Lazy, Hazy, and Crazy

The lyrics of the popular 1963 song by Nat King Cole say that it’s time to “roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer”.

“Lazy” alright.  You’d think that being able to get outdoors would automatically mean more exercise but, unfortunately, lying on the beach, lounging on the back porch, and chilling in the basement don’t seem to burn many calories.

According to the song, we should be breaking out the “soda and pretzels and beer”.  For my family it would be more like burgers and ice-cream treats and tall glasses of lemonade, but they still don’t seem to keep the bathroom scales in balance.

I have more luck keeping off the pounds during the winter when I don’t need to think twice about turning on the oven to cook up a healthy, organic roast beef dinner, and when ice-cream is used as a garnish on homemade apple crisp or peach cobbler.

The good news is: my last year’s swimsuit is too big for me this summer.  The bad news is: I get to go shopping again for a cute and modest swimsuit – one that isn’t cut down to my navel or up to my waist and doesn’t float over my head when I jump into the water.  Ah, swimsuit shopping.  It definitely makes for a “crazy” day.

I’m not sure about the “hazy” part, but if I don’t eat those fresh garden veggies and ripe summer fruit, I may need to be “rolled out” by the end of the summer.

The Corn Invasion

Don’t worry about aliens or foreigners.  The real invaders are already here.  Corn products.  They’re everywhere!  Hiding, maybe even hurting.

I didn’t realize this until a few months ago when I ate two yummy cobs of corn.  Almost immediately the roof of my mouth felt bumpy and my tongue hurt.  After an hour or two it went away, but it left me wondering if I was allergic to corn.  Sure enough, a consultation with a Naturopath revealed that I was highly intolerant to corn (as well as a few other things).

It was easy to avoid corn on the cob, cornflakes, and cornbread, but when I started paying closer attention to the ingredients in packaged items, I realized it was a lot harder than that.  Corn is in everything!  Well, not quite everything, but a lot.

There’s corn flour, corn starch, modified corn starch, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, and dextrose (which is sugar usually made from corn) to name a few.  It’s in canned soup, taco seasoning, and breakfast cereal (including oat and rice varieties).  I even checked the ingredients on a bag of sticky rice the other day:  rice, corn syrup.  I couldn’t believe it!

When we use too much of something (even good things) we can develop intolerances to it.  I wonder if we’re headed that way with corn products.

Lots of people are out to make the big bucks.  This often means sacrificing quality for quantity.  Why not use cheap fillers, like corn, especially when they can be passed off as natural foods? 

It’s one more reason to try harder to do what we should be doing anyway:  eating a variety of foods as close to their natural state as possible.  Good for the waistline, good for the wallet.