Nausea: American Food

This is so funny! Stephen Colbert going off about eating habits of Americans.

Thought for Food

Yup, Naughty it is, unfortunately.

It's not KFC, it's Friendly's--a family style restaurant chain that started off as an ice cream shop and branched out into other things. Will all the talk of restaurant food being too high in fat, sodium, and sugar, I can't imagine what they were thinking.

Colbert was right: "It's like your lunch--and two OTHER people's lunches--are having a three-way in your mouth!"

The double version:



Bring me a barf bucket!

I think Naughty is talking about KFC's Double Down. I think.

Major League Eating events are disguisting!!! I watched Nathan's on the 4th and thought I was going to die!! Gross.

One of the things I did during this past school year was to be a lunch monitor at the elementary school here and I gotta say that I was surprised and heartened at how much fruit and veggies the little guys ate. The maindishes provided to the kids were boardering on sinful, but atleast it had fruit and veggies on the side.

Anybody remember that nimrod who ate nothing but McDonald's Supersized Meals every day for a month to make a film about how bad junk food was for you? And the upshot of the documentary was that his doctor told him to quit before the end of the month or he'd be doing irreversible damage to his internal organs.

And people used that documentary to support their position that McDonald's food was bad for you.

What's bad for you isn't the food they serve, it's continuing to eat *after* your body tells you you're full. Which he did, three times a day, for almost a month, and quite possibly could've died if he hadn't stopped.

The excess food (i.e., that eaten after your appetite is gone) stretches-out yor stomach, which is a bad thing to happen for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it'll take more food thereafter to get that "full" feeling, has calories that the body *usually* stores in the liver, and the excess food makes the liver stretch to accommodate the excess sugar. What it can't cram into the liver ends up in your bloodstream, leading to type-II diabetes (and the dangers associated with ultra-high-blood-sugar, like peripheral neuropathy and kidney damage).

Making matters worse, diet sodas render the body's "normal" sensing mechanism of sugar content in food unreliable, as the body has only the one way of sensing sugar, and that's the way that the tongue's "sweetness" taste buds work. Your duodenum has the same "sweetness" tastebuds in it, telling the pancreas how much insulin to release into the bloodstream, and at the same time, telling the brain that you've had enough to eat.

Keep drinking diet soda, and the brain (which runs exclusively on glucose and oxygen from the bloodstream) eventually realizes that something's wrong with the sugar-sensing mechanism, and instead relies on the nerves in the upper part of the stomach to tell when it's being stretched by the shear volume of food consumed, and that's when the brain says "full" and tells you to back away from the dinner plate.

But, over-eating *stretches* that part of the stomach, so the "full" backup sensor system fails, also, and you end up with people who are constantly eating *and* constantly hungry, and end up "Wal*Mart fat", a local term describing people approaching perfect spheres, dressed in spandex slacks.

So, mothers, if you love your kids, *don't* force them to finish eating everything on their plates, and *don't* encourage them to drink diet sodas (as if they're healthier than sugar-sweetened sodas).

Incidentally, there are several kinds of sugar, and they aren't equally fattening, even when adjusting for equal calories. The sugar in fruit is "fructose", and that is the "sweetest-tasting" sugar, and happens to enter the bloodstream fastest of all sugars, and is also the *most* fattening of all sugars.

Sorry about the bad news, but it's science, and backed up by all the recent research. The manufacturers of soft drinks aren't going to tell you, because it'd be catastrophic to their profits, and would effectively shut down one of the more lucrative chemical industry's products - artificial sweeteners. (And embarrass the FDA in the process, as it's *their* job to make these things public knowledge.)

Super size me.

He set out to tell a story, and he told that story, but left out the key issue that made him sick - he was cramming more food down his gullet than anyone (other than the "Wal*Mart-fat people) *would've* eaten.

I grew up on fast food, my mother worked daily and cooking was an additional chore she chose to avoid. I still eat fast food as my main dietary source, one meal per day, generally only an entre. I also generally eat one "health food" bar per day for extra protein and fiber, and supplement my diet with vitamins (2000 IU of D, 1000mg of C, and a daily dose of multivitamins-for-50+ guys), plus resveratrol. After starting resveratrol, most of my grey hair reverted to brown.

The damage that caused the doctor to tell him to quit *wasn't* from the danger to his heart, he was developing the early symptoms of gout, one of the same diseases that plagued Henry VIIIth, who was notorious for his gluttony. Had the nimrod declared, *correctly*, that his film was about the dangers of "gluttony", then I wouldn't be calling him a nimrod, here.

