The next food scare: the New York Times (via Slashdot) announces, to a chorus of hostile comments, that fatty foods not only make one (assuming one is a laboratory rat) more or less incapable of exercise but also cause one to be so stupid as to forget how to run around in one’s exercise-wheel.
I am becoming convinced that this whole business is like the carrots thing.
Once upon a time, during the Second World War, there was an elaborate piece of double propaganda (doubtless thought up by Lord Reith himself) concerning carrots.
It was given out that carrots contain a biochemical compound which has a direct effect upon the chemistry of the photoreceptors in the human eye, and that certain RAF crews were being provided with a diet rich in carrots in order to enhance their night vision.
After the war it was given out that this was really propaganda, intended to divert German attention from the British ‘invention’ of radar.
Of course at the time it happened German radar was better than ours (it remained of higher technical quality for the duration of the war).
The real point of the story was to make people eat the carrots, because at the time they were more or less all there was to eat.
Afterwards the radar story, quite untrue, convinced people that though they had indeed been ‘had’ by the Ministry of Information, it was all in a good cause.
I am becoming convinced that consistent attempts are being made to persuade people to want to eat only those things which will be likely to be left over once the Righteous and their pets have been adequately fed.
As a response I tip you of one of the best blogs in the universe:
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/
That would explain the ‘Don’t give your children ham in their sandwiches, you monsters!’ campaign that launched this morning…
AN: seen, many thanks.
JM: quite.
@JuliaM: I thought that was just the Daily Mash taking the mick out of bansturbation. Truly we have passed into the looking-glass world.
Cooked pork in all its forms is nice. The history of its sequestration by the Righteous, and its forbiddenness to the “hoi-polloi” is long, and is clearly based on what tastes good being for those who deserve it by status. Socialism in other words.
The Normans introduced sever punishments like mutilation and death for the removal of, for example, Wild Boar (it was bacon really) or deer (Venison, very nice and nourishing) from their Nobles’ hunting “forests”.
Goering was the only German allowed to hunt, I believe, under Hitler, a non-smoking vegetarian: never trust either sort.
Today’s GramscoFabiaNazis are trying to put the clock back of course, to happier times for them.
When meat is banned, and we the “masses” are all malnourished and have ricketts, poor sight, liver disorders and other vitamin-related deficiencies, we may have to kill and eat them all.
Richard Head Longbows, in Wiltshire, is, I believe, a supplier of the necessary tackle. The steel bodkins and dart-patterns are very good and can be ground sharp. The problem with lamp-posts is that the meat will taste funny as the hangee will have died in fright and pain, and has probably shat himself in the process.
To be quite honest I thought the idea was to get something done about the government *before* being obliged to resort to anthropophagy.
“I thought that was just the Daily Mash taking the mick out of bansturbation.”
I often think that! Sadly, it often turns out not to be.
You truly can’t make it up any more, it seems….