If a little is good...

...a lot is not necessarily better.
And can, in fact, be harmful.
There is no area of pseudonutrition that has been exploited more shamelessly and potentially harmfully than "supplements". There are specific deficiency syndromes for each known vitamin (which serve as co-factors to metabolic processes and must be obtained from the diet) and also potentially fatal "overdose" syndromes for the fat solubles (A,D,K,E). Megadoses of water solubles (Bs, C) have never been shown to be therapeutic, either. There is no substitute for a rationally balanced diet. Our problem is not LACK of vitamins, it is TOO MANY CALORIES.
And vitamins DO NOT cause weight loss, either!

Not donuts....

...red blood cells in hypernatremia.
What is hypernatremia, you ask?
A deficiency of free water relative to sodium, I answer.
The cell membrane is permeable to free water; when the plasma becomes hypertonic (excess salt), the water inside the cell leaks out though osmosis, causing the cell to shrink.
And why is this a problem, I ask?
OXYGEN, you answer!

In the end, most of it is...

Yes, most specialty waters, power beverages, sports drinks, juices, nectars, and sodas are some form of sugar and water, with or without flavorings and with or without a few vitamins and minerals that can be obtained many places. Some have as many as 220 calories in 8 ounces, a few ZERO (meaning they aren't even SUGARY water). But they all retail for many times their ingredient costs.

More foodie propaganda....

NOT what you think!

Whatever that may be! Worms? Spaghetti?
This is the cerebrovascular circulation.
The brain is THE organ--up to 25% of our glucose and oxygen intake goes first to the brain--always at the expense of all other organs and functions.
Vascular structures have pain sensors, so many of our headaches (migraines especially) come from changes in vascular tone . In case you have forgotten, brain tissue itself has no nerve endings and therefore feels no pain.
There is no such thing as a cerebrovascular (or any other kind of, really) "accident". All events are predictable at some level of statistical likelihood. Strokes--the more proper name for circulatory insults to the brain--have several causes, the most common being atherosclerotic blockage of the carotid arteries. As proven in the recent case of the junior senator from Illinois, you are never too young to be concerned about the health of your blood vessels (he is only 52). Be good to ALL your vessels--keep your weight and cholesterol level down and your exercise up. (And there are no magic foods that prevent strokes, including fish oils.)

Foodie propaganda?

Must be working!
Bottled water sells like it's free--which it is NOT.
At up to $2 per liter, this is 1000s of times (yes, thousands) more costly than tap water.
In the U.S. tap water is safe. Elsewhere, even in Europe, it is not either due to general hygiene issues or specific ones (each region has it's own e. coli, for example).
But in the West, beyond plain water, there are literally hundreds of options to choose from, all to meet a relatively basic need for plain H2O and a few minerals. What is truly potentially lethal about drinks has nothing to do with fluid--it's all the other stuff that goes in. From alcohol to caffeine to vitamins to sugar (lots and lots of sugar), we HAVE poisoned our water with things that, especially in excess, can kill us. As usual, the food industry and its shills make money off of ignorance.
READ THOSE LABELS.
And in the end, you--and your budget--will be better off getting your water from the tap.

The best?

The brightest? Not at the beginning.
The brain seems to be an example of that old "nature abhors a vacuum" cliche (which it actually doesn't, btw). It appears that the first radical change in our ancestors that led to humanity was standing upright. This then freed the hands to "do more" and pulled the brain along to develop further (fill up the vacuum?)
to keep up.
Along the way came speech and sentience. And all we really wanted to was to run faster and farther!
The most vertical!

Neither one...

...means "healthy".

"Organic" means that the food is produced without pesticides (many of which are, by the way, "natural").
"Natural" means...um, er...not "un-natural"? Mouse feces are "natural"...uranium is "natural"...vomit is "natural"....

Foodie propaganda is slick pseudoscience in action!
Nowhere need the buyer beware more than in re: food!

It looks like a ....

Kidney!

Not poison!

Lipids are also not poison.

They are essential to cell structure as they form the majority of the cell membrane, which is a key determinant of cellular differentiation. The brain is 70% fatty tissue--making all of us "fat heads".
It's not lipids per se that are the problem--it is the amount and kind of lipids we ingest. Being more than 30% of calories, saturation, and the "trans" isomeric structure all can cause metabolic problems (especially atherosclerosis). Stored fats (adipose tissue), which are the second layer of energy after glucose and stored glycogen, are highly efficient in that they contain about 7 calories per gram, whereas glycogen and protein only contain 4. This means, in fact, that more calories must be expended to utilize it as energy.
And, unfortunately, foodie lies about special "fat burning foods" are just that--lies.
Once again the issue is balancing intake with output, and in the case of lipids making sure to avoid saturated and trans fats, as well as excess calories!

Love it!

The Krebs Krab!

Pseudoscience!

