Oddities in the Grocery Aisles

Who would have guessed that a trip to the grocery store could be so astonishing? I don’t often venture into the aisles of the grocery store—unless I need tea or canned tuna or somesuch, I stick to the meat, dairy and produce sections. I understand things like eggs, lettuce, grapefruit and sliced ham. Lately, I’ve seen some oddities when looking for things like oat bran in the aisles:

Onion flavoring. What’s wrong with a real onion? Is less than a buck a pound too much to pay? Is chopping it too much work?
Labels proclaiming “Real Sugar!” I’d expect to see this in the baking aisle, but the labels were on soft drinks. Maybe it’s because the sugar-free craze of the 1970s is etched in my mind that this strikes me as odd. (If you don’t remember the 70s, it was a time when people were a lot thinner.) If Bill Cosby ever revives his comedy routine about giving his kids chocolate cake for breakfast (because he thought that wheat, eggs and milk were healthy), he can add sugar to the list of healthy ingredients.
If, unlike Mrs. Cosby, you think that wheat, eggs, milk, chocolate and sugar are a good breakfast, there is over half an aisle devoted to breakfast cereals, pancake and waffle mixes, and maple-like syrup. (You’ll have to go to the dairy section for eggs, though…even though eggs aren’t dairy products.)
Nearly all the yogurt had added sugar of some sort, but the announcement was in the fine print. Maybe it wasn’t that Real Sugar that’s worth bragging about.
Crackers and other junk foods were labeled “All Natural!” as if that makes it good for you. Things like lead and botulism are natural, too.
One container of “All natural!” yogurt had 10 grams of saturated fat. And plenty of good bacteria. The fat will give you a stomach ache but the bacteria will cure it.
Aisles and aisles full of wheat products. Would a feed lot full of cattle being fattened up for slaughter use this much grain?
There was a whole section of the store devoted to flavored (read: sugary) water, another whole section to junk food, half an aisle to ice cream, and almost half an aisle to candy (in the baby stuff aisle, of course). Shelf space devoted to oat bran: four inches.

Comments

Moving on to YouTube

Remember when the blogosphere was a wild ride? Doctors, writers and researchers dove into research, picked apart studies and stood up to official advice and conventional wisdom that didn't work. We found each other in the comments and made a community. Along the way, Dr. T. Colin Campbell's research got exposed as shoddy by an English major, Tom Naughton made us laugh, "safe starch" fads made us scratch our heads, "Diabetes Warrior" Steve Cooksey almost went to jail, CarbSane trolled everyone who was anyone, and CarbSaneR trolled the troll. Now it's very quiet. Blogs don't come up in Google search results anymore and even if they did, most of the bloggers have stopped writing. That's why I've moved on to YouTube. Videos do come up in search results and my shorts--which are mostly what I make--get pushed out to hundreds of people or more. My videos are on food and health (biohacking), but also on growing things and fixing things. If you...

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...

Holiday Dinner Tip from Restaurant Pros: Limit the Menu

After watching some people online getting freaked out about trying to put on holiday dinners and getting overwhelmed to the point that they're thinking about canceling the whole thing, I thought I'd put out a restaurant tip that will help people put on a dinner with less aggravation. A big complaint among the frustrated home cooks I've seen is that family members are not contributing to the dinner. But a bigger problem I see is that their menu is just too big. One lady's family is having her make 12 dishes all by herself, and some of these dishes look pretty complicated. Watch the video here or read on. The reason this is aggravating is that more dishes mean more shopping, more prep, and more cleanup. It's hard to make several dishes that will all be ready at the same time. Even though I used to be a prep cook at a restaurant, I've put on Thanksgiving dinners myself, and I cook from scratch almost every day, there's no way I'd try to make a 12-course di...

We Hate the ADA; Why does the Perfect Health Diet Get a Pass?

Some people keep touting the Perfect Health Diet as low-carb, but carb levels that are mostly in the triple digits aren't generally regarded as low-carb; in fact, one of the authors says low-carb diets are unhealthy. A lot of us hate the American Diabetes Association's advice for diabetics: start with 45g to 60g of carbohydrate per meal and go higher or lower from there. That's 135g to 180g of carb. Perfect Health Diet advice for diabetics: eat 20% to 30% of your diet as carbohydrate. On 2,000 calories, that's 100g to 150g of carb. On 1,700 calories, that's 85 to 128g; on 2,200 calories, that's 112 to 168g. Depending on your carb and calorie intake, carbs would be 85g to 168g per day. That's not a mile off from the ADA's recommendations. Paul Jaminet, one of the authors of the Perfect Health Diet, says, "the basic biology here is that the body's physiology is optimized for a carbohydrate intake of about 30%." He warns against a ...

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too. Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog