Phriday Phunn Quizz: Thursday Edition

Due to the holiday, we are presenting the Phriday Phunn Quizz a whole day early. I'm keeping busy by making two batches of ice cream for various social events we're attending, which after a few weeks of railing about sugar, and starting to rail about giving sweets to kids, makes me a big fat hypocrite the life of the party. Guess right and you'll enter the kingdom of heaven, but guess wrong and see how the kids around me will be after eating my ice cream.

This is the face of:

1. a pre-diabetic
2. Satan
3. a generation that grew up on much smaller portions
4. corporate imagineering

Family values include:

1. food and fun
2. lots of cheesecake
3. free-market Jesus
4. a super-sized combo bucket for $2.99

Well be back on Tuesday, with the monthly weigh-in and the state of the lard.

THE COUNT: 2230
A day out with Edie, kept to the budget. Lunch up with Grandma's on the UES at her favorite pizza joint. The house salad wasn't that great, and the dressing on the side that came with it was just vegetable oil with some dried herbs in it. I was given two containers, and I looked at the bottom - 2oz. That's four tablespoons, which is....400 calories of oil. And I was given two -- 800 calories of dressing. I poured one of them over the salad, but it could not hide the fact that was not that fresh, and I only ate half, with a lot of oil pooling on the bottom.

AM SNACK: 7:45am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, steel cut oatmeal, 375 cal

AM SNACK: 12pm, momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: 2:30pm, 2 slices pizza, house salad, diet coke, +/- 1000 cal

DINNER: 7:45pm, sardines & avocado on whole wheat toast, steamed string beans, baked red potatoes, 7oz diet sprite, 730 cal

Am I a Man, or a Garbage Can?

PJ O'Fudgenukkers, Brooklyn Style

One thing that calorie counting will teach you awfully fast: portions are stupid large. They've been large so long that we don't recognize them as large anymore. Look at the plates and bowls and cups from the my parents only 40-odd years ago, and they were noticeably smaller. Now that I'm a parent, those portions are now even growing larger, due to the "I am my own kid's garbage can" phenomenon....

THEY sit there, five little pasta shells, nestled in a shallow bath of melted butter and Parmesan: the remains of dinner for my toddler son and daughter. I cannot help myself. I reach over, grab the pink plastic bowl and scoop a bite into my mouth. At that moment, I realize something has gone terribly wrong.

The NY Time's Dining & Wine piece is all about the struggles of dads with little kids, vacuuming up their left over kiddie portions in the face of trying to keep a cap on their own eating. There are various quotes from what are referred to as "daddy bloggers", which gave me the kinda heebie-jeebies that a spoiled Jewish teenager from Long Island gets when someone off-handedly mentions JAPs.

Yeah, I'm a daddy blogger. Kiss my tuchus!

The piece is a fairly standard exploration of the challenges of living with and feeding a person with the tastes of a child -- sugar this, fried that, cheesy pleasey, and damn the cholesterol. To a certain extent, if you have an adult palate, your child will not always want to eat what you are eating but if you don't have a fully adult palate (and who does?), the temptation of high-calorie, high-taste food every day will be hard to turn away.

Even before I started counting and restricting my calories, I haven't been too tempted to eat Edie's foods, with the exception of the conveniently microwaved chicken nuggets. However today, I did act as Edie's trash can, but....it was a good thing, thanks to the restaurant I was in.

Today, me n' the kids spent the day in Brooklyn Bridge Park with a friend and her toddler, and she recommended a restaurant that she heard was kid-friendly, just up the street from the playground on the butt-end of Atlantic Avenue.

Come for the play-space, stay for kids leaving you alone while in the play space.

The Moxie Spot trumpets "Family, Fun & Food" on it's sign prominently, which immediately got me thinking of the Republican Convention currently going down in Florida. How much retrograde, religiously inclined insanity is defended in the name of "family, fun & food values"? To me, "family restaurant" is code for "crappy food, noisy room". But it looked near empty, so that was a plus.

