Monday Moaning

Here we go again!

Sugar, the big enemy.

Headlines today:

Cut back amount of sugar children consume, parents told

Health officials believe children are consuming more sugar than they should

Parents are being encouraged to cut back on the amount of sugar they feed children in a new health campaign.

The Public Health England (PHE) Change4Life campaign offers “sugar swap” tips, including swapping ice cream for yogurt and sugary drinks for sugar-free alternatives.

Health guidelines advise that 10% of a person’s energy or calorie intake should be made up of sugar.

But officials fear children between four and 10 are consuming far more.

‘Health impact’

Source: BBCNews Read more

Opinion:

While it may be true, sugar is not the BIG enemy. They’re barking up the wrong tree… again. Because the real tree has gremlins.

The real enemies are twofold, sweeteners and HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup); i.e. sugar-free alternatives.

Sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose are far more damaging to the body than sugar.

HFCS, which has replaced natural sugar in nearly all sodas and prepared foods in supermarkets, is a plague.

Natural sugar has 50/50 sucrose/fructose. HFCS has an imbalance, as much as 40/60. The excess fructose cannot be processed by the body and my understanding goes straight to the liver and gets converted to fat.

HFCS is the hidden beast that is responsible for the current explosion of obesity. Check this…

Now look at this…

Check out these figures…

Click the image to enbiggenate if your eyes are like mine

Nearly every drink and preprepared food product in the supermarkets have HFCS…

The governments won’t do anything about HFCS, because they’d be fighting giant corporations who pay millions for the ‘right’ politicians to be elected.

Politicians are basically cowards, they won’t protect your rights over their chances of being reelected.

You and your health simply don’t matter!

Your only guarantee for health is to totally eliminate HFCS from your diet. Forget the sugar problem, compared to HFCS it’s not a problem.

Monday Moaning

Two moans this morning…

Tanzania accused of backtracking over sale of Masai’s ancestral land

Masai told to leave historic homeland by end of the year so it can become a hunting reserve for the Dubai royal family

Tanzania has been accused of reneging on its promise to 40,000 Masai pastoralists by going ahead with plans to evict them and turn their ancestral land into a reserve for the royal family of Dubai to hunt big game.

Activists celebrated last year when the government said it had backed down over a proposed 1,500 sq km “wildlife corridor” bordering the Serengeti national park that would serve a commercial hunting and safari company based in the United Arab Emirates.

The Tanzanian government has been accused of going back on a deal not to sell Maasai land bordering the Serengeti national park. Photograph: Alamy

Now the deal appears to be back on and the Masai have been ordered to quit their traditional lands by the end of the year. Masai representatives will meet the prime minister, Mizengo Pinda, in Dodoma on Tuesday to express their anger. They insist the sale of the land would rob them of their heritage and directly or indirectly affect the livelihoods of 80,000 people. The area is crucial for grazing livestock on which the nomadic Masai depend.

Unlike last year, the government is offering compensation of 1 billion shillings (£369,350), not to be paid directly but to be channelled into socio-economic development projects. The Masai have dismissed the offer.

“I feel betrayed,” said Samwel Nangiria, co-ordinator of the local Ngonett civil society group. “One billion is very little and you cannot compare that with land. It’s inherited. Their mothers and grandmothers are buried in that land. There’s nothing you can compare with it.”

Nangiria said he believes the government never truly intended to abandon the scheme in the Loliondo district but was wary of global attention. “They had to pretend they were dropping the agenda to fool the international press.”

Source: TheGuardian Read more

Opinion:

Do I really need to say it? This smacks of pure greed and corruption.

The last thing the world needs is to pander to the likes of the Dubai royal family. They’re nothing but a bunch of spoiled brats.

.

Mediterranean diet is best way to tackle obesity, say doctors

Mediterranean diets may help reduce the risk of heart attacks, researchers say

A Mediterranean diet may be a better way of tackling obesity than calorie counting, leading doctors have said.