This illustrates a "science" known as "craniometry". It was developed to explain the obvious superiority of western Europeans. This is one of the most common species of pseudoscience--assuming a result and gathering "evidence" to support it. Craniometry was simply racism in a lab coat.
Today pseudoscience peddlers are more subtle. They use better jargon, they toss around words like "research" and "studies", and they relentlessly promote the opinions of so-called "experts" in order to sell something--usually a product, but often a point of view. What they get out of selling their falsehood is either power or money or both.
The foodies have a corner on the pseudoscience market today. Using simply the latest issue of FIRST for women and an article about "fat-flushing soups", my Nutrition class was able to identify dozens of mistakes in application of basic biology, common sense, and the scientific method to reduce this article to rubbish. In the end it was simply a testimonial by two women that eating soup caused them to lose weight. We don't know what they were eating before, and they did not reveal caloric expenditure. Their "evidence" is not falsifiable, since it is pure anecdote, and that alone takes their "nutrition science" into the realm of fantasy. My Nutrition students asked the question, "It is possible to lose weight without caloric restriction?", since this article claimed that eating these soups would do that. Their unanimous answer? NO. Case closed--for today.
Craniometry was racism--popular nutritional literature is wishful thinking at best and a host of cruel lies at worst. Neither has a place in a scientifically literate society.

Look to the cell!

The body can only do what any individual cell can do!

When confronted with a physiologic problem, it is the usual response of the young clinical student to want to describe it in a global sense. For example, the effect of alcohol on muscular control and coordination are attributed to "cerebellar dysfunction". Sounds classy! But in fact, the question is HOW is the cerebellum in turn "messed up"? The answer lies at the cell level. Alcohol poisons(interferes with the normal functioning of) the cell membrane via the Na/K pump; this in turn stops any cell exposed to alcohol to be unable to "do its thing." Nerves don't fire properly, muscles don't contract properly, liver cells can't do their job, etc. So, in the end, if you can describe the cellular anomaly you can generalize to all tissues that are exposed to the assault, be it chemical, infectious, or genetic. Our body works on fairly simple general cellular biological principles, and the clinician who masters THESE can understand and even describe almost anything that happens at the macrophysiologic level!.
Keep it simple!

Magic!--NOT!!!

Nutrition is NOT magic--there are no miracle diets.
There is only knowledge and rational application of that knowledge.
Believing the lies that the foodie pseudoscientists promulgate about losing weight (and most other nutritional issues like antioxidation as a cure-all) is like jumping off a cliff and hoping you can fly.
DON'T DO IT!
There are plenty of reputable sources for nutritional information, and they DO NOT include someone in Whole Paycheck trying to sell blueberries by telling you they will prevent cancer.
Use your education and native smarts to ask questions and LEARN the answers from real science.
You will be TRULY healthier for it!

Anatomy is beautiful!

Medieval anatomist Andreas Vesalius was the forerunner of BODY WORLDS creator Gunther von Hagens; both men find beauty and grace in the human body. My eldest son and his family live in Portland OR and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry currently has a BODY WORLDS exhibit that, while focusing on the brain, includes the signature musculo-skeletal pieces, such as The Angel and The Ballerina, that demonstrate the strength and efficiency of this system. My grandson, who is 8, enjoyed the exhibit thoroughly and did not find it "scary" at all. If you can find one of these exhibits--there is a small remnant at the Chicago MSI--GO! Knowledge of your body will allow you to more fully participate in your health care decisions. (If your doctor is intimidated by this knowledge, you need a new doctor!)

Ode to Glucose

Oh, glucose, king of carbs thou art,
And poison not a bit.
Powering all that spins and twirls,
And making cells be fit.

The foodies hate thee, to be sure,
And curse thy presence all the time,
Displaying that their "knowledge" be
Worth no more than a dime.

But Krebs displayed how precious thou be
In phosphorylating sweet,
For were thou not ubiquitous
We never would see heat.

So fear not for thy future,
Tho' foodies' lies keep on,
For nature knows thy beneficence
And will prove true anon.

Calcium!

Add calcium and the muscle contracts,
take it away and watch it relax!

No "lips to hips"

One of the many false assertions that foodie pseudo-scientists make is that food is absorbed essentially intact. WRONG!
Ingestion, digestion, propulsion, absorption, and defecation are process es that are focused on breaking food down into usable units--glucose, fatty acids, amino acids, and small co-factor molecules such as vitamins and minerals.
We have evolved a nutrient utilization system that is maximally flexible, so that we can consume a broad array of foods and still get what we need at the cellular level.
What goes to the hips (or belly) are excess calories of any kind, stored as adipose or fat. The key to not having this happen? Consume fewer calories than you expend!

90%

...of what is "out there" about food is bogus.
Food is not...
..."super"...
..."fat burning"...
...for the brain...
...about "belly fat"...
...based on vitamins...
...the cause of almost all "food allergies"....
It's just food-
carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins in a reasonable mix,
adding up to a reasonable amount of calories per day.
Americans' obsession with food has made us the fattest people in history.
Life is too sweet to waste it thinking, planning, and worrying about food.
Happy new year!