Time to eat right... not to make others rich

"Cut out some of that abdominal fat ewry day by using this 1 strange tip."

"Lose a little bit abdominal fat every day by following this tip"

"Super diet for a flat belly"

These are examples on the ads I get popping up when online. Not quite sure whether to be amused by the strange typos in these ads, or if I should get horrendously upset or just plain offended. The last one would be preferred, as I then could just sulk and be insulted and ignore them with cool arrogance. That is why there would be no wars if women were the ones to lead the world, you know: We would not have wars, but we would have a selection of countries not speaking to each other because we would be jealous or insulted.

Problem is I find it rather hard to be offended, upset or insulted over something which appears to be so ridiculously unprofessional.

There is a business in the town where I grew up which manufactures a diet pill. It is VERY successful. The founder of this company gave many interviews to the media when they first started. He got into a LOT of trouble because of his honesty; he stated that: This is going to be a huge success, basically because people who think they are fat, people who are afraid to get fat and people who are genuinely fat spend any amount of money at all, if they think it helps them losing weight.

I think we, who struggle to keep our BMI down (and we want to keep it down because after all; we have shoes to tie), are trapped in our comfort zone. We all know what would be good for us. To eat vegetables, cut down on dressings and fat, walk short distances instead of driving everywhere. We think we save time on deep fried food and industry prepared dishes. It is, to us, a question of saving time.

For some strange reason we think that while waiting in line for our food to be deep fried, when we sit in the sofa waiting for the delivery man to arrive or while thawing deep frozen food in the microwave before it is ready to be heated, we save a lot of time.

I am not sure what happened to cookbooks, but I know that internet, especially www.youtube.com, is FULL of good recipes, good instructions on how to do and motivation. Use it!  And when I urge you to do so; I do with a reservation. There is a lot of strange food out there. Really. Honestly. Very unintelligible. Fun, but unintelligible.

Commercials tell us that microwave dinners, take away and semifinished meals (just add water, oil, eggs and/or cheese etc…) saves time and are easier to cook. It is not the truth. The truth is that meals like these are so full of salt, hardened fat (to prolong the expiration date) and sugar, we can’t even recognize the dish. But the industry stuff this kind of prefabricated food with so much salt, fat and sugar, which is really cheap, it is really bad for us... in spite of us believing we cook ourselves.

My grandfather used to say: Red is pretty and sweet is tasty. True, but so are many other colours and tastes.

We eat in front of the TV, or at our desk while working, not paying any attention to what we eat or how much. To eat becomes an unconscious thing we just commit. Almost like a habit. We stuff food in, chew and swallow. Taste, texture, the feeling of becoming full are absent, because our mind is set on focusing on something else.

I would really like to take back control on my money, my time and my health. I will never be skinny, and I would not want to be. If I am to watch everything I eat, I would turn out very boring, not as adventurous and too preoccupied with my appearance. I enjoy the diversity of nature and its fruits way too much to limit myself to brown or white food only.

I want all those fraudulent businessmen who think they can cheat me into making them rich, while making myself miserable, to be proven wrong. I want to spend my money on foods I enjoy both shopping (to go grocery shopping can be quite an adventure), prepare, eat and enjoy while eating. I refuse to swallow it down with a diet pill or some powder or sawdust bar, in a hopeless quest to become closer to the media created ideal of a body. I don’t want my food to be something I purchase and eat just because it is time.

 

When facts are partially fiction, in the media

The thing about trifle details which is part of our everyday doings, and that you see, read or hear on a regular basis (and never really pay attention to); is that once you notice them they overshadow the general main impression, experience or impact it has on you.

Like… the ticking of an alarm clock. You don’t hear it, until one night you just can’t sleep and there it is: tic-tac-tic-tac and your entire you gets so absorbed with the sound it really gets on your nerves. You are on the alert and it is impossible to get any sleep at all. You shut out everything except the suddenly really loud sound.

Every morning I try to find time to scan through today’s newspaper. It makes me feel updated on what’s on the agenda for the rest of the day. Headlines, ingress and pictures give me a guideline to what will be the talk of the day.

