The McDonald Diet

By now this is kind of old news, but I haven't been able to log into blogger for a while now & I'm not gonna let that stop me from posting about it. We've all heard about the 'Super Size Me' documentary showing how unhealthy McDonalds 'truly' is. I haven't seen the film myself, but I know the details: hideously fatty liver, increase in body fat, & the fact that McDonalds burgers & especially fries don't seem to decompose.

Part two of this comes from a teacher in Edmonton who went on a diet similar to (but different in important ways) the Super Size Me diet. Rather than packing on the McPounds like Morgan Spurlock did, this teacher actually lost weight.

How did this teacher manage to get entirely the opposite result of what Spurlock did? I'd say he did it by not being an idiot. The nutritional information for McDonalds food is available to everybody fairly easily, and Spurlock could easily have calculated how much energy he was expending in a day, and realized he was consuming much more than that in food. Whether Spurlock is eating McDonalds, or Broccoli, he will put on weight if he consumes more calories than he spends. This is not a feature of fast food.

The other main thing our Edmonton teacher friend did is to add an hour of exercise (just 3x weekly I believe) to his lifestyle. In my opinion, this is the power of exercise: you can eat McDonalds every meal every day, but with exercise, you can lose weight doing it! Spurlock ate Maccers and sat on his ass all day. If I do nothing but sit on my ass & eat, I'll put on weight no matter what.

As for the fatty deposits on Spurlock's liver, exercise will take care of that, and probably a lot more health concerns such as high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and on and on. Super Size Me was basically a get fat plan. The McDonalds food didn't help, but it wasn't the main factor in Spurlock's big health disaster.

What does concern me about McDonalds is that it didn't break down like the other 'real' hamburgers when kept in solution. When I make a burger at home from extra lean ground beef I know approximately what's in it, but I have NO clue crazy chemicals are in Mickey D's food.

All in all, I'm not saying Maccers makes food that's any good for you, but I am saying at least it's still food. I'd put McDonalds way higher on my health list than potato chips, or pop. In fact, the fries & drink are probably the worst part about a McDonalds combo anyhow.

Women & tuna (oh sick! not like that!)

Courtesy of Dr. Mercola, is a scary story on how bloodborne mercury in our pregnant mothers is affecting our children.

Research indicates that 10%-15% of children born annually in the US (thats 316,000-637,000) have blood mercury levels high enough to have a measurable impact on their IQs. What kind of an impact? A decrease of as little as 0.2 points... or as many as 24!

Other data indicate that mercury levels are not as high now as they were during the study, but this still crystallizes to me how dangerous a substance mercury really is.

I've seriously curbed my canned fish consumption over the last 12 months, which more than slightly annoys me because I likes my fish! However, tuna fish aren't the root of the problem. In the US, coal energy power plants produce nearly half the annual mercury.

Two more reasons to find alternative energy sources: smarter kids, and Cam being able to eat all the tuna he wants.

Toronto Auto Show 2005

On Friday, Dad & I made our annual trip to the Toronto Auto Show. It was a great time as always, and this year I had a digital camera to capture some of the snazzier cars. Most impressive car of the show? Definetly the Toyota Prius. Toyota is doing some fantastic things with their hybrid program. BMW has also got some exciting stuff going on with their hydrogen fuel program. They've committed to having a hydrogen ready vehicle commercially available before 2009.

This picture will fuel me 'til I've got a Harley of my own:



Update: Courtesy of Quark Soup & somewhat related:

Washington Post: "...Today's automobiles are packed with about a thousand times as much computing power as was in the Apollo moon landers, according to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Computer chips run more than 86 percent of the systems in an average vehicle, according to the alliance...."

This doesn't impress me with today's autos, it makes me impressed with the Apollo astronauts. They flew to the moon & back using slide-rules! I am spoiled rotten.