Happy Meals Are Bad, Twinkies Are Good: Welcome to the Food Wars

Or make them fat. Whatever.

How could something so happy - it's even got happy in the name! - cause so much angst? By now you've certainly heard about San Francisco banning the McDonald's Happy Meal. (Note: they actually just banned the toy from being included in meals that don't meet certain nutritional criteria but as a mother of four I can tell you that's pretty much the same thing.) You've probably also heard that a judge overturned the ban. The war on Happy Meals has grown pretty heated in the past couple of weeks and naturally, this battle has filtered down to the fitness blog world.

Last week, MizFit headed up Team Happy Meals (which, if you read her post, is not actually pro-junk food but rather pro-parental responsibility.) In the other corner, Workout Mommy started up Team Healthy Meals for all the reasons you'd expect. Would you rather be healthy or happy, people?! Me, I can't decide.

Against the ban: If you ban the Happy Meal toy kids can still get their fix (and parents their 30 minutes of playland-induced peace) by walking across the street to a variety of other establishments. There is no shortage of junk food or cheap, plastic, movie tie-in crap in this country.

Pro ban: my kids only want the Happy Meal for the toy. They will actually throw their chicken nuggets in the garbage. I know. (I circumvented this wasteful ritual by going to the thrift store and buying a huge bag of old Happy Meal toys for 1$ and then handing them out to the kids for various reasons like pooping in the potty rather than just in the general vicinity, sharing their gum with their brothers even if it was prechewed and sometimes just as a bribe to be quiet and let mommy poop on her potty and chew her own gum in peace.) So if you ban the toy my kids will never want the chicken nuggets or junior cheeseburger all on their own - yay!

Pro: I can't even remember the last time we went to McDonald's - we generally save the Golden Arches for long road trips where we stop every few hours to make an offering at the shrine of the man who invented the indoor playland, unsung hero that he is. So what do I care if they ban them or not?

Against: We have another long road trip in our future. Probably many. A free toy (even if I think it is the lamest thing ever) + a slide that smells like urine = toddler joy. God bless Ronald.

Pro: Maybe this is the kick in the pants fast food establishments needed to offer healthier choices for kids.

Against: They already do, people just don't buy them.

Against: Where does the legislation stop? We've talked before about the slippery slope of letting the government define what is and is not "healthy" food.

Pro: It's more of a gesture, a statement against childhood obesity, than anything else. We have to draw the line in the sand somewhere, right?

Against: Do we really want to make Happy Meals the forbidden fruit?

Against: Legislation targeted at fast food usually affects poor people disproportionally.

Against: It's the parent's job to decide what to feed their children and where to spend their money.

Pro: Perhaps this will spark some conversation about how to better educate parents and children about healthy eating.

Against: Children have to learn sometime how to make healthy choices and they're not going to learn that skill by having some junk food randomly banned. Less than healthy food abounds and it is okay to eat it sometimes, just not all the time.

Pro: So use this new law as a teaching tool!

Pro: This kind of food is addicting. Literally. Plus those things are so processed they don't even rot! So we need to do anything we can to keep it out of the hands of little bodies that are still forming neural pathways (unlike my brain which is shedding neurons by the second - every time I have to listen to the Animaniacs song another cell dies).

Against: So then this law is a piddly drop in the bucket - go big or go home! Hello, school lunches!

Against: Europe has tons of McDonald's (I know, I've seen them!) and Europeans are notoriously Not Fat.

Pro: Really? You know you've reached the end of the debate when someone throws in the everything-is-better-in-Europe argument.

ANYHOW. It's been a long day that started with the kids whining about having to eat whole-wheat chocolate zucchini muffins for breakfast (despite the name, they actually taste amazing) and ended with a fist fight that left two of them bloody and the baby screaming just because she figures why not, that's just what people do in our house. So help my poor addled brain decide.

Oh, and just in case your brain hasn't exploded yet, check out this new study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (see - you already know it's going to be good because it's European!) that showed that obese children ate more whole grains, fruits, vegetables and lean meats than their slim counterparts. According to the researchers, it's not what you eat but rather how good you are at portion control. Twinkie diet anyone?? (Cliff notes version: Professor lost 27 pounds by eating mostly snack cakes. AND his blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides all went down.)

Are you in favor of legislation that would make junk food harder to buy? Does it make a difference if the food is intended for and marketed to, children? What do you make of the Norwegian study results? Did the Twinkie Diet blow your mind as much as it did mine?

Marie Claire Says TV Show about "Fatties" is Socially Irresponsible

This Dr. Phil poster may be a joke but many people are serious about their cruel comments.

Marie Claire has done it again! After the article that rocked the food-blogging world (which was nasty, sneaky and unfair... and also made some very valid points that I am still thinking about) last month, the lady mag is back in fine foot-in-mouth form with a new article titled "Should Fatties Get a Room (Even on TV)?" that claims to explore whether programming starring happy fat people is "disturbing" and "implicitly promoting obesity." Their unsurprising fashion-mag answer: yes and yes. (Which I find hilariously ironic considering their main complaint about the food bloggers is that they promote unhealthy ideals with their obsessive food restriction and exercise. Apparently you can't win unless you spring forth from the womb perfectly formed.)

I don't watch TV. If you didn't know that explicitly you have probably guessed it from how culturally clueless I am. And yet I do remember one thing from hazy college TV-show obsessed days (Holla Felicity and America's Next Top Model!) and that is this: You don't mess with Sookie. Gilmore Girls was brilliant and not just because I couldn't decide who I wanted to be more - Alexis Bledel or her "mom" Lauren Graham as they were both so witty and adorable. All of the characters on the show were funny, relatable and entertaining. One of the standouts on the show Sookie, played by Melissa McCarthy, who was a chef, a spitfire of a best friend and a comedienne in her own right. Oh and did I mention she was a bit chubby?

Well the (un-Kirstie Alley) fat actress has a new show out called "Mike & Molly" about an overweight couple who meets at Overeaters Anonymous and falls in love. Typical schlocky sitcom hijinks ensue and the show would probably have barely shown up on the radar if it were not for Marie Claire blogger Maura Kelly's post on how a show featuring two obese people in love is disgusting. In her own words, "So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room - just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair."

Wow, did she really just say that out loud? Yep. And she continues with the tired I-have-a-fat/gay/black/grinder monkey for a friend trope, "Now, don't go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump. I'm not some size-ist jerk. And I also know how tough it can be for truly heavy people to psych themselves up for the long process of slimming down. (For instance, the overweight maintenance guy at my gym has talked to me a little bit about how it seems worthless for him to even try working out, because he's been heavy for as long as he can remember.)"

