Humor Random Comments Thread

[TheShuttleExperience]

"Some of them" can be applied to any group to select the biggest idiots of them.

Even "Some of them Nobel Prize winners" .

We need an industry. But nothing in the big old book of economics says, that industry has to destroy the planet....

Well, I don't think our industry kills the planet. In fact the sun does, in about 5 billion years. Or maybe an asteroid before But life will not exist anymore by then for a long time

The problem is when some of them start to think they have the interpretational sovereignty and the right to bully other people that prefer a different life. If somebody doesn't want to drive cars, fly, eat meat etc. then that's completely fine. I actually don't even care. I won't go that way and prefer my car for shopping instead of a cargo bike. The problems start when a minority tries to annoy the majority. But yes, that applies to other groups as well. Especially populists in general.

When SpaceX launches a rocket, certain individuals in Germany, even in the media, start to discuss the influence on the climate. I just ask myself what's wrong with those people

 

[Urwumpe]

The problem is when some of them start to think they have the interpretational sovereignty and the right to bully other people that prefer a different life

You mean like those, who want to tell people how to speak, how to write, how to spent your money, who to love and generally, how you should feel about you? Or more like those, who tell women, that they should be raped? More like those, who tell young people, they should better be dead?

Yeah, maybe telling people that eating more meat than recommended for your health is bad, is really worse behaviour than demanding violence against other people.... Where is shooting people in the moral compass today? Is killing positive again?

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

You mean like those, who want to tell people how to speak, how to write, how to spent your money, who to love and generally, how you should feel about you? Or more like those, who tell women, that they should be raped? More like those, who tell young people, they should better be dead?

Yeah, maybe telling people that eating more meat than recommended for your health is bad, is really worse behaviour than demanding violence against other people.... Where is shooting people in the moral compass today? Is killing positive again?

I think nutrition guides and general recommendations how and what to eat are nonsense. Unless someone suffers from obesity or anorexia.

 

[Urwumpe]

I think nutrition guides and general recommendations how and what to eat are nonsense. Unless someone suffers from obesity or anorexia.

Yeah, and when your house has already burned down, its the right time to recommend some best practices for fire prevention to you...

 

[Frilock]

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

Yeah, and when your house has already burned down, its the right time to recommend some best practices for fire prevention to you...

Well, food is not a threat. It's an enjoyment, especially these days. Nutrition is something very individual. I also don't need a guide for my sexlife

If everything becomes a threat and political issue, then I would assume people need a talk therapy. Or it's maybe just the inimitable positive and lovely manner of the German, being afraid of everything

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

View attachment 32277

If it launches from Berlin it is most likely not working properly anyway

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, food is not a threat. It's an enjoyment, especially these days. Nutrition is something very individual.

Flying is also fun... until it isn't. So, its maybe better to consider some best practices to make sure the fun lasts longer.

Otherwise: Small sins god punishes instantly. Large sins nine months later.

 

[jedidia]

Well, food is not a threat.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it totally is. Obesity manages to kill a lot more people in this day and age than malnurishment does (or traffic, or crime, or war, for that matter):

Number of deaths by risk factor

Total annual number of deaths by risk factor, measured across all age groups and both sexes.

ourworldindata.org

There are people who are blessed with a metabolism that just cannot become obese, or even overweight, no matter what they do. I'm one of them (I also don't like most sweets, which helps a lot). You might be one of them. It's easy for somebody like me to imagine that obesity is a fringe problem and can could never happen if you don't go completely overboard. But that impression is horribly, terrifyingly wrong. The fact is that our food industry has managed to f*** up our diet so bloody hard that unless you're blessed like me, or you take some responsibility for what you eat, you're going to have a problem. It's not quite that bad in europe, but in the US it's horrible. And, paradoxically, in poor countries it's worse. Because people buy the most satiation for the cheapest money they can get, and that stuff has side effects. Having serious nourishment deficiencies while at the same time being overweight is basically the default state of the average human.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

[...]

