Sheryl Kirby

Salad Days

People should not throw wedding receptions on Daylight Saving Time switch overs. Or at least not the day after. We went to a wedding reception last night and stayed out far too late and drank far too much. There were drink tickets and the G&T’s were being made with premium gin and an 8 to 1 ratio of G to T. There was much dancing and eating of cake and sushi, not to mention the spitting out of little tiny quiche upon the discovery of the bacon contained therein.

This morning, after little sleep, combined with too much booze and too much dancing (there’s nothing like a gay wedding for good tunes on the dancefloor), I’m feeling a bit rough around the edges.

Ever since I can remember, a hangover demands a salad. My body just wants something fresh and crisp and cold. I have the makings of an excellent salad in the kitchen, of course, but moving from a reclining to a standing position causes me to emit loud “Urrrnnnnggghhh!” noises reminiscent of Lurch from the Addams family.

The quick lunch choices in our immediate vicinity are few. Two burger joints, two sub places and a roti place which, while I typically adore the roti place, didn’t sit well in my brain today.

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I’m Not Fat, I’m Festively Plump

Denial – not just a river in Egypt.

A recent study of obese adults indicated that 75% of them claim to have healthy eating habits, while 40% claim to exercise vigorously 3 or more times a week. Doctors are not sure whether the study participants are in denial, or if they simply don’t know what constitutes a “healthy diet” or “vigorous exercise”.

“There is, perhaps, some denial going on. Or there is a lack of understanding of what does it mean to be eating healthy and what is vigorous exercise,” said Dr. David Schutt of Thomson Medstat, the Michigan-based health-care research firm that conducted the survey.

The survey found that 28% of obese participants ate two or more snacks per day, compared with 24% of the normal-weight participants, but no records were kept of exactly what any of the participants were eating, or how much.

“In my experience,” explains consumer health advocate Mike Adams, “very few people truly understand what it means to follow a healthy lifestyle. Most consumers suffer under the dangerous misimpression that processed, factory-made foods can somehow be healthy, even though they are stripped of nutrition and laced with chemical additives,” he says. “Part of the problem is that the FDA allows food companies to make ridiculous health claims, such as claiming that chocolate milk powder, made primarily with processed sugar, is good for kids’ bones because it contains a tiny amount of supplemental calcium.”

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Canned Goods and Tinfoil Hats

Greg thinks I’m a bit of a weirdo for laying claim to a section of shelf space in the closet to create a pantry. After Hurricane Katrina, although we are nowhere near New Orleans, or any hurricane, earthquake, tornado, flood, forestfire or landslide danger zone, I got all “emergency preparedness” crazy. Because shit could still happen. It might be another big power outage, like we had in ’03, or an icestorm or an attack by Tara. Or, more likely, it could be an influenza pandemic that shuts the whole city down.

During “the SARS”, I was going for allergy shots every week, and had to do the whole handwash, mask, questionnaire deal just to get in to see the nurse (my doctor’s office is inside a hospital), so I’m familiar with the protocol. And the paranoia. That was bad enough, but a flu pandemic would be even worse.

Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks of these things. The Toronto Star is reporting on a conference held by Canadian Grocers to ensure that grocery stores and supermarkets are prepared for something such as a flu pandemic. Turns out, most of them really aren’t.

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Healthy Breakfasts

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It’s true. That’s not just something made up by the cereal companies. Yet this most important meal is often overlooked or neglected by the majority of North Americans as we rush to get out the door each morning.

The way I see it, our problem is two-fold. First, we are over-scheduled and under-organized and just don’t have the time (or don’t think we have the time) to sit down each morning for breakfast. We rush and hurry and end up grabbing something supremely unhealthy like a donut or a granola bar. Secondly, North Americans just don’t think of their first meal of the day as being “breakfast” unless it looks like a Denny’s Grand Slam.

I mean, stop for a minute and think of your favourite breakfast foods. There’s probably some eggs, bacon, of course, pancakes, waffles, toast… Now who wants to get up and cook that for their family each and every morning? My Grandmother used to, but only because she had to, and just recently she admitted to me that she, the woman who inspired my love of food, hates cooking with every fibre of her being – mostly because of having to get up every single day for 50 years to cook breakfast! If my Grandmother, with her pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse isn’t up to cooking breakfast, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

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Drink Your Greens

There’s nothing like a tasty glass of pond slime to get you started in the morning.

You’ve probably seem them in the supermarket, those bottles of icky green stuff, slotted in with the fancy juices and smoothies. With names like Green Goodness, Extreme Green and Green Energy, they are marketed in such a way as to make you feel super-healthy and pious after drinking one. But are they really the wonder food they’re made out to be?

First, it’s important to note that in all of the products I tested, the primary ingredients are various types of juice; apple, banana and mango top the lists, although some include pear, kiwi, pineapple, and even green tea. But the ingredient that we’re concentrating on is the one that gives each product its distinctive sludgy green colour – spirulina.