Oh well if you know a fat janitor then it's totally okay! She goes on to tell obese people that if they just try hard enough they can lose the weight writing, "But ... I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It's something they can change, if only they put their minds to it." and then giving overly simplistic, albeit true tips like "eat more fresh and unprocessed foods" and "visit your local YMCA." Yes, it really is that bad.

But now that I've pointed out the egregious error - and it is as easy as falling of the curb to jump on Kelly, heck half the Internet is (the other half is too busy arguing over whether Christine O'Donnell is a moronic constitutional illiterate or a nuanced legal genius) - I feel inclined to point out that she's really not the problem. Many, many people feel this way. Remember Anna Wintour being horrified at the Mall of America not by the fact that Forever 21 sits right next to Prada but because she thinks all Midwesterners look like "little houses"? Most people just don't say it out loud. Kelly is the whipping girl because she wrote it in black and white (and doesn't have the entire fashion world at her back).

Jezebel points out that, to her credit, Kelly tries to atone in the comments by saying her remarks are lingering effects of her previous history of anorexia. "Though I don't think of myself as anorexic any more, being freaked out by obesity to the insensitive, even cruel, point that I was is certainly a vestige of the anorexic mindset; maybe so was being righteous about how easy it is to lose weight. (Because once I lost an extreme amount of weight, of course—about half my body weight—etc.)." I can personally attest to the mental havoc that eating disorders wreak. Not only do you have no concept of what you as a person look like, you really don't see other people accurately either. And the crazy doesn't go away just because you start eating again.

So I don't fault her for thinking these thoughts - she is just parroting the cultural zeitgeist of body-hate - but I think we should focus on the larger issue of challenging the validity of these thoughts. For me I don't care whether or not obese people are "gross" to watch kiss or more expensive to insure or are taking up two airplane seats or are riding zebras in Kenya whilst singing "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts." The point for me is that they are people before they are anything else. And all people, whether they be obese or elderly or handicapped or colicky infants or felons or rogue inflatable-slide-riding flight attendants, deserve to be treated with respect and kindness.

How do you feel about a TV show starring two happy obese people? What do you think of Kelly's take on it? Is her history of an eating disorder a valid mea culpa?

Should You be Able to Buy Soda on Food Stamps?

At first blush the proposed ban in New York City on using food stamps to buy soda seemed like an excellent idea to me. I haven't drank a soda in years. I haven't missed it either - while ice cream is the monkey on my back, for whatever reason soda was a piece of cake (har!) to give up. Thanks to McD's introducing milk into their Happy Meals, my kids only drink soda at the odd birthday party or when Grandma sneaks it to them. Even my husband knows better than to bring it into the house (although I do know where his private stash of bottled rootbeer is). Soda is, and I'm guessing about 99% of people will agree with me, not healthy.

And then a pundit on NPR posed the question, "First trans fats, then soda - what next?" What next, indeed. One man's healthy is another man's horrible. Once you get beyond the basic no-nos of Twinkies and diet Coke, the phrase "health food" becomes a Rorshach test of people's deepest beliefs. Don't believe me? Put a militant vegan and a paleo adherent in the same room. Very quickly there will be no more talk of actual foodstuffs but a whole lot of epithets, judgments, research studies and moralizing getting thrown around. I've seen some of the nicest, sweetest people completely lose their nut when their dietary habits are called into question.

A food philosophy - diet is so gauche! - is the new religion. Telling people how you found Jesus in the paint on your ceiling is the surest way to get yourself blackballed from all future parties but go on a 30-minute explanation of how you have been shooting up pregnant-lady urine to lose weight and everyone is all ears. Catechism over canapes is boring but critiquing what's in the canapes? It's practically an Olympic event.

So who gets to make the rules about what's healthy? Up until now it's been a pretty personal decision. You decide for yourself and while you may evangelize, other people still have the right to ignore you and snarf their gas station food. But once you introduce legislation - whether it be in the form of an added tax (like the one proposed for soda last year), a healthy rating sticker applied to foods (a la broccoli is a 10 and white bread is a 1), or a subsidy for certain farmers - then somebody, somewhere is going to have to make the call on what's "good" and what's "bad." This could get as sticky as a push-pop on a hot day.

Besides the obvious hot spots of meat and processed sugar, consider something as simple as the tomato. Totally good for you right? It has all that lycopene that's so good for your prostate! (Not that I have a prostate but I've heard they're handy.) And yet it's also classified as a nightshade which, along with potatoes, peppers and eggplants, are considered toxic by many health gurus. Toxic? Tomatoes?! While this is just one example of the confusion over the definition of "healthy" - and before I scare you off spaghetti sauce for the rest of your life, check out this more nuanced discussion of the nightshade issue in this great article from Mark's Daily Apple - many more abound.

I'm on the fence, however, regarding the current pending legislation proposed by Mayor Bloomberg which would forbid food stamp recipients from using the stamps to purchase soda and other sugary drinks. On one hand, soda is bad for you and lower-income people have a higher risk of obesity already. Not to mention that the idea is hardly novel: having worked a stint as a cashier in a grocery store, I'm well aware that food stamps already have some limitations - you can't buy alcohol, tobacco or paper goods. Fair enough, right? But you also can't purchase "prepared food that is designed to be eaten in the store" (so no green salad from the deli) nor can you get vitamins, including pre-natals. On the other hand, soda is hardly harmful on the scale of alcohol or tobacco (although I can feel some people's fingers itching to argue this point with me right now - bring it on in the comments!) and if you're going to ban soda for it's high content of sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup (the Freddie Kruger of sweeteners, that is if he wore one of those corn hats you get at the State Fair) then you probably ought to ban things like candy, barbecue sauce and - oh, yes - sports drinks. One serving of regular Gatorade has 29.5 grams of sugar.

In an online poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal, out of 1200 respondents 73.8% supported the pending ban. Apparently the will of the voting public has been spoken (although, of course, that can't be said for sure until an actual vote takes place). I wonder if it would be different though if the ban on sugary sodas were to be extended to all citizens, and not just those on the welfare end?

What's your take: should people on food stamps be banned from using them to buy soda? Would you support a tax on "unhealthy" foods? And - the important question of the day - what do you call it - soda, pop, soda pop, or Coke?

New Trend: Texting While Running

American racers are sissies, in Europe they are way less lax on enforcement. "Oh hai! I will teach you to look where you are running - buttock, say hello to my two pointy friends!"

"Don't forget to follow my race tweets!!" my friend* texted me on the eve of her big race. The Twin Cities Marathon was yesterday - huge props to all my peeps who ran it! (Way to go, Tracey - her first one!! And Bill, Shannon and Meghan!) - but I figured she was kidding. Who tweets while running a marathon? Remembering the last time I ran farther than 20 miles (um, over two years ago, sigh), I was a) too exhausted to form a coherent post and b) so sweaty that had I even had my phone on me I would have fumbled it through my slippery hands and drop-kicked it over the finish line.

