Food Rant 4

Bike coffee photo, this is what happens when you start to do a series, let real life get in the way and then start taking photos unrelated to the series. :-)

Ranting on..

Luckily we have scientific research to help us to choose what to eat. Scientific research is good because it is scientific and you can’t argue with science. Except that science only gets done because it is funded. Who funds food and drink research? Well it may be funded by governments, by charities such as the British heart Foundation but also junk food giants such as Unilever, Coca Cola or Mars. Coca Cola also sponsor the American Association of Cardiologists. Most of the members of the board who advise the UK government in sugar intake are rather heavily funded by the junk food industry, as recently reported by the (spit) Daily Mail. How can we trust research that is funded by the junk food and sugar industry? (I don’t trust the Daily Mail either of course but these things are a matter of public record) As someone in the Mail article puts it, it is like putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank.

Furthermore, there are “scientific journals” out there that have paid entry. If you pay them, they will publish your work no questions asked.

If you suffer from any of the illnesses that are very probably caused by processed food, your doctor is likely to give you pills to make it better and is likely to pooh pooh the idea that your diet can be causing it. It is not their fault. They are trained and sponsored by the drug industry, a drug industry that actively benefits from people being sick because they can then produce drugs to cure it. I was completely unsurprised to see that statins are being pushed to more and more people, the goalposts are being moved much further apart to encompass more people who now “need” to take statins. I knew this would happen because it is happening in the US. Here, if you are over 60, it doesn’t matter how healthy or fit you are, you need to take statins. In the US you simply have to be black. Isn’t that shocking? However you can lower your cholesterol naturally by eating more vegetables and taking exercise. And did you know that Glaxo Smith Kline were paying doctors to go to events and talk up the effects of their drugs? Or that they are given sales targets, yes sales targets for prescribing drugs? They are only stopping this because they got caught. Don’t think this is the end of it.

I don’t believe that GPs are out to harm us, of course they aren’t but when they are sponsored and trained and paid by drugs companies, they are probably going to go along with what they are told. They can hardly go along with what they are NOT told by definition! My GP has been great in helping me but he seemed very surprised that I didn’t want to go on medication (6 pills a day every day!) for something which could better be cured by finding the cause of my illness and removing it. (In the gap between when I actually wrote this and when I eventually blipped it, I have tried eating gluten again and felt rather bloated and rubbish, confirming it.)

So is it all just a great big conspiracy to keep us fat and sick and reliant on pharmaceuticals to survive? Well maybe and maybe not. You see we could be said to be complicit in all of this. Many people would much rather take a pill than have to eat veg or take a walk. And also, every time a new study comes out to show that such and such is bad for us (or good for us) there is a bit of a rush to buy the magic ingredient, but have you noticed how often that magic ingredient is something that is magically available in a box as a pill or a powder? Garlic is good for you! (garlic capsules are available!) Fish oil is good for you! (fish oil capsules are available!) and by the way, the fish themselves do not produce this oil - they get it from algae they eat. The fish oil industry seem to keep that one a little quiet don’t they? Plant sterols lower cholesterol! (plant sterols are available in this highly sugary yoghurt drink!). Etc etc. But as soon as these amazing health benefits become available in a small, convenient package, they somewhat lose their health benefits. Not just because they have been extracted and removed from their component parts and all the good they might also be doing you but because if you are eating all your vitamins and minerals as a capsule, you are leaving all that room in your stomach for all the foods that have very little, if any nutritional value and which may well be actively bad for you. Those wonderful healthy wholegrains being a notable example. Apart from the fibre they really have very little nutritional value. Go and look. If they have decent levels of vitamins it is because they have been fortified- ie had them added artificially. Why do they have to have vitamins added? Because they are of very little nutritional value. And you can get your fibre from fruit and veg. Which are full of vitamins and minerals.

On the flip side of that coin, we keep getting told that stuff is good for us when it really isn’t. Who wouldn’t want excellent health in a pill? If you can get the goodness of kale in a kale pill instead of having to wash, chop and cook actual kale then that is great isn’t it? If you can’t trust the Government, the healthcare industry and the food industry to tell you what is good for you and what medicines will make you better, then who can you trust? All of the evidence shows that people in general really do try to eat healthily. It is just that we are being fed (both literally and metaphorically) a pack of lies.

STOP PRESS Another one of those “chocolate is good for you” news stories, (which are bound to be followed very shortly by one of those “chocolate is bad for you” stories)

This one is particularly sinister. A quote from the article:-

“Meanwhile, the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute plans a big trial of a chocolate pill for heart disease.
It's teaming up with chocolate manufacturer Mars,”

Not only are they trying to turn chocolate into a PILL, it is going to be funded by MARS. HA!!

HAHAHAHA!!