McFat Like Me: Wanna’ Soup Or Size That?

McD’s began rationing French Fries Wednesday morning, December 17, at it’s 3100 Japanese locations as an emergency airlift of 1,000 tons of spuds and an extra shipment by sea from the U.S. East Coast set sail.

Industrial Food Manufacturer McDonald’s continues to spread diet-related disease internationally. 
Getty Images

The highly processed frozen spuds are deep-fryer ready, and a leading U.S. export. Folks in the Land of The Rising Sun love their French Fried spuds, and eat more than 300k tons of the imported American tuber annually, according to USDA figures. Of particular note, most of Japan’s locally grown potatoes are eaten fresh.

McD’s continually denies any responsibility, role or contribution to increased obesity, either in America, or abroad where they conduct business. But increased rates of Japanese obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, suggest not conspiracy, but wanton disregard for, if not flagrant violation of, Japan’s Ministry of Health 2008 ‘Metabo Law’ that requires men to maintain a waist line less than 33.5 inches and women less than 35.4 inches.

A McDonald’s in Japan

The American Fast Food Industry was introduced to Japan in the 1970’s, and since then, consumption of rice in the daily Japanese diet has decreased and been replaced by bread, meat, dairy products, hamburgers, French fries, milkshakes and doughnuts.

Similarly to America, one of the time-honored Family Values of enjoying freshly prepared food at home has declined, and consumption of Industrially Prepared Food, and use of video games has risen.

Even though the Japanese diet still includes much more fish having omega-3 fatty acids, the adoption of a more ‘Western Diet’ is causing health problems. O3FAs are thought to protect against heart disease, and on average, the Japanese eat much less food high in saturated fat than Americans.

The Japanese government has quickly acknowledged the damaging health effects of Industrialized Food Production, which is known as the Standard American Diet, and has moved to disincentivize their citizens from becoming obese like Americans.

Japanese people have historically enjoyed a high life expectancy, very nearly 80 years, although in recent years, their increase in longevity has slowed to 1.2%. The Japanese health care system provides Universal Coverage primarily through local government or employer insurance, and the system is foreseeing dire financial trouble because chronic diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, high blood pressure, high glucose levels and cholesterol will significantly burden the system.

As the Japanese population ages and their health begins to deteriorate, the workforce will not be large enough to cover those health costs. The government sees an opportunity to cut costs by lowering rising obesity.

cnbc.com/id/102275074

bu.edu/themovement/2011/05/29/the-fats-on-fire

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Why the LGBT community should support Shirey Ice Cream in Florence, Alabama

Edwin Markham, American poet

Outwitted

He drew a circle that shut me out–

Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in!

by Edwin Markham, April 23, 1852 – March 7, 1940

That brief poem, or epigram, by Edwin Markham summarizes succinctly the idea upon which I will expound in this entry.

In the past several days, it came to light that a Shoals area Alabama entrepreneur, Garrett Shirey – who, with his brothers Reese & Austin, are founders and co-owners of Shirey Ice Cream in the northwest Alabama town of Florence, population 39,447 – had Tweeted at least two uncharacteristic and very unbecoming messages. The specific dates and times they were made, and the content can be seen in the screen shot images of the Tweets, both which appear later in this entry.

First, some background.

Walking on Holy Ground: Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken Cafe & Museum, Corbin, KY

While in Kentucky, make certain you visit the National Corvette Museum, in Bowling Green.

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Journeys

In Kentucky, Fried Chicken History

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: August 24, 2012

WHEN making his rounds as a traveling salesman for a Chicago printing company, Duncan Hines would occasionally pull off the Dixie Highway in Corbin, Ky., and eat at Sanders Cafe. In the 1939 edition of “Adventures in Good Eating,” his pioneering restaurant guide, he recommended the cafe and its adjoining motor court as “very good place to stop en route to Cumberland Falls and the Great Smokies,” highlighting its “sizzling steaks, fried chicken, country ham, hot biscuits.”

The Sanders Cafe and Museum in Corbin, KY / Jonathan Palmer for The New York Times

The cafe is still there, only now it incorporates a museum and holds down a spot on the National Register of Historic Places, for one huge, unignorable reason. The owner, chef and resident genius of the place was none other than Colonel Harland Sanders, who, on this hallowed ground, cooked the first batch of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Cumberland Falls does not work the magic it once did, and Corbin itself is not high on anyone’s list of tourist destinations. But the Colonel Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum is a modest must. In addition to capturing a pivotal moment in the mass-marketing of American vernacular food, it evokes a dreamlike time, before the arrival of the Interstate System and its proliferation of fast-food restaurants and chain hotels, when traveling the American highway was a thrilling, high-risk proposition, with marvelous discoveries and ghastly disappointments waiting at every turn.

In its present form, the Sanders Cafe and Museum was born in 1990, the 100th anniversary of Colonel Sanders’s birth. JRN, a Tennessee-based company that operates nearly 200 KFC franchises in the Southeast, was about to open a modern KFC restaurant next to the old cafe. To mark the great birthday, it put out a call for artifacts and memorabilia that would allow it to celebrate the Colonel, his cafe and his fried chicken.

All sorts of stuff

Global Educational Attainment, 1950-2010

Educational attainment in the world, 1950–2010

Robert Barro, Jong-Wha Lee, 18 May 2010

Empirical investigations of the role of human capital require accurate measures across countries and over time. This column describes a new dataset on educational attainment for 146 countries at 5-year intervals from 1950 to 2010. The new data, freely available online, use more information and better methodology than existing datasets. Among the many new results is that the rate of return to an additional year of schooling on output is quite high – ranging from 5% to 12%.

