No S Diet - My Thoughts

[snazzybabe]

No Snacks, No Sweets, No Seconds

Just thought I'd let you know my thoughts on the 'No Sweets'.
I consider sweets to refer to: sugar, honey, orange-juice, chocolate, lollies, white bread, white flour, white pasta etc.
A lot of the stuff I mentioned you will know it as carbohydrate but your body does not distinguish between a chocolate bar and white bread. They both cause insulin to be released so that the sugar/carbohydrate can be moved out of your blood-stream and into your cells. Having a lot of sugar in your blood-stream is bad for you if it happens too many times and too often can cause diabetes. When your body senses that your blood sugar level is high it acts straightaway and causes insulin to be released and ushers the sugar to a place on your cell called the insulin receptor. If you are not exercising and don't need that extra energy the insulin then opens up the door to your fat cells and closes the door shut. So insulin makes your body store calories as fat and sugar or carbohydrate in your blood makes you produce more insulin.

If you cut out the amount of sugar/carbohydrate you eat you also lessen calories being stored as fat in your body. That is way a low carbohydrate or low sugar diet helps you lose stored body fat.

Do yourself a favour and cut out white flour and white sugar from your diet. They don't have any nutritional benefit. Eat more good fats and good quality protein and your body will thank you for it.

Anyway, that is just my opinion.

[snazzybabe]

I read this on the No S page:

If you feel the need to take a systematic approach towards nutrition too, be my guest. The nosdiet is compatible with pretty much every other diet plan I've come across. You can be a No-S/Vegan if you want (shudder). You could even do No-S plus Atkins, or No-S/Zone if you want to hedge your weight loss bets (though I think it's becoming increasingly clear these last two examples are emphatically *not* going to help you in the nutrition department, if at all).

I don't think I agree with that last sentence about Atkins or the Zone not helping in the nutrition department. I would be interested to read any research that has made you think this. I know of so many people who are just buzzing with energy and health from these type of diets. Also people who finally have their cholesterol and high blood pressure under control.

That said, everyone is different. What works for me may not work for someone else. The ultimate goal is to be healthy, weight loss is just a secondary benefit (unless you are obese then weight loss will help you get healthy).

[cvmom]

Hello Snazzy Babe.

Everyone at this forum follows various eating plans. I agree with you that we have too many processed foods in our society and that the levels of sugar wreck havoc on our systems.

I have done the extremely low carb thing but personally I find that it just makes me obsess about carbs and sugar even more. (Plus I became less then a nice person. LOL) I tend to eat a slightly vegetarian menu and make sure that all my complex carbs are whole grain. The reason that I found this site was that I was actually looking for a "no Sugar" diet. Instead I found Reinhard who is just an amazing guy with a simple plan.

For me, this is all about balance and moderation. An excellent read is Marille Guiano's "French Women Don't Get Fat". She talks about eating high quality food and moderation in all things. I'd rather eat a few fantastic cookies once a week then say I could never have them again. Life is just too darn short.

I encourage you to stay here and give No S a try.

Sincerely

CVMOM

[margaret]

Read French book, too. Bought two pounds of expensive leeks and made the worst broth in the world. Premise is correct, but couldn't drink that soup.

[gratefuldeb67]

Hey Snazzybabe!!! Flatout and good on ya for joining up with us mate!
Good to have you aboard.
Thanks for the medicinal, nutritional post! I might just start experimenting with lowering my intake of wheat flour... Sounds sensible, though I don't really want to cut it out completely...
I like pizza and pasta and cereal, but I will see if I can get all of that in Whole wheat form...
You be snazzy!
Peace and Love,
Debster
ps.. Hey Margaret! What was missing from your inedible Leeky soup?
Sounds like it needed something! LOL......
Sorry for your culinary dissappointment... It happens sometimes!

[Kevin]

Personally, I think that eating Atkins can't be good for you. Humans have the teeth of omnivores, leaning hard to the herbivore end of the spectrum. While lots of folks think vegetables and the chemicals in them help prevent disease, I've heard few of the same claims for meat.

I think that eating the biggest variety of vegetables possible, with a reasonable amount of starch- as unrefined as possible - and a little meat is the best plan. On whole, I'll bet that careful vegetarians are in far better shape than Atkins advocates. There may be people that are doing well on Atkins, but there are also reports of serious illness like kidney and gastric problems.

Type II diabetes is a complicated disease. While it's more frequent in societies that eat highly refined food, so is obesity and inactivity. I'm not sure I'd place bets on which of those is the cause and which is the effect.