Family Values runs on cheesecakes. Subservient, God-fearing cheesecakes.

Spacious, lots of wood, we ordered at the counter, they brought the food to us. A play area was near by, and a 2nd floor is a complete play area, too. Menu was standard fried stuff/pastas/pastries, with a healthy number of kids portions. The first thing I noticed was that the prices for everything, including the adult stuff, was kinda low for the neighborhood. Hmmm. The kids bopped at the coloring table, and when the food came, it was surprisingly good and...modestly portioned. Rather than sell you a standard jumbo burger for $12, here was what a burger usually was like 40 years ago, about half the size...for about half the price!

This past weekend in the Northfork, Edie begged us into submission was treated to ice cream every day because vacation days are "special days." It really annoyed me that one particular shop had no kid's size, just a "small" which was easily 12 oz, which is a large at a standard fancy-pants place in Manhattan. But here, my adult-sized burger & onion rings was pleasantly dinky, which allowed me to....hoover up most of the fries in Edie's kid's hot dog combo plate without the guilt wracking all the other "daddy bloggers" in the NY Times.

The place was quiet today, but I'd have to assume on the weekends the Moxie Spot is more jammed up than the "escort services" at the current Republican convention. Still, on a Daddy Blogger scale of one to five diapers, the Moxie Spot gets 4 1/2, discounted a half a diaper for the anemic pickle on my burger. Kids love pickles, but adults love good pickles.

Tomorrow, delving in to the dark heart of daddy blogging.

THE COUNT: 2,305
Last night was a struggle, got really hungry after I went to bed around 11pm. When I travelled around Europe as a student for a few months on a very limited budget, I went to bed hungry many nights, and when I got home my parents were happy/concerned with how thin I looked. The happy/concerned look of my long-gone parents got me through the night with out snacking.

AM SNACK: 7:30am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, fruit smoothie, 350 cal

AM SNACK: 11am, momma salad, 90 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, burger, onion rings, fries, diet coke, +/- 1000 cal
Felt like a grand. Could be wrong, but don't think so. I think I may have to play with weighing a meal without counting, eating it, guessing the calories then doing the math.

DINNER: 6:45pm, grilled chicken breast, steamed green beans, baked potatoes, 7oz diet sprite,  840 cal

Lil' Debbie Gets Pwned

Gettin' the kids hooked.

I'm the pusher man. I teach culinary at a high school after school program in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I've been doing this for about three years now, about to start the fourth, it's a good gig while my main time is dominated with raising children. I do some recruiting in the cafeteria in September for an early October start. I set up a little table with the poster above, and present two trays of little brownie squares. One side is made by me, usually the day before, the other side is made by my evil counterpart, Lil' Debbie.

Bitch.

I have about 35 minutes while the student body eats a pre-packaged, pre-made, reheated, politically shaped,  and nutritionally regimented meal. They're shy at first, but once they've eaten and they see a few kids grab a few without paying, it rolls and all the brownies are gone before the end of the lunch period.

I sell them on the brownies to take the class. Taste them one after the other, and most either grunt "thanks!" and run away. Some linger, and give their opinions. Most prefer the home-made, but a few always say the Little Debbie is better, as it tastes like a brownie is supposed to taste - they've never had anything else. A few have a revelation -- they are tasting a real brownie for the first time, not an industrial simulacrum of the idea of a brownie, made with the cheapest possible ingredients and artificial additives and preservatives to deliver a brownie-like experience. It is those students that usually become my students. They usually have a predilection to be interested in food, but the brownie tweaks them.

Gimme chocolate NOW!

I also point to the cost vs. quality. Despite shelling out for top-of-the-line foo-foo organic ingredients for my brownies, it still actually comes out cheaper per brownie than Lil' Debdeb. I list my ingredients by what there is most of to least of, so the first ingredient is sugar. Lil Debbo has flour as first, but forms of sugar as #2, #4, #5 and #9. Who do you think has more sugar per bite? My brownie doesn't even have nine ingredients.

