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SC State Fair 2009

Well, after a sucktacular couple of weeks full of Swine Flu, a broken (TWICE) heater, a crappy birthday (mine) and more bills than I had the money to pay, we had the State Fair.  I had bought the tickets and ride coupons way in advance (I AM the Thrifty Mom, after all) and we went last night.

Going to the state fair with no money is sort of depressing, but the kids had a ball and that is ALL that counts:

Daddy and Bitty Girl doing Cheesy Grins and THCTD looking lovely.

Fiver, Boy, and Bulk

Left to right: Bulk, Boy, THCTD, and Bitty on one of the most popular rides of the day.

Fiver and Bulk, not to big to enjoy one of the classics.

We stayed for hours - longer than we ever have with the kids - and still missed a bunch of the sites. But we all ate and the babies rode the rides and we were pretty tired and happy at the finish.

Oh and FWIW, just between you and me and the goal post, the new parking is the stupidest waste of space and money I have ever seen. It's inefficient and impractical. Gamecock Money Making Machine FAIL.

Today on the "Diet DUH" report:

"Doctor's efforts to fight childhood obesity not working."

YA THINK?

Duh-huh, people.  No shit, Sherlock.

"FRIDAY, Sept. 4 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers are recommending that officials in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia rethink their efforts to combat obesity in children because the current strategies -- emphasizing healthy diets and exercise -- aren't working.



In a study released online Sept. 4 in BMJ, Australian researchers followed more than 250 overweight and mildly obese Australian children who visited their general practitioners between 2005 and 2006. A total of 139 were given counseling over three months about changing their eating habits and increasing exercise; the other 119 did not get such counseling.


Parents said the kids who received counseling drank fewer soft drinks, but they didn't eat more fruit or vegetables or less fat, and they didn't lose significant amounts of weight.


The researchers reported that brief, physician-led intervention produced no long-term improvement in body mass index, physical activity or nutrition habits.


The counseling isn't harmful, the study authors noted, but it doesn't seem to work and is expensive.

"Resources may be better divided between primary prevention at the community and population levels, and enhancement of clinical treatment options for children with established obesity," the researchers concluded."

Number one, O great medical / dietary community, and for the thousandth time, DIETARY FAT ISNT THE PROBLEM. So thank goodness they didn't eat less fat.

Number two, (and here's the 'duh' bit) YOU'RE TALKING TO THE WRONG PEOPLE, PEOPLE!

(Sorry to shout, but this is just so stupid.)

Let me go ahead and say this, for the record. It's the cure for childhood obesity. Srsly. What a revelation and I'm sharing it with you, the medical community!  I'll even type ... really ... slowly ... so ... you .... can ... get ...it.

Ready?

Blue's Cure For The Childhood Obesity Epidemic:

>> PARENTING <<

Yup.  That's it. That's all.

Don't speak to the kids. What kid listens to anything a random grown up has to say anyway?  Don't expect the community to do something miraculous and cure obesity.  Certainly don't look to the government!

No. Obesity begins at home.

Starting with what Mommy stuffs in her face whilst pregnant (Krispy Kreme anyone?), to what she offers baby the day he's born (breast milk which is naturally packed with nutrients and fats [milkfat] and very low in sugars [lactose]?  Or formula which is loaded with soy, grains, and sugar [corn syrup]?

Parents decide whether they will feed their babies vegetables first or just start with the sweet fruits ("because she loves them and eats so well when we feed her peaches 3 times a day!" They decide whether to only put milk or water in the bottle or just say "Forget it!  He's crying and the juice always settles him down!"

Parents decide whether to make turkey and cheese sandwiches on whole wheat with carrot sticks or whether to just toss a Lunchable and a sports drink in their kid's book bag, or worse, just let them eat the swill that the school serves (hey high fructose corn syrup sauce katsup is a vegetable, right?)

Wake up, world. Snap out of it, medical community. Open your eyes, dieticians.

Parenting can END childhood obesity.

We just have to tell parents the truth. Let them know what sort of crap they're feeding their kids. Educate the public on the dangers of soy and seed oils and HFCS.  Help them fight the food industry and the government nutrition standards and demand good food in the stores.

What do you think?  Is that all it takes?  Just parents stepping up?  What are your suggestions for ending / fighting childhood obesity? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Morning Rant: Sunday coupons and crap overload

Right. Quickie this a.m. (I have 6 minutes before I have to make breakfast for the Evil Geniuslets, lol)

I just HAD to share this with you:

Like all good thrifty / frugal people I clip coupons. Honestly though, I don't get too many and here's why: store brands are just as good 99% of the time and are streets cheaper than name brand.

