2013-03-28 Thu

Clear Thinking

Thanks to federal law or guidelines, almost every scrap of processed food in Canada is labeled with a few ingredients, quantified.

This does not apply to broccoli, carrots, and other healthy foods.

I am in a good mood, about to meet my friend Cathy, so arriving early I treat myself to a chocolaty milk drink; not good for my weight, but a treat once a month is a good thing.

Check out the label above.

What do you think?

Take the entry for Sodium as an example. Depending on where/what you read it is said that North Americans consume around 2,500 mg of salt (or sodium; the writers appear confused about this) each day, and that a large part of it comes from processed food.

We need (depending etc) about 280 mg, as I understand it.

In other words, we consume way too much Sodium Chloride salt (NaCl) than is good for us.

So, look again, and you think 150 mg is not bad, probably a small amount compared to what the cook will add to the chicken soup, or the salt in the whipped cream in the desert.

Look again; it isn't 150 mg at all.

Look at the top of the label; amounts are quoted PER HALF BOTTLE.

As Cathy says, "Who drinks just half the bottle?!". I agree.

We also agree that this sort of labeling is bordering on dishonesty.

For packages where we ladle out a spoonful at a time, we expect to see "per teaspoon" or similar, and to check the units.

But why try to hide the fact that the bottle contains more than the daily requirement?

Clear Thinking

Outside the local church, two women standing with a sign "Life is Precious" with a picture of a baby.

I assume this is an anti-abortion statement, and without getting into the pro- anti-life debate, I'd like to suggest that life is NOT precious, never has been, never will be, and it's getting cheaper by the second.

If Isaac Newton or Einstein hadn't come along when they did, the universal truths would have been uncovered later rather than sooner, but they would have been discovered, for sure.

What's a delay of 2,000 years in a Universe that is already 13,000,000,000 years old?

And mankind's biggest problem right now is population growth. We already have mass-deaths through starvation, thirst and drought, in fringe areas of the world. Children and Adults drop like flies through disease and pangs.

Even the most "advanced" areas have managed to dry up the Colorado River so that it no longer reaches the sea as it should; aquifers are dry after being squeezed to provide cheap food for growing markets.

I wish you a healthy life, and for all children too, but I'd be too self-centered if I believed that my genes had any more value than the others; chances are they have less value than yours.