Hello, Im writing this so others can avoid MY awful experience with this Âjump start 48 Âhour diet, sometimes called the Hollywood Diet. ItÂs Monday now and IÂm almost feeling normal again, but still very weak. Ever have stomach flu? ThatÂs what this was like. Saturday morning, full of determination, I mixed up a batch of the WomanÂs World recipe of the diet. Since it had more protein, it sounded more healthy than the Hollywood version of the Âjump-start recipe. Besides, I donÂt care for papayas or apricots, which may be the source of the bitter tang some users have complained about. It tasted just FINE, and I had my first shake at around 10 am, then went about my usual weekend activity, which was sewing. Not too strenuous. I worked steadily with a big container of water next to me, taking sips off that to keep hydrated as many have recommended. When I got hungry, I drank another fruit shake. Of course I used the toilet a lot more with all this liquid, but IÂd expected that, after all, I was trying to clean out my system. In articles IÂd read about this sort of diet IÂd learned our bowels can hold from 2-7 pounds of wasteÂwhich accounts for most of the Âweight lost in this diet. Of course, once youÂre back on regular food afterwards it all comes back, a little detail the TV infomercials leave out. Around 4pm my dogs came in and began staring at me. Not normal behavior for them. They are very perceptive pooches and their message was clear: ÂAre you feeling bad? They were right. I was feeling woozy, and had a headache, which I attributed to the sudden diet shift. I drank more water and decidedÂafter sewing a long seam up the wrong wayÂthat I needed to compromise on this. My weakness was such that I couldnÂt sit up to sew anymore, so I lay down on the bed and thought things over. As in the Slim Fast diet the idea of having one sensible meal for dinner made sense. So I had one (with some Tylenol) and felt a little better, but not much. I found I was too weak to sit at the sewing machine even then, and my trips to the toilet were becoming more frequent and cramp-ridden. Ditto for my between-runs rests. I dozed the rest of the slow evening, lurching up from bed to deal with bouts of out-and-out diarrhea, cursing myself for being so stupid. I got NO sleep that night, only catching short, shallow dozing between stumbling to the bathroom every 30 to 40 minutes, and groaning with cramp. Throughout all that my little dogs snuggled close, giving what comfort they could. I had chills, then the sweats like a fever victim, terrible cramps, and a thunderous headache that no amount of Tylenol would fix. I kept drinking water, knowing that if I didnÂt keep hydrated IÂd only feel worse. Finally I took a dose of Emetrol for the nausea. Exactly 30 seconds later I was bent over the tub with an uncontrolled case of the heaves, and remained there in abject misery for the next half hour. I crept back to bed, extremely weak, and went back to the chills, cramps, and sweats routine for the rest of the night. In the morning I still had the awful headache, and the shakes kept me from standing upright for more than a couple minutes. The cramps had abated, so I felt certain I was on the down side of the bell curve. I continued drinking water, and in the afternoon managed to keep down a couple finely chewed crackers. I remained bed-ridden the whole of the day. By evening I had dry toast and an egg. So, there it was: the 24-hour give yourself stomach-flu symptoms diet, and, NO, I did NOT lose ANY weight. The only jump-start to my system darn near burned out the battery, leaving me incapacitated for 2 days, weaker but wiser on the third. (And full of gas!) I will mention the one time I did lose weight a couple years back. I reduced my calorie intake to 1000-1200 a day, stopped drinking caffeine and anything fizzy (including diet fizzy drinks) and increased my walking to a mile a day. I lost 30 pounds. ItÂs the same old story, the quick miracle fads just donÂt work. I was able to stick to this one for only 8 hours before my body violently rebelled against the abuse. Had I stuck to it for 48 as the regime calls for IÂd have landed in a hospital with a bunch of health care workers shaking their heads over me, too polite to ask ÂWhat were you THINKING???? So you think about it now. As for meÂIÂm going back to the old routine. ItÂs slower, but more certain and 200% healthier. Pat Elrod

