Category: Eat, Drink, and Move That Body!

If you were to randomly come across a commentary entitled “Stop Supporting a Tainted Food Supply,” where would you suppose you were? Alternet? PETA? Some random editorial that happened to get picked up by Buzzflash?

How about financial news site TheStreet.com?

After giving us the quickie-version of the latest massive meat recall — which the USDA says shouldn’t concern us because most of the meat has already been eaten and what we don’t know can’t hurt us — the author tells us:

I’m taking a stand and putting my money where my mouth is — literally. My five-person family consumes about $1,300 of food per month — $15,600 per year — including the meals we eat at home and at restaurants. I can easily divert at least a quarter of that money to farmers and meat producers in my own community.

Now, just as a point of curiosity, how is that going to help? Even if we go out on a limb and assume that her community has farmers and meat producers that sell locally, what guaranty does the author have that locally produced food is free of the problems of corporate farming? Just because it’s local doesn’t mean that the animals have been humanely treated, or that the vegetables are free from contaminants, or that any of it has been handled in a sanitary fashion. Even the most vile of factory farms and slaughterhouses are “local” to somebody.

Ah, now here’s someone who has a grip on the problem: the Faithful Penguin points out the false premise that “the markets are a regular libertarian paradise of goodwill and bonhomie where no capitalist would dare engage in shoddy or dangerous practices because the market would ‘self-regulate;’ therefore, no rational businessman would take those risks as they’d be run out of business.” In fact, he reminds us that the current regulations — the ones that have been systematically undermined since the Reagan Administration — were passed into law in 1906, after “Upton Sinclair published The Jungle. Written to awaken the consciousness of America to the plight of immigrant workers, the horrific and dangerous conditions in Chicago’s slaughterhouses were exposed, causing the public to worry about its own health.”

In the end, that is what regulation is supposed to do: protect us from the excesses of unbridled corporatism. Some people say regulation costs jobs. I say deregulation has cost a lot of jobs in such diverse areas as air travel (bankrupt airlines), telecommunications (bankrupt providers like WorldCom), energy (bankrupt and corrupt companies like Enron), and food production (family farms). Sure, some regulation goes overboard, and some other regulation is actually a gift to the industry being “regulated,” but a whole lot of it is reaction to somebody somewhere saying “there oughta be a law.”

In closing: stock market danger; sign this stack of papers, including the one that lets your tax preparer sell your returns; make your own ginger beer; Iron Chef or Not Iron Chef; I’m late to the coverage, so I’ll let Jill say “duh” on late diagnosis of cancer; Duhpartment of Research tells us men can live longer by “abstaining from smoking, weight management, blood pressure control, regular exercise and avoiding diabetes” (anybody know how to avoid diabetes? “weight management”, “regular exercise”, and have the right relatives!); the “education gap” and social mobility; awesomely elegant wrapping; why doesn’t the border fence go across the golf course?; Word to Mrs. Clinton, it’s not that you’re a woman, it’s that you’re you!; thanks to Pharyngula for pointing out 41 hilarious science experiments; and strange economic portents, economic indicators will no longer be published due to budget constraints, and the attack of the expanding dollar menu.

Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

I have some new cookbooks.

Specifically I have some new vegetarian cookbooks. I am not a full vegetarian, but I do try to make healthy food for my family. And “healthy” means plenty of veggies. Furthermore, meatless dishes are often (but not always!) higher nutrition for lower calories, and very budget friendly as well.

One of the new books is How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. One feature I love is that vegan, fast, or make-ahead recipes are clearly marked. Frankly, this is an improvement over the original How to Cook Everything, and I hope future editions of that book will utilize similar markings. One thing you will not find in HtCEV is a lot of recipes that use fake meat. Sure, there are tofu recipes and seitan recipes, and 10 pages on making your own veggie “burgers”, including adaptations for “meat”loaves and “meat”balls. And sure, there are recipes that use alternative-but-still-natural sweeteners such as agave nectar or maple syrup. But no Gimme Lean, no Liquid Amino Acids, no TVP, no Tofurky, no Quorn, no Morningstar Farms, no Boca Burgers, no Gardenburgers, no frozen meatless beef/chicken/pork substitute patties, in fact nothing that should be capitalized or have a trademark symbol.

