Little quirks for smirks

Smirking for coffee

I just spooned some demerara sugar into a highball glass which is essentially a typical drinking glass with a thick base, straight-up sides, and probably about 2.5 inches or about 8 centimetres tall. I smirked and sniggered at the quirky things I have done, as the sugar was meant for a coffee mug.

The kettle was just switched on, the routine of making instant coffee rather than tea that used to be my comfort beverage for the morning. As soon as I noticed, I took my big mug out of the sink, poured out the water, and tipped the sugar out of the glass into the mug before adding a teaspoonful of instant coffee. I stick to NESCAFÉ® Original Instant Coffee, whatever the cost.

Sometimes, I make filter coffee and for that, I would set up my milk frothing machine as it is never really right with ordinary milk or evaporated milk which is a holdover from my time in the Netherlands where they use coffee milk, a creamier full-fat milk for coffee.

Interestingly, some consider coffee a drug, I have heard a preacher boast about never tasting alcohol or coffee, maybe it is an abomination to others, but I do like the taste of coffee even as my mother has tried to prevail upon me to ditch both coffee and sugar. It doesn’t work for her; it works for me.

And this is funny

I have put it all down to quirks, nothing to concern myself too much about since I might have done many of these things before, and this is not a result of aging. Forgetting I already have my glasses on, I attempt to put on the spare only to realise I could not. Wearing an undervest back-to-front and that slight constriction at the neck is an alert to it.

The other day, I had a jumper on, then a jacket, but before donning my overcoat for the cold outdoors, I reached for another jacket and my arm went down a sleeve, it felt too tight. Very funny, I surmised inwardly. You do not need another jacket on.

I might say my name, but I do not call myself names for doing silly things. I guess what matters is being aware of things rather than forgetting and being observed by someone else like Brian who still ribs me no end about when I did the glasses skit. Living with your quirks is just one way of being able to make fun of yourself.

Pouring sugar into my ears

Mums in admonition

It is quite funny the kind of early Friday morning banter I have with my mum which after the greetings follows a range of questions, answers, prayers, advice, admonitions, and generalities.

At 57, I am both a child as much an adult, though, in the admonition department, it is like a tussle of wills and determination. Obviously, one of the sticking points is how to wean me off sugar and my apparent addiction to sweet and sweetened things. Much as I avoid artificial sweeteners of every sort, pure sugar that goes into confectionary and demerara sugar that I put into beverages, I cannot seem to avoid.

Then again, some years ago, I did take sugar out of my tea and as long as my latte was milky enough, I could have coffee without sugar, I have returned to my old ways, and the craving for sugar heightened by reduced sensitivity of olfactory receptors and taste buds.

Sweet to my hearing

Mother however would not hear my pleadings and even as I would hate to admit I am addicted to sugar; it is something I should work to reduce just for health’s sake. She seems to think she can apply and exert coercive pressure by twisting my ears so that they turn and burn bright red to which I retorted, sugar does not go in through the ears.

The impression I got was the flaring of my ears might well moderate my use of sugar and before I could say, Fat Chance! I could feel my ears warming up and I relented on the point of adjustment I was taking only to make coffee some two hours later with the same amount of sugar I put in the mug yesterday, which I ended up not drinking because I was invited for tea by my neighbour. It is muscle memory as it is taste bud memory.

As for my ears, spare the twisting, I can still remember the last time.

The unsweetened experience of taste

For each, a pleasure

A friend shared a profile of his with me which made for intriguing reading until I happened upon a phrase, I was unfamiliar with. With more information at my fingertips than I could care to absorb in a microsecond, I tapped in the ‘girlfriend experience’ and a new world of knowledge without prejudice was opened to me.

Not one to moralise about vices as I cannot say I have that many virtues, even as one strives to be more virtuous, the offer of intimacy with emotional accoutrements for an agreed transactional value satisfies a universe of purveyors and patrons that cannot be ignored, if consent rather than duress initiates the purpose of the rendezvous. Invariably, there should be no shame in having the talent to share and seeking the talent to explore rather than exploit.