Eating less and moving more is probably the best preventative.

Just my humble opinion.

[snazzybabe]

Thanks guys for the welcome.
I've got that French Book on hold at my library so hopefully I'll get a copy soon. I recall reading an extract from it where she pointed out that when you eat your 3 meals you should sit and just focus on the meal. Alot of people eat on the go and grab a snack here and there, eat while walking and never really get to enjoy their food and probably end up eating a whole lot more.
I do like the concept of low carb and have lost weight on it numerous times but my problem is that once I've lost the weight I get a bit cocky and start eating high-carb again with a vengeance. Obviously the weight comes back on, luckily no more than what I started with. My main problem is dieting for a special occassion. I reach my goal for the occassion and then I start eating crap again and put on weight and then look for another occassion to slim down for. Also, I am an emotional eater. When I'm stressed, sad or happy I turn to food for comfort. That is why I found this site. There must be a better way.
I was a major consumer of fat-free processed goods and I learned my lesson from that. I don't want to then get stuck into all I can eat low-carb processed foods.
I can do the NoS by doing my low carb during the weekdays and then carbing up on the weekends. That way I will not feel like I am restricting myself.

[cvmom]

"I can do the NoS by doing my low carb during the weekdays and then carbing up on the weekends. That way I will not feel like I am restricting myself."

Hi Snazzy.

That sounds like the perfect solution for you. Everyone has their own definition of "Sweets". Some around here have jam in the morning with their toast. That would totally set me up for a craving. Also, I have plain yogurt on non S days and on the S days I have vanilla. You know your body and what works best for you.

I have afternoon dips that (prior to no S) would leave me with huge cravings. Now I just make sure I have a good lunch with some high-quality protein and that seems to tide me over.

Good luck. CVMOM

P.S. I do like the French books' over all philosophy but there is no way on earth you'd catch me eating leek soup for 2 days!!! LOL

[reinhard]

snazzybabe, as far as I'm concerned you're welcome to add other esses if you like, or combine no-s with other stuff. I would beware of mission creep, however. Straight No-s is hard enough, and effective enough for long term weight control. There's a risk in piling on extra rules. The hardest part about no-s is almost that it isn't that hard, that the demands it makes are so few that you feel impatient, like you should be doing more. And then you do more and it's too much, you can't sustain it.

I am, as I mention on the home page and you point out, a little skeptical about low carb, for 2 reasons:

1) Most human beings for most of history have been skinny. Most of the calories they consumed were from carbs. Only the rich could afford to eat differently -- and they were fat. Maybe there is some weird metabolic trick that a calculated low carb diet could tap into to make you skinnier without horrible long term side effects, but doesn't it make more sense to try to model your diet on how the vast majority of skinny people actually ate throughout history than on some weird theoretical technique practiced almost exclusively by fat people? Doesn't it seem obvious that if you want to be skinny the most direct way of doing this is to eat like a skinny person? "Less calories" sure, but how? Not by counting. Skinny people don't count. Nobody even knew there was anything to count until we all got fat. They were skinny because scarcity and society imposed certain traditional eating behaviors. Scarcity and society no longer do this, so the nosdiet spells it out. It's a simplification, sure, it has to be, but not an oversimplification. It's true enough, and it works. It's really the most direct, obvious way of dealing with the problem of being overweight. Why even bother wondering about the mysterious carb in the face of this more obvious approach?

2) Carbs are not merely the stuff of junk food, but the foundation of some of the greatest glories of gastronomy. If you wish, reserve them for the weekend, but please show them some respect!

The link I give on the home page is to some American Heart association report which anti-carbists have informed me is fascist old-school medical establishment propaganda, and maybe they're right, but it doesn't interest me much because I have no desire or need to do without carbs (except for the N-day sugar restriction).

I don't want to get into a carb battle here, I just wanted to clarify my position, since you asked. An S-day safety valve low carb diet is much better than straight low carb, I think. And best of luck to you, however you decide to reconcile the systems. I'm not a jealous diet guru, I'll shout encouragement either way.

[snazzybabe]

Thanks Reinhard for your reply.
The NoS is a good system because 80% of the time people are eating good food and 20% of the time (or less) they get to have a sweet etc so they don't feel like they are on a diet. This is a good thing limiting junk food as it shouldn't be an everyday food.

