Vinnie Tortorich

Maybe I shouldn’t write a blog tonight. Maybe I should take a day off. Why? Well, because I’m pissed. I’m not pissed at the world like most people get. I usually go through life taking it as it comes. I learned today that someone who owes me a lot of money simply won’t pay it back. I know we live in a world now where no one is accountable for anything. It’s always someone else’s problem. But that doesn’t stop me from being pissed. I probably should erase that and start over, but I’m not. It’s my blog. Writing it and leaving it makes me feel better. To be honest, I don’t give a rat’s ass what anyone else thinks about it. But I digress. I got a call from a friend a few weeks ago. Let’s call her Suzanne because that’s what her name is. I’ve known her for the better part of 20 years. When we first met she was a VP at Playboy in the video and television distribution department. Like most VPs, Suzanne is a smart woman. Let’s face it, you don’t get to that level by being an idiot. Though we’re not close friends, we’ve stayed in touch through the years, basically through other friends in the corporation. I’ve often said everyone I know in L.A. can be linked back to Playboy in some way. More recently, my friend Andy (the contributor who writes the recipes for this blog) moved back from England. Andy, also a one-time VP at the same company, is still close with Suzanne and her husband. For that reason, I’ve seen more of her than ever. I told you that to tell you this. Suzanne sent me a Facebook message a couple of weeks back. She told me she was going to Europe a couple of weeks. On her return, she wanted to have a conversation with me about a frightening subject – childhood obesity in America today. I couldn’t wait for my friend to return from overseas. This is a subject that both fascinates and angers me. When I left New Orleans 20 years ago, I had a lot going on. I was the fitness coordinator for a prestigious private school. It was my job to keep all of the athletes from the different sports in shape so all their coaches would have to do is coach. That worked out well. There was no shortage of state championships during my time at Newman. I’m not taking any of the credit, but I’m proud to say I was a part of the kids’ lives at the time. From swimming and gymnastics, to football, baseball and basketball, to volleyball, track and cross country, I was involved in it all. I had a bi-weekly radio show on WSMB called Talking Fitness. I constantly addressed what I saw as an up-and-coming epidemic. I didn’t call it childhood obesity, I called it back then a bunch of fat kids. I also had private clients. I already had overweight kids on my schedule. I moved to L.A. with one main idea in my back pocket. In short, it was to bring media attention to what I thought was a new epidemic – overweight kids. I took meetings at several big TV studios, owned by the likes of Disney, Nickelodeon (young at the time) and all of the Big Three networks. They all listened intently to my ideas. But all came away with the same feeling. When I would show a proposal for a Saturday morning show telling kids to get out and do things, they would laugh me out the building. They didn’t want kids out doing things, they wanted them in front of the television. When I said kids had to be taught to have better diets, again, once the laughing stopped, they replied that they’d never put a show on telling them not to eat lots of sugar. How would they sell their sugary products on commercials? Sure, we have no shortage of people, places and things to point fingers at for causing childhood obesity. I realize that P.E. programs have all been cut out of schools. I understand the latch-key kid problem. They end up eating anything and everything. I guess I’m just showing one other place where the finger should be pointed. By the way, both of these networks now pay lip service to the very thing they laughed at 20 years ago. Sorry I’m so angry tonight, but hey, I’m usually angry. I guess that’s why so many people read my blog…I think.

