The Truth About Soda

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“I don't know too many parents that want to feed their kids soda, but high-fructose corn syrup is cheap. The price of soda in 20 years has gone down 40 percent while the price of whole foods, fruits and vegetables, has gone up 40 percent & obesity goes up right along that curve.” 

                            ~ Tom Colicchio

The soda debate rages on, and it’s not about whether or not to personally drink it or not, but whether it should be a banned substance, period. And then there is the pathetic joke that is calls itself diet soda, possibly worse than the high-fructose corn syrup saturated, diabetes causing ‘real’ soda version. You may not be able to find more harmful chemicals in a Federal research lab than you can in a diet soda, with the aspartame sweetener at the top of the list. At least regular soda doesn’t hide behind the ‘diet’ mask.

Look, every once in a while I drink half a can of Coke, just for the nostalgia of it, but long ago I kicked my Pepsi/Coke habit. And I certainly did have one, just as way too many of us now do. I finally realized, and I hope this might help someone out there, that I was as much addicted to the bubbles, or carbonation, as anything else. I found that substituting any non-carbonated beverage left me feeling well, pun-intended, flat. I discovered that mixing Pomegranate juice (1/3) and fizzy water (2/3) gave me the fix I needed, in a much healthier bubbly cocktail than soda could provide. And yes, that combination is a more expensive alternative for sure, as most healthy options unfortunately turn out to be.

Studies, Studies, Studies

I browsed through more studies than you’d care to know about, and what I found out is that based on WHO sponsored the study, and perhaps what the MONEY people wanted to find out, the results were conflicting at best. So let’s consider a few undeniable facts. The American Medical Association suggests no more than 45 grams of sugar per day for males, 30 grams for females. One 12 oz. can of Pepsi contains 41 grams of sugar. You do the math. In addition, we all know the best sources of our daily sugar quota should be natural if possible, as in from fruits.

We also know, unquestionably, that sugar cravings increase exponentially as we ramp up consumption. For example, if you start out with a high sugar (or high carbohydrate, as processed carbs turn to glucose in the bloodstream similarly as quickly as pure sugar) breakfast, inevitably your glucose level spikes, and then crashes soon after, accelerating cravings for more (sugar or carbs) in order to alleviate the crash feeling. When this spike/crash, spike/crash scenario is repeated day-in and day-out, our insulin levels, as well as our weight and cravings, rage out of control. Obesity and diabetes, along with many other conditions inherent in overweight individuals such as hypertension, heart disease and strokes, all can be a side effect of abusing this sugared up beverage.

The toll on our kids may be even worse, as many are poisoned both by the sugar and the subsequent habits/cravings formed before they have the power to think for themselves. Pediatricians who treat overweight children claim that many of their child patients take in 1,000 to 2,000 calories a day from soft drinks alone. A New York University professor of nutrition and food studies, Marion Nestle, PhD, says, “Some children drink sodas all day long. They are getting most if not all of the calories they need in a day from soft drinks, so it’s no wonder they are fat.” If not bad enough, these calories come with absolutely no nutritional value, the very definition of ‘empty’ calories.

Look Better, Feel Better, Live Better

Regardless of whether soda ends up like the cigarette as a legal but socially unacceptable habit, or if it continues to be available as an acceptable addiction to those who choose it, for now, like it is with all things, personal responsibility will dictate what place soda plays in your and your families lives. Maybe more importantly than what place soda plays in your life, please think about the ramifications for your kids. Bad habits ingrained during the formative years are a bear to break later in life.

“According to the USDA, 16% of calories in the typical American’s diet come from refined sugars and half of those calories come from beverages with added sugar. Sodas used to be an occasional treat, but now they are part of the culture.”

                         ~ Michael Jacobson, PhD

 

PS: Knowledge is power, but only when action is taken along with it!

Dear Santa

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             “I don't need a holiday or a feast to feel grateful for my children, the sun, the moon, the roof over my head, music, and laughter, but I like to take this time to take the path of thanks less traveled.”

                                     ~ Paula Poundstone

Dear Santa-

The Holiday Season is for families, togetherness and harmony, and most of all for love. It goes beyond religions and political agendas, shopping sprees and guilt spending, and is more than Black Friday and the subsequent sales and promotions dreamed up by our nifty marketing gurus to skew the Holiday spirit towards the almighty dollar.

I wish for a world where we stop taking everything so personally, and when we do, react in ways that further propagate the incorrect perception that perhaps led to the original infraction in the first place (see Ferguson, Missouri). It is our inalienable right to protest a perceived wrong, but I hope for a cloud of common sense to block the ignorance leading to the sometimes violent and hateful methods employed therein. I pray for a day where we come to understand that two wrongs never equal a right.

I love the Holiday season and I know that you are not involved in the Thanksgiving thing, but can we please not start pounding the Christmas/ Hanukkah/Kwanzaa marketing, music, decorations and advertisements until Thanksgiving has had its day. Somehow a day based on humble thanks for the blessings that we have gets severely bastardized when the plotting for materialistic excess creeps in and the chatter of Black Friday permeates Thanksgiving conversations. Santa, can we fix that, pretty please?

