[Ed Bighi]

That diet works. Actually, anything that cuts the refined sugar out works. United States has the highest per-capita sugar consumption in the world. Though not the highest fat consumption. Considering we are the most obese by far, do the math. It isn't the fat. It never was. The way I look at it, when you walk in a grocery store, go along the walls and avoid the isles. Get the produce dept, the meat, poutry and fish dept, the cheeses, and leave. What is in the aisles, other than maybe tuna and a few other things, is crap.

My wife's uncle was the president of Goya foods for years until recently. He's always told me that there is very little profit in protein. It's not even half as profitable as carbohydrates. He says the big bucks are in carbs. Cereal is the holy grail of profit. Atkins always felt that there was some backscratching going on when the food pyramid was conceived. After all, the highest profit items with the largest lobbies are at the top. Remember that nothing is what it seems when there is money involved.

But even if someone tries to eat right, I still feel that there is too much funny business going on with the engineering of foods over here. Let me tell you, there is a big difference between eating a steak from a cow raised in a pen in Texas and one from the pampas in Argentina or the grassy fields of New Zealand. And then people wonder why the europeans aren't too interested in importing US food items.

A while back someone asked me why europeans are concerned with engineered foods. I told him about one time in Portugal, when I stopped at a small town for lunch and ate one particularly tasty fish among other fine tasting fish. After a 80 km drive to another town to stay for the night, I go to dinner and ask for the same fish I had for lunch. I was told they didn't have that there. For that, the waiter tells me, I would have to go to the town I was at for lunch. I proceed to tell him that it was only 80 km away. Then he tells me that, after all, it's 80 km. That distance, he said, would make the fish no longer fresh and they have no interest in that.

Then there were the sheer number of houses, with tiny backyards filled with grapes and vegetables for personal use. Now you tell me, would these people be interested in an abnormally large tomato or a super cow? Good, bad, who cares. Why eat that crap when you can get pretty good tomatoes from your neighbor's back yard. Or a good hog from the farm on the other side of town. So there you go.