Ugly Middle Aged Drinkers

“To alcohol... The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.”

Homer Simpson, TV star and middle-age icon.

I have always thought that Homer’s profoundly simple view of the world was the result of a sort of post-modern Buddha-like trance brought on by sitting spread legged on the couch, staring at baseball and taking deep swigs of beer. (Instead of sitting in the woods in the lotus position, murmuring guttural mantras and taking deep breaths of air.) The result is similar: Homer goes into a profound stupor, the Buddha into a profound calmness. It there much difference?

Of course there is! And even worse, according to a recent study, Homer’s trance-like state may the result of his age. The new study shows older people are less likely to realize how alcohol is affecting them. “Drinking seems to impair older people more than their younger drinking buddies. Also, older people are less likely to realize how the alcohol is affecting them”.

As a bartender friend of mine at a popular local watering hole for middle age folks said, “The hard part about my job is figuring out who is drunk and who is just stupid.”

The study was based on research with 42 older participants between the ages of 50 and 74 and 26 younger participants between the ages of 25 and 35. Although peak breath-alcohol measures were similar between the older and younger groups of drinkers, older participants who had received alcohol took longer to complete a simple test than the younger participants did.

According to the study: ‘The performance age gap did not happen with non-drinkers. A difference wasn't seen between the older participants and younger participants who had consumed non-alcoholic beverages. (However, all of the non-drinking participants in the study reported immense boredom in their lives and displayed interesting other addictions such as obscene chocolate sundays, reality TV and model trains)

Also, older drinkers were less likely to realize they were impaired at the testing 25 minutes after alcohol consumption. That can be dangerous, as older drinkers may think they are fine to drive when they are not.

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools” said Ernest Hemmingway, a famous middle-aged writer/drinker.

He was referring to how often drinking is a social occasion, and according to the same study, consumption among older adults is likely to become a larger public health issue for this very reason.

More than half of adults over the age of 55 drink in social settings, and the percentage of the population that is older is projected to increase dramatically over the next couple of decades. By 2030, one-in-five U.S. residents will be over the age of 65.

I can tell you this from experience. Do not ride a motorcycle or bicycle in areas of dense retirement populations like exist in Florida. You will be in mortal danger.

Other than the fact that we middle-agers can’t handle our booze, we also are the age where we are most likely to have teenagers who could be experimenting with drinking. Since we are smarter than them and can handle alcohol better than them (not), our generation sometimes hypocritically try to stop them from drinking altogether.

As another sage alcoholic middle-ager Hunter S. Thompson once said, “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they always worked for me.

Wrong! Yet another new study found that : “Most importantly, set a good example and moderate your own drinking. Your children will likely adopt drinking habits similar to your own. “Do as I say, not as I do” is not an effective stance.”

This same study says that if you do drink, you should teach your children to drink at a fairly young age, so that when they start having access to it socially, they will know how to handle it. In this way they “ will be able to pass up temptation at teen parties. You hope that they will view getting drunk, or other drug use, as foolish rather than as interesting or sophisticated.

Let’s go back to Homer Simpson’s parenting methods, which have been criticized by many. He regularly makes a fool out of himself in front of his children. How many of our own friends have we seen doing this after too much to drink? The question is whether Bart and Lisa will realize their Dad is making a fool out of himself and turn out differently. And will our own children benefit or be hurt by witnessing the antics of drunken parents? I’m betting that the parents who conduct themselves responsibly and demonstrate the right way to drink will have better luck.

Looking for Some Really Good Dirt

Remember mud pies when you were a kid? You could make them without a stove or help from the grownups...just a little water, some dirt, preferable dark and musty, and voila...a tasty treat. And although a little gritty, and occasionally wormy, the result was strangely satisfying and oddly natural.

Alas, there was always the moment when the grownups discovered your culinary adventure, and would scream in horror for you to stop. Usually a thorough washing of the hands and mouth followed, and a stint in the corner of your bedroom.

Well, as it turns out, your natural inclination towards dirt delicacies was a healthy habit ingrained by evolution, according to new research. In studies of what is called the hygiene hypothesis, researchers are concluding that organisms like the millions of bacteria, viruses and especially worms that enter the body along with “dirt” spur the development of a healthy immune system. Several continuing studies suggest that worms may help to redirect an immune system that has gone awry and resulted in autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma.