It's a cheap but efficient ploy -- most kids are already familiar with sweet, with chocolate, with moist and gooey. I teach 6 different sections of varying length and advancement during the whole school year, and only one of them actually gets a pastry class, where I teach various cookies, cakes, pies and tarts. However, the brownies usually come up when we cook a full meal for the whole school at Thanksgiving, or for the PTA, or for a once-a-year catering gig.

Speaking of pre-packaged, pre-made, reheated, politically shaped, and nutritionally regimented meals, the government of NYC recently tried to cancel a program that puts professional chefs in public schools to make from-scratch fresh food for the students instead of the trucked-in packaged crap from central commissaries. Why? Because the meals prepared might not meet new federal nutritional standards that are required to get certain federal lunch funds. Fortunately, the city reversed it's decision before school reconvened.

After Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, and other lawmakers urged the Education Department to figure out a way to keep Wellness in the Schools involved in devising and cooking meals, the department decided to allow the program to continue.

“We are working in collaboration with WITS on an alternative menu that will also meet the new U.S.D.A. regulations,” said Erin Hughes, a department spokeswoman. “The department always aims to work with our partners, and we value having an organization like WITS in our schools.”

It's sad that the level of bureaucracy is so thick that a major contender for mayor in the coming election has the opportunity to tweak the rank and file to make what should be simple matters work. I see the food the kids are eating at the high school in Red Hook, and it is god-awful. It might be nutritionally sound, but they are not eating a lot of it. It's not because there isn't enough sugar or candy coating or salt or frying to it -- it's because it's not fresh, it's been sitting around too long, and is made with crappy ingredients. Urgle burgle, I think I might have to spend a week blogging about school meals soon...

Urgle with side of burgle, steam gurgle, and a pint of durgle.

THE COUNT: 2360
The weekend was hard -- Greenport in the Northfork has become uncomfortably touristy, and after almost a decade of going their to visit every summer, I think this might have been the last time. A deciding factor is the wicked combination of an ice cream obsessed toddler and a one-block downtown with about five different flavors of ice cream shop. We justified feeding her ice cream every day with "being on vacation" and explained to her that eating ice cream more than once a day would make her "fat and sad", which she countered with "ice cream is yummy in my tummy!" -sigh- Then I said, "Girl, read my blog your just like your mother."

Pizza, lobster rolls, fries, a total lack of vegetables, it wasn't pretty. Saturday night we skipped the restaurants and I got a bag of baby carrots for dinner, as lunch was still weighing on me. Sunday I woke up to ride an organized century bike ride, and hungry me was met by a huge table of cakes and pastries at the start line. I gorged on a stupid amount, and while it gave me energy, I suspect it might have effected my mood for the worse. Who knows, there were a lot of other factors working. Something to keep in mind to pay attention to the next time I gorge on sugar.

AM SNACK: 7:45am, 7oz diet coke, 0 cal
Need to make green tea today, settled for a lesser eye opener.

BREAKFAST: 9am, fage full fat yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 330 cal

LUNCH: 1:30pm, spicy beef patty, vegetable patty, 830 cal

DINNER: 7pm, broiled sole, steamed string beans, boiled corn, baby carrots, 14oz diet sprite, 730 cal
Tempted to cook up the potatoes that came from the CSA this evening, but had corn bought from a farm stand in the Northfork yesterday that had to be eaten. Nice problem to have.

EVENING SNACK: 9:15pm, watermelon, 150 cal

EVENING SNACK: 10pm, peanuts & chocolate chips, 320 cal

Phriday Phun Quizz: More Sugah, honey!

Friday once again! Takin' the fambly out for an end of summer weekend away, so we'll continue to report from my stomach on Tuesday. Leaving in the morning, so I'm going to just try to aim to go to bed slightly hungry without recording the calories.