On the matter of ‘girlfriend experience’ of which it is an expression, a film, and a television series, even for the limited period in which that experience exists with one patron before another seeks it, it can only be hoped that the value of it which for my friend would be as cerebral as it is physical and rewarding will be repeated with more generosity than before.

Much as there can be a gender specification like ‘boyfriend experience’, it would appear the ‘girlfriend experience’ applies to all manner of companionship of that genre, it evokes a more fulfilling expectation than can be said for the less salubrious male determined version.

Stirring up the wrong sugar

Then to my long-running polemic about Frankenstein sugars. These are artificial sweeteners not derived from sugar cane or beetroot. I had decades ago taken to reading the labels on drinks and foods to ensure these sweeteners did not become part of my diet. Anything that suggests diet, no sugar, or low calorie, almost definitely has a different kind of known sugar in it.

Blog - The rise of the Frankenstein Sugars

In my ‘The rise of the Frankenstein Sugars’ blog of 2007, I wrote of the many sweeteners I have avoid whilst failing to wean myself off sugar. I had discovered through the process of elimination that some sweeteners trigger severe migraines, though accidental ingestion may not be a direct cause, new knowledge guides my adjustments.

The other day, I walked into a shop for a bottle of cranberry juice which is supposed to be ameliorative for the water infection I recently had. There was one with Stevia, a sweetener and sugar substitute derived from plants.

Peradventure a mistake indeed

Plants would have suggested its natural providence, but on tasting the juice, I did not have more than a glass, before I emptied the bottle down the sink after a week of it squatting with mendicancy in my fridge. Indeed, I have worked on eradicating the use of sugar in my beverages, I rarely have it in coffee which should be milky and not in tea when served in a restaurant or in a café.

I need to work on the guilty pleasures at home, honey replacing sugar is an indulgence and agave syrup doing the same is probably a cry for help where you’re marooned far away from civilisation. Evaporated milk in tea or coffee is a sin I indulged with the use of coffee milk when I lived in the Netherlands. I can only wonder how many pounds I might shed if I made sugar haram.

Stevia is sweet, but that is where the praise ends, the aftertaste is bland and forgettable, just a few degrees from sickly, you cannot have a tongue with taste buds and think Stevia is the future of sweetness. If I were to close the chapter on Stevia, Yuck, will be the last word of the three same words I repeat at the end. Each with their own exclamation mark. I regret that foolish adventure each day I remember my tongue was assaulted by it.

Thought Picnic: To the gym for a Jim?

Sweet tooth dilemma

I cannot deny I have always had a sweet tooth, a characteristic of which has gone to war against my dentition from decades ago. Whilst I count myself more a tea-drinker than a coffee-quaffer, the beverages have required sweetening and milk.

Then I started changing elements of my diet out of concerns for my health at first and to address some fears of body dysmorphia that might accompany a certain age. I have thankfully never been fat, but I am a bit troubled about things getting out of control, like bundles of unexplained tissue at the back of the neck and a tummy ballooning into an embarrassment.

My medication can change the physiology that some people can be susceptible to lipodystrophy where fat deposits show up in parts of the body to cause discomfort and possible deformities.

Figures and numbers

Maybe if I spent a bit more time in the gym and took up swimming as I have always wanted to, I could bring that and the other under control. When I had cancer some 8 years ago, I lost a quarter of my body weight, having had a 32” waist for as long as I could remember, I was down to about 28” that my doctor in discussing the change to my physique wanted me to gain back all that I had lost and a little more.

I have never been comfortable to gaining back all of it, I would rather I was 10% to 15% short of my peak weight. Besides, I have too much of a head for the numbers in checking the Body Mass Index (BMI) or making metric comparisons between height and weight where I imagine you are fit if your weight in kilograms is less than 100 units taken from your height. So, the comparison for a typical height of 6 feet which is 183cm should carry a weight of 83kg or less.

