Tag: food

the junk food diet that works!

Have you heard of the Twinkie diet?  It’s also known as a convenience store diet.   A professor of human nutrition decided to prove that the main cause of weight loss was counting calories, not the nutritional value of the food.  So for two months, he ate a small meal of junk food every three hours.   His meals consisted of Twinkies, Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Doritos, sugary cereals, and Oreos.  That was two-thirds of his diet — the rest included a daily protein shake, some vegetables, and a multivitamin pill.  His project was a success, in that he lost 27 pounds in two months.

Would deep-fried Oreos fit in this "diet"?

Sounds great, right?  When I heard this, I was thinking, “Where do you sign up for this kind of research?!?”  What made his “diet” effective was that he limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day.  A man of his size would normally consume 2,600 calories per day.  The key to his “diet” (and any diet) was to consume fewer calories than he burned.   It makes sense.  (That’s my approach, although it looks like I haven’t been eating enough junk food!)

You might assume this his junk food diet would make his health worse, but it actually didn’t.  His “bad” cholesterol (LDL) dropped 20 percent and his “good” cholesterol (HDL) increased by 20 percent.  His level of triglycerides (a measure of body fat) went down by 39 percent.  That’s inconceivable.

So according to his research experiment and the documented results, you can eat Twinkies and Oreos and Doritos every day and become healthier! The numbers don’t lie.

At this link there’s a list of what his typical daily diet would include: Twinkie diet helps professor lose 27 pounds.

I almost hesitate to admit this next part because it might mean that the self-proclaimed “Important Doctor” might actually know something about nutrition and be right, but perhaps there is some validity to the bacon and cheese diet, if used in moderation.  I decided to put that in here because it sounds like some research is in order…  🙂   We also need to add Cheetos and Oreos and ice cream to it.   Then include copious amounts of Southern-style sweet tea, and it would be the most awesome diet ever.

caption contest, man pointing at food

A new week, and a new caption contest — they just seem to go together, don’t they?  Anyway, this week’s picture features a man pointing at a plate of food.  He looks kinda like Adam Richman of Man v Food fame, but I’m not for sure if it is.  The food appears to be some type of cheeseburger, but that is open to your interpretation.

Here’s how the game works.  You write a caption for this picture, explaining what is going on.  The goal is to think of something funny.  Why is this man pointing at his food?  What is he saying or thinking?  What is the guy in the background thinking?  Feel free to make up a short story to explain it, if you feel so inspired.  Of course, one-liners are welcome.  (Puns are not necessarily welcome, but are tolerated.)  🙂

(To see our other caption contests, click on the “Say What?” category in the sidebar.)

review of Paula Deen’s restaurant

This past weekend I ate at Paula Deen Buffet restaurant at Harrah’s Casino in Tunica, MS.  For those of you who don’t know who she is, she’s one of the stars on The Food Network, and she’s famous for Southern-style cooking.  She’s also famous for using butter in almost everything she cooks.  As you might guess, the food was great.  I don’t even want to know how many calories I consumed.

The restaurant has 7 different buffet lines, and none of them were the kind that are just there for looks (like fruit*) — there was something scrumptious on every one.   The fried chicken was the best I’d ever eaten from a restaurant — it was very close to what my mom makes.  The baked macaroni and cheese was incredible.  I could go on and on about how great the food is.  Let’s just say I could eat there every day.   I do need to mention that one of the buffet lines has only desserts, and from the ones I sampled, it was all good.  I have to recommend the chocolate ooey-gooey butter bars — I even brought back a box of those for later.   🙂

If you ever get the chance to eat there, by all means, do so.  (I wonder what needs to happen to get one of those to open in central Arkansas…)

* I have nothing against fruit, but when I go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, I’m not there for fruit.

viewer mail, issue #18

One of the regular readers here recently mentioned that we haven’t put out an issue of viewer mail in a while.  They are correct.   And there is no good excuse for it, because it’s a fun series, and there’s plenty of material to work with.  Perhaps the writers are slackers.  So to light a fire under them, I told them they had to put out a new episode of viewer mail or they’d go to bed without supper.  That is sufficient motivation, so now we have the next issue of viewer mail.

As usual, this is based on actual search terms used to find this blog, and I’ll focus on the ones we haven’t already written extensively about.

Click image to see a larger, more tempting picture.

* large sausage & bacon sandwich — My dream of the future is that someday we’ll be able to download stuff like this.  Just type it in at a certain site (or select it from pictures), and it’s downloaded through the Internet.  Although I wonder if the tubes of the Internet are subject to artery clogging… Why would I worry about that, though?  I’m American!  Here’s the kind of breakfast sandwich I would download — bacon, sausage, copious amounts of cheese, held together by grilled cheese with bacon.   (There could hardly be a better breakfast sandwich, unless you add some milk gravy.)

* buffet calories — This is an invalid request.  The whole nature of a food buffet is unlimited, so if you’re wanting to count calories, you should avoid a buffet.  The great part of a buffet is that you get to eat what you want, in whatever combination you want, and however much you want.  That’s why it’s called “all you can eat”.   If you don’t eat all you can eat, you’re getting ripped off, because that’s what you paid for.

* homer simpson freak out — Your search returned 7,352,809 results.   🙂

* barack obama thinking — Your search returned 0 results.   (That was too easy…)

* super awesome bacon sandwhich — See above.  Actually, there are a number of bacon sandwiches (and other awesome bacon foodstuffs) documented here.  You can click on the “Food Critic” category, and many will either start with bacon or have it added.  (It’s inevitable that someone will always say “needs more bacon”.)   One of the Food Critic entries is a massively stacked , with many layers of bacon.  You can also search for our Buffet o’ Bacon series, where we conduct our own bacon recipe research, involving the Buffet o’ Blog important chefs (of which there are several).  There you’ll find some bacon dishes you’ve probably never thought of before, and it may make you hungry.  🙂

* women have bad moods — Your search returned 380,599,248,107 results.  (I hope I don’t get in trouble for that!)

I’d better wrap this up before things get too crazy.   Actually, I suddenly have a powerful craving for bacon…  Time to exit stage right to search for bacon!