So imagine my surprise when my phone chimed with an announcement from her at the start line. Well, I figured, she's not running yet. But then mile marker two brought a hot foot alert. The aid stations were serving Powerade in red cups, just in case you are curious. Possible blister at mile 14. Definite blister at 16. Cramp at 17. Ominously (or mercifully?) that was the last text I got from her. While the blow-by-blow was very entertaining for me, as it went on I began to worry about her safety on the race course. Twin Cities is pretty strict - they won't even let you use your iPod on the course out of concern for the safety of all the runners - so I can only imagine what they'd do if they caught you texting. In other races, I've heard many a runner complain about getting veered into by electronically distracted racers. Of course the complainant is generally sporting white earbuds but that's another issue I suppose.

Just walking while texting is risky - you may remember the 15-year-old girl who walked into an open manhole in Long Island whilst texting. Plenty of us have walked into walls, fallen off curbs, and apologized to a mannequin after bumping into it in the mall, thanks to walking and texting. (Yeah, that last one was me. It was super embarrassing.) So if walking and thumb-typing is that tricky, it's a miracle more runners haven't been injured fussing with their gadgetry.

And it's not just phones that are the issue. I once tripped over a tree root and did one of those face-plant prat falls in the dirt thanks to messing with the readout on my heart rate monitor. (It said I was flat-lining! Clearly an emergency!) Thanks to iPods, GPS systems, heart rate monitors and, yes, phones, runners have a million reasons to take their attention off the road. But is it worth it?

For myself, running without music is pure agony. I better either have a friend loaded with juicy gossip or an mp3 player loaded with a heart-pounding playlist to get me through my long runs. (Side note: I can walk for hours listening to podcasts but I can't run to them. Also, I can't stand books on tape. The people read.... so.... slow.... that I just want to grab them by the lips and scream, "Talk like a normal human, not a robot!") I also generally wear my heart rate monitor. And if I were rich enough to have a Garmin I'd darn sure be wearing that bad boy too. But all of those are, in theory anyhow, "set it and forget it" (I'm the Ron Popeil of fitness!) gadgets. Properly set up you shouldn't have to mess with those for the duration of your run. Texting on your phone, however, is a different story.

What's your opinion on texting while running? Have you ever fallen in a manhole cover? Anyone else totally unable to run without music? 'Fess up: How much of a techno-geek are you on your runs? (Anyone else think people on books-on-CD read too slowly??)

*Details have been changed to protect the, er, innocent.

In Search of a Cape: This Year's Most Ridiculous Halloween Costumes

What are you going to be for Halloween this year? I know, I know we're still more than a month out but I've got the annual Turboween coming up! It may possibly be my most favorite Turbo workout of the year. This year the theme is "Superheroes" and while my house is replete with capes they all kind of smell like pee or have peanut butter stuck to them. Or both. So I'm on the hunt for the perfect Superhero-ine costume* (that will still let me crescent kick and smash heads into my knee.) In addition, the Gym Buddies and I are running in this year's Monster Dash and of course we are dressing up for that too which means we need costumes we can run 10 miles in without chafing.

Beginning my search today, I immediately ran up against the first problem of female costumes: The Slut Factor. The Slut-o-ween phenomenon - the one night of the year when all good girls (and nurses and maids and cops and even feminine hygiene products) go bad - has been well documented. And yet I was still surprised by this year's crop of ever more ridiculous costumes. So here are my Top Ten Halloween Costumes That Should Not Exist:

1. Elmo: This little cutie lives on Sesame Street, is voiced by a man, and whose sole talent consists of playing Jingle Bells over and over on a PlaySkool piano. What part of that screams sex pot?

2. Ditto for Big Bird here. I actually saw this one in the flesh (feathers?) at Target and it is twice as horrifying in real life. And why is this woman so insanely happy when Big Bird is apparently eating her head?

Image Source: Buzzfeed

3. While we're cannabalizing children's shows, how about this Peanuts costume that skipped right over Uncanny Valley to fall straight into Creepy Caldera. But hey, at least they didn't try and sex her up.

Image source: Spirit halloween

4. Ask yourself: What is the least sexy animal out there? A cold fish. Although I am left wondering why the model has no googley eyes on her anywhere.

Image Source: Buzzfeed

5. Mrs. Potato head takes care of that dilemma by placing the eyes right where they should be: on a woman's breasts. Totally removes the age-old male quandary of where to look when addressing females. Win!

Image Source: Buzzfeed

6. This one, creatively titled "Club skirt and top" loses on two counts: First, you can't call it a skirt if you can see crotch and second, the only girls who would be interested in wearing this would be girls who go to clubs and reason would say they wouldn't need to shell out 39.99$ when they already own this in 3 different colors. Also as lame: "lingerie model."

Image Source: Zoogster

7. Back to children's items that have no business being sexy: the blue crayon! (Also available in pink!) What I wouldn't give to have been a fly on the wall for that meeting. "Well team, you know what really gets me turned on? A nice stick of colored wax... yeah." Probably the same kid who sniffed the dry erase markers during recess.

Image source: Spirit halloween

8. This costume wouldn't be entirely ridiculous if it weren't for one fatal flaw: it doesn't come with roller skates. So basically if you wear this, you're just a chick in seasonally inappropriate beach wear. Also, don't real "Sexy Roller Derby Girl"s have much better costumes than this? Juliette Lewis would muscle this girl into a locker and leave her there. I've seen Whip It.

Image Source: Zoogster

9. Optimus Prime is a) A dude b) A robot and c) Transforms into a plane (or a car or something - haven't seen that movie). The only thing this costume transforms is her shin guards... into metal knee highs. Two adolescent male fantasies colliding rarely turns out well.

Image source: Spirit halloween

10. The most ridiculous Halloween costume of 2010 has tobe this "Girl in Skintight Dress" costume. Come on, you're not even trying now! Aren't you at least supposed to put on some mouse ears or something? Slap Franklin D. Roosevelt's visage over your navel and call yourself a dime? At least put on an ankle monitoring bracelet and go as Lindsey Lohan!

Image Source: Zoogster

This is nothing super nor heroic in any permutation of hooker (is it crazy that I'm pretty sure someone's going to challenge that assertion?) so what's a cape-tastic babe to do? Any suggestions for me? Have you ever ran a race in costume? What's the most ridiculous Halloween costume you've seen?

*I am a total Grinch when it comes to Halloween. I hate being scared and I hate gore. So that rules out 90% of adult All Hallow's Eve activities. That leaves me dressing myself up and dressing little kids up. And I love it!