While I tingle with Holiday delight most of the season as I have a family, however imperfect we all are, to celebrate with, I often feel somewhat hopeless for those who are homeless, alone, estranged or orphaned. It seems that the Holidays for these folks may magnify the less than ideal circumstances they find themselves surrounded by. This quote may help express my feelings:  
                   

“Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely, the frayed, and the rejected.        

Jimmy Cannon

I know this is not your department, but is there a way that we can make it so that no one is left behind? Santa, I’m counting on your magic here.

And can we get the real meaning of the Holiday Season back? Gifts are great, and certainly a way of expressing love, gratitude, loyalty etc. towards those special to us. And the Holidays are about family, and families represent a love that binds. People that love each other give gifts as an expression of their feelings. While gifts are not necessary to express our heartfelt emotions, they are generally appreciated and make both the giver and recipient feel really good. I do get that and participate willingly.

It just seems to me that this push towards explosive shopping, fueled by retailers, but at the same time supported by the masses, perhaps has started to blur the lines of the meaning of gift giving. For me, materialistic excess is near the top of my list of what is wrong with our world. I certainly don’t want to put you out of business, Santa, but can we dial it down a notch? It’s a little over the top. Perhaps we could direct some of our focus towards spending quality time with our friends and relatives, enjoying food, drink and conversation with them. What a novel concept.

Can we please have peace over war, love over hate and acceptance over exclusion? May we encourage diversity with our consideration and tolerance, religious and ethnic inclusion infused with caring and compassion, and even a humble respect for opposing parties and their sometime polar opposite political ideals? Perhaps we all need to occasionally agree to disagree. It’s OK. If we remain needing to always be RIGHT, we can never nurture meaningful relationships, because they are in fact mutually exclusive. Santa, these are some of the Holiday gifts I would truly appreciate.

Look Better, Feel Better, Live Better

Of course, Santa, as referenced here is simply an ideal, and those who celebrate the Holidays in other cultural ways, please understand that this is simply speaking, and quite tongue in cheek, to the majority. Insert any name you want that makes it work for you; or practice the same religious and cultural tolerances we’re asking for as our Holiday gift this year. We’re all the same in as many ways as we are different!

“Our many different cultures notwithstanding, there's something about the Holidays that makes the planet communal. Even nations that do not celebrate Christmas can't help but be caught up in the collective spirit of their neighbors, as twinkling lights dot the landscape and carols fill the air. It's an inspiring time of the year.”

                                                                                   ~ Marlo Thomas

 

PS: Breathe in the inspiration, exhale peace and joy....J Happy Holidays!

A Tale of Two Bodies

              “I like looking nice, but I always put comfort over fashion. I don't find thin girls attractive; be happy and healthy. I've never had a problem with the way I look. I'd rather have lunch with my friends than go to a gym.                                                    ~ Adele

We’re not 100% with Adele here, as the gym is certainly important. But we are with her in that balance, and being happy and healthy is way more important than striving to be thin! And comfort over fashion is way cool, too. If more people had a mind of their own on this topic, the skinny bitch fashion industry would have less and less of a negative influence on our fragile self images.

A Tale of Two Fashion Marketing Campaigns

Let’s get real with expectations for a moment. Do we endorse the wafer thin models that may represent less than 1% of our countries demographic, despite age, and unfortunately lead us to unneeded anxiety and self doubt in our own body images? Hell no. But we also don’t want to give out kitchen passes for being overweight and enable the excuse factory for obesity, either. For us, as stated before, health is more important than appearance, and athletically fit, strong and healthy as a ‘look’ is the new thin (as in the desirable new look) and the new sexy.

First, let’s tell the status quo ad story from a leading offender in the clueless, arrogant fashion industry, Victoria’s Secret. You’ve all seen the TV ads, so here’s the skinny (pun intended). Their latest Ad Campaign,

The Perfect “Body”, from a company not especially known for embracing diverse body types, seems to have hit a nerve this time. 

With the lingerie brand’s #IAmPerfect movement, accusations abound of body shaming and promotion of an unrealistic standard of beauty. It appears women have grown accustomed to the half-naked freaks of nature parading around on runways, TV shows and in print campaigns, but the words, The Perfect ”Body”, along with the waif images, was apparently too much this time.

U.K. residents Frances Black, Gabriella Kountourides, and Laura Ferris launched a change.org petition demanding that Victoria’s Secret change the wording on their campaign so it doesn’t glorify unrealistic beauty standards. The three co-filers also want a promise from the company to ‘pledge to not use such harmful marketing in the future.’    
            
Good luck with that petition, ladies. Maybe better to boycott Victoria’s Secret merchandise and hit them where they live, ie: in their pocketbooks? Just a thought...And just in time to restore some modicum of faith in the fashion industry, we have the story of 27 year old Myla Dalbesio, a plus size (read, sadly, as the size of a normal woman, only because anything over a size 8 is considered by, you guessed it, the fashion industry as PLUS sized) model featured by Calvin Klein in the brand’s latest "Perfectly Fit" underwear campaign.  

