Where to start...

... i guess i can start with the president's remarks about an AG's looks, since the news covered that first all day too. Many women I know were saying it doesnt matter but I think it does. Not matter for top news, but for his stupid gaffes and ridiculous statements when he thinks he is being funny.

Here is my take on it: What's he going to say to the next female AG that he meets? He can't tell her she is the best looking in the US because he already did that with someone else. But if he doesnt comment on her looks, does that mean he thinks she is as ugly as a pile of bricks? That's where I think it's a problem - it sets a precedent that shouldnt have been set. Is he going to tell another that she has great legs? Nice lips? Beautiful hair? What do you follow that up with when you meet other female AG's in the future?? Seriously. That's why it annoyed me. It's kind of like if you are a woman and you meet the president now and he speaks about you in front of millions of people, if he doesnt compliment your looks somehow, isn't that an unspoken insult? The man is such a tard I can't believe it.

I dont jump on the bandwagon about him being sexist, I just think he is completely stupid. He thinks he is relateable but he is a total dweeb. Im sorry but he is. There is no end of lists of things he has said that were as bad as Biden, if not worse. Look up presidential gaffes if you are bored. But people still put him as higher in intellect than poor GWBush. At least he didnt claim to be a smarty pants ever. He joked about getting Cs in school. Obama is put on a pedestal and has been named in media several times as being one of the smartest and well-learned presidents ever. Oh really? I think they better take that back. the man has said some real boners in his time as Prez. You cant be perfect all the time, but it doesnt take rocket science degrees to know that you just dont say things like that or you will be expected to compliment everyone else too and then it's just going to get silly..

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Next, I have been looking into this Gluten-Free fad that everyone seems to be promoting. There are a lot of docs out there now telling people that they are gluten intolerant and need to cut it from their diets. A friend of mine was told this last year while seeing a nutrition homeopathic doc about her weight. He said she is bloated and tired all the time because her stomach cannot handle gluten. I said 'oh you have Celiac's? yikes!', thinking that was what she meant. She said no, she is just intolerant of it because the human body was not meant to digest it and that her doc said that most people are actually intolerant or sensitive and people were just not built to eat grains.

Funny, I have been told that by vegans over the years, that human bodies were not meant to eat meat at all.

Wow. Now we arent supposed to eat gluten either? Well there goes 80% of what I eat - gluten based foods and meat. Oh oh. I should be dead by now or in serious pain. But im not. hmmmm....

So a year goes by and my friend is totally gluten free, as is her whole family. She has been very vigilant about it and makes most things herself from scratch because she doesnt trust a bakery to not keep flour lying around (gee, ya think its really gluten free if its made in a facility also making flour based products??) - and she rarely cheats. Very rarely. She was serious about losing weight after getting very big. Well after a full year she has only lost 10 lbs and looks pretty much the same. I could have told her that myself because I know some people with true Celiac's disease and they are not thin at all lol. But whatever. She doesnt understand what is wrong but her doc led her to believe that removing gluten from her life would magically cure her swelling belly. Nope. Not even her face is thinner.

So I started looking this stuff up awhile back and was surprised to see so many studies and articles linking back to Paleo people - basically those that only eat what they believe cavemen would have eaten. Apparently humans can evolve but they are not allowed to change their diet as they go along for a hundred thousand years? People probably didnt wear much clothing and they didnt speak english as far as we know, so should we stop that too? Or other languages. Hmm interesting. But anyway, the point was that gluten is too hard for the stomach and intestines and cant break down properly, or something like that. But I read other dietary studies that showed gluten was good because it scraped the goo off our tummy lining and that led to digestive health instead. You know - like 'eat your fiber kids, so you can be regular'. But the Paleos say to get fiber from fruits and veg that they list. Somehow I see the other dietary science of scraping the intestines doing a better job than fiberous stuff from fruit, but what do I know? I just found it funny that if I followed links back through studies and books, I ALWAYS ended up at the original source being the paleo-diet people.

I think we need to recognize a fad for what it is - a FAD and not waste our time and money on this. Humans have been eating bread for a long long time according to historical records. Thousands of years. Many thousands of years if you look at various cultures and their mark left on history like tools and drawings. Too bad they couldnt leave us recipe books eh? But as humans have evolved in various ways such as clothing and transportation and brain abilities, apparently we arent supposed to be able to evolve our eating habits. That just seems silly to me. But it also concerns me how some doctors are pushing this. I had a boy at my daycare, who was severely underweight at 2 years old, where his mom took him to a homeopath and the dude tested a hair sample and said her son was intolerant to 34 THINGS!!! 34 things he was not supposed to eat in any form. Yeah try putting weight on a kid who cant eat whole food groups and several individual items. Eventually mom got sick of trying to follow the plan and surprise surprise, we kept stuffing him up and he is now almost at regular weight. Phew. I seriously thought the kid was going to die because his bumb skin was hanging off in folds. HANGING OFF. the only time Ive seen anything like that in my life is on children in the ads for africa. But there it was, hanging off his rear end right in my face when I was changing him. I cried later. It was awful. So that was my experience with a doc telling someone they are intolerant of certain foods after testing his hair. Not allergic, just 'intolerant'.

My friend has a PhD in nutrition and she has started posting all sorts of things on her page to try to make people aware of this new movement and to check into it thouroughly before making such a change. Because keep in mind, a lot of people are already on no-dairy and no-meat kicks as well. add in no-gluten and they are eating fruits and veggies but often not in sufficient quantities to get enough nutrition. How many people would actually sit and calculate the levels of the food they are eating when they dont even want to count something as simple as calories?

And with the push for healthy eating, there are now studies coming out in the US and Canada showing youth as young as grade one presenting at ER with non-anorexic and non-bulemic eating disorders, where the bases was the children being afraid to eat almost anything because of being taught in school about obesity and they could die of a heart attack before they are 18 if they eat this this or that that. It's getting out of hand.

I am not the picture of glowing health myself but I believe in the adage of 'everything in moderation'. Dont go around eating fast food everyday cos it's outrageous in calories and nothing beats a home cooked meal for taste and price anyway. Dont go pigging out on chips and then wonder why you cant lose weight. Try to be active when and where you can. Walk to the corner store instead of driving. Drink water to replenish your blood and keep your organs happy (I notice i get more headaches when im not drinking enough water every day). What's wrong with the old 4 food groups rule? that's so easy to follow. But two or three food groups are being wiped off the map by these fads - dairy, grains, and meats. Oh boy. and we wonder why there is a problem.......

I want to throw in here that when we used to feed the kids at daycare fruits and veg for afternoon snack, we would let them eat as much as they wanted, because hey, it's fruit and veg! Perfect. We would have grapes, apples, oranges, brocoli, celery, cauliflower, and carrots. Parents started asking us to watch how much they ate... not because they wouldnt eat their supper later. But because they would come home on Monday and Wednesday afternoons with the runs. Every time. Ooops. So we started letting them fill their little bowls only twice and in all the years since, we havent had any complaints about the kids getting the trots at home later. Phew. We also stopped serving dark grape juice too because they would have green poop for days lol. But that's another story....