It’s Valentine’s Day, so enjoy your VD. Mine started with a phone call that supposedly came from my insurance company. I’ll have to look into that later, but the person, who did know the name of my insurance company, my address and my birthdate, then started asking me questions like “Do you attend a Medical Day Care?” among other things. When I pressed about the reasons for these questions, she claimed that she’s setting me up for a case manager, which is apparently a benefit of my insurance. BTW, I’m on state Medicaid, but because I’m disabled, it’s better than what would normally be afforded to me.
When I asked why I have not been made aware of this by mail, she claimed they don’t notify clients about this by mail. I told her I wasn’t comfortable answering the questions, because, well, I don’t KNOW that she’s from my insurance company! To be honest, her accent was kind of heavy and I basically had to guess she was even SAYING “insurance company”. So, to prove that she’s REALLY from my insurance company, she offers me a callback number.
I just shook my head and told her to give me the number and promised to call right back. At some point today, I’ll call the number that I HAVE for Americhoice, TYVM. It may not be weight-loss related, but watch your back guys. Maybe she was who she said she was, but I don’t think so. Anyone can come up with your address and birthday, even your insurance company. They call pull all that out of your trash!
ANYWAY….
Some of you may know how I feel about nutrition labels. On one hand, if you’re going to eat it, you really should know what’s in it, especially the “important stuff” – your fats, calories, carbs, sugars, protein, sugars, sodium and fiber. On the other hand, an awful lot of dirty pool goes into that label. The rule is, the more you know, they less they can get away with.
For example – what IS natural flavor? There’s plenty of blogs and other resources out there that can tell you that, if you take the time to look, and perhaps in time I’ll address the matter in more detail myself (along with artificial flavor). Suffice it to say that if I told you what natural flavor actually means, you’d have to look it up anyway, because it sure doesn’t sound natural.
What’s more, they put unrealistic serving sizes up there. I actually went into some detail on this at Blooming Wellness a few months ago, you can read it here. It will open in a new tab, scroll down to the end to see my example involving Ramen noodles (holy crap are there some lies on that packaging!).
In any case, the reason I bring it up is because I read a great post on a neighboring blog, “Natural Knowledge 24/7″, this morning, that deals with this very topic. You can read all about it, including some of the food industry’s biggest offenders – SPOILER: canned soup! Gotta keep those sodium numbers down, so THEY LIE TO YOU.
Lastly, the scale read 463 this morning, may not sound like much, but slow weight loss is healthy weight loss, and little increments add up to a lot!
In closing, if you have something to celebrate on this, the 14th of February, then do it, and enjoy yourself! And if not, then like me, you can celebrate the end of valentine’s day, tomorrow.
