Halloweenie

It's Halloween, which means it's time for all of us to go into diabetic comas.

Not trying to chub up this year? Want to keep your child from acquiring chipmunk cheeks (or teeth)?

Well these two dentists in South Carolina seem to have the answer: Instead of buying candy for kids this year, they're buying it from them--in particular the kinds they don't want--to ship to soldiers in Iraq.

Hey, thanks for being willing to die for me, to show my gratitude I send you stale Good 'n Plenty. Grandma didn't want them this year.

And kiddies, capitalism lesson number one--always take things for free and then sell them at higher prices.

Have a Happy American Halloween!

Pollan's Parameters

As Joel mentioned in a comment on an earlier post, NYT Magazine released its Food Issue this past month, and Michael Pollan has some interesting digital-image-quote doohickeys in addition to his article that I'd LOVE to post on here to stimulate all your visual receptors but I can't. Damn you Adobe flash player for not allowing me to steal things.

Well, synopsis anyway: Pollan asked readers of Well, a health blog on nytimes.com, to tell him their personal eating-well rules. He posted his favorites. Now I post my favorites of his favorites, or parts of his favorites that are my favorites, based on originality, practicality, cleverness and of course humor. Now if only I had a digital design friend to make them artistically competent; alas.

My parents are both from Italy, and one of our family rules was that you could not leave the table until you had finished your fruit: "Non si puo lasciare la tavola fino che hai finito la frutta." It was a great way to incorporate fruit into our diets and also helped satiate our sweet tooths, keeping us away from less healthful sweets.

 (Resisting urge to translate that into Spanish...)

Don't eat anything that took more energy to ship than to grow.

"Make and take your own lunch to work." My father has always done this, and so have I. It saves money, and you know what you are eating.

 The Chinese have a saying: "Eat until you are seven-tenths full and save the other three-tenths for hunger." That way, food always tastes good, and you don't eat too much.

 Avoid snack foods with the "oh" sound in their names: Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, Hostess Ho Hos, etc.

Never eat something that is pretending to be something else ... If I want something that tastes like meat or butter, I would rather have the real thing than some chemical concoction pretending to be more healthful.

 (Except I don't know if I'm as gung-ho as this lady... she says "no 'low fat' sour cream", so does that mean no skim milk? What is low fat sour cream pretending to be?)

 "When drinking tea, just drink tea." I find this Zen teaching useful .... Perhaps a bit of mindfulness goes a long way first thing in the morning.

 "It's better to pay the grocer than the doctor."

(Or farmer!)


And my favorite, for its realism:

After spending some time working with people with eating disorders, I came up with this rule: "Don't create arbitrary rules for eating if their only purpose is to help you feel in control." I try to eat healthfully, but if there's a choice between eating ice cream and spending all day obsessing about eating ice cream, I'm going to eat the ice cream!

This Laura Usher and I have this in common. These rules are all great for principles and theories but I'd rather refer to them as "guidelines" than "rules". As I've stated before, I think it's the restrictive nature of diets (and their rules) that actually frustrates and inhibits healthy eating.


But to each their own; I'd rather see people talking about healthy eating, even in the context of restrictions, than not talking at all.


Which, by the way--Pollan is still taking suggestions. Have one you want to add? Go to Tara Parker-Pope's blog and post it in a comment. Think another one of Pollan's faves should have made it on here? Let me know. Democracy is fun.

sleight of hand by the FDA

Thanks to Ben for pointing out that I didn't list foods that contain maltodextrin in my original post. While I alluded to vague categories of both sugar-free and energy-boosting foods, I didn't mention concrete examples.

This is partly because I didn't find any lists of this sort online--another missing piece of the maltodextrin puzzle on the World Wide Web.

But from my research I can give you some examples that I found or know from my own brain (my OWN, not Google's; imagine):

Pretty much, anything from a box. Or can. Processed foods. It can be in cereals, chips, fruit snacks, powdered drinks, granola bars. It's a filler and an additive, so it's in snacks, especially ones that are considered lower-calorie or sugar-free. If I listed every food, my eyes would cross.