Adderall Makes You Crazy (The Lindsay Lohan Cautionary Tale)

Normal. It's not a word I'm used to using in regards to Lindsay Lohan. From the very beginning she has been many things - oh how I adored her as the red-haired imp on The Parent Trap, Culottes Edition - but she has never been normal. Currently, for those of you keeping tabs on the fallen princess, she just finished serving jail time for missing her alcohol classes and went directly to rehab (do not pass Hollywood & Vine, do not snort $200). She was supposed to spend 90 days in rehab but doctors at the UCLA center have decided that she might not be an addict after all, despite all the photographic and textual evidence of her looking inebriated and/or high as she gets DUIs and has raging public fights with her exes on Twitter. (Not that I'm judging - had Twitter been around during my break-up/make-up years I have no doubt I would have leveraged it to it's maximum cringe-inducing potential. I love me a good public scene.) No, it appears her problems with manic behavior, impulsivity, sleep disturbances and even alcoholism, are all symptoms of a psychosis brought on by addiction to the AD/HD drug Adderall. And in this, Lindsay may be more normal than we'd like her to be.

It is estimated that about 25% of college students take Adderall or Ritalin for non-medical purposes. No one really knows for sure because students are understandably reluctant to 'fess up to their amphetamine use although ask any college student you know and they'll likely tell you it's easier to get an Adderall than a beer. Prescriptions of the drug are up 3100% over the past several years which only increases the black-market viability. Even in my un-hip over-30 demographic, I run out of hands to count on before I run out of people I know who have used it.

A while ago, I wrote about an experience where a friend at the gym approached me about taking Adderall to lose weight. She called it "the perfect life in a pill" and was so persuasive in her efforts (and descriptive in her how-to's) that I was sorely tempted to give it a try myself. Although it's not mentioned in any of my pregnancy manuals, being that I'm a nursing mom and we're not even allowed to eat unpasteurized cheese I'm pretty sure that recreational prescription drug abuse is a no-no. I wrote the post in an effort to cleanse myself of thoughts of magically fitting skinny jeans and brilliant articles that write themselves. But it was all the comments you guys left me detailing your horrific experiences with it and the many detrimental (and potentially life threatening) side effects that really sealed it for me. I never tried it. Seriously, anyone contemplating non-medical Adderall use should go read through that comment thread.

For those people truly afflicted with AD/HD, the drug can be a lifesaver but for people wrongly diagnosed, the fallout can be severe. According to doctors, Lindsay is not AD/HD and should never have been prescribed the drug - small comfort, I'm sure, as she roasts on the spit of public condemnation. But in a world where achievement is everything and our public figures are only as good as their last interview, it doesn't take much imagination to figure out how she would end up with her very own golden ticket on a Rx pad.

What happens to Lindsay Lohan now that she's been taken off the meds is anyone's guess. Perhaps she'll metamorphose overnight back into the moppet we all loved and start being a reliable actress again. Or maybe she'll go on a coke bender and all our speculation about whether her symptoms were "cocaine-like" or just "cocaine" will be ended. For the record, I hope it's the former. As much as I love a good train wreck, I prefer the ones where everyone walks out alive.

Either way though we now have conclusive proof, walking around in padded-knee "Presidential" leggings, that Adderall can make you crazy. To this end, Lindsay may end up being a more powerful cautionary tale about the risks of abusing prescription stimulants than any D.A.R.E. campaign college boards could imagine. At the very least I suppose I owe her a thank-you card.

Have you ever used Adderall or another stimulant for an off-label purpose? Do you really think Lindsay's problems are all the result of a bad ADHD diagnosis?

Pet Peeve: People Who Complain About Being Too Pretty

You know who I really want to sympathize with? Debralee Lorenzana, the banker who was allegedly fired from Citibank for being too sexy. When the story first broke a couple of weeks ago, my initial reaction was dismay at one more woman being Windexed off the glass ceiling. But then Debralee started talking and hasn't shut up since. Every interview I read with this woman - and she is everywhere, no one can say she isn't taking full advantage of her new notoriety - makes me a little angrier and a lot more irritated.

In a Village Voice interview (via Jezebel) she says, "If being less good-looking means being happy and finding love and not being sexually harassed and having a job where no one bothers you and no one questions you because of your looks, then, definitely, I'd want that. I think of that every day."

See, Debralee is one of those people who likes to chronically whine about how hard her life is because she's just too darn pretty. Everyone knows somebody like this. In college I had a roommate who was blond and tiny and blue eyed with eyelashes so long she was constantly tugging on them to prove they weren't falsies. And her favorite topic of conversation was how hard it was to be her. To this day her Facebook statuses say things like "I ate 6 Reeses Peanut Butter Cups today and I'm still a size 0! Why can't I gain weight??! I'm having Ben & Jerry's for lunch - wish me luck!!!!!" If she could mind-read what I'm really wishing her I'm sure we'd no longer be Facebook friends.

There are other permutations of the I'm Too Sexy For My Shirt persona: the guy who claims he's been fired from every job because he's too smart and his bosses feel intimidated by him or the reality star who claims that everyone hates her because she's just too honest and "real" for reality TV. But none of them get under my skin quite like the I'm Too Pretty person.

While I do understand how beauty could be detrimental in some situations - I swear I'm not totally missing the empathy gene - it just screams false humility to me. By telling everyone not to look at them, they're inviting everyone to do just that. Like when Jessica Biel told Allure magazine that she doesn't get offered many good movie roles because she's too beautiful. I wanted to write her and ask if perhaps it's because she's not a good actress? I saw 7th Heaven, people. Not to mention how insulting this attitude is to people who have to live with the very real and much worse effects of being not pretty in a society that values nothing more than sex appeal. My roommate once said to me, "I wish I could just trade places with you for a night - you know, so I could blend in and watch the guys without being mobbed by them. You're so lucky!" What she really meant of course was that I should feel lucky to be her official purse holder/seat saver/designated driver.

But I have to admit that where Debralee really lost her case with me was when footage from a 2003 plastic-surgery reality show surfaced showing her getting multiple surgeries including implants, a tummy tuck and lipo to acquire her desired shape, one she describes as "t*ts on a stick." First she decries Citibank's actions, "Are you saying that just because I look this way genetically, that this should be a curse for me?" and then we find out that actually she's not this way genetically.

Unfortunately, none of this should matter one iota in her case against Citibank. If she was truly fired for wearing "turtlenecks and pencil skirts" despite having above par performance then she deserves to win her discrimination suit. But that doesn't mean I have to like her. Can Citibank fire her for being obnoxious?

What do you think about Lorenzana being fired for being "too sexy"? Do you know someone who is always complaining they're too sexy/smart/rich/thin? Is my annoyance really just sour grapes?

Calling all Sports Superfans: Would You Lie for Love?

"I love you, man!" "Aw! Come to papa!"

