If you are jealous of the success that sucralose (Splenda) has enjoyed in the marketplace, and want a piece of the action yourself, here are a few hints for you:

1. Make your crap taste better. It’s nasty, 99 percent of the time.

2. Make it cheaper. It’s ridiculously expensive. For [...]]]> Dear stevia sellers:

If you are jealous of the success that sucralose (Splenda) has enjoyed in the marketplace, and want a piece of the action yourself, here are a few hints for you:

1. Make your crap taste better. It’s nasty, 99 percent of the time.

2. Make it cheaper. It’s ridiculously expensive. For Pete’s sake, it’s a fucking dried leaf. This is not rocket science.

3. I was going to say “make it stand up better to baking” but this page says it can bake at temperatures up to 400 degrees F without breaking down, and most baked-good recipes call for temperatures lower than that. I’ll take their word for it. It’s still not an ideal substitute for sugar because it can’t do everything sugar can do. Neither can sucralose, I’ll admit, but polyols can, and health nuts don’t like those either.

That’s all you have to do, guys. Quit it with the bullshit hysteria campaigns. I just saw something on Facebook that said sucralose was initially developed as an insecticide. They also said that bulked out sucralose affects you the same way sugar does. I commented on the post thusly:

If they think this stuff affects you the same way as sugar just because it has maltodextrin and/or dextrose in it (depends on which form of Splenda you’re talking about, granulated or packet), they’re crazy. I get sick from eating table sugar because my body is no longer accustomed to it. I don’t get sick from Splenda. Now, I don’t generally eat huge amounts of it either. I have a couple packets here, a couple packets there–nothing like the sugar I was consuming years ago.

It’s still not as bad for you as sugar is. Anyone who says otherwise obviously thinks losing eyesight and kidneys and feet is no big deal. I have type 2 diabetics in my family and can’t play around with this.

Stevia? Make it taste better first. And stand up better to baking. And frankly there have been some concerns about the safety of stevia too. Let’s just say sweetness is poison and accept that if we’re going to have a lot of sweet stuff, REGARDLESS of the sweetening agent, that we are taking risks with our health and lives. How about that?

and…

Other comments, based on what I’ve read here:

http://www.downtoearth.org/health/vitamins-supplements/sucralose-dangerous-sugar-substitute

1. The thymus gland is supposed to shrink. You’re supposed to have barely any thymus left by the time you’re an adult.

2. My hemoglobin A1C was normal when I last went to the doctor, which was this most recent July. I’ve been using Splenda for years now. That glycosated [sic] hemoglobin they’re talking about is what the HgA1C measures.

For what it’s worth. I’ll keep my mind open about the insecticide thing but really, you eat herbs, don’t you? They kill bugs too.

Seriously, have you looked into the toxicity of herbs? I love them, I love learning about herbal medicine and I think that on balance they’re better for us than the chemical soup presented to us by the pharmaceutical industry, BUT, they’re still dangerous if you use them wrong–even the culinary herbs. They use thymol, one of the most important constituents in thyme, rosemary, and culinary sage, as an antifungal preservative for the original United States Constitution. If you opened the capsule the Constitution is kept in without taking proper precautions, you’d get sick.

These nature nuts (and I mean that in the best possible way) will get hysterical about a few atoms of chlorine but make themselves sick cutting all the fat out of their diets, or ingest an essential oil they’re not supposed to eat and die of liver failure. It’s insane.

I was reading a comment today on the California Avocado Commission’s fan page by someone who throws avocado pits into their Vita-Mix when they use avocados in a smoothie. The CAC’s response was something like “OMG please don’t do that, that’s bad for you.” WTF people? You’re on Facebook advertising your stupidity to the world. Do a goddamn Google search. Your liver will thank you.

But I WAY digressed there. Dear stevia sellers, if you would just work a little harder at selling your product on its own merits (and giving it more merits–it hasn’t enough yet, if you ask me), you wouldn’t need to smear the competition.

