They’re Magically Delicious

The idea behind this commercial is to relive one’s youth through cereal consumption. Do we really care that now it is “whole” wheat? It is still a huge sugar load that will eventually zap your energy when your blood sugar level crashes. The reason that so many dietitians advocate many meals a day, or substantial snacks, is that eating products like this lead to sugar highs and crashes. You need a snack at 11 and 3 to keep up your sugar level in the blood. But if you have meals higher in protein and fat, the meal stays with you. 

Experiment on yourself. Have a high cereal/carbohydrate breakfast and see how hungry you feel at 11. Then the next day have a higher fat breakfast like eggs with meat and see how you feel at 11. Most people will be less hungry. 

Why do the cereal companies want you to eat their product? Obviously they make money. 

Cereal	Per Box	Per Ounce
Quaker Oatmeal	2.19	12.2
Grape-Nuts	3.49	14.5
Pop-Tarts	2.19	15.6
Raisin Bran	3.43	17.2
Quaker Natural	5.29	18.0
Quaker Crunchy Corn Bran	2.99	18.7
Corn Flakes	3.39	18.8
Wheaties	3.99	22.2
Shredded Wheat	3.69	24.6
Cocoa Puffs	3.69	24.6
Froot Loops	3.69	24.6
Cheerios	3.79	25.3
Frosted Flakes	3.79	25.3
Corn Pops	4.07	27.1
Kix	4.99	27.7
Rice Krispies	3.79	28.1
Cinnamon Toast Crunch	4.25	30.4
Special K	3.79	31.6

http://www.amyx.org/wazfag/cereal.htm

Here is what the author of this chart had to say about boxed cereal costs:

Normally one would not eat these colors. How do the prices of cereal compare to other foods, like meat?  Well, whole chicken, at $1.29 per pound, is 8.1 cents per ounce; chuck roast, bone in, is 12.4 (both cheaper than Raisin Bran); New York steak is 40.6 cents per ounce; and top round (London broil) is 24.3.  I suppose we might expect a higher quality cut of meat to be more expensive than breakfast cereal, but it could come as a shock to learn that for the same price you pay for Cocoa Puffs or Froot Loops, you could be eating London broil.  Either that, or you can’t compare Raisin Bran and roast beef.

While these figures are from 1999, I doubt that the relative comparison has changed much. 

Try a little experiment the next time you go to the grocery store. Take a calculator, or use your phone and take the price of the boxed cereal and divide by the ounces—then multiple by 16. That is the price per pound. Then go to the meat department and compare. 

I did this in the mountain community where I live. The Lucky Charms cost $6.66 a pound. Hmm. 

The most expensive cuts of meat were 8 to 12 dollars per pound. Perfectly fine sirloin was $4.99, and you could get 2 pounds of chicken for $6. Or one could get 2 1/2 dozen eggs instead of one pound of that cereal. Lucky Charms were not a good value. 

No, this post is not about health, although I will tag it as health. I will also tag it as what this post is really about—propaganda. 

Whenever you see an ad, for anything, they are trying to persuade you to buy a product. Advertising is expensive. Only brands with high profit margins are going to be advertised by the manufacturer. (Of course there are ads by retailers that advertise a product at a cheap price to get you into the store. You can do well if you take an ad, buy those items in the ad that you need, and then leave the store. The store will lose money. Do this to every store and then shop for those items not on sale that you still need.)

Quit watching ad-supported entertainment as much as you can. It is not free, it costs you more than paying for your entertainment. You may think you are not being influenced, but you are. This is a part of leaving Babylon the Great. 

I will talk about propaganda this week. Tomorrow I will have an old video from the 50’s that talks about propaganda.

Would Jesus Eat at Chick-Fil-A?

Would Jesus have gone to eat at Chick-Fil-A to support the restaurant? 

Let’s look at their signature Chicken Sandwich. I must admit to my junk food jaded eyes it looks pretty good. 

440Calories 16gFat

2gFiber 6gSugars

30gProtein 3.5g Saturated Fat

0g Trans Fat 60mg Cholesterol

1400mg Sodium 42g Carbohydrates

15% Iron 15% Calcium

2% Vitamin A 2% Vitamin C

Now compare it to their healthy-looking sandwich, the chicken salad sandwich. 

