FRUCTOSE-FREE WEEKEND WISHES 2007

I was at a grocery store yesterday looking for another brand of cereal to have on hand (see entry below, “Cereal Box Blues”) and came across Kellogg’s Smart Start Healthy Heart cereal. There were several different flavors, such as cinnamon raisin, original, etc. I read the list of ingredients and was appalled to see high fructose corn syrup in every single one of them. And they ALL had way too much sugar in general. I mean, the cinnamon raisin cereal lists sugar as the second ingredient, with high fructose corn syrup as fourth! I couldn’t believe it. High fructose corn syrup is just sooo bad for you.

 

I finally settled on Total Cranberry Crunch from General Mills. Not for me, but for my older son, the fruity flakey lover (or should I say the flakey fruity lover?). The box raves about how this cereal is an excellent source of whole grain, which all these cereals do. Whole grain is good, but sugar is listed second! It also contains corn syrup, brown sugar, and brown sugar syrup. But at least it does not contain high fructose corn syrup. It also brags that it’s low in fat and how “low-fat diets” are good, which I take issue with because what I have learned from being on a controlled-carb plan is that low-fat diets can be dangerous. Fat is good for you as long as it is real fat, not transfat. I have not been to the health food store recently but plan to check their packaged cereals. I still say plain, cooked oatmeal is the way to go. Oh, and then the checker hands me my receipt, along with a coupon for Post Selects cereal, including Blueberry Morning. Ack! I gave him an astonished look and said, “What, you didn’t read my blog???” (Not really.)

 

When I got home, I visited the Kellogg’s website where they tout their “nutritious breakfast foods”. They also say that this Smart Start Healthy Heart cereal and bars are certified by the American Heart Association! How can this organization endorse a cereal with all that sugar, including high fructose corn syrup??? No wonder people have such poor health in this country, with obesity and diabetes rampant. The website also gave a link to their SmartStart.com site with advice from a doctor who is director of the Heart Center for Women at Rush University Medical Center. How can she endorse this cereal? I would never eat that stuff!

 

So then I had to send emails to all these people connected to Kellogg’s, and I still have a couple of snail mail letters to send out, enclosing my blog entry about Cereal Box Blues along with my Somersize weight loss story. I could send them all kinds of other stuff, too, because I’m sure they think alcohol is fine in moderation, and endorse the Mediterranean Diet which includes WINE, but I won’t because of postage costs. I will be contacting General Mills as well, but will not be quite so upset at them because of their lack of high fructose corn syrup. Oh no, I just realized it might be included in some of their other cereal, which I did not check yet! Sigh…my work is never done. If only more people would read my blog, it would make my life a whole lot easier! But since I only have two readers, just the three of us know what is right.

 

In any case, I hope you have a good weekend. Eat well. Get plenty of rest. Exercise. Brush and floss. Drink lots of water. And whatever you do, please, for the love of all things holy, stay away from high fructose corn syrup!    ~Me

CEREAL BOX BLUES 2007

So I’m standing in the kitchen Sunday morning minding my own business, waiting for my oatmeal to finish cooking, when I notice an empty cereal box on the counter. It formerly held “Blueberry Morning” by Post Selects, which I had bought to have on hand for my sons. I never noticed the back of the box; I guess I just grabbed this brand because my older son told me he prefers “flaky cereal with fruit” and the cover photo looked like it matched that description. But now the back panel was facing me, and I saw that it advertised a “Bed and Breakfast Getaway with Sara Moulton!” I never heard of her, but the caption said she is a celebrity chef. She is shown wearing an apron and a big smile on her face, stirring something in a bowl. I continued to read, and saw that ten grand prize winners and their companion will get to stay at an upscale bread and breakfast, meet Sara and participate in a cooking demonstration, and attend a WINE PAIRING CLASS and cheese tasting. Aaarggghhh! Why did they have to ruin it all by having a WINE PAIRING CLASS??? I can’t even read a cereal box without having alcohol shoved in my face!

 

They obviously think wine is all elegant and glamorous, and that it is sophisticated to learn the right wine to pair with food. After all, it is sooo important to impress guests with your knowledge of booze at fancy dinner parties. Well there IS no “right wine!” It’s ALL WRONG! Alcohol is a toxic chemical that affects every hormone, poisons cells, has been linked to cancer, birth defects, heart, brain and liver damage and other bad things. What’s more, it is a mind-altering drug! A highly-addictive psychoactive drug! That alone makes it wrong! And they even have a PICTURE of wine on the box! Seriously! There is an illustration of a fancy bed and breakfast, superimposed with a bottle of wine, two wine glasses with booze in them, and a bunch of grapes. That is just terrible! No wonder so many people drink! As I’ve said before, we can hardly chastise our youth for underage drinking, when grown adults make alcohol look so fun, glamorous, romantic, sophisticated and acceptable. Adults should know better.