Here lies the Phriday Phun Quizz. Guess right and be rewarded by our Father Art, who is in heaven. Guess wrong and see what is wrong with them kids today.

Chris Crocker wants you to:

1. leave Big Food alone.
2. eat more sugar and grow up big and strong just like him.
3. buy his new porn video.
4. use him in a meme, any ol' meme.

This is an example of:

1. The Nanny State
2. Truth in Advertising
3. All of the above
4. None of the above

Paula Deen has got:

1. the Buttah
2. the Sugah
3. the Fattyfat
4. the chachas

These drinks represent:

1. the mixture of alcohol and sugar
2. drinks for children
3. crimes against civilized culture
4. dinner at Sigma Kappa Alpha

It's Sugar, It's Alcohol, It's Sugar Alcohol!

Ain't no party like a sugar-booze-caffeine party!

When I heard about sugar alcohols, my first thought was, "Ah! Now THAT is the product of the future!" Sugar and alcohol is quite a party combo. However, "sugar alcohol" is good if your party is full of senior citizens:

Sugar alcohols can produce a noticeable cooling sensation in the mouth when highly concentrated, for instance in sugar-free hard candy or chewing gum.

From the highly toxic single-carbon methanol to the food-friendly multi-carbon sorbitol, they're all sweet to the taste, and have fewer calories than sucrose's 4 cal/g.  They're not as sweet as sucrose, but can take the edge off the off flavors of artificial sweeteners. Sugar alcohols also don't cause tooth decay - sweet! But meh.

Sugar and alcohol have something in common: If sugar were to get in to a fight with alcohol, he'd slice his hand off and casually admit, "I am you father...."

"4-Luke-oh, you are a distillation of me, Darth Sucrose." Sorry.

They're both super-simple carbohydrates that the body needs to do little to get into the bloodstream. Sugar will rush in and give you fast energy, then a crash. Alcohol will rush in and get you drunk, then hang you over. When sugar undergoes the metabolic process known as fermentation, an environment is produced to allow yeast to go nutso and eat all the sugar. The yeasts belch & poo two new, simpler components: alcohol and CO2. Through distillation, any boring stuff like water is taken away and you're left with spirits.

Sugar is 4 cal/g, and even though alcohol is made directly from the sugars in the original sources like grains (vodka, beer), raw sugar plants (rum) and grapes (wine), it has 7cal/g. It's quite a different animal. Or is it?

Excess sugar can alter metabolism, raise blood pressure, skew the signaling of hormones and damage the liver — outcomes that sound suspiciously similar to what can happen after a person drinks too much alcohol. Schmidt, co-chair of UCSF’s Community Engagement and Health Policy program, noted on CNN: “When you think about it, this actually makes a lot of sense. Alcohol, after all, is simply the distillation of sugar. Where does vodka come from? Sugar.”

Alcohol is an acquired taste, but the pleasure from it's intoxicating effects is universal and timeless. Add some sugar to an alcoholic drink to mask the taste of the alcohol and make it taste like candy, and you got one wicked brew.

Sorority Breakfast.

As a middle-aged parent of two, I don't drink much anymore and don't know many people who drink much more than I do. Of course, back in college, I drank to keep up and I had one close friend who became a full-blown alcoholic after our university years wound down. Looking back on our time together, I remember him being much more enthusiastic about getting drinks than I, but what sticks out more is his over-arching love for potatoes in all their forms. We joked it was because of his Irish heritage, but perhaps he needed the simple starches to help quell an addiction to simple sugars, which would eventually be serviced with alcohol? Research seems to point to a relationship between sugar addiction sweet tooths and a prediliction to par-tay alcoholism.

More and more, I'm wondering why sugar isn't being consider a combination food/drug, like alcohol, and it's giving me the sadz.

Make that a sugar-free cupcake, dang it!