                                      

                                                                                                                                            

So what’s the significance here? To Myla, who spent years abusing Adderall, flirting with bulimia and crash dieting in attempting to whittle herself to a conforming ‘model’ size, it represents progress. And Calvin Klein didn’t use her inclusion as some publicity stunt for ‘inclusion’, as other fashion iconic companies have done in the past, simply for PR reasons. She was treated exactly as the other models were and expected only to produce some outstanding photos, a universal goal of all models anyway.


“It’s not like [Calvin Klein] released this campaign and were like ‘Whoa, look, there’s this plus size girl in our campaign.’ They released me in this campaign with everyone else; there’s no distinction. It’s not a separate section for plus size girls,” Dalbesio was quoted as saying. Some fashion companies, as evidenced here by Calvin Klein’s actions, do get us after all!

Look Better, Feel Better, Live Better

One of my favorite sayings is, “money votes”. Be careful, therefore, where you decide to spend and invest your hard earned cash. Refraining from doing business with those companies that promote ideals counter to ours gives us at least a small voice at a time when we may feel we have no say. Most companies that seem not to have a consumer conscience are also likely fully invested in the ‘corporate profit at all costs game’. Hit them, and hit them hard, where it hurts most!

         “I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls.”

                                                                      ― J.K. Rowling

PS: And this just in... A new, real looking Barbie doll now comes in a normally proportioned body size! Among other add-ons, she even has customizable cellulite stickers if your kids want to make Lammily even more real. We might suggest instead that you incorporate UP Beauty Anti-Cellulite Cream to get rid of or reduce cellulite, so our kids don’t need to use those stickers for their reality! 

10 Hours Walking in New York City

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          "Catcalls make us feel unsafe. Catcalls remind us that, at any moment, even when we feel safe, we could be assaulted. Even if we were all superwomen, capable of dodging all harm, catcalls tell us that we’re only objects, waiting to be objectified by the next brazen creep who walks by."                                                           — Valerie Burn

WoW, I guess that’s one way to look at it. I’ve always believed that the way we interpret our world boils down to our answer to this, as posed by Albert Einstein: “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” Do we view the world as threatening and dangerous? Or do we see it as a place of peace and safety? Obviously, the world is neither of these all of the time, but since perception directly influences reality, our core outlook has a large bearing on our view points. Put me in the category of the above quote being extremely inflammatory and blown out of proportion, based on fear and hostility, not on love. Valerie seems to live in a hostile universe.

That is not to say that I condone public sexual harassment of women, or anyone for that matter, in any form. But the question remains as to what one interprets as a ‘catcall’, with the definition being as important as the issue. Is, “Hey darlin’, lookin’ fine today” a catcall? Does it depend on whom it comes from, their proximity, or what the voice inflection is? How does one, if it’s even possible, judge the intent? Does it depend on our mood when we encounter it? Do various ethnic and socioeconomic circumstances, or a perceived inequity between the ‘victim’ and the ‘catcallers’ social status, factor into the equation? Only one thing is certain – it’s complicated and the answers are NOT cut and dried.

By now you probably have heard some of the ruckus caused by the viral video (link attached in the PS) of the attractive white lady wandering the streets of NYC, getting verbally acknowledged in varying degrees by men, most of which were African American or Latino and visibly blue collar at best. The first item of note here was a lack of male white collar Caucasian representation on the video footage, for whatever the reason. The second irony, if you will, is that the producers of the video were from an organization called ‘Hollaback’ and they presented approximately 2 edited minutes out of a 10 hour shoot. Hollaback, by the way, is an organization whose stated goal is to end offensive catcalling, so let’s consider their agenda before we wig out on the video content.

It has been said that in sports (and many other subjects, I’m sure), you can find and use statistics to support whatever theory or picture you want to present. I would argue that if you have 10 hours of video footage edited down to 2 minutes, you just might be able to tell whatever story you wanted to in support of your goals, stated or otherwise. Isn’t being mentally manipulated by an agenda ironically close to catcalling as an infringement on our personal boundaries?

It must be TRUE, I saw it on YouTube

Again, let’s be clear on something. Harassing or verbally abusing another human, male or female, for any reason is wrong and unacceptable. What we’re trying to get across here, though, is that we all need to keep our thinking caps on as we filter through the multitudes of images that come at us daily. We’ve all seen the punch line to the joke, “I saw (or read) it online, it’s gotta’ be true”. There are people and organizations out there seeking to manipulate us, to stoke our fires so to speak, in getting us to side with their agendas. If you consciously support a cause, then that’s a win. Anything else is crap.               

Look Better, Feel Better, Live Better

As you know, we’re big proponents of personal responsibility and living with intent. Please don’t say anything to anyone that you wouldn’t want to hear yourself. Make your intent to create a friendly world filled with love and positivity. Filter out the daily nonsense you encounter and surround yourself with people, things and causes that make you feel good. And be careful, for what goes in, must come out!

“Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone's face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.”
                                                                                ~ Henri Nouwen

PS: Here’s the link to the video:                                                     

After viewing it, what is your impression?