Can Magical Fruit Juices Cure King Henry's Syphilis?

Everyone wants to be healthy, and many people want to be more than they are now. For that reason, I often hear about “great business opportunities” involving magical fruit juices. I don’t use the word “magical” lightly. Nearly all of these super-juices are sold through Amway-style mlm schemes. Before you even think about buying from one of these companies, remember that they are not in the fruit juice business; they are in the multilevel marketing business. There is a big difference.

Since most of these juices are a rip off for all the same reasons, let’s get The Skinny on one of the more popular juices. The principles involved here apply to all similar products.
MonaVie was founded by a guy named Daillin Larsen. He was an old pro at direct selling, and supposedly wanted to share the benefits of acai berries with other people. However, after the company grew to 70,000 distributors he left the company to do something else.

The Price of MonaVie and similar juices
It's $40 a bottle with a bottle lasting only around one week. That means you can expect to pay around $175 a month for this juice. For many people, that's a significant car payment. The company also doesn't publish how much of the acai berry is each bottle, so you don’t even know what you are paying for.

I am pretty sure MonaVie means “The juice that transfers money from your wallet to mine” in Latin. The juice has 19 different fruits in it, and people who sell it claim it does everything from curing cancer to shrinking nasal warts. Of course, the company itself never actually makes any claims, but the distributors claim the juice treats all sorts of medical problems. (I have been personally told that it will cure joint pain. Oh! the solution to joint pain is fruit! I feel so stupid...) If this juice does half of what it claims, I ought to be drinking it by the gallon, right?

Claims
My guess is that 99% of the people selling acai (or other special juices) have done none of their own research into the product. That’s just human nature. But let’s be honest. If someone says, “Doctors have shown”, we will believe almost anything they say.

According to the company website, the juice’s power to heal, and prevent aging is due to its being high in antioxidants: (read this in your most nasally voice)

“Through an exclusive freeze-drying process, MonaVie is able to capture the vital nutrients found in [acai berries]. MonaVie's freeze-dried acai powder boasts an ORAC score (antioxidant power) higher than any other fruit or vegetable tested to date, on a gram-for-gram basis.”

Super-juices all build their claims on the same idea. They claim to have a lot of antioxidants, which fight free radicals that “cause” aging. To understand if these juices will fulfill their claims of health, we have to know what a free radical is and if the juice really has a lot of anti-oxidants to stop those pesky free radicals.

What’s a Free Radical? (The non-nerdy version)

Imagine you are grilling some hot dogs (or soy patties, or whatever you want) over a campfire. As the wood burns, it puts out smoke as a byproduct, right? Free Radicals are like the “smoke” your body makes as it burns energy, moves and lives. Now imagine that your cousin Leonard (who wears underwear over his blue jeans) gets a face-full of smoke as he walks by and he pukes on Aunt Cindy’s poodle, who is thrown into the lake by Uncle Sherman to wash her off… Where was I? Oh. Just like smoke, if too many free radicals get together, they can damage your cells. This is one reason that people who eat adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables high in antioxidants have a lower rate of cardiovascular disease, cancers, and cataracts. But all we know is that fruits and vegetables are rich in antioxidants; we don’t actually know for sure what factors are making people more healthy when they eat their veggies.

Despite what people tell you, free radicals are not all bad. Besides being a good band name, free radicals promote processes that help you make energy from fat and kill bacterial invaders. For obvious reasons, getting rid of all free radicals can do very bad things to you. Anyone who tells you that you need massive amounts of anti-oxidants is forgetting this fact.

Does Mona Vie (and other juices) have a lot of antioxidants?

The main phytochemicals (plant chemicals) that deliver antioxidants to the body are vitamins C, E and beta-carotene. For the super-fruit juices to fulfill their claims, they obviously would need to have large amounts of these vitamins.

How much do they have?
Since companies like Mona Vie base their entire marketing campaign around the claim that they are high in antioxidants… they better deliver.

The Australian Consumers Association did a major study to answer this question in 2007. They bought virtually every super-juice that's commercially available. They tested all of them and measured TAC (aka how antioxidant is in there). They also went on for pages and pages about how they did all the steps and why. You may have noticed the promoters of these products never do that. They just tell you “studies have shown” and then hope you don’t ask questions.

So they had something to compare the “magical” juices to, they measured the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) of an apple and got 5900. This number was then compared to the TAC in a daily serving of each super-juice.

1. Goji berry? A berry from Asia also known as “wolfberry”. Samples measured a TAC from 570 to 2,025 for a 100% purée of the berry.
2. Mangosteen fruit? Some people claim Mangosteen has double the antioxidants of goji. The results? 1,020 to 1,710 TAC per serving
3. Noni Juice? They tested to brands of this Polynesian fruit. The two brands measured 540 and 525, only 9% the TAC of a common apple! Brian Dunning helps us put this in perspective: “In other words, a $7 cup of noni juice contains as much antioxidants as a thin 5¢ slice of apple.”
4. Açai Berry? Acai is the touted ingredient in Mona Vie, but since they don’t advertise it, we don’t actually know how much acai is in their juice. The açai is a purple berry from the Amazon, and Oprah says it is the “#1 food for anti-aging.” Of course, Oprah also takes medical advice from Jenny McCarthy so I ranked the quality of her advice to be down there with snufalupagus. Anyway. The results of the test? A 14% açai pulp had a TAC of 1,800, or about 31% as much as a apple.
5. An orange? 2,540 TAC
6. A cup of strawberries? 5,938
7. A cup of raspberries? 6,058 TAC
8. A cup of Blueberries? 9,019 TAC

What’s the bottom line? Nearly every fruit has far more antioxidants than these “magical” super juices.

I know what you’re thinking: “But their marketing literature says that the berries have 6 times, 10 times or 20 times the antioxidants!” Here’s where they’ve tricked you. The fruit might have 10 times the antioxidants, but they aren’t selling you the fruit… they are selling you a drink that contains SOME of the juice. The mangosteen fruit has a tons of antioxidants, but it's all in the inedible rind.

So Super-fruit juices may be good sources of antioxidants… if you have been getting your anti-oxidants from Papa John.

But do they work?
The American Heart Association reviewed five studies of super-juices for their efficacy in preventing cardiovascular disease, which is the main health claim about antioxidants. Of the five studies, two showed no effects, and three showed negative effects. Conclusion: These juices don’t actually do what many people claim. Are they good tasting fruit juices? Sure. Can they be used to treat medical conditions? NO! NO! NO!

There is widespread scientific agreement that eating adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables can help lower the incidence of cardiovascular disease and certain cancers. With respect to antioxidants and other phytochemicals, the key question is whether supplementation has been proven to do more good than harm. So far, the answer is no, which is why the FDA will not permit any of these substances to be labeled or marketed with claims that they can prevent disease.

