are taking up two airplane seats or are riding zebras in Kenya whilst singing "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts." The point for me is that they are people before they are anything else. And all people, whether they be obese or elderly or handicapped or colicky infants or felons or rogue inflatable-slide-riding flight attendants, deserve to be treated with respect and kindness.

How do you feel about a TV show starring two happy obese people? What do you think of Kelly's take on it? Is her history of an eating disorder a valid mea culpa?

Are Carbohydrates The #1 Health Menace? [Good Calories Bad Calories]

Sparkly vampires that don't die in sunlight and fall in love with inarticulate teenage girls, zombies eating brains with grapefruit spoons and their pinkies out (or off?) with Elizabeth Bennett, hapless-yet-cunning teens battling to the death in a reality show that makes Jersey Shore look like The Christian Ladies Aid Society - these are the types of books that keep most people up at night. Me? I've been up for a week now reading the gripping tales of The Fat-Cholesterol Hypothesis and The Carbohydrate Hypothesis spun by Gary Taubes in his game-changing tome Good Calories Bad Calories. Kinda like the Bible and Moby Dick, lots of people will talk about this book but very few of them have actually read it.

Not that I blame them. It's 576 densely worded pages of research paper hell. And I used to be a Graduate Assistant that was paid to write research papers so I know that of which I speak. I'm going to be honest: I read most of it. Skimmed the rest. Fell asleep and drooled all over the "Conservation of Energy" chapter. Was just like college but without all the PowerPoint atrocities.

Good thing for all of us, Taubes includes a four word summary - a dietary rebus, if you will - on the front cover. Take this handy quiz:

Like the old woman/young woman illusion, what you see is all about your perspective. In this picture, is the piece of bread the "good calories" and the butter the "bad calories" or vice versa? For years, as any of you who lived through the nineties (check yes if you ever included "grrrl" in a description of yourself!) can attest, fat - especially saturated animal fats like butter - was the devil in the Devil's food cake. Even today, the American Heart Association recommends no more than 7% of your daily calories come from saturated fats and no more than 25-35 % from any fat. Most of us are well versed in the "good fats" and "bad fats" doctrine. It is, as Taubes takes the first 4 chapters to point out, the conventional wisdom. (I can't complain too much though because it was during this introduction that I got to meet a delightful 18th century Brit named Banting who lost so much weight on a low-carb diet that he went on a pamphlet-strewn publicity tour that puts Atkins to shame. Banting is like Jared the Subway Guy dressed like Marie Osmond on Nutrisystem and with an evangelical spirit that's half Kirstie Allie and half Richard Simmons. I love him.)

According to Taubes, everything you "know" about diet and nutrition is wrong. He backs up this assertion with very (very very) detailed analyses of all the research ever done on the subject, branching into a conspiracy theory about scientists suppressing evidence and changing study results that I would have found laughably ludicrous had I not worked in academic research for so many years and found out first hand what sharks professors on tenure track can be. But I digress. Here's a summary - you're welcome - of the myths busted by Taubes:

1. Eating fat makes you fat.
2. High cholesterol is bad and the best predictor of heart disease.
3. Cholesterol should be lowered at all costs.
4. The best way to lower triglycerides and cholesterol is through cutting out dietary fats, especially saturated animal fats.
5. That Western illness like cancer, diabetes, dementia and heart disease are inevitable if you live long enough.

Basically, Taubes postulates that the surest and best way to help people not only lose weight but also live the longest, healthiest lives possible is to eat lots of fat (all kinds) and protein but cut out carbohydrates. He especially blames sugar for societal ills - no shocker there - but also includes "good" carbohydrates like fruit and whole grains. Not only do carbohydrates not provide good nutrition in the form of energy, says he, but also have the deleterious effects of leaching vitamins and weakening the body in other ways. For those of you who are familiar with Atkins or with the Paleo/Primal diets, Taubes' book is scripture. For the rest of us, these assertions fly in the face of everything we have been taught about good nutrition.

Honesty, Part Two: He makes a very compelling case. Taubes is a highly acclaimed science writer and this background is evident in his meticulous review of every study out there. He not only tackles famous studies, like the Nurses' Health Study, The Seven Countries Study and Ancel Keys' starvation studies, but he includes every minor paper, even previously unpublished ones. About halfway through the book I wanted to throw my hands up and just accept whatever he said as true because he was clearly willing to do a lot more studying than I am on the subject.

And the science is catching up to him on some points. Recent papers have come out breaking the supposed link between dietary cholesterol and heart disease (yay, we can eat eggs AND their yolks again!). Saturated fats are getting lots more good press - indeed I have had a very positive experience adding more fats of all kinds to my diet. The problem for me is when he starts dissing my beloved whole grains and fruit. No matter his comprehensive body of research stating otherwise, I do better and feel better when I eat a diet that includes those two things. That's why I flunked out of the Primal Blueprint. Twice. (Of course, new science is also contradicting him.)

It is at this point in the story my brain kicks into full-on Crazy. Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe I'm just in denial. Was my mid-afternoon crash the result of my Tabata workout or the whole grain bread I wrapped around my tuna? Maybe I SHOULD try low-carb again! If I don't, I could die a horrible death of diabetes, heart disease or cancer! Or all three at the same time!

The only thing that stopped me from dumping my oatmeal down the disposal that very second was remembering how well my current Intuitive Eating Experiment is going. I'm happy. I'm healthy. I'm 2 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight and 5 from my "happy" weight (not to be confused with my ideal weight, also known as the weight I should never weigh again because even though I thought it was ideal it was really too low and I looked sick and didn't menstruate and was kind of a witch so yeah.) In a fit of reason - I'm not possessed of those nearly as often as I ought to be - I e-mailed my dear friend Dr. Jon who, also being British and therefore super cool, gave me a different perspective on Taubes, writing,

"Based on all my years of experience, I'm a great believer in moderation when it comes to diet . People lose sight of certain primary physiological facts and become obsessed with Super Foods, antioxidants, detox diets and supplements . To take some examples, a low fat diet isn't healthy because the body needs both saturated and unsaturated fats to maintain its health, LDL cholesterol is vital to well being, and reduced salt intake can literally kill anybody who works out heavily . That's the major difficulty with laying down rigid guidelines - they don't work for everybody and can actually do major harm .