I want to like your stuff. Really, I do. I’m trying.

Oh, and it would help if you would be more forthcoming about the potential hazards of YOUR product. I’m just sayin’.

No love,
Me.

Someone, I have no idea who, has bought one of my t-shirts recently. Pretty trippy. I haven’t sold something on Cafe Press in years. I’m a little intimidated now, though, for a couple of reasons:

1. This means I should get my ass in gear, doesn’t it. O_O [...]]]> 248.5 | 241 | 140

Someone, I have no idea who, has bought one of my t-shirts recently. Pretty trippy. I haven’t sold something on Cafe Press in years. I’m a little intimidated now, though, for a couple of reasons:

1. This means I should get my ass in gear, doesn’t it. O_O Lots of people are going to be seeing that URL now, unless of course the guy’s a recluse.

2. I don’t… quite… get the pricing of the shirt. He bought the shirt in the Marketplace and it cost him $31. I did not set the price at $31. I’m not sure what’s going on here. I can’t do anything about it now, I don’t control what they do with the pricing, but if you don’t want to spend thirty bucks on a shirt (even an organic one, which is what he bought), I recommend you go directly to the shop and get your shirt there. I also have bags, mugs, and stickers available for those of you who are on a more austere budget or who just don’t wear T-shirts.

Have fun, kids. I need to do more work on this site if I’m going to be getting more visitors…

I have noticed in my clicking around the lowcarbblogosphere that lots of low-carbers make a clean break when they adopt a LC diet, including the cleaning out of the pantry and the donating of carby foods to food banks or similar. [...]]]> Today is the National Association of Letter Carriers’ annual Stamp Out Hunger Day.

I have noticed in my clicking around the lowcarbblogosphere that lots of low-carbers make a clean break when they adopt a LC diet, including the cleaning out of the pantry and the donating of carby foods to food banks or similar. They advocate that other low-carbers do the same.

Well, I have a little bit different of a request for you sugar-free folks out there: Don’t do it.

If you want to donate canned fruit ’cause that’s carby, that’s fine. But don’t donate pasta. Don’t donate rice. Don’t donate barley or lentils or beans or crackers.

Just don’t. YOU know those things are bad for you. This is not Magical Wishes Land where carbs are ONLY bad for YOU but not bad for anyone else. I don’t know what level of cognitive dissonance it takes for a LCer to comprehend that crackers will shorten your lifespan but will be perfectly nutritious for someone on food stamps and WIC… but snap out of it, ’cause you’re full of shit.

I take this personally. I got kicked out of my babydaddy’s house the year I was pregnant with my daughter. He did look after us… to a point. After we left, his entire household of four people went on the South Beach diet, including the pantry-cleaning stage.

Guess who got their carb castoffs.

Guess who also had early swelling of the ankles, tested high enough on her blood glucose to trigger not one but two glucose tolerance tests during her prenatal care, and who bore a daughter with kidney and urinary defects diagnosed at four months of age. (The ankle swelling, by the way, mostly disappeared when I got more B vitamin supplementation and some meat back into my diet.)

Poor people have to take what they can get. If what they get is crap, I can pretty well guarantee you they will never get out of poverty because they’ll be sick, they’ll be mentally ill and their ability to advocate for themselves and their kids will be severely diminished.

And I bet you look down your nose at them ’cause they occasionally eat Big Macs and fries.

So yeah. If you think carby food’s bad for you, you are not a different species from them. Throw the grainy shit in the garbage and put some canned tuna and chunk chicken out there by your mailbox today.

Thanks in advance.

(You should see my yard. The Violet [...]]]> So, the dude who emailed me yesterday was Zachary of The Paleo Garden, and he’s actually a huge sweetie and I feel awful now that I got all het up about the email. Here is a whole mess of violets for ya, dude, and keep talking.