By contrast, I have another new cookbook that features only vegan recipes — for those who aren’t in the know, vegans not only don’t eat any sort of meat or fish, they don’t eat any animal-produced products (dairy, eggs, honey) either. You might think this is very limiting in a world where meat and eggs and dairy products are everywhere, even on our salads (mmGorgonzola). It is certainly challenging, and requires some thinking ahead. If you want to read more about that, I humbly refer you to Veggie Going Vegan and Fat Free Vegan.

Anyway, this cookbook talks seriously about eating healthy food: why the chemicals in coffee are bad for you; why refined sugar is bad for you but artificial low-calorie sweeteners are worse, and a new study supports that fact (ok, ok, giving up my Diet Coke, *sigh*); be selective about your grains, avoid ones that have “white” in the name, and why; the chemicals that go into modern farming of meat; it goes on. I really like the frank and irreverent tone of the book. I may not agree with everything they say — for example my experience with potato products is that they tend to make me gain more weight than white rice — but they do try to back up their opinions.

And then — 8 paragraphs away from a sentence summarizing the various drugs, pesticides, steroids, and hormones that end up in farmed meat and meat products — they point out that section of the grocery store dedicated to overpriced, frozen wad, chemistry sets known as fake meat. Sure, they admit that these products should only be eaten in moderation, and that they only sort of taste like meat. Oh, and that humble readers such as myself should make up their own minds.

The chemicals in dairy products? Bad! The chemicals that turn rice and soy into something that taste like dairy products? Inexplicably good! Eggs? Bad! Egg Beaters? Still bad! Vegan egg replacer made with starch and cellulose through some super-secret chemical process? Somehow good!

Listen, I am willing to concede that a diet of cheeseburgers is probably not good for you. But I have this strange feeling that switching to a diet of fake burger patties with fake cheese on a whole wheat bun isn’t much better for you. If you honestly can’t handle life without burgers, that’s ok. Really it is. Maybe a vegan lifestyle isn’t for you.

But you’ll just have to trust me that there are better things you can be putting in your mouth: for half the price of a box of frozen-burgerish-substance, you can make your own delicious meat substitute (and I bet you already have most of the ingredients in your pantry); you could be eating soba noodles in peanut sauce; you could be enjoying roasted veggies — you can figure out how to hack up some veggies and stick them in a hot oven for an hour, right?; you can make sloppy pinto-joes (sorry my recipe is simpler than any I see online) or black bean soup; just yesterday I had a lovely hummus and falafel platter for lunch; and we haven’t even touched on “exotic” ingredients like seitan and tempeh. Frankly, looking beyond a hunk of meat opens a freaking huge culinary world. After all, several cultures developed their own independent vegetarian cuisines in the complete absence of the latest scientific information on amino acids. There’s a lot of delicious and nutritious food out there. Why waste time, money, and calories on chemistry sets?

In closing: America Says Thanks for the gift card, I used it to buy “pasta sauce, diapers, [and] laundry detergent“; America Also Says the recession is already here; it’s one thing to walk away from the house, it’s another thing to walk away from the student loans, and America is doing both; at least we have homes to walk away from, one in six Iraqis don’t; Dear Hillary, grow up and smell the democracy; collegiate bloggers should read this now; deja vu; CNN shows their priorities by asking “So when are my shows coming back?“; another take on kids still don’t have employers; since the tourists are just here for the dollars, let’s not annoy them; somehow killing one out of five people doesn’t sound like a “peace” plan; Senate Traitors; and everything you will ever need to know about mattresses. Oh, and happy 200th birthday of Abe Lincoln.

It’s Blog for Choice Day. And although Maya’s Granny has written far more eloquently than I can on this topic, I will add my own comments.

I sincerely hope I am never in the position of having to make a personal decision to terminate a pregnancy. I don’t know that I could do it unless my health were at stake. But who am I to make that decision for anyone else? Why is my decision more valid than yours?