Conclusion
If you're truly curious about super-fruit juices and want the truth, ask a source who has no financial interest in the product. Ask your medical doctor. You may find that he knows nothing about it; products like MonaVie that have no proven health value rarely find their way into medical or nutritional literature.

Let’s face it. The most compelling reason to believe their magical claims that the juice creates health is that their Aunt’s Nephew’s Cousin’s dog walker used it to cure her bunions. Let’s not forget that people lie. And other people believe those lies. And those people tell other people. That’s why we can’t make medical conclusions based on anecdotal stories.

Another point: these superfruit juices have been available for years, and no one has been reporting a decrease in the various diseases that some have claimed to be curing.
It should be mentioned that many "concentrates" of fruits or vegetables are being marketed, but it’s not possible to condense large amounts of plants into a pill without losing fiber, nutrients, and many other phytochemicals (plant chemicals) You might as well just eat a salad.

If you've got $175 dollars month to spend on Mona Vie, you've got enough for a gym membership and a daily dose of fresh fruit.

The Zombie Apocolypse!

You are SO lucky to have a friend that is a geek. I’m not joking. The Daily Skinny may save your life one day soon.

We all know what people do on the internet when they get bored: read Infectious Disease journals. I was cruising the e-boulevard in geekville when I came across a research paper called, “When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection”.

As I drooled over the title, I muttered to myself “you had me at ‘Mathematical Modeling’.” (Sometimes I also say this to my wife, Weather Principio, who rolls her eyes.)

As far as I am concerned, math and zombies BELONG together. Because of my concerns regarding an impending zombie apocalypse, I began reading. The purpose of the paper, from my perspective, was to project how fast Zombie-ism is likely to grow (after an outbreak) and what methods would be most successful for stopping it.

In case you are not up-to-date on the latest zombie info, here is the Skinny:

Usually a zombie is someone who has died and been brought back to life by magic, or has skipped the death stage and gone straight to zombie-hood. Normally the latter type of zombie occurs due to a zombie infection (they have a lot of open sores).

The pure, classical school of zombies maintains that zombies have always been a stiff, slow moving monster that is unable to communicate or reason. Some weirdoes have made movies where the zombies were just as agile as the living, but clearly that is nonsense. It has been observed that zombies tend to have no other aim than to eat the flesh of humans (often the brain). Not surprisingly, the zombie infection can be passed to other people through a break in the skin. Although I suppose if you were to kiss a Zombie, that would also do the trick. (Eww…) I am not aware of any successful Zombie-Human relationships, so as a general rule, never date someone who is dead, undead, re-dead, post-dead, or less than alive. Also, I am told zombies have incredibly bad death-breath, so if you plan to give one a serious kiss you may want to think again.

Naturally, zombies are very difficult to kill. They can take 100 times the damage of a normal human and be fine. The tricky part of killing them is doing it without catching the zombie infection from their fluids. It seems that the most effective method for stopping a zombie is to give it a significant head wound. Usually a machete or gun is used, but a few cases of lethal Hannah Montana cds have been reported.

For some reason, zombies tend to move in huge packs, so try to isolate yourself as much as possible following an outbreak.

Most people that read about zombies are glad to have the information for defense planning purposes. But some of you are wondering how to use this to your advantage. So, I have taken the liberty of doing some research.

HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN ZOMBIE ARMY

It’s really not super hard. First, you’ll need some coup de poudre. If for some reason you have no idea what that is, you can substitute the less effective tetrodotoxin. This is the chemical in puffer fish that kills you if you eat it. Just camp-out behind a sushi restaurant for awhile, and you’ll be able to find a bunch. Absorb the toxin into some flour to get the poison in a powder form. Now mix it with a dissociative drug. I like to use datura when I am working on a zombie army, because it has just a little bit more punch to it. If your supermarket has a deadly plants section, you might find it under the name Hell's Bells.

An ethnobotonist at Harvard says these two powders will cause a death-like state in the person you give it. It seemed like he was pretty smart, until his plumber pointed out that it doesn’t take a PhD to realize that giving people poison causes “a death-like state”. Anyway, once you have administered the zombie poison to the person of your choice, the person will drop dead. Don’t run for garbage bags and circular saws though! They will wake up in a day or so, and be entirely subject to your will. (Bwaah haaah haaah!) That incubation time is important for the zombie infection fluids to become more virulent. When they wake up, the zombie-ism, will spread and your army will grow!

This has been “documented” to work by a man who used it on his brother, Clairvius. The man grew a zombie army to work his farm in Haiti. The trick to being a success is to keep giving your zombies doses of the drugs. However, the poor guy died in 1964 and eventually the drugs wore off on his zombies. (I HATE that!) In fact, after awhile, Clairvius (the brother) went home to live with his family. Surprisingly, most of the other zombies were pretty messed up after being buried alive and then force fed hallucinogens for decades. It seems they never rejoined humanity.

Back to the Mathematical Model!

Their complex equation involved three basic types of people. “Susceptibles” are the normal, healthy people who are being chased. They could become victims of zombification. “Zombies” are obviously, the ones who want to eat your brains. The final group was the “Removed”. This is a nice way of saying: The Zombie scum that we have re-killed or re-deaded”.

The formula takes into account the possibility of quarantine and even treatment. Theoretically some humans survive, but they must learn to coexist with zombies. Personally, I think that only in a Disney movie would the ending include the zombies and the townsfolk becoming friends.

So what does the formula tell us? If an infection breaks out in a city of 500,000 people, the zombies will outnumber the susceptibles (the good guys!) in about three days. Some claim that catching zombie diseases can be avoided if your pineal gland is pure and healthy. Of course, they also claim that in order for it to be healthy you have to buy their expensive solution which comes dangerously close to causing metal toxicity (Gold and Silver). (To be fair, they don’t actually claim their solution is intended for zombies. But if they can make up fake health claims, I can make up fake uses.)

The authors wisely concluded their study with, “An outbreak of zombies is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. It is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.”

In their modeling, the only solution that ended favorably for us normal folks involved a massive army sweeping the country and killing all the zombies (including those with dormant zombie infections). Luckily, some healthcare reformers are pushing to get “medical chainsaws” in every home. That way, we can assemble an army quickly.

CRITICISM AGAINST THE MODEL
In feedback to their article, one person asked the one question that matters: “If society begins collapsing into chaos and the world is succumbing to the zombie apocalypse, how long would the internet stay up?”

To stay around long term, the zombies would have to harvest the humans in 15-18 year cycles and provide food, clothing and shelter while they produce the next litter of humans. All the evidence seems to indicate that zombies do not have the patience and cultivation skills necessary to farm humans. Because of this, it is unlikely that any zombie population will sustainable in the long term. So if a zombie outbreak occurs, just plan on hiding for a few weeks while the zombies starve to death.

