Calorie-Counting At The Fast Food Shack

In Ohio, many fast food outlets post the calories of the items they offer.  As you roll up to the drive-through lane, you learn that the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder has X calories or the Dairy Queen bacon grillburger has Y calories.

The theory behind posting the calorie counts is to arm the consumer with information that will allow him or her to make good — or at least knowledgeable — decisions when it comes to ordering their food.  Yet you wonder:  do many fast food customers really make productive use of that information to change their eating habits?

A recent study indicates that the calorie postings really don’t matter that much.  The study occurred in Philadelphia — which requires fast-food outlets to post the calorie, sodium, and fat content of their menu items — and it concluded that only 8 percent of fast food consumers use the information to make healthier eating choices.

Why?  Many of the people surveyed in the study claimed they didn’t see the nutritional information, and others had no context in which to assess the calorie counts, because they didn’t know what a healthy daily calorie intake would be.  Without knowing the context, they’re unaware whether that 760 calories for the cheeseburger of their choice is reasonable.  And, study authors note, the people ordering the food have to be “motivated to eat healthy.”

I think the last point is the only operative one.  I try to avoid fast food at all costs, due to taste, salt content, and calorie count concerns.  When I’ve been forced to order it, because I’m on the road rushing to get somewhere and don’t have the time to eat a normal meal, I try to order the most low-calorie, low-sodium offering that is available and that is readily consumed while driving a car.  The posted notices are perfectly adequate for that purpose, and you don’t need to know the USDA recommended daily calorie intake for your gender and age to know that lower calorie and sodium numbers are better.

The reality, however, is that most people who frequent fast-food restaurants don’t care about the calories.  They don’t go there to seek healthy eating options, they go because it’s quick and convenient and they crave the Big Mac, fries, and chocolate shake.  Survey recipients who say they don’t notice the signs are engaging in self-deception; they’re blaming others for their own choices.  Why bother forcing fast-food restaurants to post larger and more detailed signs, when the real culprits in the bad decisions category are the consumers themselves?

Terror On Campus

It was a tough morning in Columbus yesterday.  When word spread that there was an active shooter somewhere on the Ohio State campus, everyone in town started thinking about people they know who attend the University, or work there, or might conceivably be down in the campus area.  Because Ohio State is a huge, integral part of the Columbus community, a violent incident on campus could affect a lot of people, students and non-students alike.  We held our breath and hoped.

As the day wore on, the story changed.  The active shooter became an Ohio State student who apparently pulled a fire alarm at the OSU engineering buildings and labs, then drove his car into the crowd of students and faculty who had exited the buildings in response to the alarm.  After his car hit the crowd, the driver emerged armed with a butcher’s knife and began slashing and stabbing people.  Students broke and ran.  Fortunately, an Ohio State campus police officer happened to be nearby, and he shot and killed the assailant — a student named Abdul Razak Ali Artan — before he was able to injure anyone else.  Eleven innocent people were hurt in the car crash and stabbings, but all are expected to survive.  You can read the AP story about the incident here and the Columbus Dispatch story here.

Was it an act of terrorism?  Authorities are investigating whether Artan became self-radicalized somehow, and was responding to calls from terrorist groups, like ISIS, encouraging members to engage in car attacks and knife attacks against westerners.  According to witnesses, Artan wasn’t speaking when he emerged from the car and started his slashing attacks.  We’ll have to wait for authorities to piece together his back story from the evidence they gather, and while the investigation proceeds our city will hold its breath a second time.  That’s because Artan apparently was of Somali descent, and Columbus has a large Somali community — and when something like this happens, there are inevitable fears of a backlash.  Having lived in Columbus for decades, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but people will be walking on eggshells for a while.

Whether Artan’s attack is officially found to be an act of terrorism, or just the violent attack of someone who became deranged, for a brief period yesterday there was terror on the Ohio State campus.  Students were put in danger, their parents tried frantically to find out whether their children were OK, and our community had to deal with another of the distressingly frequent acts of random violence.

It just sucks.

The President-Elect And His Tweets

Over the past few weeks, as the Donald Trump transition team has vetted candidates for Cabinet-level positions and geared up for the new administration that will take office next year, we’ve started to get a sense of what the next four years will be like.  With important decisions being made and critical planning underway, the post-election process is slowly revealing what kind of President Donald Trump might be.

