May
25
As delightful as it was unexpected
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My good friend Neil kindly proof read one of my books on the Oriental game of Go. He is appropriately picky, and did a splendid job. So I needed to return the favour. Rather than resort to money, I offered to photograph his family, and he was happy to accept.
The sun shone yesterday, as I arrived at his house. It had been 2 years since I previously photographed him, his wife and 2 children. I was surprised to be greeted with great excitement by the 2 and 5 year old girls, who leapt around with way too much energy.
An hour and a half later, as I was packing my camera equipment away, ready to depart, I could hear the elder girl being consoled by her mother. She was crying heavily, and saying “I don’t want him to go”.
This was sooooo moving, in part, of course, because it was so unexpected.
I will always remember that moment - such a shame that we adults lose that sense of joy and sadness that can render such raw emotion.
May
14
Food Standards Agency : 30th May
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Sorry - diet again. But do remember that we eat every day and food affects us a lot - much, much more than you could imagine.
Anyway, I wrote an email to the Food Standards Agency regarding the advice on their ‘Eat well, be well’ web site. I simply asked for the Science behind their recommendation that we eat more carbs and less fat. Here is the dialog so far :
19 Apr Initial email
7 May Acknowledgement. They would forward my email to the Nutrionist.
14 May No reply yet.
14 May I write a letter to the Welsh arm of the Food Standards Agency asking the question again.
19 May Reply from Welsh FSA to say they are chasing the London failure to respond to my email. The WFSA Director is aware of this situation. Sounds good.
21 May Cajoled into action, a London nutrionist emails to say she is working on the reply. Not entirely sure why work she ever be required for the science behind their most fundamental advice. Maybe nearing a reply.
29 May :
Received my reply from the Nutrionist. In summary, the high carb / low fat advice is based on 2 pieces of research by COMA (Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy) :
Diet and Cardiovascular Disease (1984)
Nutritional Aspects of Cardiovascular Disease (1994)
I cannot get free access to these reports just yet. I would be very interested to read them. It concerns me that their main principle is based on research by one party, disbanded in 2000 (replaced by SACN - The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition).
I have asked the Nutrionist for copies of these reports.
May
7
Low carb status
Filed Under Health | 2 Comments
I have been eating a very low carbohydrate diet for 10 days now. I am making written notes of the progress, although the value of my experience is heavily reduced because of the clouding effect of heavy anxiety/psychological reactions. The change in eating and its effect, is almost as big an impact as getting married.
The salient point is that I have periods of sustained clear headedness that I have not had for about 15 years. The normal fogginess in my thinking is almost totally gone.
After 15 years of suffering with head fog (in addition to headaches), I now find a resolution by accident! I tell people and they are non-plussed. This baffles me - if a friend had resolved debilitating long term condition and was wanting to celebrate, I would think that I might be happy for them!
Of course, the rectifying of a condition that has blighted me for 15 years in less that number of days merely reinforces the staggering significance of a low carb diet.
And fear not - the ‘blighting’ of the Atkins diet (a packaged variation on low-carb) was not Scientifically grounded. This blighting is another signature of Capitalism - bullying or tarnishing anything that might dent the enormous carbohydrates industry’s profits.
If you really want to know, then read :
“Trick and treat” by Barry Groves.
This cuts through the dogmas such as 5-fruit/veg a day, and gives 400+ pages of raw facts.
I will summarise :
“Trick and treat” is the most important book I have read, or am ever likely to read in my life. By a good margin.”
I have bought 4 more copies to lend to family and friends.
I have learnt more of true, meaningful value from this book about health than the sum total of all other books in my life.
I am know to enthuse and thereby exagerate. This time, the plaudits are entirely appropriate. It will knock your socks off.
May
7
On the whole, Capitalism is way better than alternatives such as Communism. But the quality of Capitalism is less than it seems - many of it’s shortcomings are subtle.
Subtle in terms of detection, but not in deleterious effect.
I’ll give you two examples.
First, milk.
