I’m strapping on my helmet and flak jacket, as I write this, because some people won’t find this funny. But with the advent of Fat Focker TV (America’s Biggest Loser), we already know that many Americans find buffet molesters amusing, to the tune of at least a couple of hours a week. And mamamillions of advertising dollars.

We already know that the portable shade people have a higher risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and just about every disease imaginable. As an orthopaedic surgeon, I was often called upon to fix blubber-related injuries, which translates to asking your joints to carry a load much heavier than the design of your frame. It’s like loading a truck until the trailer rides on the wheels, which is an invitation to disaster.

The so called Health Reform Act will not help anybody who is overweight. (Or anyone else with a problem, either.) The reason is very simple. There is absolutely no provision in the reform that increases preventative care. Obese folks will head on down to the Obama clinics, where well meaning, but absolutely clueless, government health care officials will recommend whatever drug is bringing in big money to the treasury.

They certainly won’t be handing out any good advice, because after a few years, there will be fewer and fewer decent doctors still involved in the practice of medicine. Not only that, but they won’t even be allowed to tell you what all your options are, because some back room medical hack will be handing them all the solutions that will be fit to print.

Here’s what should be done.

Everyone that is overweight gets a Dr. Bill Food Card.

You must use it for all purchases of chow.

It would work like this:  You’re in the grocery store, and you add two big bags of potato chips to the cart, along with a 12 pack of soda. Then you dump in some frozen pizza, a box or two of Hot Pockets, and a box of donuts and a 3 gallon tub of ice cream. You roll up to the counter, hand the clerk your card, and you are immediately scanned. When the high tech scanner ascertains your weight, you are immediately denied checkout and forced back into the store, to reselect some real food.

You keep getting rejected, until you only have healthy food in your cart.

By golly…I think it’s a brilliant idea and just look at the built in exercise, that forces people to walk around and around, looking for the healthy food.

Or you could just do this on your own, without any help at all from benevolent government.

You could start by eating a good breakfast and getting some antioxidants. You do that by eating the color rainbow of fruits and vegetables. Then make sure you get some B vitamins and take my Powerhouse Omega Formula, an ultra pure, enteric coated, pharmaceutical grade fish oil:

https://www.
Make sure you get some zinc. And be sure you get some vitamin D, by spending 20-30 minutes a day in the sun. A young physician friend of mine had his vitamin D level checked recently. His doctor wasn’t happy with the extremely low level he found. He ordered my friend to get out of his office and the hospital, get some sunlight every day and take a supplement.

My Powerhouse Omega Formula helps to protect us from different diseases, by keeping the heart beating at a slower, steady pace, stopping the clogging of arteries (atherosclerosis), reducing blood triglyceride levels, lowering blood pressure levels, increasing nitric oxide levels in the blood and tissues, and reducing inflammation, naturally.

But by losing weight, you can accelerate all those things and gain even more benefits.

Being a fat focker buys you a one way ticket to Davey Jones’ Locker, sooner, rather than later. Wise up and you won’t have to use Obamacare.

Starting last Monday, and even before that, all the talk about the Masters centered on Tiger Woods. First there was media speculation, then the press conference, then more media speculation, then Billy Payne’s silly remarks, then even sillier remarks by Charles Barkley, and thankfully the tournament got started on Thursday, where one of the old coots, (60 year old Tom Watson), charged out of the gate to get the party started.

While Watson was a good story, you knew it wouldn’t last. So all the attention turned once again to Tiger Woods. For a five month layoff, I thought Tiger looked pretty good. He was paired with the unflappable K.J. Choi, who is a real “steady Eddie.” Choi and Woods were almost mirror images of each other, shooting virtually the same score for the entire tournament.

On Saturday, a guy that was hardly mentioned all week started putting a cramp in plans to recrown Tiger Woods. Phil Mickelson, who everybody said was playing poorly to start the year, was brewing up a little left-handed excitement. While Tiger was fighting troubles of his own poor judgement, Phil’s family has spent the last year fighting cancer. Both his mother and his wife Amy have breast cancer, and have been undergoing treatment. With all the Tiger hullaballoo, this didn’t get one one hundreth of the coverage accorded Tiger’s stable.

Mickelson said on Tuesday that it has been a very difficult year, trying to manage the golf and all it demands, with his family and all the extra demands brought on by a very difficult disease. He actually looked a little haggard, or maybe he just missed his haircut appointment.

