November 30, 2006

Let's get rid of the word diet

Diets don't work. It's unproductive to look at health that way. The word (and action) are unhealthy.

Let's RightSize our food, our buying, our lives.

No more talk of diets. No more newspaper articles like this one: Enjoy holidays, but avoid gaining weight

If every day, in every place, in every food, we used the RightSize, we wouldn't have to worry about the holidays or any day.

When hosting a party, does the restaurant give up all responsibility to provide appropriate choices? Why is it up to the guests to be the only ones to do the right thing.

The article says:

In restaurants

At group dinners, try to consume only one of the following: an appetizer, a drink, bread or dessert.

Read the restaurant's online menu - including preparation and nutritional information - beforehand.

Choose your entree before you get there. (This trick also works when you're on the go. Knowing the calorie count of a fast-food sandwich might discourage you from eating it.)

For preset menus, request sauces on the side, light dressing or vegetable substitutions. Or ask the waiter to serve you half the meal and box the rest.


Here's a start: Restaurant need to clearly publish the all preparation and nutritional information on the menu. You should have a choice of what size you want. The prices should be clear for each size.

You should not have to ask to have the anything on the side...it should be how it's served. Light, low-calorie, low-fat, healthy food selections should be just as many as the unhealthy choices.

One low-fat salad dressing is NOT a choice. One small Diet choice with cottage cheese is not a choice, it's criminal. (While we are at it, let's eliminate cottage cheese. It has nothing to do with health or good taste.)

Why do we have to have Tricks of the Trade?

In the Wall Street Journal's Nov. 29 issue is a perfect example of what's wrong with food in America. The WSJ describes that to eat healthy on the road you must turned yourself into a nutrition expert...because no one "out there" is going to help you.

The article tells you to carry nuts, trail mix and dried fruit because the airlines surely will not have it. Carry fresh fruit, baby carrots or prepackage cheese sticks...and even small cans of tuna, because the hotel will not have it. The article even says call the hotel and request a refrigerator for your room, because you know the hotel restaurant won't have anything at the RightSize for you.

That's just plain wrong. We should be insisting that airlines and hotels provide good healthy food at the RightSize for us. We're the customers. Once we start only going to airlines and hotels that provide the best for us and our children, things will change.

November 29, 2006

RightSizingAmerica© starts NOW

We need to RightSize America. Let's --together -- get America eating the RightSize all the time.

Not the euphemism for firing people. But a phrase for getting everyone and everything to the RightSize. That means getting people to the RightSize. That means getting food portions to the RightSize. That means getting our children to the RightSize. It means getting our priorities to the RightSize.

The first step is for everyone in America (really everyone in the World) to start figuring out what is the RightSize, and to communicate that when we find the RightSize.

Our first job is to find restaurants, fast-food shops, diners, lunch counters (are there any left?), cafeterias, pushcarts, fair booths...any (and every) place that sells or distributes food and drinks to serve the RightSize. And at the RightPrice.

I don't have a problem with the Triple Whopper or the Monster Thickburger. I don't have a problem with a Venti Iced White Chocolate Mocha. I don't have a problem with all-you-can-eat buffets.

I have a big problem with not offering options and choices for us to choose the RightSize at the RightPrice. Why is it OK to offer huge dishes at restaurants? But not small reasonable sizes at appropriate prices.

This blog's vision to to start RightSizingAmerica. Let's find the RightSizes. Let's publicize those places, those portions, those companies and people who are giving us choices.

And let's also publicize those companies, schools and people who are NOT giving us choices, and are turning America (and next, the World) into gigantic Madison Ave.-eating robots.