A while back we talked about the Okinawan diet and I told you that the preliminary results indicate that that population's longevity and general good health seems to be both genetic and influenced by a more restricted diet and reduced intake . It is a relatively low-fat diet too, but too much must not be read into that . The Chinese diet is less restricted and pretty high in fats of all descriptions, and the typical French diet is enough to make a dietitian's eyes water . Yet all three countries have a far lower incidence of heart disease than the USA, Canada and the UK - just a thought, but maybe speaking English is the causative factor ???? :)

What you are doing these days, returning to intuitive eating and trusting your body to tell you what it needs, is the sanest and healthiest way to live . Logically, the human body has developed over the last couple of hundred thousand years and evolved the ability to signal its requirements . The plethora of mad ideas out there is truly mind-boggling . We have one particular "guru" over here who you should really have a look at . Her name is Gillian McKeith, aka the Poo Lady (if you have a look, you'll understand why - she's obsessed with it) . Amongst her insane ideas is that chlorophyll "helps to oxygenate the blood" by swallowing it !!! If you remember your highschool biology, chlorophyll is what makes plants green and uses light to photosynthesise carbon dioxide into carbon for the plant to grow, releasing the oxygen into the atmosphere as a byproduct . The only way I could imagine obtaining oxygen from chlorophyll in the gut would be by sticking a searchlight up the unfortunate soul's butt - and then what ??? The gut does NOT have gills !"

So, the take-away message from all this, is that diet books give me way more nightmares than vampires, zombies and teen-death-match-reality-shows combined. (You know it's only a matter of time before someone writes that book!) Actually, what I learned is that I still want to turn to other people - experts, by golly! - to tell me what to do with my body rather than just listening to what it says. There's a fine line here between learning enough to interpret your body's signals and going so far as to substitute everyone else's judgment for your own. Please don't misunderstand me - I'm not calling Taubes a quack and there was much of value in the book, especially on fats and their chemical mechanisms in the body, (and his chapter on paradoxes in the literature will blow your mind) but his recommendations on whole carbs and fruits just doesn't sit well with me. Lots of people live long, healthy lives on a variety of diets. You have the Okinawans with their super-low-fat diet. Then you have the Masai whose traditional diet of meat, whole milk and blood (yes, really) is about 70% fat. And these are two of the longest-lived peoples on the planet! But you know what I bet they have in common? They don't spend a lot of time reading diet books.

What are your thoughts on carbohydrates - all good, only the whole kind, or as little as possible and no grains? How much fat do you normally eat? Any of you read Good Calories Bad Calories? Do you always look for experts or research to tell you what to do, like I do??

The Number One Most Effective Weight Loss Tip [Giveaway!]

"50 Ways To Burn More Calories" is the biggest, boldest headline on this month's Allure magazine (the one with a spacey Megan Fox on the cover where she says that she can't stand looking at herself and the thing she loves most is to be alone so she often spaces out to block out crowds - good thing she chose Hollywood as her lifelong career then!) The list of 50 tips mostly includes non-stunners like "get more sleep" "walk more" "watch less TV" and "eat whole foods." Salmon and brown rice, the cure-all for everything! Thankfully they also include some downright idiotic suggestions for your entertainment: "Wear stillettos - they work your calves!" (and give you bunions and shorted tendons!), "Pop a pill - glutamate supps burn an extra 20 calories!" (20 calories?! You probably burn that just by wrestling off the child-proof cap) and my personal fave "Avoid eating any kind of fat within two hours of a workout - or your body will burn the fat in your protein bar instead of the fat on your butt!" (This cannot possibly be true).

Strangely, the number one way to get thin didn't even get an honorable mention in Allure's Top 50. It doesn't get a lot of press but there is one way to get thin that has a proven and impressive track record in both real life and the research. It's not a pill or a powder. As much as MeMe Roth would like you to believe it's not willpower. Much to my dismay it's not exercise either. Want to know the number one way to a flat belly?

Get rich.

What, you were expecting something to do with calories in/calories out? It has been shown time and time again that income is the single strongest predictor of body weight. A Seattle study from two years ago showed that 22% of people making less that $15,000 a year are obese (defined as having a BMI over 29) compared with just 15% of those making $50,000 or more a year. If you crack six digits your chance of being obese drops to under 10%. A new Seattle study (being from Seattle I can attest to the plethora of research scientists out there!) extrapolates on why this might be. You may think that it's your dedication to local food or your passion for exercise or even your obsession with Nicole Richie that keeps you thin - and undoubtedly they do - but it takes money to do those kinds of healthy activities.

MSN reports that lower-end grocery stores have ten times the number of obese patrons as more expensive markets. In the already-svelte Seattle (the city has an obesity rate of just 2o%), 40% of Albertson's shoppers were obese compared with less than 4% of Whole Foods shoppers.

"It’s not a matter of availability, lead researcher Adam Drewnowski of the University of Washington said. All of the stores in his study stocked a wide range of nutritious food, including plenty of fruits and vegetables.

Instead, he contends it’s because healthy, low-calorie foods cost more money and take more effort to prepare than processed, high-calorie foods. In a separate study two years ago, Drewnowski estimated that a calorie-dense diet cost $3.52 a day compared with $36.32 a day for a low-calorie diet."

$36.32 a DAY?! I eat a very healthy diet and my budget for my family is $3-5 per person per day. Sure there are ways to be healthy on a budget but learning those tricks often takes education and time... both of which require money.

Fortunately people are starting to catch on to the great poverty divide in the obesity wars. The government recently passed "the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, to spend $400 million starting next year to bring supermarkets to low-income areas." In addition, General Mills - who in the past has gotten a bad rap for sugary cereals but is also the purveyor of Green Giant frozen veggies - has started a get-healthy initiative called Eat Better America. You can sign up on their site to win $1500 plus a variety of other prizes. You can also follow them on Twitter and friend them on Facebook. To help you finance your healthy eats, General Mills would like to give one of you a $25 gift card. To enter, just leave me a comment below telling me your best eating healthy on a budget tip!

Anyone else read that Allure article and want to smack them for writing "Eat less sugar" as if it's actual news and then making it the top headline?" What kind of grocery store do you shop at? Does the rich = thin connection surprise you? How do you eat healthy on a budget?

Your Insurance Company is Trying to Kill You... With Fast Food

image credit

No matter where you fall on the spectrum of personal responsibility versus our obesogenic environment as the primary factor in the obesity crisis, there is one thing we all seem to agree on: Fast food is awful. Whether you think it's your fault for choosing to eat it or the companies' faults for engineering such addictive concoctions of fat, salt and sugar, everyone knows that fast food will kill you by inches. That's not up for debate.