I searched some medical websites like PubMed and could find no cases of a recovered zombie succumbing to their disease again. This proves that rehabilitated zombies are probably immune, and don’t re-enter the “susceptible” population. But let’s be honest… would you let a “recovered” zombie babysit your kids? Maybe we could have a zombie registry or something…

Oh. Just one more tip from the Zombie Survival Guide (not kidding). Stock up on axes and swords, since guns always run out of ammo. My research also indicates that knowing some kung fu may help.

**For those who wondered: there is no such thing as zombies, big foot, the Loch Ness Monster, El Chupacabra or prosthetic feet with built in gun holsters.**

Are there 57 States Now?

Numbers can be creepy. Just ask Jim Carey who did a movie about the number 23. From the movie posters, I assumed it was a math movie… the thought made me shudder. So I didn’t see it. In any case, it looked kind a scary. Numbers can be scary though. Some people are afraid of the number 13, and some people are afraid of the number 57.

On May 9, 2008 President Obama stopped in Oregon and made the following statement:
"It is wonderful to be back in Oregon. Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in fifty… seven states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it."

You can also view the clip on Youtube.

Now, obviously there are not 57 states in the U.S. At first I thought maybe he was including U.S. Territories, but there are 14 of those, so that’s not the answer. When I do the math, I get the following…

1. There are 50 states
2. He said he hadn’t been to Alaska or Hawaii so that leaves 48
3. He said he had not been to one other state so that makes 47.
4. Given that he stumbled over the number, and later expressed concern at having misspoke… could it be that President Obama meant to say 47, and not 57?

That kind of seems like a non-story, right? Then I received a recent email with another sort of math in it. It went something like this.

1. President Obama said there were 57 states… he is either stupid or it was a slip of the tongue that reveals his evil, secret plans.

2. Since everyone who knows him says he is smart, he must be hatching a secret, evil plan.

3. The email then points out that there are 57 states of Islam, so ha! That proves Obama is a secret Muslim!
a. They extend this third step to make claims he is trying to unite the 57 states against
the U.S. blah blah blah (you can imagine)

4. It could NOT have been that he simply said the wrong number… That is what THEY want you to believe.

So let’s cover each of their steps and consider if our friendly emailer has a good point.

Point number one is a false dichotomy. That means that they want you to think you only have two choices, when there are really more. He’s a list I came up with.

1. He is stupid
2. He is evil and has secret plans
3. He misspoke
4. He was trying to add numbers on the fly, and came up with the wrong number
5. He just saw a 757 fly overhead and it threw the wrong number into his speech.
6. He was wishing he was at home putting Heinz 57 on a hot dog

Point two cracks me up. He’s either stupid or evil… Doesn’t this mean that all good people are stupid, and all smart people are evil? Hmm…

Point three. Point three bugs me a little. Point three, and their associated ramblings presupposes that Muslim people are bad, have secret/evil plans (see #1) and should be feared. It should be obvious that this is religious bigotry at worst, and at best is a gross generalization. But what about the 57 States of Islam? This refers to the members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and if a person takes the time to go to their website, they will find out there are actually 54 Islamic States. If you only count the ones that are under Muslim rule, then the number is even smaller. So much for "57" being so damning.

Here is the list:

Adghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Azerbaijan
Benin
Burkina-FASO
Cameroon
Chad
Comoros
Cote D'Ivoire
Djibouti
Egypt
Gabon
Gambia
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kuwait
Kyrgyz Republic
Lebanon
Libya
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Mauritania
Morocco
Mozambique
Niger
Nigeria
Oman
Pakistan
Palestine
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Somalia
Sudan
Suriname
Syria
Tajikistan
Togo
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Uganda
United Arab Emirates
Uzebekistan
Yemen

As far as President Obama being a secret Muslim, who knows? I doubt if anyone has the ability to judge if anyone sincerely believes ANY religion. My email offered no proof that the President is a believer in Islam. I couldn’t find any evidence of him going to a mosque, reading the Koran, praying to Mecca, or observing any Islamic holidays. The email said Obama admitted he was “once a Muslim”, but if he did I can’t find his statement. It also claimed he was sworn in using the Qur’an, but this just isn’t true. The email also seems to ignore the fact that he has been a practicing Christian for 20 years and has even publicly talked about his relationship with Christ. Sounds pretty Christian to me, but what do I know?

I don’t really see why it matters if he is Muslim or not. One thing that I love about the United States is that religious affiliation is not required for public service. Christians, Jews, Muslims and Atheists could all be President of the United States. That is, they could be if we stopped fear mongering for awhile.

So let’s get back to the number 57. The problem with choosing one word or number to “prove” a person is good or evil is that it works both ways. I will now show that Obama is hatching a secret evil plan using the number 57.

1. The atomic number of Lanthanum is 57 and it comes from the Greek which means “to lie hidden”

2. The Saros Cycles of solar eclipses is number 57. This shows that Obama intends to block out all spiritual light.

3. Passenger 57 is a Wesley Snipes film where terrorists seize control. Gaah! This is so obvious!
4. In the TV show Dangermouse, Agent 57 is the Master of Disguise. Evil!

5. 57 is the international code for direct dialing Colombia. He is controlled by a drug cartel!

6. 57 is a municipal district in Russia. He’s a communist!

7. Last of all, Hebrew Gammatria. This is where each letter has a value (like A=1) Here are Hebrew words that add up to 57:
a. Perish
b. Eat
c. Prison
d. Ruin
e. Fear
f. Vanity

Now let’s use the number 57 to show that Obama is a good Christian:

1. In 57 AD Emperor Zhang of Han was born. Emperor Zhang was hardworking and diligent. He reduced taxes and paid close attention to all affairs of state.

2. The 57th day of the year is February 26th. This is the day John Kellogg was born. Yeah Corn Flakes!

3. During the Crusades, the Knights Templar would say the Lord’s Prayer 57 times if they missed choir.

4. The 57th word in the King James version of the bible is “light”

5. The 57th Psalm says. “I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people: I will sing unto thee among the nations. For thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: let thy glory be above all the earth.”

6. The following Hebrew words add up to 57:
a. Greatness
b. Strength
c. Magnify
d. Levite
e. Mother

So what’s the point? Symbolism, historical references and numerical coincidences can be used to make almost any point. Don’t accept ideas without evidence. Persuasiveness is not evidence. I’m thinking we ought to stop being afraid of the Muslims in our community, and start being afraid of the people who create these emails. After all, the bad guys are the smart ones…

What Can You Do With a Microwave and a Barrel of Monkeys?