 

A wine pairing class. Oh brother. Why don’t they have a pot pairing class while they’re at it? As I’ve said before, when I used to chastise pot-smokers online, they would say all accusingly, “Yeah, but I bet you still drink your wine,” eager to prove me a hypocrite. They thought I was like “everybody else”, where I would “savor fine wine.” But I had to stress that of course I did not drink wine or any other mind-altering drug. I have no desire to, and I also know that just because alcohol is legal doesn’t make it right. And I bet Sara Moulton and any others involved in this wine pairing class would never smoke pot. Heavens no. “Drugs are bad” and everybody teaches their kids to never use them, right? Yet these grown adults think nothing of consuming a mind-altering drug in the form of alcohol. And they’ll probably use the excuse, “Jesus drank wine.” Like anybody drinks wine or other booze to be more like Jesus. Yeah, right.

 

When my dad passed away, I was cleaning out his house and found all this wine he and my mom used to drink before their health deteriorated. I threw it out! No way was I going to drink that stuff, and I don’t hate anybody enough to give them a toxic, highly-addictive mind-altering drug. So down the drain it all went. Cases of it, gone forever. And here this cereal company is TEACHING people to drink booze, making it sound all elegant. And then I spend hours writing to wineries to try and talk some sense into them and get them to realize how unhealthy and unwholesome alcohol is, and companies like this just help keep these wineries in business!

 

And THEN, I’m reading the list of ingredients in this Blueberry Morning stuff, and just about croaked. The second ingredient is SUGAR!!! First rice, then the sugar, then blueberries, and then HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP!! High fructose corn syrup is the worst form of sugar there is! Do an Internet search for this substance and you’ll find out for yourself! The list continues on with some whole grains (that’s good), and then MORE sugar (brown sugar), and later corn syrup.

 

At the bottom, in very small print, it says this cereal counts as 3 starch “dietary exchanges” based on guidelines by the American Diabetes Association and the American Dietetic Association. I can’t believe these organizations would approve of ANYBODY eating this cereal, let alone those with diabetes symptoms! This is terrible for you! If you don’t already have diabetes, this cereal could very well cause or contribute to it. Post, a division of Kraft Foods, touts that it is “dedicated to providing you and your family with quality nutritious products”, and the box makes it sound like this product is so wholesome, calling it a “sensible solution” because it has whole grain, is low fat and has no trans fat. Whole grain is a start, but still, the sugar and high fructose corn syrup just negates it all!

 

And they make it sound like fat makes you fat, as if fat is bad for you. This goes against everything I have learned about weight loss and good nutrition from being on Somersize, the controlled carb program I have followed since 2001. It is not fat and calories that cause weight gain, it is sugar! I lost weight by eating as much fat as I wanted. But I cut out sugar and refined carbs, which raise your insulin level causing fat to be stored. If I ate this cereal, my insulin level would spike and my cravings would be out of control. Heck, it’s bad enough just eating plain, whole-grain oatmeal! I have a big bowl of that most mornings, and I’m starving 45 minutes later. After it digests and I switch to proteins, fats and veggies for the rest of the day (as per Somersize guidelines) I do much better, feeling satisfied and with no cravings. 

 

So that’s what I get for innocently reading a cereal box. Now I have to hunt down email addresses and snail mail addresses, and send letters to chastise all these people for promoting and glorifying alcohol and for manufacturing and approving an unhealthy product. Like I don’t have enough people to chastise already. I tell ya, it’s hard work saving the world. If only I got paid.

 

The box has been taken apart and flattened, all ready for the recycling bin (see photo above). I will never buy this cereal again. I don’t even want my skinny sons eating it. The only blueberry morning I will ever have is with the plain, fresh, organic fruit.

