news you can use

i realized the other day while driving home from work that not everybody knows what i know. and i just took it for granted that they did. for example: last week my boss took me to one of his vistage meetings to hear a speaker talk about nutrition. vistage is a membership for ceo's who want to better themselves, better their business, etc. anyways, i tried to keep my eye rolling to a minimum because the whole thing was lame. well, lame to me. so the guy blabs on about eating the right proportions and talks about fiber and protein and yada yada yada - like who hasn't heard all of this before? he seriously expected these people to pack a small cooler with protein and veggies everyday and take it everywhere so that you can eat 6 times a day. he's also a bodybuilder. that right there made me tune him out. he is not your average person and therefore knows not what he demands. anyways, he had this HUGE secret to share. he said it would be LIFE CHANGING and that it was actually illegal for him to tell us this. now, this perked me right up cause it sounded fantastic. i was anxiously waiting for him to reveal the mystery of a good looking body. finally, he picks up a small bottle and with a huge grin, pronounces that he has found the ultimate solution. stevia. stevia. i accidentally laughed out loud and then had to play it off. he passed it around so everyone could have a taste and there was much ooohing and aaahing. i was quite disappointed. stevia was his ace in the hole? who the hell doesn't know about stevia? hello? why is it illegal for him to tell us about it? because the sugar industry has literally outlawed the promotion of stevia as a sugar substitue. crazy, huh? anyways, i left the meeting early cause there was nothing else this guy could have said that i didn't already know. i know i sound extremely pompous. but come on, who doesn't know about stevia? in this day and age, there is information everywhere! tips, articles, books, blogs, forums, etc etc. how can any person on any kind of diet/nutrition kick not know about using stevia and eating lots of soluable and insoluable fiber and eating protein only the size of your palm? duh!!

then it occured to me that maybe I'm the one who doesn't realize something. maybe i'm just a freak of nature, that i obsessively research stuff and squirrel away information like a packrat? yes, you only have to look at the files on my computer and the number of bookmarks i have to know this. i have over 3,000 bookmarks. and i don't normally bookmark a single page or article unless it's really good. i bookmark entire websites chock full of information both common knowledge and obscure. i know shit that i have no reason to know. and then an epiphany: would i be doing a good deed by sharing any of this info? i mean, half the blogs on the web are tutorials or how-to videos, lists & tips. i don't want to be regurgitating anything already online - but then maybe the people who read my blog don't know about those websites? maybe they don't have the time or inclination to root through all the crap to find the good stuff?

can ya tell i'm bored at work today?

back to stevia. if you don't know what it is, it's a plant. it is a natural sweetener - which means no weird chemicals, no calorie overload, no insulin rush. it's like 400,000 times sweeter than sugar or something like that. you only need a 1/4 teaspoon of the diltuted stuff to equal a whole tablespoon of sugar. use it for sweetening everything, you can find it with the herbal supplements (it's illegal to promote it as sugar, so it won't be in that section of the store). there's a comapny called sweet leaf that makes a product and you can also find it at trader joe's.

so this morning in my daily perusal of google reader, i come across this very handy article called 20 things you can use twice before throwing away. isn't that handy? check it out.