Bloggers

The fads we all enjoy living with!

Aug 26, 2016

It bothers me a little that we have become a race full of worriers. Or to be more accurate, there are some who like to be worriers on our behalf and tell us all the things we shouldn’t do for fear of the effect they may have on us!

For instance, as recently as a week or two ago an article appeared in the press telling us that red meat was terribly unsafe to eat, (especially the way I like it – near to raw!), and we should instead get our proteins from such things as mung beans and nuts, etc. How crazy is that? The human race has been eating meat, good, honest red meat since the times when we lived in caves and had yet to discover fire and gourmet cooking. If meat, undercooked or not, is so bad for us, how did the human race manage to survive until now, and look so well on the stuff? In fact, I believe if there is one state in which meat can do us harm, it’s when it’s actually overcooked with a coating of charred material on the outside – a well-known and established cause of cancer which applies to such other delicacies as toast and roast potatoes as well.

Another of the things the “experts” try to get us worried about is the danger of putting a mobile phone up to your ear when using it, because it will cause massive and deadly growths to spring up inside our brains leading to time spent in a coffin! They say it’s the radio waves that are being emitted which are the danger, but what bothers me about this little gem is the fact that the air all around us is packed with radio energy all the time and wherever we are. Lying in bed at night, having a bath, traveling in your car or enjoying a nice evening out in a posh restaurant with your wife, (or your mistress), there they are, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. And not only that, but these ‘deadly’ waves are also passing straight through your body. To them you just don’t exist! Want proof? Turn on a portable radio and tune it to a station, any station, it really doesn’t matter which. Now, hold the radio against your stomach and you can hear the chosen signal can’t you, because your stomach is facing towards the emitting station perhaps. But now, turn slowly round through three hundred and sixty degrees and ‘woe & behold’, there was no change in the music coming from the region of your midriff, despite the fact that somewhere during your rotation you must have had your back towards the station and your stomach pointing away from it! This is because, as I said, your body is no impediment to the signal. And similar to the ‘raw’ meat above, we humans seem to be surviving the onslaught quite satisfactorily!

I remember, during the 1950’s a famous series of advertisements appeared in the UK, telling us all that we should “Go to work on an egg!”, because they were good for us, providing most of the basic food requirements and easy to prepare. Then, in 1988 Edwina Currie, a well-known British member of parliament created a furore, (especially in the egg producing industry), when she announced the fact that most eggs contained, as well as the egg itself, dangerous levels of salmonella! For several years, no-one ate very many eggs, and it was the 1990’s before it was proved that she was basically wrong and it was only one or two particular flocks that had been responsible, and they had since been cleared! Now we can enjoy this delicious and versatile food once again, though I confess I still am wary of raw eggs. I used to enjoy one in milk every morning as part of my breakfast, but no longer, all because of that silly M.P.!

I could quote many other instances of what I believe to be scare-mongering, a lot of it through misinformation, some for commercial reasons, but common sense tells me that we wouldn’t be here now if all the tales were true – the human race would have been wiped out centuries ago. So basically I just get on with my life and try to ignore the fads we get involved in, a way of life that hasn’t let me down for eighty-two years!