Following that sugar-free thing, maltodextrin is also the main ingredient in Splenda. So, this little sneaky sugar-free sweetener is not, in fact, devoid of calories, because, as I mentioned previously, maltodextrin has 4 calories per gram. And one packet of Splenda is one gram, so they have around 3 or 4 calories each. From their website:

[T]he bulking agents provide so few calories per serving that the FDA allows the SPLENDA® No Calorie Sweetener Products to be called no-calorie sweeteners, because they provide less than five calories per serving.

No wonder all these "diet" drinks haven't made a dent in the obesity epidemic. In fact, I know we've all heard that they actually make you fat--a statement that has been backed up by research--but do we listen? I don't keep soda in my apartment or drink it that often, but I know that at my sister's house I find myself reaching for diet over regular. Are we now so conditioned to associate "diet" with "healthier" even when we know that's not the case? Who's to blame for this?

Well, if you noticed the subtle acronym in the quote from Splenda, it's the Food and Drug Administraion that allows them to claim that they are calorie-free.

So maybe those girls who tried to sue McDonald's for making them fat a few years ago were aiming at the wrong target.

Decoding the Jargon, pt. i

I'm a label-reader. I stand in grocery stores and hold two similar-looking packages in my hands and study and compare and critique. And I always run into something, no matter how "natural" the product claims to be: ingredients that may as well be written in Chinese. Or gibberish. Because they are, to about 99 percent of the public.

Words that inspire mental images of lab coats and Bunsen burners in chemistry class my junior year of high school, words that I don't want to ingest.

But I do. We all do.

What are these?

So begins a series in my blog, a perhaps and hopefully coherent and followable trail through this mess of personal and journalistic anecdotes. Because I cannot be the only person who wonders what these things are. And wants to know, in layman's (lame-man's?) terms.

To begin, simply because it is the first one I have found on this bag of (organic baked) tortilla chips:

Maltodextrin*

Merriam-Webster, that nice motherly book of definitions, says that it is:

any of various carbohydrates derived from the partial hydrolysis of starch (as of corn or potatoes) and used in prepared foods especially as a filler and to enhance texture and flavor

Ah, yes. Right. Abstract, thank you.

More digging.

Looks like, you cook a starchy plant (usually corn because we live in the United States and corn invades everything), throw in some enzymes and/or acid (like they pre-digest it for you), and you get a very processed, white powdery substance.

Corn --> Cornstarch --> Maltodextrin

It is just a long chain of glucose (simple sugar) molecules, which makes it technically classifiable as a complex carbohydrate (i.e. the carbs found in fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, etc.) But, those chains are broken down into single glucose molecules in the body. So it is pretty much sugar once our bodies digest it, and has the same amount of calories (4 per gram), but it is not sweet.

And even though our body processes it as sugar, it is not listed under "sugar" on nutrition labels because it is "complex".  It will just show up under the general carbohydrate listing.

For this devious reason, maltodextrin is used a lot as a filler in foods looking to lower its sugar content and also in energy supplements looking to raise caloric levels without adding taste.

Whew, okay, let me just take a deep breath and cool down my brain, because I had to trudge through a lot of suspicious bullshit just to come up with that simple analysis. Curiously, there is not a lot of good info on the web about maltodextrin, at least that seems trustworthy. (I wondered, Should I go get a *gasp* book?) And a lot of it is contradictory.

For example, one article on a website for vitamin supplements says, "During the cooking process, ... natural enzymes and acids help to break down the starch even further." By not mentioning where those enzymes or acids come from, this gives the impression that they just appear, that they come from the food itself. But, I found on other sites words such as applied and used in reference to enzymes.

My intuition is that, much like its representation on the Internet, maltodextrin is a sneaky thing. It is natural in that it comes from a plant. But it only comes about from manipulation of that plant. And it tricks our bodies into thinking it's something it's not... or maybe it's the food industry that tricks us, by labeling it as "complex" when it really is more "simple."

My advice, especially if you are diabetic: watch out, treat it like sugar. Better yet, just use unrefined versions of sugar. At least those are sweet.