That’s the point of “Choice.” You are an independent human being; you can think for yourself. And contrary to what the so-called “Pro-Life” community would have you believe, sometimes people do “Choose Life.” My favorite story about just that — emphasis mine — is here:

Whoopi [Goldberg] was asked to contribute [to the book, Open the Unusual Door, True Life Stories of Challenge, Adventure and Success by Black Americans] and wrote about when her 14-year old daughter announced to her that he was pregnant. Even though she had supported and had spoken out in favor of pro-choice, her daughter’s situation gave “pro-choice” a new meaning. Choice to have a baby, not just choice to have an abortion. Whoopi wrote, “I had to take my beliefs out for a little test drive… It means women have the choice to do whatever they want..; even if it smacked into what my choice would have been for her… she taught me pro-choice is not just a phrase.” For me this is an important lesson. First it reminds me that I don’t want to be a parent so young. It also showed me how stating one’s beliefs or position about an issue becomes very different when you have to confront it personally. Facing it forces you to think about the issue differently. It’s one thing to state a belief; it’s another if you have to live it! It’s easier to talk the talk than walk the walk!

Obstacles like “waiting periods” and parental consent laws and spousal/paternal consent laws (which can sadly be used to force women to become gestation machines for rapists) are a nice way of saying “Oh now hold on a minute little lady! You aren’t smart enough to make this decision all on your lonesome! Don’t you know you’re havin’ a baby?”

Kindly leave aside for a moment the issue of whether a woman who is “not smart enough to know her own mind” should really be raising children.

I honestly don’t see how mainstream America can take the so-called Pro-Life movement seriously until such time as they denounce and expel the internal faction that thinks it is acceptable to enforce their opinions through violence, vandalism, and murder. By failing to do so, by actively spreading lies about birth control and abortion, they are showing their true colors: the Anti-Sex movement.

Make no mistake: I deeply respect efforts to minimize the number of abortions that take place around the world. The only way to prevent abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. You prevent unwanted pregnancies by making sure women have access to birth control, by working to prevent birth defects that can turn a desperately wanted pregnancy into a tragedy, by reducing sexual assault, and by encouraging a social and economic environment conducive to the raising of children.

In Closing: Tim Iocono on Recession; the intersection of politics and health care; Henry Paulson sure looks scared about something; one way to get a raise?; ammunition the Democrats should be using but aren’t; and finally, Real ID Rebels.

If you have been reading ShortWoman for some years, you have already read some of what follows. Yesterday, I explained why I probably know more about successful dieting than many people. That being said, I am neither a doctor nor a nutritionist nor any sort of personal trainer.

Most diets fail because we have unrealistic expectations. We think that if only we lost x pounds our lives would change; it’s not so. We think that we can deprive ourselves for a period of weeks or months and then go back to the way we’ve always eaten (or worse yet, reward ourselves with a big pig-out); the truth is that not only will our body hoard calories, we will go back to our old weight if we eat the old way — that is why most people who lose weight gain it back. We think our workout entitles us to a little treat; a little treat completely negates the average workout. We think a brisk walk around the mall is a workout; but what we actually do is a slow amble around the mall while sucking down a 600 calorie mocha. We think that we will magically lose weight by purchasing and eating chemistry experiments with labels that proclaim “low fat” or “low carb” or “lite”; the only thing that gets skinnier is our wallets. We think this weight loss plan will be the one that is different, the one that works; we ignore the small type about “results not typical” or “when combined with a reduced calorie diet and exercise.” We don’t stop to wonder how long Jared had to eat Subway Sandwiches 3 meals a day to lose all that weight; any doctor will tell you that 1-3 pounds lost a week is healthy — so losing 100 pounds should take 8-24 months. In short, we think there is such a thing as a magic pill.

Another major reason diets fail is that they are unsustainable. This needless to say overlaps with our unrealistic expectations. Do you really want to drink your lunch for the rest of your life? Because if you listen carefully to the ads on the TV, you will see that is their plan for you! Can you live on 1200 calories a day? Sure, for a while, but sooner or later hunger will catch up with you unless you have some sort of metabolic ace-in-the-hole. Since we have already established that losing a lot of weight takes time, sustainability is a huge factor. A diet that you can’t stand to keep doing for months — whether because of hunger or boredom — just won’t work. A sign of a good diet is that there is actual discussion of various stages of diet and a transition into a way of eating that will help us maintain a healthy weight.

The third major reason diets fail is lack of support. We have friends who say “Oh come on, just one cookie won’t hurt you!” (and we wonder if they say “Oh come on, just one drink won’t hurt you!” to recovering alcoholics). Or maybe we have friends who think they are being helpful by telling us what we can and cannot eat. Maybe we have husbands who tell the kids “Mom’s not having any pizza, she’s on one of her crazy diets again.” Even if our families, friends, and coworkers are supportive, we frequently find ourselves in a position where it is clear that we are eating diet food while everyone else is eating “normal” food. When we find that we have no supply of food that conforms to our diet, we do not engender the sympathy of those around us. At least Jared’s sandwich looked like a normal meal to everyone else. Even professional support groups like Weight Watchers have practices that are somewhat less than motivational.