I guess that thinking, especially for males, belies a predilection to physical attraction defined as slim, slender or skinny, which would put the weight at lower than 75kg. On matters of body dysmorphia, one can suddenly be quite fickle, for both oneself and others.

Changes to diet

On my diet, I started with taking the Maggi essence out of my cooking completely, I am good enough in the kitchen to make tasty food without enhancing it with additives. Though it is not what I would get from eating out. One radical change was when I stopped putting sugar in my tea and consequently stopped having it in my coffee too.

It was not an act of the will of determination, I just decided to try it and then concluded, it was doing me no harm. It has not knocked the kilograms off the scale, but I am a bit happier for it. My next activity has been reducing salt in my diet too. Along with this change, I rarely take fizzy drinks, drink more water and where I make yoghurt shakes, I use honey as the sweetener.

To the gym for a Jim?

I probably can shed a lot of weight by doing more exercise, my three months in Edinburgh involved walking to my office, sometimes up to 2 kilometres each way, even if I could get a bus. I thought it was good exercise.

However, the struggle remains to maintain a fitter body into my 50s without getting obsessed with the way I look. This blog shows I am a bit concerned, I just don’t want it to take over my life. That is my fear of body dysmorphic disorder.

Pink Slime: What you can eat may not be food

Raising the Yuck Factor

I cannot say I am one to be overtaken by food scares that fill our headlines from day to day but I do worry when the way our food is derived departs from as it were standard procedures to concoctions that make Frankenstein plasticine play.

In all honesty, I should be unconcerned with the uproar about “pink slime” because I never use minced beef in my cooking and rarely ever eat meals that have minced beef as part of the ingredients.

“Pink Slime” or to give its it more fanciful name - Lean Finely Textured Beef – plumbs the depths of sick-making yuck that could have you filling sick-bags with more than the contents of your stomach.

Taking science beyond food

As the story goes, some food industry genius thought after beef was cut off the bone there was still too much being discarded and he came up with the process of heating the beef trimmings in centrifuges to separate the fat from the meat, the exposing the product to ammonium gas to kill bacteria and this is mixed with ground beef in what Beef Products Inc. (hardly reminiscent of your dear grandma’s kitchen in name or purpose) might have called the triumph of economics and science over waste.

Reading this is stomach churning enough for my somewhat rigid constitution but what makes it alarming is the way the food industry has subsumed the regulators who trot out the idea that this whole thing is safe.

I will however contend that just because the processing of food is safe does not mean it is fit for purpose; the safety of processing must not just be demonstrated but it must be seen to not to take the Yuck Factor to the point of chronic emesis.

These unnatural things

Indeed, one must commend Jamie Oliver [1] for exposing this atrocious travesty that takes the nutritious and edible out of food leaving it just barely amenable to mastication with our digestive systems struggling to derive any nutrients before the muck is passed out our bodies made more susceptible to unknown attacks having not evolved to the chemistry necessary to process this stuff.

It is bad enough to learn that beef is treated with carbon monoxide [2] to prevent its natural browning due to rancidity or to note the rise of Frankenstein Sugars [3], but nothing prepared me for when I read that beef from a cow apparently suffering from Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy [4] (BSE) or “Mad Cow’s Disease” ended up in 8 states and the Island of Guam [5].

What is real?

There is no reason to touch the topic of Mechanically Recovered Meat [6] if you have not filled three sick bags already, but when you realise that sausages and chicken nuggets from conveyor-belt mass-market and cheap outlets do not lend themselves to traditional methods your begin to wonder what else is sacred about our food.

This is not to say that there is no need to find ways to improve quality and yield for food products be they plant or animal derived but the tampering with natural processes to do with colour, texture, taste and unnatural derivations has to be more tightly regulated and probably stopped, besides, with the certificates of food-worthiness given by food agencies we are left to better trust our instincts than allow for these compromised agencies in cahoots with the Food Industrial Complex to certify products stray dogs might well sniff at.

