The Amazing Marketing Diet

 This bacon, butter,  and martini lover (separately, of course) is suddenly faced with all the markers of heart disease: elevated blood work, a heart that has been wonk for years, but is now slightly more wonky. And my body went from fit to fluffy. Kardashians might like a big butt and hips, but my body (and my knees) do not. 

So now, I find myself (gasp) cutting things down, or completely out. 

If you know me, you know I've followed and tried just about every trendy diet. 

I've been fluffy and I've been thin. I love being thin mostly because it was easy to shop at thrift stores and basically anything I wore looked amazing. And I felt amazing. And I was also recycling!

Anyway, this morning I was examining the box of Low Sugar oatmeal the husband had in the cupboard. 

I'm trying to cut back on carbs (and do you know blackberries have a lot of carbs, granted, the "good kind" but still..." 

I'm also trying to stay away from gluten. Years ago, blood work pointed towards gluten intolerance. But then a year later it was better (and I never really stopped eating gluten, just cut back). 

The oatmeal box did not say it was gluten free, BUT, it did say it was heart healthy and could reduced cholesterol. 

And while I was reading that box, Ed Bernays (known as the father of public relations) popped into my mind. I've studied him, marketing, and propaganda extensively. 

Was it hearth healthy? Or did Quaker Oats fund some organization to do a "study" where the end results would be that YES, Quaker Oats is healthy for your heart. 

We love anything that promises to make us feel better, look better, and is scientifically proven or recommended by doctors. Doctors are generally a trusted group. 

Ed Bernays knew that. And almost every marketing campaign he worked on, he used "studies" to show how a product would benefit our human instincts to be better, belong, be someone, and be in control. 

And even though I  know this, I still fall for marketing promises.  

I put the oatmeal box back. It wasn't gluten free, and I haven't reached the point I am willing to eat oatmeal without some butter and brown sugar. 

So, I'll just stick to what has worked for me in the past: small meals, low carbs, as few preservatives as possible, non saturated fats (I'll never say goodbye to butter or bacon - what's the point of living without a little pleasure! - I'll just cut back on them). 

When I was in Paramedic school, P.A. Richard Lang did some of our cardiac courses. I'll never forget he said: "You can do all the right things: eat healthy, work out, be very fit, but some people simply have in in their genetics and there is little you can do to stop heart disease or cardiac death." Honesty. No sugar coating it, and though he said diet and exercise and not smoking or drinking can help, there are some cases it wouldn't make a difference. 

Though we have so many resources at our fingertips these days, it's challenging to know what sources are authentic, and what sources are corrupted by studies financed by organizations in order to sell their product and profit. 

You can never go wrong with common sense. Though these days, even common sense is being subverted by experts trying to sell you on the fact that common sense isn't as smart as the product they are selling. 

Who Owns You?

  Something to think about from the great, smart, wise, Walter Williams. 

Who owns you? If one owns himself, then it is he who decides how much risk he takes. If government owns you, then you don't have the right to unilaterally decide how much risk you'll take.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williamns061114.php3

Walter Williams - http://walterewilliams.com/

Walter E. Williams, was a prominent conservative economist, author and political commentator who expressed profoundly skeptical views of government efforts to aid his fellow African-Americans and other minority groups. 

Samuel Adams Warning of Big Government in 1771

It is a tremendously important and never-ending problem for the self-governing American people to be not only adequately informed but ever alert and vigorously active in forestalling whenever possible, and combating whenever necessary, any and all threats to Individual Liberty and to its supporting system of constitutionally limited government. In this connection, it is essential to keep in mind that the greatest danger lies in the subtle and gradual, or piecemeal, approach of danger--by which the foundations are gradually eroded rather than by open and outright assault; accompanied by harsh attacks upon all who seek to alert the people to such danger whenever it threatens. This was stressed by Samuel Adams--always in the forefront, as a firebrand patriot, in the fight for Liberty and Independence, for the rights of Free Man through Freedom from Goverument-over-Man--in an essay published in 1771 in the Boston Gazette, signed "Candidus" (quoted exactly as in original text, including emphasis):

"If the liberties of America are ever compleatly ruined, of which in my opinion there is now the utmost danger, it will in all probability be the consequence of a mistaken notion of prudence, which leads men to acquiesce in measures of the most destructive tendency for the sake of present ease. When designs are form'd to rase the very foundation of a free government, those few who are to erect their grandeur and fortunes upon the general ruin, will employ every art to sooth the devoted people into a state of indolence, inattention and security, which is forever the fore-runner of slavery-- They are alarmed at nothing so much, as attempts to awaken the people to jealousy and watchfulness; and it has been an old game played over and over again, to hold up the men who would rouse their fellow citizens and countrymen to a sense of their real danger, and spirit them to the most zealous activity in the use of all proper means for the preservation of the public liberty, as 'pretended patriots,' 'intemperate politicians,' rash, hotheaded men, Incendiaries, wretched desperadoes, who, as was said of the best of men, would turn the world upside down, or have done it already."

The economic is subordinate to higher values not only in such comparative rating but also among Man's motivating influences. Assuredly any adequate examination of pertinent historical materials proves this to be unquestionably true of the thinking of the entire generation in America of the period 1776-1787 and, second to none, of The Founders as a group. They rated their economic interests and security as secondary to their ideals in seeking "Liberty and Independence"--a truth which is highlighted, for example, by the Declaration of Independence, especially its closing words: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." The record proves they meant it, and equally the almost-naked, ever-hungry and shoeless men at Valley Forge who stained the snow with bleeding feet, yet fought on.