And yet there's a reason there is a McD's, Burger King, Taco Bell or any other edifice with a drive through window at every major intersection in America. See, fast food is the Charlie Sheen of nutrition; we all love to vilify him and yet everyone giggles watching Two and a Half Men, even though it's so stereotypically stupid that butter knives look sharp by comparison. So how would you feel if you knew Charlie Sheen was actually an assassin bankrolled by some of the most powerful companies in the world and sent to kill you for their profit?

Ok, took that analogy one step too far. Back up to fast food. Actually back up one step higher - to the companies who buy stock in fast food. According to "Harvard Medical School researchers, 11 large companies that offer life, disability, or health insurance owned about $1.9 billion in stock in the five largest fast-food companies as of June 2009." Yes, you read that correctly. The people whom you are paying to be invested in your health are actually invested in ruining it.

One one level it does make a certain amount sense. The harder your arteries and the bigger your belly, the more money they make in bypass surgeries and drugs. The Harvard researchers emphasized this:
"The insurance industry cares about making money, and it doesn't really care how," says the senior author of the study, J. Wesley Boyd, M.D., an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, in Boston. "They will invest in products that contribute to significant morbidity and mortality if doing so is going to make money."

They don't actually come out and say your insurance company is trying to make you sick but then again Charlie Sheen was just spotted with a shaved head - the new universal symbol of crazy a la Brittney. Some things just don't need to be explicitly said.

The insurance companies, naturally, disagree. Their first point - that their stock portfolios are made up of many diverse stocks of which fast food is only a very teeny tiny percentage - is a good one. Heck, I don't even know what all stocks are in my portfolio and I'm only working with a few thousand bucks. For all I know I could own stock in Al Qaeda Airlines. But all this talk of index funds, subsidiaries and parent companies is boring. Frankly I'm more interested in their second point which is that it does not serve their long-term financial purposes to go killing off their customer base.

"Health insurance companies get profits if they invest in tobacco and fast food, [but] these are some of the top drivers of mortality in the country," says Sara N. Bleich, Ph.D., an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore, Maryland and who researches obesity policy but was not involved in the current study. "They are essentially killing off their consumer base, so it's not a sustainable model in the long-term. Long-term goals should be consistent with health, because that ensures a large population from which to draw consumers."

I love that we are having a national discussion about whether or not sickening one's customers is a "sustainable business model."

The study authors call for insurance companies to jettison the fast food stocks which makes for good news bites, I suppose. Unfortunately this introduces a whole other set of ethical dilemmas. If insurance companies are barred from - or guilted out of - investing in any companies that are possibly detrimental to their clients' health then Wall Street is going to see a mass dumping of stocks for everything from Jim Beam to Willy Wonka to Charlie Sheen's Production Company. While this is an entertaining take on the health care debate, it's not a very meaningful one. Let's put the focus back where it belongs: pearl-clutching over KFC's latest abomination, the double down (that'd be two pieces of fried chicken bracketing two pieces of cheese and two strips of bacon).

What do you think - do insurance companies have a corporate responsibility to only invest in healthful stocks? Would you eat the Double Down (guess what - despite all the hype it has less fat and calories than one piece of Chicago style pizza.)? Also, can anyone tell me what fast food icon the 3rd one from the left in the above picture is supposed to be?? Seriously, I have no idea and I've been staring at it for 20 minutes now.

New Research: Men Can Eat Carbs and Don't Fear Getting Fat. (Women, not so much.)

File this under It's Not Fair (or, Another Reason It's OK to Steal His Comfy T-Shirts): Men can eat simple carbs like white bread, pasta and rice galore and it doesn't up their heart disease risk. Women, on the other hand, just smell the stuff and their ticker goes off like a firecracker. To pour salt on our razor-nicked legs, men aren't even afraid of getting fat - a woman's worst nightmare, second only to our Pill packs getting replaced with Pez.

Men Get Carte Blanche With Carbs

In the first study, out of the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, a national institute for cancer research in Milan, Italy, researchers found that women who eat foods high on the glycemic index - think crusty French bread, French fries and French silk pie - have twice the incidence of heart disease as their whole-grain chowing sisters. (Side note: I don't think the French have forgiven us yet for the XYZ Affair.) Men, it was found, were able to chow down on the villified white stuff to their heart's content - and their heart would actually be content. They may get fat but their hearts don't suffer.

This idea of eating according to a food's rank on the GI is not new. The glycemic index

"is a ranking of carbohydrates on a scale from 0 to 100 according to the extent to which they raise blood sugar levels after eating. Foods with a high GI are those which are rapidly digested and absorbed and result in marked fluctuations in blood sugar levels. Low-GI foods, by virtue of their slow digestion and absorption, produce gradual rises in blood sugar and insulin levels, and have proven benefits for health. [...]

Recent studies from Harvard School of Public Health indicate that the risks of diseases such as type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease are strongly related to the GI of the overall diet. In 1999, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) recommended that people in industrialised countries base their diets on low-GI foods in order to prevent the most common diseases of affluence, such as coronary heart disease, diabetes and obesity."

But targeting the recommendations to women is a new development. Fortunately, eating low-GI doesn't take any more diligence than does a normal healthy diet (which is to say it takes a lot of diligence but at least it's stuff you already know you should be doing): replace white grains with whole ones, avoid sugary drinks and candy, get enough good fats and protein in your diet and so forth. But then you always knew, deep down, that crunchy-yet-still-styrofoamy rice cakes weren't really health food, didn't you?

Men Aren't Afraid of Getting Fat

Anyone who has ever spent time people watching with a straight man at the mall can skip the details of this next study and jump right to the conclusion: Men aren't afraid of getting fat. Some men may fear gaining weight due to societal or health pressures but this fear isn't hardwired into their brains like it is for women. Of course. Researchers from Brigham Young University found that the brains of all women, even those with no previous history of eating disorders and self-reported that they weren't concerned with their body image (wherever did they find these rare, mythical creatures?), lit up like a Christmas tree in the area that conveys fear when shown pictures of obese strangers (and where did they find people willing to pose for these pictures?).

The point of the research was to use brain imaging technology to help in the treatment of eating disorders. Unfortunately this plan was short-circuited when even the control group of "healthy" women showed brain patterns of body anxiety similar to those of the eating disordered women. Men showed no such predilection to feeling badly about their own bodies when shown pictures of overweight strangers.