As Sunday got started, the wheat started to separate from the chaff, or the real players started to go up and down the leader board. Westwood hung tough, then was tied by Mickelson. Then Westwood dropped and K. J. Choi tied Mickelson. Mickelson started his charge by getting a birdie on 12, then making an absolutely unbelievable shot on 13. Then another birdie, and the rest of the field, except for Westwood, started to fade away.

Although the television announcers tried to keep other players in the mix, you knew as Mickelson tee’d off at 16 that it was over. Phil put the nail in the coffin, with another birdie on 18.

Mickelson has now won the Masters three times. That puts him in some rare company. Names like Palmer, Nicklaus, Player, Snead…and of course, Tiger, along with that Brit…aye…Faldo, renowned for being the slowest golfer ever. If I operated like Faldo played golf, I would have only completed one hip job a week.

Here’s an observation of mine. For the last couple of years, Phil Mickelson has been improving his health. For years, he was distinguished by what many call man boobs and he had a stomach to match. Sunday he looked (except for the hair) as good as I’ve ever seen him. He has lost weight, he is visibly stronger and he exudes more confidence than I have ever seen him display.

He needs every bit of that swagger to win golf’s most prestigious prize, while his family is being battered.

If golf was looking for a good image, it doesn’t have to look too far. It was on display all week and the media just about missed it.

Follow Phil’s example and get yourself in tip top shape. You never know when you’re going to be tested.

I learned a new pasta dish, earlier in the week, when I stopped by my chef buddy’s place and I’m going to share it with you. This is simple (now that I’ve been walked through it by an expert), and it’s also pretty healthy, if you’re not a member of the group, Science In The Public Interest (they’re the same people who told us fettucine alfredo was fattening…like it took a PhD to figure that out.)

Penne with Broccoli Rabe and Sausage

1 pound of penne, capellini, or orecchiette
8 ounces Italian sausage, chicken, turkey, or pork (casings removed)
6-10 cloves of garlic, finely minced
2 bunches broccoli rabe, about 2 pounds, trimmed and cut in 2, in lengths
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Fresh black pepper
Red pepper flakes
1 cup grated parmesan cheese

Bring 4 quarts of water to a rolling boil, in a large pot. Add 1 Tbsp of salt, then the pasta and cook according to instructions, for whatever pasta you are using. Drain pasta when al dente, but do not rinse.

While the pasta is cooking, cook the sausage until browned, in a non stick skillet. When browned, add the sausage to a food processor and pulse a couple of times. You just want to chop it so you get very small pieces, not turn it to mush (in this way, a small amount of sausage can flavor a large dish).

Return the sausage to the pan, add a little olive oil, the garlic, red pepper and cook for a few minutes. Then add the chicken broth and the broccoli rabe. Cover and cook a couple of minutes, until the broccoli rabe turns bright green. Uncover and cook, until most of the broth has evaporated. Add a little more olive oil and then, add the pasta. Mix it up and then, add about 2/3 of the parmesan and season with salt and pepper.

Turn it out onto a large platter, hit it with a little more olive oil and the rest of the cheese.

This should feed about six adults, very nicely.

When you combine my Powerhouse Omega Formula: ( https://www. )…with all that wonderful garlic, olive oil and the broccoli rabe, you really are giving your body a tremendous cocktail, one that fortifies, as it flushes (and that garlic makes the fish oil’s omega-3′s into a net cholesterol lowering agent, as well).

Bon Apetit!

Sooner or later, I knew this would happen. Big Pharma wants in the fish oil business and they have  started the big campaign for “prescription” fish oil. The first wave of commercials is now showing on television, even though there have been magazine ads for months in anything you would call a health related magazine.

Along with any Big Pharma campaign comes what I call a disinformation avalanche. For quite some time, Big Pharma stooges (journalists), have been filling the word space with stories of toxic fish, high mercury levels, anti-green fish oil companies and other assorted garbage. This was all to lay the framework for Lovaza, which can now by prescribed by a doctor.

But if you really do some research and read the FDA application, there is very little at all said about the issue on contamination. There certainly is plenty of gobbledy-gook in the application, which is an extremely large part of any federal application.

What this means is that while the Big Pharma stooges mouth just exactly what they are told, raising all kinds of red herring reports about supplement manufacturers, there is virtually nothing in their federal applications about these issues.

I wonder why that is.

I can speculate a bit, my speculation being nine tenths correct, but because I wasn’t in the room, I can’t make this iron clad. But my speculation is that those issues were left out because Big Pharma absolutely knows that this contamination argument is patently false. But, it makes for good stealth marketing, so they are having someone else make their argument for them.