Generations ago you said that skinny people ate mostly carbohydrates and the rich who were fat ate considerably more. The rich had plenty of meat but they also had the carbohydrates including the sugary sweets too and they were less physically active.
The skinny poor person even though they had carbohydrates like whole-grain bread (not white processed), potatoes and vegies I'm sure you'll agree that they were physically very active. They must have done a lot of heavy labouring and walking. They didn't get to indulge in sugary treats and I'm sure fruit would have been quite rare.

"The explosion of American sugar consumption, from about 7 pounds per person per year in 1800 to an incredible 152 pounds per person per year now, represents an increase of more than 2000 percent, the single most drastic dietary change in the history of humnakind. The second most drastic change was the Agricultural Revolution itself, when humankind went from eating very few grains and beans, to making them the staples of the diet."

So if the sugary junk is cut back (like with No S) and we increase or add exercise into our lives then we can eat the breads and pasta without gaining weight. The carbs only become a problem when eaten to excess and in combination with fat and protein.

Anyway, I know you're not a jealous diet guru. You are one of a kind in an industry that is only concerned with profit whereas you are doing this because you have a passion for it and are not in it for the money.

[Ariel King]

Amen to that. The nice thing about NoS is that you can tailor your meals to whatever you feel is healthiest for you and still follow its rules. Unless of course you feel that a pile of cookies is the healthiest meal for you.

[cvmom]

Ariel

I used to think that cookies were a food group.

Reinhard: You are so eloquent. Why can't I write like you? I read a really interesting article last year in Good Housekeeping, (or one of those women's magazines). In the article the writer decided to live and eat like a 1950's housewife. In 2 weeks I think she dropped pounds without even trying. She cited how small her portions were at every meal. I don't believe she had any processed foods (maybe spam?) but she had dessert every night. It was probably a real sized scoop of real ice cream not some 1/2 pint of candy-filled Ben and Jerry's. Plus she did a lot more physical activity. She was sweeping instead of vacuuming, etc. It was fascinating.

I think the other toughie in our society is that food is in our faces everywhere we go. I got TiVo for my own personal enjoyment but a side benefit is that my kids can watch a show without being exposed to all those snacks posing as foods on the adverts. I refuse to buy them things like Fruit Roll Ups. Watch as your young daughter grows up and see all the packaging. You have to be viligant.

Snazzy: Go for it. Your weight loss will not be a yo-yo anymore.

Hope you all have a great day.

CVMom

[sibyl]

CVMom:

You are so right about food being 'everywhere'. Advertising for everything is so ubiquitos. Its all irritating, but especially the food adverts. They seem to be for the worst food - candy, fast-food hamburgers, chips, pastry, etc., etc. You won't be happy/fulfilled/satisfied unless you have our super greasy sugar loaded crispy coated syrup burger!! And then people get blasted for being too fat and eating too much and not having any willpower. Talk about a mixed message!

I remember this sf story I read when I was in high school (I wish I could remember the author or the title) in which advertising was on everything, even individual toilet paper squares, and a tv like device was on all the time in every room and every street corner, with adverts blaring, and you were not allowed or even capable of turning it off. Some days I think we're getting frighteningly close to that. Kudos to you for turning them off with the TiVo (can't get it here, yet). Me, I turn the channel or read a bit while the ads are on, and I try to ignore the billboards.

[spiralstares]

Before starting No S, I lost about 12 pounds in a month by eating pizza, french fries, ice cream, candy, sandwiches, McDonalds, pretty much whatever I wanted, but just in a limited quantity.

In fact, with the exception of the sweet stuff, that's still the types of things I'm eating during the week and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm losing weight as fast as anybody on this board.

Here's the truth about weight loss, and I write this as someone who has no bias towards any particular diet: Losing weight is more a matter of physics than it is of chemistry.

You need to choose a diet plan that you can stick to even after you lose the weight. If you don't then you'll be right back where you started. I have no desire to cut out carbs for the rest of my life, I prefer to use moderation as my key to weight loss. But if it works for you and it's something your willing to stick to, then hey, go for it. But evidence suggests that once your body orients itself to a low-carb lifestyle, you'll regain much of the weight you lose. (I don't have the details of the study on me, but if you read the cover story in Vol. 10 No. 4 of the science journal Skeptic Magazine, you can read about it there.)

But regardless of studies you need to go with what works for you. What works for me is the combined principles of moderation and movement, and that's something I feel I can stick with for the long run, so that's what I'm going with.

[fawnmarie]

I remember this sf story I read when I was in high school (I wish I could remember the author or the title) in which advertising was on everything, even individual toilet paper squares,

Is that "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", by Harlan Ellison? I only vaguely remember it, myself, though I know I loved it.

