LORI MARBLE: How much information do you consume?

I’ll start with a “poundage” update.  

So far I’ve lost 23 pounds. I’m going to be in a holding pattern for a little while. Let my weight stabilize, and then I’ll start the process again.

So far it’s been easy to give up sugar, a little bit tougher to exclude bread. The one thing that I continue to crave is potato chips. I have noticed that my sense of smell is heightened; things that smelled good – “pre diet” – now smell amazing. Funny, no matter how good the chips look and how brightly the colored package on my kitchen counter shines, attempting to capture my attention, chips now smell like dirty socks.

It’s sad that I’m craving dirty socks!

The twins on the other hand have no problems with the dirty socks on their feet, and the smelly chips they devour by the bag.   

I had to run errands the other evening, dinner was ready for the boys when I left and when I returned they had eaten everything I prepared and had launched into their chip stash.

“I’m hungry again,” said the older twin. “I ate dinner and two bags of chips. What can I have now?”

Did you catch that “two bags of chips” comment? He was talking about the large size bags, not the dinky individual servings.

I can’t complain about too much about what the boys eat. During any sporting season they self-regulate and stop drinking pop. They’ve always been good vegetable and fruit eaters. 

Bags of salad disappear at about the same rate as bags of chips.

All teasing aside, they’re not junk food junkies, but I do wonder about kids their age and the changing flow of information, especially news. Are they junk news consumers?

Big Al and I read three newspapers a day. 

We can’t go to bed until the late night news is done. Granted we both have jobs that often interact with the media, but in general we want to be informed. Information is power. 

The news they take in has to impact their school, sports or immediate social media circle or it is of no value.

Yesterday afternoon I attended a workshop on how to reach people through the third screen; the cell phone, iPods and iPhones that have attached themselves to our persons like a fifth appendage. 

The presenter kept apologizing that his slides were out of date. Every time he corrected the number of new iPhone / smart phone users or wrote the new number of “apps” for these devices, the number would skyrocket the next day.

I read that the number of words an average person consumes – reads or hears — every day is 100,500. The rise of social media, the Internet, and information at the touch of a button on our phones is the culprit for the tripling of information we read from 1980 to 2008.

That vast information going into our systems and the twins’ brains every day has to be akin to devouring several family size bags of chips. 

I’ll try to balance out their junk news glut with a good newspaper column every day or two.

Lori Marble writes a weekly column for the Daily News.