*Ironically, maltodextrin does not show up as a recognized word in Blogger's spellcheck. Go... figure.

somebody please reign in that senile old man

Um, okay, while looking for an image to put on that KFC post (yes, a post-post edit), I inadvertently threw up:

In honor of the 60 million (and growing) citizens of Grilled Nation who have tried KFC's new Kentucky Grilled Chicken, KFC issued a letter to the United Nations Secretary General requesting that Grilled Nation "earn a seat" at the international organization's table. The letter also requested that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon call a special one-hour lunch break so that members of the UN can "UNThink" their usual lunch routine and try new Kentucky Grilled Chicken (KGC).

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? I thought this was a joke at first but I'm pretty sure this is the actual press release so, unfortunately, guess not.

Yes, in a world where people kill each other, kill their neighbors and loved ones, over food, religion, politics, freedom, equality, rights, etc., THIS is the issue the UN needs to be worrying about. Absolutely. Nail on the head, KFC, thanks for  making America once again look AWESOME and totally in tune with reality.

treading through unneccesary anxiety

I'm about to go to Giant Eagle to get some produce, because I didn't buy any when I went grocery shopping at Trader Joe's this week even though I'm out, thinking I would be able to go to a farmer's market this weekend, but I had a hair appointment this morning and by the time I got home to feed my hungry little belly with a quick breakfast, the one in the Strip was closing soon, and I knew I'd hit traffic and would have to pay for parking...... and...... I was sleepy anyway because I got up early for the hair appointment, and I just wanted a quick little nap, it's Saturday for chrissakes---

Blahblahblah, slap me if you will, but the point I want to make is that I'm realizing it's these little inconveniences that make a lot of people (including me today) dismiss buying locally. It's just so much easier to pick up produce where you buy your milk and Eggos and Tyson dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets too. While you're at it, why not throw in your toothpaste and mascara? Why not just shop at Wal-Mart?!

This idea of convenience is one of the main factors that has driven our society to fast foods and super mega-stores, because we simply don't want to spend the time shopping around if we know we can get it cheaper there. And what if you live in a rural area? I know my mom would love to have the abundance of local farmer's markets that I do, but she doesn't (ironically, really) because there's just too much space where she is. She can buy local, but she's gotta hike to do it. And mom and pop shops, or even just alternative grocery stores? Virtually non-existent there. When it comes to food or clothes or anything really, rural areas pretty much just have the big ol' chains. The places I avoid like the plague.

It's like this trade-off  must be in the fine print of the deeds of these big country houses-- "Ah, yes, here you go, have this space, it's nice really isn't it, and so much quieter than those crazy cities, but... oh.... lack of population means lack of stores... and choices... so I hope you really like Red Lobster."

The more I write this the less I want to go to Giant Eagle, even though I can get local there probably (for about twice what I'd pay if I bought it straight from the farmer.) But if I don't go buy fresh produce today, I will have to wait until Tuesday evening, and my stomach starts feeling funny if I go too long without feeding it veggies. And I'm depleting my frozen supplies. And they're just not the same, anyway.

Words that are coming to mind: spoiled, privileged, whiny, lazy, upper-middle class.

I'm going to Nicaragua to study abroad this summer and this is one of the reasons why. To cure the gag reflexes that act up when I think of some of these words.

I may be being overly self-critical right now, so forgive me, but it's because while I feel frustrated by the obstacles of doing the "right" thing, or at least what feels right to me, I simultaneously feel like: for people who don't have the extra money or time or CAR for that matter, to try to buy local, this isn't even an issue. Getting enough food for their family is the issue.

I'm lucky to have so many options. I think I'll still go to the farmer's market Tuesday; I might as well, I can! I'll just buy salad stuff today. So my tummy doesn't hate me.

kentucky fried crap

My first real job was at the Subway in my hometown, where my bosses hated me because I defied their very scientific and mechanical approaches to sub preparation ("Sandwich Artist", the official title of Subway slaves, is a clever misnomer.) Skill-wise, I don't know if I learned much other than How to Be Corporate's Bitch. But at least I can give an insider's account of the behind-the-scenes action at Subway--the fact that the roast beef acquires a rainbow-like sheen when exposed to oxygen, and that a little-followed policy is to charge 25 cents when a customer exceeds his 6 olive slices max--all of which, I found out today, are nothing compared to the skeletons in the closet of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

My co-worker Julius worked at KFC when he was 16, and he let me in on how the crispy little chicken parts get from point A to point B:

The raw chicken breasts, thighs and wings come in a plastic bag that, once thawed, becomes filled with blood. Company procedure dictates that employees must drain the blood  and remove certain gushy excesses before tossing the chicken parts in the fryer, but Julius said that if things got too busy, those inconsequential steps were skipped, and the whole bag was dumped in, blood and guts and all.

