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Hey, that’s not food! – Issue #1

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Let’s start this party off with an easy one. Imagine, if you will, that you have woken up, started your day, and gotten to work. You work feverishly all morning, as Sisyphus did, trying to push your boulder of work up your proverbial mountain. Your co-worker/kinda friend pops his/her head into your cubicle and says “hey! wanna get some lunch?!”. Starved, you say, “sure! what’s on the menu?”. Your friend/coworker says:

Well, I was thinking of getting some chicken that as been caged up and has never seen the light of day while ingesting TONs of antibiotics, processing it with some ammonia, you know, to kill the harmful stuff, grinding it up, then combining it with water, salt, and some sodium phosphates. After that, I was going to batter it up with bleached white flour, water, wheat flour, modified food starch (whatever THAT is, hahaha), salt, a little BAMBAM spices, wheat gluten, paprika, diglycerides, maybe a little leavening from some sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, ammonium bicarbonate, and monocalcium phosphate. Then we need some flavor… hmm… lets use some “natural flavor!” from some unspecified plant source with some paprika extractives. Once all that is done, I was thinking about cooking it in some handily dandily prepared vegetable oil which, FYI, is a mix of canola, corn, soybean, and hydrogenated soybean oil with perhaps some TBHQ (tert-Butylhydroquinone) and citric acid, you know, for freshness. Lastly, we’re gonna get some foam, so we will need to add some dimethylpolysiloxane to keep that stuff from acting up. 1

Wow! You wonder if you coworker is a chemist or if they just want something to eat. You decide to choose your own adventure and eat a salad.

Can you guess what this is?

Come on give it a shot. This is an easy one!

DING DING DING! Yes, it’s everyone’s favorite McDonald’s Chicken McScienceProject. You win the knowledge to not eat this crap ever again!

Oh, it’s not that bad. Right?

Let’s look at some nutritional data2. Don’t pay a TON of attention to protein, carbs, and fat. If you are zoning and eating some McNuggets, I think you are doing it wrong, but that’s another topic. Take a look at the nutrient breakdown. Wow… not a lot going on there. Whoa!!! Look at the Fats & Fatty Acids, in particular, the ratio between Omega 6 and Omega 3 (3505mg/191mg). Did you know our ancestors had a 1-1 or 2-1 ratio of n6/n33. This is an 18/1 ratio! That’s not good and actually, I suspect will be a VERY common thread that we will see in many of the foods that are reviewed. This is why you have to take your fish oil is such high quantities4 – to balance this crap out.

When EVERY food that you eat has such a terrible n6/n3 ratio, guess what. Come on, try. YOU will have a terrible n6/n3 ratio. You really are what you really eat.

Back to the ingredients list for a sec. Among other substances, did you notice that when you eat a chicken nugget, you are eating corn and soy, the 2 top American produced crops which are the most heavily genetically modified? Again, the same concept applies as with the n6/n3 ratio. Sure, a piece of corn with dinner isn’t going to kill you. A soy product here and there isn’t going to cripple you or give you boobs if you’re a dude. What I hope to illustrate here is that corn and soy are in almost every processed food that you eat. I challenge you to go the store and try to find a boxed product that does not contain corn or soy in some way.

You might be thinking to yourself “hey buddy, I don’t go to McDonald’s. I know that stuff’s bad for me. I go to Wendy’s”. Yeah, you sure do “know when it’s real”, don’t you. Here’s the ingredient list from Wendy’s version5:

Crispy Chicken Nuggets: Chicken Breast, Water, Modified Corn Starch, Sodium Phosphates, Salt, Whey Protein Concentrate. Battered and Breaded with: Wheat Flour, Water, Bleached Wheat Flour, Salt, Modified Corn Starch, Spices, Leavening (sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium phosphate), Dextrose, Yellow Corn Flour, Yeast, Garlic Powder, Citric Acid, Spice Extractives, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Xanthan Gum. Cooked in Vegetable Oil (soybean oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural flavor [vegetable], citric acid [preservative], dimethylpolysiloxane [anti-foaming agent]). Cooked in the same oil as menu items that contain Egg and Fish (where available). CONTAINS: MILK, WHEAT.

Wow. That doesn’t really look much better or “real” for that matter. Lots of corn, soy, wheat, and more chemicals and preservatives. Hm. What about the nutritional data6, though? These seem to have a bit more in the way of minerals than the McDonald’s version but is comparable if not worse in the way of vitamins. As far as the n6/n3 ratio goes, again, we see 3.6g of omega-6 and .1g of omega-37. That’s a 36:1 ratio. Read that again. 36:1. That is horrible.