Fawn

[spiralstares]

Fawnmarie wrote (in the original thread that I accidentally posted the message above in).

In what way is it more of a matter of physics than chemistry?

I don't know about the low-carb thing either. I lost quite a bit of weight on it, kept it off for years and didn't gain anything back until I started stuffing high-carb crap in my face again, and even then I had to do it for over a year. Only the weariness of having eaten like "a freak" for seven years and the psychological inability to put myself again in the state I need to be in to eat like "a freak" keeps me from returning to it.

So, please 'splain the "physics" concept.

All I meant was that while I'm certain there are biochemical ways of causing your body to lose weight, the reason most people are bigger now then they were 50, 100, 200 years ago is not because the chemical make-up of the food we eat is different. It's that the amount of food is different and the physical energy we expel is less.

So, my point is that if the reason we're bigger as a species is that the physical amount of food we eat has grown, while our expenditure of physical energy has decreased then maybe we as a society and us as individuals should attack the problem by reversing that trend. That is, if we're looking for a long-term solution.

[fawnmarie]

Oh. Well, that splains what you meant.

Fawn

[margaret]

Three weeks ago I tried the Metabolic typing diet, which says it is about chemistry...it was a very limited diet...nothing I could sustain for more then about six hours
whether it's chemistry or physics there is one thing I do know....it's not metaphysics...

[snazzybabe]

All I meant was that while I'm certain there are biochemical ways of causing your body to lose weight, the reason most people are bigger now then they were 50, 100, 200 years ago is not because the chemical make-up of the food we eat is different. It's that the amount of food is different and the physical energy we expel is less.

So, my point is that if the reason we're bigger as a species is that the physical amount of food we eat has grown, while our expenditure of physical energy has decreased then maybe we as a society and us as individuals should attack the problem by reversing that trend. That is, if we're looking for a long-term solution.

Some of the food we eat now is different. Most of what we eat now is processed and full of preservatives. We also have so many convenience foods - frozen meals, ready-made gravy, soups, sauces, desserts. The 1950s housewife cooked everything from scratch. These days people just don't know how to cook they want food that's ready in a few minutes.

I do agree portion sizes have increased.

The amount of exercise we do has definitely decreased as you say, contributing to our fatness as a society.

[Jammin' Jan]

Another thing that has contributed to our weight increase, and which no one ever mentions, is central heating. People used to burn more calories on a regular basis just trying to stay warm. Nowadays, we just turn up the heat in the house, car, etc.

Hard physical labor and cold temps burn calories. That's why the pioneers could get away with apple pie for breakfast!

[Kevin]

This is particularly true where you live, Jan!

[ClickBeetle]

I'm not sure if the 1950's housewife "cooked everything from scratch." When you look at the typical cookbook from the 1950's, it's full of instant and prepared foods. Condensed soups used as casserole bases (the ubiquitous cream-of-mushroom or cream-of-chicken soup), jello "salads," various preserved and potted meat products (Vienna sausages, spam, wieners, bologna, tinned chicken, Armour canned ham, and corned beef), fruits canned in heavy syrup, Wonder bread.

Cheez whiz, Bisquick, muffin mix, cake mix, rice-a-roni, instant noodle casseroles, and TV dinners --- all date from the 1950's or before. Sometimes, looking at those cookbooks, it seems like food from the 50's consists mostly of various re-combinations of diced pimentos, stuffed olives, deviled ham, canned mandarin oranges, Miracle Whip, instant coffee, and wedges of iceberg lettuce doused in bottled Thousand Island dressing.

Convenience foods - things that you just heat and eat, or mixes that come in packets and only need eggs or milk or water added -- actually date from the early 20th century and were in widespread use by the 1930's and 40's.

I'm not saying everything about 1950's food is bad, not at all. But just remember that, at the time, it was considered practically revolutionary when Julia Child started teaching people how to make a basic white sauce from scratch by heating flour and butter together in a saucepan.

[snazzybabe]

I didn't know they had all those convenience foods back then. But I still think today we eat a whole lot more crap then they did back then.

[Jammin' Jan]

I was growing up in the 50's and early 60's and have pretty strong memories of the food we ate. My grandma, God love her, used to make bacon for breakfast, then she would fry eggs in all the bacon fat, spooning the hot fat over the tops of the eggs. This was on the weekends. On weekdays, we had oatmeal with milk, and freshly-squeezed orange juice. At dinnertime, all the veggies were canned. Meals followed the meat-vegetable/jello salad-starch pattern. Grandma ate too much chocolate, and the doctor was always telling her to "lose ten pounds by Christmas." Year after year.