(Now, this is one KFC out of 70 zillion, and adherence to policies and procedures may not be uniform, so please don't sue me, scary Colonel man.)

There was no raw meat at Subway, thank god, but there was meat, and it had to be raw at some point. And who knows where the hell it came from. A chicken, presumably, somewhere....

Maybe we should start stamping our foods with "Made in" labels.

world café

transcribed (roughly, with edits) from my journal (like one with PAPER and INK; archaic, I know):

4:58 p.m.

I'm sitting in Taiwan Café, the little Chinese restaurant on the corner of Oakland and Forbes with the front door that opens to a set of descending stairs. Which is kind of creepy and ominous in the way that all basements are, but the sushi and the grinning owner who wants to hear multiple times that you are enjoying your food and the posters on the walls of silly dogs playing cards (like they think they're human! imagine!) are worth it.

Today, about half of the groups of restaurant patrons are Asian, or Asian-American, or Pacific Islander, or from the general or not-so-general vicinity of the Pacific Ocean, and the other half are White, or American, or Caucasian, or European-American-ancestral- hybrids. A couple at a booth directly in front of me is a mixture of these two.

I'm eating an "Alaskan Roll"-- that's salmon from perhaps the Pacific NW, avocado from Central or South America, seaweed from the... sea?, and rice from China. Maybe. All assumptions. While I eat, I read an assignment about the history of food for the class I have at six, rushing to finish the last chapter.

I pick up each too-big bite with chopsticks, a skill I've somewhat acquired since coming to college, and to my right, an Asian girl of indeterminate nationality watches me. I can't see her face but my peripherals tell me there are side-glances, wonder, but my peripherals could be self-conscious and/or paranoid.

A little girl to my left--who appears to be the owner's daughter since she is sitting by herself and seems to have free range to cans of soda--eats rice with a white plastic fork as she swings her feet.

I sit in Taiwan Café and I eat my sushi and I read the words in my textbook: "foods became interchangeable commodities, losing all connection to their place of origin" and I underline it,  look up, and look around, and open my eyes and see, that sometimes books can dim that thing that goes on around us: real life.

exercise excuses

I hate to say it, but I've got to be honest: since I ran that race a couple weeks ago, my workout schedule has.... dwindled. To near-nonexistent. So I told myself last night that I would go running this morning, but then I had troubles falling asleep. I laid in bed this morning for about twenty minutes, half-listening to the painful sounds of KissFM, trying to decide whether I should go running or work on a paper or go back to sleep.
The little voices of reason in my head duked it out over using my time wisely, for things I really need to get done, as opposed to things that aren't really neccessary.

It was then that I realized that if I hadn't been having this useless debate with myself, I'd already be out the door. So I got up and put my shoes on.

I have a problem with keeping up with exercise during both the winter and times of endless school assignments. My brain justifies not working out because I have so many other responsibilities.

But if I stop and really think about it... I spent an hour last night watching Mad Men, something that really is not necessary but a passion nonetheless, so I make time for it. Time that could have been spent writing a paper. I love running and working out, I really do, but I guess the difference in my priority levels is attributable to the fact that watching Mad Men is a passive act (well, sort of, except when I yell at the Don in my TV screen to stop being a wife-cheating douchebag), while exercise is active and thus more strenuous. Maybe I'm just lazy.

But I felt so good when I got back from my run--which surprised me because I thought my hiatus was going to kick me in the ass--that I realized this is not a battle I can let lethargy win. Because the longer you go without exercise, the less vital it seems, the more you forget how good it makes you feel, and the easier it is to push it further back on the mental shelf.

So goal this winter: Don't slack off, stop over-analyzing, turn your brain off and your body on and JUST GO.

Season of the Punkin

October means one thing other than my birthday and Halloween and cold weather and the leaves changing colors:

The Pumpkin.

