Friday is Buy Nothing Day

The day after Thanksgiving is lovingly referred to as Black Friday. I know I have fond memories of spending turkey day at my sister and brother-in-laws browsing the paper ad flyers, with my sister and aunt hunting down the best bargains and making a game plan for which stores to hit in which order. They had kids to buy Christmas presents for, and I had none.

Now I do have a kid, but I refuse to inherit the madness that plagues a large majority of my family. Shopping and over consumption.

Not only do we have a tendency to over consume food, but we also have the same with tendency when it comes to bargains.

This Friday, we are staying at home, and I’m making a game plan to spend the day with my daughter and husband. We will not be hitting the stores. That includes shopping for food too.

I do however have plans to hit the road. I’ll be walking and working off some of the goodies I consumed on Thanksgiving.

For the holidays, my husband and I will not be buying gifts for one another, and I think my younger sister and I agreed not to purchase as well. I already have a few little things for my daughter, but we plan to spend Christmas morning enjoying one another’s company and food, instead of gifts we don’t need or use. I hope to teach her the lesson that spending time with family is more important than presents.

Check out the Buy Nothing Day campaign at Adbusters, and see how you can join the 24 hour moratorium on consumer spending. I especially like the credit card cut up, although they warn that carrying scissors in public could get you arrested as a “terrorist”. Or watch the North American Piggy ad on YouTube.

Next step for me, Buy Nothing Christmas.

Happy non-shopping holidays!

Culture Jam book review

Culture Jam

I started this book, Culture Jam How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge – And Why We Must, towards the end of grad school, and just picked it up again and finished it this past week. I’ve wanted to read it for a few years now, and finally got around to it. It’s authored by the founder of Adbusters Magazine, Kalle Lasn.

A few points I found particularly interesting and relevant to food, fat and consumerism. In the chapter, The End of the American Dream, Lasn writes about postwar America and says “People gobbled takeout and started getting fat.” He concludes the chapter with a story of Elvis getting fat, and his death “Elvis devoured pills and fried-banana-and-peanut-butter sandwiches, suppressing the pain of being Elvis and seemingly trying to lose himself inside his own expanding girth.”

He likens the Elvis story to the old American Dream. “Our bodies, minds, families, communities, the environment – all are consumed.”

He also writes in the chapter Demarketing Loops about uncooling fast food, and uncooling the fashion industry. The book was published in 1999, and I had forgotten some of the advertising campaigns he mentions, but reading about them brought back memories.  He writes about the 1995 Calvin Klein campaign where young models were filmed in basements and were so offensive they were investigated by the U.S. Justice department.

Interspersed with the text are samples of his spoof ads and un-commercials including the Obsession Fetish 30 second TV spot.

I loved this paragraph,

“The first stage of demarketing our bodies involves realizing the true source of our self-esteem problems. It’s important to understand that we ourselves are not to blame. Body-image distortions, eating disorders, dieting and exercise addictions….They’re are responsibility, but they are not our fault. The issue is primarily a cultural and corporate one, and that’s the level on which it must be tackled. We must learn to direct our anger, not inwardly at ourselves, but outwardly at the beauty industry.”

The book is a little dated, but still very relevant. A lot has changed in 8 years, but we are still facing the environmental crisis that we were back then, including the assaults on our minds, bodies and the environment by corporate America. 

Shut down your computer, turn off your TV; pick up this book and read.

Eat yogurt and help the Earth too

I tried organic yogurt recently, primarily because it was on sale. I really only buy whichever yogurt is on sale for the week because I’m cheap, and hate paying more than $.60 for a small cup. One day while in Whole Foods I saw their Horizons organic yogurt was on sale for half price, two for $.99! I bought a few. The points values were a little higher than I like for yogurt, about 3-4 per cup, but whatever, they were on sale.

Then one day while shopping at Giant Food, I found Stonyfield Farms “All Natural” fat free yogurt on sale for $.50 per cup too. I bought a few cups for my refrigerator at work, but then noticed the lids, and the promotion they have going on. You can save the lids, clean them, send them to Stonyfield, and they will donate $100,000 to 3 organizations. It’s called “Bid With Your Lid” and I saw one of my favorite non-profits, The Center for a New American Dream on the lids!