In the grand tradition of Sandra Bullock and Jesse James, Ross Gellar and his first wife Carol, and that governor from South Carolina who went MIA for two days to "hike the Appalacian trail", my marriage was based on a lie.  No, I'm not a neo-Nazi man whore, a closeted lesbian nor do I have a secret Argentinian mistress for whom I would abandon the government of an entire state to canoodle with but nevertheless my lie threatened to rock the very foundations of my early wedded bliss.

See, I did one of those terribly stereotypically girly things that I'm embarrassed to even call a girly stereotype much less cop to doing it.  I lied about liking to watch sports.

When my husband and I first met I was so charmed by his rakish good looks and blatant lack of propriety (he fell asleep on the front row of the very first day of class - and even drooled!) that I was determined to do anything to get him to keep hanging out with me.  This desire to be near to my crush led me to do several unfortunate things like inviting him to "take my dad's car and go get doughnuts at Smith's" (to which he replied witheringly, "What are you, 16?") and agreeing to sit on an ice block at the winter carnival until I won a free t-shirt (and hopefully his heart).  But the most egregious was my sudden interest in all things sports.


Up until I met him, I had never watched an entire game of any team sport.  Figure skating, sure. Swimming, yes (you've seen Michael Phelps, right?). Gymnastics, absolutely.  But no basketball, football, soccer, rugby, volleyball or even tennis match had ever washed over my bored retinas.  Having done everything I could to escape the horror of gym class in high school, I didn't even know the rules to any of those games much less who to scream for or what color to paint my face.  True story: in college I once went to a football game on a date.  I brought a 700-page novel to read.  I didn't even notice when he left me.  Another true story: in high school a friend's dad got me and a few girl friends first-tier seats to the final playoff game between the Bulls and the Jazz.  We left during half time because the cheerleaders sucked and we wanted Chinese food.  (My husband dies a little more every time I tell that story.)

But then love came into my life bringing not only mushy notes and roses but also sports.  Specifically, basketball.  My husband has always loved basketball.  College, pro, kiddie league - if it was there, he'd watch it (he's watching the NBA finals as I type this).  So I pretended to watch whatever he was watching so I could go to the sports parties with him and snuggle up in the stands with him and wear his Utah Jazz sweatshirt so I could smell him (this was back when the Jazz were good).

I know.  I want to smack myself too.  It's girls like me that give girls a bad name.  It's bad enough that I hate watching sports.  But to lie about it?

And then we got married and it all stopped.  Instead of the final four, I was glued to Felicity (ohmygoodness SHE CUT HER HAIR).  When he suggested an away game date night, I made plans to go away... to the Indigo Girls concert.  When he bought me my own school mascot t-shirt I wore it every day... to bed.  He felt betrayed.  He'd thought he'd found one of those cool girls that every guy dreams of but exist far less in reality than they do in Doritos commercials.  Instead he got Bill Walton, if Bill Walton narrated the Miss America pageant.

To this day I still feel bad about my trickery.  And this guilt has led to me to occasionally watch something sports related with him.  I have discovered that team sports are not as boring as I thought they were!  For instance, you have Venus Williams' flesh-toned undies and crazyawesomeinsane tennis costumes to keep you glued to tennis:

Hee!  She gets swack* too!!

And with moves like these, no wonder soccer is the number 1 sport in the world!

Any sport that has fans like these must have a good sense of humor:

And then there is my husband's beloved basketball:

Just awesome.

This is pretty much exactly how I play basketball.  

And this may be the best sports picture ever taken.  How could I not love this game??

Have you ever lied to impress a date?  Do you like watching team sports?  What do you think about Venus Williams' underwear - distracting and unsportsmanlike or fun?

*That would be Gym Buddy parlance for sweaty crack.  We're gross, I know.

The Problem With Protein Powders

See - this is the proper way to get your protein.

What I'm about to tell you may make me the most reviled person in the fit-o-spere: I don't love smoothies*. Or protein shakes. Or recovery drinks. Or even drinkable yogurt. The only exception to this rule are milkshakes but even then I only like the kind that are basically candy chunks with ice cream and milk poured in the cracks (helloooo Dairy Queen Girl Scout Blizzards! (Made with Girl Scout cookies, not Girl Scouts themselves. (Specifically the Samoa cookies, coconutty caramel devils they are.))) Triple parentheses! See, I get so worked up about smoothies that I must resort to bad grammar to get my point across.

Now that you are recoiling from your screens in horror - For the love of little green apples, what serious worker-outer doesn't love a good protein shake?! - allow me to back pedal a bit. I don't hate smoothies. And my kids adore them (Popeye is so passe, a "Shrek" smoothie is the only way I can get the 3-year-old to eat his spinach) so I do make them with some frequency. I just don't make them for myself.

My first issue is that I like to chew stuff. I blame this on my father who chews ice like the Kardashian sisters chew QuickTrim. Although, to my knowledge, he has never posed in a bikini touting the curative powers of ice chewing (results not typical, spray tan not included.) When I was just a wee tot, he taught me how to make chunky milkshakes - stirred with a spoon and never blended - and it ruined me on the smooth kind forever. He also ate mayonnaise straight out of the jar using a carrot as a spoon which is another one of my secret weaknesses. Aw heck, while I'm airing all his dietary laundry, he also loves unsweetened mineral water, something else I am still preternaturally fond of.

Problemo numero dos is that I don't like protein powder. I don't like it in protein bars, cereals, drink mixes and especially not in smoothies. Not only does it taste funny and is often full of tons of artificial sweeteners and other chemicals but I'm leery of protein that doesn't come from a whole food. (Holla Michael Pollan!) Plus protein powder advertisements are second only to diet pills in obnoxiousness so I feel that I must hate them on principle.

And then there's this: Consumer Reports this month performed lab tests on 15 popular protein drinks and pre-fab smoothies. Their findings are not comforting. In an industry that is self-policed - the FDA does not regulate supplements, leaving manufacturers to set and maintain their own standards - it is probably not much of a surprise that Consumer Reports found several ingredients that were not on the label (i.e. lead, arsenic and cadmium) and found several listed ingredients to be lacking (oh, like, protein). The top three offenders for contaminants were EAS Myoplex Shakes, Muscle Milk protein powders and Muscle Milk Shakes - two of the most popular brands on the market. Especially concerning was the high levels of cadmium found. Thanks to Tommy Boy, we're all pretty aware of the dangers of lead poisoning (I think the most popular retort in my high school was "Did you eat paint chips as a child?") but many of us aren't aware of cadmium, a heavy metal that infiltrates our food supply through many pesticides.

"This is a highly toxic metal, and while there are some cases where decisions have to be weighed against relative risks, accepting that you have to be exposed to any cadmium at all in your protein drink after your workout is definitely not one of them," says Michael Harbut, M.D., director of the Environmental Cancer Initiative at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Royal Oak, Mich. "

In addition to heavy metals, other ingredients not listed on the label - like banned steroids - have been found in protein powders.