THE COUNT: 2450
Went over the budget, but it was a day on my feet, taking Edie to the Bronx Zoo, so I'm not going to beat myself up. There were many, many opportunities to indulge in french fries and ice cream at the zoo, and Edie didn't let me forget it.

BREAKFAST: 8:15am, kolon bloe, 300 cal

LUNCH: 12:30pm, almond butter & grape jelly on whole wheat bread, momma salad, chocolate covered espresso beanz, 7oz diet coke, 700 cal

PM SNACK: 1pm, small vegan chocolate chip cookie, +/- 50 cal
Friend and fellow kitchen experimenter offered me a cookie, I couldn't say, "sorry, I'm on a strict diet, so I'm going to be a sourpuss and a dark cloud of unfun and refuse your delicious cookie."

DINNER: 7pm, whole wheat spag with turkey meatballs, tomato sauce, parm and steamed string beans with butter, 1160 cal

PM SNACK: 9:30pm, popcorn, 240 cal

Diabetes, Diabeetus, let's call the whole thing off

Nazis getting you down? I'll be your buddy!

My poppa and his family escaped from Austria in the late 1930's, one of the last Jewish families to leave before it became impossible. Dad never spoke much about Vienna. Even when we visited his hometown when he was an old man, other than some vivid memories of "NO JEWS" painted on park benches in yellow, he didn't have much to say about the place....except for the bakeries. A Viennese sacher torte sent his childhood heart spinning, the cream puffs and cakes and confections made him all a-twitter decades before twittering became a thing. He had the most wonderful memories of a bakery on every corner, each turning out more fantastic temptations than the next. Unfortunately, his spinning childhood heart also sent his adult insulin levels spinning, too.

My father had adult-onset Type 2 diabetes in his later years, starting when I was a teen. He credited his life-long sweet tooth for his high blood sugar, and he managed his disease well, with a focus becoming of his scientific training. He eliminated all candy and junk food, he acquired a stationary bicycle and spent a regular number of hours on it five days a week. I remember seeing my parents while on vacation from college. I'd be going out at night and my mom would be bed in her housecoat and my dad pedalling away on his stationary bike. She'd be watching TV and he'd be reading a book on a stand attached to his handle bars. They made it work.

Later in life when their exercise routine got too dull, they resorted into learning all the dance moves of Kid n' Play.

So in these past few weeks of reading and writing about sugar, I was thinking that underlining the relationship between sugar and diabetes would be a no-brainer. Except that my "common sense" assumption is, uh, wrong.

The myth that sugar causes diabetes is commonly accepted by many people. Research has shown that it isn't true. Eating sugar has nothing to do with developing type 1 diabetes.
The biggest dietary risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes is simply eating too much and being overweight — your body doesn’t care if the extra food comes from cookies or beef, it is gaining weight that is the culprit.

The American Diabetes Association goes on to say that while sugar may make blood sugar spike and make you feel crazy n' wot-not (specially if you already have diabetes), that in itself will not cause diabetes. But if you constantly take in too much sugar or any carbohydrate, that'll put you in a direct path to "the sugah".

All the buttah just makes the sugah shoot through me fastah, honey!

The NY Times recently featured a piece about a new study that shows that the best way to prevent Type 2 diabetes in prediabetic people is bariatric surgery, yick!

Over the course of a roughly 15-year period, those who had one of three types of bariatric procedures were 80 percent less likely to develop the disease than people who tried losing weight with diet and exercise advice from their doctors.

The important take away here is twofold:

1. Most diabetes comes from being fat, and when you lose the chunk, you lose the diabetes.
2. Those who choose what McDonalds and Big Sugar would recommend (the freedomy choiciness of a balanced diet and exercise) to cure their diabetes overwhelmingly fail compared to those who cut up and splay their guts with expensive, risky, painful procedures. 

Sugar may not directly cause diabetes, but it's addictive qualities do directly cause obesity, which in turn directly causes diabetes. So sweet sugar, you're not quite off the hook.