Debunking Myths

According to Snopes.com [7], McDonald’s stopped using mechanically recovered meat in Chicken McNuggets in 2003. When I feel better, I might be tempted to try it again.

Sources

[1] BBC News - Could 'pink slime' be rebranded?

[2] Akin Akintayo: The beauty of the dead cow

[3] Akin Akintayo: The rise of the Frankenstein Sugars

[4] Bovine spongiform encephalopathy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Akin Akintayo: Cult of the Mad Cow

[6] Mechanically separated meat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] snopes.com: Pink Slime and Mechanically Separated Chicken

Big Fat Arse Sugar Management

Crazy science for amazing discoveries

Scientific research is almost an obscure activity with reclusive scientists in their clandestine laboratories or backyard garages working on some mad idea that would not survive public scrutiny if discussed at the onset.

Meanwhile, someone somewhere has to sponsor these seemingly hare-brain activities which might first yield a “Eureka” moment and then possibly something beneficial to humankind whilst having some other venture capitalist laughing all the way to the bank having taken an almost incalculable risk that has now come good.

How to keep us breathing in health

An area of research that would never stop is that which pertains to battling diseases that affect us and which sometimes includes experimentation with animals – this for some is unfortunate but for all that we can humanely do to manage the suffering of animals the breakthroughs would eventually benefit both that species of animals and the human race.

I do not see anything wrong with animal testing in the main because the testing of those processes on human beings would elicit greater ethical and legal issues that could become insurmountable.

This is however my opinion, many might disagree with it; that is their prerogative but I would not entertain commentary that becomes disagreeable on this matter.

Animal skin in leather and fur

To put this is context Karl Lagerfeld [1] brings balance to another dimension of animal usage where there is the entire clamour about the use of fur but none about leather shoes, handbags and all other leather goods which are still animal skin but with the hair shaved off.

He goes on to deal with the matter of the few size 0 models in relation to a society that is full of obese and overweight people – obviously, those with vested interests would wail about animal cruelty and role models which again is their prerogative but they do need a wider perspective to the issues rather than their narrow agendas that they purvey.

One should not deny them the fundamentalism and fanaticism of their passionate causes; the will to live might desert them if they cannot bellow from the hilltops, wave their placards with fervour and make appearances on television as “rent-a-soundbite” experts.

However, I detest the way their ability to make noise about their causes visits the menace of the minority on the more tolerant majority whose concerns are rather more mundane and probably more serious as we devote our time to our responsible activities in everyday life.

Big bottom diabetes prevention

Now the rolling gait of African women has its attraction to a particular kind of African man – in Nigeria, certain ladies have to reside in fattening houses to be ready for marriage.

I have sometimes wondered how these women have been able to handle these humongous backsides without the need for radical hip replacement surgery after a while – I have considered this look rather unhealthy.

So imagine my amusement with scientists who have given rats dodo-butts and found out that shifting the fat from around the stomach to having a big backside helps prevent diabetes [2].

I have my doubts about the benefits of having a big backside and being free of diabetes and otherwise going from my comments about the rolling dawdling gait which might just be what tips the scales to a point where the springs break.

What is even more incredible is how the thinking of the scientists involved was able to link big arse cultivation to sugar management in the body – that is the madness of science and the genius of new ideas.

Now imagine conducting such tests on a human-being and realise that there might just be a point in some animal testing.

Sources

[1] Karl Lagerfeld defends fur industry saying 'beasts' would kill us if we didn't kill them – The Daily Telegraph

[2] Having a large bottom could help protect against diabetes claims study – The Daily Telegraph

The rise of the Frankenstein Sugars

Sweet headache

Years ago, I just could not understand why I was having repeated migraines for no seemingly apparent reason, then they all suddenly stopped; on reflection it was when I ran out of chewable Vitamin C tablet supplements.

It all came together when I bought some wafers from a shop and then shared the problem with a friend who had a medical background, he suggested the migraines might be diet related, probably artificial sweeteners.