Writing in the Postgraduate Medical Journal (PMJ), the doctors said a Mediterranean diet quickly reduced the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

And they said it may be better than low-fat diets for sustained weight loss.

Source: BBCNews Read more

Opinion:

In my opinion, this is bullshit. Not totally, but once again the ‘experts’ are ignoring the real issue. Ban HFCS from all foods and sodas, and the problem disappears, almost.

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Make you Fink on Friday

Does this make you think?

Why does America have a greater obesity problem than Europe…

 

Monday Moaning

The world is slowly waking up.

Realising the major causes of obesity; organisations are trying to get the governments to listen.

But the governments don’t want to listen, there’s too much lobbying and money involved.

One article I read:

Shoppers ‘misled’ over level of fat, sugar and salt in food

Call for ban on promoting foods claiming to be healthy but which actually contain high levels of sugar, fat and salt – The Guardian Recommended reading

Is on the right track.

Another:

Health group calls for ‘sugar tax’ to cut child obesity

– BBCNews More recommended reading

Is barking up the wrong tree, close to the right one, but not close enough.

The blame is put on sugar, maybe true, but the real culprit is High Fructose Corn Syrup that is replacing true sugar in the majority of sodas and prepared foods.

Generally, the public, and these do good organisations are unaware of HFCS; and the industries want to keep it that way.

Instead of a sugar tax, although it’s a good idea, they should be calling on a double or triple tax on any product that contains HFCS. Better still they should be calling for a complete ban on the poison.

HFCS is cheaper than true sugar, ergo more profits.

What is the problem?

As I see it, supported by reading many sources, sugar is 50% sucrose & 50% fructose.

HFSC is 55-60% fructose and correspondingly less sucrose.

Doesn’t sound too bad…

But this imbalance, however it appears slight is the problem. Our bodies cannot process the excess fructose, it goes straight to the liver and becomes fat.

Therefore, an increase in obesity.

Everybody is clamouring about the obesity epidemic, but nobody is putting the blame where it belongs.

Which foods contain HFCS?

These…

And these…

And these…

And nearly every other product you buy at the supermarket or fast food outlet.

First introduced into the American food industry in the 1970s, HFCSs were used in sodas from 1984.

Looking at this graph can you see the rise in childhood obesity beginning in 1980s?

And, continuing to rise rapidly since then.

It’s only in recent years with a little awareness that there has been a slight dip.

The rapid rise in obesity in the U.S. correlates to the introduction of HFCS into processed food. – Source

There’s another issue:

As Addictive As Cocaine: HFCS – America’s Most Deadly Addiction?

– From the Trenches well worth reading because it contains info about bees too.

Much has been said on both sides of the Atlantic about declining bee populations.

If you don’t have bees, you don’t have pollination; you don’t have pollination, you don’t have food.

Sugar is a problem, but nowhere near the problem of HFCSs

We have to get the governments to put the blame where it belongs; instead of saying kids need to exercise more, sure they do, BUT THAT’S NOT THE PROBLEM! That’s just passing the buck.

We have to take personal responsibility and shun these products.

We have to send a strong message, because if we don’t, we’ll have more cases

Do you want this…

…as the future for your kids?

 

 

Monday Moaning

Get off your ass and walk!

I read a post this morning about the costs of private transport. I’ve lost the link now… Arrrggghhh!

But it took into account the cost of mining, manufacture, etc, right up to the consumer.

Update… 

The link: Good News Monday

The problem today is people seem to have forgotten that they have legs, and that legs were around long before cars.

Cities are not designed for walking, they are designed for cars, and there is more than half the problem.

The old days when you had a corner store and could walk have gone, because people have cars, they can drive to the supermarket.

One of the major problems the world is facing today is obesity. Today in an article I read that 50% obese by 2020 is greatly underestimating the problem.