If I could get one wish, it would be that Mr. Trump decide to stop using Twitter.

I recognize this probably is a forlorn hope.  In many ways, Trump’s candidacy was driven by social media, and his tweets were a big part of the strategy.  Through his Twitter account, Trump had a forum for outlandish comments and was able to keep his name in the news.  His tweets provided him with lots of free air time, and his inclination, as President, likely will be to keep doing what worked well during the campaign.

And yet, the qualities we are looking for in a President are different from those that can drive a presidential campaign.  Dashing off a tweet seems fundamentally inconsistent with the considered judgment that we hope the occupants of the Oval Office will bring to the position.  (I recognize that President Obama has and uses a Twitter account, which I think is unfortunate, too, but without doing an exhaustive analysis I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that his tweets haven’t been quite as controversial as Trump’s.)

Consider one of the President-elects most recent tweets, which asserts that he won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”   Of course, no evidence is cited (Twitter isn’t exactly known for that) but the claim that there were millions of illegal votes seems incredibly reckless — as well as bizarre, since Trump won the election and you would think the prevailing candidate wouldn’t want to cast any doubt on the results in any event.  It’s the kind of charge that might work for a candidate looking for some free media coverage, but it just isn’t suited to the President-elect.  Presidents don’t need to gin up controversy to get their names in the news.

Many Americans are fair and open-minded people; even if they didn’t vote for Trump, they will be willing to give him a chance to show how he will perform as President.  I think they are looking to see whether Mr. Trump shows the reflection and thoughtfulness that are a key part of what we think of as “acting presidential.”  Tweets just don’t fit into the presidential job description.

 

Epic

Look, there have been a lot of incredible Ohio State-Michigan games over the years.  Virtually every game between the two fierce rivals during the ’70s was a tough, hard-hitting advertisement for why college football is the greatest sport there is.  There was the Snow Bowl, and the 2006 match-up between two teams ranked no. 1 and no.2, and — giving the devil its due — Michigan’s legendary 1969 upset of an Ohio State team that many at the time considered to be the best college football team ever.

So I’m not going to say that yesterday’s double-overtime thriller was the best Ohio State-Michigan game ever played — but I am going to say that it was an epic contest that was simply one of the best college football games I’ve ever seen.  Two strong teams with shutdown defenses.  Wild emotional swings.  Missed field goals and turnovers.  Officiating controversy.  A gutsy call that blew up in the coach’s face, and then a gutsy call that produced the game-winning touchdown.  It’s the stuff of legend; an instant classic that people will remember and talk about for years to come.  No one who watched it, in the stands or on TV, will forget the 2016 edition of The Game.

And in the end, Ohio State won, and Michigan went home crushed.  Michigan’s head coach, Jim Harbaugh, blames the referees for the loss, saying they missed a spot and blew some pass interference calls.  His disappointment is understandable, because his team played a great game and seemed to have The Game in hand until Ohio State’s defense ground the Michigan offense down and the Buckeyes’ offense finally woke up.  Still, it’s too bad that such a great game should end with such sour grapes.  Coach Harbaugh’s comments seem to cheapen The Game, and that’s too bad.

Ohio State’s unfortunate mishaps against Penn State mean that the Buckeyes once again won’t play in the Big Ten championship game.   Instead, they will have to wait to see whether they are selected for this year’s college football playoff, and Ohio State fans will keep their fingers crossed that the selection committee recognizes that the Buckeyes are one of the four best teams in the land.

For now, though, we can just savor an epic win against the Wolverines, and reflect on the fact that beating That Team from Up North never gets old.

Farewell To Fidel

Fidel Castro has died.  The cigar-puffing, fatigue-wearing Cuban revolutionary , who was a thorn in the side of countless American presidents, was 90.

The news of Castro’s death is weird, because he’s one of those figures who seems like he should have been dead for a long time already.  After all, this is a guy who first came to power when Dwight Eisenhower was President, TV was a new form of entertainment, and Chuck Berry and Elvis ruled the radio.  Castro became a geopolitical figure when he played a central role in the Kennedy Administration with the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.  He seems like an anachronism from a long-dead era.

