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DailyDirt: You Are What You Eat

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Fri, Jan 17th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The 2004 documentary Super Size Me set out with a goal of showing everyone how unhealthy it is to eat nothing but fast food every day for a month. The movie wasn't done in any particularly controlled way, but it still seemed to provide some convincing anecdotal evidence for the common sense knowledge that fast food is usually junk food. But the counterexample for fast food is Jared Fogle who lost an incredible amount of weight eating only at Subway (and has gone on to become Subway's most famous spokesperson). Does it really matter what you eat? Of course it does, but exercise and watching how much you eat is important, too. Here are just a few other weird diets that are trying to prove some point (with varying success).

John Cisna, a high school science teacher, ate only McDonald's food for 90 days... and lost weight and improved his cholesterol levels. Cisna exercised more than he did prior to his all McD diet, and he strictly limited his daily intake to 2,000 calories. [url]
Sylvester Graham was one of America's first radical diet promoters in the 1800s. The Graham Diet consisted of a lot of bland foods including graham crackers (which would not be easily confused with those made by Nabisco today). [url]
Almost anyone could probably eat nothing but pizza for a week without even really trying. The teenage mutant ninja turtles are probably not great diet role models, but there are a lot of varieties of pizza to keep things interesting. [url]

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Filed Under: calories, diets, food, jared fogle, john cisna, junk food, pizza, sylvester graham
Companies: mcdonald's, nabisco, subway

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out_of_the_blue, 17 Jan 2014 @ 5:38pm

Is this more than product placement?
With these large corporations so prominently and unnecessarly featured, my bet is not:

Companies:
mcdonald's, nabisco, subway

Bloggers on "teh internets" aren't bound by pesky old rules of disclosing sponsors, now are they?
Worse than being censored on the net is being advertised. You can escape censorship with your ideas intact; advertising uses lures and tricks to re-shape your very mind.

13:37:31[o-370-4]
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- Pixelation, 17 Jan 2014 @ 10:14pm
  
  Re: Is this more than product placement?
  Apparently you eat ass...
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mettha, 18 Jan 2014 @ 6:55am

guys how can u believe the subway's myth? I mean, im not from the states, so for sure I dunno but dont you think it's just PR marketing stuff?
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Jan 2014 @ 7:46am

Well - obviously, a lack of nutritional content will eventually affect one's health. So, these stunts appear to be PR items.

Out of the three mentioned items (McMeal, graham crackers, pizza) pizza probably provides the most nutritional content although depending upon its toppings could fall short.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2014 @ 1:32am

From my own experience, quantity is much more influential on how your body reacts than quality.

Not so long ago we were starving. There wasn't enough food to get obese and the work was much more intense, we didn't change biologically so it makes sense to me that one should now have to emulate food scarcity to have a good health because that were the conditions that we originally were made to face.

Also it crossed my mind that, if we ever adapt to have plenty, a lot of people would die when things aren't so plentiful. Raising the bar for food intake means making more difficult to survive. We lose survivability range.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 19 Jan 2014 @ 8:50am
  
  Re:
  This is backed up in numerous animal studies as well. In terms of maximizing life span, the single best thing that you can do is to have a subsistence diet.
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- Anonymous, 23 Jan 2014 @ 8:54am
  
  Re:
  We? I wasn't.
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jdlaughead (profile), 19 Jan 2014 @ 10:33am

The ANT DIET, or Semi-Fasting
Do Americans really know how to eat, or just to inhale there food? How many really Chew their food to get the full taste of there food, or just too much in a hurry, to finish. I have watched how kids eat pizza in a group, they just gulp it down in a second, so they can get to the second piece, and Gulp it down, no wonder they are so fat, before Pizza, we never had that problem. Well to the Ant Diet, I love the Ant Diet, because you can eat anything you want and still stay thin. I you look up the Ant Diet, you will find ants eat nothing solid, what they do is chew the food, and suck all the juice out of the food, and swallow it and then drop the bulk out of their mouth. The only places you have taste buds are on your tongue and the back of your throat, to detect bitter, there are no taste buds in your stomach. Why taste buds in the back of your throat, to detect poison, as nature, makes most poison bitter, that is why children don't like bitter drinks or food, but adults do enjoy there Beers all the way down.

I have been on the Ant Diet, off and on now for about 7 years, when I first started my first Ant Village. I wanted to know what Ants like to eat or drink, and when I found out, nothing solid, I couldn't believe It, and their are no fat ants. Ants like honey, sugar, lobster, no ham, not much meat or vegetables, food that is soggy and easy to chew. You make honey water, they can get a little drunk. However to start a Ant village, the Ants or Queen will pick you, and I had one village for 7 years, they hibernate around October and come back around April. Ants are very civilized, and keep there civilization in check, and only eat the food you give them.

How to start the diet, first remember to start to CHEW the food, till their is no more taste, then drop the Bulk out of your mouth and into a recycle cup, I use a 32oz plastic cup, and when it is almost full, throw the bulk out to the birds in the back yard, they eat about everything,or give it to the dogs. It will probably take about 2 weeks to get use to the process, by remembering first to chew all the food and not to swallow it first. Thanks to the little ants, I never have to worry about my weight any more. Meats are a lot of fun to chew, like Corn beef, or pastrami , have lots of taste, or open face sandwiches . It's nice to know you don't have to swallow everything you eat, try bagels.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 20 Jan 2014 @ 8:05am
  
  Re: The ANT DIET, or Semi-Fasting
  I think I'd rather do what I already do: eat less, eat slower. Eating without swallowing is a bit like having sex without orgasm. Plus, it's kinda disgusting.
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Anon, 20 Jan 2014 @ 10:26am

SuperSize Me was misleading
Basically Spurling was trying to (a) eat everything on the menu, (b) always say yes when asked if he wanted to supersize. He also made a point of eating far more than a normal diet. Finally, (c) he deliberately stopped doing any possible exercise (i.e. take the elvator rater than teh stairs, don't walk very far). The guy was a skinny-bitch vegitarian, and he went to eating 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day. He set himself up to fail.

McDonalds has a moderate amount of good food. Burgers have onions, lettuce, tomato. They have (had?) salads. They have eggs.

The problem is not so much his source of food as his quantity and choices. McDonalds can't stop you from having several double-big-macs and several milkshakes a day until you eat 3 times a normal diet- that's up to you. You can buy the same amount of fat and sugar in teh supermarket, or by going to an upscale restaurant. (you just probably can't afford the upscale restaurant quantity).
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- John Fenderson (profile), 20 Jan 2014 @ 8:14pm
  
  Re: SuperSize Me was misleading
  Absolutely. In fairness to the movie, though, he did make it clear at the start what, exactly, he was doing and why. The movie is intended to make a point, and uses theatrics to do it.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 20 Jan 2014 @ 8:16pm
  
  Re: SuperSize Me was misleading
  Oh, and unless you skip the dressing, that salad has more calories than that Big Mac. Strange, but true.
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