The lead neuroscientist Dr. Mark Allen concludes,

"Although the [healthy] women's brain activity doesn't look like full-blown eating disorders, they are much closer to it than men are. Many women learn that bodily appearance and thinness constitute what is important about them, and their brain responding reflects that," he said. "I think it is an unfortunate and false idea to learn about oneself and does put one at greater risk for eating and mood disorders."

The findings are more sad than surprising but I found it interesting that our thin-is-everything culture is so powerful that it actually alters our brain wiring. Bring that little tidbit up the next time someone says that photoshopped ads are harmless.

Now that I've got you contemplating your thighs and glaring at your man eating pizza, check out Marc Ambinder's nuanced look in The Atlantic about the obesity crisis. It's a must read for anyone interested in the national conversation on weight and what it means.

What do you think about the GI diet? How do you feel when you see an obese stranger? Do you immediately feel fear and shame, like the women in the research? Would you admit it if you did?? What differences have you noticed between you & your man when it comes to food and body image?

Michelle Obama Ruins Easter

You've got to hand it to Michelle Obama - by proclaiming her goal to "end childhood obesity in one generation" as her platform as First Lady she certainly isn't taking the safe route. I'm not mocking previous First Ladies but saying kids need to read books is pretty tame compared to telling people their kids are fat and are going to die young. And this last weekend she showed that she meant what she said when she revamped the traditional White House Easter celebration. Seeing as I didn't even know the White House celebrated Easter much less has an annual "egg roll", I'm not sure what the traditional festivities entailed although I'm assuming there was candy aplenty.

Not this year! All Peeps, Cadbury Eggs and other confections were chucked in favor of goody bags filled with... "pre-screened fruit." (And no I have no idea what exactly "pre-screened" means in this context either.) In addition, Olympic athletes were staked out at "exercise stations" arranged in a circuit. The (non)icing on the (nonexistent) cake was the hand sanitizing stations. This story gave me a good belly laugh. Michelle Obama healthified Easter!

That is SO something I would do. Man, I love her.

And it sounds like she had equally disastrous results as I usually do, judging from all the media commentary. The same media, I might add, that moan piteously about the epidemic of childhood obesity in this country.

To read the rest of the story and see how Good Housekeeping photoshopped all the sass out of our darling First Lady (and to see how I worked Jessica Simpson into the same article!), check out my post today over on the Huffington Post.

What do you think about Ms. Obama's healthy Easter initiative? Did she go too far to make her point or does Shaun White trump Jelly Bellies? Do you make any healthy concessions at your house when it comes to holidays or is it a beloved day of debauchery?

Strangers Will Tell You You're Fat But Your Friends Won't

A waitress friend of mine recently snapped a pic of an overweight patron's meal. Why? So she could text it to several of her friends. Sure her customer's meal was appalling - One of every appetizer? Yes, please - but even more so was the realization that now, more than ever, eating is a spectator sport. People feel they not only have a right to see what other people are eating but also to pass judgment on it.

I blame the media for this. Or at least for beginning the trend with shows like the Biggest Loser that have cameras recording participants' every bite and advertising that relies on monitoring a person's food intake to sell their product a la Jared the Subway Guy. Speaking of The Biggest Loser and Jared, have you seen what's happened to them lately? Many of the finalists and winners of the former and Jared of the latter have been in the news lately for doing what most people having lost weight on a diet do: they regained it. Ryan Benson, Kai Hibbard (this link is one of the most heart breaking weight loss/gain stories I've ever read - man I just want to meet her and hug her and then throw her scale off the nearest building) and, most famously, Erik Chopin have all regained most, if not all, of the weight they lost on the world's most famous diet show. Jared The Subway Guy has also recently regained some his famously lost weight. We won't even talk about the media hoopla surrounding Marie Osmond, Kirstie Alley, and the grand dame of weight loss struggles, Oprah.

I know all this because every weight blip is broadcast to an eager audience, one I am apparently a part of despite the fact that I have never seen even one episode of The Biggest Loser (culturally irrelevant, that's me!) and the last time I ate in a Subway was Homecoming dance my junior year of high school when I got food poisoning from old ham and spent the rest of the night upchucking in the E.R. Recently pics were snapped of Jared TSG looking a bit meatier and immediately the Examiner exclaimed, "We're sure Jared will lose the extra weight in no time. After all, his career as a Subway spokesperson depends on it." highlighting the fact that we have entered the era where losing weight is an official career choice. And a lucrative one.

So I suppose it isn't surprising that all this has filtered down to the common folk. The weird twist, however, is that while we feel (too?) comfortable commenting on a stranger's weight whether it be on TV or texting their menu choices to friends, many of us don't dare broach the subject with our friends. Perhaps we are afraid of offending people or losing a friendship but my personal theory is that people are already keenly aware of what they weigh and whether or not that is healthy for them and therefore do not need me to tell them about it.

And yet.

The other day I came home from the gym and noticed during my post-shower grooming ritual that mostly involves random tweezing and lotioning my brillo-bad kneecaps (they have actually ran my nylons - back in the days when I wore nylons. Which I don't now, but I digress.) a realllly long, dark hair on my jawline. It was so bad I should have been getting better radio reception everywhere I went. It was clearly visible and so embarrassing. My first thought was: why didn't the Gym Buddies tell me I was rocking a chin-stache??

My chin-stache gave me an A-Ha moment (paging Oprah!): I wish my weight weren't an issue at all - that nobody would notice it one way or the other - but since that is not the case (not for me, not for anyone) I would rather my friends talk to me about it than a stranger.

Which would you prefer - strangers commenting on your weight or a good friend? (Sadly, "nobody" is not an option.) Do you feel comfortable commenting on a strangers weight? Would you talk to a friend about hers or his? Is anyone else's worst nightmare having a waitress text pics of your cheat meal to all her friends???

Why Nobody* Should Be Kicked Off An Airplane

photo credit

By now I'm sure you have heard all about actor/director Kevin Smith AKA "Silent Bob" getting kicked off a Southwest flight for being fat. There has been some back and forth between Smith and Southwest about the actual reason he got kicked off the flight. Southwest says it was because he booked two seats on a later flight but instead chose to fly standby on an earlier flight with only one seat available. Smith says it is all about his girth, that Southwest told him he was a "safety hazard" to which he responded, "What, was I going to roll over on a fellow passenger?" Southwest points out they gave him a $100 voucher for the inconvenience. Smith got the last word in, however, tweeting hilariously "the side of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised." Adding awesomely, "You messed with the wrong sedentary processed-food eater!" The lesson here folks is that funny always wins. Always.