It is widely accepted that human capital, particularly attained through education, is crucial to economic progress. An increase in the number of well-educated people implies a higher level of labour productivity and a greater ability to absorb advanced technology from developed countries (Acemoglu 2009). Empirical investigations of the role of human capital require accurate and internationally-comparable measures of human capital across countries and over time.

Our earlier studies (1993, 1996, and 2001) constructed measures of educational attainment of the adult population for a broad group of countries. This column introduces a new data set (available at barrolee.com) providing improved estimates for 146 countries at 5-year intervals from 1950 to 2010. The data are

Fit for Human Consumption, or Rat Poison? High Fructose Corn Syrup Continually Indicted in Obesity Epidemic.

Fit for Human Consumption, or Rat Poison? How many foods use High Fructose Corn Syrup? The answer might surprise you. Or, it may not. Originally uploaded by SouthernBreeze

In the last several years, obesity has become a rampant epidemic in the United States. While there are doubtless many causes, it is my opinion that a wholesale change in our dietary practices – and I specifically do not mean to refer to increased portion sizes, consumption or intake – but rather to an ingredient which has become all too common in commercially prepared food… which, if we were honest with ourselves, is most of what we consume.

For example, the majority of Americans do NOT grow their own vegetables, raise their own groceries (meat, dairy, poultry, eggs, pork, etc.), nor do they eat homegrown, locally grown, or even “freshly prepared” vegetables, even if those vegetables were imported to the United States. Consider even pineapples, for example. Once, the exceeding majority of the world’s supply of pineapples were grown in Hawaii. The highest quality pineapples are sold to Japanese markets, where they pay top price for the highest quality fruit. Not so in the United States, where American customers balk at high prices, even if it’s associated with higher quality.

Historically, Hawaii was the world’s largest pineapple producer and source for pineapples. Relatively recently however, rapacious corporate profit seekers abandoned Hawaii for cheaper production (translate “cheap labor” & “no health & safety regulation”), and there now remain only two fresh pineapple operations remaining in Hawaii: one on Maui, and another on Oahu. And that quandary is an entirely separate, yet related, problematic issue.

However, much of what we eat has been commercially processed in volume. And I mean in HUGE volumes! In America’s factory food processors, a fairly common ingredient is

Should you drink Bottled Water?

Hello?

Pure & safe drinking water is but one thing taxes are used to provide to the general public.

Hello? Anybody home?

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Bottled Water Vs. Tap Water

Remember the drinking fountain, that once ubiquitous, and free, source of H2O? It seems quaint now. Instead, bottled water is everywhere, in offices, airplanes, stores, homes and restaurants across the country.We consumed over eight billion gallons of the stuff in 2006, a 10 percent increase from 2005. It’s refreshing, calorie-free, convenient to carry around, tastier than some tap water and a heck of a lot healthier than sugary sodas. But more and more, people are questioning whether the water, and the package it comes in, is safe, or at least safer than tap water — and if the convenience is worth the environmental impact.

What’s in That Bottle?
Evocative names and labels depicting pastoral scenes have convinced us that the liquid is the purest drink around. “But no one should think that bottled water is better regulated, better protected or safer than tap,” says Eric Goldstein, co-director of the urban program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a nonprofit organization devoted to protecting health and the environment.

More than 25% of bottled water comes from a public source. – Dave Robertson/Masterfile

Yes, some bottled water comes from sparkling springs and other pristine sources. But more than 25 percent of it comes from a municipal supply. The water is treated, purified and sold to us, often at a thousandfold increase in price. Most people are surprised to learn that they’re drinking glorified tap water, but bottlers aren’t required to list the source on the label.This year Aquafina will begin stating on labels that its H2O comes from public water sources. And Nestlé Pure Life bottles will indicate whether the water comes from public, private or deep well sources. Dasani acknowledges on its website, but not on the label itself, that it draws from local water.

Labels can be misleading at best, deceptive at worst. In one notorious case, water coming from a well located near a hazardous waste site was sold to many bottlers. At least one of these companies labeled its product “spring water.” In another case, H2O sold as “pure glacier water” came from a public water system in Alaska.

Lisa Ledwidge, 38, of Minneapolis, stopped drinking bottled water a couple of years ago, partly because she found out that many brands come from a municipal supply. “You’re spending more per gallon than you would on gasoline for this thing that you can get out of the tap virtually for free,” she says. “I wondered, Why am I spending this money while complaining about how much gas costs? But you don’t ever hear anyone complain about the price of bottled water.” Ledwidge says she now drinks only filtered tap water.

The controversy isn’t simply about tap vs. bottled water; most people drink both, knowing the importance of plenty of water. What they may not know is that some bottled water may not be as pure as they expect. In 1999 the NRDC tested more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water. (This is the most recent major report on bottled water safety.) While noting that most bottled water is safe, the organization found that at least one sample of a third of the brands contained bacterial or chemical contaminants, including carcinogens, in levels exceeding state or industry standards. Since the report, no major regulatory changes have been made and bottlers haven’t drastically altered their procedures, so the risk is likely still there.

The NRDC found that samples of two brands were contaminated with

Dusting with WD-40… and the other 1,999 other things you can do with it.

WD-40 is an amazing product.

According to the company it was developed by some outer space types whom were researching a formulation for a type of lubrication that would displace

WD-40 with the new "Smart Straw," an attached folding straw.

water.

Water, as you may know, actually supports oil – which is why we see oil floating on the surface of water, rather than sinking down below the surface.

The initials “WD” stand for “Water Displacement,” while the “40” is the 40th formula that was tried. Thus, WD-40.

Here’s what the company’s website says about their premiere product.