Some of the lab-coat bozos who dream up fake "studies" to convince you to eat or not to eat and to spend a lot of your money on buying books related to fake health and nutrition scams would like you to believe that wheat is your enemy. Unless you have celiac disease, it isn't, but if you're like most Americans, you don't know science from Shinola, don't know a study from a Studebaker or glutin from glockenspiels and the same goes for history and biology, but that's not what this is about.
A popular fiction is that "studies show" that the advent of agricultural civilization (is there any other kind?) made people smaller and so you should avoid agricultural products. Of course it's hokum designed to sell product and is popular with inflated airheads from Hollywood, but it's not a study, a scientific, randomized large double blind study, it's motivated speculation -- like all those e-mails I get telling me that some new scandal is going to get Obama impeached any day now.
Agriculture allowed cities to form. Cities allowed greater communication and closer association between more and more people and that fostered diseases and epidemics previously unknown or previously restricted in range. Such things had a strong effect on health and disease can easily explain what the diet "doctors" would like to blame, for their own gain, on grain. Even in modern times, AIDS, which may have been around for a very long time, was spread around the world by airplanes. Communication has a dark side, just look at what the spread of Europeans and their diseases did to the Americas. Still we live longer than ever, are more disease free, are larger than ever and remain active longer, Pizza and TV dinners notwithstanding.
Of course if you like to give names to the "ages" of Man, you'd have to consider the title The Information Age. Could it be however that pernicious, malicious, malignant and dangerous ideas, memes, lies, stereotypes, maledictions and political doctrines are the deadly side effect of the electronic media, just as cities, ships and Camel trains spread death along with culture and commerce?
Obama is going to declare martial law, going to take your guns, send you to death camps, murder your grandmother. Apollo 11 never went to the moon, that German plane, that Malaysian plane never crashed, that bomb never went off. Obama is a Muslim, Clinton tried to have the UN invade the US. Cell phones will kill you, wheat will damage your brain, cooking your food is bad, The Koch Brothers and Woody Harrelson know what's best for us and Subarus are made with love. Sure, it's the information age, but who can deny, looking at the vast majority of that information, that it's the bullshit age. Mythology has gone metastatic. It's mass produced for entertainment and profit, for greed and power and even though much of it is benign, much of it is deadly. It's not only deadly to your health, but to your cognitive, your critical faculties and whether or not it all ends with bangs or whimpers, the cenotaph, the tombstone of our species will be inscribed with these words STUDIES SHOW.
I see that coffee is back in favor as
ReplyDeletethe highest source of antioxidants. It was a university study, but perhaps Starbucks kicked in a grant or two?
IMO, the height of the bullshit age is common tap water in a fancy plastic bottle that sells for even more than the same bottle full of soda. Let's just throw in that some bottle water comes from California municipal taps (and they are in an awful drought. Guess, I'll go with the flow and flip on Dr. Oz.
Dr. Oz and his magic beans. Exposing any of these people as a fraud never seems to slow them down. But MY studies show there's no life without coffee, antioxidants or not.
ReplyDeleteI’m too impatience to wait for my percolator to twerk; so I grind coffee beans with my teeth and wait for an earthquake to steady my hands.
ReplyDelete"Subarus are made with love" damn....like,see, I knewz alla rest a dat was true, but I musta MISSED the one about the Subarus.....coulda been during one of my heavy druggie periods. Damn....still learn something everyday!!!!
ReplyDeleteThere really is nothing magic about beans or legumes, other than both excellent sources of protein. And, Dr. Oz is right most of the time according to my training sources. All scientific.
ReplyDeleteLast year, a Senate committee scolded him for selling fake diet products. From what I read, he admitted it's all a scam while simultaneously denying it. He claimed he never endorses anything while even now I get several e-mails a week about his latest miracle diet supplement. It rained all night the day I left - the weather it was dry. . .
DeleteWhat is Shinola?
ReplyDelete"What is Shinola?"
DeleteA long story, but here is the short version. In Part III, our stalwart traveler, Lemuel Gulliver, visits the Academy of Lagado where people are trying to turn excrement back into food and sh*t into shinola. Today, we have other names for them.
A wax shoe polish.
ReplyDeleteI guess this shows my age. Seems they don't make the stuff any more and of course hardly anyone wears shoes that require shoe polish. "He doesn't know shit from Shinola" used to be a very common phrase. Maybe it's a reminder of how damn young everyone is that they're now making watches under the Shinola brand name, and in Detroit, of all places.
ReplyDeleteI last polished my dress shoes 3 years ago. Don't go out to fancy functions much anymore. Enjoying it too!
ReplyDelete