The truth about fitness is that it isn’t easy. The human body was not designed to sit behind a desk all day. It is built to walk, to run, to carry things, to throw things, to swim, to climb, to move. And it is designed to do that all day, every day. Well guess what, most of us don’t have that ancient lifestyle. No, we sit at desks or on sofas, we ride in cars and buses and airplanes, we spend a lot of time on our butts. Even those of us who work on our feet generally walk no more than a few yards at one time. So we have to actually work out. And no, it isn’t fun. It isn’t supposed to be fun. Our ancestors didn’t hunt game and gather fruit because it was fun; they did it because it was food. Our ancestors didn’t run from predators because it was fun; they did it so they could live another day. Our ancestors didn’t haul wood back to the campsite because it was fun; they did it so there would be fire for heat and light and cooking. I do not work out because it is fun; I work out because I like the way my body looks when I do it regularly.

I am a freak of nature. I lost over 20% of my body weight almost a decade ago. I am my college weight, and in much better shape than I was then. There’s plenty in the archives, of course, but more of what I think about sustainable weight loss can be found in these 5 posts: one, two, three, four, five.

In closing: the market for liberty; lots of plastic bins are a symptom of a clutter problem, not a cure for it; USA Today reports on legal voters purged from voter registration lists; FedEx and the IRS are arguing about whether the delivery guy is an employee or a contractor (FedEx is going to lose); I like Hello Kitty and I think this is a bad idea; planes to nowhere; and remember the Massachusetts health plan? It turns out the fines for not having health insurance “could total as much as $912 for individuals and $1,824 for couples by the end of 2008….” Friendly reminder, the fine for a business not providing health insurance is $295. So much for Massachusetts being nigh unto socialists.

Let me tell you a little about myself.

I was never an athletic child by any stretch of the imagination. Being short compared to my classmates, I usually scored poorly on any physical fitness test that measured my cohort by age as opposed to height: my legs were shorter so I couldn’t run as fast; my arms were shorter so I couldn’t climb as well. I was in 5th grade before it dawned on our Phys Ed teacher that setting the chin-up bar for “average height for xth grader” skewed his results for anyone on my side of the bell curve. He added one of those folding gym mats to make up for the difference, and suddenly 6 girls could do the flex arm hang that never could before! He probably took credit for improving our strength too.

Through Junior High and the first year of High School, I did bike a lot. There were actually places I could go on my bike, such as the library, park district, a grocery store, several friends’ houses, and a small shopping center. This was no longer true when we moved to Texas. My physical activity was largely limited to walking around the school. Nonetheless, my BMI on graduation day was 21.2* — well within normal range.

I went to college, and had a bigger campus to walk around. I also had to take a few PE classes, which is where I met the first truly competent coach I ever personally encountered. At the time, she was the head Women’s Volleyball coach, and she took the time to point out what I was doing wrong, and more importantly how I could do better. I was still not very athletic, but at least I wasn’t a hazard in the gym. However, like most other college students, my diet was not what anyone would consider spectacular. Somehow, I managed the 4 years only gaining 5 pounds, for a BMI of 22.2. This is, by the way, my current weight and BMI.

A year later — in the middle of grad school — I got married. By then my BMI was up to 23.6 — still normal, but I was still getting heavier. Then one night, I got home from choir practice to find my new husband watching one of those talk shows, and I became familiar with the work of Joyce Vedral. She’s looking pretty good for a senior citizen, isn’t she? Trust me, she looked terrific then too. Within days, I bought one of her books, the one she wrote with Jean Claude VanDamme’s wife. Well, I started weightlifting. And because we had a number of activities, we ate more fast food than was really good for us. I bulked up, but not in a good way. I moved on to one of Dr. Vedral’s other workouts, but not before my BMI was up to 25.4. I was able to delude myself that a lot of it was muscle. And hey, BMI is a crock, right? Right? Besides, I’ve got one of those relatively wide Eastern-European frames and will never ever be model-skinny. Right?