People today need to get off their asses, and walk. Walk to the shops, I do sometimes, 25 minutes, and I am encumbered by a walking stick. Most people today are encumbered by their i/smart phones. We are encumbered by our need for convenience, and it will be the death of us.

As parents we are setting a horrible example to our kids, and making the problem worse by our own pathetic examples. Kids today just want to sit with their TVs, video games, etc. We need to give them better examples to follow.

Monday Moaning

Sell, sell, sell, at all costs, sell!

Even if it’s bad for people’s health.

Coca-Cola’s Conspiracy Against Tap Water

Coca-Cola is running a stealth advertising campaign.

Stealth? Why would a corporation as ad-dependent as Coke spend big bucks on advertising that it doesn’t want consumers to notice? Shhhh – because the campaign is a surreptitious ploy to enlist restaurants in a marketing conspiracy that targets you, your children, and – of course – your wallet.

Coke calls its covert gambit “Cap the Tap,” urging restaurateurs to stop offering plain old tap water to customers: “Every time your business fills a cup or glass with tap water, it pours potential profits down the drain.” Cap the Tap can put a stop to that, says Coke, “by teaching [your] crew members or waitstaff suggestive selling techniques to convert requests for tap water into orders for revenue-generating beverages.”

The program provides a guide for restaurant managers who would direct Coke’s customer assault, a backroom poster to remind waitstaff “when and how to suggestively sell beverages,” and a participant’s guide to put “suggestive selling” foremost in mind as staff confronts the enemy… uh, I mean customers. Tactics include outflanking those recalcitrant customers who insist on water. Just switch the sales pitch to bottled water – remember, Coca-Cola also owns Dasani, one of the top-selling brands of bottled water in the US.

Early in its Cap the Tap scheme, the beverage behemoth offered two incentive programs for waitstaff: “Suggest More and Score” and “Get Your Fill.” Both were competitions to spur servers to push more Coke on American restaurant-goers.

Coke’s CEO has declared that “obesity is today’s most challenging health issue,” and solving it requires all of us “doing our part.” Really – by selling more Coke? That’s proof that hypocrisy is now the official rocket fuel of corporate profits.

Listen to this commentary on The Progressive:

Opinion:

“doing our part” (in the battle against obesity). Really? That’s a joke. Selling more of the biggest cause of obesity on the planet – Coca Cola!

As long as soda manufacturers use HFCS, they are killing people.

Governments are scared stupid to tackle these corporations, the lose of political donations bribes makes government sphincters quiver with fear.

Restaurants need to tell these companies where to put their nasty deals and hope it hurts!

 

Are we Slowing Down?

Many children ‘slower runners than their parents were’

Children are advised to do at least an hour of vigorous activity every day

Many children cannot run as fast as their parents could when they were young, a study of global fitness says.

Experts say the work – being presented at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting – suggests children’s fitness levels may be declining.

Researchers analysed data spanning 46 years and involving more than 25 million children in 28 countries.

On average, children today run a mile 90 seconds slower than did their counterparts 30 years ago, they said.

Obesity

Across nations, cardiovascular endurance – gauged by how far children can run in a set time – has dwindled consistently by about 5% every decade, according to the findings.

The decline is seen in boys and girls and across all ages from nine to 17 years, and is linked to obesity, with some countries faring worse than others.

Lead researcher Dr Grant Tomkinson of the University of South Australia’s School of Health Sciences said: “In fact, about 30% to 60% of the declines in endurance running performance can be explained by increases in fat mass.”

The problem is largely one of Western countries, but some parts of Asia like South Korea, mainland China and Hong Kong are also seeing this phenomenon.

Dr Tomkinson said children needed to be inspired and encouraged to do more vigorous exercise.

If not, the public health consequences could be dire.

Huff and puff

“If a young person is generally unfit now, then they are more likely to develop conditions like heart disease later in life,” said Dr Tomkinson.