This Daily Skinny returns to the good old days of explaining stuff. I sort of got on a kick of revealing the stupidity of various claims, but I am returning to my roots. For you to get the most of this Daily Skinny, you will need:

1/3 cup of water in a 2 cup microwave safe container
A saltine cracker
¼ pound or so of frozen hamburger
A microwave
A monkey wrench
Some rice krispy treats
An “adult” to supervise you
A barrel of monkeys (the toy -real monkeys do not come in barrels)
A large knife. Like the kind used in late night murder mysteries- except serrated
Oh! and you may also need some band-aids

I was recently grilling some wonderful slabs of cow, and it happened. I got talking, forgot about the hamburgers, and the heat on my grill got waaay to high. Luckily I pulled the burgers off the grill before the outside burned, but since they had only been in there a few minutes I was afraid the middle might still be raw even though the outside had sort of a Cajun look to it. Of course, the only thing worse than a burned hamburger is one that is both burned and raw. (What can I say, I have a gift.) It is then that my grilling companion sagely counsels, “Don’t worry; you can just put them in the microwave. After all, they do cook from the inside-out”.

If your supervising adult is now nodding self-importantly, use your monkey wrench on them. Although I do make an effort to be nice to my guests, the unwritten rule of the house is: ”If you make a crazy claim, you’d better have some evidence”. Incidentally, it is not a good marriage strategy to demand evidence from your wife for everything she says… In my mind, I am just being inquisitive. In her mind I am calling her a liar. Anyway, I have digressed…

Microwaves do NOT cook from the inside out. But admittedly, microwaves are mystical things. How DO they work?

A special type of vacuum tube, called a magnetron (This sounds like either an X-men or a Transformer, but it isn’t). For the geeks out there, it is actually a type of diode. Anyway, the magnetron converts electric power into very short radio waves called microwave radiation, (that makes sense…). These radio waves shoot out of the magnetron at 2450 Megahertz. At that frequency, power is readily absorbed by water, fats and sugars. These waves go through a waveguide (a funky machined pipe) that carries it into the microwave oven cavity, where it bounces around. The microwaves cause the water molecules in food to vibrate, which creates the heat that cooks the food. This is why foods high in water content, heat up faster than other foods. Microwaves cook faster than ovens because they are only heating the food-not the whole huge oven and everything in it. A regular oven works by heating the air around food, and waiting for that air to heat the food.

Try it!
1. Eat a rice krispy treat
2. Cook your 1/3 cup of water in the microwave for 30 seconds, and then notice how hot it is. (Depending on your microwave, it could be pretty hot.)
3. Cook your saltine cracker for 30 seconds then eat it. The water will have gained much more heat. You have just demonstrated that water rich items cook faster in microwaves!

Although heat is produced directly in the food, microwave ovens do not cook food from the "inside-out." When thick foods are cooked, the outer layers are heated and cooked primarily by microwaves while the inside is cooked mainly by the conduction of heat from the hot outer layers. If you want to be real nerdy about it, microwaves do penetrate a little into the food, but it is still NOT heating from the inside out. (The microwaves move from the outside-in.)

So where did the idea that microwaves cook from the inside out come from? In a microwave, the air in the oven is at room temperature so the temperature of the food surface is cooler than food in a conventional oven where the food is heated by hot air. This may have lead some people to think the heat was “inside” the food.  Although these might be the same people who think the actors are inside the TV.

Want to test it for yourself? If a microwave cooks from the inside-out, then something partially cooked should be warm in the center, and much cooler on the surface, right?

1. Eat a rice krispy treat
2. Cook your frozen hamburger in the microwave for 1 minute
3. Take your big serrated knife, and cut the chunk of hamburger in half.

Notice that the outside is squishy, while the center is still frozen solid! My grilling buddy is busted! The only way to cook food from the inside out would be if there were a heat source inside the food!

Want to have more fun with your microwave? I’m not going to tell you what happens. You’ll have to be adventurous on your own. Try some of the following:

Safe to Nuke: Most likely won't cause permanent problems in you or the microwave.

1. Marshmallow peeps
2. A bar of soap
3. Eggs
4. Twinkies

Probably Safe to Nuke: I (or someone I know) has done this safely, but there are some risks.

1. Place a wooden tooth pick standing up in your oven and light the top on fire (you only need a small flame). You could stick it in between the clip of a plastic pencil top, or in a cork. Your oven will be blackened, but this will wash right off. If you want to protect a small microwave from melting, put a glass bowl over the toothpick.

2. Nuke cd’s. This one is classic and fun. Try a silver CD and a green or gold or blue CD-R. Don’t use your favorite Donny Osmond cd because it won’t work after this.

3. Cook a Christmas tree ornament (a metal one).

4. A light bulb. Don’t nuke it for very long, or the bulb will break. Stick to maybe 10 seconds. To prevent breakage, you could put the lightbulb in a bowl of water, but it’s not quite as cool.

5. Cut a grape in half. Not all the way, just leave a little skin between the two halves. Place the cut grape on a plate - round sides down, flat (cut) side up, still attached or just touching if severed. Start the microwave.

6. If you have an old flat bottomed microwave, you can also do grape races! Take some vegetable oil and grease the bottom of the microwave, then take some grapes and line them up at one end of the microwave with the holes pointing towards the wall they are lined up against. Take bets, and then turn the microwave on to see which one gets the farthest or gets to the other side fastest.

Cool but Not Safe Nuke: You may hurt yourself and/or your microwave.

1. Firecracker. Don’t light it. Let the microwave do the work.

2. Make a strip of aluminum foil (22 x 1 cm ) into a bracelet shape, wrapping the two ends tightly into each other. Put it on an old glass plate that you would be okay with destroying. The foil will melt right into the glass plate. and fold it like shown below. Don’t let this one run for too long because it is going to suck a lot of power. Stick to 10-20 seconds or you could kill your microwave. You may wish to wear sunglasses while you watch this.

3. Never ever put an ice-pack in the microwave. The ingredient that lowers the temperature is ammonium nitrate. It is an explosive, and the explosions will ruin both you and your microwave. You might think it will be cool, however you are not likely to live through it.

Happy Cooking!

How Money Works or Why our society can NEVER be debt free.

In today’s edition of The Daily Skinny, we will be discussing money. I had another topic planned, but let’s face it. This one is more useful. After a significant number of classes and study, I think there may be things about money that an average person may not know.

I’ll try not get too academic about this, but let’s start with some definitions.

1. Real Currency – money with intrinsic value that can be exchanged for something else of value (ie a gold nugget is traded for a pair of levis during the gold rush)
2. Fiat Currency- Money that has no intrinsic value, other than what the government say it has.

All of our U.S. bills are fiat currency. Notice that a $20 bill is not more valuable than a $1 bill, except that it has a 20 instead of a 1 on it. In fact, they have no value other than the government backing it. It even states on our bills that “This note is legal tender…”. It has value because the government says it does, and basically everyone on the planet accepts their word. Both kinds of currency (fiat & real) have their pros and cons, but let’s keep this simple.