Conclusion

Earlier on, I referred to these things as a “McScienceProject” because that is exactly what they are. Yeah, they do taste great, and sure there’s some real food in there somewhere, but the overall affect is a manufactured piece of caloric intake that is virtually devoid of any nutritional value. Can you survive on it? Yes. Can you thrive on it? No.

Maybe you are thinking “dude, this is just one food, lighten up”. Look at that ingredient list, look me in the eye and tell me that you are cool with your child eating everything that list a few times a week or everyday in some cases. Go ahead. I couldn’t do it.

As we profile more “foods” in this series, my hope is that you will start to see some common threads and realize that you are not getting things “in moderation” as you think you are nor are you eating foods that help the body be the best that it can be. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Until next time!

References

Ingredients

Ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Nutritional Data

Hey, that’s not food! – Intro

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Inspiration

There are various conversations and events that have influenced me in wanting to create something like this. In a general sense, lots of people call products “food” which are anything but. We are misguided by marketing, packaging, propaganda, and our own sense that we “know” what we are eating, that we have completely lost site of the fact that most processed food isn’t really food anymore.

Goal

My goal in creating this series of posts is to get people to understand that many of the items out there that we refer to as “food” are not. They are chemically processed and distorted into a product that might taste great, but are really nothing more then chemicals, preservatives, nutrient sparse, and really, do you no nutritional good at all. Period. End of story. Game. Set. Match. Point. Win. Michael Scott.

Format

For each posting, I will first describe the food’s ingredients. I will then ask you “would you eat this?”. Hopefully, in most cases you will say “hell no”. I will then reveal what the food is so that you can be totally shocked and say “WOT! I didn’t know this crap was in food that I eat every day! Maybe I shouldn’t eat that thing all that much anymore!”. Maybe it’ll change a life. Maybe not. Whatever.

After revealing the food, I may or may not go into some of the ingredients in detail to explain or point you to resources that explain why the ingredients in this food are not good for you or any other human to ingest.

Suggestions

Along the way, if you have a food you’d like me to feature or would like to recommend a change to the format, feel free to drop me a line.

Ouch

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My legs are wrecked. It hurts to move around, literally. They are sore to the touch. I tried to go for a run/walk yesterday morning and the transition from walking to jogging was really painful.

Yesterday’s WOD was really hard on me. Here’s what we did yesterday:

Warm-up

  • 6 minute row
  • Stretches
  • Group Warm Up
  • 3x – 7 squat snatches, 14 double unders

The first 10-20 pulls on the rower were pure agony. My legs were so stiff and sore despite the stretching and activity that I had done. Ouch!

Skill

  • Tabata Row (damper on 4) – I got 877m or something like that. My power quit after round 3. Fio had us turn the display to show wattage and strokes per minute. While I kept a pretty good s/m ratio, my wattage fell pretty considerably after the 2nd round (Close to 500 to about 250, so about 1/2).

WOD

12 Minute AMRAP

  • 15 KB Swings
  • 20 Sit ups
  • 30 Squats

I managed to get 4 rounds plus 1 KB swing. I started off with the 1.5 pood, but it quickly started putting strain on my back, so I dropped it to 1 pood. I encountered the same exact problem with sit ups that I did last time. I got to about 40 and my top 4 ab muscles started to spasm out of control. Fun. I had to do the rest of the sit ups pressing as hard as I could on my stomach. The squats were just awful. This was the longest 12 minutes I have experienced in a while.

Running

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No other physical activity destroys my spirit and makes me feel worse than running. None other.

I have SO many negative emotions that are attached to running. Because of these emotions, it doesn’t matter if we are doing sprints, 400s, miles, 5ks, or whatever. It doesn’t even matter to me if I actually do well! To me, it’s always horrible. I could PR on something and in my head, it’s still horrible and most likely, I really hated every second of it.

By now, I am SURE you are asking, “but why? why on Earth would you feel this way!?”. Come along, friends.

Let’s back up for a moment.

Picture if you will, the years 1992-1994, a 12-14 year old Bryan in 6th-8th grade. Picture me really fat and out of shape. My diet sucked, I watched a lot of TV and played a TON of video games. I wasn’t really active.