BUT, we do still have a v. few name brands that we cling to. Bodog, hanging grimly on to his upper-middle-class suburban upbringing, where they buy ONLY name brands, still insists on certain ones.  Even I share one or two.  Caffeine Free Diet Coke is one. Bodog and I have never found any store brand that can exactly match the taste. 

So I carefully go though all of the inserts in the Sunday paper with my eyes peeled for usable coups (and price matches since I shop at WalMart where they'll match any competator's price, yeah!)

Well, every Sunday I have the same brain explosion and vow to blog about it, and this is the Sunday I actually do it!  Here's the crap I find every week-end in the sales papers:

Death-By-Carbohydrate foods; sugar laden cereals ("Now provides fiber!" like that's gonna cancel out the astronomical sugar/carb content and chemicals and dyes.); "diet" FrankenFoods; hydrogenated vegetable oils masqerading as food ("Fresh buttery taste!" Why not just eat butter, you imbeciles?); and adverts for restaurants that make you store glucose by just reading them ("Never ending pasta bowl"?!  Let's waddle on over! Just stick a knife in your heart right now!  It'll save the years on double hand-fulls of meds and a motorised chair cuz you're so fat and sick you can't walk! "Includes unlimited breadsticks!" Ugh! )

Also featured are loads of "comfort foods" (I HATE that term. Food does not comfort me. I don't require food to give me pleasure or make me feel happy or safe. I require food to sustain me. My loved ones comfort me; my home, my animals, my books, etc, etc.  Food?  Nope. It's just freakin' food, people.  I enjoy the heck out of it, but I don't have an emotional attachment to it. Sorry!)

ANYway ... cookie dough, brownie mix, icing, microwave chocolate flavoured crap, ice cream, and on and on.  It makes me slightly queasy to look at all of it.

But the worst is the dog food. By a long shot.  Teensy individual portion servings for teensy overindulged dogs and all designed to look like human food. As a matter of fact, the dog food FrankenCrap looks better than the frozen human food FrankenCrap ... and you know what?  They both have the same ingredients. 

Now, we know that we have existed in approximately our current form for about 2 million years. So have dogs via wolves. What did we eat?  Meat, eggs, fruit, veg, seeds, nuts, and insects.  What did wolves eat?  Meat.  Period.  I'm sure they wouldn't turn down a found broken egg or a juicy injured insect, but otherwise: meat.

So why the bloody blue hell is there a dogfood* with "delicious ingredients like orzo, baby spinach, and tomatoes"?!

Because there are credulous, besotted dog owners out there who want FiFi to eat what Mummy eats, yes she does! Mummy loves her Feefulls, doesn't she? Yes she does, and wants her to have yummy noms in her tums tums!

Sick yet?  I am. And the worst part is, so is FiFi. Increasingly, our beloved pets are suffering from the same high carb/ high sugar induced diseases that we are: obesity, heart disease, diabetes.  Did you see how well I did the baby talk?  That's because I am the besotted owner of 6 rescued dogs (yes, I said SIX, and 4 cats!)  and also want my animals to get the very best. Fortunately I cannot afford to buy gormet dogfood, but unfortunately that means I'm unable to feed my dogs and cats what they were meant to eat: raw meat.  I do my best by supplimenting all the fat, grease, eggs, and leftover meat I can, though.

Do you find the Sunday inserts a smorgasboard of obesity and ill-health -inducing crap, or is it just me?  Do folks not know how bad this stuff is for them?  Do they not care?  Do they know they are ruining their animal's health as well?  How many absurdly fat dogs and cats have you seen?

GAH!


*This dogfood is Cesar Bistro, BTW. Nothing against this company, they're just catering to people who actually have no idea that the $30/bag premium gormet dry dogfood that they buy is made of corn and soybeans. I have never seen a wolf grazing in a corn field. Ever.

How about we nip it in the bud?

Great article in the NY Times by an overweight doctor struggling to advise an overweight patient.

It's frank and up front about the awkward juxtaposition of a person reciting the same old "eat less, move more" rhetoric when that person clearly is either not following his own advice or - surprise, surprise - that advice is complete crap.

Charles Washington from Zeroing in on Health did a better job than I ever could of stating what is obvious to any of us low-carbers: stop the dogma and advise the slashing of sugars/starches/carbs.  Instead, these doctors not only follow the same old useless advice, but continue to espouse it knowing, from their own experience, that it doesn't work (obviously). Charles Washington says:

"This advice should not be based solely on the doctor’s experience. It should be based on an understanding of the science of metabolic syndrome and the advice of Dr. Spock and those who came before just 50 years ago. Carbohydrates are the key to fattening and if one wants to avoid weight gain, then they must decrease carbohydrate consumption. They used to know and teach this until Ancel Keys came along with his total cholesterol nonsense. Now, doctors must stand confused in front of their patients with only their experience to rely on. Is it any wonder that the patients glaze over? I think it’s only right. If an obese person came up to me trying to tell me about the unhealthiness of my diet, I would have to laugh. I mean, really."