To stay healthy, children and young people need to do at least an hour of physical activity – such as walking or cycling to school and running in the playground – every day. It can be done in small chunks rather than one session.

Prof Michael Gwitz of the American Heart Association said: “The type of exercise is really important.”

He says exercise must be something that “makes you sweat” and is “sustained and dynamic” to promote cardiovascular fitness.

Simply going to the gym or belonging to a school sports team might not be enough, unless you are moving around a lot.

Christopher Allen of the British Heart Foundation, said: “It’s well established that being physically inactive in childhood can have serious health implications later in life.

“Keeping active can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and the sooner kids start, the better.

“By encouraging children to get active, we can help protect their hearts as they grow up. Parents, schools and community groups can all help kids on their way to 60 minutes exercise a day.”

Opinion:

Not only exercise, get them off any form of soda, and don’t feed them anything that comes in a packet or a can from the supermarket.

 

Monday Moaning

The world seems to be treading a fine line between need and want.

The world needs food.

The world wants to drive for fun.

It seems that we can’t have both.

Biofuel crops: food security must come first

Even so-called ‘good’ biofuels need safeguards to ensure that they don’t damage biodiversity or displace other crops

Biofuel crops increase emissions through land clearance, fertiliser use, and by displacing other crops. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

Since 2003, the UK and other EU countries have effectively poured billions of euros into biofuels, on the premise that they reduce emissions from transport. But it has been an expensive case of the Emperor’s new clothes: we now know that many biofuel crops actually increase overall emissions. At the same time, they damage biodiversity, hurt some of the world’s poorest people by pushing up food prices, and cost us an estimated £460m each year.

Early in September, the European Parliament will have its first opportunity to put the brakes on. MEPs will vote on whether to amend biofuels policy to take account of the critical issue of indirect land use change (iLUC) and at what level to cap biofuels made from food crops.

Biofuel crops increase emissions through land clearance, fertiliser use, and by displacing other crops. When millions of hectares of land are switched from food to biofuel crops, food prices rise and food production is displaced, triggering a domino-like chain of events ending in cropland expansion elsewhere, including into the tropical forests of Southeast Asia and the savannas of South America and Africa. This is iLUC.

We can’t point to the precise hectare of rainforest that’s felled because a particular farmer now grows fuel rather than food. But the evidence is clear that burning millions of tonnes of food as biofuel on top of what we eat leads to more land clearance and more fertiliser use (even accounting for useful biofuel co-products fed to animals). UK biofuel use in the first year of monitoring required around 1.4 million hectares of farmland, most of it overseas. That’s an area the size of Northern Ireland, just to provide 3% of our transport fuel. By ignoring iLUC, the EU overlooks a large share of the emissions triggered by its biofuel targets.

ILUC is not just about carbon. Agricultural expansion and intensification are among the greatest of all threats to wild nature. Each year, millions of hectares of new cropland threaten tropical forests, wetlands and other biodiversity-rich habitats. Fertiliser run-off from the US corn belt, which supplies us with bioethanol, helps create an oxygen-depleted ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive has laudable ‘sustainability criteria’, but unsustainable biofuels can still be imported; they just don’t count towards the targets. Furthermore, the criteria don’t address iLUC, so biofuel demand continues to cause deforestation and biodiversity loss. If a domino falls in the forest, apparently no-one can hear it.

Read more

Opinion:

Maybe we are the tail trying to wag the dog. We’ve got the whole issue wrong.

Maybe we should be curtailing non-essential motoring instead of trying to find more ways to provide fuel for it.

Cars should be banned from Sunday outings, travelling across the country for that holiday, used to get to work where there are public transport services.

Things like hoons driving aimlessly in search of a bonk on a Friday evening, the whole concept of motor racing should be banned, pleasure boating and fun jet skis.

We should instead be looking at more ways people can work from home. Groceries can be delivered by one truck, instead of 40 cars being used for a household shopping trip.