There once was a doctor in the 1800s who ran a famous test. It became known as Pavlov’s dog test. In case you’ve never heard of it, I’ll give you a brief description of it. Pavlov would ring a bell right before he would feed the dogs. After repeating this several times, he would ring the bell but not give the food. The dogs would salivate anyway. As humans we like to think we are more advanced than dogs. Sure, we have the thumbs and everything, but it kind of stops there. If anyone wants to write in and explain cognition to me, don’t bother, this is not what this blog is about. We as humans become Pavlov’s dogs on a daily basis. If you think you are immune to it, think again. The crackling of bacon frying in a pan can and will cause instant hunger pangs. The smell of cinnamon can instantly remind us of holiday food. Even if we’re not hungry, walking into a house full of cinnamon can make our stomach feel empty. Ever notice the candy at the store checkout? You think that’s an accident? The folks at Hershey’s and Mars pay top dollar for the counter space around checkout aisles. In some cases, they pay even more than the shelves inside the store. Believe me, that’s no accident. You ever notice most fast food restaurants have yellow in their signs? Studies have shown the color yellow makes you hungry. The mere sight of it from the freeway is enough to make us pull over and get a Whopper or Big Mac. The fast food companies are more brilliant than that. As a kid we used to chant “Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.” The actress who uttered “Where’s the beef?” in the commercial was actually dead before we started repeating the phrase. I could go on and on with this. There’s no end to what food does to most of our senses, whether we hear it, see it, smell it, or touch it. We have the uncontrollable urge to want it and need it. I told you that to tell you this. I ran into a friend of Serena’s a couple of weeks back named Patty. She’s a successful real estate agent in the Calabasas area. Patty had mentioned to me she’s a reader of the blog and that she had a perplexing situation. She noted she wasn’t particularly concerned about it. She just didn’t understand why she did it. Patty is a thin woman who is in great shape. She told me one of her favorite shows is Biggest Loser. She never misses an episode. If she’s busy, she records it on Tivo. Everytime she watches the show, she gets the urge to eat junk food. And not just a little junk food, a lot of it. Anything she can get her hands on. Once the show is over, the binge stops. Curious, I asked a few questions. Have you binged your entire life? She said no, it was completely new to her. I asked if she had ever been heavy. Again, the answer was no. I told her Biggest Loser is a seasonal show with no more than 18-20 episodes. Since there are 365 days a years, eating badly for less than 5 percent of the time. One of my favorite Vinnie-isms has always been, “What you eat between Christmas and New Years doesn’t make you fat, it’s what you eat between New Years and Christmas.”

Every now and then we like to feature a comment from our loyal readers. Here’s one from my friend David Holt.

– Vinnie

You’re not only the guy who came up with the idea of half-priced yogurt but also the guy who’s made the point more than once that the bicycle doesn’t matter as much as some people may think. If Colnago let you ride one of their $10K bikes for the week, the “paint job” spell may be broken and you’ll realize that that $1000 Beater on ebay may ride almost as well. Not good for Colnago.

On the other hand, I don’t underestimate the power of beauty and elegance for its own sake. So what–you’re not that much faster or comfortable on the Colnago than the Beater–but you own something that was done well and has a grace of its own. Terry Lentz at the 508 this year rode a classic bike to the overall win demonstrating from one perspective that the bike itself is not all that important. But Terry made that bike himself. It was beautiful and elegant. He obviously spent lots of hours, money, and tender- loving-care building it. It was, in that respect, very much about the bike.

“I can think of nothing better than riding a fine horse into a new country.” Gus McCrae/Larry McMurty “Lonesome Dove”

By the way, it just occurred to me that the word “Sophia” means wise or wisdom–which perhaps explains why I’ve always respected SL for her mind as much as her other assets. (Surprisingly, Serena means…serene. I just looked it up.)

mc

“No sugar tonight in my coffee. No sugar tonight in my tea.” – Guess Who

I wasn’t like most 5 year olds growing up. I used to wake up at 3 a.m., not because I was scared and had to go sleep with my mommy and daddy, or had to go to the bathroom or anything. That was my daily routine. That’s when I woke up. Why was a 5 year old up at this time? I gotta tell you, it was 1967, and anyone old enough can tell you that television would kick off at around midnight. It wasn’t because I wanted to play video games. Those weren’t really invented yet. No, I didn’t have any kind of sleep apnea. I woke up so I could hang with the greatest man on the planet, my grandfather. My parents’ house and my grandparents’ house seemed like inches away. Once I woke up, I walked across the yard. My grandfather was wide awake making grits and eggs and enjoying his first cup of coffee of the day. As I walked in, he would never even say good morning, he would give me a knowing smile and pour me a cup of French roast coffee with mostly milk. I would eat breakfast with him. Sometimes he would tell me stories about when he was a kid. Often we would play a south Louisiana card game called Bourre. He would leave for work at 5 a.m. I would walk back home, get into bed and sleep for another two hours until it was time to wake up and go to kindergarten. Two things happened back then. I learned that waking up before the sun was a virtue. I also learned that coffee was the best beverage on the planet. I often said that if a doctor told me I had to stop drinking coffee I would kill myself. That’s not really true. The real answer is, I would keep drinking coffee until it killed me. I told you that to tell you this. You always hear negative things about coffee. Sometimes I’ll offer to buy someone a cup and they’ll say that they’re trying to cut back. Doctors will tell you to cut back on coffee. There’s always negatives around what I consider to be one of the world’s most perfect beverages. In reality, coffee is good for you and beats the competition. Case in point, coffee against any soda on the market…coffee is the clear winner. Coffee versus alcoholic beverages…coffee comes out way ahead. Obviously when you pick coffee over those products, of course it will look good. You know what? Coffee is even better than that. Coffee is an ergogenic aid. What do I mean by this? Coffee can and will enhance athletic performance, in both speed and long distance events. In simple terms, in long distance events, caffeine will allow your body to utilize fat for energy and store glycogen. As most ultra athletes and triathletes will tell you, this is a definite advantage late in a race. There’s no shortage to the benefits of coffee, including in most studies, lowering the risk of diabetes. Keep in mind though that too much of a good thing is bad. Studies have shown that more than 700 mg of caffeine can have an adverse effect during exercise or competition. As a rule of thumb, two cups of coffee is all you need.