Mechanical soft diet refers to the consistancy mainly of the meat. Mechanical soft foods are very well cooked with lots of gravy or sauce for the meats. Meats can be cut up finely or med fine like ground beef. Also meat can be chopped in chunks. It will depend on the persons degree of chewing/ swallowing difficulty. Meats should be sliced very thin and always have gravy or sauce with them to aid in swallowing. Any foods can be eaten on a mechanical soft diet as long as they are cooked very tender and the meat is the proper consistency. If needed you can puree the meat or even all foods. Add nectar, juice, gravy, broth, milk or other calorie dense liquids to foods to puree.Even pureed foods can vary in consistancy. There are generally 3 consistancies used: pudding constancy, nectar consistancy and thin consistancy (almost the consistancy of milk). Some speech therapists also recommend using applesauce consistancy. The best thing to do is consult a speech therapist and your doctor if the person is having swallowing problems so a modified barium swallow test can be given. This test will assist in determining the proper consistancy of foods/liquids to avoid choking and aspiration. I hope I helped. Good luck to you. Debra Truncale, RD, LD

The canola oil is important to the recipe. This was the answer to the same concern about canola oil, from a website that I get sent to Disney for trying to post. The canola oil story is a HOAX!! And that's all there is to it. Any "warnings" from an e-mail are 99 percent certain to be lies and hoaxes. Don't buy into it. "What we have here is a bit of truth about a product's family history worked into a hysterical screed against the product itself. There is no earthly reason to give any credence to this rumor -- Canola oil is not the horrifying product this widely-disseminated e-mail makes it out to be, nor has the FDA turned loose on the American public a health scourge worthy of being named one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. An appreciation of what this scare is based upon begins with a better understanding of what canola oil and how it came into being. The rape plant (Brassica napus) is a member of the mustard family, as claimed in the e-mail. However, before associations between rape and mustard gas set in too strongly, it should be noted turnip, cabbage, watercress, horseradish, and radish are also members of this family of plants. Rapeseed oil has been used for cooking for centuries in Europe, India, China, and Japan. As modern science is finding out, its previous use wasn't necessarily a guarantee of safety. Cooking at high temperatures with unrefined rapeseed oil now appears to be related to an increased risk of lung cancer because at high temperatures cooking oil gives off chemicals capable of causing mutations in cells. Unrefined rapeseed oil is particularly notable for this, but other oils also have this association. Those intent upon doing large amounts of wok cooking with any sort of cooking oil should therefore lower their frying temperature from the 240C to 280°C called for in Chinese cooking to 180°C. Rapeseed oil naturally contains a high percentage (30-60%) of erucic acid, a substance associated with heart lesions in laboratory animals. For this reason rapeseed oil was not used for consumption in the United States prior to 1974, although it was used in other countries. (Americans chose to use it as a lubricant to maintain Allied naval and merchant ships during World War II.) In 1974, rapeseed varieties with a low erucic content were introduced. Scientists had found a way to replace almost all of rapeseed's erucic acid with oleic acid, a type of monounsaturated fatty acid. (This change was accomplished through the cross-breeding of plants, not by the techniques commonly referred to as "genetic engineering.") By 1978, all Canadian rapeseed produced for food use contained less than 2% erucic acid. The Canadian seed oil industry rechristened the product "canola oil" (Canadian oil) in 1978 in an attempt to distance the product from negative associations with the word "rape." Canola was introduced to American consumers in 1986. By 1990, erucic acid levels in canola oil ranged from 0.5% to 1.0%, in compliance with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards. This light, tasteless oil's popularity is due to the structure of its fats. It is lower in saturated fat (about 6%) than any other oil. Compare this to the high saturated fat content of peanut oil (about 18%) and palm oil (at an incredibly high 79%). It also contains more cholesterol-balancing monounsaturated fat than any oil except olive oil and has the distinction of containing Omega-3 fatty acids, a polyunsaturated fat reputed to not only lower both cholesterol and triglycerides, but also to contribute to brain growth and development. In other words, it's a healthy oil. One shouldn't feel afraid to use it because of some Internet scare loosely based on half-truths and outright lies."

My Dad has the same problems as your Dad. You should make your own bread. Bread has lots of sodium and you can make it sodium free. Milk has lots of sodium. You can buy soy or other grain milks but they have lots of sodium also. But, you can make rice milk real easy and not add salt and either drink or use it in your receipes and it is sodium free. If a salad dressing calls for oil, use water and thicken with cornstarch or arrowroot. I use Fetherweight Baking powder (no sodium), EnerG egg replacer (0 fat, 0 cholesterol, 5 mg. sodium), EnerG baking soda (no sodium). I create my own receipes for my Dad. I gave him a low sodium cookbook (uses less than 500 mg. sodium in a days meals). I cannot remember the name of it. E-mail me and I will let you know.