Can we get any sillier than this?

 

 

“Hostess Brands, known for fare like Twinkies and Ding Dongs, is making a successful foray into more upscale treats. The company posted surprisingly strong earnings on Thursday, along with an upbeat forecast, sending shares on their biggest rally ever. The snack maker credited the rollout of the Hostess Bakery Petites line, which has no artificial flavors or high-fructose corn syrup, for boosting the growth. The latest results helped solidify a turnaround for an iconic American business” Daniel Acker, Bloomberg, 3/1/18.

“Chicago – With more than 86 million Americans living with prediabetes and nearly 90 percent of them unaware of it, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are set to make a major announcement this week about their new joint effort aimed at preventing type 2 diabetes.  Type 2 diabetes is one of our nation’s leading causes of suffering and death—with one out of three people at risk of developing the disease in their lifetime.”  Press Release, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3/11/2015

The Bloomberg article was headlined:  “Twinkie Maker’s Push Into More Upscale Snacks Helps Fuel Rally.”

The CDC press release was headlined “AMA, CDC to Announce Urgent National Initiative to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes.”

Isn’t America great?

I could hardly contain my excitement when I read the Bloomberg headline  – a rejoicing about the evolving resurrection of one of America’s iconic “sugar factories” from a 2012 bankruptcy.  What could be better than the re-emergence of a company that does a nice job of undermining our collective health, move upscale with that process and line the pockets of a small handful of private equity firms?

It’s just so thrilling – and American – isn’t it?

I love the part about “Hostess Bakery Petites line, which has no artificial flavors or high-fructose corn syrup. “  OK, we’re safe folks.  No threat – got those ugly monsters out of this new treat.

This is food-industry marketing at its best.  Make a big deal about eliminating the top-of-mind evil demon, HFCS, knowing that consumers won’t bother to read the label to find out that the top three ingredients in the product are still sugar.

Let’s take a look at what IS there instead of what isn’t there.  Here are the actual ingredients in this new company-saving sugar treat.  This is extracted from the Walmart advertising for this new treat.  (I tried to count the actual number of ingredients but got lost.  Maybe you can come up with a count.)

 

Hostess New Bakery Petites Double Chocolate Cake Delights. A Decadent small batch treats made with the finest ingredients with real chocolate, no artificial colors or flavors. Each mouth-watering mini cake is baked with care so you can savor each delicious bite Hostess Bakery Petites Double Chocolate Cake Delights, 7.9 oz

 Ingredients: CONFECTIONERY COATING (SUGAR, PALM KERNEL OIL AND PALM OIL, COCOA POWDER, WHEY POWDER, SOY LECITHIN, NATURAL FLAVORS), WATER, SUGAR, BLEACHED ENRICHED WHEAT FLOUR [WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, FERROUS SULFATE (IRON), THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID], CORN SYRUP, COCOA, SHORTENING (PALM OIL, MONO & DIGLYCERIDES, POLYSORBATE 60), SPRINKLES (SUGAR, CORN STARCH AND CARNAUBA WAX), PALM OIL, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS: GLYCERIN, SOY LECITHIN, SOYBEAN OIL, COCOA (PROCESSED WITH ALKALI) WHEY, BAKING SODA, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, MONOGLYCERIDES, POLYSORBATE 60, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, PRESERVATIVES (PHOSPHORIC ACID, SODIUM PROPIONATE), SALT, DEXTROSE, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SOY PROTEIN ISOLATE, SORBIC ACID AND POTASSIUM SORBATE (TO RETAIN FRESHNESS), XANTHAN GUM, SODIUM ACID PYROPHOSPHATE, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SODIUM STEARATE, CELLULOSE GUM, NATURAL FLAVOR, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE, CALCIUM SULFATE, WHEAT GLUTEN, AMMONIUM SULFATE, ASCORBIC ACID, CHOCOLATE LIQUOR.  From Walmart product listing

 

As I chuckled over the thick irony of these two announcements, my thoughts went to Michael Pollan’s wonderful book “Food Rules, An Eater’s Manual”.  Pollan’s compilation of 83 rules for proper eating is a masterfully written and illustrated two-hour read worth its weight in good health.