At home, meat was a big deal and there was always a lot of it. Also white bread, sweetened breakfast cereals, Kool-ade, real butter for the toast, potatoes, vegetables, everything. Hershey's syrup was always in the fridge for the ice cream which was always in the freezer. After school, I almost always had a few cents on me to stop at the drug store with the other kids and buy something...Hershey bars were only a nickel then! I did not learn to like soda pop until high school, mid 60's. Didn't care much for Fizzies in the 50's either!

We ate a lot of TV dinners, since my Mom worked full-time. Vegetables were either fresh or frozen at our house. I used to love taking mayo and black olive sandwiches on white bread for school lunch, and there were always chips, fruit, and milk, too.

We ate a lot of desserts back then. Cakes were common, and we also had a lots of sweet things from the local bakery.

Adults smoked and drank, and that was part of the common culture.

So, you can see, there was good and bad. I don't think we are really any worse off today. We just have more to choose from, so we need to choose wisely.

[gratefuldeb67]

Hey guys! Since we're all getting nostalgic here, LOL...
I remember a marked difference, not in food ingredients, from my childhood, (except back then they had "Tab and Fresca" LOL...")
But in attitudes...
You were expected, at least in my home, to have fruit and vegetables, and not have desserts all the time...
Having soda or ice cream was a once in a while occurrence and only, only for treats.. Like at someones birthday...
Do any of you remember someone in your family saying "You'll ruin your appetite" if you ever wanted to eat some stuff before you had a meal?
Well whoever said that was right! Also, I think fast food places, like McDonalds etc... simply hadn't proliferated to the point that they were on every fifth block on the street...
In a way, they were "Sses" too because you had to make a special trip to get to them... Usually if you were on a trip going somewhere long distance or something.... Now you pass Starbucks, and all the rest of the chains every thirty seconds!
But food ingredients, I believe, aren't that fundamentally different, just there's an emphasis on the ratio of garbage preservatives and chemicals, to actual nutritional stuff, I think has gone up, because of cost efficiency (like adding hydrolized soy to almost everything, and what about xanthan gum! LOL...)
Gluttony, however, is the problem everyone...
And we can remedy that, so why not make it the focus, and not get lost in this sea of nutritional confusion... Don't lose the forest for the trees...
Staring at a plate is easier than trying to decipher the names of the chemicals on your box of cereal (though I do look at that too...)
I guess, the longer the list, the worse it is for you! LOL...
Love and Peace,
Deb

[margaret]

I think the reason we eat more is because the food industry has been putting more sugar in the food in order to stimulate our appetites so we will eat more. (Actually I read that in a book - maybe Fat Nation or something like that.) It is just like the tobacco industry putting nicotine and other ingredients in cigarettes to make people more easily get addicted.

[peetie]

I think you may be onto something here, Margaret. Last night, for dessert, I had a large piece of carrot cake from my favorite bakery. I have been doing better and better about not eating in the evenings on no s days, but even though yesterday was a freebie day, it was interesting to notice how hungry I was all evening! Even though I had ingested more calories than usual, they were in the form of sugar and it really stimulated my appetite. I

I ended up having a small salad before bed because I didn't think I'd sleep with that gnawing feeling. This taught me the wisdom, for me, of keeping sweets for s-days.

peetie

[snazzybabe]

I was born in Europe and we came to live in Australia in 1970. In our family mum cooked traditional food which was lots of soups and casseroles. We rarely had dessert as it wasn't part of our culture. Mum and dad grew up in a village where they grew their own vegies, milked the cow etc. It would be very rare that dad could afford to buy a bag of oranges or even sweets for us.
When we had some kind of religious festival thats when we would have lamb on the spit and a few other goodies. You really looked forward to it.
When we came to Australia we had more choice and could afford more. We still didn't have the dessert after dinner but I could have all the oranges I wanted - that was fantastic as I absolutely loved oranges. Also the sweets - lollies, icecream, biscuits and chips were no longer a rare sight in our house as we could afford them and also they were more readily available.

I'm in absolute agreement about sweet food being so addictive. When I eat it, I can't seem to get enough.

[ceri]

[I'm in absolute agreement about sweet food being so addictive. When I eat it, I can't seem to get enough.]