You can vote online for your favorite non-profit and you will also get a coupon for a free yogurt too! I love coupons too (‘cause I’m cheap).

Anyway, I went back to Giant and bought around 20 yogurts to save and mail in to get a gift.

Unfortunately, I tried to use my coupon back at Giant Food, only to learn that they DO NOT accept online coupons anymore!

Due to an increased number of fraudulent Internet coupons in the market place, Giant no longer accepts Internet coupons for free items. At this time we are still accepting Internet coupons for cents off. This change has only occurred recently. We realize that many customers receive these coupons over the Internet and believe they are legitimate. Unfortunately, in many instances they are not. Also, the manufacturers have told us that they won’t reimburse retailers for them if we do accept them. Here is a link to a website that explains this in more detail. http://www.cents-off.com.

I thought about a boycott of Giant due to this fact, but yet I shop there when they have my favorite stuff on sale, so nevermind.

My favorites are the Lotsa Lemon for 2 points and the Strawberry Raspberry for 2 points. I found the Chocolate Underground to be less than desirable taste wise and 3 points.

I’m still a few lids short of my 30 lids to the organic cotton tote bag, so let me know where they may be on sale before October.

Mindless Eating book review

I just finished the book Mindless Eating and really enjoyed it. I’ve been an avid reader for years now, and some of the studies he mentioned in his book, I remember reading about them in the news. My favorite one was about the stale popcorn in the movie theater. If given a larger portion size, you will eat more, even if the popcorn is 5 days old and stale.

Another thing I found interesting is how men and women rate and think of comfort foods differently. Men prefer foods such as pizza, pasta and soup over cakes and cookies because it made them feel spoiled and taken care of. Women on the other hand like the snack like foods of candy, cookies and ice cream which are hassle, preparation and virtually cleanup free. Other hot meal foods remind us of all the work we have to do to produce them.

He also writes about fast food places, nutrition labels, portion sizes and marketing. Fries win over side salads about 30 to 1 a manager at Burger King tells him, and fast food would make healthier options available if there were a market demand and money to be made for them.

I do know that since I started doing Weight Watchers back in 2003, I almost always order a kids meal instead of a regular combo at a fast food joint. Now that I have a child, I don’t look so silly doing this anymore either.

Most of the things he mentioned I kind of already knew, but it was nice to see the science behind the “dieting do’s and don’ts”. At the end of the book he even has a suggested diet plan, and reviews popular diets including WW.

The most important thing I took away from it was that you really need to think about what you are eating before you eat it. That’s why I like writing everything down. It was a hard habit to get back into, but I’m glad I did. Even if I don’t measure everything like I’m supposed to, at least I write it down.

He also wrote about starting a program and sticking to it for a month leads to a habit. I think my exercise routine has been going on for over a month now. I still am not fond of exercise overall, but I do enjoy my classes and it’s become a habit. My Tuesday-Thursday ones are the moderate workouts, but on the weekends I’m doing the hard core one, and last week I did two. I think they made a big difference. I hurt for a few days, but feel better overall during the week. These are mostly cardio classes though with a little strength, but I feel I still need to make an appointment with a personal trainer to learn the weights. I’m just not sure how I’ll fit my cardio and weight workouts into one week.

Check out the book, or the website which has a lot of great information on it too.

Eat Better America Reminder Ring

I received this in the mail this week. I had registered a few weeks ago at eatbetteramerica.com after seeing the URL on a box of Fiber One cereal that I eat with my yogurt. I love marketing and thought this was very cleaver!

When I signed up they mentioned something about sending coupons and such, but this was a surprise, a Reminder Ring, made of the same plastic/rubber that all those support bracelets are made of. It gives instructions about how to wear including, “Say some vows, place on ring finger. Glance at ring for support when near fried foods.” Ingenious.

They also list other items not to forget my favorite of which are don’t forget:

1. that elevators are optional.
2. that health club memberships are more valuable than clean plate memberships.
3. that size doesn’t matter, unless you’re talking about portions.

However, I disagree with this one which says, “that it’s humanly possible to only eat one piece of pizza.”

Their site is pretty nifty too with recipes and advice from experts. Personally I won’t wear the ring, but I will hang it up in my cubicle at work for those high stress moments when I want to run for the vending machine.