Get a Life by Loretta LaRoche

I am always amazed at how often a study comes out that discovers the obvious. The latest, greatest finding is about popcorn. It seems that the researchers discovered that movie popcorn has many more calories than previously thought, even without the butter.

This is another big DUH!

I often buy popcorn and have it as a snack. The kind I buy is low in calories and has no butter in it. I have discovered that I can add spices to it and it becomes a yummy treat.

Does that mean I don’t occasionally have the movie version? Of course not. But I have never deluded myself into believing that just because I don’t have them squirt butter on it that it is better for me. It tastes too good not to have something in it that puts it over the top calorie wise even without the butter.

These revelations that constantly come out daily about something we’re eating, drinking, wearing, or doing should be put into a publication called “The Dictionary of DUHS”.

Have we all become so hypnotized by marketers that all forms of common sense have been abandoned? A couple of weeks ago the FDA told the makers of Cocoa Crispies to remove a statement that alluded to the fact that they could improve a child’s immunity. What group of collective nitwits came up with this ridiculous conclusion?

Some other DUHS I’ve been floored by are: wearing a seat belt could save your life, exercise increases energy and helps you maintain or lose weight, being with people who love you and whom you love may help you live longer, laughter helps relieve stress, too much anger is bad for your heart, and on and on.

None of these statements are rocket science, yet they continue to be studied and reported at the cost of millions of tax dollars.

What frightens me is that we seem to have lost our abilities to think for ourselves. If it looks like a duck, and acts like a duck…Guess what? It’s a duck!

When you eat a bag of French fries, a big burger with cheese and a vat of cola day in and day out and spend most of your time melding into your couch; do you really need to read a scientific report that says most of what you ate might advance your journey to the great “dirt nap”?

How about going from DUH to HUH? Maybe if we all started railing against all this stupidity there might be less of it….DUH!

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.