510Calories 19gFat

5gFiber 12gSugars

29gProtein

3.5g Saturated Fat 0g Trans Fat

80mg Cholesterol 1120mg Sodium

55g Carbohydrates 20% Iron

15% Calcium 35% Vitamin A

6% Vitamin C

More fat, more sugar, more calories—but it looks so healthy! 

Would Jesus Eat At Chick-Fil-A?

Shall we talk about french fries and the obligatory 32 oz Coke? No, let’s not talk about that. It is too depressing.  

To be fair to Chick-Fil-A, they do seem to have more healthy choices than your average cash food, er, fast food restaurant, but are people ordering these healthier choices? 

Do a simple experiment. Go to any fast food franchise and look at the people. Look at the lady with the tattoos that needs to lose 100 lbs. And I bet the chair really groaned when that Big Guy sat in it! Then go to the bathroom and look in the mirror. Do you look much different? Even with the 20 lbs. I lost this last year, I don’t. 

For me it is Jack-in-the-Box. I remember going to the Jack-in-the-Box with my mom. This was before modern cash registers, so we would always add up the total ourselves, and for some reason our total was always less. Then we would drive to the ocean and watch the waves and the sea birds over Bird Rock as we ate. The little community we lived in was named after that rock. Ah, comfort food at its highest. Jesus might have enjoyed the view but ...

Would Jesus Eat At Chick-Fil-A?

I have not even talked about the mass production of chickens. They do not see the sky unless someone leaves a door open by mistake. They cut off their bills so they won’t peck each other in the unnatural crowding.They package the chicken manure into feed for the steer that became the hamburger you ate at McDonalds. We strip mine our soil to grow corn for the chickens. No, I will not talk about that

Would Jesus eat at Chick-Fil-A?

I guess that in a sense I am not talking about the same thing that is being discussed with regard to the Chick-Fil-A crisis. That is a part of my point. We dwell on the trivialities of who supports gay marriage and who doesn’t. I don’t. We then ignore the much more important issues, issues that we should be shouting from the house tops. This is how we are enslaved by what Revelation 17-18 calls Babylon the Great.  

We risk acting like the Pharisees of old that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 23:

²³ You Pharisees and teachers are show-offs, and you’re in for trouble! You give God a tenth of the spices from your garden, such as mint, dill, and cumin. Yet you neglect the more important matters of the Law, such as justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These are the important things you should have done, though you should not have left the others undone either. ²⁴ You blind leaders! You strain out a small fly but swallow a camel.

Yes, there is a real risk of religious freedom at stake, but how is that camel tasting? Probably better than that chicken sandwich you ate. 

Eat Food that will rot, and eat it before it does! I am not saying that Jesus would never eat at a fast food restaurant. I ate at Jack-in-the-Box yesterday. But after going home and looking up the calories in an ultimate cheeseburger—780, even without the fries—I think that I will be following my own advice even more than I thought when I first wrote this piece over a week ago. 

Would Jesus eat at Chick-Fil-A? I am not saying that every meal we eat needs to be a culinary, environmental, and nutritional masterpiece, but when society heads down the Babylon the Great path, all becomes corrupt. That includes our restaurants. Asking what would Jesus eat is an obvious question that does not get asked.

We all know the answer. We have always known the answer from our youngest days. The question is, what will we do about it? 

Omnivore's Dilemna

An Interesting talk about Pollan's book, the Omnivore's Dilemna. Note that I do not agree with him about carbohydrates. 

How Long Will You Live?

I found an interesting longevity calculator from Northwestern Mutual Life. Naturally they make more money if their policy holders live longer! But using the calculator was an interesting experience for me. Three modest changes in the assumptions led to an 8 year increase in my life expectancy—from 83 (what I am doing right now) to 91 years (three modest changes). What is good about the calculator is that you can contemplate changes and see how it affects your life expectancy.

