Soda Pop - The Perfect Disease Sandwich

It's 3 p.m., and your belly is rumbling. You'd like a nice burger with your soda, but it's not available. No Cheetos, no Fritos, no Dr. Peppers, no Doritos, no pretzels, no crackers, no cookies, no chips, no pretzels, no chips, no Oreos, no donuts, no Oreos, no donuts, no Oreos.

Your drink of choice is a health drink and you're exercising, so no worries. Maybe a few chocolate cookies would do the trick. Or a couple of Oreos with a handful of cashews. Or a big glass of Cola.

You try to go shopping, buy some pretzels, and cheating will get you in trouble. The market is mercy, and maximum incentive to cheat. You walk out of the store with a few Oreos and a couple of cashews and wonder why you're fat.

At six, you skip breakfast. You've been told not to do it by your trainer, and you walk the eight-block mile route to work anyway. On the way home, you pass the fast-food restaurant and buy the Cheesecake Factory meal for two. It's not as if you even know what you're eating. You go home on the proudly pedaled bike, full of Cheesecake Factory and medium fries and1980s Mac T. Cheese.

At eight, you crash, and your headache and nausea are starting to subside. You grab the pretzels and cookies and try to tell yourself that this wasn't a wise choice. You might even feel slightly guilty, thinking that if only you hadn't gone to the gym, you might have made different decisions. But you finish the pretzels and cookie and find yourself once again in the haven of your armful of pretzels and cookie litter.

At two, you're still trying to make it through the morning without food. You stop at the post office and grab a candy bar from a package. Five minutes later, you feel drugged up, and everything you touch feels like steel. You open the package to find a working candy bar, although the pretzels and cookies in the box are not working. You try to eat them, but they are cold and numb. After eating them, you feel Asokus-like and can't think or walk properly.

Your life is pleasifying until five when the rain begins. You begin to mud pit your bike, but it won't work. Finally, you drain your poncho, put your bike and inner tube in, and climb into bed. The dream of riding a bike through the night is gone. You only stop by the phone to call your wife, because every time you try to talk to her, you only get feytuingly and dangerously winded.

You try to reason with yourself. You could have ordered that pizza, or you could have eaten that candy bar. Instead of relying on external sources for your energy, you depend on yourself. But what choice was made? You try to figure it out. Usually the right one, but it doesn't happen right away.

In reality, you did what couldn't happen. Instead of following your plan, you compounded the problem. You knew how much you wanted to eat, or what you'd have done, but you wanted to do it anyway. What can you do to stop undoing your good intentions?

Numerous studies show that what we choose to eat, how much we eat, and how healthy we are all impact our overall health. One of the largest factors in determining our level of health is nutrition, so let's talk about what nutrition can do for us.

Bring on the veggies, thank you very much. As a country, the typical teenage girl consumes fewer than 2 servings of vegetables a week. For an adult woman, it's less than one serving per day. Last year that number was 9 servings a day. Among girls, 8 ½ servings were consumed, compared to 9 servings for boys.

Consuming more vegetables and fruits can impact our overall health, though the benefits are strongest when we cut down on the sugar and salt our food contains. One 2001 study published in JAMA showed that dietary salt intake and sugar intake enriched with added sugars and fats are associated with an increased risk for hypertension, heart disease, stomach cancer, and diverticulosis.

So no matter whether you're at the extreme end of the spectrum or you're in the middle, the first step is to make the best choices for your own health. Even the best of us can only take so much "cway." Please forward this information to your friends and family.