(You should see my yard. The Violet Fairy threw up all over it, I think, or spilled her paint pot or something. By the way, if you’re paleo-ly inclined, they’re not just pretty, they’re also a good source of vitamin C… and totally paleo, unless you candy them, and if you do I won’t tell.)

One of the reasons I nitpick about gender stuff sometimes is that one of my experiences, as a woman, has been that there isn’t much room in the world for a woman who talks like I do. At least online. I’m a lot quieter in person unless I’m really comfortable with you. Even then it’s iffy. But online it’s like that mental block goes away, and you get to see me in all my snarky glory. Some people appreciate it, like Jamie, although she’s got her own lil’ snark-fu going on there, and is much more subtle about it than I am. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been accused of being a guy, especially in chat rooms and especially in the early years I was online. It seems like people are getting used to smartassed women on the Internet now, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have a long way to go. (And no, my name’s not Baby.)

The irritating part is that so often I’d catch crap from progressives. I was like, Do you believe in all that shit about women’s equality or don’t you? When a guy acts like that you just think he’s had a bad day and you stay friends with him and you move on with things. When a woman gets all hot to trot you gang up on her and kick her out of your little social circle. What is that? I’m not even in that great of company; liberal dudes frequently joke about Ann Coulter being transsexual. Oh good lord… I know the woman’s crazy as a bedbug, but her crime is being opinionated, not trying to pee standing up.

So yeah. It’s been fun. One of the reasons, in fact, that I don’t have many friends anymore. I can’t just shut up and let it slide when my back’s against the wall. Then again, I always did find it hard to just let go when a principle was at stake. Dunno what that is, it just is. The few people who stuck around figured that out about me, I guess, and decided they could live with it.

Now you know where the blog name came from.

So anyway, it’s nice to see there are, well, nice people out there. I knew there were, but I usually scare them. So hi, Zach, and welcome to the blogroll and all that. I apologize for my boorish behavior before.

‘K, that’s it for now, I want to write more, but it wouldn’t be on topic here, and anyway I have offline stuffs to do.

Here. Have a flower. Now shaddup.

Just kidding. Kinda. [...]]]> Someone emailed me about my KFC post. I know who it was, but I won’t name names just yet ’cause I don’t know what he was getting at, for reasons I’ll get into in a minute. Just, here’s a wild violet for ya, dude…

Here. Have a flower. Now shaddup.

Just kidding. Kinda. (By the way I did not take that photo for this post, it was just something I happened across in looking for one, ’cause I like to include pictures with my blog posts most of the time. I think it looks cool.) Seriously though, he was a Paleo blogger, so just in case someone out there’s on the defensive, let me clear up a few things.

First off, I’m not saying the dudely Paleo bloggers are TEH EVUL. I like reading y’all’s stuff… well, if you don’t get into the fatty-bashing or the evo-psych. I find the latter tends to be used by people all over academia and wannabe-academia to excuse men’s bad or women’s insipid behavior and wow, it gets tiresome. I found out something funny along the way in my 36-plus years of life: When you just engage with human beings like they are human beings, and don’t go into it with this mental package that “oh, this is a boy-type person, I must behave A Certain Way,” or, “oh, this is a girl-type person, I must behave this other Certain Way,” life goes a LOT more smoothly. I don’t need to hear that you must grunt and pound your chest ’cause it woulda made the wimminfolk drool all over you three million years ago. This is 2010 and you look like a fucking idiot. Quit it. Thanks in advance.

Where was I? Oh yeah. What was I saying?

Simply this. My point is as follows: I am interested in what makes guys tick, at least insofar as the few differences they tend to have compared to women. They don’t always have them–there are XY human beings out there who were born with a three-quarters set of girl equipment, for crying out loud!–but I’m talking about averages here. There’s a difference between acknowledging the average, and declaring it the default condition for everybody in that category. Nevertheless, the differences interest me, just because I like men generally (believe it or not), I like biology, and it all sort of runs together.