Food is not a threat at all. Eating is a basic and vital requirement. And it's enjoyment, especially today since one can pick from an embarrassment of riches like never before in history.

What can become a threat to an individual is his/her eating behavior caused by mental or psychosocial issues (comfort eating, self-gratification etc.) or a lack of self-awareness. But it's not the food. You can not eat Pizza and Hamburger all day long while staying on the couch and drinking Coca Cola all day long, and then blame the food for the outcome. That's a very wrong approach. I often hear that "Pizza is so tasty but unhealthy". And that's just the usual utter nonsense. It's always interesting how people react when pointing it out. It is almost as if I would disrespect a religious believe while I sin about 3-5 times a week without going to hell.

It just does not make any sense to generally categorize food into the category of either good/healthy or bad/unhealthy, like self-proclaimed dietary and fitness gurus in the media and internet do so 24/7. Food does either contain a lot of energy/nutritional value or little energy/nutritional value. But how food gets metabolized and how it effects a body is very individual and very different. Like you pointed out, I can also eat whatever I want. I'm in perfect shape my entire life. But according to self-proclaimed dietary and fitness gurus I should be nearly death already while people can't believe I am way older than 30.

As for obesity, there are more than a dozen reasons why an individual can suffer from obesity. The individual eating behavior being just one of them. It is also a very widespread misconception that overweight is always related to being or becoming unhealthy and one in general only has to change the diet and do sports for becoming and staying slim, healthy and happy. It's already hard to find a scientific basis for it since health and happiness depends on so many more factors than just on food. And people have very different conceptions and opinions on it. ESA for example likes to see a normal BMI for their Ascans, while NASA doesn't seem to care much if one looks at the "spare tire" of some of their astronauts (same goes for Russia...).

It's the people, not the food.

 

[Urwumpe]

But it's not the food.

Oh deer.

6000 years of human experience with food quality and still people come around and claim all is wrong.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

Flying is also fun... until it isn't. So, its maybe better to consider some best practices to make sure the fun lasts longer.

Otherwise: Small sins god punishes instantly. Large sins nine months later.

Well, does vasectomy correspond to a sleeve gastrectomy then?

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

Oh deer.

6000 years of human experience with food quality and still people come around and claim all is wrong.

I think it's even more than 6,000 years. But the way we eat has changed a lot over time I guess. Also depending on the culture, stock breeding, wheat farming etc. You will probably find a million different conceptions regarding "healthy" and "unhealthy" eating/food (or "wrong" or "right") around the globe. Pick one, or a few, or none

 

[jedidia]

Food is not a threat at all. Eating is a basic and vital requirement.

That makes about as much sense as saying rain is not a threat at all, because it's a basic and vital meteorological requirement...

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

That makes about as much sense as saying rain is not a threat at all, because it's a basic and vital meteorological requirement...

Well, you have no real influence on meteorological circumstances that can potentially kill you, other than maybe not buy a house just next to a river or at the seaside and complain afterwards. But what you eat and how you eat is almost entirely your personal decision and behavior Alcohol, for example, kills about 70,000 individuals in Germany each year. But somehow I still fail to see why I should be afraid of a glass of Riesling every now and then.

 

[jedidia]

But what you eat and how you eat is almost entirely your personal decision and behavior Alcohol, for example, kills about 70,000 individuals in Germany each year. But somehow I still fail to see why I should be afraid of a glass of Riesling every now and then.

