Health

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Marketing Ads that Try to Convince You They are Selling Healthier Foods, Like Natural Cut Fries with Sea Salt

I am thoroughly amused by advertisements designed for morons. The “healthy” snack franchise Smoothie King wins a special prize in my book. Every morning as I’m driving to work I have to look at their lame sign with a weekly message for passers-by. Every year during the first week of May their marquee reads, “Slim down for summer with a healthy smoothie for dinner”.

Yes, because drinking a smoothie with more sugar than two sodas is going to help the situation. Like having a syrup-based smoothie instead of balanced dinner is going to magically melt the pounds away. Simply hilarious.

But this week’s sign literally made me laugh at loud in the car, looking like a crazy man when seen by the cars next to me at the red light: “Flu season? Not this year! -Immunity Boost”.

Are you Efron kiddin’ me? While Smoothie King’s Echinacea-based “immunity boost” in their smoothies has to do some good, it’s asinine to trust that this $2 shot of an herbal supplement in itself will prevent the flu. So lame.

I’m of the old school of belief that says to let nature just run its course. The more I am exposed to what’s out there, the more immunity my body builds.

While I do catch something more serious every five years like strep throat, in which I have no choice but to visit a doctor and get a prescription to fight it off, I’ve learned in my 28 ½ years that pretty much every week of October 14th, March 28th, and sometimes January 15th, I suffer from major allergic reactions. To the air, I guess. And usually when that happens, it turns into a mild form of sinusitis.

I have encountered this so many times that it’s just a part of life to me now. Being that I get around five sick days a year from my employer, I use them for the days of the year I have the most severe symptoms: migraines, toothaches, oversensitive skin, body aches, depression, lack of appetite, inability to focus, foggy short-term memory.

Since I have dealt with allergy and sinus issues most of my life, I know that what many people call being “sick”, I simply call a “bad allergy and sinus week”. Unless I have a lasting fever or am unable to swallow food and keep it down, I am not sick. And I’m definitely not wasting my time and money to go pay a doctor to give me a prescription to weaken my own body’s ability to fight off what I can become stronger by suffering through.

If I’m gonna be “sick”, I might as well enjoy three straight days of Netflix online streaming without the interruption of a doctor visit.

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Holiday Dinners are a Chinese Buffet in Disguise

In the final scene of the 1983 classic holiday movie, A Christmas Story, Ralphie’s family is forced to have their Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant because their neighbors’ dogs ate the turkey. Today I had my first holiday dinner of the season. I reminded myself how miserable I would be (like with every other holiday feast) if I ate too much.

For the first time ever, I was successful. I controlled myself. I didn’t feel like I had been given a tranquilizer dart after the meal.

 

But even with the careful planning of portion control, it’s easy to eat too much and feel groggy the rest of the day. I discovered why today. Holiday dinner are a Chinese buffet, in disguise. All the major elements are there:

Meat that has little flavor (turkey). Cooked vegetables that are saturated in butter and often intertwined with pork (green beans). Plenty of carbs (mashed potatoes, hash brown casserole, macaroni and cheese, and of course, dressing). And a sugary dessert (carrot cake, pumpkin pie, egg nog). All set up on two big folding tables. Come-and-go-as-you-please-there’s-plenty-more style.

Really, eating Chinese food for the holidays isn’t much different than what we do anyway. Except there are no labels required to inform us of exactly which meat is being served. Because that’s never a good thing.

 

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Cigarettes: The Drinkable Version

As followers of the financial superhero Dave Ramsey, my wife and I are both allotted $10 each at the beginning of every week for what is called “blow money.” We can waste it on whatever we want: going out for lunch (instead of bringing our lunch to work), buying a CD, picking up a magazine at the book store, anything that would fall under the category of “disposable income”.

Because it’s evitable we all blow money each week. It keeps us from going crazy. Besides, we all “deserve it”. But my wife and I are putting perimeters on this human tradition. In the terminology of a child, it’s our weekly allowance. The rest of our income is for our needs (groceries, gas, etc.) and paying off our debts. No exceptions.

 

In the past year since we started doing this, my “blow money” has mainly been spent on the cheapest coffee available at Starbucks ($1.75 with tax). Taking the five minute drive during my lunch break as my workday escape. Sitting in a comfy leather chair, reading a book, sipping what truly is wonderful coffee.