I got out of school and started working full time. I ended up in one of those apartment offices that always has some sort of food thing going on: cookies for guests; popcorn with the manager in the afternoons; lunch with “the girls”; stopping for a snack on the way to make bank deposits. Oh, and then we’d all decide to diet together — which usually meant a trip to Sam’s Club where we would buy a big salad bag and a monster sized bottle of reduced fat ranch dressing. By the time the lettuce got brown and disgusting, we had usually given up anyway. I still walked some, and we had fencing class once a week. We probably had fast food of one flavor or another 4 days a week for dinner. During this time, my BMI fluctuated between 26.3 and 28.1. I looked like a little sausage, especially in that “modular clothing” that places like “Units” used to sell. I had become convinced that diets were a waste of time. And then I got pregnant.

My official post-pregnancy weight is only 3 pounds more than my official pre-pregnancy weight. That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, my BMI was still way too high at 28.7! Like Scarlett O’Hara and many other women, I resigned myself to the idea that most women don’t get their old bodies back after having a baby. I bought size 12 jeans and decided to live with it. For most practical purposes, I had stopped working out except for an occasional walk around the block pushing the stroller — weather permitting.

One fine morning, my husband arrived home from work — he was by then working in an Emergency Room — and announced we were going on a diet. He had been keeping track of the progress made by the head of the local Nephrology residency (a kidney specialist) on one of those low-carbohydrate diets. Here’s my husband’s results. Frankly, he looks even better now. I got back down to college weight, and we did not do any kind of exercise at all.

We didn’t add exercise to our routine until several years later in 2001, when we bought a decent stationary bike. Although I was skeptical at the time, it has more than paid for itself since we didn’t have to buy a gym membership (or two). I started doing Joyce Vedral’s Fat Burning Workout and some flexibility training while he biked. I have since switched to a military workout, and experimented with the shovelglove. I tend to develop some less-than-feminine-looking muscles, so back to the military workout for me. He uses weights while I bike. We both watch CNBC while we work out.

I lost the weight, and I kept it off long enough to make me (according to a prominent “fat acceptance” blogger) “literally a freak of nature.” Although my BMI did creep back up to 24 for a bit — still “normal”, still lookin good, just not as firm as I’d like — I’m now back down to college weight and in better shape than I have ever been. Because I have much better muscle tone than I did in college, I wear a size 2 jean now. Frankly, I don’t think I have ever worn a size two before, even in Junior High! And we’re about to step up the workout routine; maybe I’ll get back to High School weight.

Next time, I hope to talk about being a freak of nature, the truth about fitness, and why most diets fail.

In the meantime, a little background reading in lieu of “in closing”: Children who sleep less weigh more; inexpensive recipes for the New Year; I hate to say it but Kate’s right about Weight Watchers and Jill has some insights of her own to add, too; BlogHer on the diet rabbit-hole; and heck, she’s still big but she looks like she lost 20 pounds just by getting a bra that fit! Thanks, Carson!

* I realize BMI is a controversial measurement. I am using it to avoid this kind of reaction. By expressing my weight as a ratio with my height, you can start to think of it in terms of what you would weigh at these levels instead of focusing on my relative lightness.

Hey guys. I know this is a pretty cool time in your lives: you are legally grown-ups; you are making new friends, some of whom are from wildly different places than you; you are either deciding what you want to do “when you grow up” or actively working towards it; some of you are living on your own — or at least not with mom and dad — for the first time.

Now don’t get me wrong. I know your point of view is very different from mine. I read that list Beliot College makes every fall, even if I think they could have made better points. I was in college when you were born! However, there are some things that don’t change, no matter how much they should change.

And the one biggest thing that hasn’t changed but should is that you will know people who drink too much. Some of those people will do really stupid things as a result. Some of those people will die. Some of them will sadly cause someone else’s death. Some of them will have other horrible results.

There is a very good chance that one of the people you know who will drink too much is you.

Hey, I’m not so old that I don’t know the score. What, you don’t think I drank my share of beer in college? I know. Your friends are drinking and you want to fit in. Or maybe you’re pledging a frat/sorority and hey, you are willing to do whatever the pledge captain says. And for the first time in your life, there’s nobody you have to call and check in with, nobody who will care if you don’t drag your butt into bed before 3 AM if at all. You control your own schedule — except for that one 8 AM class that you had to take — and you are responsible for your own decisions. Nobody is blaming you for saying “I can have a beer if I want to, and nobody is going to stop me!”

