How To Find Out If You Are Old
No, I am not going to try this!
Sugar is poison. My heart attack has finally opened my eyes to the truth
Giles Fraser, The Guardian
Globally, diabetes has almost quadrupled in 35 years and yet the multibillion-dollar sugar industry is happy to keep us in the dark about why
I am now a member of the zipper club. I know, I thought it sounded rude too. But apparently it’s the club name for those of us who have a scar right down the middle of our chest. I have one down my leg too, from groin to ankle. And as I spend time recovering from a heart bypass operation – mostly doing very little, watching the cricket, reading the paper – I have started to reflect on my condition. How did it come to this? How did the arteries of my heart become so clogged with gunk that I may have been just weeks from meeting my maker?
“Diabetic,” they said. “Pah,” I thought. I don’t feel any different. I just get up to pee a bit more at night. Some biochemical medical problem just seemed a bit too elusive, abstract, distant. I mean, when Diane Abbott blamed a bad interview on diabetes, who really took that seriously? Earlier this year, I was sent on a diabetes awareness day and spent the time looking out of the window, bored. They tried to explain it to me but I wasn’t concentrating.
Well, now that someone has sliced through my breastbone as they might a Christmas turkey, the whole thing doesn’t seem quite so distant. And suddenly – and unsurprisingly – I am concentrating. All ears to, and pretty evangelical about, the evils of sugar. Sorry to have doubted you, Diane.
Back in September 2016, the Journal of the American Medical Association published papers, discovered deep in the Harvard University archives, that demonstrated how the sugar industry has been manipulating research into heart disease for years. These papers revealed that the purveyors of this white poison – in behaviour straight out of the tobacco industry playbook – had been paying Harvard scientists throughout the 1960s to emphasise the link between fat and heart disease and ignore the connection with sugar. Since then, Coca-Cola has funded research into the link between sugar and obesity. And the confectionery industry has paid for research which “demonstrated” that children who eat sweets are thinner than those who don’t.
As I write, my son returns from the shops, perfectly on cue, laden with a chocolate bar, a full-fat Coke and a packet of lollipops. I want to tell him that Willy Wonka is a death-dealing drug dealer. But I bite my lip for now. He will think me a crank. Everything he likes has sugar in it. That’s my fault – he got hooked on sugary breakfast cereals as a child. As Gary Taubes explained in his remarkable book The Case Against Sugar, published last year, it has “assimilated itself into all aspects of our eating experience”. Advertisements have normalised the omnipresence of sugar as a part of a balanced diet. And my son’s brain has become accustomed to the dopamine it releases. He has become an addict. Most of us are addicts.
In 1996, 1.4 million people in the UK had diabetes. Since then the figure has trebled to over 4 million. Diabetes now gobbles up more than 10% of the NHS budget, with that percentage set to rise steeply in the coming years. The World Health Authority published a major report on global diabetes last year. Its figures show that the number of people with diabetes has gone up from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. This is not just a matter of bad individual choices. You can’t dismiss this as the aggregate of many millions of singular decisions, each one nothing more than a matter of weakness of will and responsible for itself alone. This has become a global epidemic.
For the last 30 years I have built a pretty effective protective shell against fat-shaming. I would probably have taken losing half a stone if offered, but I wasn’t especially unhappy with my body shape. But now I see things differently. Now I see a multibillion-dollar industry that makes its profits by keeping us obese and in the dark about why. After my operation, I cut out sugar and carbohydrates as best I could. I have lost 10 kilograms in the five weeks since. And I plan to lose a lot more. It’s not a diet – I hate diets. It’s a form of protest. The scales have fallen from my eyes.
Beware the candy man.
NASA Confirms It Dumped Chemtrails Over Baltimore
More and more, the “chemtrail conspiracy” becomes much less of a conspiracy and more of a reality. Geoengineering corporations are take advantage of liberal climate change agendas, offering up technology that will manipulate the weather. The system that’s now rising up is one of profiteering (nothing unusual here).
https://prepforthat.com/nasa-geoengineering-chemtrails-baltimore/
This Is The Best Takedown Of The ‘Speed Kills’ Myth You’ll Ever See
One refrain you hear frequently from insurance companies, police, and the media is that ‘speed kills.’ It doesn’t, and this is the best debunking of that myth that we’ve ever seen.
http://jalopnik.com/this-is-the-best-takedown-of-the-speed-kills-myth-you-1302382244
500 Greatest Songs of All Time – Rolling Stone
If you want to revisit memory lane, here is a shortcut to get there…
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/the-500-greatest-songs-of-all-time-20110407
How Much Do You Want It?
The Prison Industrial Complex
This is one of many things we need to fix.
The rewards should be for improved conditions, not worsened ones.
Citizen In A Republic
Wise words these. It behooves us to be reminded of them from time to time.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Excerpt from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic” given be Theodore Roosevelt in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910
Her visit to Rome…
A woman was at her hairdresser’s getting her hair styled for a trip to Rome with her husband. She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded, “Rome? Why would anyone want to go there? It’s crowded and dirty. You’re crazy to go to Rome. So, how are you getting there?”
“We’re taking Continental,” was the reply. “We got a great rate!”
“Continental?” exclaimed the hairdresser.” That’s a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they’re always
late. So, where are you staying in Rome?”
“We’ll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome’s Tiber River called Teste.”
“Don’t go any further. I know that place. Everybody thinks its gonna be something special and exclusive, but it’s really a dump.”
“We’re going to go to see the Vatican and maybe get to see the Pope.”
“That’s rich,” laughed the hairdresser. You and a million other people trying to see him. He’ll look the size of an ant. Boy, good luck on this
lousy trip of yours. You’re going to need it.”
A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome.
“It was wonderful,” explained the woman, “not only were we on time to catch one of Continental’s brand new planes, but it was overbooked, and
they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful, and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot. The hotel was great! They’d just finished a $5 million remodeling job, and now it’s a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner’s suite at no extra charge!”
“Well,” muttered the hairdresser, “that’s all well and good, but I know you didn’t get to see the Pope.”
“Actually, we were quite lucky, because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder, and explained that the Pope likes to
meet some of the visitors, and if I’d be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me. Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me.”
“Oh, really! What’d he say?”
He said, “Who screwed up your hair?”