• The louder the music the more you drink.

• Vertical farming: the gardening of the future.

• How about we just watch out fat and calories and eat lots of fruits and veggies?

• If you're thinkin' about my baby it don't matter if you're black or white.

• The South leads our nation in obesity. This should probably come as no surprise.

Hey! Why did Times writer Ellen Carpenter just gloss over this rather telling piece of information in Sunday’s puff piece about a Thursday night on the town with R&B star Ashanti?

By dinnertime, Ashanti was starving. “I don’t remember the last time I ate,” she said as she rode an elevator to the club’s garden-floor dining room. She paused to think. “It was a Carney’s turkey burger. That was Wednesday afternoon in L.A.”

And right when you go, “Wait, wha? Before big events Ashanti starves herself?” Carpenter’s already onto the famous guests in attendance at the singer’s album release party.

CONTINUED »

IT AIN'T THE DEF JAM DETOX, BUT… Oprah Winfrey is forgoing meat for 21-days and doing her normal Oprah duty to promote the hell out of the the people — Quantum Wellness author Kathy Freston and Canadian motivational speaker Eckhart Toll — who inspired her. Now their sales will probably multiply with every pound the O loses. But it's not about weight, Oprah wrote on her blog. "This 21-day cleanse gives me a chance to think about [eating] differently and see what my attachments are to certain kinds of foods – and what I'm willing to do to change. Don't know if I'm going to feel better or worse, but I'm willing to try to see if my body at least feels differently." Countless women across the world just emptied their freezers. [People]

When I read that Aretha Franklin brought her own food to the Sony/BMG Grammy after-party, I thought it was a joke. Unfortunately, I don't think it is.

Instead of noshing on the chicken Caesar salad bites, mushroom tarts or mini-milkshakes offered at the Sony/BMG bash, Aretha Franklin (with Brandy) brought her own food, picking up hot dogs from Pink's takeout stand.

A new study suggests that weight loss stories in black women's magazines tend to recommend fad diets and faith at higher rates than "mainstream" women's magazines, which are more likely to promote eating whole grains, smaller portions and lower-fat foods. Wonderful, because fad diets and "faith in God" are two sure things to melt off the pounds of the black women — 3/4 of whom are overweight or obese — reading the magazines! I'm sure even the most conservative pastors would tell you that laying off the fries and getting your ass off the couch will help you lose weight better than prayer.

For their data, researchers used 406 weight loss articles published from 1984 to 2004 in Ebony, Jet, Essence, Ladies Home Journal, Better Homes & Gardens, and Good Housekeeping.

CONTINUED »

• If it's finals time and you feel the need to pull an all-nighter, you might be better off just taking your ass to bed.

• Do a lot of research before you do DNA testing.

• ADHD drugs: not only are they over-prescribed, they might send you to the ER.

• Singing your way to quitting smoking sounds nice in theory, but…

• Did anyone really believe Anna Nicole Smith really lost weight using TrimSpa?

• On World AIDS Day weekend, don't let AIDS fatigue take you over.

• Something black people have in common with Chinese women.

• Inner-city African American women have trouble meeting dietary goals that help prevent cancer.

• Along the same lines, more than 50 percent of black and Mexican women are obese.

• Out of the four men arrested for NFL player Sean Taylor's murder, three were in their teens. Somehow, this study doesn't really excuse their behavior.

• One in three people believe in ghosts! This is the sort of study conducted solely for Halloween purposes.

• Oh, those astronauts. When they're not slapping on diapers and driving for hours to kidnap their lovers' girlfriends, they're cracking jokes in space.

• An entire school system in Eastern Kentucky shut down after one kid came down with a superbug. Seem excessive?

• Five tips for healthy eating that the majority of black people will probably never follow.

• Racial disparity in alcoholism treatment completion? Guess which racial groups are on the negative end.

Well, this explains the tight dresses and possibly the mysterious Page Six item about Ashanti's avoidance of the cameras.

R+B star ASHANTI lost eight pounds (3.6 kilograms) this summer (07) on the Master Cleanser diet. The pretty singer felt she needed to shape up for a run of promotional appearances for new film Resident Evil: Extinction and new album Declaration and so she spent a week eating nothing.

She explains, "I did the lemon-pepper-maple syrup diet for seven days. "When I got really hungry, I ate fruit. I lost eight pounds and kept it off."

The Master Cleanse (aka Beyonce's Dreamgirls diet) is known for a lot of things, namely instant gratification, but "keeping the weight off" is not one of them. She's either still living off of lemon water and fruit or she'll soon have to retire her new dresses.

[CM]

• Like kids in a candy store, all of us are.

• Little girls are becoming less and less little these days.

• And once again, we have a health problem caused by environmental ills that some people like to pretend don't exist.

• Scientists refute studies that say black males naturally have more aggressive prostate cancer, blaming the issue on diagnosis and health care.

• Soda makes us fat? No way.