I’m not going to put on the holier than thou and talk about how the legal drinking age is still 21. That notwithstanding, you’re legally an adult at 18, and entitled to make your own decisions, no matter how stupid. Nor am I going to preach about drunk driving. If those gory films in driver’s education didn’t persuade you that it’s a bad idea that can get you arrested or get you into a horrible wreck, nothing I can say is going to change your mind.

What I am going to say is to please use your head. Moderation is a good thing. Unlike that casserole your mom used to make, there is no rule that says you have to finish that mug of beer or bottle of hard liquor. It’s ok to not “have seconds,” let alone thirds and beyond. It’s ok to say “I’m fine, maybe I’ll have another one later.” You can use that 8 AM class or your job — it turns out over half of you have at least part time jobs, good for you! — as a perfectly valid excuse for why you won’t be having another drink. Do you honestly think your Dad has never said something like “Sorry guys, I’d better not have another. Gotta work in the morning”?

Please. Don’t be the guy who made the papers by dying of alcohol poisoning. Or the girl who wrapped her car around a telephone pole and killed her best friend. Or the guy who fell down the stairs and broke his leg, but didn’t notice until he tried to walk away. Or the girl who woke up with no underwear and no memory of the prior evening. Or the guy who woke up with some girl he doesn’t even know. Or the girl whose friends and family are begging her to get help, at least go to an AA meeting. Or the guy who is flunking all his classes because he spends too much time drunk and not enough time studying.

These things happen every year on college campuses across our nation.

Please, don’t let it be you.

****

This has been my personal message to all the college students of the world. Please feel free to send a link to this article to friends, family, and other people you care about. If you choose to forward the text instead, please note that it is written by Bridget Magnus of ShortWoman.com and Central Sanity, all rights reserved by the author.

Sometimes it takes the BBC to tell us the bleeding obvious: “Too much food, alcohol and sun has fuelled a massive rise in some forms of cancer, warn UK experts.” They’re British, so save the pedantic comments about spelling. There’s a lot to be said for “Moderation in all things.” Now, science confirms it!

Speaking of too much food, a new study suggests that feeding lots of “diet” foods to kids may cause overeating as adults. The working theory is that they “are conditioned to associate certain tastes – be they sweet or salty – with low-calorie foods, [so] they will begin to overeat at later meals to compensate, even if the sweet and salty treats are calorie-rich.” But by the time puberty is reached, “they likely used other cues, such as texture and portion size, to determine more correct calorie intake.” Granted, the research in question was done in rats, but in an age where we are becoming increasingly concerned about childhood obesity rates, this research may mean rethinking weight control for kids. The scientist in charge of the research concluded “Use nutritious, healthy food with calories and make sure the calories are balanced to the amount of activity level of the children.”

Of course I think we are all better off eating “nutritious, healthy food with calories” as opposed to the chemistry experiments that allow us to eat “low calorie” versions of cookies, candy, and high fat/sugar things.

And as for Cute Fuzzy Animals, today I received an email. I don’t normally forward such things, but I have verified this particular story via Snopes:

Hi, all you animal lovers. This is pretty simple… Please tell ten friends to tell ten today! The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily to meet their quota of getting free food donated every day to abused and neglected animals.It takes less than a minute (How about 20 seconds) [actually it takes about 5 seconds, I tried it] to go to their site and click on the purple box “fund food for animals” for free. This doesn’t cost you a thing.

Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned/neglected animals in exchange for advertising.

Here’s the web site! Pass it along to people you know.

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/

AGAIN, PLEASE TELL 10 FRIENDS

Snopes points out that CharityUSA runs a family of sites that allow you to “donate” money for free by clicking a simple link, in addition to several online stores that allow you to both give money and show your charitable pride.

If you want to tell 10 people, that’s fine. If you’d rather put this information on your own site, that’s even better. But in any event, get clicking!

In closing: Bush 41, proud father?; if the economy is so great, how come fewer Mexican workers in the United States are sending money home; the CSM reports that experts say if you want to fly and get there on time, it will cost you extra; the new environmentalists on the block, Christian Evangelicals; a HUGE new planet has been found; and finally, Support Our Constitution.

I have two health-related items to share with you today.