There seems to be no middle ground when you are talking about Castro.  He overthrew a corrupt and dictatorial regime, and some liberals tout some of his policies — such as the apparent quality and low cost of health care in Castro’s Cuba.  During the tumultuous ’60s, at least, he and his cohort Che Guevara had some of that revolutionary cachet and radical chic.  But Castro also was a died-in-the-wool communist, and there is no doubt that his regime was both brutal and repressive, clamping down on freedoms we take for granted and keeping Cuba in the dark ages economically.  People who have visited Cuba since the American embargo has been eased describe a struggling, impoverished country that seems to have stopped its progress in the 1950s.

Castro obviously was a significant historical figure, but how he will be perceived by history remains an open question.  Some of that perception will depend on how Cuba fares, now that some semblance of normal relations with non-communist countries is likely, and some of it will depend on what we learn about the inner workings of the Castro regime, and just how cold-blooded and terrible it was.

The Tree Season

You know Christmas isn’t far away when the Christmas tree lots spring up.  Last week they staked out the yard in front of the church school with tree stands, and today the trees arrived.  The air was heady with the smell of pine as the workers unloaded the trucks and then moved the trees to their respective positions.  Now all we need is a fire in an oil drum and some snow to complete the traditional tableau.

Happy Thanksgiving!

To friends and family, near and far,

You’re in our thoughts, where’er you are

To all our wish, and this we pray:

A warm and happy Thanksgiving Day!

Three More Things to Be Thankful For

We all have things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

The above photo, taken by a news helicopter last night, and the accompanying news story about the worst holiday traffic jam in SoCal history made me realize that I have three more things to be thankful for than I was even aware of:

1.  I’m not stuck in a car on “the 405,” breathing exhaust fumes and trapped forever in angry, soul-deadening gridlock.

2.  I don’t have to drive to some faraway location this Thanksgiving.  In fact, I may not need to drive at all.

3.  I don’t live in southern California.  Sorry, all you people out in LA and thereabouts:  I just don’t see how you can stand the traffic.  What passes for a traffic jam in Columbus would be viewed as a pretty good day on Golden State freeways.

 

Cheese, Cheese, It’s Good For Your Heart

It’s always rewarding when you learn that something you consume routinely and really enjoy turns out to have alleged health benefits.

So, being a long-time turophile (i.e., a cheese lover) I was pleased to learn that eating cheese apparently helps you to live longer.  Tests on mice indicate that aged, runny, smelly cheeses — like blue cheese — contain a substance called spermidine that produces improved cardiac function.  Then, when scientists studied a group of 800 Italians to see whether noshing on cheese seemed to have health benefits for humans, they found that the Italians who ate more cheese had lower blood pressure, a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, and a significantly lower risk of heart failure.

Of course, we could debate whether a group of 800 Italians is a sufficiently large control group, or whether you can effectively screen out the influence of other life activities to determine that cheese consumption is the specific cause of the better heart health results — but since I like the results of the study and it supports my cheese-eating habits, we’ll just say that laboratory mice and 800 Italians can’t be wrong.

American Tune

I always listen to music walking to and from work.  This evening, as I was listening to my acoustic playlist, it struck me that American Tune by Paul Simon — a beautiful song that is one of my favorites — pretty accurately captures how many people are feeling these days.  I’m not just talking about disappointed Hillary Clinton voters, either.  There seems to be a strong sense of disquiet, an unsettled feeling, mingled with curiosity, trepidation, raw hope, and uncertainty about what might happen next, lurking throughout the general populace.  Some of those feelings stem from the election results and the thought of Donald Trump as President, to be sure, but some of them also seem to flow from concerns about the direction of the country as a whole.  Where is our road leading?

American Tune, which was released in 1973, aptly crystallizes this odd mixture of emotions and sensations.  Simon wrote:

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
Oh, but it’s all right, it’s all right
For lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
We’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong

Two verses later, the song concludes, in a mixture of pride, doubt, fatigue, and resignation:

Oh, we come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune
Oh, it’s all right, it’s all right
It’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest

It says something about the universality of music when a song written at the end of the Nixon Administration can so perfectly express how so many Americans are feeling, 45 years later.

Taking A “Mystery Trip”

The “mystery trip” is reportedly the hot new concept in the travel world.  It works pretty much like it sounds:  the traveler hires a travel agent, who then plans the trip without disclosing anything about it.  The traveler shows up at the airport, or train station, or port on the designated date, is handed an envelope that finally discloses the destination, itinerary, and tickets, and then is off on a voyage into the new and unexpected.