I thought it appropriate to invoke a handful of his rules here in hopes that someone would forward this to the execs at Hostess Brands and add to what already has to be a difficulty in sleeping.

Food Rules to the rescue

Food rule #2:  Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.

Food rule #3:  Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.

Food rule #6: Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.

Food rule #7: Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce.

Food rule #14:  Eat only foods that will eventually rot. (NOTE:  It’s important to point out that the rumor that Twinkies have a shelf-life of 50-100 years has been exposed as untrue.  Their shelf life, however, has been recently extended from its original 26 days to 45 days.  There, now don’t you feel better about its nutritional quality?)

Food rule #19: Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans. (as opposed to corporations)

Food rule #20:  Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.

Food rule #21: If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t (NOTE: Hostess estimates that it uses 8 million pounds of sugar, seven million pounds of refined flour and one million eggs to produce 500 million Twinkies each year.)

Food companies like Hostess Brands are in a tough position.  Stockholders, debtors and 18,500 employees to keep whole, while turning out products that are on the wrong end of the social consciousness scale and contributing to an emerging global health crisis.

But that’s not likely to change.  That’s why it’s incumbent on us to be knowledgeable and take control of our own health, know how our biology works and pay attention to what we are eating.

Pollan’s book is a good starting point

Are You Headed for Life’s “Dinosaur Floor”?

 

There’s a story told by author Mitch Anthony in his book “The New Retirementality” of a Fortune 100 company in New York City that has a floor at their executive office complex that is referred to as the “dinosaur floor.”  Reportedly, it is a floor where executive managers in their 50’s or 60’s whose contributions are considered as static are assigned to hang-on until retirement age.

Sort of a purgatory warehouse.  No doubt a better option for the company than the time loss and expense of hassling with a bunch of age discrimination suits.

It’s interesting that there don’t seem to be any surprises for the occupants.  If you go there, you know why and accept it.  Or maybe you don’t stay and come back to life, bail out, resurrect, re-energize, and redeploy your experience and talents elsewhere.

The path to this floor?   Irrelevance.   Apparently a floor of talented folks who didn’t stay current and who decided to stop learning.

Are you headed for a “dinosaur floor” in your life?

Is there the equivalent of a dinosaur floor looming in your life?

If you’ve moved into your second half, there’s definitely a chance that you may have.

Think about what could put you there:

  1. Intellectual laziness
  2. Resistance to change
  3. Entitlement attitude
  4. 20th-century thinking
  5. Lack of career ownership
  6. Visions of early retirement

If your only resume is on a floppy disk and the most complicated thing you’ve read in the last 10 years is Sports Illustrated – ah, forget it.  You wouldn’t be reading this blog anyway.

 

Who owns your career?

The 20th century offered up cradle-to-grave possibilities – an environment in which one relied on managers and human resources to guide a career.  Work hard, don’t upset the cart and the rewards will be there.  But the 21st century got in the way and all that is bye-bye. However, many still cling to the illusion that their company has their interests at heart and will nurture them along.

Never has a thought pattern been more dangerous.

If you have awakened to this, you’ll like the advice offered up by Master Certified Career Coach, Janine Moon, in her book “Career Ownership.”  She cleverly contrasts home ownership with career ownership, asking the poignant question “why do so many of us own our homes but rent our careers?”

She points out that we will go to pretty extraordinary lengths to make sure our home purchase is the right one and done optimally but ignore the very engine that enables us to own it in the first place.   It’s as if we are asleep to the fact that we are giving up our main source of security to someone else.

With both the magnitude and pace of change accelerating, career ownership becomes paramount. But what does that mean?  Again, we can turn to Coach Moon for some solid advice.