If you doubt me, read up on gout, and rewatch the movie and listen to what the doctor was telling him about the "uric acid crystals" in his bloodstream and his dangerously-high blood glucose levels, i.e., developing type-II diabetes, and his "portal hypertension", caused by too much sugar ingestion damaging his liver ("fatty-liver disease" causes portal hypertension).

Influencing people through deception, even if the *primary* effect of the deception is considered "beneficial", is evil, as it takes away the person's ability to make his/her own decisions based on the truth, and further, confuses those who believed the lie when they finally hear the real truth.

And it's a small step from there to forcing people to act "moral" through fear of punishment. If the only thing keeping you from committing adultery is fear of being stoned, then *that's* not morality, that's cowardice. (A point I figured I'd post to the Iranian President after this current issue is resolved.)

The problem in those old-fashioned cultures is that they still believe that women don't like sex--in fact, it's a sign of a woman's virtue that she doesn't like sex, but nonetheless opens her legs for her husband so she can give him children. They think that women who like sex are not just morally deficient but sexually deviant in the same way they think gay men are. It's not normal, it's not what Allah ordained. So for a woman to commit adultery goes against everything they believe is "normal" for women, and goes against their culture and religious mores.

"I have a couple of friends who never cook--keep no food in the house. They eat every meal out, and it's usually fast food. They're all overweight, two are morbidly obese"

Do you know if they drink diet soda? It sounds like it fits the syndrome I described.

The worst junk food there is is actually French fries ("chips", to the British). Starches are called "polysaccharides", by biochemists, sugars are called "saccharides". Starches are one way plants store sugars, the sugar molecules are like 3D ">"s, and starches are stacks of sugar molecules, like ">>>>>>>>>>>>>". As fruit ripens, the energy stored as starches are converted to sugars, generally a 50-50 combination of glucose and fructose (the equivalent of sucrose).

The net effect is that people eat fries thinking them as being vegetables, therefore "healthy". They are fairly addictive, but the thing is, the starches eventually break down into pure sugar, so when you eat them, you'll eat more of them than you'd eat cake.

Cake would be better for you, because the sugar hits your bloodstream and tells you when to quit, assuming that appetite control mechanism hasn't already been destroyed by diet sodas.

As for cultures based on ignorance of facts, Natural Selection is one way they become footnotes in history, education is another (except when the most-ignorant are the teachers), and hard-earned experience the third way - when they are shown by Nature itself that their entire belief system doesn't fit reality. If the experienced increase in numbers slowly, somewhere around 70/30 (70 being "old school") civil war breaks out, and a bloodbath ensues. When it happens suddenly, the "old school" generally steps aside or changes positions to maintain their jobs within the government/political structure.

It may be interesting to note that the Romans went through this transformation, from multi-theism to Christianity by assimilation of ancient customs into the new religion, customs we still participate in today, like Christmas occurring at the end of the calendar year. Romans used to celebrate the end of the year with five days of feasting and giving gifts. That was a pagan custom. So was lighting candles to saints (making sacrifices to pagan gods). For a long time, Romans practiced different religions in the same temples, using the same rituals, praying to the same statues for the same things, side by side. There, the change in the Official Religion happened virtually overnight, while the population's beliefs were allowed to change at their own pace.

Very pragmatic, those Romans. Not sure there's a clear answer to today's troubles, but it's something worth thinking about, and if one solution is viable, even if distasteful, it means that less-distasteful solutions may exist.

...or the late '50s. I've learned to eat only when hungry, and then only a reasonable amount, and despite my sedentary lifestyle, I've retained a fairly steady, reasonable weight for my size and body-type. That works out to about one "meal" per day, but never with fries. I do have a sweet tooth, though, and I nibble on candy. I find that my main weight problem occurs when the local grocery store has a half-off sale on my favorite cookies, but I drop the weight when I finish-off the cookies.

My point was (if I remember correctly), that there are worse things than regular old sugar, top of the list being "artificial sweeteners".

My brother once got stung by a Portuguese "Man-O-War" (stinging jellyfish in the Florida Gulf, and the locals immediately doused him with either ammonia or vinegar, I can't remember which, and it immediately stopped the stinging. (Still had to remove all the little stingers, IIRC.)

Hope that helps, but it happened over 40 years ago, so it may not (memory gone or several parallel universes ago, maybe both).

Vinegar or meat-tenderizer! I *knew* there was a weird home remedy for those stings! Thanks, mrst!

"Man-o-wars" (Men-of-war"?) have tendrils that reach out as far as 30 feet from their "bodies". And they often break off, and float along alone, still capable of stinging people.