The research says that it is instinctive for babies to constantly picking things up from the floor or ground and put them in their mouths, and that’s how babies explore the world. But why the mouth, when sight, hearing, touch and even scent are far better at identifying things?

One researcher even noticed how children would enjoy good crushed rock or dried dog droppings and then turn down delicious mashed potatoes.

According to the research: “Since all instinctive behaviors have an evolutionary advantage or they would not have been retained for millions of years, chances are that this one too has helped us survive as a species. And, indeed, accumulating evidence strongly suggests that eating dirt is good for you.”

These studies, along with epidemiological observations, seem to explain why immune system disorders like multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and allergies have risen significantly in the United States and other developed countries.

Meanwhile, good parents everywhere have apparently been doing the opposite of what nature intended. Everywhere you look, parents are slathering antibacterial lotions and soaps on their kids and anything they touch. Kids for the most part aren’t even allowed to play in the dirt anymore, yet their Wii remote and their pacifiers are sanitized to hospital operating room standards. (Which actually ain’t that good. Could it be the pandemic of operating room staph infections is somehow related to the lack of dirt in our diet?)

The other problem is the quality of the dirt in our yards in today’s times. A good dirt yard is sort of like mine: full of organic, live bacteria and dog droppings. The look of our good dirt yard is is witnessed by the plethora of weeds, some edible including dandelions, wild strawberries and daisies. I tell my wife that this is the reason I like the weeds in our yard. If I was to hit it with chemicals, great looking grass would grow, but make the dirt inedible.

Bad dirt yards are easy to spot and they are everywhere. Perfectly green grass and manicured landscaping gives it away. This look equals weed killers like Roundup, fertilizers imbued with stuff to make bombs with (no kidding) and heavy metals. Perhaps eating this dirt inoculates kids from future toxins but the bacteria is mostly dead. And forget the dog droppings....last I heard its a $200 dollar fine in Wrightsville Beach for leaving well enough alone.

For grins, I tried to make a mud pie from the soil of my next door neighbors yard, who has the most obnoxiously beautiful grass and plants I have ever seen. (my wife reminds me of it daily). I also for the sake of a controlled experiment took the same amount of mud pie ingredients from my organic yard. Using the same amount of water on both soils, I put both mixes into a standard pie pan and let sit for about an hour.

The results were amazingly different considering the source soils where just one yard (not the unit of measure) apart and from the same neighborhood. My neighbor’s mud pie was sort of cement smelling to the nose, pasty to the tongue, strangely devoid of any organic overtones and it left a metallic aftertaste that I could not shake. Worse, for some reason my arms went numb for about 15 minutes.

After regaining the use of my hands and thoroughly washing my mouth out with soap, (like my mother used to do) I tried the pie from my yard. It had a sort of sweetness to the nose, and while gritty, actually had some chewiness to it. It even seemed to have an essence of fine escargot and truffles, which may explain the movement I detected just beneath the surface of the pie. The finish was reminded me of a combination of arugula and sweet strawberries that may have been allowed to ferment for some period.

I asked my wife to try the pies as well to help confirm my findings. She refused because according to her: “I don’t like mushrooms or escargot, and I want a yard like our neighbors! I don’t care how good our yard tastes! Have you lost your mind?!

Recession Taking a Toll on People's Backsides: Toilet Paper Use Down

OK, so I am standing in the toilet paper aisle at the Harris Teeter staring at a wall of white rolls clad in all sorts of colorful packaging claiming all kinds of benefits for my backside. Of course that is how toilet paper is marketed...either because it feels good (which makes it more expensive) or it doesn't (but is a much better deal). I figured that if people wanted to save money, their butt was always the sacrificial lamb of sorts, and they would still be using the same amount of toilet paper, just a cheaper brand. But I have just read that people are using LESS toilet paper of all kinds because of the recession, and I am trying to figure out how to do that.