The first is about the sun. Yesterday was the Solstice — that’s the day with the most sunlight all year (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway) — and many people are engaging in outdoor activities. Sunscreen is vitally important if you are going to be outside during daylight hours, and that advice applies to kids as well as adults. Unfortunately, not all sunscreens are created equal, and some “either fall short of their claims or contain unsafe ingredients….” So what is a sun-conscious consumer to do? We already read labels and look for protection against both UVA and UVB, we look at the active ingredients, yet the label may be wrong!

Luckily, there is a new website in town that has done the important work of figuring out what the labels actually mean, and what the products actually do. You can find their summary here.

The second item is about new reports showing that hormone treatments for menopausal women maybe aren’t as bad for you as was feared a few years ago, and there are new guidelines reflecting that thinking. One thing that I will point out that I suspect you will not see mentioned elsewhere is that what modern medicine calls “Hormone Replacement Therapy” or HRT is actually Hormone Substitution Therapy. If you want the super long with a hundred pages of footnotes version, you’ll want to read this book. The 60-second summary is that human hormones can’t be patented, so drug companies make synthetic hormones out of things like horse pee that they can patent, except it’s not quite as good for you. If there is an interest in some middle ground of additional info, leave a comment and I will reply with some web resources.

In closing: Larry Kudlow is not better than Ezra; by way of follow up, Hillary and the Left; an article connecting the dots between the USDA, big Agriculture, and our ever bigger butts; a petition from Candlelighters; new CAFE standards (which aren’t law until the President signs them so keep your fingers crossed) would require both cars and SUVs to get 35 MPG by… say they didn’t mention a year; it looks like Dick Cheney thinks he’s above the law, Congressman replies Are Not! (ok, he puts it nicer than that); results of the Schneier movie plot contest; who knew Sci-Fi Heaven was in Riverside, CA; and Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs is kind enough to give us the 50 best anime of all time.

Regular readers know that I don’t normally resort to ranting about personal experiences. In fact I can only remember doing it once before, about a banking experience a few months ago. The same disclaimers apply more or less: the events I am about to describe did occur; my reporting of said events may be colored by my outrage; management is welcome — encouraged, in fact — to reply. When I have verified the origin of such a reply and the authority of the sender to make it, I will post it in an update to this post.

Saturday evening (June 16, 2007), I settled into a chair on the patio of one of what had been one of my favorite restaurants, Kona Grill. This little chain has about 15 locations in 10 states, and is traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker KONA. We liked this place so much, we have probably eaten there 3 times in the last 4 weeks. I have never had a bad meal there. I was looking forward to enjoying a glass of wine and some of their fabulous appetizers such as avocado egg rolls and tuna wasabi. Hey, it’s fusion cuisine, don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it!

We enjoyed some drinks. We had some appetizers. We had some very nice sushi. It was a lovely evening, sitting in 99 degree weather with the misters going.

After we ordered dessert (ok it was another appetizer) is when things got strange. Between songs on their stereo, the volume went up. It wasn’t just tweeked a little; it got quite a lot louder. This is something that has happened before, and in the past a nice word to one of the staff members was all it took to bring things back to a reasonable level. The volume control is right by the bar, so the bartender is the person in control of it. The bartender happened to open a window less than 10 feet away from us, so we took this as an opportunity to catch his eye.

Imagine our surprise to instead receive an obscene gesture.

I could hardly believe what I had just seen. However, before I could say anything my husband exclaimed that he had seen the same thing I had seen. Now I was mad. And I probably overreacted, shouting something to the effect of “Turn down that stereo and don’t you dare shoot us the bird!” I think our waitress must have been just coming out the door at the moment; my husband told her to get a manager right now. He showed up within 60 seconds, and that was the last thing the manager did right.

We explained what had happened to the young man in the light blue shirt and pink tie that claimed to be the manager (alas, no name tag, no corporate logo, and no name offered). There are many things he could have said at that moment. Things like “let me find out what happened and I’ll be right back,” or “I agree that’s totally unacceptable, sir,” or “I understand why you are unhappy sir,” not even “I’m terribly sorry, how can I make this up to you, sir?” Instead he explained that it’s policy to keep the music on the patio loud, and as for the bartender he said — and I quote — “What do you want me to do?”

My thoughts: be a manager; it’s your job. The manager gets to decide what to do, but he has to do something. Instead, all signs were that he was going to do nothing.