I’ll cherry pick a few of her suggestions and encourage you to invest in the book.  She packs a lot into 100 pages – and it’s coming from someone who can back up her advice as a veteran of “corporate wars.”

Here’s a partial list of Moon’s questions to ask yourself:

  • When did you last do serious research to educate yourself about the future of your industry and the skills needed to succeed in this changing marketplace?
  • When did you last assess your skills, abilities, and goals to determine how you could get the most satisfaction out of the workspace in which you spend many of your waking hours.?
  • When did you last write out your 3-year career plan (on your own) along with your 12-month learning plan?
  • When did you last devote personal time and funds to upgrade your own skills?
  • When did you last consider requesting a job rotation that would help you build a relationship and impact your marketability inside or outside of your organization?
  • When did you last review and align yourself with your organization’s top two strategic growth areas?
  • When did you last identify a weak area in your skills or performance and take personal responsibility to address the problem?

But they think I’m over the hill!

There’s no denying that ageism is alive and well within corporations.  But we can bring it on ourselves.

If you are in your late 40’s or into your 50’s, you’ve stepped into ageism territory so it’s best to not give it a foothold.  And that ageism foothold happens when one fails to stay relevant and current with upgraded skills and deep engagement with corporate initiatives.

Oh, and don’t forget politics. You should know by now how the political game is played and can leverage that to your advantage.

If you are 55, there is a 70% chance you will have a younger boss.  The choice is to resent them or learn from them.  Get to their level technologically and adapt to their communications style.

All this is taking career ownership.  Don’t rent your career out. Own it.

It’s as Janine Moon says: “When was the last time you washed a rental car?”

Ending up on a “dinosaur floor” is a threat for us all to be aware of.  How are you avoiding that threat in your job or your personal life?  Scroll down and leave us a comment.  We’d love to hear how you are safeguarding yourself against ageism and irrelevance.

A Serious Cellular Conversation

Hello.  Allow me to introduce myself.  I’m a human cell.  You won’t recognize me because you’ve never seen me before. I’m normally about 1/10th the diameter of a human hair.

I’ve blown myself up a couple of million times to be able to spend some time with you because, frankly, we need to talk.

I was floating along in your bloodstream a couple of weeks ago hauling my usual load of nutrients and oxygen for delivery – sort of a microscopic Fed Ex guy in a bright red truck – and I was chatting it up with a couple of my fellow red blood cells about how work seemed to be getting harder and harder.

Turns out, they were all feeling the same thing – tired, stressed, working overtime. So we pulled together some of our co-workers over in liver, pancreas, stomach, lungs – sort of a roundtable if you will – to see what they were feeling.  And it was unanimous. Everyone was feeling stressed out.

The consensus was that there is very little understanding and appreciation for what we do and that makes our work a lot harder.

So they elected me to come talk to you. We thought a little basic education might help us affect some changes that would allow us to do our job better.

Let me start by pointing out that there are about 38 ½ trillion of us in your body– that’s trillion with a “T”.  In miles, that’s equivalent to 414,000 trips to the sun.

We really haven’t changed in the last 3 ½ billion years – essentially most of us have a cell membrane, a nucleus,  cytoplasm, ribosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi vesicles, mitochondria plus some other stuff.  But that’s not what I’m here to talk about – you can Google all that.

Just know that whoever or whatever thought you up and put you all together did an amazing job of organizing something out of total chaos to make you into the most magnificent machine ever devised – an incredible 24×7 immune system that’s working it’s butt off to try to keep you healthy.

Unfortunately, you can’t imagine how tough that is these days.

We need some help!

I can’t stick around very long.  So, I’ll cut to the chase.

We feel we are being abused!  I’m here to ask you, on behalf of my 38 ½ trillion friends, to give us a break!

We’ve proven our ability to work effectively together to enable people to live a long and healthy life.  For instance, we recently helped a lady in Paris live to 122 ½ years – a new benchmark for longevity.  She was active right up to the end.