Remember the milk in a bottle on your doorstep? You normall shook it to distribute the cream which rose to the top. Pasteurised full fat milk is so heavily processed that not only does this not happen, by calves cannot survive on it, so depeleted of nutrients by this processing.
This processing is carried out to sterilise the product - the suppliers do not want to be sued so use brute force to avod this - and to extend its shelf life. Mostly so that we do not complain about sour milk, but also to maximise profits.
This is the signature of Capitalism that I refer to.
Second, Newspapers.
When the likes of Rupert Murdock took control, costs were ruthlessly slashed. This essentially killed the long held mandatory practice of journalists to double check stories.So news now, no longer vetted, can, and is frequently sourced by PR departments. We are told what they want us to here, not the truth.
The constant drive of Capitalism to yield profits by cost cutting has no genuine concern for the consumer.
These are but 2 examples.
In summary, the adage that our ‘Quality of life’ has rarely been so good is a myth. Much better to say that our ‘Quantity and range of things to buy’ had never been higher.
Quality is being squeezed out of the equation.
This is deeply sad, partly because, in many cases, we are not even aware of it happening.
May
1
Parallel lines
Filed Under Health, Life, Psychology | Leave a Comment
Sorry, but the theme of my blogs is likely to be diet for a while.
I realised that there is a parallel between our mis information about a healthy diet and that about withdrawl from heroine.
As I mentioned in another article, the deterrant of a massive painful and sustained process of withdrawl from Heroine is perpuated by not only the World powers, but also by the ‘addicts’ themselves. The World powers make staggering amounts of money from drug trafficking, so do not want heroine users to know that a few days of flu like symptoms is all they are likely to suffer in order to release their dependence on the drug.
Sadly, the drug of carbohydrates is a much much tougher cookie. Not that anyone you are likely to know apart from myself is likely to advocate a virtual withdrawl from carb consumption.
I am on day 5 of the withdrawl, and 52 years of enormous dependence on carbs is making the adjustment tough. I feel ill a lot of the time. Light headed, weak, and even, today, feelings of food poisoning.
This is not terribly surprising considering the weight of time I had mis-eaten.
So why bother, when I feel so ill?
Many reasons. One, of course, the principle one, is that I trust the concessus of opinion in the many articles I have read.
But two, and most critically, underneath the spaced out head, weak body state I am often in, I notice massive changes. My brain is constantly clear.
I have no pre-lunch craving for food, with a strained, foggy, irritable head.
I have no post lunch lethargy.
I feel very stable in mood. Energised by not hyper as I am often likely to be.
I no longer have low blood sugar problems. For the first time in decades.
And whilst my headaches persist, the steady flow of glucose to my brain means that they are an irritant, and not an interferent. They do not dominate. At least, not so far. And 5 days in a row is exceptional for me - in such a time span, I nearly always have one day with a whole day of almost incapable thinking faculties.
I am keeping a detailed diary of each day - what I eat andhow I feel. I will post it on this blog when I get time.
As it stands, I have yet to face the consequences of a truly healthy diet - how is makes me anti-social for not eating carbs when with others.
But I just had a meal of cray fish and a little mackerel in coconut and olive oils. No carbs. No veg. And I fill replete.
The food tasted absolutely divine. Two reasons why :
- The oils enhance the taste.
- The taste of this real food is not obscure by carbs.
Now I understand why my dad called carbs ‘Cannon fodder’. This fodder we do not have to eat.
But anyone thinking of adopting this diet should have time a plenty to cope with the weakness and light headedness, and is best advised to start with a simple compromise - halve your normal amount of potatoes/rice/bread/pastaand add a littlefat in the form of olive oil, or sesame oil, or quality cheese, even cream. Preferably full fat.
Oh, and by the way, saturated animal fat is not bad for you. Another myth for good measure.
May
1
Mass indoctrination
Filed Under Health, Life, Psychology | Leave a Comment
I declare indebtedness to a combination of 3 things :
- The Worldwide communication by the masses for the masses thanks to the Internet.
- Amazon for stocking a staggering number of books.
- The freedom to read these mass communications, and the books they refer to via Amazon.