According to Advertising Age Magazine "People long have taken for granted that some categories of consumer goods, such as toilet paper, truly are recession-proof. Turns out that, like many assumptions, is wrong. As a result of the recession, consumers went beyond trading down to cheaper, private-label products and actually bought less toilet paper of any kind. The recession has turned bad enough that people bought less toilet paper — about 5.5% less last quarter in the U.S., according to Kimberly Clark Corp. Chairman-CEO Tom Falk, who blamed the economy for disappointing fourth-quarter earnings and a weak forecast for 2009."

Whilst standing there trying to work this out, I pulled out my trusted iPhone and searched Google for "how to save toilet paper" I was led to a site called FrugalFamilies.com. These were their suggestions.

"1.Use less. (Duh) The standard frugal guide is three or four sheets. If you fold it instead of grabbing a bunch and crinkling it up, you will need less. A wad of toilet paper will have more sheets in it that a fold." (this is a known scientific fact)

"2. Buy a lower priced brand. I think this works only to a point. If the paper is too thin, you'll wind up using more of it. Some people swear their family uses the same amount no matter which brand they buy." (and your butt will hate you for it.)

"3. Separate two-ply paper into two rolls. A friend of mine swears this works. When she gets home from the store, she and the kids go to work separating out the two ply roll so that there is a layer or "ply" per roll. She uses empty toilet paper tubes to roll the separated toilet paper and keep things neat." (Freud called this "Anal Retentive Syndrome" which is a precursor to "Obsessive Compulsive Syndrome" which is supposedly caused by kids being potty trained too soon. I know a lot of people with this affliction but would not even think about consulting them for this article, knowing how wound up it would make them.)

"4. Use something else. Beside newspaper, frugal people use all sorts of things as a substitute for toilet paper." (The chick that is now famous for buying a PC instead of a Mac in the new Microsoft ad says she uses leaves from her yard to save money...)

"You can make your own flannel wipes to dry yourself. Flannel can be bought for less than $1 a yard sometimes, especially if it is a seasonal flannel. Cut the flannel into squares and you are all set. You will need a bucket or wipe box to store the used flannel until you have enough to wash." (Yes flannel...not terry cloth...not silk...not old cotton tee shirts...must be flannel)

"You can also just rinse with a squirt bottle and use a washcloth to dry. You might even get cleaner with a rinse instead of wiping with toilet paper." (In other words go buy a bidet. Men...get used to it.)

Truth in Marketing?

Although toilet-paper marketers are promoting more sheets, more layers and the added sanitation of wet wipes, the promises don't always hold true. More plies aren't always stronger according to Consumer Reports. (speaking of Anal Retentive Syndrome, a magazine that caters to those types)

To test toilet paper Consumer Reports technicians measured how much lead shot dampened sheets could hold before they broke. "The strongest sheets were thickest and typically had two plies compared with just one for rolls that scored lower. However, Quilted Northern Ultra Plus has three plies and it was neither thickest nor strongest, and Scott Extra Soft proved about as strong as many two-ply rolls, despite having just one." According to CR, "Scott 1000, (my favorite brand) at 6 cents per 100 sheets, delivered the most sheets for the lowest price, however its individual sheets were thinner than that of most other brands tested."

In our family we test our toilet paper not with lead shot but with a high fiber diet that is recommended by People Magazine and many of the famous inhabitants of Malibu, California. While we have found this diet almost useless for controlling our weight, it day in and day out provides a great testing ground for toilet paper.

What we have discovered is that we use the same amount of toilet paper every month, no matter what the brand, so the only way to save money is buy the cheapest and most hardy brand. Again, let me suggest Scott 1000, or the "Endless Roll" as my son calls it. (He is a surfer and loves that movie, "The Endless Summer" and movie allusions are encouraged in our house.)

You cannot go wrong with a toilet paper brand that's name sounds more like a racing bike, and touts strength, performance and longevity over comfort and gentleness. Use Scott 1000 for a month, and your butt will feel just like you road The Tour de France on said racing bike as well. But you'll save serious money.

True story, I went on an adult Outward Bound kayak trip in the Bahamas where 12 people, men and women had to share one roll of toilet paper for over a week. There simply wasn't the room for more toilet paper after we had stuffed the boats with food, water, tents, sleeping bags and other provisions. Well, as you can imagine, the roll didn't even last a day. Let me just say that the palm trees down there do not supply a natural alternative. The next thing you know, people are standing on the shoreline, looking longingly at the water, and not because the wanted to go snorkeling. Everyone sort of had to make do (do) with what was available which was an entire ocean serving as sort of a natural bidet.