They're everywhere:

• I indulged in a pumpkin muffin the other week and texted my friend Kelsey to remind her that she wasn't enjoying it with me. (This is a girl who bought a corny Halloween t-shirt because a pumpkin was on it, went to a pumpkin patch and hayride with her boyfriend last weekend and enjoys pretty much any culinary expression of the plant.) She texted back along the lines of: "you bitch I hate you."
• When I look out the window of my bus as it goes down 5th Avenue, the sidewalks and grass and nearly every inch of surface area outside a church are covered with these bulbous orange gourds, and I'm always tempted to yank the cord and jump off the bus to buy one, but then realize this would mean I'd have to tote an awkward, lumpy twenty-pound ball around campus with me all day. 
• Trader Joe's has a special cinnamony, nutmegy pumpkin pancake mix for sale right now that my mom and I made for breakfast this morning. This blogger suggests enhancing the pumpkinness of this breakfast experience with TJ's pumpkin butter... we just topped them with a little cinnamon and brown sugar for fear of turning orange.

This bright, multi-functional plant makes a big appearance every fall, so I thought it only fair to give it a little limelight on my blog. After all, pumpkins are chocked full of vitamins and minerals, particularly the antioxidant beta-carotene, which is converted into vitamin A in our bodies and can help your skin, eyes, and immune system. And they are yummy and can be converted into hundreds of different dishes, as evidenced by the recipe suggestions of these pumpkin-loonies (look, Kelsey, a club you can join.)

So go support a farmer and buy some pumpkins from a local patch and carve them up and roast the seeds and make a pie and enjoy the bounties of one simple little squash. And watch the Pumpkin King in the Nightmare Before Christmas while you're at it (and invite me because I know the words to all of the songs and will murmur them under my breath until you punch me in the arm several times.)

so we get free food, right?

The other week I attended a lecture on food for a global studies course (and I haven't written about it yet? Yeah. I know. Shoot me.) and the hippie lady who spoke focused on food as a right. As in a government is obliged to provide sustenance for its citizens. Simultaneously, I'm reading about how feudal lords and aristocrats from China to France stored surpluses for distribution to the poor during famines way, way back in the day when "lord" didn't necessarily signify Jesus and peasants clapped coconut halves together for lack of horses or other viable transportation.

So what about now, in an age where the term "McDonaldization" is taught in college classes? Is food a right or a commodity? Should it be one or the other?

All this talk about the right to food came into context when I read an article called Tent City, in which a journalist lived amongst homeless people in an encampment of tents to try to gain a better understanding of them, their lifestyles, how they came into this situation, etc. While exploring the site, he came across what appeared to be the nucleus of this "city", something called Poverello House (or "the Pov"):

Free meals were available here, no questions asked. [...] At times the existence of the Pov seemed like a kind of miracle of clear-sighted, unconditional generosity. At other times, it seemed like a gigantic enabling machine: The free food supplied by the Pov seemed to be the main reason for the existence of the [tent city].

This brings up a lot of complex welfare-related questions that I (and everyone else, it seems) can't answer. But I do want to address it in reference to this concept of food as a right, and what this might do to people's will and drive to satiate hunger: If we don't have to buy or work for food because it is provided for us by the government, what does this do to our view of it? What does it become? Does it lose its value, in the way that cheap, instantaneous bagged meals handed from a hole in a wall have often replaced Sunday pot roast family dinners? If we're not working to provide for ourselves in a basic sense, but don't have the means (whether economic, social, mental, what have you) to strive for what some sociologists say is the next step: abstract self-fulfillment-- what are we working for?

I don't know, but something tells me it might be drugs. Which makes me think we (the big-wigs, the little man; everyone) should reevaluate our priorities. But, there are cases in which egalitarian distribution of food has not had detrimental consequences. Take, for example, the !Kung San (better known as the Bushmen, or to me, prior to taking an anthropology class, as the clicky tongue people), a hunter-gatherer tribe from Africa that still exists today (although in a slightly Westernized sense). These people survive(d) on roots, plants, and precious few game that they could kill with bows and arrows, and distributed their food equally amongst all members of the tribe.

So, in a way, to them food was a right, as in no one should be excluded from partaking in a feast just because they weren't directly responsible for killing or digging the main course. But, all members (except children) contributed in some sense to the cycle of these peoples' society, so it didn't matter; they did their part somewhere else.