However. I do not go around speaking to men’s experiences as men, trying to tell men what they should and should not eat that is specific to their gender, or any of that crap. I am not an expert on being a guy; I am not a guy! I stick to my own gender when it comes time for that gender-specific stuff. The ONLY time I have ever crossed that line is in discussions about circumcision because I’ve dated guys from both camps and I know up close and personal that there are, shall we say, differences between the two that go well beyond appearance. A heterosexual cut guy is not going to know that. I don’t know for sure either, but I’ve seen some strong evidence. That’s the only reason I say anything about it. Otherwise I wouldn’t speak up.

Sorry for the TMI, I’m just trying to illustrate.

So my complaint yesterday was about guys who go around preaching to women about what we need and don’t need ’cause we pump out the babies. Do you not understand by now that male meddling in the childbirth process is exactly why moms and babies have such a high mortality rate worldwide now? You killed off most of the midwives in the West, you couldn’t be bothered to wash your hands in between an autopsy and a birthing bed, you invented birthing-on-the-back, you invented stirrups, you invented twilight sleep, you invented forceps and epidurals, you came up with the brilliant idea that women shouldn’t breastfeed… Need I go on?

You couldn’t get any of the rest of it right. Now you’re gonna tell us how to eat? Shut up, sirs.

Hence my ire at that point in my rant. And I am explaining in case that Paleo blogger’s email to me was a complaint email. Not to go into the martyr act, although I guess I am a little bit, but every time I bring up the gender thing, somebody’s got to try to verbally disembowel me. I’m used to it, so I don’t even bother to read it anymore because I have practically memorized any of the possible arguments they could use book, chapter, and verse. It’s boring. You’re not original. Go get a hobby.

Now, in case Mr. Paleo wasn’t chewing me out, I apologize for assuming he was. I just don’t want to find out one way or the other. But this finds me in the interesting position of being a blogger who doesn’t read her feedback. I don’t know that I want to go there, and I don’t want people thinking I’m completely unapproachable, even given my blog name and all.

On the other hand, I don’t feel like being yelled at. So what we need here is a nice happy medium where you get to talk to me and I don’t have to get my blood pressure up over someone who couldn’t care less whether what he has to say is constructive, useful, or even accurate.

So if you really, really want to get in touch with me by email, and you can actually remember your manners in the process, here’s what you do: Use a subject line, and write it as a summary of the contents of the email. Don’t be vague. For instance, Paleo Blogger’s subject line went something like this:

About your KFC blog post

He’d have had a better chance of being read had he titled it something like this:

About your KFC blog post: I agree

or even…

About your KFC blog post: Interesting observation, but I have a quibble

Now I just want one thing understood here. If you go along with my request, and I open up the email to find something like this:

haha stupd btch WTF r u bitchn abt women have equl rites ur so stoopid LOLOLOL

…or even a literate version of that… well, you better send it anonymously. Because if you don’t, I’ll save the goddamn thing, and start ALL kinds of drama about you being a lying, two-faced troll. And I reserve the right to forward ANY email in this vein to ANYONE who wants to see firsthand evidence. It will be no trouble whatsoever for them to read the headers.

Just saying. I’ve been on the internets way too damn long not to know how some people operate.

Coolio? All righty then. No offense intended (well, unless you deserved it)… I just have to watch my ass. I learned the hard way a long damn time ago that nobody is going to watch it for me, no matter how fetching it may or may not be. (And believe you me, once upon a time it was quite fetching.)

I smell dinner. Catch y’all later. Buh-bye.

edited to add (screw dinner for a minute): One other thing to clear up. I am NOT saying men and women are exactly alike. The trouble with this culture is it treats us like one gender is better (usually men) and the other is not so great (usually women), just because of those differences. And I still say there isn’t enough difference in men’s and women’s protein needs to justify the claim that men need more meat and women hardly need any. Especially when you consider that for at least 18 months out of our lives, we not only need protein, but we need enough for ourselves AND for someone else.