But the fact is that Lovaza and my Powerhouse Omega Formula, are judged by and meet exactly the same purity standards. But theirs are “blessed” by the FDA (the same FDA that approved Thalidomide, Vioxx and more recently,  Avandia). Lovaza does have a slightly higher dose of omega 3′s per capsule, but that comes at a much, much higher price tag.

The total EPA/DHA for Lovaza is 840mg per capsule.
The total EPA/DHA for my POF is 780mg per capsule.
The price of Lovaza is approximately $162.00 per month (retail).
The price of my POF is $59.00 per month (on continuity).

On an annual basis, that’s $1944.00 for Lovaza.

My Powerhouse Omega Formula is $708.00 a year. 

That’s $1236 EXTRA, per year, for an extra 60 mg. of omega-3′s per capsule. Do the math. Something just doesn’t seem right about that to me.

And, my POF has a special enteric coating. Lovaza does NOT. You’d think that for all that extra dough, they’d spring for an enteric coating, to virtually eliminate fish burps and aftertaste, but nooooo.

And since they are buying millions of units, they pay less than I do, to produce it. So it’s easy to see why they want you to switch to “prescription” Lovaza. But then again, this isn’t surprising, since they sat down with Obama and worked out a deal, to keep their companies in the money.

Now, instead of just paying for your own prescriptions, you are going to pay for everyone else’s, too. And at a much much higher rate. No money will ever be saved in this health care debacle, that’s for sure.

Except that if you’re smart, you’ll stick with me. Lovaza is the New Coke. We all know how long that lasted.

I found out today that Baba Wawa is having a celebration called “100 Women of the Century” and that one of the 100 women to be honored is Jane Fonda. Now…if this was a celebration of Hollywood, called “100 Actors of the Century,” I would probably just go to my room and watch something else.

But it isn’t. This is a sort of lifetime achievement award and, while Jane Fonda has undoubtably achieved some successes, like selling zillions of workout tapes, giving her an award for that would be fine and dandy with me.

But this isn’t, and now I’m going to tell you why.

Back in the late 1960′s Jane Fonda, in addition to being an actress, was an anti-war activist and quite a vocal one. She also contributed large sums of money to these movements. I also don’t have any quibble with this. As Americans we are all entitled to dissent from the prevailing view and to contribute money to organizations that dissent.

But Fonda went much further than that. She openly sided with the enemy and took an infamous trip to Hanoi in 1968, where she publicly sided with the Communists and was directly responsible for the death and torture of American prisoners of war.

Here is a story about her trip from a pilot named Jerry Driscoll. Jerry Driscoll was the former commandant of the USAF Survival School and a F4E pilot, who was shot down and imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton.

He was dragged from a filthy stinking cell, cleaned, fed and dressed in clean PJ’s and ordered to describe…for a visiting American “Peace Activist” the lenient and human treatment he received.

He spat on Fonda, was clubbed and dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward onto the camp commander’s feet, which made the commander go beserk. In 1978, Jerry Driscoll still suffered from double vision, incurred from the beating by the camp commander.

Colonel Larry Carrigan spent 6 years in the Hanoi Hilton. His group was also cleaned up, fed and clothed in preparation for a “peace delegation” visit. They however, had devised a plan to get word to the world that they were alive and still survived. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security Number on it, in the palm of his hand.

When they were paraded before Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man’s hand and asking questions like: “Aren’t you sorry you bombed babies? Aren’t you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors? Believing this had to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper.

She took them all without missing a beat. At the end of the line…and once the camera stopped rolling…to the shocked disbelief of the POW’s…she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper.

Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Colonel Carrigan survived, which is how we know about this incident.

Throughout the intervening years, Fonda has refused all offers to debate survivors of the Hanoi Hilton.

She has received much favorable press in the last two decades, some of it actually praising her actions as the acts of a principled woman. But principled women do not commit acts of treason, which this very clearly was.

Baba Wawa needs to be reminded of this, and in a big way. Our current Commander in Chief would probably have gone with Fonda and done the same thing. He is only a small step away from betraying Israel, with his own people (us) not far behind. But remember, as Chris “Tingle” Matthews says, “I don’t understand why anyone would call him a socialist.” So you can see why it would be easy for him, and many others in the media, to call Fonda principled, when what she is in reality is a traitor.

To make a play on one of her movies, “They Shoot Traitors… Don’t They?” No…no we don’t. We send them to the Kennedy Center, with the President in attendance and we televise the whole disgusting spectacle.

Those of you taking my Powerhouse Omega Formula know better, because your brain is functioning much better than the average Joe. Healthy body, healthy brain. And when you get to the voting booththis November…send the incumbents home again.