Don’t Judge A Food By Its Cover

Recently I decided to be a grown up, put on my big boy pants and go and get myself a physical. Turns out that I have type 2 Diabetes. My numbers were pretty high so the Dr. put me on some meds and told me what I need to do for some education and to get a glucose monitor. Of course, dealing with insurance put delays for everything while they decided who I could see, what I could have, yada, yada, yada. I decided that on my own, I would start to change my diet.

I have always eaten balanced meals. Unfortunately, I also liked to indulge in various foods that probably aren’t the healthiest choices. I also had (and still have) much different ideas of what a “serving size” is.  So, I started tracking everything I ate. To Mrs. Voices point, I am probably obsessing a leetle too much about tracking every line on the nutrition labels. It is driving me a little batty about how much I am having of what and too many grams of this and not enough milligrams of that. What is HAS done however, is make me LOOK at the nutrition labels, which I really haven’t done before.

It is amazing what you can actually learn when you read the labels. It is even scarier when you realize the serving sizes of things against the nutritional values. What I thought was a single serving bag of Honey Mustard & Onion pretzels, was actually 3.5 servings. What I thought wasn’t that bad, really was far worse. Ugh. It is also scary how much sodium is in EVERYTHING! Even thing that you think are healthy. Apparently they use sodium to make “healthy” things taste better. Sugars are another thing that are crazy on how much is in things that you think might not have as much as they do.

So, there are certain things I am supposed to eat that are better for me: Whole grains, lean meats and the like. I found out grocery shopping that just because the name of something sounds healthy, it doesn’t mean it is. For example, I saw something that said “whole grain tortillas”. I thought that would be great! I would still be bale to enjoy the Fiesta this year. I flipped it over and grabbed a package of regular flour tortillas that was next to it.  SHOCKER! The regular flour variety, were actually overall healthier that the ones that touted themselves as a “healthy” option. There were a lot of other things that I found as well. It also took me about 3 times as long to shop since I had to read all those labels.

I know a few of my friends who might read this are going to say “Duh! An entire pizza is not 1 serving”. It is going to be a long road. It will take a lot of getting used to. I won’t be able to do things like enter a hot dog eating contest, drink Marion under the table in Tibet, judge a cake baking contest with David or cure depression by eating a half gallon of Americone Dream. It will all be alright though and eventually I will be able to partake in Summer Beer once again … as long as I read the label.

 

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They Are More Powerful Now

I waited until today to do my celebrity death update so I could use that line for the title. For those of you too young to understand any Star Wars references or why I am putting that today … then I find your lack of trivia disturbing. Anyhoo, I also just had a pretty stressful couple of weeks (which I will explain in a later post) so I just didn’t feel like getting on the computer and typing this much until today.  It can be argued that this month there were an inordinate number of trifectas as there were a couple of groupings. My clairvoyance didn’t let me see this coming. I really need to revisit my sad devotion to an ancient religion.  Speaking of trifectas, it seems there were an awful lot of thoroughbreds that kicked this month as well. I am not going to list them all.

 

Roger Ebert – 70 – Film Critic – April 4

Margaret Thatcher – 87 – Former British Prime Minister – April 8

Annette Funicello – 70 – Mouseketeer – April 8

Richard Brooker – 58 – Jason Voorhees in Part 3 – April 8

Dick Sutliff – 77 – Journalist on WGN – April 9

Jimmy Dawkins – Blues musician – April 10

Jonathan Winters – 87 – Comedian – April 11

Frank Bank – 71 – “Lumpy” on Leave it to Beaver – April 13

Richard LeParmentier – 66 – Force choked in Star Wars and a cop in Who Framed Roger Rabbit– April 15

Pat Summerall – 82 – Football broadcaster – April 16

Allan Arbus – 95 – Actor M*A*S*H – April 19

Dani Crivelli – ? – Drummer with Krokus – April 21

Chrissy Amphlett – 53 – Singer Divinyls – April 21

Richie Havens – 72 – Folk Singer – April 22

George Jones – 81 – Country singer – April 26