Low-Fat: the Microsoft of Diets

You know the feeling: there's a system out there that's wildly popular, almost everybody uses it (except for some maverick non-fiction-loving nerds), and its proponents are at the top of the heap in their field. And yet the system isn't working for you. There's bloating. The help from on high isn't helpful. It takes so long to accomplish anything.

It isn't you, it's the operating system. Low-fat diets are like Microsoft products: they're everywhere, and they work well enough for some people, but for others, they're an epic fail. Over the past few days, to work around an issue that Microsoft has known about for years and years, I've had to manually resize dozens of images every time I opened a document. And I've spent the entire evening tonight figuring out why my computer was at a standstill. (It turned out the automatic updates feature in good ol' Microsoft has been running up my CPU usage to 100%, bloating it like five servings of fruits and vegetables and a bowl full of whole grains. Disabling it has brought it down to 15% and made my computer functional again. Unfortunately, it has to be enabled to even get manual updates.)

How is this like low-fat diets? If your body doesn't run well on glucose for whatever reason (GI problems as I have, wonky blood sugar, dental problems, a weight problem, hormonal issues, mental function issues, etc.), it can take everything you have just to get through the day if you're trying to do low-fat. Most people without those problems won't understand.

Like the theories behind low-fat diets (the cholesterol hypothesis, the diet-heart hypothesis, the sugar-bad-fiber-good hypothesis, the ever-changing Mediterranean diet with its French paradox, and so on), Microsoft is a moving target. Office 2010 took the tools people had used for 20 years and scattered them. Some of the tools are gone. (The quick access toolbar is fine until you have to work on someone else's computer.) Third-party vendors, like makers of extra-mild toothpaste and stomach remedies and diet pills and moisturizers, are there with software you can download to work around Microsoft's problems so you can get something done.

There has to be a better way. The paleo equivalent of modern-day software might be DOS, which I actually found easier to work with. Maybe my next computer will be a MAC; maybe I'll get a Google tablet. I'm not paying $90 for Windows 7. Microsoft may think it's untouchable because its products are entrenched. But not so long ago, people switched from manual systems to computers. They can switch from one system to another system as well--and in the interest of saving time, money and frustration, they may do so. Microsoft is being protected by the network effect (it's widely used and companies want to be compatible with one another); low-fat diets by authority (government regulations that some people are subject to and scare tactics from authority figures). But no moat is unassailable.

This Just In: Yogurt Doesn't Improve Health

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."

Decongestant Ineffective; Vibration Plate Works

A common ingredient in many cold medicines has been shown so ineffective that the FDA recently proposed taking it off the market. The ingredient, phenylephrine, "failed to outperform placebo pills in patients with cold and allergy congestion," say researchers from the University of Florida. "The same researchers also challenged the drug's effectiveness in 2007, but the FDA allowed the products to remain on the market pending additional research," according to CNBC . Mostly placebos. Photo from Pixabay . I can attest that phenylephrine doesn't work. Before I stopped eating wheat, I constantly had nasal and sinus congestion. I helped keep Sudafed in business when the active ingredient was pseudoephedrine, but I noticed the PE (phenylephrine) variety didn't work at all. The only other decongestants I've found helpful are guaifenesin (Mucinex) and spicy food. Mucinex is expensive because it works! (The cheaper store brands work just as well, though.) Su

Paleo Diet: Eating Differently from Everyone Else is Fine!

I've been seeing more and more articles by women (it's always women) whose heads have exploded trying to figure out life without yogurt and cupcakes. Oh, the shenanigans they get up to: bathroom problems from stuffing themselves with vegetables, paleo baked goods that don't taste the same as ones from the bakery, and especially the irresistible urge to eat "normally." The technical problems aren't hard to sort out: substitutes like baked goods will taste different because they are different, but an adjustment period of a few months will make those foods taste normal. And whatever you eat, don't stuff yourself. First, though, read a book by Loren Cordain or Mark Sisson to learn about the paleo diet before diving in. The articles I keep reading, though, have more to do with attitude: the urge to be exactly like everybody else or the urge to be helpless. If you're in the second category, I can't, by definition, help you. If you'd rather be Lu

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 .

Angel said…

Haha, love this analogy! I just sympathized with a friend yesterday who was moaning about Windows 8.

And I have a difficult time believing that most people do well on food pyramid-like diets. I think the vast majority of people find them unsatisfying, but that may be my own miserable experience influencing my opinion there.

December 13, 2013

Lori Miller said…

I just spent almost an hour fixing paragraph numbering in a document--an hour because Microsoft's Fisher-Price word processing program is so childproof that their forced/auto numbering is hard to override. Is it just me or has this gotten worse with 2010? I wish they'd just fix the bugs in their software and provide manual overrides instead of dumbing it down.

Lowcarb team member said…

Grrrrrrr ....it makes me mad. You can be happily doing work on the computer and then boom something happens. Of course you think "it must be me" but very often it's not.

Is modern day technology worth it?

Would we all have tons more time without it?

Not easy to answer, we are all so used to hitting the key pad and expecting things to work ok.

Well I've posted this to you - so far so good.

All the best Jan

December 15, 2013

What makes me mad is that they change things just to be changing them so that we have to buy their new versions. They should just (1) fix the damn bugs and (2) have manual and auto settings, like those on an SLR camera.

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

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