Ongoing observations regarding "The Trained Consumer"

Yesterday, I convinced a work mate to rethink artificial sweeteners as a fat reduction strategy. On the face of it, that's a win. In fact, I was so successful, they threw a partially consumed can of soft drink away.

The information I used to perform this feat of magic was taken from the book, Why We Get Sick: The New Science Of Darwinian Medicine by Randolph M. Nesse & George C. Williams, which puts forward the following untested but provocative theory:

What if, when the body senses that it is about to ingest sugar (ie tastes something sweet), it reduces the rate at which it is converting the bodies energy stores to glucose, the expectation being that the ingested sugars will balance the shortfall. If the shortfall is not met, obviously the blood glucose level will drop which produces a hunger response, and perhaps, a craving for sweet foods. The outcome being that the benefits of low-calorie sweeteners is offset, and possibly reversed, by food cravings.

An offshoot of low cal response would of course be more products sales which is good for the corporate bottom line.

I'm sure there would be a fair amount of controversy generated by such a hypothesis if it were to come under public focus but still, I think it may have some merit.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that I felt uncomfortable with the fact that my colleague had taken what I'd said to heart without asking a single question. As I said to my girlfriend last night when I was relaying the story for her, my aim is not to preach to people to change them but to provoke them into finding answers for themselves.

By my own admission, I'm an idealist. I do however acknowledge that my approach to life is a luxury that many other people don't have. What works for me is definitely not for everyone. Which is why I feel uncomfortable when someone accepts my rantings without question. However, I find it very hard to stand by and watch someone I associate with abuse themselves in ignorance.

Sure I may be wrong but at least I don't have a vested interest. No doubt there's more to follow...

Religious faith as a means to keep the masses simple

I've just been reading a few of the entries on "The Celebrity Atheist List" and found Steve Wozniaks entry refering to an email that states that Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds and Larry Ellison are all atheists or agnostic. Steve admits to being "atheist or agnostic", also admitting that he doesn't know the difference.

It occured to me that believing that a god has a plan for you or is otherwise watching over you, or that life goes according to god's plan is a real nice, easy method of social suppression. How many people throughout history have chalked their losses, failures down to "god's will" and left it at that rather than trying again until achieving success?

I wonder how what the ratio is of atheism/agnosticism vs religious beliefs among successful people. And I'm talking about fair dinkum religion, not that bullshit American god of capitalism and ass kissing. Does that ratio match a corresponding enquiry among the general public? I would bet that there's an imbalance towards religion being rarer the higher up the ladder of success we go.

Blogging via email

Well, it's got to be about 6mths since I've posted here. Mainly because I
couldn't be assed going through all the crap of actually posting. However,
I just discovered or maybe re-remembered that a post can be submitted via
email. Post via email? Hell yes! I can even post from my mobile via email
for christ sakes!

So, now that I've finally joined the rest of blogging humanity in posting
via email, we'll see if I've got anything to actually say via email.

Or something like that...

I'm assuming I'll get better at this.