Rudynate

People are much fatter now than they were in the 60s and 70s. In the 60s really obese people, commonplace now, were a rarity - they really stood out. In my grade school, I can remember one fat girl - one in a student body of maybe 200 kids. In high school, in a student body of 1500, there were a couple fat kids. Everyone else was normal size. In the military, in the early 70s - nobody was fat. Some of the older, career soldiers were on the chubby side, but nobody was fat. Even in the 80's, although the tide was beginning to turn, really obese people were uncommon.

I don't know if that is true. When I was in high school, in Rochester, we went on a field trip to Utica. There were no McD's in Rochester at the time and we were going to stop for lunch at a McD's in Syracuse. Everyone was very excited that we got to try McD's. These weren't children from underprivilieged homes - we were all students at a cushy suburban high school whose fathers were al Kodak executives.

It was in the early 60's that the health profession started sounding the alarm about the danger of excessive cholesterol in the diet and started recommending cutting back on eggs, dairy fats and meat. As new knowledge became available, the recommendations evolved. At first it was cut cholesterol - you were supposed to replace butter with margarine and not eat more than 3 egg yolks in a week. After that, it was thought that excessive fat was the problem and the American Heart Association recommended a diet containing no more than 30% total fat. Eventually, it was decided that 30% fat wasn't low enough and you started seeing recommendations to cut total fat to 20% or even as low as 10%, with the result that people tried to cut their fat intake to ridiculous levels while stuffing themselves with foods high in sugar, salt and refined carbs and waistlines started to grow. After that, it was thought that total fat wasn't the problem but saturated fat, so red meat and dairy fats went on the chopping block, and people were encouraged to consume healthy fats like olive oil. nuts and avocados. After that, it was thought that saturated fat wasn't the problem, only certain saturated fats, so then you were supposed to not eat red meat or dairy but chicken and fish were OK. After that, eggs were rehabilitated when it was found that only certain individuals responded poorly to large amounts of dietary cholesterol. After that carbohydrates were indicted. After that it was thought that only sugar and refined carbs were bad. The newest information, which I read only a few weeks ago, is that dairy fat is not nearly the hazard that they once thought it was, so butter, cream and cheese are being rehabilitated. I am not a professional scientist but I have science background and I appreciate that our understanding evolves as the science evolves and that the healthcare profession is doing the best it can with the information it has at any given time, so I just roll with the punches.

There are only two foods I can think of that I can't tolerate - edamame and fava beans. Either of them give me serious indigestion. My kidneys don't like too much protein so no gluttonous portions of anything that is mostly protein. It was a sad day when my doc told me that a high-protein diet was not my friend.

How would you decide what is to be taxed? What exactly is "fast food?" Food from certain purveyors? Food with a prescribed nutritional content? Would you tax all take-out food no matter what it is? Would you tax Mexican food, Chinese food, Thai food, burgers, pizza? Would you exclude providers like Chipotle, whose food is arguably healthy? Education is the only answer. Dry up demand and the supply will also dry up.

Images are one thing - skin-to-skin a whole other thing.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - the snack aisle also has rice cakes, peanuts, raw almonds, walnuts, etc. The fruit aisle also has items of questionable value such as bananas and pineapple. It took my husband forever to learn that fresh fruit is not a "free" food. I finally managed to convince him that he couldn't eat all the fresh fruit he wanted and he dropped a couple inches from his waist effortlessly.

It's true and not true all at the same time. As a young man I got occasional offers of cash for sex. Reflexively, I always said "I don't do that." Then afterward, I would always ask myself. "Dummy, why did you say no?"

My husband has a great talent that way. He is really good at coming up with unexpected additions of one or two herbs/spices that take a dish from good to great.

Didn't he say by implication?

My bodybuilding coach (an IFBB pro, to give you an idea of his physique) encouraged a lot of touching to feel what muscles he was activating with a particular movement.

I hear you, I learned to cook really well from Gourmet Magazine, where there wasn't a recipe that didn't have at least ten herbs and spices in it. I still use that sort of recipe from time to time, but I'm now I'm more into the artistry of making simple food taste amazing.

Marcella Hazan was a native Italian. Before you dismiss her recipe, you should try it. There's a reason it's famous. Three ingredients and simply amazing.

To me, marinara sauce is a pasta sauce, yes, but it's not "spaghetti sauce." Spaghetti sauce is the slow-cooked sauce made by Italian grandmothers everywhere. When I was a kid, my parents got spaghetti to go from an Italian restaurant called "Angie's" We sometimes had dinner there too. My father would take an empty pot to Angie's and come home with it full of spaghetti and meatballs with a bunch of sliced Italian bread. I liked to go with him - it was in a part of town where we never went so it seemed like an adventure.

When I make a red sauce - not often-, I use Marcella Hazan's famous recipe.

Probably not a good idea to assume that they don't make any money. True, the ones working in big-box gyms don't get paid very much - it's the entry level in the fitness world --but some self-employed trainers with reputations are pulling down 6 figures.

I put it out of my mind. Of course gyms are full of sexy trainers, and we know that some sexy trainers provide other services. I've never wanted one bad enough to risk alienating them. I would say that somebody you are that interested in, you should get to know first. After you have been around them a little, you might have a better idea of whether they would be receptive. I once had a trainer who was over-the-top sexy. I never doubted that he was straight, but we became comfortable enough with each other so that we touched a lot -hand on the shoulder-type stuff, etc. I really enjoyed that small degree of physical closeness.

An (Italian) Italian woman once told me that slow-cooked sauces are virtually unknown in Italy - that they are mostly an Italian-American thing. I went to school with lots of Italian kids. Every family has its own recipe for "gravy." My sister-in-law was Italian. She said proper gravy needs to have both beef and pork. She made hers with beef and a single pork chop which she dropped into the sauce pot just for the pork flavor, then she removed it when the sauce was done.

Id buy one for sure, if I was into decorating cakes. I like to make cakes, but they typically don't have icing or decoration - just plain or with a glaze or whipped cream.

That would seriously concern me if someone close to me had worked out how they were going to take their own life.

I have one serious health condition and a handful of semi-serious ones. I haven't stopped to count, but I am easily taking at least 8 prescription drugs.

The The fatal combination is ammonia and chlorine bleach. If the Pine Sol has ammonia in it, he may be exposing himself to toxic fumes. My cleaner cleans our wood floors with Murphy's oil soap.

You must be Italian - American. They are the only ones who call spaghetti sauce gravy.

25 years ago or so. I think on my last job before I became self-employed, we had one big block of time, called PTO, that could be used for vacation, sick days, or occasional mental health days.

HP printers are the absolute worst for this - they have become so complicated that they are almost unusable. Occasionally, I have had to reinstall the software.