Our government has the power to print our money themselves, but they don’t. I won’t conjecture why they don’t, but they don’t. I guess this point is moot (what kind of word is “moot”?) since it would be a huge task to change our whole system. Anyway, the government doesn’t print our money, they hire it out. The Federal Reserve prints it. I hope most people know that the Federal Reserve is NOT part of or controlled by the government. It is a business. It’s about as governmental as Federal Express. In fact, if you look at the top of our bills, they are owned by the Federal Reserve, NOT the U.S. government. Let’s follow the process of you buying a house, from the reserve to you.

"The actual process of money creation takes place in the banks." (Modern Money Mechanics, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago)

1. The Federal Reserve creates/prints $150,000.

2. The U.S. government accepts the $150,000 and agrees to pay it back with interest. (Just like a loan) Let’s pretend the government agrees to pay back $160,000.

3. The $150,000 is deposited in your local bank, “Steve’s Bank & tackle Store”.
When “Steve’s Bank & Tackle Store” gets that $150,000, the Federal Reserve says they can’t loan it all out but they have to keep some of it in reserve. One reason for this is that during the depression when banks ran out of cash, people wanting to make withdrawals were not happy. For simplicity, let’s say the rate is a flat 3%. So the bank can loan out $145,500.

4. You get a loan for $145,500, buy your house, and the bank pays the person who owned your house previously $145,000

5. That bank takes out the reserve and gives person B a loan for $141,135
6. Person B’s bank takes out the reserve and loans Person C $136,900
7. Person C’s bank takes out the reserve and loans Person D $132,793
8. This continues for a long long time.

9. When it’s all over, there will be $5,000,000 in loans created (multiplier=1/reserve RATE). And how much money is in the economy to pay it back? $150,000. As you can see, it is for this reason, impossible to pay off the national debt (under the current system). In fact, the only time we have not had a national debt was when President Jackson got rid of their version of the Federal Reserve.

So what keeps the whole house of cards from falling down? Mainly two things. Other countries investing their money in the U.S., the Federal Reserve printing more money, and inflation. You can see that this is a self sustaining cycle. This system guarantees that there will periodically be cycles of bankruptcies, company failures, and banking assets being written off as worthless. Our current economy is not broken. It is functioning as it was designed to function. So why do we put up with it? Because in the good times things are really good. Money is cheap, easy, and we can buy whatever we want. But it is unavoidable that we must sometime pay the piper.

We are using debt (loans) to create money out of thin air. This is the reason that one Federal Reserve Chairmen said, “If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”

Want to hear something funny/sad? Because we will always owe more in loans, than there is money to pay it off, there will ALWAYS be bankruptcies and foreclosures. And when the bank takes your house, they have basically bought your house with money that never existed. In one lawsuit, Martin v Mahoney, a bank was trying to foreclose on a man. The man showed that the bank did not actually have the money for his loan, but created it after the loan was signed (by the above process). The jury denied the banks claim to foreclose and held the contract unenforceable. I must admit though that this was a small bank, and they basically admitted everything. If you tried this with a big bank they are not going to do you any such favors.

We are in a period of inflation, and the level of inflation is going to increase. This means we are in a period of time when the system will be working against you.

Inflation is an increase in the money supply; no matter what anyone tells you, it is not an increase in prices. Saying inflation is rising prices, is like saying a runny nose is a cold. Rising prices is just one symptom of inflation just like a runny nose is only one symptom of a cold.
$1 in 1913 was worth 21.60 in 2007 that is a 96% devaluation since the Federal Reserve began.
When the Federal Reserve chairmen say they are going to lower interest rates, what they really mean is that they want to increase inflation, and make the dollar worth less. This makes old loans easier to pay off with new money, and delays the inevitable.

The bottom line is that people who cannot control their debt and spending habits will increasingly become prisoners of their debt which they will have a harder time repaying. This process will push people into lower and lower income classes until they cannot extricate themselves. So what can be done?

Don’t buy ANYTHING with debt if you can help it. The only debt that the prepared person should have is debt that is related to producing income. That means school loans, car loans (for getting to work), and eventually maybe a home loan. Anything that will not enable you to produce income should NOT be financed. Emergencies will happen, and we should have 3 to 6 months of income saved to prevent emergencies from forcing us into debt.

The more your income exceeds your expenses, the less inflation will impact you negatively. If you can’t increase your income, decrease your expenses.

Society can’t be debt free, but you can. Anyone who doesn’t do the above will eventually sorely wish they had. I'm not forecasting this, I am promising it. The system is working how it is designed to work. The less we are part of that system, the better off financially we will be.

Unnatural Deaths “He” doesn’t want you to know about

Or Persnickety Dipstick’s Series of Idiotic Events

If you can’t follow sarcasm in a written form, you are going to have problems reading this. ;)

I saw an infomercial the other day regarding lowering your debt which I thought was misleading and oversimplified financial topics. So I decided to sick The Daily Skinny on him. Let's talk about his legal issues, and then briefly look at some of his products.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is continuously suing Kevin Trudeau for various forms of deception and fraud. A court order currently restricts his ability to promote and sell any product or service (Kevin is the victim here); however, he is permitted to promote books and other publications due to free-speech protection under the First Amendment. But he's not allowed to promote or sell products or services. That is how much the FTC trusts Kevin Trudeau. It is clear to me that I must trust him also.

1990
Kevin posed as a doctor, so he could get away with depositing $80,000 in false checks. Trudeau was convicted of fraud and larceny.

1991
Kevin gathered the credit card numbers of people who bought his product "Mega Memory". He used these numbers to make $122,735.68 in fraudulent charges. He told the court that the charges weren’t fraudulent, but were created by a series of math errors. Kev was convicted and did two years in the pokie for it. Of course he claims he is a changed man, blah blah blah… wants to help people blah blah blah. But don’t worry. His legal problems continue. (I don’t know why that cheers me up.)

1996
While he was in jail, Kevin met Jules Leib. Jules (I call him Julie) was a cocaine dealer (he was also innocent ;) ). They started an illegal pyramid scheme and called the company “Nutrition for Life”. In 1996, both men were sued by 8 different states, and the Securities & Exchange Commission. Trudeau settled out of court and agreed to change the functioning of the company. Unfortunately, Kevin only knew a few kinds of shapes and pyramids were his favorite. The State of Michigan was so ticked that they banned him from doing any business in their state. (I LOVE Michigan!)

1997
Some of the stockholders of Nutrition for Life sued Kevin for misrepresenting and omitting important information about Nutrition for Life’s business. (So much for him turning over a new leaf.) Kevin’s little business was found guilty and had to pay 2 million dollars to the individuals involved in the lawsuit. He was also ordered to pay their $600,000 in legal costs.