” I believe in miracles. Where you from you sexy thing?” – Hot Chocolate

I remember as a young kid my dad came home from work one day perplexed as to what happened on the job that day. At the time, he was a principal at a public school in southern Louisiana. One of the kids got hurt on the school grounds. The kid was bleeding badly and needed immediate medical attention. My dad called an ambulance to the school and rode to the emergency room. By that time, the kids parents were there. They tried to yank the kid out of the ambulance and take him home. The parents’ religious views didn’t allow the kid to receive medical help. If I remember right they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. They don’t believe in doctors. Before you think that’s crazy, think again. It seems that half the world believes that a Jewish guy walked on water. They also think that same Jewish guy hung around with that hot piece of ass Mary Magdalene, known to be a whore and never doing her. I don’t believe it. I might believe the walking on water story. But not doing a hot whore? Not even the son of God. But I digress. I told you that to tell you this. My nephew, you know the one who had the ball problem a week ago in this blog, was watching some kind of documentary. Like most, they pretended to make it fair, but it was more like a Michael Moore piece, where it was one sided. Come to think of it, documentaries have to be one sided or else it’ll be boring. Before I lose you as a reader, and God knows I don’t want to do that. This documentary pushes that everyone is vitamin deficient. Really folks? Are we deficient in anything as a society? When you think about it, we didn’t even discover vitamins until the turn of the last century. To be more precise, about 105 years ago. Now all of a sudden, people say we need vitamins on top of vitamins. Don’t get me wrong, I think vitamins are a great idea as a supplement to natural food. The idea here is, if you’re missing a vitamin or two from food on any given day, you’re covered. The rest of them help us create the most expensive urine in the world. Do we absolutely need to take a vitamin pill on a daily basis? No. Do we need high quantities of Vitamin C, over and above what you might get in a multivitamin on a daily basis. Probably not. Are vitamins a good idea on a daily basis to cover what we might not be getting? Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I’ll include here a link that will send you to a company where you can buy a high-quality vitamin here: Ultra Supreme Vemma.

“You are my candy girl, and you got me wanting you.” – The Archies

I grew up in Louisiana. The state’s biggest cash crop was sugar cane. I won’t lie to you, I’m addicted to sugar like everyone else. I’d have to say it’s my biggest vice. We all seem to know that sugar is bad for us. If you ask most people, they’d say the reason is because it will rot your teeth and cause you to gain weight. These two reasons should be enough to make anyone stay away from excess sugar. But we don’t. Why? Like any other drug or alcohol, it makes us high. It increases dopamine and serotonin in your brain. That makes us feel good. Listed below are nine reasons why sugar is bad for you. By far, these are not the only reasons. There are literally hundreds. We will revisit this subject once a week for a while. The hope is that by writing it, I will curtail my own sugar use. By you reading it, you will be armed with the knowledge to do the same. I told you that to tell you this.

9 reasons why sugar is bad for you

1. Sugar causes hyperactivity, anxiety and crankiness in children. The last thing we need is hyperactive kids.

2. Sugar can raise triglycerides. High levels of triglycerides have been linked to poor health and weight gain.

3. Sugar can reduce the body’s defenses against bacterial infection. I can’t remember when or how I learned this, but if we have too much sugar in our system when we have the common cold, all the vitamin C in the world won’t help.

4. Sugar can cause the body to lose tissue elasticity and function. As we get older we automatically lose muscle tissue and elasticity. By eating sugar, we put the system into overdrive.

5. Sugar can lead to cancer of the ovaries. This should be reason enough not to overeat sugar. I remember when I went through my own battle with cancer. One of the common themes was cancer feeds on sugar.

6. Sugar interferes with the body’s absorption of calcium and magnesium. We need both to build bones. Our bodies lose both minerals through sweat. If you exercise heavily, sugar is not your friend.

7. Sugar can cause hypoglycemia. When you raise your glycemic index, your body releases certain hormones. Those hormones can and will make you fat.

8. Sugar can produce an acidic digestive tract. Put simply, this can cause pain.

9. Sugar can contribute to premature aging. Need I say more?