I totally agree with this remark by snazzybabe. When someone opens a box of sweets, if I can avoid eating one choc, I can avoid eating any of them, but once Ive eaten one, I'm lost. Same goes for biscuits, cake etc. I think the low carb mob are right about this, we dont seem to have a STOP button for carbs, esp, of the sweet 'n sugary kind. It's much easier to know when youve had enough protein or fat... it just makes you nauseous

The reason is probably that in our caveperson days, we didnt tend to encounter many sweet things.. maybe fruit if it was in season, or honey if you could find a wild bees nest, and didnt mind getting stung. Our diet was one heck of a lot more montonous than it is now: tubers, leaves, and the occaisional animal that didnt get us first or manage to escape, and probably quite a lot of fish.

But we do need some carbs. mainly of the wholegrain kind.
I guess the whole overweight problem comes back to to an over-abundance of easily available, cheap and poor quality food thats usually bereft of vitamins, minerals etc and which is heavily advertised and marketed, and is thus difficult to avoid.

I sometimes wonder if we keep on eating because our bodies are looking for the goodies that should be there, but arent anymore (unless you grow your own)

Ceri

[Samurai]

I have the same problem. A bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos is diet disaster for me! Same with sodas- I can't have just one for the day. Once I open that door its all over; I'll drink 3-4 before the day is done.

Funny thing is fruits are sweet and I have no problem eating one apple or a single mango or whatever. Matter of fact they are sometimes too sweet, in a different way I guess, in that after one I really don't want anymore, or anything sweet at all.

So I've been using fruit as my sweet stuff and now try to include some fruit at every meal. I found that it stops those cookie cravings cold.

[gratefuldeb67]

Hi Samurai!
Good for you on eating healthier these days!
Fruits are not only sweet, but they have fiber, substance, and a variety of flavors and colors... And they are full of vitamins...
One of the things mentioned in the past NoS group about sugar cravings was their possible origination from being vitamin deprived... (was that an actual sentence? LOL...)
If we just wanted sugar alone we'd be eating it straight out of the sugar bowl... I believe it's more than just the sweet taste, though that's important too... Perhaps fruit are so satisfying because they provide the nutrients the body is craving, which can radically change our energy levels...
Doritos! Those are tough to stop eating for sure...
Did you ever notice that the main seasoning used in all of the varieties of Doritos is MSG? Well that could have something to do with their addictive qualities... (besides their yummy crunchiness)

Again, congratulations on treating your self so well these days!!!
Have you kept up with Shovelglove?
Be well Samurai San!
Peace and Love,
Deb

[Samurai]

Hey Deb,
I didn't know that about MSG in the Doritos, although its really not surprising, right? What packaged junk food doesn't contain that stuff these days? LOL

You're right on about the vitamins in fruits, too. With the way foods are preserved and packaged, we are overfed and undernourished, or so it seems.

Speaking of eating healthy, is anyone on the board concerned with Mad Cow? They found a second case in the USA, apparently from a steer that was sent to Texas this past November, meant for slaughter in the human food chain.

[peetie]

Samuri,
Being on the neurotic side, I am concerned about mad cow even though there is no evidence that it has worked its way into the food supply. Just for extra precaution, I buy my beef at health food type markets who carry grass fed beef. Even some of the larger chains are starting to carry grain/grass fed beef also. It is my understanding, that the disease is spread through feeding cows animal by products, so if the cows only eat grain, or grass, they aren't exposed.

Then again, I'm probably being overly concerned over nothing, but that's what I do best!

peetie

[reinhard]

Welcome, Peetie. Sorry for the delay. And don't worry about mad cow. You are much, much likelier to die from a lightening strike than from the human form of mad cow.

[peetie]

Thanks, Reinhard....I was getting a bit of a complex, so thank you for the howdy do!

So, I have to worry about lightning now too?

In all seriousness, if we let every latest food scare rock our world, we'd be awfully hungry. I tend to get all wacked out about the food crisis du jour, and then mellow out when I realize anew that this is how we sell newspapers in this country. Scare the H out of people.

Well, I better move away from the window incase some lightning appears. Although it is sunny and blue skies and typical so. CA weather today.....

peetie

[sibyl]

I realized awhile ago that every single food item we ingest has something bad for us - even distilled water can kill us (if too much is drunk in a single sitting).

So I figured I'd just worry about the obviously harmful stuff, like rotten, moldy, or spoiled food, cut back on the obviously not-healthy stuff, like candy and pastries, and let the magazines duke it out whether eggs are good for you or not.

[peetie]

Sounds like something there is precious little of these days, Sibyl, COMMON SENSE! I definitely think you're on to something here!


peetie