The Last Word in Diabeetus.

Tomorrow, two tastes that go great together: sugar, alcohol and -gasp- sugar alcohols.

THE COUNT:2275
The day centered around lifting weights and cleaning up the house, then some good friends coming over with kids, making pizza for all, then walking the strollers through naps to enjoy some downtown parks. It left me tired and a bit frazzled, but all the more in love with my family.

AM SNACK: 7:45am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 9:15am, steel cut oatmeal, 375 cal

LUNCH: noon, home made margarita pizza, 14 oz diet coke, 830 cal
Every ingredient pre-scaled and mapped out, made it easy to whip out 4 pies of equal caloric content.

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, half a vanilla ice cream cone, 100 cal
Didn't need this snack, but Edie did, and I had to eat along to prevent a huge ice cream mess on her face, hair and clothes. The whole cone was about 190 cal, and I probably ate about 1/2 of it.

PM SNACK: 5:15pm, momma salad, 100 cal

DINNER: 6:45pm, 6" veggie burger sub, Doritos, soda water, 760 cal
Didn't want to cook, but didn't want the questionable calories of ordering in food, so I popped over to the local Subway for some peace, quiet and certainty.

EVENING SNACK: 9pm, watermelon, 85 cal

Soda Ban: The Facts, Astroturfed

FROM MAH COLD DEAD HANDS!!

Big Soda has dropped some of their loose pocket change to set up a website to influence the voting public on a topic they can't actually vote on, so it's interesting to delve into what exactly they're getting at. Let's take a look at the "facts" as they see them, shall we?:

What beverages would be banned? The mayor is proposing a ban on the sale of sugar-sweetened beverages over 16 ounces in restaurants, movie theaters, sports venues, coffee shops, pizza shops, delis, food trucks or carts. This restriction would apply to both fountain and bottled beverages and include beverages like soda, sweetened coffee drinks and teas, juice drinks and sports drinks.

The correct answer is, "No beverages would be banned." It's a serving-size issue for the most caloric, nutritionally-void drinks. While juice and sports drink have a patina of nutritional value, the bottom line is they are as full of empty calories just like Mountain Spew and Croaka Cola.

I coulda been a contendah....for wacky pack copy-writing.

What beverages are exempt from the restriction? Diet sodas or any other calorie-free drink would be exempt from the restriction along with any drink that is at least half milk or half milk substitute.

So now it's a "restriction" and not a ban. Basically, the whole wide world of non-sugared drinks are unaffected. But if you're a sugar-addict (or a share holder in Big Sugar), that doesn't mean much.

Does the restriction apply to free refills at restaurants? No, it doesn’t. Consumers could refill a beverage at a restaurant as many times as they want.

So much for being a "ban" or much of "restriction", for that matter. There is also nothing stopping anyone from buying multiple sodas, not just freebies, but making this point fully clear would be too, uh, honest and factual.

Drink in the Freedom.

Does the restriction apply to beverages sold at grocery stores? This proposal would apply to all restaurants/food locations which require a health inspection report. People can still purchase sodas, juice drinks, sports drinks and sugar-sweetened teas in sizes larger than 16 ounces at the grocery store.

If you want to be a disgusting glutton that people stare at and cluck their tongues at, you still can be...at the grocery store.

Are sugar-sweetened beverages the cause of obesity? No, calories from all foods count. From 1999 to 2010, full-calorie soda sales declined 12.5% while obesity rates went up. According to the CDC, added sugars consumed from sugar sweetened beverages are down 39% thanks in part to more low- and zero-calorie choices. Restrictions that target a specific size of beverage will do nothing to change behaviors or teach people about a healthy lifestyle. Only education, diet and exercise can do that.

Oy. Sure, calories from all food count, but between the addictive nature of sugar and the fact that it is nutritionally void, it is sugar that is the most expendable, if we need to cut calories. Sales might be going down in sugared soda, but consumption of sugar is still up, due to our increase in all calories since the 70s.

