Monday Moaning

I must admit that I was stuck for something to moan about this morning, so I had a nap.

I often do this in the vain hope that inspiration will up and slap me silly.

It doesn’t always work, and it didn’t this morning. So I got up and made bacon and eggs for a late breakfast.

It was when I switched on the TV to watch as I ate, I heard a doctor talking

absolute unadulterated bullshit!

That was the inspiration I needed.

The programme was a popular live talk show shown throughout Brazil daily and the subject today was fat overweight  women and their self-esteem.

The doctor stated that “over weight was caused by people’s addiction to carbohydrates.”

Man has been using high carbohydrate food since he stopped being a hunter-gatherer and discovered agriculture; corn being the principle crop.

But prehistoric man never had a weight problem!

The weight problem didn’t start until man became addicted to junk food. Not only junk/fast/processed food, but still more recently than that.

All these and more have HFCS

The real overweight problem began when we began to meddle with GMOs, and further with the replacement of sugar in soft drinks (sodas) and other sweetened foods with HFCS.

These are the real culprits, particularly the latter.

To make it worse companies have produced diet and Zero soft drinks using artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose, 200x sweeter than sugar. These sweeteners affect every organ in your body from the brain down. They disrupt thinking and learning, they play havoc with hormones and much more.

You have to look at why HFCS is a danger. Sugar (cane and beet) is almost pure sucrose, whereas HFCS is, roughly, 45% glucose and 55% fructose. YOUR BODY CANNOT PROCESS THE FRUCTOSE!

Therein lies the problem.

Once again we have the manufactures claiming HFCS is similar to table sugar, but independents say otherwise.

To hear a doctor spouting that carbohydrates are the problem, and ignoring the glaring fact that HFCS is by far the greater threat, makes me wonder where the medical profession has its head today; I believe well lodged in its nether regions.

There is another culprit, and that is we spend too much time on our fat acres and not enough time walking, working and exercising. Cars are the biggest problem there, but that’s another moan for another day.

 

Make you Fink on Friday

Kept in the dark and fed on bullshit

The more I read, the more I find stories that are not being told.

By lies or omission, we are being treated like mushrooms; kept in the dark and fed on bullshit!

It’s so prevalent that it’s hard to pinpoint because there are so many issues. GM foods, banking, Wall Street, wars, military, scandals, HFCS, labeling, local government, the government, fracking, unleaded gasoline. The list could just go on and on ad nauseum.

Here’s another one…

Toxic oil and gas waste being dumped in wells with thousands of violations

There is a new must-read investigation into documented environmental contamination of groundwater around the country from oil and gas waste that has never before been brought to light. NRDC has been sounding the alarm about the dangers of oil and gas waste. It can be very toxic, and can even be disposed of in residential neighborhoods, including people’s backyards–yet it is not subject to hazardous waste laws in the U.S. due to special political favors granted to the influential oil and gas industry. Because of this, NRDC asked the EPA to write new rules for toxic oil and gas waste.

The recent investigation by ProPublica, published in Scientific American, underscores the dramatic need for strong new safeguards to protect our drinking water from toxic oil and gas waste. The investigation focusses on underground injection of oil and gas waste. Current standards applicable to underground oil and gas waste disposal are inadequate to prevent toxic wastes from contaminating groundwater. Now ProPublica provides a lot more concrete evidence of this fact.

It is a long and comprehensive investigative piece; the reporter reviewed documents related to more than 220,000 well inspections. I encourage you to read the entire thing, but I will post some of the most frightening findings here (keep in mind that these wells are drilled through aquifers that are underground sources of drinking water):

• Experts are concerned and make clear that no one fully understands the current risks. A retired EPA expert in underground injection stated: “In 10 to 100 years we are going to find out that most of our groundwater is polluted, A lot of people are going to get sick, and a lot of people may die.”

Source: Switchboard Read more

Opinion:

Just one more item to be added into the long, long list of things we are not told. Issues that are vital to our very survival and nobody knows about them.

Here we have water, the most precious commodity on the planet, essential for our survival and it is being slowly poisoned because no one regulates the disposal of highly toxic oil and gas waste.

“It is not subject to hazardous waste laws in the U.S. due to special political favors granted to the influential oil and gas industry.”

Once again we see the politicians ‘granting favours’ to the industry regardless of the problems it could generate. Governments don’t care about you and I, they don’t give a tinker’s cuss.

When will we finally be told the truth?

Hopefully, before it’s too late.

Monday Moaning

Vegan friendly

I read this morning about ‘vegan wines.’ Then I nearly choked on my second coffee as I pondered… but, but wines are made from grapes and stuff (yes, there are fruit wines), there’s no steak or pork chops in wine making.

Which all lead to the big question; what the hell are these veges and vegany people up to now?

Well, the post talked about organic farming and there was a new term for me ‘biodynamic’ which sent me off to that great internet oracle Wikipedia:

Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms, emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants and animals as a self-nourishing system without external inputs insofar as this is possible given the loss of nutrients due to the export of food. As in other forms of organic agriculture, artificial fertilizers and toxic pesticides and herbicides are strictly avoided.

So, I am on a learning curve and I haven’t even finished my second coffee.

Reading further, I discovered some things about wine that I didn’t know. “Many wines are refined and clarified with egg, fish bladder and/or gelatin to remove various particles.” Quote from: Organic Authority.

Toe Jam

So, my initial reaction that they were worried about bullshit ah, manure, was a presumption. Although they don’t specifically mention bullsh… ah, manure in the vegan aspects, I wonder if they object to that as well.Which further lead me wonder what we would do with all the bullsh… ah, manure and political rhetoric in the world if we couldn’t use it to fertilise our grapes.

All this of course prompted me to wonder whether or not ‘toe jam’ was considered to be an animal product.

I am not a vege, nor a vegan, I am a healthy, if overweight (mainly due to my sedentary lifestyle), carnivore and consider these vege and vegany things to be fads perpetrated by the misguided; unless you are specifically allergic to some products.

I wonder as to where the bus will stop next… will grapes be banned from wine because someone heard one squeal as it was be cruelly trodden on?

Here’s something new to consider. Biodiversity itself uses animal products. For example, spraying the vines with ‘Preparation 501’ to enhance photosynthesis. Prep 501 is made from cows horns and manure.  Check here.

So we really are on the horns of a dilemma. How far do we go?

Check out the list on One Green Planet, there’s hardly anything in the supermarket that veges and vegany types can eat. I must admit, I was suprised.

NB: This was written somewhat tongue in cheek between my second and third coffees of the morning. I realise that there are those of you who take this seriously and consider your ideals to be loftier than those of us who are mere carnivores… It appeals to my mischievous nature.