So, I looked at the container of my Vitamin C supplements, the wrapper on the wafer and a few experiments of consciously taking foods with sweeteners and I nailed the culprit.

Aspartyl-phenylalanine-1-methyl ester

I had never been a fan of diet drinks, so that was easy, however, I had to consciously check foods for sugar-free or low sugar content usually Aspartame marketed under trade names as Equal, Nutrasweet or Canderel and Acesulfame K used in chewing gum, drinks and all kinds of low sugar foods.

In fact, there are a whole group of artificial sweeteners that are hundred of times sweeter than table sugar but of low calorific value, saccharine happens to be the oldest of the lot.

For those who have to contend with sugar related diseases, these sweeteners for taste are a welcome substitute.

The names of these chemical concoctions are coined to instil sheer terror - Aspartyl-phenylalanine-1-methyl ester for Aspartame and the potassium salt of 6-methyl-1,2,3- oxathiazine-4(3H)-one 2,2-dioxide for Acesulfame K - K being the potassium.

Brain tumours from artificial sweetener

However, I got a lot more worried about sweeteners even though I had discontinued ingesting them when I was trying to get an alternative booking to Paris after the Channel Tunnel fire when the travel agent was about to fleece me - the Internet came in handy as I was just as informed as they were on flight information and my rights as they were ABTA bonded.

I did a quick search for ABTA, then Netscape Navigator was the rage and I ended up at the American Brain Tumours Association where a number of studies had suggested a dramatic increase in the incidence of brain tumours since the acceptance of Nutrasweet by the FDA in the American food chain.

As usual with food science, there are claims and counter-claims, it is a minefield of information and one just has to be a bit smart about how to respond to the advice.

I bookmarked that page and refined my search with ABTA Travel, this then took me to the Association of British Travel Agents where I was able to read about my rights and sort out my travel.

The doctors not sweetened

That was in 1996 when the FDA was about to approve Acesulfame K as a sweetener and scientists were against extending the use of the chemical to other foodstuffs; the lobbyists must have sewn it up because it got approved in America and this allowed it to have acceptance all over the world too.

Recently, Dr. Morando Soffritti of the Ramazzini Foundation found that Aspartame which consists of two amino acids and a methanol binding agent - note methanol - caused multiple cancers in rats, however, this has brought the FDA out fighting because of possible culpability allowing what might have been a carcinogenic poison in the food chain.

A few days ago, I read in the online edition of the Daily Mail that Sainsbury's - the third largest supermarket chain in the UK - were taking chemicals out of their brand drinks and other products as more research indicates concerns about the safety of Aspartame and other sweeteners and artificial flavourings.

So the sweet chemical was to be replaced with sucralose - a low calorie sweetener made from sugar - for many people that would be the end of the story, I almost rejoiced.

Frankenstein sugars

Sucralose indeed made from sugar as scientists have found ways of strengthening the potency of sugar to between 350 - 1000 times the strength of table sugar, which makes it better than most other artificial sweeteners - it is marketed under the name of Splenda or generic Altern.

1,6-dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-β-D-fructo-furanosyl 4-chloro-4-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside is the chemical name, and it is produced by substituting three of the sucrose hydroxyl groups with chlorine atoms - in layman terms, sugar is chlorinated to create sucralose.

In fact the sweetness is too potent to be used unadulterated that it has to be mixed with Maltodextrin as a packing agent to be used domestically.

However, the concern is about changing the natural state of a naturally occurring substance into a Frankenstein sugar which is a chlorocarbon that bothers medical circles, another source of chlorine is added to the food chain beyond salt and chlorinated water besides the other halogenous compounds of fluorine and iodine that we ingest.

Basically, with insufficient studies and research into the long-term effects of the usage of these chemically enhanced natural substances, we do not have to worry about brain tumours as much as one can now consider organ, genetic and reproductive damage, one wonders if measuring the pain-threshold of sweetener side-effects is the benchmark for approval.

What wellbeing we give up for keeping things sweet.