It was gentle and soft as a Caribbean breeze. Sounds like a great tag line for a new toilet paper brand.

Are Mothers the Worst Drivers?

Remember a few years ago when Britney Spears was internationally maligned for driving with her baby son on her lap?

Imagine if she was breast feeding , talking on a cell phone time and touching up her makeup at the same.

Recently a 39 year old women was stopped by police for doing just that, (actually not sure she was doing her makeup) and has been charged with a first-degree misdemeanor of child endangering and minor misdemeanor for unlawfully restraining her child, who was reportedly younger than 2.

The women said that she had decided to feed her daughter while driving because she “does not deprive her child when she is hungry.”

A registered nurse and lactation consultant for Kettering Medical Center, responded to that by saying that it would have been in the best interest of the child if she had pulled over. "She should have put her baby first, and not put the baby in an unsafe situation. She should have been in her car seat."

"If the baby is not strapped in, that could cause terrible head injury," she said. "I don't have anything against breast feeding, but there has to be a better place to do it. (How about at the local shopping mall, where it seems to be some sort of fad).

Of course this story does not prove that women are worse drivers than men, but only proves that this particular women is an idiot. However research has shown that many women with children take unnecessary risks while driving to attend to them, which is the opposite of what they should be doing.

So this activity doesn’t speak to whether mothers are the worst drivers skill wise...but perhaps judgement wise. Your average Dad driver could care less if the kids are crying in the back seat...he has already learned to filter all that out. But mother’s have the instinct thing driving them to put the kids happiness ahead of the need to drive safely.

Lest you think I am picking on women in this piece, I just ran across a new study from England that showed women and gay men are likely to be the worst drivers. The research has revealed that both perform poorly in tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness when compared to heterosexual men.

Psychologists at Queen Mary, University of London, who conducted the study, believe their findings show that driving in a strange environment would be more difficult for gay men and women than for straight male motorists. Both tend to rely on local landmarks to get around, and are also slower to take in spatial information.

"Straight Men are good at using distal, or geometrical cues, to decide if they’re going north or south, for instance. They have a better basic sense of direction, but they can use local land marks as well. "Driving in a novel environment which is poor in cues is where these differences are likely to show up most. "Women and gay men are going to take a lot longer to reach their destination, making more errors, taking wrong turns etc. They need more rich local landmarks." (Like Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, and Whole Foods).

Wow, I guess the good news about this research is that very few if any of the gay men I know will be tempted to breast feed while driving. Further, one of my favorite writers, David Sedaris, a Raleigh native, and gay, says he never drives because he is no good at it. But I digress...

In search of more proof that mothers are the worst drivers I looked at some actual crash statistics from Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Public Health showing that female drivers are involved in slightly more crashes than men.

Although men are three times more likely than women to be killed in car crashes, researchers have found that, when the total numbers of crashes are considered, female drivers are involved in slightly more crashes than men. Overall, men were involved in 5.1 crashes per million miles

driven compared to 5.7 crashes for women, despite the fact that on average they drove 74 percent more miles per year than did women. BUT, since the men drove 74% more miles than the women, their raw number of accidents are higher than that of the women.

Now this is where it gets interesting. The statistics show that although teenage boys started off badly, with about 20 percent more crashes per mile driven than teenage girls, males and females between ages 20 and 35 were equally at risk of being involved in a crash, and after age 35 female drivers were at greater risk of a crash than their male counterparts, which is precisely the prime age of mothers with kids.

Is this the smoking gun? (or the slightly damp nursing bra?) Not sure, but it is sort of intuitive that breast feeding, talking on the phone and fussing with your make up when driving is just not a good idea and anyone doing that is going to be in more accidents, no matter what their sex or sexual persuasion might be.

BTW the statistics show that men are more likely to drive while intoxicated, not use a seatbelt, and exceed the speed limit. Duh

Elephants Gone Wild

Kitty and I recently were paid a visit by our close mutual friend, David Beattie who is a safari guide based in Zimbabwe, Africa. Of the many stories he told us of his last year in the wilds was one about his good friend being killed by an elephant. The details of the mauling were disturbing enough, but according to him and as confirmed by a simple search of the news, elephants have sort of gone wild all over the world as of late...even in zoo environments.