Or so it used to be.

There is a good chance I am a bit weird (actually I know I in many ways am); I pay attention to words. I believe that words have the power to catalyze action. I believe you can express just about any opinion prevented you choose your words right. Even an insult can be presented so eloquently it is hard to be offended.

Subconsciously I think we all, to some degree, pick up on these nuances and react to the impact the words we are exposed to have.

It goes both ways; how you speak or write affects people… and we all know that what we hear or read makes an impact on our way of thinking.

There has, for as long as I can remember, been an ongoing discussion about the importance of the press being objective. Lately, when I read the news in the morning, I find myself not really paying attention to the news itself. Like the ticking of the alarm-clock; I pay more attention to the language used.

I don’t know if it is a conscious choice, or if journalists of today are taught this is an acceptable angle to a story, but a LOT of what I read in the newspapers (in paper, and even more on online editions), and what I hear on the radio or watch/hear on TV, is not factual information: we get the journalist’s own opinion on a story, case or occurrence.

I started picking up on the choice of words different journalists tend to prefer.

Far too often the weak, and yet exposed, groups of people in society are even further degraded… or we enhance the prejudices they already suffer from, by how we express ourselves.

An example I see a lot is: the suspect is a young man of foreign descent. So; we don’t talk about the crime committed, we talk about all the foreigners who have come to our country causing nothing but trouble. Making it a disadvantage he is even young, and a man…!

The young man may very well have been born and raised here, his grandparents being the ones to immigrate, but that is not of interest: we just generalize and call them all foreigners, regardless of background or situation.

It is a problem how facts are selected, picked and chosen, deliberately leaving important arguments or facts out.

I am old enough to remember when a fight was won when the opponent lay on the ground. Today a fight is about getting your opponent to the ground so you can hit and kick him properly. Words can do that as well.

When we were presented to news before, we used to discuss issues regarding the event or situation in question.

Now I notice we more and more often discuss not the event or situation itself, but social issues the journalist chose to indicate.

We call media, the press, the fourth estate. They set the agenda by what they present to the masses.

Instead of mending our society by addressing what is wrong with our system, we are lured into brand-marking people. Blaming what is wrong on everybody else. Making us believe our community would be so much better if only we stuck to our own kind. Our people (and I think this goes for everyone, regardless of age, colour, religion and/or political stand.

It is a shame we can’t be updated on news without linguistic misguidance, which distracts us.

I can’t help but thinking this is why we tend to engage less in our local community.

Children’s sports lack trainers and coaches.

The Salvation Army is in great need of more/new volunteers as the older generation must step down.

The list is close to endless.

Instead of spending time healing what is wrong, we focus more and more on our own comfort and feel smug about ourselves because we, at least, are decent people.

And while we do so, we criticize what a bad coach our daughter has to deal with, we don’t even think about what an effort he/she does for our daughter; doing the best he/she can with hardly any help from the other parents.

Very seldom we give thanks or show appreciation. Hardly ever do we care to tell what is right or well.

We adopt the lingo from the medias where we hardly hear anything good. (And if we do it usually involves an infant or an animal.) Small children and animals are still pardoned from our negativity.

I know my postings on here are really nothing much to brag about when it comes to credibility. To be honest I don’t really spend much time on thinking them through… but then again: I never set out to be objective or informative. I just ramble on about what’s on my mind, and it is very subjective.

In many ways news is presented the same way: The press often takes side, choose to tell the part of the story which serves their agenda or cause the best way.

If we want to understand, if we want to change what is wrong about our system we need to know the full story. We can’t make it a matter about whether we like or dislike individuals. It isn’t ok to base factual info on a journalist’s personal view.

I highly appreciate learning what other people think about different things. That is how we evolve as reflective human beings. But what I would like to see is a stronger marking of what is a fact and what is an opinion, especially in the news

(Schoolbooks suffer from the same problem, as they more and more often are designed to be sellable, but that is a different matter.)

Inaccurate language and facts only inspires aggression and makes it approved of, among the masses, to talk about "us" and "them". Looking at history, that was never a good strategy.