O.K. - this is goody-two-shoes calling:
I have never smoked, never used drugs, except for one little pill to defy my husband, might have been LSD (it was heart-shaped and pinkish-red) - didn't like the experience but it was interesting.
I try to have good food, take the odd closer look at some of the stuff I buy regularly - today I checked my sunflower oil which I use sometimes for frying food and found out, no, it isn't healthy - 0.8g trans fat per 100 ml of oil - I never re-use it though, after frying the pan gets wiped with kitchen paper and then into the rubbish; I'll be trying out ghee next instead of sunflower oil for frying. I do like good wine, but usually only have it in company and with food.
Just returned from England, where my very clean-living and always vegetable-eating etc. daughter has contracted cancer 7 years ago - she is now worse - and tries every diet under the sun, and I (and her family) with her. Have eaten nothing but cooked (mostly boiled) vegetables with a bit of chicken or fish from time to time - no salt no sugar - for 6 weeks. Returned home, just bought a proprietary ice-sorbet (Weis) and found it incredibly sweet - then checked the label: yes when you work it out it consists of water and flavour and a 25% solution of sugar. Similar with a lot of things I buy, not regularly, but from to time - EVERYTHING simply tastes too sweet now after having a 'forcibly cleansed' palate and once you check the ingredients, you realise there is a lot of sugar in almost everything, including spicey sauces. What's worse a lot of the sugars are derived from corn, which is deadly, at least its capacity to make you fat is.
Sugar is a case in point, because as children we love it, can't do without it, but children burn a lot more energy than adults - have you ever seen a healthy child do ANYTHING SLOWLY? No, they run, they move fast, they shove, jump, exercise almost all day, given a chance - not so adults, who these days have mostly easy, often sedentary, jobs.
I remember a guy I knew from a mine, who drove those big trucks and he was a big boy - and he drank nothing but liters of coke when driving them trucks. Don't know what became of him. Incidentally the fat had lost him his virility - or maybe the sugar caused the fat and then the consequence was a very sad man, who gorged on pornography and it didn't make any difference in his non-performance in matters romantic. I coped, empathized but he was so obsessed, it became impossible even to go out with him anywhere without him asking around for contacts from waitresses etc. because after all it couldn't be him, so it must be the woman; getting the right one was the secret according to D.
Our modern diet is too much of everything - in times past, unless you were royalty or nobility - one's diet was restricted to seasonal stuff, cheaper stuff like lots of bread and cheese, eggs and cabbage, lots of cabbage and root vegetables in almost every European nation - meat was saved up for Sundays, in poorer households not even that - stuff like dried beans, peas, lentils were used a lot more than nowadays; cakes also once-a-month, or (in my home) a weekly delicacy, also on Sunday.
Potatoes were bought in sacks and kept in cellars or dark cool places - fresh vegetables bought when they were in season - special 'winter' apples were kept on special shelves or on tops of wardrobes to ripen and were available into winter at times. I remember just eating one apple per day, that was my daily intake of fruit - but there was always a boring vegetable with dinner, but I used to hang out for the raw stalks when Mum prepared them. In the country, with my cousins, we'd know where the apples and pears were ripening and go and steal some - wonderful feeling to make those 'raids'. We even collected apricot kernels and smashed them open and ate the bitter nut inside - now we know they contain Laetrile, used in cancer treatment.
Every part of a meat animal had its use, or made it into soups - no waste.
Soups were important - homemade soups, often made with left-overs, even stale bread made it into soups.
Weekly trips to the markets where sometimes farmers brought their produce in from the country were routine.
I even remember my Mum and I collecting elderberries from the roadside in the Vienna Woods which she made into a delicious jam, always sweetened a little with added pears.
Housewives were good at preserving things when they were in season etc. etc.
Nowadays we have everything from around the world on tap, all year round and it does not seem to make us any healthier?
But people are getting older, so things can't be that bad - I simply wanted to point out, the we have too much of everything, including sugar. I am proud to say that I rarely need to purchase sugar, even though I bake. Atm I am keeping a check on how much per year I use; I treat it as I treat other spices: a little goes a long way.
- drugs? IMO should be used to alleviate disease, but they are here and we need to learn to deal with them, sensibly.
As for anyone pushing drugs especially onto youngsters, punishments should be much harsher - we need to rewrite the rule book on that one URGENTLY - IMO
Taurisk
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