Yahoo Diet Tips Spark Ire 2007

They spark my ire, that is. I get so tired of Yahoo running articles on their front page from “Hungry-Girl”, which recommend what they think are healthy, “low-fat, low-calorie treats” for losing weight. Their latest entry includes a list of such things as fat-free whipped topping, rice cakes, and fat-free and reduced-fat salad dressings. This goes against everything I have learned about weight loss and good nutrition. These are all foods I ate when I was trying to lose weight during my 30s and early 40s, which only caused me to gain weight and make my cravings go out of control. Intense exercise did not help. It wasn’t until I began the controlled-carb program Somersize in 2001 that I saw results. I learned a whole new way of cooking and eating, which reprogrammed my metabolism and eliminated cravings. I threw out all my fat-free and reduced fat products, including those tasteless, refined carb rice cakes!

I have learned that fat doesn’t make you fat, sugar does! Fat free and reduced-fat products replace the good, healthy fat with sugar, starches and chemicals which can cause weight gain and cravings. I would never use any fake food like that ever again. I use real cream, and full-fat dressing or olive oil on my salads, which is nothing BUT fat, and hardly low in calories. I slather my vegetables in butter. I eat as much fat as I want, including sour cream, cream cheese, mayo, butter, olive oil. And I never count calories. That's because I know that fat and calories do not cause weight gain, but imbalanced hormones do. Somersize has taught me how to eat in order to keep my insulin level in check, because fat cannot be stored unless insulin is present. And what raises insulin? Sugar! And refined carbs. So I avoid sugar for the most part, and adjust my intake of healthy, WHOLE grain carbs, such as oatmeal, according to my metabolism and activity level. This seems to work fine for me. No more fat-free dressings or whipped topping. And away with the rice cakes!

My Love Letter to Yahoo! Food 2007

"I am so furious I don't know where to begin. It is just terrible that you promote and glorify alcohol, running these articles on booze. You make wine appear all elegant and sophisticated, and have recipes on margaritas, etc. Yahoo news runs stories on how unhealthy alcohol is, and yet YOU promote and glorify it, setting a terrible example. Alcohol is a toxic chemical that has been linked to cancer, birth defects, brain, heart and liver damage and other bad things. What's more, it is a MIND-ALTERING DRUG!!! That alone is what makes it wrong! We as grown adults should know better than to use a psychoactive drug! Just because alcohol is legal doesn't make it right. You wouldn't smoke pot, would you? Of course not. We tell our kids to stay away from drugs forever, that we should find NATURAL ways to enjoy life, not by using a drug. But booze-drinkers are after the same effect. They are no better than the pot smokers, except they aren't breaking the law. We can hardly chastise our youth for underage drinking, when grown adults make alcohol look so fun, glamorous, romantic, sophisticated and acceptable. Yahoo is setting a terrible example by promoting and glorifying this toxic, psychoactive drug!! It just makes me so mad! And I spoke up about alcohol on a wine blog in March, and my long time account was REVOKED WITHOUT WARNING!!! I was trying to HELP people! And you just deleted me forever, all my saved emails, important information, my groups, my webpage, gone forever!!! And then just now I was on a food story about college freshman diet tips, and some guy named Andrew (comment 29) made a rude post about how people should just stop stuffing their face and get off their a-word (only he used the actual word). Here he can use a crude word and be so rude, and I suppose nothing will happen to him! Yet I try to help people realize that alcohol is unhealthy and causes cancer, etc. and my longtime account was revoked without warning! IT JUST ISN'T FAIR!!! And you keep running these stories about fat and calories, which are totally wrong. It is not fat and calories that cause weight gain, it is sugar and refined carbs! I eat as much fat as I want, and never count calories! That's because I follow a controlled carb program, Somersize, which keeps my insulin level in check. Fat cannot be stored unless insulin is present. Your articles are just so wrong, and I keep posting about that, and yet you keep running them. Check out my weight loss story on my homepage at www.geocities.com/cindybin46 which will explain all about fat and calories and how wrong your stories are. Anyway, I am just REALLY upset with Yahoo Food, how you promote and glorify alcohol and set a terrible example, and how people can say rude, mean things about overweight people and they even use the a-word and probably nothing will happen to them, and yet my longtime account gets revoked without warning. It is just SO UPSETTING. Please stop running these stories about booze! Your wine blogs, like that one with Bonnie, are terrible! They set a terrible example! Nobody should drink alcohol! Again, we can hardly chastise our youth for underage drinking, when grown adults make alcohol look so fun, glamorous, romantic, sophisticated and acceptable. Adults should know better! Set an example!!!"

Sometimes you just gotta be firm and give 'em some "tough love".