If you Listen Hard Enough, you can Smell the Stupid

I've invented a pill that can keep you from getting dehydrated. All you need to do is dissolve this pill in eight ounces of water and drink the water. Eight times every day.

Can you smell the stupid?

At the end of just about any diet pill commercial, while they're extolling the great weight loss folks have experienced by taking their pill, the sales pitch looks like: "This pill, taken every day can help you lose just about all your weight when combined with diet and exercise."

Huh? Won't diet and exercise do that without the pill?

I was listening to the radio the other day when a fellow came on and alleged that women over 40 had to exercise for 1 hour every day just to maintain their weight, but he has a great shake that can help you NOT gain weight.

On the surface of it, this sounds completely idiotic to me. It suggests that if you're a woman over 40, you can either drink this stuff or exercise for one hour each day, or you will just keep gaining weight. How much weight? Does it ever end (before death)? Are you expected to be half a ton by the time that you're 75?

But wait: if you drink this stuff you won't gain weight? No, not exactly. You have to drink the stuff AND you have to live a healthy life. As in, eat right, and get some exercise.

Again, won't eating right and getting exercise do this without the drink? Isn't that what the guy said at the beginning of the commercial? So why do we need the drink?

If you read the study, it sheds a little bit of a different light on things too. There's a summary here.

60 minutes of "moderate" (walking, playing with kids, household chores...) activity is sufficient. If you can support "brisk" (running, swimming, basketball...) activity, 30 minutes is sufficient.

I kind of remember being told this when I was in seventh grade.

Thank goodness they've done a study on this. Almost as good as the studies on how much methane cows produce. And now, you can buy a shake that will do...what exactly? Nothing, assuming that you're not a complete lump of lazy sitting on your continually growing ass all day eating bon-bons and watching soaps (maybe it's good that they're gone; they are, aren't they?).

So long as you regularly get up out of your chair and do laundry, or play with children, go grocery shopping, etc...you'll do okay without the damn shake. And not for nothing, the commercial narrator told you that at the beginning of the commercial.

I don't now about you, but I smell the stupid.