I must admit that I am not a fan of on-line shopping, but my ilk are at the tail end of life, we’ll be dead soon. On-line shopping must be used more and more. Each trip saved prevents a car being used, or provides one more space on public transport for someone who needs it.

Every kilometre travelled on public transport means less tyres being produced, less cars and parts being manufactured.

Walking should be considered as a health benefit as well, less obesity; obesity costs every country millions in healthcare costs.

The world is all but doomed already, but if we change the paradigm now, maybe that eventual doom can be forestalled.

The first priority is to feed the world, to hell with that trip to the beach on Sunday.

 

Monday Moaning

I’m a day late again, blame it on BBQ dishes from Sunday’s family BBQ.

But there’s always something to moan about, so today it’s a Tuesday Moaning.

Today the subject is bullshit.

Bullshit that we have been fed for years.

Fat Is Bad For You

As Men’s Health magazine  states, no one has ever proven so called bad fats are really bad for you!

Fat is a necessary nutrient for the body and especially for the brain. In fact, without fat you and I would probably not be here at all as the human brain evolved and developed into the biggest and most highly evolved brain on earth due to humans eating fat. No fat = No human beings.

Even saturated fats are not all bad for you. Saturated fats are probably the most demonized food on earth! Many cultures thrive on high saturated fat diets including Eskimos (blubber – what do you think blubber is?), and the Kenyan Maasai tribe in Africa.

The reason we think saturated fats are so bad is Ancel Keyes and his cherry [lying] picking data. I dealt with Mr. Keyes in some depth a few years back, Ancel Keyes.

Mother Nature Network (MNN) lists several studies that show that prove saturated fats do not lead to heart disease, including LDLs, as well as listing the benefits of saturated fats.

As MNN states, this does not mean that we should go on a an all bacon-cheeseburger diet. Remember the key is to eat all things in moderation. Two other good reads on saturated fats can be found at body building dot com and at Men’s Health, which is always a good source for health related articles. On the fat issue read, What if Bad Fat is Actually Good for You?

This is reblogged from: More Thyme than Dough, Obesity Myths

Opinion:

I have been aware for some time that we are fed this bullshit that fat is bad for you, so I was interested in following up on this post about obesity. I am obese.

Picanha is a Brazilian cut from the sirloin

I recently had to have some medical tests, one of them was cholesterol. My cholesterol is perfect, perhaps a little low.

I eat fat!

See that picanha to the left?

I eat it, the fat is delicious, that’s where the flavour is.

Some waiters try to avoid serving the fat, I create a scandal.

We have been fed bullshit for so long that people believe natural fats are bad for you.

Why is this?

So the makers of fats like margarine, cooking oil, vegetable cooking fat can sell their ‘healthy’ products to you.

There is no independent scientific data that proves natural fat is bad for you, quite the obverse. In relation to cholesterol, every cell in your body needs it to reproduce, it you don’t have enough cholesterol your health suffers. So why do doctors always say your cholesterol is too high? Simply to sell more drugs that lower cholesterol, that is BigPharma at play. Cholesterol lowering drugs are one of the best money spinners on the planet.

Unless your cholesterol is over 250, you don’t need them. Doctors suggest 230, that way they can prescribe drugs; you don’t need them.

My cholesterol was 235, the ‘specialist’ tried to get me to lower it, when I challenged him, he admitted I was right. So I got no drugs for cholesterol.

If you throw ALL unnatural, man made fats out of the home, and return to good old butter, lard for cooking and stop cutting the fat off the meat, and if you can return to milk from the farm, you’ll be a healthier person. Also, a return to the ‘yucky’ foods like black pudding, liver, kidneys; food that we have discarded from our diets these are all valuable sources of iron and such.

I am not a doctor, I am talking commonsense from life. My admitted obesity is from my sedentary lifestyle due to mobility problems. I truly wish I could get out and about more.

Stop believing the bullshit!