Yeah, I was trying to think of some way that would get rid of the intolerable bits but not be too revolting. Goo doesn't sound wonderful... tho I love custard (and pudding), and the appeal is more the silky texture than the flavor. Maybe adaptations of stuff you already like, that sort of thing...

But so long as you don't veer off into some radical deficiency (eg. vegan or fruitarian or some such nonsense), the fact is our bodies are very flexible about nutrients and nutrient sources. People can do fine on a low-variety diet for a very long time if it just hits the high points for basic requirements.

Too much soda can be a contributor toward too much weight, yeah, mostly it's a helluva lot of sugar calories, or if sugar-free, aspartame is a thyroid inhibitor and may do more harm than the sugar would. Not something I drink either way... don't really care for it, most of the time.

But fatty food generally is not an issue unless you consume to serious excess, or too many carbs alongwith (fat-fried carbs are still carbs). My own rule is "If you can still see the food, there's not enough butter!" :)

"I'm afraid there are plenty of Type 2 diabetics whose weight gain was _triggered_ or at least ballooned, under the influence of Type 2 diabetes."

That's an interesting perspective, and perhaps we do have the cause and effect entirely backwards. Has there been any research looking at it from this end?

A great many vegetarians are fat; to get enough protein and fat, you have to eat a lot more calories. A vegetarian diet is by definition very high in carbs (and relatively low in protein and fat, which are both far more necessary than are carbs), and refined vs unrefined carbs really doesn't make that much difference to your Randall cycle. Eating lots of unrefined carbs can cause acid reflux, tho.

But do have a complete thyroid panel. Recalcitrant weight gain and wonky triglycerides (not that there's real evidence they're harmful) are pretty typical hypothyroid symptoms, and it's probably the single most underdiagnosed medical issue today (the TSH test is not helping, as now doctors treat the test rather than treating the symptoms).

Other I-hate-to-cook hints:

Everything (except for pie crust and cookies) in the "new" Betty Crocker Cookbook can be cooked in the microwave without altering the recipe. Only cooking time must be decreased. I've even made souffles in the microwave!! And do your microwave cooking in glass bowls, not plastic.

Another good investment for I-hate-to-cookers is a top-quality nonstick electric frypan. I recently had to replace mine and found an inexpensive Presto brand frypan that's the best I've ever used... heats fast and evenly.

Lots of stuff like pancakes can be flung together 'close enough to wind up with the right thickness of batter' without troubling to measure it. Or do stuff like turn pancake batter into something nifty by adding a chopped onion and some grated cheese, and baking it like a cake. (Serve dripping with melted butter.)

Random stuff like meat scraps, tomatoes, water or broth, rice or chunks of leftover baked potatoes, and whatever seasoning you like go into a bowl and into the microwave for a few minutes to make a hearty and pain-free casserole.

Similarly, last week's chicken carcass or beef/pork bones and any random leftovers becomes this week's soup, or sometimes an ugly but tasty scraps-and-rice-glop. Instant mashed potatoes also make a good quick binder for random scraps of meat and veggies.

My other Instant Food Maker is a Nesco countertop roaster. I throw a chunk of frozen meat and some potatoes and carrots into it, add a little water and seasoning (or an onion soup packet), turn it to 300F, go away for a couple hours, and the contents are magically turned into enough food for a week.

I know all this because tho I hate cooking, I hate most frozen/processed food more; also, I'm cheap, and it's a lot more economical both to cook from scratch and to repurpose the small leftovers most people throw out.

I don't think it's a matter of training. I think it's a matter of genetics and therefore of hormones.

Frex, there was an interesting study on women who became vegetarians in mid-life, because "meat suddenly smells bad" (not for 'ethical' reasons). Turns out they uniformly suffered from estrogen deficiency, which radically altered their perceptions of smell and therefore taste. I have personally witnessed this phenomenon with someone who had a hysterectomy at 40 and never bothered to get her hormones adjusted. I've also seen it a couple times with M-to-F transgendered folks who haven't yet got their new hormone levels right.

Likewise, most little kids don't like strong or sharp flavors, yet at maturity, these same kids often prefer those same flavors they couldn't stand as juveniles. The most critical factors between juvenile and adult are changes in the hormone profile. (I've also noticed that apparent hormone insufficiency often accompanies the schizo/bipolar/OCD spectrum, which I believe is not so much something one comes down with, as something one fails to mature out out.)

I have Hashimoto's thyroditis, and if I crave and like the taste of sweets above other stuff, it's a good indicator that I need to increase my thyroid dosage (in fact this preference for sweets will appear before ANY other hypothyroid symptoms).