1998
Kevin made a bunch of infomercials for “Mega Memory System,” “Addiction Breaking System,” “Action Reading,” “Eden's Secret,” “Mega Reading”… and my personal favorite, “Hair Farming” (I don’t even know what to say to that.) His Hair farming was so amazing that he said it would cure baldness for all of the human race. In a surprising let down, there is still baldness 11 years later. His addiction breaking program claimed it could eliminate addictions in 60 seconds. (I think it involved some kind of coma, but I couldn’t say for sure). Incidentally, like many crackpots, he uses a lot of terms like “quantum physics” which he knows nothing about. Most of the time the word “quantum” is involved, it is a scam. Write it down. The Federal Trade Commission sued him for false advertising; Kevin was found guilty and fined $500,000.

2003
The FTC filed a complaint against Kevin (and a bunch of his companies) stating that disease-related claims for his “Coral Calcium Supreme” and “Biotape” were false and unsubstantiated. To save some time and money, Kevin signed a stipulation that this was true, and he promised to stop making fraudulent claims about his products. I also heard that the FTC prepared a motion to stop Kevin from tucking his shirt into his underpants. I guess they never filed it though.

Summer 2004
Kevin is found in contempt of court for violating the agreement he signed the previous year, by continuing to claim “Coral Calcium” cures cancer and a host of other illnesses. To protect the public, Kevin is ordered to cease all marketing for “Coral Calcium” products.

Fall 2004
Unfortunately, Kevin couldn’t keep his mouth shut very long, and was sued by a customer for his claims related to “Coral Calcium” curing cancer, and “Biotape” curing severe pain. He settled the suit by paying $2 million, and the court banned him from making infomercials. Unfortunately, Kevin got them to make an exception for infomercials which promote books. Kevin is the MacGuyver of the criminal world, I swear.

2005
Kevin realizes that it is pretty hard to rip off innocent people when you can’t make false claims or misleading infomercials. Not only that, but check fraud is treated very seriously by this point, so he can’t go back to his roots. (How is the poor guy supposed to make a living?) Instead of getting some real skills and making an honest living, Kevin sued the FTC seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. He claimed that the rulings against him were punishment because he had been critical of the FTC, and they had therefore violated his first amendment rights. The FTC filed a motion to dismiss using really crazy legal terms that I don’t understand. The gist of it seemed to be that his lawsuit was stupid. The court agreed and dismissed the case. Kevin appealed. Kevin was denied. (Ha ha sucka!)

August 2005
Still ticked from getting spanked by the FTC and the courts, he sued the New York State Consumer Protection Board for a lot of money. The NYCPB had used television stations to warn consumers that Kevin had been making fraudulent claims regarding the book. (How do they sleep at night?) In addition, his ad gave the false impression that Tammy Faye Messner opposes chemotherapy in favor of the ‘natural cures’ in Trudeau’s book. This not true, but why should Kevin care about that? He claimed the actions of the NYCPB violated his First Amendment rights. He won a temporary restraining order while the court looked into it. Kevin also filed a motion to have the NYCPB send a letter of “correction” to TV stations, but the court denied this request. Kevin’s case of victim-hood wasn’t looking so good when it was discovered that the back cover of the book itself is fraudulent. It has a quote from Dr. Herbert Ley, a former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The problem is that he died three years before the book was written and was most likely not available for comment on the book. Kevin has since dropped all his claims for monetary damages, although he is still pursuing the case.

November 2007
Trudeau was found in contempt of a court order for making "patently false" claims about his book The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About.

August 2008
Kevin was fined more than $37 million and banned from infomercials for three years, because of continuing (how dumb is he?) to make fraudulent claims about The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About. Kevin appealed, and the court denied his appeal. Rumor has it that Kevin’s lawyer is writing a book, “Legal Strategies and other skills I learned from a Bathroom Reader”.

Natural Cures?
In his book, Trudeau claims that there are “all-natural” cures for cancer, arthritis, AIDS, acid reflux disease, obesity, multiple sclerosis, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, and ADD. Naturally he claims that the FDA and the FTC want to hide these cures from you. He seems to ignore the fact that there are companies researching this stuff ALL OVER THE WORLD in places where the FDA has no influence. Which is more likely?

1. A big organization with lots of red tape periodically makes mistakes, or
2. The thousands of employees of the FDA are in collusion to withhold effective treatments from the ill and never talk about the cures they hide even though their own family members are dying from these same diseases…

Trudeau says that natural treatments cannot be patented and are not profitable enough to justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars in testing, so they will always lack FDA approval. He forgets that sometimes selling a million really cheap drugs can be more profitable than selling thousands of expensive ones. In many cases, the FDA is not pursuing the “cures” because controlled studies have shown that some “cures” do NOTHING. For example, St John’s Wort is believed by some to be a “natural cure” for depression. However, studies done by real scientists (not by naturopaths etc) have shown it has no more effect on depression than a placebo.

When people on his program started getting sick and going to the ER, Kevin said that it only proved that he was right. (What?!) He stated that their health problems were due to withdrawals from the toxins in the medications they had previously been taking. (This is so dumb my brain hurts...)

Kevin makes all sorts of allegations about bribes, threats and other illegal actions by the FDA but provides no evidence of anything. (That’s how he rolls.) The NYCPB also found evidence that when people call Kevin’s number for information about the book, he is selling their information to telemarketers without their consent. Some individuals have also accused him of making unauthorized charges to their credit cards.

Weight Loss?

In April 2007, Trudeau released The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About.
Trudeau claims that the weight loss plan outlined in the book is easy, can be done at home, and readers can eat anything they want. He does not mention that the plan requires intense dieting, daily injections of a prescribed drug that is not easily obtainable (human chorionic gonadotropin), and lifelong dietary restrictions. It also requires switching to all organic foods, and repeated cleansings of the colon and liver. (Ugh) Other recommended activities include walking an hour a day or more and doing breathing exercises.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has already warned against this diet, as it is unsafe. In fact, the FTC has ordered clinics and promoters of the diet and hCG to cease making false claims about the effectiveness of hCG. Even though they claim it is safe, it is NOT approved by the FDA for weight loss. Clinical research trials published by the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition have shown that hCG is ineffective as a weight-loss aid.

Kevin claims that the program in his book turns off the hypothalamus gland, thereby suppressing hunger. (Does shutting off parts of the body sound good to you?) He then claims that once your appetite is suppressed, your metabolism will skyrocket, allowing you to eat meals such as prime rib, pasta, and hot fudge sundaes. This of course ignores the fact these foods are unhealthy not just because they make you fat, but because they contribute to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diverticulitis, and many other problems. But don’t worry! Kevin has his coral calcium to sell you when you get sick.

Kevin has promoted Robert Barefoot in an infomercial touting the value of coral calcium. They falsely claimed that a study on calcium showed that coral calcium had cured many cases of terminal cancer. Trudeau and Barefoot (AKA Barefoot Bobby) claim that coral calcium and alkaline water can neutralize blood acidity (which according to them causes cancer). This is not just false, but dumb.