Imagine a cocksucker asshole gym teacher* that made us “run the mile” once a week or so. For most of the kids in my grade, this consisted of something like 7.5 relatively easy laps around the schoolyard. You’re a kid and have boundless energy. What’s a mile? Nothing more than a means for the cocksucker asshole gym teacher to tire a bunch of high energy kids out, really. I watch the Dog Whisperer. I know what’s up.

As you are probably guessing, it was not really easy for me. In fact, for me, it was anything but. It was lots of walking, pain, trouble breathing, people looking, staring, talking, making fun. All in all, it was a horrible experience that made me want to slit my wrists. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.

I would always be last or near last to finish, which meant that everyone had to watch as I attempted to jog my fat ass around the schoolyard. The longer I took, the longer they had to watch. Middle school kids aren’t very encouraging, nor was the cocksucker asshole gym teacher. In fact, he was quite an asshole and cocksucker to boot. Eventually, I learned how to feign sickness/dizziness so that I wouldn’t have to suffer this humiliation. I would rather kids think I was sick than make fun of me while I tried to accomplish this task.

Fast forward to this morning. A beautiful “winter” morning here in Cedar Park, Texas.

I got to CFCP this morning in relatively good spirits for the New Year’s Day WOD which was:

  1. Bottom-to-bottom Tabata Squats – scored by lowest round count. Mine was 10. Feh.
  2. 1 Mile Time Trial in 10:24. We just did 4x on the 400m route.

It must be said up front that the people at CFCP are awesome. They are encouraging. The coaches are in no way anything at all like my cocksucker asshole gym teacher and the people that go there are in no way like the kids in my middle school gym class. Yes, I completely understand that all of this negativity is in my head. All of it. It’s brought on by me and can really only be done away with by me.

The idea for this WOD was to do the bottom-to-bottom squats, then the mile with no rest I between. Technically, you *could* rest if you really wanted to but the clock for the mile started as soon as the squats were done.

Anyway, so I start running and like 90% of the people in class just go on past me. I am used to this by now. Everything hurts. I can’t breathe. I feel slow, huge, and overall, just bad and loserish. On top of it, my headphones keep popping out of my ears and frustrating the shit out of me. I have to fight with myself to just keep going. I didn’t take any walk breaks, but my pace is terribly slow. In fact, I may as well be power walking with some AM/FM stereo headphones in the mall.

Eventually, people that started at the same time as me are LAPPING me. At this point, all of that negative chatter starts and I am again reminded that I’m the fat, slow kid. Depressing, really. As I come in for my final 200m, I can hear people encouraging me to finish strong which is great. I still feel terrible. Just awful inside.

Clearly I need an attitude change. I recognize this. Pulling that off though, is a whole other story. It’s a monumental feat for me to remain positive in these situations. Clearly, the things that happened to me during that dreadful time of my life are still affecting me. Sad, yes, true, very much so. I can say, pretty much without hesitation or thought, that those were the worst 3 years of my life.

I am really looking forward to this “I Do The Impossible” challenge starting. I really need something to get my positive energy and momentum going. Apparently, my coach “has a plan” for me and all I have to do is “comply”. I can’t wait to see this plan and get to it. While I am incredibly proud of my friends and the progress that they have made, I am sick of not being the one making progress. We shall see.

*I hate this man and would happily beat the ever living shit of him on site. No, I don’t care if he’s like 70 now. He had it coming.

Impossible

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CFCP has this challenge coming up called “I do the impossible”. I had been wanting to do it, but was highly discouraged by the price tag. Under normal circumstances, it would not be a big deal to pay to play, but with the baby on the way and all of the things that need to get done/bought/prepared, it started to look like less and less of a possibility. I  had pretty much given up on the idea of it actually happening.

V had other ideas, apparently. She, along with her family, and some people at the gym arranged for me to be able to do this challenge. Since I had hurt my back in October, I haven’t really ever gotten fully back on track. My eating has been OK, but I haven’t been working out a whole lot. Some, but not a lot. I thought that this challenge would be great to get me going again.

Since I received this gift, I have been thinking about what I think is “impossible”. It sort of reminds me of the quote by Henry Ford that went "Whether You Believe You Can, Or You Can’t, You Are Right".

I try to not really think of things as being “impossible”. More like “improbable” or “yeah, that would take a TON of work”.

For me, in terms of fitness, there are things that are surely impossible. Let’s face it, I am not going to bench press a car or run a mile in 4 minutes. This lead me into thinking about what some reasonable goals are. I am sure that when they kick this challenge off we will talk about this a lot, but I thought I’d start getting my ideas out so it’s not a surprise to pick a goal.

