The best silly food and silly diets of 2014

I’m very excited to share with you my end of year best of the best in diets and food innovation. Celebrating these contributions to humankind is a fond tradition and will, at the very least, take your mind off ISIS and Ebola for a bit.

An insult to kids' intelligence: Bubblegum flavored broccoli

This year, McDonald’s experimented with bubblegum flavored broccoli. The venture has been called off -- kids didn’t like it. Whoever came up with the idea of improving the taste of a food by making it taste like a non-food deserves this years’ award for underestimating kids. It’s ok – more honest even -- for fake food to taste like fake food, but can dressing up real as fake be an upgrade? Kids notice a fake from miles. 

Other contenders for this years’ silliest innovation: a park bench that weighs you, and then tells you – and the world – your weight and what you should do about it. Oh, and let’s not forget the company that offers to deliver to your home the food you’d only consider as a hungry captive at 30,000 feet. Yes, you heard that right, plane food on the ground. 

Bulletproof your common sense

Enjoying a cult-like following and celebrity endorsements, this new diet promises to make you energized, alert and focused, melt body fat, increase muscle mass without exercise and taste great. What’s this miracle food? A mixture of grass fed butter, pharmaceutical grade MCT oil, and specially selected Upgraded Coffee Beans ($18.95 for a small ¾ pound bag).  At 450 plus calories a cup it sure should fuel your day, but if you want to really bulletproof yourself, the next time you see the word ‘miracle’, ‘effortless’ or ‘melt’ connected to a diet, save time and money by following this simple step: close that tab/change that channel/throw away that ad. Here’s my prediction: 2015 won’t bring a slimness and health magic potion either. 

Party with IV hydration rescue

We all know how important it is to be well hydrated, but who knew that your vein is better than your mouth? If you’re hungover, feeling tired or sniffing a cold IVme will hook you up with fluids and electrolytes, maybe add some vitamins, and within an hour you’ll be as good as new, so they promise. Reviv offers several specialty IV formulations, the Slimboost one sounds especially tempting: it promises to increase energy levels, increase red blood cell production, help regulate sleep, mood and appetite, detoxify the body and rev up amino acids metabolism (what does that even mean?).

I’m here to defend the old fashioned mouth. I think that (provided you’re in good enough shape to step into these clinics) the mouth remains the safest orifice for fluids, it practically evolved for just that. It has a lovely mechanism that enables us to take in non-sterile, hardly even clean food and drink. It has safeguards that allow for enormous variations in intake. Oh, and instead of the slight pain of the needle you can get great pleasure from your taste buds and smell receptors that welcome the fluids.

And if someone you love is feeling fuzzy, achy and hungover, an instant redemption IV might be robbing them of the only benefit of their miserable state: the power of immediate consequences might save them from their next binge. Sounds cruel, but a big headache can be a liver’s best friend.

Wishing you a happy, healthy and lighthearted holiday season,

Dr. Ayala