This whole debacle, besides providing a dose of hilarity that I sorely needed today, has reopened the debate about overweight passengers on airplanes. I will admit to some ambivalence on this issue. I once spent an entire 3 hours flight wedged next to a girl who had just undergone bariatric surgery and was flying home to her parents. She was thirteen. So, yeah, I had to spend 3 hours sitting on my neighbor's lap. But at least I wasn't a thirteen-year-old who had just had bariatric surgery alone. My discomfort was nothing compared to hers. I decided that day to always err on the side of kindness.

And that was even before I became the most hated person on the airplane.

You know what's worse than an overweight person taking up two chairs? Me, walking down the gateway with all of my young children. I've seen people throw themselves out of those tiny airplane windows rather than sit next to me and my brood. One of the most humiliating episodes of my life occurred on a 4-hr flight after a 6-hr layover. I had two teeeny tiny boys and was 8 months pregnant with number 3. Unfortunately the younger one - for reasons still unknown to me as he was pre-verbal - decided to shriek for the duration. I was already near tears myself from his relentless crying when the man sitting in front of me turned around and yelled, "For God's sake, will you feed it already or something?" I burst into tears and yelled back, "Oh you're supposed to feed these things? Why didn't anyone tell me before??" His retort? "They should have never let you on this plane." (Indeed, in 2008 a woman and her autistic toddler son were kicked off a flight because the boy was "too chatty.")

It might have got ugly had the flight attendant not intervened. She escorted me and the crying son to the back of the plane where she got out milk and cookies. Which she then fed to me while she rocked my crying baby. Another mother then came back and offered to take turns holding him, explaining that she had 4 kids herself (now grown) and asked to switch the man seats so she could sit by us. She played cheerio bingo with my older son for the rest of the flight.

For me it's not so much an issue of fat acceptance but rather people acceptance. Kids are people. Overweight people are people. The handicapped are people. The guy who ate three chili cheese dogs and then filled the plane with his toxic gas is still a person. Does it suck being squished into half a seat? Absolutely. Crying babies, barfing, snoring, incessant humming, seat kicking - there are lots of ways that public transportation, which is what flying is, can totally suck. But the perpetrators are still people. And people deserve to be treated with civility.

So does that mean overweight people should have to buy a second seat if they don't fit in one? Perhaps, as it will probably make everyone more comfortable - Kevin Smith seemed okay with this part of it. But should they be shamed into doing it? Or arbitrarily kicked off a flight? Or in any other manner humiliated? No.

I've said it before but whoever you are - no matter your weight, mental capacity or even air-sickness propensity - as long as you keep your hands to yourself, you can sit next to me. That is, if you don't mind my children.

What do you guys think of all this? Anyone else ever been humiliated on an airplane? Should overweight people have to buy an extra seat or should airlines make bigger seats?

*Except for terrorists. They should totally be kicked off airplanes. Preferably while still in flight.

Gain Weight, Lose Your Date

Beautiful people have so many problems. Not only do they have to worry about getting mobbed at parties and being given more free swag than they can carry home in a taxi but now they have to worry that their friends are spying on them on the Internet. No, this is not the usual Big Brother hysteria over being outed for one's political views, cross-dressing fetish or secret collection of Marie Osmond porcelain dolls. It turns out that if you are beautiful you have a lot more to be worried about than your drunk-face pictures going viral on Facebook. Like, say, your friends tattling on you for gaining weight.


Beautifulpeople.com, the dating site notorious for requiring people to pass a hotness panel before joining (death panels are so passe!), has recently made news again for kicking off over 5,000 members after other members ratted them out for getting fat. The newly unbeautiful were pushed off their sanctimonious pedestals after posting pictures of themselves enjoying holiday goodies and having the audacity to not barf them up immediately afterward. And as everyone knows, fat = ugly.

Site founder Robert Hintze explains the move saying, "As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld. Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded." While Hintze does not explain how calling customers "fatties" is good for potential business, he does say that if the ex-members whip themselves back into acceptable condition they can reapply and, if they pass the hotness panel, rejoin.

Why would people want to rejoin a group that found them so abhorrent they couldn't even tolerate looking at their pictures? Because, of course, it is an exclusive club and people like being special. It's easy to pick apart BeautifulPeople.com - after all their homepage is littered with superficial gems like "Do you want to guarantee your dates will always be beautiful? No more filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites!" - but they are merely continuing a long-held human tradition: the middle school clique. Even the fossil record shows evidence of prehistoric pelt-wedgies.

BeautifulPeople.com certainly isn't the first social group to self select based entirely on one characteristic. While an IQ exam is slightly less subjective than a hotness rating, Mensa is equally exclusive in their membership. So I vote that rather than vilify the pretty people for wanting to keep their ranks pure, we make our own dating site. We may not be cool but we're a lot closer to cold fusion! Imagine the Mensa dating site: "Tired of meeting stupid people? Bored with dinner conversation that revolves solely around the unironic discussion of reality TV? No more sifting through people that don't get why prehistoric pelt wedgies are funny!"

The truth is that people have long allowed beauty to blind them to other more important issues, like aspirations of global domination. Just ask Mark Antony. (No, not Mark Anthony although J.Lo. may very well being trying to take over the world -one perfume at a time!) I actually feel for the dethroned beauties. If you have based your whole self image around one thing, especially when that thing is as ephemeral as "beauty", then it must be quite the blow to informed that you are one of the hoi polloi after all. I'd be interested to know what happens to the 5,000 ousted uglies. Will they move on to other things, eventually realizing their immense good luck in escaping such inanity? Or will they spend inordinate amounts of time and money trying to reclaim what they lost? And, most importantly, will anyone realize that weight is not the defining characteristic of beauty?

Paris Hilton, always available for comment, spoke for all the beleaguered hawt people chiding, "Like I've always said - if you're not a hottie then you're a nottie!"*

*Paris Hilton did not actually say this. Despite my maiden name being Hilton, I hail from the side of the clan with the "panties on" gene and am therefore ostracized at all family functions. Still, I bet she was thinking it!

Anyone else kinda feel sorry for the not-hotties? Or did you crack a little smile and envision slapping a sticker on their rear that says "spanked by karma"??

When School Lunch Attacks

"Chips and a rice krispie treat!" My first-grader chirped happily.

