The Uncomfortable Truth

If you ever get the chance to enjoy Gilbert & Sullivan’s classic operetta, The Pirates of Penzance, you should take it. There is a part in the second act, when the heroine, Mabel, is encouraging the police to go and meet the pirates in battle. She sings to a martial tune:

Go, ye heroes, go to glory.
Though ye die in combat gory,
Ye shall live in song and story
Go to immortality!
Go to death and go to slaughter;
Die, and every Cornish daughter
With her tears your grave shall water,
Go, ye heroes, go and die!

It’s hilarious.
William S. Gilbert was a brilliant satirist. Though written in the nineteenth century, his point is still clear: “Supporting” the troops isn’t too good for the troops!
Yet we’re told that “You can’t be for our troops if you’re against the war.”
In this space, I’ve received comments from individuals who have little sympathy for the dead and their families. “They volunteered,” I’ve been told.

“Gee son, your daddy is dead. That’s OK, because he died fighting for . . . . . uh . . . .oh yeah, WMDs . . no wait, that’s not it . . . . to remove a really bad man from power. . . . no, that’s not it either. . . . . . umm, look, your dad died fighting for his country.”
“But my daddy was a mechanic, not a soldier” The little boy protests through anguished sobs.
“Well son, when your dad joined the National Guard fifteen years ago, so he could afford the payments on that nice house you live in, he knew the risks. Tell your mom not to blame the president, she should blame your daddy for volunteering.”

The bottom line is this:
You can support this war or you can support the troops.
You cannot do both.
On the other hand, I suppose you can be a coward, support this war, and just pretend to support the troops, while expecting other people’s children to fight this war for you—like our president.

Posted by Quentin Colgan at 07:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Last time, I wrote about trans fatty acids and how they should be outlawed. There is another, equally poisonous concoction in our food.
I bring this up because if it takes twenty-five years for common sense to break out, a lot of lives and money will be wasted. I bring this up because I’m tired of being taxed for other people’s poor health choices.
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is another of those manmade concoctions that most everybody eats, completely ignorant of the health effects.
HFCS was invented in the sixties by adding an animal-derived enzyme (vegans, take note!) to corn syrup and producing a product that is sweeter than sugar and just happens to be liquid.
In 1983 the Food and Drug Administration—motto: “We will never let the public’s health get in the way of corporate profit.”—added HFCS to its list of foods “Generally recognized as safe.”
If one were to chart the number of cases of diabetes in this country over the last forty years, one would notice a steep increase that began in the mid-eighties. A blind man could see that, even though our diet contains one-third less fat than it did a generation ago, we have become a nation of fatties.
Coincidence?
Perhaps not.
Could it be that putting unnatural products into the human body is having unnatural effects?
A study in the December 2005 issue of Prevention noted that lab animals who consumed HFCS ate fewer calories per day than the animals in the control group, yet gained more weight.
Unnatural?
A Google search of HFCS brings up a wealth of information on this poison and why it should be avoided at all cost.
HFCS is responsible for increased obesity rates.
When you eat sugars, insulin is produced. It seems that fat gets transported to your waistline by insulin. This makes sense. The Atkins diet is legendary for the amounts of fat consumed, yet without sugar in the diet, fat is not stored. HFCS raises insulin levels for three times as long as table sugar. That’s three times longer for fats to be deposited.
HFCS has been indicated in increased levels of triglycerides—artery clogging fats responsible for stroke and heart disease.
HFCS does not satisfy. When I was a kid, a Coke before dinner would ruin my appetite—mother was right. That is not the case today. Besides the fact that Coke just tastes different—unless it’s made in Mexico—it still leaves you hungry. Overeating is the result.
Wasn’t it back around 1984 that Coke came out with “New” Coke? It was quickly replaced by “Classic” Coke. Real Coke never returned to this country.
But, I digress.
HFCS is not only cheaper, being a liquid, it’s cheaper to get it into the can.
Soda manufacturers are probably saving two cents per can. How many cans of soda are made each year? A few hundred billion? Multiply that by .02 and you get a few billion dollars.
It isn’t just in soda, it’s everywhere. Especially convenience foods.
Ever wonder why you see so many obese children and teenagers? It isn’t just lazing around playing video games.
Check the labels on what your children eat. For example, my kids’ former favorite, Spaghetti-Os, has an ounce of this poison in each of those little cans. Breads, juices, snack foods, breakfast foods, even those “healthy” smoothies you may give your children, all of these have HFCS.
The only good news is that more and more people are becoming aware of how dangerous HFCS is.
Of course, if you search the internet, you’ll find contrary opinions—usually sponsored by the corn or food-processing industry. My favorite is one where a fellow states his opinion that being one molecule different than regular sugar, HFCS cannot possibly harm the body. He needs to learn that cocaine is one atom away from being a sugar.
What causes such stupidity? Why does it take so long to outlaw these poisons?
Money!
As with smoking and global warming, if you have enough money, it’s easy to find “experts” to refute the obvious. With money, you can bribe your chippies in Congress to block common-sense legislation that actually serves the needs of the citizens.
It’s hard to beat money. Remember, money is more important than life in the corporate world. Money will keep this poison on the market for a long time, it is up to us to be on guard.
Avoid this garbage at all cost. The life you save will be your own.