Thanks to the popularity of Atkins, South Beach and other low-carb diets, protein is the macronutrient of the day with many people, especially athletes, afraid that they aren't getting enough. Protein powder/shakes companies play on this fear with ambiguous labeling and dosing guidelines, encouraging users to ingest as many servings as possible.

"Shao, the industry trade-group official, says there is no such thing as consuming too much protein, as long as you're getting other nutrients in your diet as well. Not so, says Kathleen Laquale, a licensed nutritionist and certified athletic trainer. "The body can only break down 5 to 9 grams of protein per hour, and any excess that is not burned for energy is converted to fat or excreted, so it's a ridiculous waste to be recommending so much more than you really need."

Excess protein can also have detrimental effects on your health with issues ranging from diarrhea to bone loss to kidney dysfunction. Like anything, you have to find the right balance. Protein is a necessary nutrient and care should be taken to get enough but there is such a thing as too much.

Do you like smoothies or are you weird about needing something to chew on like me? Got a favorite recipe to share? Do you use protein powder? Do you worry about not getting enough protein in your diet? Is Tommy Boy a classic in your house too?

*If you do love smoothies - and I love that you love them! - there are lots of great websites with fantastic healthy, delicious smoothie recipes (and tons of pretty pictures!). Check out Deb the Smoothie Girl, Heather Eats Almond Butter and Allie of Pimp My Protein Shake.

Reverse Airbrushing: Photoshop Jumps the Shark

Now this is an appropriate use of photoshop, children.

This will be the most head-spinning quote you will read all week (unless you read that story about the "new teen trend" of drinking vodka through their eyeballs - that one's got a couple of doozies that'll make you grab the nearest adolescent and shake them): "The editor of the top-selling health and fitness magazine in the U.S., Self, has admitted: 'We retouch to make the models look bigger and healthier.'" Keep in mind this is the same mag that skinnified Kelly Clarkson to the point of unrecognizability not long ago. Sure you knew that everyone from catalog models to Demi Moore to WWF wrestlers is photoshopped to have thinner waists, less hip and, in the case of the wrestlers, no nipples (seriously), but did you know about the increasingly common practice of reverse photoshopping?

Robin Derrick, creative director of Vogue, explains, "I spent the first ten years of my career making girls look thinner -and the last ten making them look larger." This isn't the first time reverse photoshopping has appeared in the news - Cameron Diaz got her "manly" lower ab definition smoothed out for Cosmo - but the controversy erupted all over again earlier this week when this:

was transformed into this:

British mag Healthy admitted to adding about 30 pounds to model Kamila because she showed up to the photo shoot looking "really ill and unwell." This scandal caused Leah Hardy, a former editor at Cosmopolitan, to write an article for the Daily Mail first explaining this bizarre practice (it has something to do with designer sample sizes being designed for boys needing to be modeled by women who look like boys but then photoshopped to approximate some features of a real woman so as to appeal to the real women who buy the magazines, with nary a mention of Victoria Beckham which must have taken immense restraint) and apologizing for her part in it.

I, for one, appreciate her apology. For one thing Cosmo got me into serious trouble with my parents growing up when I took a picture of my then 14-year-old sister holding my contraband Cosmo with the title "Your Orgasm" prominently displayed on the cover. It might have ended there had I not sent the picture to a few of our friends - and this being before Facebook, I actually printed it out and sent it (can you imagine?) - who then passed it to a few more friends who then... well, it got back to my parents. I don't remember how my sister felt about her instant - and unintentional - celebrity but my parents sure weren't amused. I had to write everyone involved letters of apology. Oh yes I did. Had it been ten years later my sister would have gone viral and I would have had to pay a professional to scrub her Google results. Who knew that Cosmo would be what makes me appreciate being old? But that is neither here nor there. It was this quote from Ms. Hardy that warmed my fashion mag-deadened heart:

"At the time, when we pored over the raw images, creating the appearance of smooth flesh over protruding ribs, softening the look of collarbones that stuck out like coat hangers, adding curves to flat bottoms and cleavage to pigeon chests, we felt we were doing the right thing. [...] But now, I wonder. Because for all our retouching, it was still clear to the reader that these women were very, very thin. But, hey, they still looked great! They had 22-inch waists (those were never made bigger), but they also had breasts and great skin. They had teeny tiny ankles and thin thighs, but they still had luscious hair and full cheeks.Thanks to retouching, our readers - and those of Vogue, and Self, and Healthy magazine – never saw the horrible, hungry downside of skinny. That these underweight girls didn't look glamorous in the flesh. Their skeletal bodies, dull, thinning hair, spots and dark circles under their eyes were magicked away by technology, leaving only the allure of coltish limbs and Bambi eyes. A vision of perfection that simply didn't exist. No wonder women yearn to be super-thin when they never see how ugly thin can be."

Did you ever think you'd live to see the day when a Cosmo editrix says, "How ugly thin can be"? Do you think we are finally realizing that there is such a thing as "too thin"? Does reverse airbrushing surprise you?

Hooters Waitress Suspended For Not Fitting Uniform

Hooters made news today by admitting what most of us already know: Despite claims that it is best known for its wings it turns out it is really selling breasts. And the rest of the well-shaped bodies of their famous scantily clad waitstaff. A Hooters in Detroit - does this city really need any more bad publicity? - recently put 20-year-old Cassandra Smith on probation for gaining weight.



The pretty blond waitress and two-year Hooters veteran was called in for her annual review only to be confronted by her manager and a representative from corporate headquarters about her recent weight gain. The company offered her a free gym membership and 30 days to slim back down into tip-top short-shorts shape or face a "separation" from the company. (No word if she would be able to sue for alimony.) While this might seem despicable at first glance, the company defended itself by making the comparison between their waitresses and the Rockettes and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders saying, "We will say that our practice of upholding an image standard based on appearance, attitude, and fitness for Hooters girls is both legal and fair."

Certainly Smith had to know when she was hired that they weren't paying her for her stellar mastery of the menu nor her uncanny ability to remember all her customer's names. So while she doesn't have the paycheck or the celebrity (or the rockin' costumes - those orange shorts are a travesty of American Apparel proportions) of a Rockette or Cheerleader, she shouldn't have been surprised when she was commoditized like one, right? Only two problems with that argument:

1. Smith is 5'8" and 132 pounds. Yeah she's changed since they hired her but she's hardly portly by any stretch of the imagination.


2. Her boss is this guy. Granted he's not the one, er, pushing wings but really the irony had to be rich in that room. Normally I would abstain from making a comment about anyone's weight but since he brought up the topic, I say he is making himself fair game for public scrutiny.