"That's what you had for lunch?" I asked incredulously as the preschooler started the tantrum process (everything must be equal in this household) and the baby took up a chorus of "Chip! Chip!!!!"

"Oh yeah, and a chocolate milk." (Note to self: the mystery of the two cavities before age 7? Solved.)

Normally, given the societal cacophony regarding that stuff we put into our mouth and also need to live, I try to reserve judgment on what my son has for lunch on the one day a week he's allowed to have hot lunch with his kickball cronies. Especially since the other four days he's stuck with a nutritionally balanced home lunch packed by me, I try to just take a deep breath and go to my happy place whenever he talks about chicken nuggies or tater tots or french toast sticks with vats of fake syrup. I may have mentioned it here a time or two but I have food issues. And I'm trying really hard not to pass those onto my kids.

But a rice krispie treat, chips and chocolate milk?!?!?

"Wasn't there some protein? Or, say, a fruit or vegetable?" I croaked, visions of Wall-E dancing before my eyes.

"Oh yeah," he nodded seriously. "They had that brown crumbly stuff on tortillas. You know that stuff?"

Do I know cafeteria mystery meat? Were there vegetarians in the Donner party? Some questions are better left unasked, son.

High Fructose Highway to Hell
As my mother is fond of reminding me, you can't bubble wrap your children. Not only does it not work for protecting them from life's hard lessons but it also says specifically on the wrap "not for use with children." (Ironic considering I don't know a single child who doesn't adore the stuff.) It's like those cruel plastics manufacturers read my mind and then stole the dream away.

Anyhow, part of letting my children grow up and develop a healthy relationship to food is allowing them to sometimes eat things I deem questionable (i.e. with more dubious ingredients than Edward Scissorhands had paper cuts). I tell myself that it's about modeling good decision making and then giving them opportunities to make choices themselves.

Of course we are also talking about the same kid who just yesterday licked the metal frame of the bus window in -45 (F) degree temps and discovered for himself that The Christmas Story isn't just a light-hearted holiday classic but also the harrowing tale of what happens when you gamble against the laws of chemistry. He's six; he's not exactly known for making brilliant decisions. (And yes, since I know you are wondering, he panicked and yanked his tongue off and his now the proud owner of a skinned tongue. Like I told my high-schoolers: Don't mess with physics. It wins every time.)

So I tooled around his school's website and discovered that the menu actually listed exactly what my little George Washington had said: soft taco, chips and for dessert they had a choice of a rice krispie treat or a banana. And like my son astutely observed, "We always, like, have bananas at home." The other option listed in teeny tiny print was "green salad." I considered calling the lunch ladies' bluff and showing up to see if any elementary child has ever in the history of the school chosen the green salad option but, like I said, negative forty five here. I can't even walk to my mailbox without my nose hairs forming a unique snowflake pattern.

In an attempt to be helpful, the school menu completed the trifecta of nutritional terror by providing the calories, fat grams and sodium content of each meal. I almost fainted. It makes a Happy Meal look downright sensible. Plus, at McDonald's, at least you get a movie tie-in toy. Double the whiny fun!

So what's a formerly eating-disordered mother to do? We've discussed the sensitive topic of childhood obesity here before. Do I take away his lunchtime ticket to coolville? After all, his fate as a geek was pretty much sealed the day he was born to my husband and I. Or is one school meal/nutritional train wreck a week an acceptable risk to take with growing bodies and minds?

At least the chocolate milk has protein in it, right? Oh fudge.

Does Keeping Kids Safe Mean Making Them Fat?

Thanks Gym Buddy Dennis!

Think hard - when was the last time you saw a high dive outside of the Olympics? Our local pool sure doesn't have one. Indeed, the last time I can remember seeing one was in my high school pool when I was on the diving team for about two seconds. (Although I stuck around long after I quit to help all the guys shave their legs before meets. What can I say? Swimmers are hot. Even freakishly hairless boy swimmers.) There's a reason we don't see many high diving boards anymore. Or any diving boards at all. Or merry-go-rounds. Or ten-foot-tall metal slides. Or see-saws. Or many of the playground favorites from our childhoods. It's because they're not safe.

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old-timer who walked to school in paper bag shoes - uphill both ways! - and played hackey sack with a hairball for fun, I have to say: What is happening to children these days?

An uproar in New York about unsafe playgrounds brought out some intense emotions in parents and children alike. And what was the object of their protestation? Tetanus-laden uncovered screws? Uncoated swing chains that pinch little fingers? George Michael policing the restrooms? Nope. They were mad about the rubber surface that was installed to protect children against falls. See, when the weather gets hot, so does the rubber and apparently the kids felt like it was burning their feet.

I do have some sympathy for those New Yorkers. As a parent I completely understand the pain that ensues when children start whining. If mine keep it up long enough I swear my ears actually bleed. As a playground veteran I can vouch for the fact that children find any number of things outdoors whine-worthy. In addition to hot playground surfaces, there's hot playground equipment, hot picnic tables and hot (read: lukewarm) juice boxes. There's also cold swing seats, cold monkey bars and cold (read: lukewarm) bottles. You know what helps with all that? Earplugs. Oh, and shoes.

Are Safe Kids Fat Kids?
In a day where it is postulated that over 85% of the U.S. population will be overweight in 20 years, it seems like a lot of parents aren't getting the message about the importance of exercise. While the above example is a little extreme, many parents end up curtailing physical activities - especially the spontaneous outdoor kind that experts have long advocated as necessary for children's mental and physical health - because of safety concerns.

I have to admit I have done it. I won't let my six-year-old walk two blocks to his friend's house to play because I'm concerned about all the street crossing he'll have to do. I don't let any of my children play outside unattended because we don't have a fenced-in yard. So if I'm busy when they want to play outside, they don't get to go outside. If they want to practice riding their bikes? I drive them (!) to a local park because we have no sidewalks in our neighborhood. In fact, most parents I know make some marked concessions to safety that our parents didn't do when we were kids.

My mother accuses me of trying to wrap my kids in bubble wrap but I am a mother to three boys. And I say this with love but they're crazy. The two-year-old gets his kicks from scaling the bookshelves and then jumping off the top. The four-year-old literally thinks he can fly, as evidenced by his ability to jump down an entire flight of stairs without touching carpet until he lands in a heap at the bottom. We've already had multiple visits to the emergency room involving such innocuous objects as a banister, a bungee cord, and a fluffy red pom-pom. Can you imagine the carnage that would ensue with, say, a pellet gun? Or a roller-derby Barbie??