Now, I'm aware that our society is vastly different from that of the !Kung, but my point is this: handing out food isn't teaching anyone the value of it. So in that sense I don't think food should be a right. But if some kind of exchange takes place--not necessarily monetary, because I understand, in the limited sense that someone ingrained in the the middle-class only can, that a capitalist society doesn't always make room for everyone--but if they have to do something for that food--wash their dishes afterward, serve it to someone else, anything!--wouldn't that make them see it as something worth fighting for?

Maybe I'm being too harsh; I mean, these people have been through enough, let 'em have a free meal! Or maybe I'm being naive by assuming all people can or will fight for something they really want (or in this case, need). But it just seems to me that if one country has an obesity epidemic and another (or like half the world) has to deal with starvation and malnutrition, something is fundamentally wrong.

Take your jetpack and leave

When I was a kid, watching the same cartoons my mom watched when she was a kid (and probably in the same position: on floor, on stomach, head in hands), she told me that she had thought the world would be like this by now. (The Jetsons really fucked with the minds of impressionable young baby-boomers, giving them false expectations of flying cars and the ability to steal money from the wallet of your dad without repercussions.)

But it's worth pondering, with all the technological advances we've had in computers and music and movies and telephones and the like, why not in other arenas? Like food? Why can't we press a button and out pops a pill that dissolves into the perfect little army of nutrients that our bodies need? Where the hell are you, science?!

But then again, maybe we do have these new forms of non-natural foods; they're just not in the neat little plastic package we expected. Take for example: energy drinks! energy bars! virtually anything energy related that isn't coffee or tea! I also found an article about food pills (and other futuristic follies) that mentioned food for soldiers, namely MRE's (meals-ready-to-eat) and CM's (compressed meals). Seems one of the only ways to partake in futuristic cuisine is to enlist yourself in mano-a-mano combat.

But really, obviously, if you know me or my blog at all, you will know that I am relieved that pill food did not take off, and, thus, worried about the products out there that are inching towards it. My reasons are many, from scientific to social. First of all, there are aspects of food that just can't be manipulated into a compact package. An article I found about "nutraceuticals", another ploy to present healthful aspects of food in a pill form, states:

The problem, it seems, is that food is too complicated to be stripped down to its chemical components, and that the whole is far greater than its parts. Most nutraceutical studies are done in vitro, not in humans, and a free chemical in a Petri dish behaves far differently than when it is bound to food and sent through the body.

Chemistry aside, there are also capitalist pressures that should make one wary about any food product touting  a plethora of health benefits. As this witty writer for the New York Times Magazine says:

Humans deciding what to eat without expert help — something they have been doing with notable success since coming down out of the trees — is seriously unprofitable if you’re a food company, distinctly risky if you’re a nutritionist and just plain boring if you’re a newspaper editor or journalist. (Or, for that matter, an eater. Who wants to hear, yet again, “Eat more fruits and vegetables”?) And so, like a large gray fog, a great Conspiracy of Confusion has gathered around the simplest questions of nutrition — much to the advantage of everybody involved. Except perhaps the ostensible beneficiary of all this nutritional expertise and advice: us, and our health and happiness as eaters.

 Finally, although the Jetsons are misleadingly posed around a kitchen table, forks in hand, if food really did come in pill form, imagine the loss of the aesthetic pleasures of eating. I mean, what do we all do, whether one is a vegan or lives on a McDiet, when we meet up with friends in the afternoon, a date on Saturday night, extended family on the holidays, Mom or Dad or Son or Daughter or Wife or Husband at home every evening? We eat. Snack. Feast. Nibble. Nosh. Taking a pill makes hunger and nutrition seems like a medical malady, something that needs to be cured. It's not; it needs to be satisfied, with real, whole foods.

fer yinz pghers

Just found a cool map on the Post-Gazette website that lists all of the farmer's markets in the Pittsburgh area and color codes them according to what days they operate. Just so happens that today is Monday and there is one open in East Liberty, a mere hop and skip from my apartment.
I also stumbled upon a website that lists what's in season when, according to state.
I swear, some days I spend an hour looking for a trustworthy website about food or health and today I sit down and find two gems in about 5 minutes. The internet gods must really want me to cut down my carbon emissions or something.

veintiuno!