For me, my entire life, I’ve been the fat kid.

Let me back up. I was a skinny kid with pin straight hair and it was awesome. Then I turned 5 or something. At that point, it was like, some genetic “you’re fucked” switch went into full effect. I ballooned up and received my wonderful curly hair with no forehead. It was oh so fantastic.

From that point on, it has been pretty much a life long experience of being on the “overweight” side of the spectrum. Literally, I have NEVER looked in the mirror and thought “yeah, that’s good” or “yeah, I’m cool with that”. Mostly, I just say “eh” or “sigh” or something like that.

In recent years, we have been on the Paleo diet and it’s been mostly good. I feel good most of the time, but still, I don’t really think I look good. Not really happy when I look in the mirror. CrossFit is fun and I love the people that I have met and the friends that I made.

Clearly, I am doing something wrong.

If I had to pick my biggest goal or something that I think is “impossible” it would be to not feel like a loser when I look in the mirror. That’s not really a tangible goal though. I need something measurable and tangible to be able to say “I did it” or “nope, maybe next time”.

I think in the end it will be something like:

“Starting with a body fat percentage of <whatever it is now>, I would like to see a decrease of <something reasonable> with a downward trend after 8 weeks”.

I don’t really care about my weight that much as long as it’s reasonable. Don’t misunderstand here. This isn’t a goal of vanity. I don’t really care what anyone else thinks when they look at me. I’m sure there are people that look over at me and say “oooooohhh tubs” or something similar. I don’t want to “look good” for anyone else (maybe my wife hehe), but me.

I do have secondary goals though which I might try to hit along the way. They are mostly centered around getting back to where I was before I got hurt. I haven’t really thought much about how to tangible set these goals, but the abstract version of these goals would be:

  1. Become comfortable running again.
  2. Get my double unders back to where they were before getting hurt (around 30 before messing up).
  3. Dead lift 445# again and possibly increase it.
  4. Clean & Jerk 205#.

I think there’s more but I don’t have time to list it out right now.

Regardless, thank you to my awesome wife and her family for making this possible for me. Thanks also to all the CFCP people that knew about it and messed with my head. You are true friends and I love you guys and gals .

I am ready to work. I’m talkin’ to you, Fio.

Gawd

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Last night was tough. I haven’t been really moving around a whole lot due to a really busy schedule of home obligations, family visit, etc…

I am still working on keeping a really close eye on form and not letting myself get carried away with the clock. Needless to say, I was pretty much toast after just the warm up last night. By the time the actual WOD came around, I wasn’t feeling too good. It was:

  • 20 dumbbell thrusters
  • Red strip run (200m)
  • 15 dumbbell thrusters
  • Red strip run (200m)
  • 10 dumbbell thrusters
  • Red strip run (200m)
  • 5 dumbell thrusters
  • Red strip run (200m)

I came in last in the class with a craptastic time of 7:36 with 25# dumbbells.

Stop

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‘Tis the season, right?

‘Tis the season to be crazy, out of your mind, busy, stressed, double booked, triple booked, short, snappy, rude, consumed with what YOU need to do… I could go on but you get the idea.

I posted a status this morning about it being a really busy day of preparation on top of work as we are leaving for Mississippi tomorrow. In that status I said that I would try to recall to breathe.

I meant this as a joke or even (if you could believe it) a bit of sarcasm. The sad part is that most of us really do forget to breathe.

We react.

We feel like everything is going 1,000,000 mph around us.

We feel like we have no control.

STOP.

Take a breath. Maybe take another one.

Stop and take a breath BEFORE we just let our lives continue speeding on around us or let that hurtful action or those hurtful words loose unto the universe, stop. Think. Breathe. Is that really the best way to proceed for yourself and everyone involved? It only takes a split second to make the decision. It literally can take a split second to realize that you have the power with your word, actions, and intent to make your or someone else’s day awesome or complete crap. You just have to recognize that you do in fact have a choice.

We are all in this together. Let’s try to maybe think about starting to act like it.

Let’s try to stop and take a breath.

Poor “Annie”…

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I went up to CFCP after work on Friday feeling tired and really not interested in working out. I wouldn’t have gone if not for Victoria egging me on, encouraging me that it would make me feel better.

It was an interesting class as it was my first with [now] Coach Trevor!

