There are lots of such things.

The Tab energy drink is all I drink anymore. All I ingest, in fact.

That link pays for itself with the Trade Whiskey post.

The vitamin water thing pisses me off. Frankly, the popularity of "vitamins" themselves makes me angry. Why do people refuse to eat, you know, food? It's such a scam. Who ever was made healthier, or less healthy, by the purposeful consumption or non- of non-food vitamins? Except maybe people who can't eat dairy, and take calcium supplements. For that, I will make an exception.

Their ratings seem uniformly too positive, especially given that the only one of those drinks (purple Vitamin water) I've had was bad.

I hate vitamin water. It doesn't quench your thirst. It makes you more thirsty.

I think calcium supplements are often useful even if you do consume dairy; also folic acid is good if you are about to be or are in the process of growing babies and iron is good if you're anemic. Vitamin D is probably also useful if you wear sunblock all the time. All that other stuff, though, seems doubtful.

Oh, and vitamin B-12 if you're a vegetarian, or especially if you're a vegan, and extra especially if you're a vegan who's breastfeeding. Also if you're old (since apparently lots of older people have trouble absorbing enough B-12 from food).

Or if you're a student who is probably going to eat pasta for the sixth time this week out of sheer laziness.

8: An friend gave me some vitamin-B pills that are supposed to help with headache and stress. I can't really tell if they help, but google tells me that the friend is not the only person who thinks this way.

An

Eh, I've started doing the daily vitamin thing, just on general principles. Plus more B vitamins supposed means less stress, or something. And god only knows if I *really* get enough calciuim....

Tab energy drink is fortified with vitamins and minerals.

I'm skeptical of multivitamins, and taking vitamin C when you have cold, etc. etc. Mineral supplements seem to be another story.

That said, both times I came home after being in Egypt for a year I went for a checkup and discovered that I had dangerously low B12 levels -- "pernicious anemia" territory, which can result in amputation (!). I don't understand why I had a deficiency because I ate meat and fish all the time when I was there. But anyway, I had to get shots for a little while.

Vitamin water is totally refreshing. It's more exciting than plain old water, but not sickly sweet like ice tea or juice. Way over-priced, though.

sweet like ice tea

Well, what are you doing mucking up perfectly good tea with sugar?

15: it comes like that in the can. And when it's unsweetened it's too bitter.

According to a sign outside the women's bathroom at the Bodies exhibit, women go to the bathroom more than men because they have smaller bladders and because they drink more fluids.

Women drink more fluids? This was news to me.

It's all those tea parties.

My dad's family was way into the vitamins. On the other hand, they were also way into stuff like automatic writing, prospecting for uranium and voting for Goldwater, so they may not be the best authorities to rely on.

Don't vitamins (and vitamin water) upset anyone else's stomach? I have a very hard time with them. I've been taking Flintstones vitamins (you know, for 2-3 year-olds) lately, and even those, delicious though they are, make me feel like shit half the time.

Don't vitamins (and vitamin water) upset anyone else's stomach?

I take that vitamin-B pill with food; seems to help the stomach thing.

Would it be rude of me to thread-jack? Probably, but it is the weekend. Weekend threads, I figure, are more casual. For that same reason, political questions seem less apropos, but, well, these are more precisely historical questions.

In particular, two things have recently struck me as odd, but I'm not seeing much comment on them.
1) Bush is really getting down into the mud-slinging this season, hurling lots of general attacks at Democrats. Is this unusual for a President? My political memory isn't very long, and I don't know of many books that get into these kinds of details, but my general picture of things is that Presidents try to be "above the fray", and so that Bush has gotten right into the muck of things has surprised me.
2) This past year, I can't think of a single thing Bush has done, other than react to issues that have come up. This kind of passivity from the President also strikes me as unusual, but, some caveat as above about the length of my political memory.

take that vitamin-B pill with food

Yeah, I do too; still.

Well, ogged, are you not a delicate flower?

I am, it's true.

I agree with 7/8. I'm sympathetic to 4, but was surprised to read recently that studies suggest that over the last 50 years, the amount of vitamins and minerals in fruits and vegetables has dropped dramatically.