Today, the Seventh of October in the Two Thousand and Ninth Year of Our Lord, marks the twenty-first year since I was birthed.

!!!!!!!!!!

Last night I drafted something yammering on about the anti-climacticness of the American 21st birthday because I can count on one hand the number of people I know who waited until they were 21 to drink (great example of this: tonight at Harris Grill in Shadyside I asked the dashing young waiter for suggestions regarding drinks, and he goes, "Well, what do you like?") But I realize now that I was just being a lame-o grumper-pants because all my closest friends are 20 still, and wanted to complain about how I couldn't go out with them because they're not cool college kids with fake IDs, and why would I want to pay twice as much for a drink in a stuffy perv-crawling bar REALLY.

But somewhere around 10 this morning as I sat at work I thought, "I can go buy a bottle of wine after this" and the heavens opened up and rained fermented goodness on the crown of my head.

So anyway. Junked that entry. But none of this really applies to my blog in any way other than setting a really bad example. Because alcohol is generally not great for you, especially if you drink it by the gallon, not the glass. And that's the only way it seems to come in college....... until you turn 21. Then suddenly you are an adult and can drink without painting the walls with vomit. For some at least; for others puke-green is just their shade.

I guess I'm in the former category because the only drink I bought was a cosmo. Tonight at least. Tomorrow I'm going to the very classy bars in Oakland with my older sister and some friends, so I decided to look for a list of the lowest calorie drinks so I don't down my daily intake. Consensus on a bunch of sites: mix with club soda, drink water in between, or have light beer (and only a few). That's fine for normal nights, but tomorrow it is time for highly complicated and fancily named drinks. Except I of course would like to avoid those that are hot fudge sundaes in disguise, so I found something on Forbes.com about the ten worst drinks for you. Click on it for a buzzkill.

Or don't click. Because I'm going to tell you about it anyway. Or at least about the top 5 because the rest are sort of well-duh (like number 8 is vodka and tonic, with 2 shots and 5 ounces tonic, at 200 calories. I mean, I guess that could be a shocker if you are unaware of the tiny sugary discrepancies between tonic water and club soda.)

TOP TEN (five) HIGHEST 

CAL COCKTAILS!

1.) Long Island Iced Tea: 780 calories

2.) Margarita: 740 

3.) Piña Colada: 644

4.) White Russian: 425 (explains a lot about The Dude)

5.) Mai Tai: 350

Just soak up the top two for a moment. Those are both (large) meals.

So I guess with alcohol, like with food, simpler is better. I just wouldn't advise pounding shots unless you're prepared to wake up in a bush with a penis drawn on your face.

musings on the popcorn industry

Writing a paper and eating popcorn and should be thinking about Las Casas' views on colonialism but instead wondering what exactly Pop-Secret's secret is. Why would you choose a product name that implies that you are not being honest with your customers? I guess it has worked for them but it seems like a fishy business maneuver to me.
There must be a CEO somewhere in in a big building stroking his big mustache, cackling: "Oh, by the way, those things exploding in the microwave that you never see in their pre-poofed state? Not corn. BABIES. Yep. Take that, vegetarians. You are now cannibals."



Really must stop watching weird cartoons on Adult Swim.

flashforward

Did it! 3.1 miles in 30:10, which is better than I expected, considering I wasn't "training", just running for fun all summer. I am very happy. I meant to take a picture of Kelsey and I after the race to post on here but forgot to amid the pancakes (and beer?!) and speakers blaring shitty pop music.

So instead you get a picture of me from districts (that race I mentioned previously) 6 years ago:

Note: This is probably the skinniest I've ever been.

races embrace the metric system

I feel like I must explain why I am on this at 11 p.m. on a Friday night, probably more for my ego than for your actual interest, but the reason is health-related so I can claim to not be that vain.

Tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. I'm running a 5K (3.1 miles) with my friend Kelsey. The race is called Run Shadyside, and it's a run/walk through my neighborhood to benefit the Boys and Girls Club, so, you know, good causes and all that junk.

