I have to confess.  I lied to you.  I said the next post would be part II of the Meat Eater or Vegetarian series and here I am sticking another one in in between.  But I at least have a good reason for this interloper post: it is time sensitive.

Due to other commitments tomorrow and Monday (see below for the Monday commitment) I more than likely won’t be able to get the promised post up before Tuesday.  I was working away on it this afternoon (actually alternating between writing the post and dealing with comments) when my bride came in and whined for me to go to a movie I didn’t really want to see.  But, being the dutiful and obliging spouse that I am, I went.  And I was glad I did.

MD just finished the book Julie & Julia and was hot to see the movie.  I hadn’t read the book, and don’t plan on it, so I was lukewarm at best on the idea.  But I’m glad I relented because the movie is one of the best I’ve seen in a long while.  MD and I related to it on a number of levels.  We written books and have been through all the publisher snafus that Julia experienced.  We know what it’s like to have a cooking show.  And we’ve been through the blogging experience.  But, unlike the heroine of the blog and book, we’ve actually met Julia.

In the summer of 2000, a couple of friends of ours who own Al Forno, a famous restaurant in Providence, RI, arranged for MD and me to be a part of a huge fundraiser for the Providence Public Library.  It got worked out in such a way that MD and I attended as – get this – celebrity chefs.  Chefs? I still don’t know how it happened because our cooking show hadn’t even been conceived of at that time and we had just published The Protein Power LifePlan a few months earlier.  But there we were as celebrity chefs with – get this, too – Emeril Lagasse, Jacques Pepin, and Julia Child.  And, as they say, that’s not all.  We were there with Billy Joel as well.  Yep, Billie, Emeril, Jacques, Julia, MD and me – the celebs brought out to raise money for the Providence Public Library.  It was kind of surreal.

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Don’t panic.  I don’t have a paid ad for the RealAge Test stretching across the top of my blog post today.  This one is for illustration purposes only.  If you are like me, however, you’ve run across this banner countless times in your online surfing.  It seems to pop up everywhere.  Or at least it used to.  It hasn’t too much lately since the big New York Times exposé, more about which later.

But first let’s take a look at something else brought to the public by the team of Roizen and Oz.  I came across this page on their RealAge website while I was googling something else.

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Applebee's Quesadilla Burger

One of my readers sent me a link to a segment on ABC News with Charlie Gibson showing just how disgustingly slanted and inaccurate mainstream media reports can be.

Gibson leads into the segment about two reporters who underwent self experimentation on the adverse effects of unhealthy eating.  The reporters, ABC’s Yuji de Nies and Jon Garcia, set out to see what would happen if they consumed a giant meal containing over 6,000 calories.  Here is the result as they reported it.

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Image credit: Nature Reviews Cancer

The latest newsletter from Dr. Cannell, President of the Vitamin D Council, on vitamin D and the swine flu (and influenza in general).  Well worth reading.

If you are interested in a free subscription to this newsletter, go to the Vitamin D Council site and sign up. Read more »

Since I’ve been asked about my take on the swine flu situation a few times in the comments section and numerous times by other people I know, I figured I would post on the subject.  Re the above cartoon: I agree with the President.

I don’t think the situation is nearly as bad as many people – including our esteemed Vice President – seem to think it is.  Whenever I hear reports of panic like those we’ve been bombarded with over the past week, I always think of what H.L. Mencken had to say in such circumstances:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

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