So what I would recommend is that you have a complete thyroid (not just TSH, which unless obviously high is worthless by itself) and reproductive hormone panel done. If there's something that needs adjustment, it may well take care of much of the hypersensitivity about food texture and taste. If that's not it -- well, I expect you have some enzyme deficiency, perhaps not anything medically identified as yet, and maybe not particularly 'abnormal' but rather on the far edge of the normal range of perception. Or it may indicate some unidentified medical issue, but apparently not life-threatening or you wouldn't still be here. :) I know someone who had a variety of physical hypersensitivities ("princess and the pea" syndrome) which sounded like neuroses if you didn't look further, but eventually proved due to a mild form of porphyria!!

But I don't think it's "all in your head" or a matter of just training yourself to accept it. Our sensory equipment is FAR more sensitive than most people give it credit for; if your body believes something isn't edible, it may well be that you lack an enzyme (again, that's genetic) needed to process it, and your nose can tell, even if your conscious brain can't.

Example: Ever see a little kid have a literal panic attack when some adult tries to force them to eat spinach for the first time? Why, you may ask, does some 5 year old, who'd never even heard of spinach before, act like you're trying to feed them poison? I think it's because the kid can (unknowingly) smell the oxalic acid, which is indeed 'poison' to a child's calcium metabolism.

So your mouth wants lump-free and shreds-of-fibre-free texture, and mild flavors? I was like that as a little kid. I ate jarred baby food (the really smooth-textured "baby's first solid food" stuff, not "toddler food") longer than normal because of it, but that doesn't seem to have done me any harm (probably wouldn't hurt an adult either, if one prefers the stuff). I'm still fairly picky about my food, but mainly I don't tolerate any 'off' flavors, and I can't swallow apple peels (my throat is fairly sure they're poisonous; they just won't go down). In particular with regard to meat, if it ain't fit to eat raw, it ain't fit to eat cooked.

Anyway, what if you run the food thru a juicer and then strain it? maybe freeze the result if that's more appealing? dilute it if the flavor is too strong? Lots of things can be made into custard, if that appeals. (Quiche is really just a savory custard.) Just throwing out ideas; feel free to throw them up, er, I mean back. :)

Also, a marked predilection toward sweets should always be investigated for hypothyroidism (which can cause juvenile reactions to other stimuli, too).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's now federal, and uniformly legal in the U.S. unless the intersection is signed otherwise.

And as it happens, right-on-red-after-stop was a western innovation, allowed in most western states as much as 50 years ago. I remember it becoming legal in MT somewhere around 1970.

Montana outlawed 'em entirely, because of how they just naturally lend themselves to this sort of corruption and setting the public up to fail (ie. short yellows practically forcing 'em to get ticketed). Bozeman was all set to have an exemption but then Redflex whined about how they couldn't make any money under the new rules, and the state legislature decided enough of that shit and nuked the exemption. So... no camera enforcement. :D

http://www.thenewspaper.com/ne...
http://www.thenewspaper.com/ne...

Not to mention that at camera-enforcement intersections, they usually shorten up the yellow light (sometimes below the federal minimums) -- which maximizes tickets while reducing the amount of time drivers have to react. When you know you're about to get in trouble for not making the right decision fast enough, do you really make better decisions? I doubt it. Evidence is that under such circumstances, more poor decisions are made, hence more (and more-severe) accidents.

Adding just one second to the yellow light time reduces both redlight-running (since most of the time it's not deliberate, but rather the effect of not having enough time to make the correct decision) and redlight-related accidents to negligible levels.

All sorts of documentation supporting the fact that it's all about revenue and not at all about safety:

http://thenewspaper.com/rlc/re...

http://thenewspaper.com/rlc/re...

Yeah, part of what I was thinking is... you can hardly get more nasty than a volcano's environment, so it's not like you can pollute it.

For many years I lived in the SoCal desert where the ground was naturally radioactive. After that, nothing worries me. :)

So have there been any efforts to tap active volcanoes for energy production?

Your post gave me the peculiar (and perhaps ridiculous) notion of siting a nuclear production facility IN the volcano (a bit of land no one cares to inhabit anyway, and if not of the explosive type, perhaps a better containment area than most).

>... Replace with cheap bland French beer? I know they have not-so-great beer, and if not, definitely some cheap staple table wine. So change the complement to suit the location. He didnt literally mean it had to be bud light.

Actually, Budweiser is appallingly popular in France. I saw teens everywhere drinking it.

You can, you just need to phrase it right -

"I love how you can always find a table there!"

"You never need to tip the servers!"

"The bartender was at his best when serving Bud Light!"

I say, we let them go!