But it's way more than that to me, seeing as it is the first race I've ran in 5 years, since I left cross country in a disillusioned huff. My last memories of races (which were all also 5Ks) are of severe disappointments, crawling into the benches on the empty bus while the rest of the team stood outside and chatted in all their sweaty glory, so I could be alone to hate myself and accept that I'd never be able to run it in 21 minutes like the top girls on the team. The best I ever did was 25, at the district championships my freshman year.

Which, looking back, was fine, great, an achievement for the little fat girl who used to make up excuses not to play kickball in gym class. But I let the pressures of the running world, and my self-imposed definition of what a "runner" was, get under my skin and convince me that I was one of those girls on the team that spectators saw and poofed their lips and cocked their heads at. A charity case.

I don't blame myself entirely for this mentality though. The (slightly ridiculous) competitive nature of high school sports chipped in its fair share. I got to the point of: Why compete if I can't be as good as I want to be?

Of course, this race will be a lot different than those distant memories. There's nothing at stake here, time-wise. Thirty fewer seconds is not going to mean the difference of my team advancing, etc. No one on the sidelines screaming at me to pick it up.

And I'll have Kelsey, my friend who's running it with me, by my side cheering me on. She never did cross-country, but she did play soccer and ran track (and was good at both, from what I hear.) After a substantially more sedentary freshman year at college, she began running during the summer to get back in shape. Last spring, less than a year later, she ran the half-marathon in Cleveland, and last weekend she ran the Great Race in Pittsburgh. So, although she's not as fast as some of the girls I remember from cross country, she's still faster than me. But she's running this shorter race for me, not to beat me, but to encourage me, which is so, so great in a lot of ways that she may not totally understand.

I'm trying not to set any goals for myself besides to finish it, and run the whole thing, which I know I can do. I want to do this to feel good and to show myself that races don't have to mean torment, that no matter the outcome I've still achieved something awesome. I want to face an irrational fear and roadblock and take one giant step over it toward a positive image of myself and my body.

Plus, there's free pancakes afterward. I think I deserve to indulge in one or two.

adventures to smoothie-land

So I bought that Greek yogurt earlier this week with the sole intention of using it in smoothies. If you've ever had Greek yogurt, you'll know it has a biting taste more like that of sour cream than what we associate with yogurt, which I'm sure causes most non-nutrition obsessed customers to turn up their noses. But funny fact: Greek yogurt is what plain ol' yogurt used to be until the days of additives and thickening agents. The only ingredients in it are skim milk, cream, and a plethora of good-for-your-belly cultures. Because of this, it has substantially more protein than regular yogurt (24g per cup vs. 7g per cup in Yoplait light vanilla). But, you're a real trooper if you can handle it plain. I can't. They sell different flavors in small containers but they are more expensive. So instead I bought the big one and a bag of frozen mixed berries (I already had frozen mango chunks) and decided to try my hand at the art of smoothie-making. What I got was more like frozen yogurt. I was so giddy about the delicious results I decided to post this pseudo-recipe in the hopes that you will try it out!

The only thing I really measured was the yogurt (not because I'm a fantastic chef by any means, I am just lazy and hate doing dishes) but I eyeballed the approximate measurements of the rest:

2/3 cup plain Greek yogurt
~10 chunks of frozen mango
~1/2 cup frozen berries
drizzled honey over it all
splash of skim milk (maybe 1/2 cup?)

Then blend blend blend. If you have a super shitty hand-me-down blender like mine, this could be... a process, mainly because this smoothie is pretty thick. I probably should have given my ancient appliance a break by adding more milk, (I realized while digging mangled mango chunks out of my dull blender blades), but I didn't, mainly because I got really excited when I realized it was like ice cream. But you can feel free to add more milk, different fruits, whatever. It's your discretion.

Which is probably the greatest part about home-made smoothies: you can make them however you want! To hell with recipes! And if you put in healthy ingredients (yogurt instead of ice cream, frozen fruit instead of ice cubes), you're gonna get a smooth, guiltless treat. I know smoothies are and have been a huge health craze for awhile, but if you buy them at some fancy shop they are usually pretty expensive and can add extra crap and calories. But if you make your smoothies at home, then you know what exactly is going into that blender and how much. No surprises there (except the extra cash in your pocket).

And remember, just because you are drinking it doesn't mean it's not a meal/snack. I think our waistlines all learned that several years ago from Frappucinos.