Indeed.  My husband's own cardiologist* is an enormous bloke, at least 30lbs overweight.  While I don't in any way think that this affects his abilities as a doctor - I think he's a fine doctor and I love him as a person - but it does skew any diet advice he gives.  The nutritionist or dietitian or whatever she was at the hospital (the HEART hospital) was as round as a bagel and sipping an iced something crappy from Starbucks when she v. seriously advised me to get Bodog on a low fat diet "right away" and cut out all those nasty saturated fats that were damaging his heart.

I'm pretty sure his welcome home supper was two 1/4lb ground beef patties, fried in bacon grease and topped with cheese and chili. 

Eight months later Bodog's blood pressure and cholesterol is perfect and he's lost 30lbs. The sheaf of low-fat diet propaganda lined the budgie's cage (crap on crap, perfect!) and he has learned to live on less than 80g of carbs a day. Erm ... my husband, not the budgie, lol!


But overweight doctors aside, the patient in the article was a child, an 8 year old, and so of course that got me into Mommy Mode.  My thing is this: how can we avoid having the doctor even have to discuss diets with our children?  Answer: don't let our kids get overweight in the first place.

Can it be done?  One of the doctors in the article invoked a "omg been there, done that" response in me:

"But Dr. (Julie C.) Lumeng has struggled with her own weight — she says she lost 50 pounds in the past year after a gestational diabetes scare — and she understands how hard it is to translate her own beliefs into daily practice. When she gets home from a long day at work, she told me, she knows she really ought to tell her three children to turn off the television and ride their bikes, while she is cooking broccoli and salmon for dinner.

“I know it all, I do research in this,” she went on. “But in the moment I’m exhausted, it’s been a long day at work, everyone’s sort of irritable. You can know what you need to do, but when the moment comes ... .”"

As a mom I can SO identify with this!  Many many times I am tired, irritated, and have a dozen things unfinished to do in the house or online for my business and it's supper time. Throw in the fact that I've personally cooked a hot healthy breakfast, dinner, and tea for these kids and the urge to blow off supper (I dunno, popsicles as a meal? Popsicles have vitamins and stuffs, right?) grows strong like the force.

But this is where we moms must show our mettle. This is our Normandy Beach of our children's diet.  This is where we need to pull up our big girl underpants and say: "No. No I will not feed my child a microwave kids meal, or a fast food kids meal, filled with chemicals, sugar, soy, and carbohydrates!  Even two slices of whole wheat bread with plain turkey and cheese is preferable."  We also need to teach our kids to eat good foods.  If you wail that your toddler won't eat wheat bread or turkey or cheese and will only eat Frankenchicken nuggets and mac and orangefakesauce so that's why that's all you serve him, well, mommy epic FAIL.

They won't starve themselves. No really, they won't.  It's our responsibility to put good food on the table in front of our children.  It might take them 20 times of taking one bite per meal to learn to like something but we must do it.

The basic gist is this: an overweight 8 year old didn't take her own money down to the Micky Ds and gorge on Big Macs. She didn't do this. Her momma did.

There's nothing in the world wrong with fast food every now and again, or even sweet treats (popsicles!), on occasion, but the fact is that WE control what our young kids eat.  The opening lines of the article struck me as terribly, terribly sad:

"The mother came out of the exam room to intercept me: she knew I would probably have to talk to her daughter about how she was gaining weight, she said, but please don’t use the word “fat,” or even “overweight.” Don’t make her feel bad about herself. "

She allowed her daughter to get fat!  And only now is she concerned about her self image?  A bit late for that.  I never, NEVER want to be in the situation where my baby girl's self confidence is weakened by something I DID TO HER.

Nuff said.

*For anyone who hasn't been following my blog, my husband, Bodog, a type 1 diabetic, had a heart attack last November (at the age of 34) and had to get 2 stents in his heart.

It's really simple, duh.

Brilliant, brilliant video on what I rant about ALL the time: 



It is just idiocy to believe "the machine" and actually buy that processed, packaged, de-fatted, reduced, enhanced, fortified, CRAP is better for you than Just.  Plain.  Food.

Use your brains, people.

Many thanks to Zen To Fitness and his great post on how to nourish the body wherin he had this vid.

Today's funny

Obviously a BritCom (a genre of which I am inordinately fond). I had to stop it and laugh.

"Meat eater":