The diet industry is making you sick, fat, and poor – that’s the claim of author David Gillespie in his new book, Big Fat Lies.

The premise is simple: almost everything we’re told about how to lose weight and be healthy is wrong. Diets don’t work. In fact, studies have shown that the best indication that an individual will be heavier in two years is if the individual is on a diet now. Vitamins, Gillespie says, aren’t actually helping you either. All they’re doing is draining your bank account and giving you very expensive urine.

What it all comes down to is sugar. It’s highly addictive, it’s in just about everything, and its prevalence has made it the root cause of most modern chronic diseases (obesity, Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, etc.). The polyunsaturated fats we consume (like margarine and canola oil) make us increasingly prone to the ill effects of sugar by amplifying our risk of heart disease and cancer.

So what can you do to live a life that’s actually healthy? Gillespie’s answer is simple: do not eat sugar or polyunsaturated oils and the rest will fall into place. At the supermarket, steer clear of processed foods and foods high in fructose. Don’t buy foods like margarine, jam, honey, Nutella, dried fruit, seeds (except flax seeds), low-fat milk, fruit juices, flavored yogurt, commercial desserts (like ice cream, cookies, and cakes), and dessert wines. Try to stay on the perimeter of the store, where the healthiest foods - fruit, vegetables, meat, milk, eggs, and bread – are kept.

Eat meat (ideally grass-fed and with the fat still attached), eggs, and dairy products (but beware of yogurts with added sugar and seed-oil margarine). Indulge in all kinds of fruits and vegetables, as long as they are whole rather than juiced or dried, and any nuts and seeds that are whole and fresh. Cook in animal fats, coconut oil, or olive oil. Don’t be afraid to put butter on bread (and, for that matter, don’t be afraid of bread).

At breakfast time, avoid most packaged breakfast cereals (and that goes for muesli, too), flavored oats, and liquid meals. Over lunch, don’t eat anything fried at a national franchise, jam sandwiches, or foods that are slathered in high-sugar sauces. Dinnertime should not include anything cooked with seed oil and anything cooked with a simmer sauce or commercial Italian sauce.

Follow Gillespie’s rules and you will be thinner, healthier, happier, and live a life that is big fat lie-free.

As Netflix faces increased competition from other streaming services like Hulu, YouTube, and Amazon, it must find a way to distinguish itself from both its competitors and mainstream television. Their strategy for continued domination of the streaming services market so far can be summed up in two words: original programming.

Netflix’s first foray into the original programming market is Lilyhammer, a drama that stars Steven Van Zandt (of The Sopranos fame) as a former New York mobster who finds himself in Lillehammer, Norway after entering the witness protection program. Beautiful though it is, the town doesn’t provide much for a former mobster to do, and he soon returns to his old ways. The show has been a success - Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, recently announced that there will be a second season.

Despite budget issues, Netflix also plans to release House of Cards later this year. The show, which will stream 26 episodes over 2 seasons, is an American update of a BBC political thriller from 1990. Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, and Kate Mara star with David Fincher, director of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network, at the helm.

Orange Is The New Black, a comedy from Weeds creator Jenji Kohan and producer Liz Friedman, is also in the pipeline. The show is based on the memoir of Piper Kerman, who wrote about her year in a women’s prison.

Famke Janssen and Bill Skaarsgard are slated to appear in Hemlock Grove, a show based on a novel by Brian McGreevy. The groundbreaking gothic horror series, which is set to stream 13 episodes in 2013, will be directed by Eli Roth.

And in what is likely one of the most anticipated television releases of all time, Netflix will be home to season four of Arrested Development, the cult favorite that was canceled by FOX in 2006.

With the possible exception of House of Cards, all of Netflix’s original series will use a single-day release plan that makes all episodes available to subscribers at the same time. Users can then watch a complete series at once or break it into smaller viewing sessions.

With this new plan, Netflix stands a good chance of keeping their lead in the streaming video industry. The question that remains for the company is whether spending money on original content means having less flexibility and budget dollars to acquire the more famous, mainstream titles from major studios that make up the core of Netflix’s business.

For more information on this service, please read our Netflix review.

The marriages may not last, but weddings and weight loss are a match that will be together forever.

Every bride wants to look her best on the big day, which for many means a strict diet and fitness regime with little margin for error. Losing weight can be a challenge at the best of times, but faced with a deadline as big as a wedding day, brides are getting creative in the battle of the bulge. Traditional methods are out – drastic measures are in.

One woman, featured in a recent New York Times article, responded to the challenge by taking regular vitamin B shots and making weekly $45 visits to a Medithin clinic. Another woman turned to the BluePrintCleanse, a $65-a-day service that provides six bottles of organic juice. Another spent a week surviving on 800 calories per day, delivered via a feeding tube inserted through her nose. Extreme? Yes. But if mainstream media is to be believed, extreme is the name of the bridal weight loss game for the foreseeable future.

A 2007 study at Cornell University found that 70% of the 272 engaged women who participated reported wanting to lose weight (20 pounds on average) before their weddings. Crash diets are becoming increasingly popular, but so are healthier, more traditional approaches to weight loss. “I’ve been training brides for 12 to 13 years, and the typical weight loss is 15 to 20 pounds,” said a Brooklyn-based personal trainer who worked with a client who was so proud of getting fit that she dropped to the ground and performed push-ups before walking down the aisle.