Spirulina is a type of blue-green algae, of which there are approximately 1500 species. It is named for its coil-like shape. According to Wikipedia:

Spirulina is a low fat, low calorie, cholesterol-free source of protein containing all the essential amino acids. It helps combat problems like diabetes, anemia and atmospheric pollution. It also helps combat ‘free radicals’ which can lead to ailments like cancer, arthritis, cataracts. Moreover, the gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) present in spirulina dissolves fat deposits, helps prevent heart problems and reduces “bad cholesterol”. The National Cancer Institute, USA, has additionally announced that sulfolipids in spirulina are remarkably active against HIV. Regular intake of spirulina increases anti-viral activity, stimulates the immune system, reduces kidney toxicity, improves wound healing and reduces radiation sickness.

However there is little scientific evidence of the nutritional value of spirulina and blue-green algae and there are many respected sources, such as The Berkeley Wellness Letter who believe there are none. Moreover it has been suggested that such supplements can be easily contaminated with microcystins and heavy metals (see above link). A court in California deemed thirty health claims made by one supplement producer to be false. From the ruling: “[The] defendant’s advertising as to the need for and benefits from defendant’s product imply that there is some reliable scientific basis for the claims such as would be reasonably expected by potential users. There is not.” (more details of court ruling). At this point all claims regarding the health and nutritional benefits of spirulina and blue-green algae should be viewed with skepticism.

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Fruitcake Pr0n – Assume the Missionary Position

Every year there’s at least one of them. The fruitcake-hater. They’re a timid lot. Someone, at some point in time, has put “the fear” in them. In many cases, it was years ago; some manufactured atrocity handed out at the office, or Great-Aunt Bertha’s dry stale creation that’s been handed back and forth from branch to branch of the family for a dozen years or more.

I take my work as a fruitcake missionary very seriously. The thrill of the challenge of fightin’ words laid down with a combination of stubbornness and trepidation; it must have been what brought the religious zealots back to the south seas islands again and again for the chance to convince the heathen natives that clothes really were better than running around naked. Fruitcake really *is* better than no fruitcake, you just have to trust me.

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Fat Politics – You’re Not as Fat as You Think You Are

Fat Politics: the Real Story behind America’s Obesity Epidemic

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia O’Hanlon’s father instilled in his daughter a respect and expectation of integrity in the fourth estate. If you read it in the newspaper, it must certainly be true. As a society, we continue to follow this philosophy. The Weekly World News and related tabloids aside, we expect our news media to report the facts, and to have done the research required to support those facts.

Which is why I’ve got some shocking news. Despite what every news channel, radio station, newspaper and magazine in the western world would have us all believe, there is no obesity epidemic. I know that we’ve been told that, over and over again – it shows up in the media at least once a week – but the truth behind the reasons why will astound you.

Author Eric Oliver started out with the intention of creating yet another tome of hand-wringing despair about how super-sizing and corn syrup were making us all fat. Yet when he dug deeper into the research, when he searched deep down into all of the sources at his disposal, he discovered that America’s Obesity Epidemic is nothing but a huge sham.

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When Was the Last Time You Ate a Shirt?

I want you to find the nearest bag of potato chips. Hint – if you can reach it without leaving your computer chair, that’s a bad thing. Now, read the ingredients list. Unless your potato chips are the super-swank high-end organic kind, I’d bet dollars to donuts that somewhere in that list is either vegetable oil or cottonseed oil. Hint #2 – if it says “vegetable oil”, then quite likely it’s cottonseed oil, at least in part.

Next step, think about this, and it’s not a trick question – when was the last time you ate a shirt?

You’ve probably eaten cottonseed oil a great deal, though, without even realizing it. It’s now one of the standards for frying potato chips because of its high smoke point, mild flavour, long shelf life and low price. If you’ve eaten pastry made with Crisco shortening, you’ve eaten cottonseed oil, although the packaging only lists vegetable oil, and you have to dig hard and deep on the Crisco website to find an ingredients list.

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Food Fight

Food Fight – The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America’s Obesity Crisis and What We Can Do About It by Dr. Kelly Brownell and Katherine Battle Horgen

The number one rule to remember when reading studies, works of non-fiction, even the news, is that everyone approaches a piece with a bias. When it comes to nutrition studies, the bias often reflects who is paying for the study; in the news, whether the network or paper has a right or left-wing slant. In non-fiction, it comes down to why you’re writing the book and the point you want to get across.

Thus, no matter how much I want to like a book, and to take it seriously, I have to account for the fact that Food Fight was written in part by the Director of the Yale Centre for Eating and Weight Disorders.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – certainly Dr. Kelly Brownell is going to know more about the surging obesity epidemic than the average person. But his bias against the evils of obesity shows up early on, and I can’t help but begin to be skeptical.

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Grocery Store Musings

How very sad is it that the local supermarket had cans of cooked pumpkin (for piemaking) priced at $2.09, yet a pre-made pie was going for $1.97?? No wonder people are more inclined to buy the pre-made crap. Even if you use the excuse of a lack of time and skill (and really, pumpkin is the easiest of pies to make, seeing as it tastes better with a graham crust and you just have to mix the can of pumpkin with an egg and some spices), there’s no way you can argue with the fact that a pre-made pie is going to run at half the cost of a from-scratch pie once you calculate all the ingredient costs.

Taste should be a factor, of course, and one look at the ingredients label should convince anyone with a brain to go for the homemade version, but even the day after Thanksgiving, those pies were flying out the door.

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