Apparently the “mystery trip” appeals to two kinds of travelers:  those who hate planning for trips, and those who really, really like to be surprised.  And there are gradations in the degree of mystery you can seek, too.  You can set a price range and then leave the trip totally in the hands of the travel agent, or you can identify a general geographic region and leave the rest of the trip in the hands of the planners.  And some mystery trippers rein in the latitude and longitude of the surprise by themselves focusing on specific regions, like one website that specializes in weekend trips into the unknown for domestic U.S. travelers.  In any case, one “mystery trip” website concludes,  “one thing is for certain: the more that is left unknown, the more rewarding and thrilling your experience will be.”

It’s an intriguing concept, but I’m not so sure about that conclusion, really.  Vacations are precious, and the “mystery trip” concept really requires you to put a lot of trust into that travel agent’s abilities.  If you’ve only got so much vacation time — to say nothing of a finite amount of vacation budgeted dollars — taking a mystery trip could be a big gamble.  I also think I’d need to be in precisely the right mood before I’d try a “mystery trip.”  Normally, I go into vacations with a clear goal in mind, like unwinding with a toes-in-the-sand vacation in a sunny, warm beach location, or an “experience the culture and see the sites” trip to a place I’ve never been to before but always wanted to visit.  Your mystery trip could be interesting, but an adventure in Lapland just might not scratch the right itch if you’re actually yearning to smell that suntan lotion or finally walk through the old sections of Istanbul.

One other thing:  how in the world (pun intended) do you pack if you don’t know whether you’re going to Alaska, Borneo or Timbuktu?

Square Dancing

The educational training I received from the American public school system included civics, algebra, English, and . . . square dancing.

At some point in my late grade school/early junior high years, the kids in my class were told that we were going to learn square dancing.  School administrators, apparently taking seriously the rampant boy talk about girls having “cooties,” concluded that the boys and girls in the class needed to interact in a social setting.  I suppose we could have learned ballroom dancing, or formal etiquette, but given the fundamental awkwardness of all boys that age, school administrators wisely decided to aim low.

So we were trooped into the school gymnasium, boys lined on one wall and girls on the other.  The male and female gym teachers then showed us what we were supposed to do as another teacher called out the steps.  Bow to your partner.  Bow to the corner.  Do si do.  Allemande left!  Allemande right!  Swing your partner.  Promenade!

The teachers acted like they were having fun, but the boys in the class viewed it all with doubtful suspicion.  Couldn’t we just go outside and play tackle football?  But then, before we knew it, the boys and girls of the class had to actually line up and do the square dancing themselves.  The boys, faces burning because they were holding a girl’s hand, stomped around in a grim exhibition of poor coordination, trying not to step on the girl’s foot, trip somebody during the “allemande,” or stumble during the “promenade.”  Of course, it really was kind of fun, but no kid was going to admit that.  So the boys groaned whenever the next square dancing class was announced, and then secretly hoped that they got to dance with the girl they kind of liked.  And then some wisecracker in the class said “Swing your partner round and round, put her in the toilet and flush her down,” and everyone laughed and the spell was broken.

Do they still teach square dancing to kids?

The Week Of The Game

In most of America, people woke up this morning, rubbed their hands over their sleep-filled eyes, and wondered aloud that it could be Thanksgiving Week already.

Not so in Buckeye Nation.  Sure, we know there is some minor holiday on Thursday featuring turkey, stuffing, family arguments about politics, and appalling overeating — but our real focus is on next Saturday, when Ohio State takes on That Team from Up North in the latest annual incarnation of The Game.

This year’s version of The Game promises to be a humdinger.  Both Ohio State and Michigan have ten wins, both are ranked in the top five nationally, and both harbor hopes of being selected to be one of the four teams in the College Football Playoffs.  The Buckeyes have had an up-and-down season that has seen them crush some teams and squeak by others.  Yesterday’s nail-biter against a rugged Michigan State squad fell into the latter category.  That Team from Up North, on the other hand, has been a lot more consistent in thrashing just about everyone they’ve faced.  Both teams have one loss, but Ohio State’s defeat, to Penn State, means the Buckeyes don’t control their own destiny in their bid to win the Big Ten championship.  Michigan can get to the Big Ten title game by beating the Buckeyes, but if Ohio State wins it has to hope that those same Michigan State Spartans who gave the Buckeyes such a tough time yesterday can beat Penn State.

