Stop Drinking Poison

Not sure what's more shocking - that we eat 46.2 pounds of high fructose corn syrup per person every year in the United States, up 3,903% in the last 40 years, or that our consumption is down from a high of 63 pounds a year in 1999, according to Danielle Kurtzleben at Vox. Fueling the trend: Our consumption of soda is up 78%.

In related news:

Over the past 35 years, obesity rates have more than doubled. From 2009 to 2010 to 2011 to 2012, rates remained the same. The average American is more than 24 pounds heavier today than in 1960.

Childhood obesity rates have more than tripled since 1980.

Why did we ban Joe Camel because he was marketing poison to kids, but not Coca Cola's polar bears, Ronald McDonald, and Twinkie the Kid?

Today in Phony Food: Turkey Hill's "Light" Ice Cream

On the left is Turkey Hill Moose Tracks Light Recipe, billed as "the creamy, rich taste you'd expect from Turkey Hill Ice Cream, but it is lower in fat and sugar." The label claims it has 50% less fat and 22% fewer calories than regular ice cream.

On the right is Turkey Hill Moose Tracks Stuff'd, billed as "frozen dairy dessert that is jam-packed with nuts, candies, and flavor" and "stuffed to the lid with all of your favorite ingredients."

"Light" and "Stuff'd" have exactly same amounts of calories, total fat and sugar:

Ice cream is my favorite thing to eat in the whole world. But it's bad for you and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. 

Real America's Salads Have Been Dead for Months

My fiancee & I got a gift card to Applebee's for Christmas, so I went to America's #1 casual dining restaurant for the first time. We're trying to watch what we eat between holiday gorge-fests, so we both got salads, which was of course a mistake because you don't go to Applebee's for salad, you go there for the cheese dip & pretzel sticks, which is both incredibly delicious and blow-your-hair-back salty.

It was amazing how Applebee's manages to assemble salads with no actual fresh vegetables - bagged greens, dried cranberries, canned red pepper, mandarin orange and corn. In Real America, even if you order a salad, you're getting meat, fried noodles and cheese in heavy sauce - and that meat spent just as long in the freezer as the vegetables were locked in the can.

Do Bland Vegetables Make Us Fat?

I was making my work lunch salads tonight and took a bite of the organic green pepper I'd gotten from Harris Teeter - so incredibly tasteless, it was barely a step above cold styrofoam. Then I tried one of the grape tomatoes - my mouth barely even registered that there was something in it. May be time to get off my butt on Saturday mornings & check out the Falls Church Farmers Market.

Are bland vegetables the reason restaurants pile fat, salt & sugar on top of their salads to make them more appealing? Fresh, local vegetables are more expensive than huge cans of refried beans. And the vegetables go bad faster & need to be refrigerated - terrible for profit margins.

So today, we salute you, Mr. Giant Taco Salad Inventor. America couldn't have hit an obesity rate of one in three without you.