As to why this has been happening, David put forth the theory that many of these mad elephants are essentially teenagers without adult supervision. He says that legal campaigns to separate elephant children from their parents have taken place world wide such that many elephants are orphans. (a truly frightening thought in the human world.) Even worse, since an elephant remembers just about everything...they are very upset at humans for having taken their parents. Sure enough, elephant researchers worldwide have come to similar conclusions.

Imagine a gang of teenagers, each weighing nearly 7 tons rampaging through the streets after a keg party goes bad. (Elephants actually do get drunk by eating fruit that has fermented on the ground and raiding stores of liquor and beer.) These wild eyed teen elephants are crushing cars, stomping innocent bystanders and and knocking houses down...literally. Since we don’t have wild herds of elephants in this country, the only thing that compares would be scenes in movies when aliens, (War of the Worlds) large apes, (like King Kong) or monstrous marshmallow men (Ghost Busters) reek havoc on Manhattan. Although exaggerated for the movies, this is the kind of fear and destruction these teen pachyderms can spread.

Fortunately it doesn’t take a battalion of National Guard to stop them. According to several elephant researchers, the only thing that works is “their mothers and their aunties” Heard that before boys?

According to one researcher: “Elephants are social creatures with defined roles for everyone in the herd. The herd is matriarchal, dominated by mothers and aunties. When the male babies grow to adolescence, they are kicked out of the herd, leaving their sisters and mother behind. Like most teenagers, they are relatively harmless, ripping up bushes and pushing down trees as a way of showing off to one another. But occasionally one of them will go rogue. Some social gene in their brain fails to kick in and they run amok, creating havoc.” (which has been proven to happen in the human teenager as well.)

“The usual remedy for a rogue elephant is to shoot it. (they do that to human teenagers frequently in the larger metro areas). Left to their own devices, they'll destroy things and corrupt their peers. One creative solution for a bachelor herd that has been corrupted by a rogue is to bus in an elephant mother. Inevitably, the mother reestablishes order in the herd.”

As another researcher stated: “As I reflect on the state of the American teenager hanging out in herds that roam our nation's malls and sneer at their elders, it seems to me that a good solution might be to parachute in a few mothers to reestablish order.”

Hmm...makes me wonder...is this the same effect that has most football players greeting their Mom when put on camera? If hockey referees were matronly women, would there be the nightly display of violence that sport is known for? Do the mothers of rowdy boys hold the key to world peace? But I digress.

One thing is for sure...if you watch videos of teen elephants gone wild, you will understand the severity of the problem. All one has to do is Google “elephants gone wild” and you will be met with links to some of the most gruesome videos of any kind you will ever see. Elephants killing people and destroying property might be even worse than being hit by an alien death ray or being tossed like a rag doll by King Kong. These elephants don’t know when to quit. I have put a few of these links up for you viewing pleasure (not), but be forewarned, this is not for the faint of heart. Elephant kills man. Elephants kill many men and tear up buildings.

Why are elephants responding to all this human interaction and abuse in such a violent way? Perhaps they have no alternative. We treat them like cattle and swine yet with a mass of over 11 pounds elephant brains are larger than those of any other land animal, and although the largest whales have body masses twentyfold those of a typical elephant, whale brains are barely twice the mass of an elephant's. A wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief, making music, art, altruism, play, use of tools,compassion and self awareness evidence a highly intelligent species on par with the smartest primates. (the category humans belong).

As humans continue to kill the elephants parents and take away their habitat, perhaps they should remember the immortal words of Peter Finch in the film “Network”, when he proclaimed “we are human beings (in this case, elephants) and we are mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore”.

When you think about it, humans send our teenagers to fight our wars....maybe that’s what the elephants are doing.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Coming to your dining room soon, interesting and important people from the past for the perfect dinner party.  You can be the envy of the local social scene by entertaining dead presidents, prophets, philosophers and musicians in the comfort of your own home. Sounds like something from Star Trek, HG Wells or CNN, (remember Wolf Blitzer talking to the ghostly Campbell Brown on Election Night?), but it is coming soon.