I think we're mostly having a semantic difference here. When you say "food is not a threat", you obviously think of the actual object for consumption. While I think of an industry, marketing, market pressures, etc. And those things need regulation to empower the individual to even have the ability to be responsible in their decisions and behaviours. And those regulations will necessarily involve politics.
I actually agree with you that the "healthy food" crowd is going somewhat overboard on many things, and that many popular diets are indeed rather unhealthy in the wrong circumstances. Which is part of the problem, of course: Misinformation and marketing hype. From that you get things like lactose-free butter at like 10 times the price of normal butter, despite normal butter containing only trace amounts of lactose that are not threatening to anyone unless they eat so much of it that they probably couldn't afford the lactose-free variant anyways.
And the thing is, this stuff needs to be talked about. Which means it must be a matter of politics. Whether or not the government supports balanced information programs on its channels is politics. Whether or not you can claim that your food is healthy in advertisement without any data to back it up is politics. Whether or not you can sell a bakery product with an insane amount of sugar in it as bread, or you have to label it as cake, is politics. Here's a neat example of exactly this:
McDonalds has to use a different Bun recipe in europe than in the US. The US buns can't legally be called bread in the EU, because way too much sugar. So already when you eat a hamburger, which you could reasonably assume to come with bread, you have a problem in the US, because you're actually being fed something closer to cake, and if nobody tells you, you might have completely wrong assumptions about your diet. Add to that that sugar is psychoactive and can literally cause addiction, and you have yourself a problem, and you have to solve that problem through politics. So it's a very good thing that it's being talked about and fought over.

 

[steph]

Most humans are quite hard to kill via food or booze, but it does happen a lot when you look at the statistics for large populations etc. Btw, if one were to intentionally look up sweeter stuff, it's worth considering buying from an eastern-europe themed shops, as there are quite a few in the bigger cities. Pepsi from there, for example, tastes distinctly sweeter than the French one, not to mention some dual-color cocoa 'tartinable' stuff that 's too good to be healthy, but can't really be found elsewhere at all. Not sure if a case of EU regulations not being applied on a wide scale or a few companies putting more sugar than the label specifies , to give them a competitive edge. However, if one were to apply this bad idea, as I did a few times, you have to be careful , as some sellers use normal French suppliers for juices.

In my case, I wasn't quite obese, but getting there, beer belly and all, after drinkingit for almost every night for more than 10 years, not to mention the junk food , pizza etc (at least around here, pizza is actually the cheapest 'fast food') . I sort of switched to it when I realised that a tasty Savoyarde pizza costs about as much a sandwich. I mean , sure , if you're having an active life with lots of sport, getting one would make sense, as it's basically the cheapest way to get calories, but that wasn't the case for me back then . I mean, I was sure I'd discover some nasty damages in the pipelines and machinery when I went and finally did my blood tests, thinking that if I managed to get through covid, I might as well try and repair the rest of the damage. Luckily, there wasn't much to repair , ending up with just a warning from the doc to really reduce the beer, or else I may run into more serious stuff a decade or two down the line. I guess it's really just the hard liquors that are truly dangerous, but you never know

But, hey, part of having a healthier life ,which I sort of decided a while ago is also sourcing the food. I'm not even sure if it's a good idea, but I sort of 'secured' a deal with a nearby farm for milk. I mean, at the shop, the 'bio milk' would be like 3 times more expensive. The one simply branded local, not that much, but still more expensive. I sometimes even drink it unboiled. This will be soon followed by getting bacon and sausages from another farm. I know, it's delicious food, but , again, it depends on the quantity. Some bacon fume or saucisson seche with Dijon mustard doesn't have to mean you'll end up obese and dying of heart disease, if other factors aren't of the bad kind and you don't eat a ton of it each day. It's a sort of local trade that may be technically illegal, but it's not like they didn't try. They opened a shop, family-run, and they had to close it after a year and a half because they couldn't really handle the expenses. This, despite being literally by the side of a road on a main route towards a seaside resort. People simply didn't stop and preferred getting their stuff from supermarkets or glitzy 'Bio market' type of establishment, despite the stuff there being several times more expensive and perhaps not even as bio as the farm stuff.. Then again, it's probably a bad time for natural food or farms. As much as France praises itself on pesticide-free agriculture etc, I've heard of a few family farms getting bought by companies. As in, the owner still owns the house, or is at least allowed to live there, but everything else is run by contractors, people on short term contracts etc. Next step will probably be switching to a more intensive production style and quality will suffer. The farm I visited was basically like Farm Sim IRL, tractors and loaders milling around (although they're supposedly shared between several farms). Tried to pet a calf and it kicked like hell, was lucky I was in front of it and not behind it

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

[...] While I think of an industry, marketing, market pressures,

Yeah, it was a mistake obviously. I was just referring to food, well, something to eat in general.

