Weigh The FAQS

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, the Japanese come up with something else to blow your mind (and possibly your lunch, so stop reading now if you’re the squeamish type). The latest health trend from our friends across the Pacific ain’t for the faint of heart as it involves a pig, a placenta, and a whole lot of peach flavoring.

Yes, Japanese company Nihon Sofuken are now offering “Placenta 10000″, a flavored jelly drink touted as great for your all-around health due to a secret ingredient: pig placenta. The placenta, as we all know, is the organ that follows the baby out of the birth canal post-delivery. As you may not know, the placenta is actually a nutritious piece of a flesh, containing a high volume of minerals that give it uniquely regenerative, anti-aging properties. It’s also a great weight loss booster and a natural cure to postpartum depression: mothers who consume the placenta after birth report feeling more upbeat and chipper than those who didn’t. It’s even vegan! So what’s not to love?

Well, for one, I’m of the mind that social taboos exist for a reason. If guzzling peach flavored placenta juice was good for you, we’d all have been doing it since the dawn of time. Secondly, just because something is “natural” doesn’t mean it makes a tasty appetite-suppressant. Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that a healthy diet and regular exercise is the surest way to sustainable weight loss. How many magic serums have you tried promising results that never delivered? I get the feeling this is just more of the same.

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Okay, let’s get this straight: Watching what you eat? Good. Becoming OCD about everything that you put in your mouth, restricting yourself to only “healthy” foods, suffering from malnutrition and dying in the process? Bad.

Even though I’d never heard of orthorexia nervosa until I came across an article about it earlier today, it didn’t surprise me at all. As they say, the road to hell is paved with crash diets and eating disorders. Orthorexia nervosa differs from anorexia and bullemia in that its victims aren’t obsessed with the amount of food they eat, rather they’re obsessed with the types of food they eat. As anyone with a passing familiarity with nutrition (anyone who’s ever read this blog) knows that we get nutrition from a variety of foods. That means a healthy diet is a diverse diet. Yes, we need to watch the sodium, fat, carbs and all the rest of it, but we also need a some of all those things to survive. A completely, 100% sodium-free diet would kill us, same with completely fat-free, and so on.

Dr. Bratman who first diagnosed this condition has a hilarious test for anyone who thinks they might suffer from it with questions like “Do you spend more than 3 hours a day thinking about your diet?” and “Do you plan your meals several days ahead?” Frankly, if you even have any suspicion that you might suffer from orthorexia nervosa, that’s probably is the best sign that you already have it. In which case, eat a dark chocolate bar RIGHT NOW; it’s good for the heart.

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Hello everyone! Jane here with just a quick post this week about something I thought you all might find as interesting as I did.

A recent study published in Neurology magazine found that putting on weight after age 40 make your three times as likely to be diagnosed with dementia. The study followed over 6,000 forty-somethings in Northern California well into their 70s. After an average of 36 years, 16% of the participants had developed dementia. However, those with the highest abdominal fat measurements were three times as likely to develop dementia as their slimmer counterparts. More alarming is the fact that these findings were consistent regardless of whether the participant’s weight was normal, overweight or obese. That means, even if you fall within the normal range of weight but have a high measurement of belly fat, you still fall within that three times more likely statistic.

In other words, you and me both have yet another good reason to lose the pounds and keep them OFF! As though hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer weren’t enough to convince us, here’s just another reason to get slim and stay slim.

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This is Jane’s husband, Greg. I’ve been bugging her so much about food irradiation that she says it’s easier on her ears if I just rant about it on this blog. So here goes…my first post. I was an English major in college so I like to think I’m halfway decent with a word or two, but if this is just grating on your irises, let me know and this’ll be the last you ever hear from me.

Before I talk about food irradiation, I want to talk about how American society has grown sterile. Kids don’t play outside much anymore, and if they do they go armed with helmets, knee pads, and sanitizer. When I was a kid, I’d play until dark and come home with stained clothes and scraped knees. If Jane and I ever have kids, I want them to play outside…but will they have anyone to play with?

Dirt has become a bad word, synonymous with disease and filth. Technically, fresh warm soil is dirt. But is it dirty? Not by a long shot. You can eat high quality soil, and farmers often do. Soil also makes it possible for us to eat fruits and vegetables. Plus, for you carnivores, those animals you’re eating probably ate stuff that grew in soil. So — soil is good, yes? Maybe we can get away from the idea that all dirt is bad.

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