That’s what really gets me. What’s a guy’s contribution to the next generation? Fifteen seconds of pleasure and a mess. When are guys ever life-support systems? Maybe when they donate a kidney. And then they need less protein.

Gimme a break. Seriously.

My little girl’s dad said something in this vein the other night that got my mental gears a-turnin’. I’m fatigued from the brouhaha around the attack on Lierre Keith and all the hype about the ecological virtues of veganism and the solution to poverty and hunger being the eating of five servings of [...]]]>

My little girl’s dad said something in this vein the other night that got my mental gears a-turnin’. I’m fatigued from the brouhaha around the attack on Lierre Keith and all the hype about the ecological virtues of veganism and the solution to poverty and hunger being the eating of five servings of veggies a day (“Ate plants. A big heap. Still hungry.”) and all that mess. I thought that addressing my frustration through humor for once might be therapeutic. And I’m still being my good ol’ lovable grouchy self. Or something like that.

The reason the prices seem all jacked up is that Cafe Press is now charging three dollars extra for back printing, so every item that allows for a back design is three dollars more than it should have been. I’m not thrilled about that, but at the same time, I want people to know how to find their way here, should any of these products sell. All the items have been priced at one dollar over CP’s imposed cost, though, so I’m not making much off of this. I may look at Zazzle later and see if they’re more reasonable but I’m more familiar with CP at the moment, so that’s what I went with.

Have fun, kiddies. Let me know how it turns out. I understand CP’s T-shirt printing has become a lot better quality since I last ordered from them.

Can someone out there please explain to me what the hell it is with low-carb bloggers and global warming? I’ve been seeing this all over the place for the past year or so. Apparently, because The Establishment is wrong about healthy diets, it is also wrong about climate change, and furthermore anyone in [...]]]>

Can someone out there please explain to me what the hell it is with low-carb bloggers and global warming? I’ve been seeing this all over the place for the past year or so. Apparently, because The Establishment is wrong about healthy diets, it is also wrong about climate change, and furthermore anyone in government who panics about global warming is a dirty, dirty fascist out to destroy the Western way of life.

I guess, to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Too bad we’re all getting screwed.

One of the more prominent LC global warming denialists is Dr. Barry Groves, of Second Opinion in the UK. I’m not trying to pick on him, I actually love reading his dietary stuff, but I don’t feel like going round hunting down a bunch of anti-GW (global warming, not George W.–oh, if only! once more a classic case of misplaced ire!) statements from LC bloggers at 3 in the morning when I’m already in sleep deficit. I’ve been carbin’ again and OMFG does my body hate me. So, easy it is.

I don’t have a lot of time to get into his stuff right now and I probably shouldn’t get too far into it in the first place because it’s off-topic here. I just wanted to touch on a few things briefly. The section on his site about “the man-made global warming scam” is here if you want to read it.

Before I begin let me state that I am not a climate scientist. The extent of my knowledge comes from random reading over the years and an earth science class when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. It was then that I learned about the carbon cycle, something I don’t often hear mentioned by climate change denialists. And that’s being kind. I actually don’t think I’ve heard anything about it at all from them, but it’s possible I did and have forgotten.

Ignore the carbon cycle and as far as I’m concerned, you don’t have much else to tell me because you’re full of shit.

Be that as it may.

First off, Groves trumpets this part of his site as though it proves without a doubt that the idea of human-caused global warming is a scam. Then you get into the introductory paragraphs and find this gem:

I say ‘scam’ because that is exactly what it appears to be to me.

Dude, if you’re going to call something a scam, you better have something more substantial to go on than what you think you’re seeing.

He links to a video of a documentary about scientists–I guess, anyway, as unlike with U.S. television documentaries they don’t apply an introductory caption with the person’s name and title–who do not agree that the science on climate change is settled. I didn’t have three-quarters of an hour to get into the video. I might later, I might not. I hate watching videos on my laptop because then my daughter whines to watch cartoons on YouTube. And, as previously stated, I’ve stayed up three hours too late.

