i weep for the educational system in this country

As I mentioned, I've been reading the weight loss support forums. And as I've also mentioned, I don't hold any set-in-stone ideas about what constitutes optimal nutrition for everyone because there's a new study contradicting an old study contradicting another study every week. But I do know some basic scientific facts and I do know what logic is and I know how to use google to look up the basic scientific facts that I don't know off the top of my head. So as you might imagine, reading what other average (mostly) Americans espouse just about makes my head explode.

When I'm home perusing this shit on my couch during a Sox game, I read the most egregious offenders aloud to D for his amusement. Like yesterday? Let me first tell you that there are some people out there who call themselves carnivores and eat nothing but meat. They are usually a subset of the "Paleo" people who think we are evolved to eat nothing but what our ancestors ate a hundred thousand years ago or something. Some of them believe in eating raw meat. Good luck with that, and uh, what I said the other day about feeling better about yourself by eavesdropping on public transportation? Reading fringe forums on the internet is just as good!

So, to end the digression, yesterday some woman who is exploring this dietary concept says, "We're made of mostly meat and water, so it makes sense that we put that back in." I read that to D, who said, "What?!" and started laughing. "No, it doesn't." I won't tell you how many tries it took my kid to pass Spanish I, but the boy understands logical thinking. Psychotic disorder and all. Oh, and as another digression, if you've never read this, you should. It'll only take you a couple minutes.

Today, I could not hold myself back, and had to post an actual fact to rebut the people who were insinuating that someone who had one glass of wine Friday could be falsely showing ketosis because she's burning off the alcohol. From about 2 seconds of googling, I ascertained that one drink is metabolized in about an hour and a half, and even if you get shitfaced and your BAC is .15, all the alcohol is metabolized in about ten hours. So, no, none of us is still metabolizing what we drank Friday night. Jesus wept. Does no one know how to look up a fact? Do they not teach you that in school? Does anyone understand that some things *are* actually facts, not opinions? (Oh, wait, we have a whole birther movement in this country. Apparently not.)

I did hold myself back from contradicting the woman who claimed that *everyone*, no exceptions, who eats a high carb diet will get health problems from it eventually. I mean, I guess she could tell me my father, who, as you know, eats his body weight in donuts and CheezIts in a year, is still going to get diabetes in another ten years, but if I could live to 94 and *then* get diabetes while eating CheezIts all along the way, I think that's a fair tradeoff.

In summary, people are stupid and our schools teach them nothing about critical thinking.

xoxo