From an Observer story that summarizes the research:

Analysing food tables prepared by government scientists between 1951 and 1999...researchers found that potatoes had lost 100 per cent of their vitamin A (important for good eyesight) and 57 per cent of their vitamin C, while today's consumers would have to eat eight oranges to get the same amount of vitamin A as their grandparents obtained from one fruit.

What the shit? Boo to modern agriculture.

Multi-vitamins. There are soem very expensive vitamins that are food-based. Whole Foods sells them. They are thought to be more absorbable than plain old isolates. A lto of people can tolerate them on an empty stomach. They tend to be pretty expensive. Whole Foods sells them. In the Northeast New Chapter is popular. They have one-a-day options and tiny tabs for people who have a hard time swallowing pills.

I hear Whole Foods sells them.

You heard wrong, Ben. Whole Foods sells them.

Vitamins are good for hearing.

Sorry, I didn't preview very well, and I'm nto trying to get anyone to shop at Whole Foods. I hope your local independetn health food store carries them, and, if they do, you shoudl buy your vitamisn there. There is also always the Internet.

A thread about drinks becomes a thread about vitamins in just four comments? Where's your gusto, people?

Must be low on B6.

A gallon of bottled water and a gallon of coffee every day. A multi-vitamin every night at bedtime. The vitamin is possibly unnecessary because I eat massive amounts of fresh fruits and raw vegetables. Dairy as snacks:cheese.

Lots of sunlight to potentiate the vitamin D. After the 5-20 miles dog walk, a quart of Coca-Cola.

Bought the wrong kind of Halloween candy, the kind I eat. November will be a trial.

32: The problem is that the linked site seems to be mainly about drinks non-alcoholic (and indeed insipid and vitamin-y) in nature. I, meanwhile, am consuming half of a Chimay Bleu, which is decidedly alcoholic in nature. And very fine it is, too.

35: Now that's more like it. Cheers.

I've been taking Flintstones vitamins (you know, for 2-3 year-olds) lately, and even those, delicious though they are,

That's what I do. One or two of those a day.

The real scam with vitamins are the massive doses. Total waste. The water soluble vitamins run right out of you. Take one of those big honking B-vitamin pellets, and it'll look like you're pissing Mountain Dew.

I've been taking Flintstones vitamins (you know, for 2-3 year-olds) lately, and even those, delicious though they are,

When I was a kid my parents gave us a multivitamin called Mulvidren. They were beyond delicious. When I was about four, I climbed up on the kitchen counter so I could get them down from their place on the highest shelf and ate about ten of them. They were so great! I wish I had one right now.

ate s/b eat. I think.

Either could be right depending on what you mean.

the pee-coloring properties of b-vitamins are useful if you're flushing your system with gallons of water to pass a drug test, because your pee will look "normal" rather than totally clear, which might be a give-away. so you can save yourself the money on those test-clean kits from the hippie coop and just wash down a coupla b-horse tablets with 2 gallons of water. my brother made it through a whole year of probation that way, though I was biting my nails to the qiuck the whole time.

21.2 -- I may have missed presidential initiatives in 1987, but nothing stands out for me. Not 1974 (the first half) either. It's hard to do much from the bunker . . .

26 gets it exactly right. Six apples a day keep the doctor away.

Also, was chicken always tasteless? I know how to season a chicken well, but it's not seasoning to enhance the meat, but to make it taste like something.

My grandmother was into herbal remedies. Many of them worked, but she had many dusty books with anecdotal testimonials like 'Mary C. of South Dakota suffered for years with gout, and then after eating a cup of cherries everyday, it was cured!'

There was an article in either the New Yorker or the Atlantic Monthly about how chickens nowadays are tasteless (thanks, modern chicken-"raising" techniques!) and how some people are trying to bring back old breeds and non-industrial conditions. But of course those chickens cost more.

44 shorthand: "Send me photos of your old cock."

This book has loads of lovely photos of old cocks. Or heirloom cocks, more precisely.

A friend of mine lets store-bought chickens sit until they start to get gamey. I haven't tried that yet, but he says it vastly improves the flavor.

My dad raves about the chicken his grandmother used to make. She would go out and slaughter the bird just before cooking it. You can't get that kind of taste these days.