Smith is said to be considering legal options but I'm guessing that the corporate giant is going to win this one. First, it's an industry truism backed by research that the hotter the waiter or waitress, the better the tips and the better the customer perceives the establishment. Hooters just happens to be more honest - and brazen - about that fact. Second, it's certainly not the first company to fire employees based on physical appearance. Even Prada does it. Third, as much as I hate that this is the case, women are sexually objectified in many, many industries. Heck we're even teaching 7-year-olds that the way to be loved and celebrated is to shake it like a stripper:

Do I wish that Cassandra Smith hadn't been suspended from her job for her weight? Absolutely. Do I also think that she should have expected this given the company? Yeah, probably. Do I think that this would be the perfect opportunity for her to find a new career based on something other than her looks? Definitely. Am I done asking myself questions so I can answer them? Apparently not.

What's your take - was Cassandra Smith fairly suspended? Have you ever worked at a job that required you to look a certain way? How did you feel about it? Did you see the "Seven Year Olds Going Hard on Single Ladies" video? (Tough luck if you didn't, it's already been taken off YouTube for copyright violations.) What do you think - little girls just having fun (and being really really talented dancers) or little girls being pornified with the consent of their parents?

What Do You Think About While You're Exercising?

Bloody rampages can really get the blood pumping - in more ways than one. The hottest new fitness trend coming out of Japan (where else do all slightly demented yet meteoric trends come from these days?) is Samurai Training. The aerobics class, which is open to both genders but is almost exclusively dominated by women - and if that doesn't tell you something about modern Japanese culture then I don't know what does - promises to give you a good sweat while you cut a swath through the bad guys with your katana, the traditional weapon of choice for Japanese Samurai. Including Tom Cruise. I mean, he's even got one in the movie poster and everyone knows movie posters are 100% historically accurate. (We'll discuss later how I learned all my important historical facts from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and thereby humiliated myself during a family game of Trivial Pursuit by mispronouncing the famous philosopher as "So-crates.")

A group fit class where you get a sword? Sign me up! Okay, so the sword is plastic but according to devotees of the new sport the emotion is so sharp that even Hello Kitty temporarily sprouts a mouth just so she can snarl while delivering "40 disemboweling thrusts" in rapid succession. Practitioners of the ancient-cum-strip mall sport not only get to disembowel imaginary foes but also get to behead them, stab them through the heart and hack off limbs (presumably the imaginary foes then cry, "Come back, I'll bite your legs off!"). Samurai classes are not for wimps: "The sessions follow Mr Takafuji’s original, punishing take on kenbu — a macabre sword dance that he said was historically performed by samurai around the remains of their recently cleaved opponents."

I want to try this class so bad that I might need to seek comfort in the styrofoam lap of my Japanese legs pillow to calm myself. Anyhow, while I'm waiting for this trend to hop the ocean, it got me thinking about, well, all the things I think about while I'm working out intensely. I don't normally picture "recently cleaved opponents" - although perhaps now I'll try and work that in to my next Turbokick class - but I do have some pretty violent fantasies. Indeed, working out my violent thoughts was one of the initial and very powerful draws of both kickboxing and Karate for me. When Turbo Jennie yells for us to grab someone's head and pull it into our knee, I'm totally picturing it. My favorite is when we do a backhanded punch thingy - I can feel a nose cracking under my knuckles. I used to think this predilection was just me working out my sordid past but after reading this article, apparently I am not alone. Samurai girls don't just kick butt, they slice it off and hand it to you on a platter.

While rolling heads and crushed bones are pretty much the exclusive purview of my martial arts classes, I do have quite the active imaginary life in all my athletic endeavors. When I'm running on a treadmill I'm imagining myself... running outside. Sigh. But when I'm running outside I imagine all kinds of scenarios: that I'm the last person alive running from a village under siege to warn the next village over (this one is particularly awesome for trail runs), that I'm a time traveler running to make my jump back into my own dimension so I can reunite with my lost love, that I'm running to a planet where pee-soaked playlands don't exist and Chuck E. Cheese only exists in nightmares. You know, whatever it takes to get me up that hill. Sometimes I even like to imagine I'm on TV (yes it would be the most boring channel ever but it's my fantasy so get your own cable station) with judges critiquing my form. "Look at that bicep curl! She's so controlled and steady! Can she eke out one more rep? I dunno Bob, I see a bead of sweat... oh there she goes! I was wrong! What a feat! Can you hear the crowd? This is one for the history books!!" Like I said, active imagination.

So what do you think about when you work out? Anyone else fantasize about killing people during kickboxing? Running away from the Nazis during your jog through suburbia? Would you try the Samurai aerobics class with me??

Models Falling From the Sky: Thin is Not the New Black

Suicide is in the air. Kazakh model Ruslana Korshunova dove to her death from her New York balcony. Canadian model Hayley Kohle leapt to a similar fate from a balcony in Milan. On the same day as Kohle, model Randy Johnston died of a drug overdose. Columbian model Lina Marulinda also chose a free fall from a balcony. But there are other ways to die in the air besides jumping. Models Lucy Gordon, Daul Kim and Ambrose Olsen all recently hanged themselves, Olsen just last month. And of course, the inimitable designer Alexander McQueen ended his fashion juggernaut along with himself by hanging last February. Death is not yet in the ground. Just a few days ago model Noemie Lenoir was found in a forest, nearly succumbed to an intentional drug overdose. Mercifully she is recovering. [Source]

These deaths should not have happened.

By all accounts each of these young models and McQueen were at the height of their careers. Not only were they young and impossibly beautiful in a world that values nothing more but they had also achieved a degree of success in a highly competitive, fickle field. Why they would want to end their lives is a personal and, most likely, unanswerable question. And yet if anyone would have a reason to live, you'd think it would be these who were living the very definition of the dream.

Tragically many people every year choose to end their own lives and so I am not sure if this recent spate of model suicides (that looks funny every time I type that, as if they are modelling the proper way to die - setting the fashion to the very end) is disproportionate to that of the general population. But I do know this: if you ever needed proof that being thin and beautiful is not the secret to happiness than this is it.

Most of us can say when confronted with such an obvious example that of course being skinny, young and hot doesn't automatically make you happy- Pamela Anderson alone should be cautionary tale enough - and yet we are sold this exact message in hundreds of insidious ways every day. Many of us buy into it. I buy into it. It's so pervasive that I'm amazed whenever I run into a woman who doesn't believe it. I want to grab her buy the shoulders and ask her where she gets her incredible self confidence, why she hasn't been been beaten down by the relentless message that she isn't enough, but she could be if she just lost weight/erased wrinkles/got bigger boobs/lightened her hair/got a better wardrobe/colored her eyes/toned her tummy (in 10 days! See page 54!)

There isn't anything wrong with trying to be beautiful, to be healthy, to be your best self. And yet this drive to improve - or "addiction to fixing" oneself as one astute e-mailer put it - is a problem when it engenders self hatred. How is anything beautiful supposed to come out of hate? Ironically this tactic of self-hate is often one of the first weapons we employ, turning self improvement into self warfare. It does work. Sort of. You can hate yourself thin. I've done it before. But then you are just thin and unhappy, like so many falling models.