Posted by Quentin Colgan at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The State of California is considering a ban on hydrogenated vegetable oils more commonly known as trans-fats, or trans fatty acids (TFAs).
It’s about damn time!
Regular readers of this column may note this seems antithetical to my thoughts on government intrusion. Not true.
I, perhaps more than anybody else, am totally opposed to the government’s attempts to regulate what I put in my body. However, I believe the government’s first duty is to protect the citizenry.
TFAs are dangerous to humans.
As we all know, heart disease kills a tremendous number of people each year in America. The most common presentation of heart disease is acute myocardial infarction (AMI). That’s where the arteries supplying blood to the heart muscle get clogged—by a diet high in TFAs. Do a Google search on trans fatty acids and myocardial infarction, then read one of the 300,000 articles on the subject if you don’t believe me. Add to that the link between TFAs and obesity, and you will find that TFAs are costing us hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
A friend of mine recently went for an overnight stay in the hospital to have some stents—which open up the clogged arteries—installed. Stents are much cheaper than a bypass, but even so, his bill came to over $100,000. He is on Medicare so we all ended up paying it. Multiply this by the estimated one-and-a-half million patients a year and pretty soon, you’re talking real money.
I can almost understand the people who oppose the government getting involved. People get tired of a “Nanny” government. However, what they are actually saying here is, “Other people should have a right to put poisons in my food. I have a right to poison myself and make other people pay for my health care when I do.”
Festival of errors!
You may have a right to poison yourself, but don’t expect me to pick up after you.
For the record: Yes, I do smoke, and no, I will not make others pay if I suffer unfortunate consequences from it. Do I believe the government should outlaw tobacco? No, only the commercial sale of it. I’ll grow my own.
I read an article on the deleterious effects of TFAs about twenty-five years ago and have done my best to avoid them ever since.
I wonder how many people, ignorant of the danger, have died in that time? My father died of an AMI when he was sixty-one. He ate margarine exclusively because it was cheaper than butter and free of animal fats.
I wonder how many trillions of dollars have been transferred from working Americans to Big Medicine in the last twenty-five years?
I wonder what took so long?

Posted by Quentin Colgan at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My second granddaughter, Mackenzie Mae Colgan was born at 5:07 Tuesday afternoon, at Enloe. She measured 20 inches long and weighed 8 lbs. 5 oz.. Her mother only weighs about 100 pounds. OUCH!
She joins her father, Topper, mother, Jessica, and sister, Hailie Rae.

Although I consider myself too young to be a grandfather—again--I was not consulted.
I am having problems with being called “grampa.” I am not anywhere close to being of the proper age for that title, as my son is not an age to be called “dad.” I told all my boys where babies come from, as well as how to NOT have babies. But do they listen?
Ahh, kids!
I’ve always considered grandfathers to be old guys. Sure there’s plenty of people younger than myself that have grandchildren, but I was born the youngest son of the second-youngest son. My father’s father—had he lived—would have been in his late-seventies when I was born. My mother’s father was in his sixties when I was born, and passed when I was six.
My own father was fifty-six when he earned that particular title.
Grampa.
Wow.
I was hoping I could at least finish five decades before I carried that handle.
Okay, I have to wear glasses to read. That doesn’t make me old, that just means my arms are too short. I have teeth I paid for, but that doesn’t make me old. It means I had an unfortunate accident in my youth.
I still have my hair, and it’s not gray. This week it’s a nice shade of brown. Even though it is now joined by hair in my ears, etc., that doesn’t make me old. That just makes me “gifted in a follicular sense.” Those lines on my face? Those are from growing up at the beach.
I can’t be a grampa!
I don’t wear black socks with shorts. I don’t drive for miles with my turn signal on--in a big car—with a death-grip on the steering wheel. I don’t tell stories without a point. I don't yell at the TV. I don’t forget where I left my keys. I don’t hate birthdays.
Yet, the evidence is there. And what beautiful evidence I have!
Oh, well. I guess I’ll have to get used to it.
As long as I don't have to wear those pants that go up to my armpits.

Posted by Quentin Colgan at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)