Regardless of the Big Ten title game implications, this will be the most eagerly anticipated Ohio-State-Michigan showdown since 2006, when the Buckeyes and Wolverines were ranked 1 and 2 going into The Game.  Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh may be quirky — OK, downright weird — but the guy obviously can coach.  In two years, he’s turned around the Michigan program and has Wolverines playing with swagger and toughness, especially on defense.  Ohio State, on the other hand, has to figure out which team will show up on Saturday — the one that has been almost unstoppable offensively, or the one that struggles to score and finds itself trying to hang on by its fingernails come the fourth quarter.  Members of Buckeye Nation are hoping it’s the former.

So bring on The Game.  Oh, and on Thursday throw me a turkey leg, willya?

Responding To The Chirp

Last night when we got home from dinner we heard one of the most reviled sounds ever heard in an American household:  the once-a-minute “chirp” that tells you that your smoke alarm battery is dying.

At least, the smoke alarm manufacturer calls it a “chirp” — but it’s nothing like the happy, carefree, burbling utterances of songbirds in springtime.  No, the smoke alarm “chirp” is more like fingernails on a chalkboard or the insistent barking of a hungry dog.  It’s a sound consciously designed to be so incredibly annoying that after a while you can’t stand it any more and must act immediately to stop it.

Smoke alarm manufacturers realize the “chirp” must be as annoying as possible because the act you need to perform to stop it is even more reviled.  No one, but no one, is eager to change the batteries on their smoke alarms because it’s never a simple process. Let’s see … which chair is likely to be tall enough to allow me to get to the alarm if I teeter on the arm and really stretch?  And once I’m up there, figuring out how to unlock the alarm from its lofty perch so the battery can be changed is a pain in the ass.  Even worse, the batteries for the alarms are always tucked away in some weird configuration.  Our unit had the batteries in a kind of sliding drawer that didn’t fully extend, requiring me to use a table knife to extricate the batteries.  Fortunately, this unit took AA units that we actually had in the house — which is a one-in-a-million shot.

And finally, the piece de resistance — reinserting the alarm to its base on the hallway ceiling and relocking it.  Every homeowner knows the frustrating reek of failure that usually hangs over this final step in the hated process.  Four out of five American homes feature smoke alarms hanging by wires, or bases left empty of the alarms themselves, or bases torn from the ceiling when the homeowner, arms fatigued by being held directly overhead for minute after excruciating minute, finally lost his balance trying to perform the delicate placement, thrust and twist that the manufacturer’s evil engineers require.  

Today, at least, the responsible thing got done, without incident or injury.  I’m proud to say that we now move forward as a once-again chirp-free household.

The Growing Selfie Death Toll

Here’s an interesting statistic:  more people died last year in “selfie”-related incidents than died from shark attacks.

That’s according to a recent scholarly paper that looked at the phenomenon of “selfie” deaths — defined as deaths that could have been avoided if the person involved had not been taking a “selfie.” According to the paper, India leads the world in reported selfie deaths and, in fact, has had more reported selfie deaths since 2014 than the rest of the world combined.  The United States, according to the paper, comes in third.  Sadly, most of the selfie deaths occurred to people who were under the age of 24, and the number of selfie deaths seems to be on the rise.

The primary cause of “selfie” deaths appears to be the “adventurous” selfie.  That’s the selfie the person takes against some dramatic backdrop, like a selfie taken at the edge of a cliff or in front of an oncoming train.  (No kidding!  People really do this stuff!)  The paper breaks selfie deaths down into categories like “height related,” “water related,” “train related,” and “weapons related” — where the death is caused by the accidental firing of a weapon that was to be prominently featured in the selfie.  There are even categories for “animal related” and “electricity related” selfie deaths, which sound especially grisly.

The paper attempts to quantify what makes particular “adventurous” selfies especially dangerous, in the hopes of making the world a safer place by making people more aware.

It’s a laudable goal — but what makes the authors think that anyone stupid enough to go shuffling backward toward the edge of a cliff, or to move nearer to that tiger, to try to frame the perfect selfie shot is going to read a scholarly paper?  Selfie deaths seem to be Darwinism in action.