Chose Your Buffet Foods Wisely! One category I played around with was weight. Weight does make a difference, but not as much as you would think. The difference between 235 and 200 in my life expectancy was only one year. This fits in well with other reading I have done. I think that the calculator assumes you are not diabetic. If you are, then the calculations would not be accurate, or are a general average. The main advantage in weight control is avoiding type 2 diabetes—a sure life expectancy reducer. This is why I plan to continue to lose weight. Not the fact that my High School reunion is on my mind! I have always had blood sugar problems, and it would be very easy for me to become diabetic if I am not careful.

Another category that I adjusted was food. Even though the suggested 5 fruits and vegetables daily is relatively easy, I doubt I am doing it. This makes a big difference in life expectancy—three more years. Personally I am close to this, 3 to 4 vegetable servings a day. How do you get to this goal and even surpass it? A large salad every day would be at least 2 servings of vegetables, maybe three depending on how you made it and not using iceberg lettuce too often. A serving of broccoli is 1/2 cup. So two servings is relatively easy to do. Remember that bread, potatoes and rice are not vegetables! I blogged previously about a woman who reversed MS by eating her vegetables!

Exercise by walking four times a week for 30 minutes added 5 years to my life expectancy. Exercising vigorously added only one more year to that total. This is because of the law of diminishing returns. Another way of looking at it is that the benefits of exercise are a bell curve with a rather steep curve. In other words, the benefits for even a modest increase in activity are substantial, but very rapidity the benefits of additional exercise decline. Too much exercise may even reduce life expectancy.

So if you want to live years longer, and have more “life in your years," (although this is a cliché, it is a true cliché ) imagine what your mother might say about your current lifestyle. You know what she will say: Turn off the TV, get off the couch and go outside and play, and eat your vegetables.

Why We Are Fat: It’s Taco Night at Arriba’s!

I have been reading Gary Taubes’ new low carb book Why We Get Fat, as I have started up my low carb diet again. There were some interesting quotes. 

In 1968, George McGovern, a U.S. senator, chaired a series of congressional hearings in which impoverished Americans testified to the difficulty of supplying nutritious meals to their families on limited incomes. But most of those who testified, as McGovern later recalled, were “vastly overweight.” This led one senior senator on his committee to say to him, “George, this is ridiculous. These people aren’t suffering from malnutrition. They’re all overweight.”

This is often the way we look at things. We see the "obvious" and do not stop to ask is it obvious? Taubes suggests that a high carbohydrate diet consisting of cheap foods will lead to obesity. The body will, when offered too many carbohydrates, put fat into the cells, even as it does this it will not nourish the rest of the body. There is an interesting variety of rat that genetically will store fat even when the researchers are starving them. When they die from this "experiment" they look obese.  

A Pima is Undergoing a Test To See How Fat He IsThe powers that be have run this same experiment on the Pima Indians of Arizona. When this tribe came in contact with the white race they were thin, lean, and healthy. But they lost their traditional foods and had to rely on the "generosity" of their conquerors, and the immediate result was one the the highest rates of diabetes among any group, and great obesity. They ate the food that the Bureau of Indian Affairs gave them or they starved. 

Why did this happen? Once  Again I quote from Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About it. 

With the California gold rush, the relative paradise of the Pima came to an end and, with it, their affluence. Anglo-Americans and Mexicans began settling in large numbers in the region. These newcomers—“some of the vilest specimens of humanity that the white race has produced,” wrote Russell—hunted the local game near to extinction, and diverted the Gila River water to irrigate their own fields at the expense of the Pimas’.

While being overweight may be a sign of American prosperity, the obesity of the poor is actually a sign of the opposite. Click here for another blogger's view of why the Pima people became fat. 

On a personal level what I am going to do is try to make sure I eat my vegetables—4 cups a day. I know that is a lot, and as much as I might wish it, bread and potatoes do not count. Since vegetables are not usually on the top of my ideal food list, it will be difficult. It will be particularly difficult to get any vegetables into my daughter. The salads I am currently eating every day (Day two so far … HaHa) puts me at about 40% of my goal.

Tonight dinner will be particularly difficult. It is taco night at Arriba's! Lettuce is a vegetable after all. 

Friday I will talk about the Pimas again. Something in the world affairs area that is "obvious," until you think about it.