Let’s ignore the idiocy that the ph of your body causes cancer, and discuss something less obvious. It makes no difference whether the foods you eat are acidic or alkaline – YOU WILL NEVER CHANGE THE ACIDITY of anything in your body except your urine (yeah, urine!). The hydrochloric acid in your stomach is so strong that nothing is going to change its acidity. If you were to place a drop of stomach acid on a piece of wood, it would eat right through it. Citrus fruits, vinegar, and vitamins like ascorbic acid or folic acid DO NOT change the acidity of your stomach or your bloodstream. In fact, if you took an entire bottle of calcium pills or antacids, the acidity of your stomach wouldn’t change for more than a few minutes. (Not to mention that you will have constipation so bad it would kill a rhino.)

Clearly Kevin and Barefoot Bobby don't know how the digestive system works. All foods that leave your stomach are acidic. This should be obvious. Your food has been soaking in a bag of acid. Then the food enters your intestines where pancreas releases stuff to neutralize the stomach acids. So no matter what you eat, the food in the stomach is acidic and the food in the intestines is alkaline. If you are an exception to this, then you are majorly broken and should not be taking medical advice from a convicted felon who has never been to medical school. You can’t change the acidity of any part of your body except your urine. Your bloodstream and organs control acidity within a very narrow range. Anything that really changed acidity in your body would make you very sick and might even kill you.

Let us sum up: Kevin has had NO medical training. NONE. Kevie responds that by not having such training, he is not biased. (This is so stupid I almost passed out). Here is my favorite part. Kevin sums up all of modern medicine by saying that medical doctors “are taught only how to write out prescriptions for poisons” and to “cut out pieces of a person's anatomy.” (Gaah! Must not kill person spouting idiotic vomit... Must not strangling him... Count to ten... Count to ten... Count to ten...)

Mega Memory?
This program was so fraudulent, and deceptive that an FTC crackdown shut down Kevin’s operations. He can no longer sell this product in any form. He is a criminal, he has no medical training, provides no scientific evidence for his claims, makes off-the-wall accusations about electromagnetic waves and other things he does not understand. He has been caught making up studies, and misinterpreting studies done by real scholars.

Perhaps is biggest fault is convincing people with conditions like cancer, to stop their treatments in order to skip through the fields of delusion with him and Barefoot Bobby. Kevin Trudeau's treatments are not famous because they don't work. Science has proven this. And if you want to pick a fight with science, you'd better come with some good evidence.

I could have gone on much much longer, but for your sake I tried to limit the length. Look forward to upcoming Daily Skinny articles on "Ouija Boards" and "Alien Hand's".

If you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out…

Let us discuss homeopathy. Homeopathy is the practice of diluting mostly dubious “cures” and then selling them for outrageous prices. Unlike some herbal remedies which actually have drugs in them, classical homeopathic treatments largely contain nothing, are NOT science based, and are even a little bit silly.

Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann began homeopathy in the 19^th century because he wasn’t a big fan of bloodletting, which was a popular medical practice of his day. It was thought that one had to bleed patients to force the disease to drain from the body and restore the humors. On this point anyway, Hahnemann was correct. Blood draining is not useful as a medical procedure. (Usually…) As far as I can tell, this was that last thing that Hahnemann was right about. He also did not agree with using emetics (making people vomit). Oh. And also he was afraid of whoopee cushions. (OK, I admit… I made that last part up.) Sammy Hahnemann decided that disease is cured by assisting a persons “vital force” to restore bodily harmony. (Sounds Chiropractic-y, huh?) Medical science continued to evolve and improve, but homeopathy did not. After all, if you are just making junk up, it’s hard to see many improvements.

The word Homeopathy comes from Greek, and means “similar suffering”. (He was a really up-beat guy.) Try to follow this next part: he called it homeopathy because he felt that disease must be cured by drugs that cause the same symptoms as the disease. (That makes perfect sense.) So if you have a stomach ache, you should cure it with something that causes stomach aches… the guy is a genius…. So a big problem with homeopathy (other than it is medically impotent) is that treatment is based on your symptoms, not on actually knowing how the disease works. The ironic thing is that you can’t test cures on sick people because they already have the symptoms that your medicine is supposed to cause. So the only way to find new cures is to give healthy people your cures to see of they get sick. (Huh? Does this sound crazy to anyone else?)

Homeopathy is a “medical” treatment that uses minute quantities of something that in larger doses would cause similar symptoms to what you sought treatment for. Sam decided that infinitesimally small doses of a drug could be very powerful, if you shake them. Since that sounds idiotic, he called it “succussion”. Naturally, he concluded that shaking stuff released spiritual powers in the water (or whatever). He called the process of standing around shaking stuff to make it more powerful, “dynamization”. Over time, Sammy became so impressed by his own stupidity that he actually started releasing dire warnings about the danger of “dynamizing” homeopathic remedies too much. He counseled homeopaths not to carry medicines about in their pockets lest they inadvertently make them too powerful and cause a death. Then that got a little dull, so he started telling people that they didn’t even have to take the drug! If a drug was succussed enough (read: shaken) it would be so powerful that people could simply smell it and be cured. (I smell something stinky… and it isn’t a remedy…)

Want to make your own homeopathic treatment?

1. Collect 1 drop of onion juice and put it in your bath tub
2. Dilute it into a bathtub of water, and then fill one 8 oz glass with your tub-onion drop soup.
3. Take that to your neighbor’s house, and pour your cup in their bathtub. Repeat step 2
4. Take the new 8 oz glass and to a neighbor who has a pool. Pour your 8 oz into their pool and fill it with clean (chlorine-free) water.
5. Mix it thoroughly. Then take a medicine dropper and extract one drop.
6. Put that drop in a vial and success it. (Shake it)
7. Once it has been dynamized, drink it.

Don’t taste any onion? Don’t worry. That tells you it must be very powerful. Actual homeopathic remedies are even MORE powerful. (Meaning some dude added extra water, and shook it more) If you see “Pulsatilla 6c” on a remedy, it means it contains Pulstilla which has been shaken 6 times (ooooohhh!) and is diluted to 1 part Pulstilla to ONE THOUSAND BILLION parts water. (I am not kidding.)

Supposedly this works because water has memory. The water “remembers” the homeopathic cure, and no matter how much you dilute it, the water takes on the properties of that one drop of stuff you added. Tim Minchin makes a great point about how dumb this is:

It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is infinite
It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!

(From his poem, Storm)

Not science?

At the beginning, I claimed that homeopathy is not a science based discipline. Want to know why? Well if the above reasons aren’t enough, keep reading. Here is how Hahnemann did research. Healthy people take his treatments, keep very specific diaries, and then promise to tell the truth. If they feel sick, that proves the cure works. (Seriously. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Well… I guess he did, so maybe you can also…)

He wanted to make sure they wouldn’t do anything to throw off his “research” so he forbade them from playing Chess, and other exciting games. He needed a name for his process of finding cures by making people sick… So he called it “proving”. The best part is that he said “methods of proving are highly personalised and of individual relevance to the homoeopath or experimenter.”

