Saturday, February 23, 2013

Flawed eCard of the Day: There's no secret diet?

A Facebook friend had this to say today:


This friend is a great person, and I'm sure she posted it because it motivates her, but unfortunately it's wrong. And of course it's not my job to tell my Facebook friends when they're wrong, but here on my own blog…it's even better than a job. Telling people when they're wrong is a pleasing recreational activity.

Of course the part I take exception to is that there's "no secret diet." There's something about that that sounds so wholesome and true, but it's actually playing right into the hands of the junk food manufacturers. They need you to believe that you can eat their products and still live a healthy life…that if you're fat, it's because your faulty willpower made you eat too much, not because you were eating their deadly and addictive "food" in the first place.

Have you heard about Coca-Cola's new anti-obesity campaign? It's a concerted effort to perpetuate the calories-in-calories-out myth, which is easy because it sounds like such common sense. But the fact is, drinking sugary, or fake-sugary, beverages spikes your insulin levels, messes up your hormones, and tells your body to store fat. If you want to do that to yourself as a "treat," that's your own business, but there is absolutely no basis for believing that Coke products are part of this nutritious breakfast. (Yes, including their diet drinks. Yes, including their sports drinks.)

So just to clarify: Getting off your ass is good. (Running for miles on end is less so, but I'll save that for another eCard debunking.) But there is a secret diet: Don't eat sugar or artificial sweeteners. Don't eat grains. Don't eat soy, legumes, or vegetable oils. Wish it wasn't such a secret.

4 comments:

  1. Okay. You had me until "Don't eat ... legumes, or vegetable oils." Why?

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    1. I've read that legumes are inflammatory, gut-irritating and contain anti-nutrients. And as for vegetable oils, I'm talking corn, canola, grapeseed, cottonseed, sunflower, etc., that are high in Omega 6 and polyunsaturated fat. All I know is I threw them out of my diet on the Whole30 and found it easy to keep them out (along with the grains and sugar, etc.), and it's made a world of difference.

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    2. I get the vegetable oil ...though I'm a proponent of extra virgin olive oil... not sure about the legume thing though. I think it depends on individual tolerance. I find if 1/4cup of lentils (or chickpeas) keeps me from jonesing carbs? I don't see the problem. For me. :)

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    3. Yeah, olive oil is supposed to be one of the good ones; I didn't mean to lump that in. And I've seen legumes placed smack in the middle of the "good for you" scale—of all the things on that list, they're supposed to be the least harmful. Personally, I never cared for them anyway, so when I found out they weren't that great, I tossed them out of my diet and never looked back.

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