Lucky you weren't swimming in Australian waters, they have a tiny version of their deadly "Box Jellyfish", called "irukandji", which easily makes it through the nets they put up to keep sharks and box-jellyfish out of swimming beach waters. The tiny versions (about a half-inch, max) are also capable of killing children and older people, but everyone else generally survives, often wishing they hadn't, as the neurotoxin in their stingers leaves the victim in agony for about two weeks, despite the generous provision of morphine.

After seeing a documentary on irukandji, I contacted the scientists identified in the documentary and suggested that they add mild 9-volt currents via tiny wires incorporated into the nets, as that's how they get the jellyfish's stingers to fire in the lab - a 9V shock from a battery. I even provided source contact info for a place that makes specialty wire (mostly for biomedical applications, like the electrode wires that connect pacemakers to the heart), and volunteered my efforts as an electrical engineer to design the electrical hardware necessary to power the nets and ensure they wouldn't harm swimmers that brushed-up against the nets.

For a while there, it looked like we were gaining momentum, the scientist liked the idea, there seemed to be interest from the government in funding new netting, I explained how 9V wasn't going to shock anybody, much less electrocute anyone.

Then, nothing. No further contact, no explanations. They apparently decided that the problem wasn't worth spending the money on the new nets, or maybe they felt the sudden appearance of electrical equipment near the beaches might have a negative impact on tourism.

Ironically, the irukandjis' stingers provide the strongest evidence for "Intelligent Design" that I know of. Their stingers are encapsulated in fragile "glass-like" globes that fracture at the slightest touch. Their stingers are like coil springs wound the most-energetically way possible - Against the natural direction of the coil, pressed tight against the "glass" globe the *wrong* way, such that when the globe breaks, the spring unwinds itself into a hypodermic needle in less than a millisecond, shooting straight into the skin a 1000x deeper than the diameter of the globe. Oh, and the "glass" globe can be shattered via nerve signal, too, so it's like a "Claymore" mine that can be triggered manually or via remote control.

The rest of the globe is filled with one of the most potent neurotoxins known to science. From an engineering perspective, it's *far* more sophisticated than anything even us Satan's Spawn American defense contractors would ever attempt to design. So, while the "Intelligent Design" Bible-thumpers are claiming credit for the wonders of nature, like kittens and puppies and dolphins and eagles, there's something else that they need to explain to us - Why did God design irukandji? To punish Australians for swimming in the ocean?

I've been on the machines, wudy. It's just...so freakin' CROWDED! I don't like crowds.

These were the standard little jellies we have all up and down the east coast: red centers, clear casings, small with not particularly long tentacles. There were none within 10 feet of us when we all started feeling the stinging. Of the ones we'd seen, the biggest was about 4-5 inches in diameter; the smallest was about the diameter of a nickel. I've seen bigger ones washed up at the town dock, but never in the swimming areas.

Oh well. I LOVE my ocean beach, and I'm going to get back in the water there soon. The jellies don't stay all summer.

Do not forget tobacco (if you can find it) for sting. If you use a styrofoam float or a tube, you can at lest exercise your torso and legs in water. Web fingers are good, I think.

ALL flotation devices are forbidden at CT's public beaches, even if you have to pay to get in. It's a pain in the ASS! The logic behind it is that people use flotation devices and get carried out too far or into deep water, and inevitably fall in and need to be rescued. But honestly--it's still a PAIN! You can't even use bathing suits with the flotation devices built in, or water wings for the kiddies, those boards you can hang onto to practice swimming--nothing!

There are places where you can go tubing (riding down a river on a big inner tube), but you have to sign a form saying you KNOW that you could DIE doing this and you promise not to sue. Not worth the paper it's written on, but you have to sign it or you can't go tubing.

This just in: Grape-seed extract kills leukemia cells:

http://www.physorg.com/news149924025.html

I *drank* Canada dry! *HIC*

You better don't ask, Lozzy, you don't really want to know.
NOBODY should know.
..
I'm rather sure that NOBODY knows what there's in that abomination.

It probably was pubic hair.
SO probably, believe me.

That. Is. So. Fucking. Disgusting.

The pubes part inside the microwave.
An then in Lozzy's mouth.

OP BURGER!
Nasty but tasty!

Lozzy--the picture I posted is two rare hamburger patties with three grilled cheese sandwiches as the buns.

Pubes optional.

Disgusting!

Once I had a huge salad at a restaurant that covered the entire plate and when I had eaten enough of it to SEE the plate I saw that there was a big ring of dirt/unwashed nastiness around the entire rim.
I was highly displeased.