What Is A Parent To Do?
There has to be some middle ground between protesting that the ground is hot on a hot day - last time I checked suing the laws of physics isn't usually productive - and leaving your kids in the care of no one but your dog while you go out on the town (Hello Peter Pan!). Out here in the frozen wasteland, parents compromise by paying exorbitant fees to have their kids play hockey. I however have a problem with a sport that makes me pay out the ying so my kids can knock around the noggin I spent nine months gestating. (I didn't even eat soft cheese because it might be bad for them!) I suppose the biggest problem is what kids are doing instead of playing outside: generally something involving a screen.

Safety is a concern for adults wishing to play in the outdoors as well. Even with reflective gear, cell phones and pepper spray available, many women cite safety as a major reason they don't exercise outside. Not to mention that injuries and accidents can happen to the best of us. Aron Ralston, anyone? (Hint: he's the man who cut off his own arm with a pocket knife to save his life.)

Other than spending a lot of time wishing I lived in a place where I could chuck my kids out the front door after breakfast and tell them not to return until the dinner bell rings, what can I do? How do you guys balance the concerns of safety with the need for exercise? And, more importantly, how do you get your kids to stop with the whining??

This sound familiar? Don't worry, you're not losing your mind - Thursdays are greatest hits day here at GFE. This post originally ran Dec. '08.

Curing the Obesity Epidemic One Beatdown at a Time

In a shocking display of honesty or hubris (both?), the immensely likable Robert Verdi recently said, "A lot of women say 'I should've been alive when Ruben was because I'm Rubenesque.' So times have changed. There are different cultural norms and values and beauty identities, and the fact that thin is in — who cares? It's why I stopped eating. I think food is for fat people and poor people. Rich people don't eat. They get dressed up and go shopping." [Emphasis mine.]

Dear Robert,
I adored you on Trading Spaces. And The Fashion Police was a guilty pleasure of mine for quite a while. I've heard (though not seen as I have a policy of never watching the movie version of a book I have enjoyed) that you were utterly charming on The Devil Wears Prada. If there was ever a man I would want to give me a much-needed makeover, it would be you! You are the rare makeover artist who can transform a person - or their personal space - without making them feel bad about themselves. That's a gift, sir. But even all of that love for your spunky knits and weird headware cannot make me overlook this.

Because this is a serious problem. See: Food is for people people. All people. This attitude that eating represents a loss of self control and is only for the déclassé is abhorrent. With one fell swoop you hurt poor people, fat people, eating disordered people, normal-weight-but-afraid-of-becoming fat people and pretty much everyone else within the sound of your voice that isn't part of the pill-n-party LA culture. As a woman of normal - sometimes even "low" - weight, I must tell you that your statement makes me sick to my stomach. Not from revulsion. From fear. I live in constant terror that were I to gain weight, I would no longer be deserving of love. It's was a primary factor in my eating disorder and remains a great source of income for my therapist. (That's me, stimulating our economy one mental health professional at a time!)

You may think you are just stating the facts ma'am but the problem is that we have created a culture where people would rather die than be fat. Why? Because it has become acceptable, praiseworthy even, to abuse, belittle and humiliate people for their weight. Take the recent case of Marsha Coupe, a British woman who was beaten to a bloody pulp by another woman for the crime of taking up two seats on a train. There are so many horrible things about this incident: First, that the attacker was another woman; Second, that the train was practically empty; Third, that the motive for the attack was clearly and specifically targeted to the victim's weight as evidenced by the attacker screaming, "You big fat pig" before kicking Coupe in the face.

Coupe explains, "The government and the press have created an atmosphere where people think they have a legitimate right to go up to an overweight person and tell them how to live their lives. To them we are all the anonymous pictures of fat people they see in the papers and are the cause of all society's ills, as well as a drain on the NHS. We deserve what we get. We're not people with feelings."

So back to you Robert - your statement that fat people are not deserving of one of the most basic human rights, food, is exactly how we get to thinking that overweight people deserve whatever abuse people see fit to heap upon them because in the end it's "for their own good." If only we all had the self control to just blithely give up food like you! Psychologist Ros Taylor takes on this sadly prevalent attitude saying, "There is true aggression towards overweight people and it comes down to fear and a complete lack of understanding of the issue. People think 'I can control what I put in my mouth so why can't they'. But we're not all the same, we don't all start from the same point."

I'd like to think you were just being glib and silly, in the way that you so often got people to laugh at the silly and unflattering clothing they were hanging on to. Except that your statement and the attack on Marsha Coupe are two sides of the same soul-destroying coin. This time people are getting hurt, really hurt and it's not entertainment anymore. So I say with love: Please shut up.

Sincerely,
Charlotte

What To Eat When You're Sick

Jell-O drink. That's what my mom called the concoction of red Jell-O powder mixed with hot water and served in a mug that she gave us whenever we were sick. Looking back, I'm not sure if it was an actual recipe intended to soothe and heal rather than an attempt to stop the whining of a sick kid while using only what she could find in our depleted pantry. While it won't win any health awards, it was so sugary delicious that no matter how sore our throats were she could still get liquids into us.

I was reminded of Jell-O drink this past week when my kids came down with the flu. Yes, the influenza flu. And yes, it was probably swine flu (a.k.a. H1N1 a.k.a. The Plague of All Nations if you listen to the media) according to the doctor. They put the whole family on Tamiflu in case the baby is born in the next few days and so I, fortunately, didn't get the bug! Still, I got a little panicky. I'll admit it. My eldest had a fever of nearly 104 and his zombie stare was freaking me out. So I did what any good mother does when a child is sick and you feel completely powerless to help - I tried to feed him.

Remember the old adage of "feed a cold, starve a fever"? I never put much stock in that. How are you supposed to recover if you are starving? My poor feverish sons though were completely on board with that. The more they refused food, the more I tried to get them to eat. At last, when I went back to the store for the 4th time in 2 days to get more medicine, in my desperation to get them to ingest something, anything, I bought them all the things I think of as "sick food." Popsicles, root beer, pudding, juice, ice cream, Cheez-its (um, what??) and of course Jell-O all went into my cart. (Side note: I was terrified I was going to see someone I knew and they would see all the crap in my cart and judge me.)