My husband said “What I want you to do is fire him, but I know that’s not going to happen. He’s going to deny he did it, and you need him pouring drinks on a Saturday.” The manager admitted that was so (causing me to wonder what a bind they would have been in if the bartender had called in sick). We don’t want money off our bill (it wasn’t offered); we don’t want empty apologies (not that any were forthcoming); we want this to never happen again. We are grown-ups and know that everybody gets mad at people sometimes. This bartender’s urge to insult could have been handled in his apron, under the bar, or several other places where customers did not have to see it, and we said so.

The manager continued to condescend to us as our dessert arrived, but by then neither of us particularly had an appetite. He left, and I don’t honestly remember whether the volume of the music ever went down or not. Shortly after, my husband saw a not-obscene but clearly hostile gesture towards him personally, an effort to goad us. Just the kind of guy a lady wants mixing her drinks.

Not long after, our waitress came by with the check, sat down with us at our table, and personally apologized for what had happened. She mentioned that she had talked to the bartender, who claimed the initial gesture had not been at us — as if that somehow made it acceptable. Ok, so he admits he made an obscene gesture where customers (and their children) could see it. Nice. And he gets to keep his job, in a town where guys are pushing one another under the bus to work a busy bar on a Saturday night.

For the record, we paid our bill in full, with a generous tip. Our receipt has a hand written note from our waitress, Tiffanie, reading “I’m very sorry! Thank you!” At least one person understands customer service. What a shame it isn’t the management.

*** Important Update June 18, 2007 *** Within 12 hours of posting this item, I received a comment from a man who identifies himself as the bartender. Please check it out for yourself. As much as I appreciate hearing from him, it is clear that the incident in question has filtered through management, inasmuch as it is highly unlikely that he was an established reader horrified to find himself my topic.

*** Update Two June 19, 2007 *** This morning I received a personal email from the District Manager. It appears to have been sent shortly after I went to bed last night; we all know that restaurateurs often work brutal hours. He expressed his regrets both at the events that occurred and management reaction to them. Furthermore, he expressed his intent to share this incident with the management team in an effort to improve customer experiences. On site management is still silent; corporate policy may be that once Head Office gets involved, they are to let it be handled from above. This is understandable, and almost certainly how I would want things done if I managed a multi-location business.

*** Update Three, later June 19, 2007 *** I have now also received an email of apology from the General Manager of the local Kona Grill (who outranks the fellow in the blue shirt from Saturday). He assures me that he has spoken both to the manager on duty about his action/inaction, and the bartender about his actions. Further more he tells me “appropriate corrective measures” are being taken, and my account of the incident is being shared with the entire staff “as a serious reminder that we cannot afford to fall short of expectations.” I must absolutely commend pretty much everybody except the shift manager Saturday for responding to customer complaints. According to the timestamp on this email, it was sent less than 24 hours after this post.

You know what? So many smart people have already weighed in on this. The USDA has decided, in the wake of several unrelated food contamination incidents, not to test all slaughtered cows for BSE, the “Mad Cow Disease.” More importantly, it has decided to take court action to prevent meat packers from independantly having their slaughtered cows tested at their own expense.

Here is the source article. I was first alerted to this travesty by Seeing the Forest. Here’s what Shakesville has to say. And here’s Daily Kos. But the granddaddy of commentary on this steaming cow-patty is this item, which includes the money quote:

First, observe the contempt for liberty. When E. coli conservatives say self-regulation is preferable to government, they’re even lying about that. Second, observe the contempt for small business. When a small company want to – voluntarily! – hold its product to a higher standard, the government blocks it, in part because bigger companies have to be protected from the competition, in part because a theoretical threat to the bottom line (false positives) trumps protection against a deadly disease.

There’s your conservatism, America: not extremism in defense of liberty. State socialism in defense of Mad Cow.

All I can imagine is that the meat packing industry is deathly afraid of what might be found if there were widespread testing. Put that in your free market and smoke it.

In closing: the United States is so desperate for combat soldiers we are sending amputees back to combat; the ACLU has figured out what I said over a week ago, that the new immigration reform bill would create a “no work list” that we can only hope is as accurate as the “no fly list”; investors hope a new forum for doctors will churn out profitable ideas rather than grounds for litigation; how curious that the college enrollment rate and the employment rate for recent high school grads are both down; and finally water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink… unless you pay for the privilege.