Saturday 8 October 2011

Link Tank 08/10

To read over your grilled spam brekkie. What do you mean you've never tried it!

This obsession with fat is really taxing

France bans ketchup in school cafeterias

That doctors letter to the Telegraph

How paedohysteria can ruin lives

The kneejerk ban on GHB causes complications for wine drinkers

Bacon - is there nothing it can't do?

Restrictions on liberty are a legacy of the welfare state

Eat with men, see the weight fall off

Fuelling rockets with urine

Pac Man for squirrels - an ongoing experiment


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

On the ketchup article, the irony is that outside of the US, the country which patronises McDonald's the most is ... France!

Ketchup is one of the most low-calorie, low-fat condiments one can eat. Absurd decision.

Churchmouse

Anonymous said...

I have had a look at the item 'that doctor's letter'. Here is a comment that I have just made:

Churm said:
“”…there is a strong supporting rationale for a broad-based advice to the UK population to try and reduce their salt intake if they want to try and avoid heart problems.”"
It it not true that within that sentence lies the serious problem that uncontrolled epidemiology has created?
The sentence should read:
“”…there is a strong supporting rationale for a broad-based advice to the UK population to try and reduce their EXCESS salt intake if they want to try and avoid heart problems.”"
Taking into consideration that the body excretes excess salt, only those people who continuously exceed their bodies ability to excrete excess salt are likely to suffer – and even those people might not.


There is the germ of an idea there about epidemiology, although, at this time of night, I am not sure what to make of it.

It goes something like this:

If Epidemiology (as applied to excess salt, for example) is correct, should not advice to the public be about the excess of salt rather than salt in itself? Advice to everyone to reduce their salt intake makes no sense if only a few people are taking salt to excess.

You could say the same about smoking, but the healthists say that there is no safe level.But I wonder what the quack doctors and quack professors would say if one asked the question, "Tell me precisely what the harmful effects of smoking one cigarette per day for 40 years would be". Throw into the argument that all human beings are genetically different and chaos appears.

I am likely to have forgotten this tomorrow - what was I talking about? Oh yes, EXCESS. I will try to remember.

Anonymous said...

Restrictions on Liberty are the Legacy of the Welfare State.

This article is very good reading and I especially like the fact it mentions state sponsored paternalism over individual liberties of eating and smoking and how once it becomes acceptable to become paternalistic, then eventually all freedoms and liberties are destroyed and the society becomes a dictatorship.

If history hasn't borne out this conclusion enough already, it looks like nowadays this should be required reading for all politicians seeking offices, to realize that they are apt to repeat history if they continue going down this route of mean-spirited and arrogant paternalism - not that they have not done serious damage already beginning with the smoking ban and that all such bans, restrictions and taxes, at this point, should be immediately amended or done away with - before any further damage is done to the social system.

Excellent article from well qualified institutional accreditations too, the Cato Institute.