But, here in America, you choose to live only an average of 80 years  – 42 years short of that benchmark, only 65% of the full-life potential that we’ve already established. And there’s still this tendency to “live short and die long.”

What’s up with that?

Here’s my point.  We’ll perform for you if you will perform for us.  There is no magic here.  If you would like us to help you feel better, have more energy, rid you of invading toxins and viruses, corral our crazy cancer cousins, keep your brain and arteries unclogged, we can do it but we’ve got to have your help.

 

Just think for a moment.  You come home from a long, stressful day at work, throw down 3-4 pops, inhale a big meatloaf dinner and then do three hours of Lazy-boy and Netflix – well, we know we’re in for a very long night.

Honestly, there are days when it just gets to be too much and a lot of us just say screw it and check out early, leaving fewer of us to do the job.  Or, sometimes, because we are so tired and pissed off, we’ll just go rogue and morph into a cancer cell.

What’s the real score?

Hey, I’m just a single cell – don’t take my word for it.  Look at the scoreboard. After 100 years of hockey-stick growth of your lifespan, it’s now going backward; diabetes is out of control; heart disease still is the leading killer; 65% of American men are overweight, 25% are obese. Your own American Medical Association recently has announced that 50% of you reading this are either diabetic or pre-diabetic and 70% of you don’t know it.

What can I say?

Hey, I’ve got to get back to my glucose deliveries.  Let me leave you with a simple plan that’s a plea from all 38 ½ trillion of us.

  • Bring us oxygen. That means you need to get off all my buddies in the back of your pants, get some exercise and get your heart rate up frequently.  We need that from you more than anything.
  • We need good non-fatty nutrients, so that means stop eating crap!  Get on the veggies, fruit and whole grains. Please don’t believe this gibberish from McDonalds saying they are becoming nutrition conscious.
  • Stop with all the sugar – the sodas, fruit juices, pastries? It’s killing us – and killing you. Sugar damages every one of us. Just stop!  Start reading the labels.  Know what’s natural sugar and what isn’t.  And just know that your food industry is playing tricks on you.  They have over 50 different words for refined sugar.
  • We need you to stop pumping stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline into the system because it’s hard for us to keep them from nicking your arteries and causing plaque buildup. So chill out and stop taking life and yourself so seriously.

That’s all I’ve got time for.  I really have to go. I think some of my customers are feeling a little shaky.

I hope you’ll take me, and this simple plan, seriously.

Look, we’ve been doing our thing successfully for 3 ½ billion years – you’ve been doing your western lifestyle thing for less than 100 years and it’s obviously not working.  So as I say goodbye, I’ll just rest my case on that.

Gotta run.  Good talking with you. Thanks for listening.

See ya back in your bloodstream!

Retirement worse than smoking?  Maybe.

 

 

This should make you stop and cogitate a bit:  the health risk of prolonged isolation is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

That’s according to the AARP Foundation.  I didn’t know AARP was doing that kind of deep biological, bio-scientific research.  But who’s going to doubt the mighty AARP?  Warren Buffett proved it long ago – selling insurance can support lots of things.

The article caught my eye because I’m a bit of a hermit, by nature and vocation, and a former smoker.

But the connection doesn’t resonate with me.

Smoking was stupid

And quitting was tough.  But it was the best thing I ever did when I quit on 6/6/79.  It was a launching pad for a whole new level of self-esteem and self-respect.

Isolation is built into what I do as a home-based recruiter, coach, and writer and it fits me as an introvert.  I empower myself through my reading, writing, and thinking and through occasional deep, stimulating conversations with a selective tribe of friends.

I don’t do crowds well – and small talk drives me crazy and reminds me, every time, of my shrinking calendar.  I’m inspired by what I do and draw a great deal of energy from my activities despite doing them largely in physical isolation.

I’m just not psychologically isolated.  I believe that’s where the difference lies.

Loneliness sucks!

