Solution to the Obesity Crisis .....continued

In my last message, I explained how I came up with a new solution, but I didn’t tell you what the idea was.

The solution to the obesity crisis.

Very simply, Restaurants, Food preparers, McDonalds, General Mills; Proctor and Gamble; Kraft; Dunkin Hines, and Dunkin Donuts, and all of the rest of the people that package and sell foods, as well as the FDA, and the USDA, and everyone else involved in food and nutrition, need to once and for all determine what is a portion.

Ta Da

If you want to lose weight, you might decide to buy your food from Nutri System where they sell you single portions of pre-measured food. Simple. (Worked for Valerie Bertinelli, and Don Shula, and I suppose lots of others.

But why should I have to buy my food from Nutri system to get single portions? Why can’t I buy it anywhere I shop?

Governor Patterson was talking about taxing coke and potato chips. Mayor Mike made them post the calorie counts. They are on the right track.

My solution (or at least the first step) to solving our World Wide Obesity Crisis is:

(drum roll)

Create the “Universal Portion Size”.

And have it make sense.

My personal weight issues go back to the fact that I come from an Eastern European Jewish background where my mother, both grandmothers and great grandmothers always made me finish all of the food on my plate. Years later, after consulting with Dr. Stephen Gullo, the weight loss guru to the rich and famous, “nothing tastes as good as thin,” whose clientele include the nobility of Europe, and even Donald Trump himself- told me that my weight problem is that “I am a finisher.”

So when I go to the supermarket to buy ice cream, I have to figure out how many calories are in the entire container. Not per serving. Because my one serving is the whole thing.

But these days I’m not eating pints of ice cream, I buy these things called QB’s- all natural crispy treat filled with ice cream square little bit of ice cream. (Ice cream wrapped in Rice Krispies 180 calories. QB n. (cube-EE): An all natural cube shaped ice cream treat that satisfies the taste buds and makes you smile.

I also shop at Pathmark. (Whole Foods Market doesn’t sell Snapple (which is all artificial, but remember what Maude said- consistency is not a human trait) and although Whole Foods has a bakery, their cookies just don’t stand up to Pathmark Oatmeal Square Raisin baked in store, 18 to a package, no nutritional information is given). (Squares- and so are the QB’s- did you notice a pattern here?).

Anyway, while I am at Pathmark, generally late at night, I sometimes watch what people are putting into their shopping carts- and I often wonder if the average person knows anything about nutrition, about nutritional information, portion sizes. I watch to see if they read the nutritional information on the packages. I think about the lawsuit blaming McDonalds for the obesity problem because they sell Big Mac’s and supersized fries and coke, which people think are okay portion sizes.

If the government can come up with this Universal Portion Size- then McDonalds can make all their meals to fit it. Instead of supersizing, and making people think that a supersized Triple Big Mac, with supersized fries and a gallon of coke is a single portion.

Unfortunately, our government has different agendas, and sends out mixed messages, and does double ententes. Up until now, special interests has out weighed the common good. Such is the case with the United States Department of Agricultures (USDA) food pyramid which is a major cause of the obesity problem.

When the USDA published their food pyramid, they gave in to special interests, the farmers, and the people who bring us items such as bread and rolls, and said that a healthy person should eat 6-11 portions of bread per day. (3-5 servings of vegetables). (I went to the USDA.gov, and clicked on food pyramid, to get this chart). HELLO- Any body home? Look at this!!!!!!!!!!!!!




One of my healthy life style rules is when the waiter brings the bread basket to the table, is to tell the waiter to take it away. We don’t need 11 servings of bread per day. We don’t need any servings of bread per day. People are fat because they eat too much bread, pasta, and other grain products.

So today’s Solution is that the government gets their act together and fixes the food pyramid.

Then they can make the rule, set the portion size, and have everyone make their products by portion size.

Then I should be able to go to McDonalds and buy a single portion of food, which contains everything that I need nutritionally, and be the right size, amount of calories, contain the right blend of Protein, carbohydrates, fats and grains including green vegetables, and fruits, etc. Enough for one person to eat to sustain themselves for the next 3-4 hours, until they eat another portion.

I can always have the choice to purchase more than one, but let it be a universal portion.

What is so difficult about that?

How about being able to go into an Italian Restaurant and ordering a single portion of pasta with whatever sauce (gravy). A serving which is about the size of my fist.

Good luck.

How about airplane food? Is that the universal portion?

Now a big banana is 2 servings of fruit. I am not suggesting that we have to genetically engineer our fruits and vegetables to be the same sizes.

You can eat all of the green vegetables that you want, can’t you? (as long as they aren’t fried, breaded, or soaked in butter (fat), even though the food pyramid says only 3-5 servings of vegetables per day. Some of the starches are another story (potatoes, corn).

People who eat 5 portions of fruit per day, live longer. (8 grapes is a potion)

Now they are still going to have to sell items in bulk. Sell ice cream by the serving, and by the pint, quart, gallon, but in addition to listing the calories by the serving, also list the calories for the entire package. I mean really, who buys a bag of potato chips or m & m’s which might be “about 3.4 servings” to share anyway? I buy raisins and nuts and it says that there are about 13 servings in the bag. And each serving is about an ounce. But how do you measure an ounce?

And how about cookies? How many servings per individually wrapped cookies- 2.3?

Let’s at least make it easier, give us a fighting chance- and we’ll win the war on obesity.

I have a cousin who is a rocket scientist at NASA (no kidding, Larry Lasher. Larry also put together a family history tracing our family back a couple of hundred years to Russia- very interesting). Although we share a lot of genes, (hair, height, brains, longevity and general health), he got the yy and I got the xx on the weight gene, so we’ve never really had a conversation about reading nutritional information from packages.

But you shouldn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know how to eat healthy.

They, the powers that be, the government, the USDA, Michele Obama, the Board of Education, need to simplify the entire process for everyone, so that everyone, every single person in the world, can know what a single serving of food is, a single meal size, is.

Period. The End.