I'm curious to see how the timestamps adapt to the end of daylight savings time...

Adapt they have!

Magic.

My dad raves about the chicken his grandmother used to make. She would go out and slaughter the bird just before cooking it. You can't get that kind of taste these days.

Doesn't take much land to raise chickens. I'm only 30, and my parents did it. Granted, we had a pretty big lot (for Los Angeles, about 2/3 acre), and it wasn't exactly common, but we raised chickens, ducks, rabbits and all kinds of stuff.

I was watching my dad slaughter rabbits by the time I was three or so. He'd take out the heart while it was still beating, show me the anatomy, it was great.

There's a store in Chicago (on Chicago street, in fact) where you can buy live chickens. Probably more than one, really, but that's the only one I've been in. I'm told that the Alemany farmer's market in sf is similar in this regard. Aegina, too.

I never made any purchases at this Chicago store, so I never found out if they kill the chickens for you or not.

Hey did you guys know hot chocolate and bourbon mix well? Because they do. Previously I was drinking rum in my hot chocolate. But bourbon I think is a little better.

There's a store in Astoria where you can buy live chickens, IIRC it is on 31st Street down toward Northern Blvd. They slaughter chickens for you.

21 -- I noticed the same thing, like I was sort of used to Bush saying transparently coded things like "there are those among us who would sell the US down the river for the sake of islamic terrorists" or "now I've heard some say that we might as well lay down our arms and surrender to Al Qaeda"; but I found it a bit surprising to hear him specifically naming Democrats as the traitors in our midst -- not exactly sure why I was, but I don't think he'd actually done that before.

I spent yesterday evening (before coming home and drinking bourbon-laced hot cocoa) at a MoveOn phone bank event, calling Virginians to tell them Allen is a bad man, Webb good.

(If any of you live in Virginia and were roused from your languorous soak in the bubble-bath by political spam, allow me to apologize on my co-spammers' behalf.)

'Mary C. of South Dakota suffered for years with gout, and then after eating a cup of cherries everyday, it was cured!'

Did it really say that in your grandmother's herbal? Because I have an acquaintance who has gout, and his doctor told him to eat a lot of cherries. Not for a cure but to help with the symptoms.

here in singapore we get 'kampong' (village) chickens from malaysia and they're full of chickeny goodness. now when I go back to the states the chickens taste like sawdust.

56: The cherries part is accurate (and in my experience, helps with the symptoms of gouty big toes). The style is accurate. I may have made up the 'Mary C.'

Bourbon is excellent in hot cider as well.

Does this mean we should take up a cherry collection for Farber?

Adult males should absolutely not supplement iron. Do not self-diagnose anemia.

Back to the OP: Bawls (YES, I just said Bawls) is a great beverage. It is guarana flavored and filled with caffeine.

I was watching my dad slaughter rabbits by the time I was three or so.

Maybe this is why gswift and I agree about everything. One of my earliest memories is of accompanying my uncle out back where he put a lamb in a headlock and cut its throat. Though I confess that I didn't think "it was great" so much as "holy shit, the poor lamb," and "holy shit, blood spurting everywhere," and then, "this is how I will do to the infidels."

62: Was that in Iran, or here, in the land of the Great Satan? (I've long wanted to slaughter a lamb and immediately cook it; for some reason, I (probably naively) assume that killing your food makes it tast better.

In Iran.

Lamb would be awesome. We had goats, but my mom wouldn't let my dad kill those.

The rabbits weren't real bloody, he was clubbing them. Ducks on the other hand, when done with a hatchet spray a bit. And did you know that if you cut out a ducks larynx and suck air through it you can make it quack? My older sister took one and hid under the kitchen window, making quacking sounds, and my mother was yelling to my dad that he'd missed one. Good times.

It must be an Iranian custom. An Iranian friend of mine said that his father took him on a special trip to see a steer being slaughtered. Some sort of thing about the fragility of life.

Ogged's uncle probably had premonitions about how Ogged would turn out and decided not to waste the full bovine macho experience on him.

Here's an Iranian custom for ya.

Did you know that if you cut off gswift's hands and flop them around, you can make them type?