And really, I must admit that a major reason I frequented Starbucks is because all of the staff there knew me by name. There is much truth in the lyric from the Cheers theme song, “You want to go where everybody knows your name.” But like any fast food joint (which Starbucks definitely is, just an upscale version of one), the place has an extremely high turnover in staff.

I realized last week all the people I knew there have gone on. And I just don’t feel like starting over with a new cast of characters. So as of last week, I stopped going.

 

Conveniently at the same time, I learned that the new office I now work in is a two minute walk from a beautiful walking park. So now I can take a nature walk (comparable to a state park) during my lunch break and read outside at a picnic table next to the flowing creek beside me. And when it’s too cold, I can walk an extra five minutes to Barnes and Noble and get the warm atmosphere I liked so much at Starbucks.

So now each week I use less gas, get more exercise, see the great outdoors, and don’t waste $10 a week on coffee.  And now I’ve converted back to work coffee, bringing in good creamer from home like Spiced Vanilla.  Still, work coffee is pretty awful. I entitle it “Cigarettes: The Drinkable Version”.

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Why One Out of Five People in the World Smoke Tobacco

Could 1.2 billion people really be wrong?

It would be difficult to imagine unintentionally eavesdropping in Starbucks and hearing this conversation: “You know, I feel that I’m missing something in my life. Maybe I should start smoking?” While it is very unlikely to actually hear a person say those words out loud, consider the truth: Out of the 6.7 billion people living in this world, 1.2 billion people smoke tobacco. That’s 18% of the world’s population. Could one out of five people be wrong, worldwide? Maybe I’m missing out on something here.

Despite its obvious health risks (is it really a risk or is it more of an eventual definite outcome?), despite an often negative social stigma, despite addiction, despite the smell a smoker becomes accustomed to yet non-smokers find offensive, despite the fact that cigarettes are the leading cause of house fires and fire related deaths, and despite the fact it’s an expensive habit, still for every five people in the world (and our country), one is a smoker. Seriously, I want to know what I’m not understanding. Surely I’m not seeing the whole picture.

Poorer households and developing countries are more likely to smoke than middle to high-income households and developed countries. What should I learn from that? Do cigarettes give people hope? Or do cigarettes help a person better deal with having less than others? If I suddenly began making half my income, it’s difficult for me to imagine spending more money on a habit that would decrease my overall health. I clearly need to get hip with the program.

I believe it is wrong for our government to ban the cultivation of any plant God put on this earth. So if every plant has a purpose, what can tobacco be used for, other than smoking? Growing up, my parents kept a package of tobacco for when any of us got a bee sting- when applied on the skin, it absorbs the poison.

Speaking of poison, tobacco also is a natural pesticide. Speaking of pesticides, my parents use NutraSweet and Sweet’N Low to pour on ant beds. It is a deathly substance to ants. Conveniently, the worker ants carry the poison throughout the colony, eventually killing them all off. Rule of thumb: If a substance easily kills insects, it’s a good indication the product is not intended for human consumption.

 

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People are Often Motivated by the Exception to the Rule, Not the Normal Outcome

 

What sometimes positively motivates people and other times negatively distracts them from reality is a magical device called The Exception to the Rule. A person who is uninspired to quit smoking because their grand maw is 92 years old, who has been smoking since she was 14 and healthier than most 60 year olds. The Exception.

A man who lost 30 lbs in 10 days from doing the Atkins Diet or a married couple who made a profit of $300K their first year of selling real estate after applying what they learned from a DVD. They’re an Infomercial’s dream come true. Helping the rest of us to naively focus on the Exception, overlooking the caption at the bottom of the screen: “Results not typical”. No kidding.

We often look at other people of similar demographics to compare ourselves to. The 30 year-old president of a company. The Exception both inspires and disappoints us. It would be one thing if this was a true illusion. But it’s real. And that is the problem and the motivation.

 

Humans are wired to look for The Exception. That’s something I have learned from writing almost daily for 4 years. If I write 2 pages about how Southerners are not represented positively in movies and TV without it being part of the comic allure or exposure to a strange regional culture, then I have to point out the Exceptions like the movies Reality Bites and Big Fish and the TV shows like King of the Hill and The Andy Griffith Show.

If I don’t, readers become distracted by trying to find the Exception. So I point out the Exception myself in what I write, to show that the general Rule I am introducing does have its Exceptions, but still it is still the Rule.

There will always be the Exception. That’s a Rule with no Exceptions. And if there was an Exception to that Rule, that would be the Exception.