In other words, every homeopath (AKA "Dumb-path") preparing remedies would likely come with completely different treatments for the same person. (Now THAT is scientific!)

A major problem with Hahnemann’s research is that it entirely relies on the test subject’s ability to accurately report his symptoms. Imagine you are doing a study on knee pain. Subject A rates his pain as a 5, and Subject B rates her pain as a 5. Do they have the same amount of pain? You HAVE NO IDEA! Subjective tests that use patient reporting and not empirical testing are highly unreliable.

Of the hundreds of studies done on homeopathic remedies, most showed no value in the remedies. A few studies like one done by Jacque Benveniste claimed to prove that homeopathy works. But when other scientists saw his research, he was thoroughly discredited. There is no evidence produced under reasonable experimental conditions that homeopathy has any more effect than a placebo.

Benveniste goes so far as to claim that a homeopathic solution can be digitally recorded, and emailed to someone. (I don't even know how to make fun of that...)

So why does anyone believe this stuff?

I’m not sure. Homeopathy has been around for 200 years, and has not been able to show any conclusive research (with repeatable results, under SCIENTIFIC conditions) that homeopathy works. It nearly always consists of overpriced impotent doses of outrageously diluted substances that do little.

Don’t waste your money.

Poop Floats

Poop floats. At least that is what people tell me. I was pretty sure the movie was called "Hope Floats" but I can see how people would confuse the two. In today's Daily Skinny, we will exmine the properties of poo and determine what the ideal poop is like. We will also attempt to help you take a side on the Floaters vs Sinkers war. Sound fun? (If not, you are a fecal snob)

According to a poop expert near me (The Poo Whisperer) a persons feces will float if your body is getting all the nutrients it needs, and sink if it is not. Or if you eat a lot of BBs, it will also sink. (So I've heard.) In any case, when I first heard this I could not help but laugh out loud. It all sounded a little ridiculous. So I began googling poop (I am so glad I have an internet filter that blocks some of the visuals) and began laughing even harder. But unlike some Daily Skinny investigations, there is some truth to be found...

There is a CRAP-LOAD of debating about whether or not one's "droppings" should float or not. Some maintain that healthy feces should glide off the "poop deck" and gracefully float in your toilet like a swan on a summer lake (Floaters). Others claim that a healthy "deposit" will slam into the toilet bowl like the titanic, and never rise again (Sinkers). (PS if you ever need a laugh, picture a band playing on your poop as it sinks.) Many of the debaters are doctors, but many are not, and most are full of it. (You know what "it" I mean.) While it can get confusing, there is a slew of fecal professionals (poo-fessionals) that are available to give us the skinny. One guy, Ted Loftness who is an internist in Minnesota said, "Nothing is so underrated as a good bowl movement." (I bet he gives great gifts on Valentine's Day.)

The debate has lead to a large number of people tracking their poop qualities and starting blogs about how concerned they are about their poo. Some of them have even posted disturbing descriptions of their bowel movements for online doctors.

...an explosion of foaming bio-warfare spewed from "Mount St. Helens" and preceeded by an "earthquake" in the bowels....

Why Does Poo Float?
The obvious answer is that poo floats when it is less dense than water. But what causes this, and is it the pereferred delivery type? I saw goals on the internet... "I am shooting for 3 floaters this week."

Floaters maintain that if your crap floats then your body is getting all the nutrients it needs, and that you are getting enough fiber. (You can't keep a good poop down is their motto) Some Vegans have claimed that sinking poo is evil and is caused by contamination of the body with animal parts. Not to worry; if your poo does not float, there are all sorts of herbs, chemicals, "cleansing" products and packing peanuts that some people will sell you to force those little guys to stop sinking. Floaters are obviously against the Sinkers. They feel that crapping a rock (literally) is dangerous to the health and less righteous than their poo-duckling floating on toilet-lake. I even read one snooty commentator which said, "American poo sinks and European poo floats; it is more pure."

Sinkers claim basically, the opposite. Sinking is better for you, and we should not hang out with people who produce floaters. Poop should sink if you are getting enough fiber, because the bulk will weigh it down. One thing the Sinkers have going for them though is... They are much funnier. Listed below are some of the reasons I found on the internet for why poop floats:
1. Leaking Breast Implants
2. Negative Vibes
3. Bilderberger plots against free society
4. Mind control xrays being produced in a secret Illuminati lab
5. Microscopic radioactive nano-spiders from the Galatic Core invading the brain (This always puts me in a crappy mood.)

All of this is pretty confusing. What IS the Skinny on Poop? (What is the scoop on poop?)
Here's the deal: Stools should be like an unripe banana in size and texture (but not color). If you in fact crap a banana, you need to start chewing your food more. Some have suggested that poo should be the texture (but not flavor) of toothpaste.

FIBER
Poo is 75% water. When you eat more fiber, the fiber holds onto more water, and makes the stool less dense. If the fiber content is high enough, this can cause poo to float. That part is true enough. While some claim that you do not have enough fiber in your diet if your poop sinks, there are many doctors that disagree. So don't get all freaked out and start making Metamucil cookies.

FAT
Most crap is 1% fat. If you eat out a lot, you might get it up to 7% or so. This causes steatorrhea. It sounds nice but it means your poo comes out like cookie dough and sticks everywhere. Fat can also make your crap float because fat is less dense than water. You get enough fat in your logs, and VOILA! you have floatery.

Air
The truth is that air also make poop float. You get a little gaseous, and instead of forming a nice, comforting bubble of flatulence, it stays diffused in your crud. This makes Mr. Hankey lighter and he floats. Just a change in diet can increase the bacteria caused gasses to increase. This type of floating may be the easiest to accomplish.

Malabsorption
Unlike what some people say, floating poo can actually be a sign of malabsorption. It can mean your body isn't absorbing nutrients properly. This is not a "Gosh I wish I were more absorbent" type of problem. This is not a "I should see my naturopath" kind of problem. This is a "I might have Pancreatic Cancer, Cystic Fibrosis, Celiac Disease or Abetalipoprotenimia" type of problem. But don't panic too much - a nice GI infection can also cause "the floats". Malabsorption floaters are not like cute little duckies though. Often they are abnormally large flotillas, and leave a greasy film on the water.

BOTTOM LINE
Changes in diet, like with fats or fiber, can make a difference in your "floatability". If you are passing bricks, then yeah fiber may the answer. But don't spend your life on a quest to always be a floater... Sinkers have it right. Consistently dropping floaters can be a sign of very serious medical conditions and should be discussed with a doctor. A REAL doctor. (IE One that went to medical school.) PS As a general rule, you shouldn't trust a "doctor" who sells things over the internet...

Loftness, the dude I quoted at the beginning says, "Most stools sink; whether it floats or not doesn't seem to make any difference [in healthy people]."