My kids thought the swine flu was the best thing that had ever happened to them. The last time we had soda pop in the house was when everyone had the stomach flu a year ago. You'd think they'd never seen white bread before from the way they devoured an entire loaf in an hour. Long story short, they ate nothing but cold and/or sugary confections for three days straight. My relief that they were taking in calories and the much-vaunted fluids was quickly usurped by the fact that everything they were eating was nutritionally void. The homemade chicken soup I made? Untouched. Yogurt berry smoothie? Left to rot (or become more yogurty because, you know, it's already bacteria laden). Even my whole wheat pumpkin muffins - usually a five star favorite around here - were ignored.

Ah, mother guilt. Despite the fact that everyone healed up quite nicely (and quickly - thanks Tamiflu!), my shame persists. Surely if there is ever a time a body needs healthy food, it is when it is sick! Right? And yet when I get sick generally all I want to eat are plain Cheerios and hot Tang. Seriously, Tang is like crack to me. Especially the sugar free garbage; I love me some hot aspartame.

It got me thinking, what do you all eat when you are sick? Are you all about the brussells sprouts and salmon to bolster your weakened immune system? Or do you have a comfort food too? Also - anyone else ever think that everyone is looking at what you buy at the grocery store and silently judging you??

Parents Told "Your Baby is Too Fat For Health Insurance"

In Colorado, an insurance company recently denied a baby health care coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Setting aside the question of if it is physically possible for an infant to have a pre-existing condition and what implications that holds for uteruses everywhere, you are probably wondering what condition was so horrible that a child so new his skin was still pruney would be denied insurance. You see, 4-month-old Alex Lange is "obese."

Read more about little Alex's health care crusade (and see a pic of the cute little butterball) in my full article over at iVillage!

Look ma! I made the front page!!

Badvertising: Mocking "Fat" Celebrities

Warning: to see the following videos, please click through. And if you don't watch the videos then this post will make zero sense.

Consider: Burger King mocking Tony Romo by way of his "blimpy" ex-girlfriend Jessica Simpson.


Take home questions:
1. Is Burger King, of all companies, allowed to make fun of anyone for being fat seeing as they're half the reason for the obesity crisis in this country?
2. Tony Romo & J. Simp have been broken up for some time now and while I don't watch football I have it on good authority that he still sucks. So does it make any sense to still be blaming her for his problems?
3. How does airing a commercial in primetime that mocks an actress' weight sell football to men? Do men really care?
4. Does anyone really think Jessica Simpson is fat?

Consider: Nicole Eggert mocking herself on Funny or Die for "getting fat" by spoofing her Baywatch days.

Nicole Eggert is BACK IN BAYWATCH! from Nicole Eggert

Take home questions:
1. Does it hurt less if you beat your critics to the punchline and call yourself out for being "fat"?
2. Why would she do this? Has Nicole Eggert done anything since Baywatch? Is she pimping some new b-level movie or something? Why??
3. Are there any women who really found this funny? Are there any men?
4. Is she really fat or is she just a victim of cruel camera angles and a too-tight bikini?

Bonus question: Have you ever pretended to be dying to get someone to give you mouth-to-mouth? Have you ever received mouth-to-mouth when you didn't need it? Because I have (lifeguard class, junior year of high school) and let me tell you, it is nothing like kissing.

Go to students! I expect your homework on my desk (i.e. inbox) by morning!

Halloween Candy: To Give or Not to Give?

I am the official Halloween Grinch. Mostly it stems from a hatred of all things scary and icky. My theory is that between Iran's second nuclear facility and OJ Simpson still roaming free there is plenty frightening stuff in the real world stuff. Roman Polanski apologists, anyone? (Off topic but you really have to click thru that link and watch the video. Hilarious!) My point: I don't need a horror flick to make me pee my pants; I can do that just fine on my own. Although a trampoline helps.

Haunted houses, being the worst combination of scary and icky, are the bane of my existence. I haven't been in one since I was twelve and was chased by a guy in a Forever 21 S&M bondage suit with a glow-in-the-dark whip. Being still in my pre-Rave days, I kicked him in his magic 8 ball(s), ran out and have never been back since. One of the most ill-advised dates I ever went on involved me hiding under a blanket during the entire hour and a half it took whats-their-names (oops, spoiler alert!) to kill everyone in that stupid house in Scream. (A garage door? Seriously?? Where did these people get that door from because mine would go off its tracks if a mouse jumped on it much less an idiotic cheerleader.) I cried. Needless to say that guy never asked me out again.

Gummy eyeballs, spaghetti brains, slutty costumes, zombies, fright nights, faux front-yard cemeteries and yes, even sparkly vampires: I hate it all. Except for one thing. Twee little children dressed up in costumes going door to door and holding out plastic pumpkins with their dimpled fists. I adore trick-or-treaters. I only have two rules: they can't be old enough to grow real stubble for their hobo costume and also, they have to have a costume. As long as they meet those two criteria, I will pour sugared confections into their buckets all night long whilst cooing momisms like "Aren't you just the prettiest little princess EVER?!?"



Lately however I've been having a crisis of conscience. With the obesity crisis growing (or at least the media coverage of it) and a child culture that is already inundated with treat-giving occasions, is it in the little Tinkerbells' and Pirates' best interests to hand out Pixi Stix, which if you really think about it are just straight sugar packed in a tube so you don't even have to bother chewing it?

If you've been in a grocery store lately you will note that alongside the 5,000 different bags of candy lining the shelves there are a few non-food options. Like really expensive stuffed animals, marginally expensive Play-Doh tubs and cheap pencil erasers. But what kid wants a pencil eraser at Halloween? At least when dentists give out toothbrushes its something that has a real use. Those "erasers" don't even erase! They just crumble! So every year I've just gone with the candy and tried not to wince when my own children came home with bags so full they break and then collapse on their loot an hour later in a candy coma.


This year my friend Beth - uber-resourceful mother of 5 - pointed out another option to me: the Oriental Trading catalog. This paean to cheap plastic wonders that many already know and love for their 6$ coconut bras has a wide selection of candy alternatives that make even my frugal heart sing. My favorites were the glow-in-the-dark and glittery tattoos but they also have neon bouncy balls, rubber snakes and lizards and those nifty finger traps that we always called Chinese handcuffs when I was growing up because we were un-PC like that.

I asked my kids if it was a lame idea and they loved it - so long as I got at least a few gummy eyeballs. So what's your opinion on dealing sugar crack to kids for a night? Am I making too big a deal out of "just one night so let them be kids already durnnit"? What are you planning on giving out this year?