The article has sparked a fierce debate. “If we needed more proof that American women are cultivating a collective eating disorder,” blogged a writer on the Independent Women’s Forum, “enter the feeding tube bride.” The bride herself hit back at critics, saying “I lost the weight. There was no other consequence. I wasn’t putting myself at risk…..It made sense to me. Why can they say it’s crazy?”

Doctors are also divided on the subject. Dr. Gianfranco Cappello of the University of Rome defended the practice. “The millions of obese patients who can benefit from this treatment outnumber the thousands of people with cancer or neurologic dysfunction that require this therapy,” he is quoted as saying. But Dr. Michael Cirigliano, medical expert for Fox 29 in Philadelphia, disagrees strongly. “It’s mind-boggling,” he said in a segment. “I’m speechless. You should not do anything like this. It’s dangerous. It’s wrong.”

Weigh in on the debate: Would you go on an extreme diet for a special occasion?

For some reviews on services to help with weight loss you can checj out our Weight and Diet category.

Imagine you own a trucking company. You also own all the highways that make up your company’s shipping routes. You decide to levy a tax on all the vehicles that use your highways – all the vehicles, that is, except those that belong to your trucking company.

Is that fair? Absolutely not. But that’s exactly what Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is accusing Comcast of doing. Hastings took to his public Facebook account to call Comcast out for breaking net neutrality through its data cap policy on the Xbox 360 Xfinity app. Hastings’ post reads:

Comcast no longer following net neutrality principles.

Comcast should apply caps equally, or not at all.

I spent the weekend enjoying four good internet video apps on my Xbox: Netflix, HBO GO, Xfinity, and Hulu.

When I watch video on my Xbox from three of these four apps, it counts against my Comcast internet cap. When I watch through Comcast’s Xfinity app, however, it does not count against my Comcast internet cap.

For example, if I watch last night’s SNL episode on my Xbox through the Hulu app, it eats up about one gigabyte of my cap, but if I watch that same episode through the Xfinity Xbox app, it doesn’t use up my cap at all.

The same device, the same IP address, the same wifi, the same internet connection, but totally different cap treatment.

In what way is this neutral?

The simple answer is: it’s not. Though all four services offer the same content, they are clearly not treated equally. Using Xfinity does not use up an account’s data allowance, while watching the same content through other services does. Xfinity has a clear advantage, encouraging subscribers to use that service over the competitors and breaking net neutrality.

The Xfinity app received immediate criticism for this exact reason when it launched late last month, and the only defense Comcast offered was that the service is delivered over its private IP network, rather the public Internet. Hastings’ complaint has attracted the attention of the Federal Communications Commission, which says it is monitoring the situation. There is still a question of whether it violates actual net neutrality rules, but either way, it’s the principle that matters most here.

Want to take action? There’s a petition on PublikDemand asking Comcast to make a choice: apply data caps equally or stop using them altogether.

For more information on the movie service mention here you can read our review of Netflix.

File this one under “Really, really cool.”

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, Ancestry.com has released the most comprehensive collection of the ship’s records in history. The collection is available for free searching online until April 15.

The infamous tale of the RMS Titanic began on April 10, 1912, when the British passenger liner set sail from Southampton. Four days into her transatlantic crossing, on April 15, 1912 at 11:40pm, the ship hit an iceberg while traveling in the north Atlantic. The collision caused the Titanic’s hull to buckle inwards and over the next two and a half hours, the ship filled with water and sank. Some passengers and crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, the majority of which were women and children thanks to a “women and children first” procedure. When the Titanic finally sank, over 1,000 people were still onboard.

Upon hearing the Titanic’s distress signals, another vessel, the Carpathia, rushed to the ship’s rescue. Despite the best efforts of Carpathia’s crew, when they arrived on the scene it was too late for most of the sinking ship’s passengers. Of the 2,224 people who set sail on the Titanic’s voyage, only 710 survived the disaster.

In memory of the tragedy, Ancestry.com has put together The Titanic Collection, which includes thousands of records related to the tragedy, including passenger lists, crew lists, and lists of deaths at sea. The collection features the wills of the Titanic’s captain, Edward Smith, and the American tycoons Benjamin Guggenheim and John Jacob Astor, who were all among the 1,500 passengers who died.

Other records that can be viewed online include images of the headstones of 121 Titanic passengers buried at Fairview Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia and over 300 coroner inquest files. Interested genealogists can also search through the passenger list of the Carpathia and a more general record, the Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1835-1974.

"The sinking of the legendary Titanic was a major moment in the history of both the United States and the United Kingdom," remarked Dan Jones, VP of Global Content for Ancestry.com. "As the years have passed, many generations have lost information that would confirm relatives who may have been aboard. We're very pleased to offer these records free for a limited time and provide a single source to find answers to some long standing family mysteries."

The collection can be viewed at www.Ancestry.com/Titanic. For more information on this Genealogy service you can read our review of Ancestry.