We started off with the new standard warm up… 6-count burpees, high-knees, butt-kicks, push ups, squats, etc. We then did the following:

  1. Tabata Push Ups – I think I scored 66 on this.
  2. 3×10 Back Squats – This sort of scared me as this is how I hurt my back. I took it REALLY easy on these and used 45#, 75#, and 105#. I asked Trevor to keep a really close eye on my form. I used a ball to make sure I wasn’t going too low. I went slow and stayed REALLY conscious of what I was doing making sure to hit all of my points on the back squat (toes curled up, weight on my heels, chin and chest up, etc).
  3. “Annie” – If you don’t know, Annie is a 50-40-30-20-10 scheme of double-unders and sit ups. I had to modify this heavily. At first, I thought the only mod I would need is to do singles as the impact from doubles still makes my back feel not so great. I did 2x on the jumps, so 100-80-60-40-20. On my first set of sit ups, I got to about 35 and then my ab muscles started cramping really hard every time I sat up, to the point where I couldn’t do sit ups! How frustrating. I finished the WOD out doing crunches. I think my time was in the 7:50ish area.

Just wait…

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By now, you know that we are parents to be. We have a little over 4 months to go until the newest Goldstein is born. We get some really good advice, tips, and tricks from lots of people. Obviously, people have had kids before and offer up their words of wisdom and most of the time it’s all good stuff and very much welcomed.

Sometimes, though, the advice is a little ridiculous and sometimes downright negative. Now, I completely understand that lots of people probably don’t even realize they do this but, after hearing some of these things SO many times, it sort of becomes grating. So, because this is my blog and one of the only places that I can vent about stuff like this, here are some things that we hear VERY often that get under my skin:

  1. The phrase “oh just wait until…”. Yes… we know kids do a lot of stupid things and will try our patience and time. We know that they will do this, that, and the other thing. I can’t say that I am fully ready or will know how to deal with every situation as with any new parent, but, really, I don’t need the reminders. My wife doesn’t either. “Oh just wait until you’re in your 3rd trimester and…” … yup. We have read the books. We have talked to other pregnant ladies. It’s not pleasant. We know. If you had said this to me or her at some point, I have smiled and nodded… we hear it A LOT. Of course, *positive* statements that start in “oh just wait…” are more than welcomed.
  2. You being flabbergasted that we are not finding out the sex of the child. While I completely understand that today, everyone finds out what they are having, we don’t want to know. That doesn’t make us bad people or parents. I realize this is hard to understand for some people, but we really want that surprise when the kid pops out and makes his/her grand entrance. While I respect and understand your decision TO find out what you are having so that you can paint your nursery or buy clothing, please respect mine and don’t talk down to me about it. I don’t need your attitude. 
  3. You acting like we are committing heresy by wanting to have a natural childbirth in a birthing center. Hmm… let’s see. Humans have been around and reproducing for how long? If you are talking about humanoid type things, 2.2 MILLION years. If I want to be generous and just talk about homo-sapiens (us), that’d be about 200,000 years. How on EARTH did those women back then even give birth without doctors, epidurals, drugs, un-natural positions, and a gigantic medical industry pushing interventions on them?! How?! Please, someone tell me how. Now, you are going to tell me that I am being “crazy” or “irresponsible” for having my child in a MEDICAL FACILITY where my wife is free to move about and deliver in a position that is best suited for her. Perhaps you are the crazy one for just going along with what everyone tells you is “best”. If you’d like to have a discussion about the merits, benefits/detriments to birthing here, there, or over there, that’s perfectly OK, but again, please, don’t talk to my like I am out of my damn mind OR go the sarcastic route with phrases such as “well, good luck with that”, or “yeah, we will see how THAT goes”, or “you will be screaming for an epidural”. Granted, this is a completely new frontier for us. It’s our first baby. I know that you think since you have had a few, that you can be a bit high and mighty. Maybe you tried to have a “natural” childbirth in a hospital and didn’t turn out all that well for you. Stories of that sort are certainly welcomed. The more information we have, the better. But this “well, I did that and it was the worst ever and I will never do it again and I would get the epidural a week before delivering and you are nuts”, well, it really just makes me not want to talk to you.

I am trying really hard to not sound like a jerk here. I don’t want to turn anyone off from giving us advice or helping us though the experiences that they have had with all of this. I am POSITIVE that as we go along we will have TONS of questions and will want to hear how different people have done things.

I guess in a nutshell, what I am trying to say here is “if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.

If you know something that you think we will greatly benefit from, please, by all means, let if fly. But, if all you want to do is criticize, tear down, and tell me just how much worse it can get/will be, please, don’t say anything at all.