Be that as it may, I got enough of the video to catch some “expert”(?) stating that the science on climate change is, in his words, “not complete.”

That pretty much did it for me right there. I admit I am not a scientist by trade, but anyone who tells you that ANY scientific discipline has “complete” data and has completely figured out everything that that discipline is supposed to study, should go into a one-person home-based business as a manure dispenser. They’re so full of it I fear they will burst at any second. At least this way they can do an end run around the bad economy, what with so many taking up gardening now…

Then you had the random arguments about how all this shit that the IPCC wants us to do is going to be “expensive” and might not even do any good. Oh my GOD, we might have to do something that costs MONEY if this global warming thing is real, y’all! Then again, these people tend to be upheld as heroes by folks who expect us all to take a similar position with health care. If it’s too expensive then you don’t get any, and if you die, too fucking bad. Just so long as you don’t dip into their bank account.

Then they’ll tell you, all outraged-like, that life sucks today because people have gotten too selfish and only care about their own desires, not about the good of society. (For instance, this mentality is frequently on display when conservatives speak out against gay marriage.) Laws-a-mussy. Fo’ shame.

That’s the best they can do?

They don’t have every single little bit of data yet?

Somebody got a (relative) few bits of information wrong?

It might (gasp!) cost money to fix the problem?

Oh, and we don’t know this is all a scam, we’re just guessing?

Wow.

Tell me something, Groves… and all the rest of you, too. How the fuck is anyone supposed to trust us about what constitutes a proper human diet (adjusted for regional and cultural differences, of course) if it comes out you guys are wrong about this one?

I mean, if you don’t care and this is your idea of how to solve the overpopulation problem… well, knock yourselves out, I guess.

But if you actually do care about people, and are horrified at my suggestion… well? What the hell am I supposed to think?

At minimum I don’t understand why the implication always is that we don’t have global warming so we can do whatever we want. That’s not working. Time to get back to the drawing board. At MINIMUM it makes no damn sense to burn up all our resources so there aren’t any for future generations. Surely you understand this concept; I hear people like you bitch all. the. time. about how Obama is Satan because he’s running up the deficit. You grasp the concept with money. It’s time to expand your intellectual reach to encompass other resources too.

Whether or not there’s global warming, we’re in a hell of a pickle. The sooner people like you get your heads out of your asses and start engaging in political discourse like you have a goddamn brain cell or two to rub together, the better off we all might be.

Just saying. Enjoy your steak. Which, by the way, I don’t believe it causes global warming either. But never mind.

Well, it’s for real. I got mine today.

Atkins swag, courtesy of the United States Postal Service

I’m not sure how much use I will [...]]]> You’ve probably seen that new Atkins Quick-Start kit advertised all over the internets lately. You give them your name and address and they send you three free bars.

Well, it’s for real. I got mine today.

Atkins swag, courtesy of the United States Postal Service

I’m not sure how much use I will make of the carb counter. The Quick-Start Guide doesn’t tell me anything I don’t know, considering I own three different editions of Diet Revolution or New Diet Revolution. And I don’t want to make a habit of the bars. They’re chock-full of soy, which isn’t so hot for your thyroid in large amounts. (Although they are life-savers when I’m crunched [ha ha] for time, or when someone in my immediate vicinity has a sweet treat I’m not allowed to eat.)

So I’m not sure why I sent away for this stuff other than a reflexive “hey cool, free low-carb shit!” And hey, that may be a good enough reason. God only knows low-carb food ain’t cheap even when you don’t live on industrial food products alone.

Maybe it’s a self-administered kick in the pants. Dunno.

Anyway, have at. They really do send you free bars, which in the grocery stores around here would be something like a six-dollar value. Nothing to sneeze at.