We live in an era where a diet - a diet! - is unironically called "Live Your Best Life." (You can even buy your "Best Life" at your local grocery store, just look for the little green labels on your favorite brands! It doesn't say but I'm assuming if you collect enough of the Best Label boxtops and mail them to Oprah then your Best Life will arrive by mail 4-6 weeks later.) Where losing weight is the fastest way to gain instant celebrity, or if you are already a celebrity to get a magazine cover. Where despite the highest unemployment rate in recent history, cosmetic sales and plastic surgery are increasing at an unprecedented rate. An era where models rain from the sky.

It's sheer craziness. It's jumping-off-a-balcony madness. I know all this and yet, deep down, I still believe if I could just lose these last 10 pounds I'd be happy. But thanks in no small part to you all, I think I'm finally willing to give that belief up. It feels scary to me. For one, I've believed this as long as I can remember. I may have outgrown Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy but I still cling with child-like devotion to the Beauty Bunny. And also, I'm convinced that this perpetual war with myself, this intense hatred, is the only thing between me and weighing 1,000 pounds and being housebound for the rest of my life. I'm afraid that if I give up fighting then I'll lose everything. But I think that too is a myth. By fighting myself how can I do anything but lose? The key to my freedom is to give up the fight. Can I trust my body that it wants to be healthy? I hope I can. Because nobody should be falling; we should be flying.

Anyone else buy into the myth that thinness equates to happiness? Anyone else addicted to fixing themselves? Anybody else convinced that fighting yourself is the only thing keeping you from oblivion? Anybody totally sick of reading about this still?? (Anyone? Bueller? Bueller??)

Everything You Know About Dietary Fat is Wrong

Nothing says health food like meat in a can. But look - it even has one of those little key thingies to help you open it!!

The Internet teaches many strange lessons. For instance, courtesy of Facebook I now know more of my girl friends' maiden names than I did when we were in high school and they were still using them. Just today I learned that millions of baby cribs are being recalled (sending me creeping into Jelly Bean's nursery with a flashlight like the stalker mom I am), that I can use oil-based exterior paint to spruce up my ugly front door (What do you all think of a cobalt blue front door? Fun? Or there goes the property value?), and that Heidi Montag was named Time magazine's least influential person (they made up a "moron" category just for her). Would I have known any of this without the great wonder that is Google? Nay.

Which I why I blame Google for all the misinformation out there about dietary fat. If that little start-up had just algorithm-ed it's way to glory a wee bit earlier then we could have crunched the data linking - or rather not linking - saturated fats with coronary disease twenty years ago and avoided the horror that is fat-free cheese. If you would have told me 15 years ago that eating fat would not make me fat, not even butter, I might have fainted.

That's right, all of the stuff you've been told about fat the last few decades was wrong. It turns out butter, real whipped cream and lard won't give you a heart attack after all. But you know what will? Simple, processed carbs.

We have a long, troubled history with fat. Back in the early part of the last century someone invented margarine, a cheap alternative to butter made out of hydrogenated vegetable oils. This oleo spread didn't catch on at first but then someone else decreed that eating fat makes you fat - especially the saturated fats found in animal products and coconut oil. Margarine, replete with the demon-spawn transfats, came to rule the market and a whole movement was born. The hysteria culminated in the fat-phobic 90's where fat grams were the only piece of information about a food that mattered. In fact, when I was a wee lass just beginning my eating disordered journey, fat grams were my number of choice to obsess over. It was my goal to make it through the day on less than 1 gram of fat. I was really good at it too! I went for years without touching meat, real cheese, nuts, avocados and even chocolate. I replaced them with - and I kid you not - fat-free popcorn and SweeTarts candy. And I felt downright smug about my "healthy" diet.

If a time machine is ever invented I want to go back and smack me.

Over the past 10 years or so, we've come to see the importance of dietary fat to our health and have welcomed "healthy fats" like olive oil, avocados and nuts back into our diet. But we were still told to limit saturated fats. Even today, this very second, the FDA is still recommending to "limit saturated fats to less than 10% of calories with the majority of fat coming from poly- or mono-unsaturated fats." They're also still recommending fat-free or reduced-fat milk despite the fact that studies have shown full-fat dairy to be healthier.

But now The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (via Scientific American) has published a meta analysis of major studies on dietary fat that refutes once and for all the assumption that saturated fats are to blame for heart disease.

The meta-analysis—which combines data from several studies—that compared the reported daily food intake of nearly 350,000 people against their risk of developing cardiovascular disease over a period of five to 23 years. The analysis, overseen by Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, found no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and the risk of heart disease.

The finding joins other conclusions of the past few years that run counter to the conventional wisdom that saturated fat is bad for the heart because it increases total cholesterol levels. That idea is “based in large measure on extrapolations, which are not supported by the data,” Krauss says.

But wait, it gets better: "Stampfer’s findings do not merely suggest that saturated fats are not so bad; they indicate that carbohydrates could be worse." The article goes on to discuss research that shows that eating a diet high in refined, processed carbohydrates is correlated with heart disease. All those Snackwell's are sitting a little heavy now, aren't they?

So will the FDA update their guidelines to reflect the new research? "Right now, Post explains, the agency’s main message to Americans is to limit overall calorie intake, irrespective of the source." That would be a big no.

It looks like Michael Pollan and your great grandma were right again: the less processed your food is the better it is for you. Whole milk beats skim. Whole wheat bread beats white. Virgin, unprocessed coconut oil is amazingly good for your health. And butter is not the great evil we have been led to believe. That noise you are hearing? All my gears grinding as my whole food paradigm shifts. (The one exception to this would be conventionally farmed meat. Toxins ingested by animals are stored primarily in their fat so the more animal fat you eat from animals raised in feed-lots, the more toxins, hormones, pesticides and other nasties you are exposing yourself to. It isn't the animal fat that is the problem though - it's the way the animals were farmed that is.)

However, to quote the inimitable G.I. Joe, knowing is [only] half the battle. Sure I know that fat is good for us blah blah blah but do you know what is in my fridge right now? Boneless, skinless chicken breasts (for the fam. I don't eat them), 2% milk (for the kiddos, again I can't have it), low-fat cream cheese and turkey bacon. Worst of all: Smart Balance Lite. Not that I am saying Smart Balance in and of itself is a bad product but why can't I just embrace butter already?! My heads says one thing but my heart still says no.

Anyone else having this internal conflict? Do you still buy skim milk? How do you feel about saturated fat? Do you generally try to avoid it? Do you think the FDA's nutritional guidelines need an overhaul? And I really do need opinions about my potentially cobalt blue door - would it be too much??