"The Biggest Loser" - Does it last.

          When the show The Biggest Loser first started coming on TV it was one of the reality shows that I would watch every week. At first I thought that the show was doing great things for these people who were severely overweight and had given up hope of ever being at a healthy weight. The show even inspired me to start exercising and eating healthier. As the show went through seasons and my knowledge of exercising and healthy eating habits grew I began to see a lot of problems with the show. Everything may seem perfect, but there are a lot of issues with this reality show. First of all, they make these extremely obese people exercise for 4-6 hours a day when they probably haven't done that much exercise for the last year. They start making these ordinary people train as hard as professional athletes and put a huge amount of strain on there bodies. Another thing is that these people are losing almost 20 pounds a week on a regular basis. This is insane. The commonly recommended weight loss per week is 1-2 pounds. So some of these contestant are losing 10x as much weight in a week than they should. Since they are so obese it is not uncommon that they would lose more weight a lot faster than someone who only needs to lose 20 pounds, but 20 pounds in one week for anyone is ridiculous. The weight that they are losing is also not weight just from fat. Since they are working out for so long each day, they lose a lot of water in there body, technically losing weight. One contestant Ryan Benson said in an interview he "regained 32 pounds in 5 days simply by drinking water." Another contestant, Kai Hibbard, consumed only sugar-free Jello and asparagus for several days along with jumping in and out of a sauna for six hours prior to the final weigh-in.  So when they step on the scale at the end of the week to see who is above that line, a lot of that weight that the scale says they lost will come right back. Also a lot of these contestants that are now off the show have gained back a lot of weight, not necessarily back to the 400 pounds that they were, but a significant amount.

McDonald's burgers are invincible.

    Everyday when I get on my laptop I click on internet explore and it takes me to my home page, yahoo. I like to look at some of the stories that seem interesting. I saw one the other day about a McDonald's burger and fries that someone bought and let sit out on their counter for 6 months. She took weekly pictures of the burger, and on day 180 the burger and fries looked the exact same as the day she bought it. The only thing that happened to the McDonald's meal was that it became hard, there was not mold, a bad smell, or decomposition. After I saw this I started to Google to see if anyone else had ever tried this and I found that someone other people had done this same experiment. One person has had a McDonald's burger for 12 years now and they also have one that is almost 2 years old. Picture and story here. Both of these burgers look identical and look the same as a burger that was bought 10 minutes ago. They also said that the only change in the burger was that it had became hard. This is pretty messed up, if you left a normal loaf of bread out it would start to mold, harden, and probably start to smell. Home made bread molds a lot faster than a loaf of bread from a store. So what are they putting in these burgers to make them so invincible? There has to be a lot of chemicals put into the bun and the meat that makes them not mold and start to smell. The other stories that I read about people leaving food out for a long period of time had similar results with different food. One person said that a subway sandwich did the same as the burger and after weeks it never molded or started to smell. There was also the same story with someone leaving out a twinkie for a year. So what are these food companies putting in our food that make them never mold? Is it safe?

Organic Food vs. Conventional Food

    Since we have been talking about food so much and all of the things commonly unknown to the masses, I decided to try and look into the pro's and con's of organic and conventional food. The food is termed by the way it is grown. If it is grown without the use of chemical then it is organic, if chemicals come in contact with the food in the growing process then it is conventional. Is one overall better than the other? Most sites that I went to basically had the same conclusion, that there is not enough evidence to support or discredit either method of farming. They share indentical taste, nutrition value, and neither one has been proven to be the healthier option. I have never even ate an organic food so I can't really imply my own input on which option I think is better, I just know that in all my time of eating conventionaly farmed food I have been fine. One of the only things that I have noticed and is actually proven is that the price of organic food is higher than the cost of conventionaly farmed food. This is a result of the organic farming process taking a lot more work to grow and proctect. So maybe the only bad thing about conventional farming is our perception that chemicals in the growing process is bad. After more research has been done over the topic and until conventional farming is proven to be a more harmful option, I will continue to eat the conventionaly farmed foods.