You will have to pry my Count Chocula from my cold, dead heads!

Which is ironic if you think about it because... oh I can't finish this.

If I had to pick the worst items at the local Safeway, Count Chocula might actually make the list ...

They need to bring back Quisp.

#1 - three squares a day and moderation is all things is dead-solid advice, no matter who gives it to you. Now, if you consider corn chips part of a square meal, all the public health information dissemination in the world isn't going to fix you.

#2 - public health information dissemination is a problem, because, who do you trust? They missed it by 14x this time. What about last time, or the next time? And it's not even that they missed it, science being science and all, but the knock-on effects it has on public and private policy that does the most damage (lawsuits against KFC for making me fat).

#3 - how long has CDC been in business? 10 years? More? Why is the next 10 years going to bring any more astonishing facts into evidence than the previous ten years? Outside of the normal 'march of science' business, that is. And even then, you better find an unbiased source to explain the meaning of the new findings...and I don't consider a tax-payer-supported agency to be unbiased.

Anyhoo...finish those green beans.

Hear, hear. Good points both. Those general studies just create confusion.

There are about 10 million very good studies out there on specific foodstuffs. Persnally, I want to make it to at least 100, hopefully 140ish, in good health, so I take the following twice every day:

Life Extension Mix (http://www.lef.org/newshop/items/item00765.html for ingredients)

Life Extension Herbal Mix (http://www.lef.org/newshop/items/item00298.html for ingredients)

(LEF is a pretty good company, they add ingredients to their mixes based on good research)

1/4 teaspoon green tea extract (which is also in the above, but I like more; this is the equiv of 5 cups of green tea)

25 mg dihydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)

Garlique aged garlic extract

and on top of that:

75g protein shake every morning (15g ea of caseinate (goatsmilk) protein, egg, soy, whey, and one other I can never remember) ith flax seed

3 grams Vitamin C (1 gram at odd intervals)

Dimethylaminoethanol (commonly known as DMAE; for mental acuity; prescribed in Europe for ADD)

about 7 cups of green tea (stashtea.com has a great slection) brewed with a cinnamon stick. I brew it very strong, in 20 oz cups. This has a great effect on my disposition as well, I've noticed. I'm much calmer and better able to deal with my several hi-stress jobs and hobbies (I take 1/16 tsp theanine as well, if I'm expecting something especially stressful to come up; this is an amino acid in green tea that calms you (the Japanese actually spike their softdrinks with it)).

I also take a growth hormone booster (which is basically a few grams of some amino acids in a certain ratio) for 3-4 days every couple weeks. This and the DHEA are more about bodybuildinbg, or least maintaining muscle/organ mass than disease prevention or anti-aging per se.

And of course I work out with weights (I found the Arnold had some good exercises; my base is squats, skullbusters, bicep curls, dumbell rows, bent-over rows, deadlifts, and barbell military press plus some odds and ends; I rotate through so I hit each exercise at least once a week) and do slow inclined situps every morning, never miss.

Even with all that, I could still keel over tomorrow, but I like to think I'm maximizing the odds in my favor. I'm 30 now and am fortunate enough to enjoy a very good income, and instead of living the high life I put away enough to be financially secure by 40, which plan really makes very little sense if I only live to be 39. So it's a financial common-sense decision as well.

You're my kind of hombre, Talldave.

You know, in a non-gay way.

Aww, you're sweet Bill (I mean that in a very masculine, heterosexual way of course).

Sorry for the spelling and grammar atrocities I commited in my post; I was in too much of a hurry.

I forgot to add, I also take about 2 grams a day of curcumin (anticancer and other health properties including healthier joints), and the cinnamon in the tea is specifically to keep blood sugar low. I also sprinkle it liberally (yes, that's right liberally) on anything sweet to avoid what I believe are probably damaging blood acidity spikes, and the insulin spikes that follow.

It's amazing how little doctors know about this stuff. Mine kept muttering "unproven" when I brought it up. I should bring him a Google search. 5 cups a day of green tea beats any statin drug hands-down for efficacy in cancer and heart-attack prevention.

I know you have an interest in these things, Bill; maybe you could post your own regimen, or even start a thread for anyone interested to post theirs.

Well, I used to take more suplementation, but that is the part that's soemwhat "unproven," (is having MORE raw materials always better?) and I'm lazy. What isn't unproven - and what doctors are mindbogglingly ignorant about - is how the average diet plays with blood sugar and toxins, and even the myriad ways that sugar screws up your body and advances aging (protein cross-linking, fat storage, inflammation, insulin resistance).

I will say this - a basic regimen that would improve the health of 99.9% of folks would be the strict lowering of glycemic foods, exercise and no liquid passing the lips aside from water, green tea and the occasional glass of red wine. But I also lukewarmly agree with many of those supplements, especially DMAE and the arginine,etc before bedtime. Can achieve much of the same effect as the DMAE by eating wild alaskan salmon, btw.(which I'm sure that you know)

Hehe, I'm lazy too, hence the mixes. Let them do the real research work.

Thanks, I hadn't heard that about salmon, although I did know DMAE was fish-derived.

I find the skepticism among doctors re green tea especially interesting, because most doctors are so sold on statins they take themselves as a preventative. (I take this as a sign doctors get too high a proportion of their information from drug companies.)

There is certainly conflicting evidence out there on some vitamins as far as whether more is better, esp for E and A (though supplement companies have claimed for years this is due to differences between d-alpha and dl-alpha tocopheryl). But I'm sure you've heard of Nobel-winning chemist Linus Pauling's groundbreaking research on Vitamin C. I have found similar effects to what Pauling described with my total of 7 grams/day. I've pretty much avoided any but the mildest cough or flu symptoms since I started that a few years ago.

There was an interesting follow-up to Pauling's work suggesting doses of 200 grams per day might be beneficial to people who are seriously ill, because of the body's high tolerance and the anti-radical effects. The interesting thing is, it should work for many illness, including most infections and even massive burns, because in a lot of illnesses most of the actual damage is from secondary effects of the infection/injury (toxins released by infections or dying tissue,) which damage is generally attributable to free radicals which Vitamin C's reducing equivalents can apparently deactivate. They actually have to hook up an IV drip to give you that much. I keep that one in mind for in extremis cases.

I agree 100% on the high-glycemic foods and exercise, though the former is mostly theoretical and will likely remain so because the effects are mostly cumulative and thus resist clinical study. But once you study the theory and the diabetes/heart attack statistics, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that any blood sugar spike damages your circulatory system.

Anyway, sorry to take up your whole thread with this. I can babble on about this stuff for hours. It's a minor obsession.