A US technology company,  Infosys Technologies has been granted two patents in the areas of holography communications that contain the development plans behind an actual 3-D communication method using computer-generated holography such that we shall all be viewing true 3D videos and playing holographic games in about two years time.

By 2010, the devices will routinely beam 3D films, games, and virtual goods into our laps and our dinning rooms.  Combine these new visual capabilities with the amazing interactive capabilities that exist in contemporary computer games and you are able to put yourself in the game, or in the case of your dining room, project the players into your Victorian cherry wood chairs.  

Combine all this together with a giant interconnected database of historic figures and their works through services like Wikipedia and just like that,  you are having some very interesting people coming to dinner.

It has always been interesting conversation to speculate on the perfect dinner party guest list.  You want to perfect mix of intellectual, philosophical, artistic and religious individuals, such that the conversation can be spirited and entertaining...without someone getting hurt. (The good news about holographic images is that they can shoot each other in anger and its all in fun.)

Being both a cook and a gadget freak, I am already planning some of my initial dinner parties.  I thought it would be interesting to invite not only interesting dead people, but at least one other live person, (other than my wife, Kitty, my kids and me) to join in for a contemporary viewpoint and for historical perspective.  I submit these for your feedback (and to elicit envy).

Guest lists for parties in order they would be held.  

1. Jesus, Adam and Eve, Moses, Buddha,  Muhammad, John Smith, Jim Jones, Pat Robertson

2.  Mark Twain, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Malcolm X, Attila the Hun, Sean Hannity 

3.  Anais Nin, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Henry Miller, Bob Guccione,  Sarah Palin

4.  Simone De Beauvoir, Ernest Hemingway,, Henri David Thoreau, Shakespeare, David Sedarus 

5. Nostradamus, Herbert Hoover, John Maynard Keynes, Jules Verne, Alan Greenspan

6. Keirkegard, Socrates, Jean Paul Sartre, Lao Tzu, Neitzsche, Bill O-Reilly 

7. Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Pavlov, Abraham Maslow,  Martha Stewart

8.  Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Barrack Obama 

9.  Karl Marx , Frederick Engels, Jesse Helms, Tiny Tim, Rush Limbaugh

10.  Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Darwin, Galileo, The Pope

11.  Mozart, Beethoven, Bob Marley,  Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Brittany Spears

12.  Johnny Unitas, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson,  YA Tittle, Michael Phelps

13.  Frankenstein, Helen Keller, Barney, Moe (from the Three Stooges), Gary Busey  

14.  King Solomon, Sadam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin, PeeWee Herman

15.  Marylin Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Junior, Kid Rock

  16. Lewis and Clark, Sacagewea, Sir Edmond Hillary, Ferdinand Magellan, Lou Dobbs 

Of course the problem would be what to serve.  Many people on this list have never seen sushi, lettuce wraps, southern style barbeque, or even a Big Mac.  As interesting a problem as this is, the reality of the situation would be that your guests might appear to be eating, but since they are electronic the food would just sit there and get cold.  Wouldn’t want to waste a great crab cake on a holograph...I don’t care how smart or famous they are.

If any of you have some good guest list ideas...email them to Kitty and she’ll start the inviting.  And remember, even though polite conversation in the South does not include religion and politics, in this case it is encouraged.   Bonn Appetit!

Bad Vitamins...Bad Cola

I am sure some of you will think what you are about to read is bad news, since it is all bad news these days.  But this is good news...the hundreds or thousands of dollars you have been spending on vitamins, vitamin infused drinks, and diet soft drinks are a total waste of money and are probably bad for your health.  Now you can save all that money and be healthier at the same time.  How often does that happen?

Yep, the jury is in on man made vitamins.  They don’t do anything that they claim to.

After numerous studies by different research entities on tens of thousands of people, health scientists have concluded that ““Consumers spend money on dietary substances with the thought that they are going to improve their health, but there’s no evidence for this,”  “Buying more fruits and vegetables might be a better choice.”  

And the good news, they are much cheaper than bottles of vitamins.  The tens of billions spent on these products are totally wasted....you might as well be taking sugar pills or placebos. (There is one exception, according to my friend Betsy and my friend Dr.  Pepper, (ironically that is his real name) pure fish oil capsules are full of natural Omega-3, which is really good for you.)