The most galling statement here is "Restrictions that target a specific size of beverage will do nothing to change behaviors or teach people about a healthy lifestyle."  To say that rules, restrictions and laws do nothing to change behavior is a flat-out anti-gubbermint lie. "Only education, diet and exercise can do that," is just another variation of the McDonald's Defense: it's a personal responsibility, it's on you to care for yourself, we're just an innocent party over here. If our product sickens you, then stop using it. No addictive qualities here, no compulsion through repetitive media exposure, just move along, thank you!

No, continue eating 68 sugar packets. You will not get fat. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Will the beverage restriction have an impact on obesity rates in New York City? No. While New Yorkers would be limited to 16-ounce beverages, they would still be able to indulge in other high calorie foods. According to government data, sugar-sweetened beverages like sodas, juice drinks, sports drinks and teas account for only 7% of calories in the average American diet. With 93% of calories coming from other foods and beverages, it’s time to look at the bigger picture—diet and exercise.

That is one incredibly certain "no," when there is no test case or study, and throwing out random statistics that don't really bear any weight on the issue doesn't help. The assumption is that people will eat the same number of calories regardless of restrictions (because we are all wild animals with no sense of shame) so why bother.  I don't think the restrictions will impact NYC's obesity because it doesn't go far enough, but I really don't know. That the message, "these drinks are too large" will become a more normalized part of the noise cloud of culture is fantastic.

The bigger picture is not to put all the responsibility on the individual -- the bigger picture is to start targeting habits that are aided and abetted by non-individuals. Corporations may be "people", but they ain't individuals.

And they have a strict diet of Soylent Green.

Will I be able to vote on this proposal? No. The mayor is only required to get approval from the NYC Department of Health to make this restriction a reality. However, public hearings will be held. Join New Yorkers for Beverage Choices to stay up to date on all of the latest developments along with information on how you can make your voice heard.

This underlines the importance of this 16-oz restriction is to the Soda Industry: it is the tip of the spear, so let's shut this conversation down before they figure out perhaps unrestricted access to addicting high-profit products are not in the consumer's best interest. Well,  according to the latest news on the website, the public hearing happened, and the public spoke. And the public agrees with the "ban" was suppressed by the evil gubbermint bureaucracy:

“The one and only public hearing about the proposed ban came and went, and many businesses that would be impacted were unable to voice their opinions because of the inconvenient time and location – in Long Island City in the middle of the business day,” said Coalition spokesperson Eliot Hoff. “Whether or not city officials are listening to New Yorkers on this issue, we are still out on the streets educating people and businesses about the impact and encouraging them to stand up and make their opinions known.”

Stand up and make their opinions known, as long as it is in line with the bottom of line of Big Soda. Astroturfing at it's finest!

Astroturfing is a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to another political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. The term is a derivation of AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.

 Tomorrow, we jump to the defense of sugar, dispelling the myth that sugar causes diabetes. FBIWC: Fair and Balanced.

THE COUNT: 2345
Took Edie up to Tarrytown to visit a friend, her kids and their suburban public pool. Eating was an afterthought, and I didn't object when she brought us to the Golden Arches -- I would know exactly how many calories I was taking in.

On the opposite end, the whole wheat pasta dish was again assembled from fresh CSA vegetables just picked from the ground this morning.

AM SNACK: 6:30am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 8:15am, fruit smoothie, 350 cal

AM SNACK: 11am, momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: 3:45pm, quarter pounder, fries, diet coke, 890 cal

DINNER: 7:30pm, whole wheat fusilli with tomato, eggplant, pepper & herbs, +/-800 cal
Did measure this meal, but didn't feel like finishing it. Measured out at 985, bringing to the upper limit of my budget...

EVENING SNACK: 8:30pm, dark chocolate, 160 cal