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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Owlbread]

I lost a fair amount of weight (about 4 stone) by cutting out lunch. I don't eat lunch now apart from special days like Christmas or something, instead I just drink green juice flavoured with a small amount of smoothie. I also cut out bread apart from breakfast.

[Bauglir]

I just skip bread. Use pasta instead, although this will necessitate carrying bowls with you for at-work lunches, which is a pain. Also avoid honey if you want to avoid fructose, that's mostly what's in it, although I just love the flavor too much to leave it out of my tea.

Pictured above: Politics? I guess?

[Owlbread]

This is political in that we are discussing potential diet plans for Chris Christie, something that may become quite important during his campaign for President. It will certainly spark debate about obesity and health in American politics and perhaps the USA as a whole.

[Bauglir]

Looks to me like you're discussing your diet plans

[Owlbread]

Looks to me like you're discussing your diet plans

I was merely showing my own diet plan as an example of something that may be successful for the big fellow. I wish him the best of luck in any case.

[wierd]

Trust me, the issue with our bread is *VERY* political.

The corn growers association has *POWERFUL* lobbyists, that work together with the sugar growers in this country to prevent imported sugar from displacing domestic sugar.

Coupled with some federal dietary mandates in the 70s and 80s, intended to combat heart disease by removing added fats from processed foods, procssed food makers looked for a cheap, inexpensive and abundant alternative to keep their products from tasting like cardboard.

You guessed it-- they found HFCS.

HFCS is now literally in every fucking thing, including "whole wheat bread". I need to go shopping tonight, so if you want, I can cameraphone the ingredients list on the backs of bread wrappers if you like.

The obesity epidemic in the US is strongly tied to this change in our diets. You can chart the change over time using information from vital statistics.

It's abhorrent.

As for me, quite literally, *I DO NOT HAVE TIME* to make bread. Look into the average amount of work vs recreation time of your typical america worker vs a european counterpart.

It will open your eyes.

[Owlbread]

Do you have a bread maker, wierd? You know, one of the machines?

[wierd]

No, I don't. My tiny kitchen does not have room for one. (I don't eve have room for dishes, really.)

[Owlbread]

Well I've used breadmakers that are quite small, about twice the size of a toaster, about half the size of a decent sized microwave but taller. But if you could make room for one of those you would find making bread much, much easier. I would never attempt to actually bake my own bread in the oven and everything on a regular basis, I'd use a machine like the 21st century techno-invalid that I am.

[XXSockXX]

As for me, quite literally, *I DO NOT HAVE TIME* to make bread. Look into the average amount of work vs recreation time of your typical america worker vs a european counterpart.

It's not like we have that time either. The few people I know who have tried to bake bread have done so just for fun.
It is a lot easier to get all sorts of quality bread in Europe though. There is packaged processed bread too, but in all european countries I've been to there are plenty of small bakerys or medium sized bakery chains where you can buy fresh bread relatively cheap.

[Sheb]

One of the things that really shocked me when I went to the US for an internship was the poor quality of the bread there. Ok, I was in Montana and far from any real city, so this was probably a factor, but jeez. All the breads had ingredients lists like little novels, full of stuff I'd expect to see in my chemistry labs rather that in food. All the bread also came in plastic bags, was sweet and quite flavorless, and more than anything it was soft. No crust. Felt like cake.

I think it's telling that when my boss decided to get me a treat, he actually brought me fresh baguette from Bozeman.


(And over here, any supermarket will have a range of freshly baked (or re-baked, there has been a small controversy about so called "polish breads" recently breads in a range of colors from white to black, from soft to hard and without a single drop of HFCS in sight.

[XXSockXX]

Yeah, american bread is weird. It's basically what we refer to as toast bread and use for, well, toast exclusively. I mostly eat dark bread (for no other reason than being used to it), that's really hard to get there and then it's expensive and treated like some sort of exotic delicacy.

[wierd]

Last I checked, you guys had 4x the average elective vacation time that we did.

I get TWO WEEKS of elective vacation time per year. That's it. (And that's after working here for almost 8 years, and getting the extended vacation option!)

There's a reason we are all depressed and or paranoid cranks packing on the pounds. we come home exhausted, can't take a vacation of any sensible quality when we need to, and end up vegitating our brains on our couches to cope. The sedentary lifestyle that encourages, coupled with an endochrine disrupting diet, and abundant job and homelife stress certainly takes its toll.

But you know, americans taking vacations-- that's not how big companies make big big profit! Think of the economic losses! OMG!

(/sickened)

[Bauglir]

Yes, talking about the corn lobby is political but that's not what we were doing. Talking about possible policy changes to adjust the trend of growing obesity is political but that's not what we were doing. Talking about the quality of bread from country to country is potentially just barely political but I don't think we're going in a direction for that topic that really qualifies.

I could start trying to convert people to agnosticism, but the existence of the First Amendment making religion potentially relevant to American politics doesn't mean that I'd be automatically on-topic.

[Sheb]

Not four time. The number of elective vacation time in the EU range from 20 to 28* days, so 4 to 4,5 weeks. Those are mandatory minimum though, some companies can offer more.

28 days is the UK, but apparently a employer can count 8 legal days off in the total of 28 for some reasons I don't really understand.