So now, the so called vitamin waters and Diet Sodas spiked with vitamins come under the microscope.  The assumption must be made that they too, are a monstrous waste of money.  Give the people in the marketing departments of the companies that make these beverages credit....they were working with what they had.  But I think they need to find another way to sell water and soda.

This is where I sort of get wound up.  According to Coke's CEO E. Neville Isdell "Diet and light brands are actually health and wellness brands,".  He was referring to a product called Diet Coke Plus, which is Diet Coke plus a few vitamins. (I think this is the guy that also said that all those plastic water bottles piling up in the oceans and landfills are biodegradable....”they will have completely disappeared in 5 thousand years”)

Let’s deconstruct a “heathy” Diet Coke.  This popular drink (which we refer to as “Brown Drool” in our family)  consists of artificially blackened water tinged with synthetic chemicals. Here are its ingredients  from most prevalent to least: carbonated water, caramel color, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate (to protect taste), natural flavors, citric acid; and caffeine.

To protect taste? What are people supposed to be tasting? Oh right, there it is: "natural flavors." Diet Coke contains more of the chemical designed to protect said flavors than the flavors themselves. (BTW, the "natural flavors" are the part that are secret and some swear contain addictive substances.....the only way to explain the constant consumption by many people).

In essense Diet Coke is a nutritional void. Human bodies evolved to make use of a variety of foods, but I doubt isolated versions of phosphoric acid, etc., are among them. And aspartame, aka Nutrasweet, may cause active damage.

Even worse, the “diet” in Diet Coke is a sham. Multiple studies have shown that people who drink diet soft drinks don't lose weight. In fact, they gain weight.

Some of the findings come from eight years of data collected by the University of Texas Health Science Center and were reported at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association.

According to the report, "What didn't surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity,"  "What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher."

In fact, when the researchers took a closer look at their data, they found that nearly all the obesity risk from soft drinks came from diet sodas.

"There was a 41% increase in risk of being overweight for every can or bottle of diet soft drink a person consumes each day,”

For regular soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

• 26% for up to 1/2 can each day

• 30.4% for 1/2 to one can each day

• 32.8% for 1 to 2 cans each day

• 47.2% for more than 2 cans each day.

For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

• 36.5% for up to 1/2 can each day

• 37.5% for 1/2 to one can each day

• 54.5% for 1 to 2 cans each day

• 57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.

For each can of diet soft drink consumed each day, a person's risk of obesity went up 41%. 

What is the lesson here?  If you are going to put something in your body, make sure it is real beverage and food, not some sort of elixir or food-like substance cooked up by the marketing department at a beverage or processed food conglomerate.  They cannot come up with anything that is near as good as the real thing.  (The exception may be the newest drink in India made from cow urine.)

Indeed, to look at the chemical composition of any common food plant is to realize just how much complexity lurks within it. 

Here’s a list of just the antioxidants that have been identified in garden-variety thyme: Some of these chemicals are broken down by your digestion, but others are going on to do undetermined things to your body: turning some gene’s expression on or off, perhaps, or heading off a free radical before it disturbs a strand of DNA deep in some cell-Terpineol, alanine, anethole, apigenin, ascorbic acid, beta carotene, caffeic acid, camphene, carvacrol, chlorogenic acid, chrysoeriol, eriodictyol, eugenol, ferulic acid, gallic acid, gamma-terpinene isochlorogenic acid, isoeugenol, isothymonin, kaempferol, labiatic acid, lauric acid, linalyl acetate, luteolin, methionine, myrcene, myristic acid, naringenin, oleanolic acid, p-coumoric acid, p-hydroxy-benzoic acid, palmitic acid, rosmarinic acid, selenium, tannin, thymol, tryptophan, ursolic acid, vanillic acid.

I don’t know what any of that stuff is, but it all works together in mysterious and wonderful ways that are not fully understood by nutritionists and the marketing people at Shaklee or PepsiCo.   So, to stay healthy, and keep some extra money in your wallet, go straight to the fruit, vegetable, and natural juice sections of your local store and avoid the soft drink, snack and frozen food sections if you can.  Your body and bank account will love you for it.