"That's garbage! Do you know how bad that is for your health?"
Did you ever notice how folks who're obsessed with healthy stuff are
sometimes not so healthy after all?
Take consumers of vitamins. They go on and on about how one must take
every nutritional supplement under the sun in order to counteract the effects of
all of the poisons we're exposed to on a daily basis. Parallel to their support
for nutritional supplements is a genuine hatred for manufacturers of food.
"You can never trust a big corporation to be forthright on their ingredient
labels."
"They're putting harmful things in our food and paying the Government not
to tell you about it."
"They're poisoning us."
Yet these same vitamin consumers trust that, let's say, a bottle of "Natural
Vitamin C from Rose-Hips" is indeed that. The vitamins are manufactured
by a corporation, too! Do they trust the vitamin companies because "anyone who
makes vitamins must be good people?"
Who, I ask, determines whether or not the vitamin C in question actually
comes from real Rose-Hips? Who checks to see that the contents of each tablet
aren't just food-grade ascorbic acid, perhaps garnered from a by-product of
processing oranges?
While pouring a pink packet of powder into my coffee the other day, one of
the folks I was dining with told me I was poisoning myself. This fellow is one
of the food police.
When we ordered, he opted for the baked fish ("no butter on it, please")
with a green salad, dressed with lemon juice. His eyes glazed over with dismay
as I ordered a medium-rare steak, french fries, and a side of creamed
spinach.
"Don't you know french fries contain trans-fats?!"
"What're 'trans-fats'?"
"They're huge fat molecules that'll give you strokes and a heart attack."
I decided at that moment to do away with the poisoned coffee and ordered a dry Tanqueray
martini 'up,' with olives.
My dining companion realized that his intelligence on trans-fats was falling
on deaf ears. I underscored that fact by walking outside to have a
cigarette after I'd finished my martini...
You see, I'm a Dinosaur. I don't adapt well to things that are
progressive nor politically correct.
The food police tell us that our wells and reservoirs are poisoned by
mercury, lead, pcbs and other toxins. So they tell us to buy bottled
water. Again, why is it that the same person who is suspicious of the "big
corporations that are poisoning everything we consume" goes ahead and trusts
that the bottled water they're buying actually comes from a pristine,
undisturbed spring somewhere deep in the woods. And bottled water costs
money. A lot of money, if you ask me. So I choose to take my
water from the tap (or from the handy dispenser on the side of my refrigerator).
A glass of tap-water costs something like a hundredth of a penny. That
leaves me with more money to spend on Tanqueray, steak and french fries.
There are those who don't even trust "conventional medicine." One of my
customers is like this. He and his wife go to a holistic healer, who
dispenses to them myriad tiny little pills intended to cure all that ails them.
However, his wife suffers migraines to this day, and he still suffers from back
pain which extends into one of his legs, and causes him to be uncomfortable when
he sits. He must stand or lie down to avoid pain. (If a doctor treated
me for years and I saw little or no results, I'd find a different doctor!)
I told him of my experience with back and muscle pain and asked if he'd ever had
a doctor prescribe a pain-killer. Of course, the answer was "no, we don't
believe in conventional medicine, and we don't trust the drug companies." Pity
him, I thought, because he's never enjoyed the sublime relief that a good,
old-fashioned Percoset delivers.
Yep, I'm a Dinosaur. I have scads of carcinogens coursing through my
bloodstream, careening around with those trans-fat molecules and the gin.
But for all that, I gotta tell you I feel pretty good, indeed.
Someone's bound, however, to read this rant and cry, "Rubbish! How can this guy possibly feel good? This guy's
killing himself and someone ought to save him!" You see; "Rubbish."
Garbage in, garbage out, I guess.
Thanks to water for spelling help with migraine and holistic!
Thanks to DejaMorgana for a C and for "But dude, you know the water comes from an untainted, natural spring up in the mountains! There is a picture of the spring on the bottle, dammit!"