I do understand what they are saying because I’ve seen the ill effects of psychological isolation.

If you click on over to the AARP article, you’ll find a list of “Risk Factors for Isolation” and – Voila! – there’s retirement smack in the middle, in the same sentence with becoming a caregiver and losing a spouse.

Robert Waldinger, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, said in this popular TED Talk, “The people in our 75-year study who were the happiest in retirement were the people who had actively worked to replace workmates with new playmates.”

Now, wait a minute.  You mean the golden ring, the coveted prize at the end of our labors, that late-life nirvana, that sole reason we’ve been busting our butts for 40 years doing something we marginally enjoyed or felt good about – it’s all really just a hoax?  You mean it’s gonna make me age faster and die sooner?

Mostly.  But it’s a big “it depends.”

We’re learning that pre-retirees are best served when they devote as much attention and energy to the non-financial components of retirement as they do to the financial components.   Research indicates that upwards of 70% of retirees enter into their retirement with little or no attention to the psychological, emotional and physical dark side of retirement.

Increased isolation is but one of those potential pitfalls but perhaps the most destructive.

There is a hidden epidemic that takes place in the shadow of retirement.   Some of the emerging statistics are alarming, all of which can be attributed, in part, to increased isolation;

  • The National Institutes of Health reports that of the 35 million Americans 65 or older, nearly 2 million suffer from full-blown depression. Another 5 million suffer from less severe forms of the illness.
  • Conditions such as heart attack, stroke, hip fracture, or macular degeneration, as well as procedures such as bypass surgery, are known to be associated with the development of depression.
  • Men older than age 65 take their own life at more than double the overall rate and are four times more likely to kill themselves than women in the same age group. Perhaps surprisingly, men age 75 and older have the highest annual suicide rate of any group – about 39 deaths per 100,000. In contrast, the rate for women peaks between ages 45 and 64 at nearly 10 deaths per 100,000. The suicide rate among men 45-64 increased by nearly 50%, between the years 1999 and 2014.

The numbers of older people affected by loneliness and isolation are striking.

According to the new AARP Foundation website Connect2Affect:

  • 17 percent of American adults 65 and older are isolated
  • Research shows a 26 percent increased risk of death due to the subjective feelings of loneliness
  • 6 million adults 65 and older have a disability that prevents them from leaving their homes without help
  • 51 percent of people 75 and older live alone

 

All this is part of the reason that I have decided to devote more of my life and coaching practice to retirement coaching.

The reach for traditional, off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure concept of retirement still seems to prevail. That despite the fact we are at a place we’ve never been before with extended longevity facing unprecedented changes in the economic, financial and self-care landscape.  Retirement that isn’t carefully planned carries with it significant life-shortening health risks.

And with this mindset, many retirees continue to step into a minefield of unexpected challenges, not the least of which is isolation. It goes hand-in-hand with loss of identity, loss of sense of purpose, declining social engagement and creeping health issues emanating from a sedentary lifestyle and historically poor diet.

 

A new retirement emerging?

The wiser of “retirees” are beginning to redefine retirement to prevent the above.  For many, that means continuing to make some level of that previously disdained four-letter word -WORK – part of their lives.  With it comes a solution to the problems of isolation, purpose, inactive lifestyle.

I wrote about the importance of work in my 12/18/17 blog “Work Yourself to Death? Not a Bad Idea!”

Work with a purpose is a new catchphrase amongst retirees.  Or collecting a “playcheck”, a term coined by Mitch Anthony in his book “The New Retirementality”, – being paid for something you really truly are meant to do, that is fun and fulfills a deep inner purpose.

Work and play can intersect.  And there is no better time for that to happen than in a “re-defined retirement”, bringing forward acquired skills and experience and applying them to something fulfilling, fun and profitable.

Who do you know that has achieved that work-play intersection?  Or maybe it’s you.  Scroll down and leave a comment.  While you are there, sign up for our free e-book “Achieving Your Full-Life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”