I mention this here because I sense a huge upsurging in knowledge of the World as it is rather than how we are lead to believe it is. I refer to the latter as mass indoctrination. The Internet, vast quantities of it written far removed from this mass indoctrination, is revealing a swathe of information never before revealed to the masses. But it is also gradually undermining and exposing this mass indoctrination.
A simple example of this is evidenced by how long it takes to move from an unsure position to that of atheist. The sheer repetition of the word and power of God is enormous. It gets rooted into the minds of even those who casually declare no belief in Him. Th need for indoctrination (especially children) is created by the need of a minority in power who want to sustain that power, regardless of the validity of the Bible.
The sheer weight is enough :
“If you are told a lie often enough and you will believe it”
I will explain the full context for this concept in a moment.
I have just read the 10 page introduction to the latest delibery from Amazon. I went for a long walk afterwards, almost in terms, because that reading was very much an epiphany for me. It brought together threads from various readings in a lucid way that flipped a switch in my mind.
The book (”Trick and Treat” by Barry Groves) details, with 54 pages of references, how we have all been conned for decades. A mass indoctrination.
Without wishing to damage the clarity of the introduction to this book, I will attempt to summarise it.
The promotion of a high-carbohydrate/low-fat diet is not based on sound Science. It exists and is perpuated to achieve the following sinister combination of aims :
- To coerce us to buy an ever burgeoning range of carbohydrate based foods. The carbohydrate foods industry is worth hundreds of billions a year. It is much easier to sell carboydrates than perishables such as fresh meat and fish.
- The imbalance of high-carbs and low-fat sets us up for a catalogue of problems and illnesses. The visible ones are obesity and diabetes. But cancer and hear disease are the less obvious ones.
- The pharmaceutical industry thrives on our illnesses, giving us drugs to treat what a healthy diet would provide uis in the first place.
But of course, I am being mislead by a single, off-beat book. But that is the whole point of indoctrination - its sheer power. The cancer rates have risen by a factor of around 10 in the last 100 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, heart disease was rare.
As an invariant universal, those people around the World still sustaining themselves on an original native diet were very healthy. In many places, there are no dentists or physicians. You may suspet that genetics plays a large role. But people from these places ‘converted’ to a Western diet get fat, and ill, when before they were healthy.
Much, much more profound, and the moment of epiphany for me was that simple matters such as colds, and illness in general is mostly avoidable by eating a low-carb/high-fat diet.
Just think about that.
My friend Nick, whilst regressed now to a dreadful diet, albeit temporarily, has not had a cold for 30 years. He cannot remember being ill. I put this down to his unique personality. And a strong correlation is valid I suspect. But he ate a low-carb/high-fat diet for 22 years.
You may wonder how the Governments, medical profession and food standards agencies could be mass indoctrinating us for decades. The sad, salient point is that too many people in positions of power in the Government and Industry have only money as a concern. Our position in all matters is that of a manipulatable consumer. The medical profession, driven to obsession by a ’symptom-pill’ dogma is massively controlled by Industry.
The health of the masses is not one that will make the most money for Industry.
It is our ill-health that does.
Again, I ask you to think about that.
They feed us junk food, and pills to fix us because it makes us ill.
You may be wondering about the title of the book - “Trick and treat”. It is based, as is obvious, on the nasty business where Halloween creates extortionists of children - we play a trick on you if you do not give us a treat. The book refers to the Worldwide healthy eating con as the trick - but they then treat the ensuing ailments. We get hit twice.
And the subtitle of the book?
“How Healthy Eating is making us Ill”.
Next time you see someone (or even observe yourself) eating a slice of toast with butter on it, try to see that the toast is merely energy - not a food. The butter - that dreadful, but nice topping - is the real food.
I strongly believe that my ‘healthy’ diet was a cause of bodily weakness - indirect cause of an injury prone nature. You see, I ate a very low fat diet - I cut off every scrap of fat off everything, not realising that fat is good, and a vital part of our diet.
OK, to convince you just a bit more. Think of when you were very young. A baby, growing really really fast. Ideally slurping your Mother’s breast milk.
What is the biggest component of that milk?
FAT.