The food industries is another topic of course. We probably don't "need" 90% of what we can find in a modern supermarket. Fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, rice, pasta, wheat, spices, dairy goods etc. does the job very well I think. But I would not blame every kind of processed product and the entire industry. There are good products and companies (like regional family enterprises and medium-size companies) and bad ones (the big national ones and the big European and global players).

Veganism and the lactose intolerance-faction is another topic. Especially "lactose intolerance" has become more like a trend rather than a real issue for some people. It's almost like "my diet is very very healthy because it does not include lactose (and wheat, of course...)", although lots of the customers actually don't have any real intolerance/never tested it. They buy products that are astronomically expensive but there is nothing really in it that could be attributed as especially "healthy". Especially all the vegan stuff...

And what really annoys me is all the marketing nonsense going on. In the past people just ate nuts, sunflower seeds and cashews. Today it's called "super food". And because it is called "super food" and because the rack in the supermarket says "super food" it is also super expensive. But hey, wooooow you just got "super food" for your super health so you'll be super healthy and probably almost become immortal once you eat that rodent food on a daily basis...

As for sugar: it does not cause a real addiction, although a lot of people do believe in it and claim it. It's like the serotonin-myth of chocolate. People believe chocolate makes you happy, and of course addictive, because it does contain serotonin. But the amount is sooo little that it can not raise spirits you would be able to feel. You will disagree and probably gasp in a second, but sugar also does not make you fat. A high consumption can, statistically, cause obesity and diabetes if further requirements are met, like physical inactivity or predisposition.

Actually there is no food that makes you either fat or slim, healthy or unhealthy or addictive or whatsoever. It's always a combination of factors and it varies individually. Most people would agree that an apple is "healthier" than a glass of Coke for example. Coke makes you fat, your teeth ill blah blah blah... we all know it. But that's not automatically true. The fruit acid and sugar of an apple can become an issue for your teeth and stomach. I for one can not eat apples... which in turn does not mean apples are "unhealthy". While a glass of Coke every now and then does not do any harm to you. The only thing that is true here is that an apple does contain way more nutritional value but a glass of Coke does actually not, except energy in the form of sugar. The rest depends on consumption, lifestyle and predisposition.

Recently had another discussion in real life about sugar and artificially sweetened beverages. A workmate felt that he had to tell me his believe that fake sugar is "more unhealthy" than real sugar (because everyone says so and because some random expert in the media and the internet says so because there was a study of someone somewhere years ago etc. just the usual stuff). I was rotating my prayer wheel to calm it down and explain that one would need to drink a dozen liters of light Coke each day to suffer healthwise. The fun fact was that my workmate is a SMOKER... I do like people! They are just mostly entertaining It's like a former neighbor, also smoker, explained to me that certain computer games are addictive. I can not describe the smell of cold cigarette smoke coming out of his apartment whenever he opened his door...

By the way, I just finished my daily training before I was writing this post. I will now have a visit at the drive in of Burger King and get some "very unhealthy" food now People who meet and know me are always and still surprised how I can eat that much and "unhealthy food" but stay slim, healthy and look 10 years younger. I always say: don't believe everything others say or write somewhere. But that seems to be a very hard thing for most people

 

[jedidia]

As for sugar: it does not cause a real addiction, although a lot of people do believe in it and claim it.

Those people include a lot of universities and researchers...

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

Those people include a lot of universities and researchers...

Actually not. There is no scientific proof that supports the claim that sugar is addictive (in the way like drugs unlike many people claim and even say "sugar is a drug").