Tuesday, May 31, 2016

The Great Learning of 2016: Part 2: Do I, Or Don't I?

  Y   ou come to a point in your life—you'll know it when it happens—where you basically have a decision to make. Do I want to live to be 90? Or do I just want to resign myself to just let Nature takes its course, get the usual diseases like heart problems or diabetes or COPD or, gods forbid, The Big C?

It's basically at that point where you either change your ways, or you don't. There really are only the two choices, but you have to make them now; you can't wait until those diseases have actually gotten you in a stranglehold, because there will be a point where nothing you belatedly do matters any more—it won't work because it's too late.

The hospital bed is too late.

Look at us. We're actually the first generation of human beings who've lived most of our lives with the Western Diet: in 1940 there were no McDonald's, there was no Swanson Frozen Dinners—hell, there were hardly any freezers!

In 1963 there were no M&Ms or Lay's BBQ potato chips or Häagen-Dazs Country Road or Denny's Double Bacon 'n' Beef or Maison India or salads in a bag. There was no instant ramen, for fuck's sake.

There were no discussions about obesity in America or hypoglycaemia except by obscure physicians running obscure clinical trials for soon-to-be multinational beverage corporations.

Sugar was good. Smoking was better. Mad Men was real; have three martinis at lunch and watch Richard Burton slur his words hilariously on the Jack Paar Show.

We—you me, and pretty much everyone who was born before 1980—have been guinea pigs in the greatest diet experiment in the history of human civilization, and the results are just coming in.

They're not good.

The chemicals that preserve, enhance, brighten, stiffen, soften and fatten have now been in the dietary food chain for nigh-on half a century. These are chemicals that our gut microbes have never encountered, have no strategies to deal with and are basically completely defenseless against.

But there's more: exotic mixtures of bizarre concoctions of sugars and starches, like Krispy Kreme or Eskimo Pie that are held together with emulsifiers, flavor enhancers and coloring agents.

We've been raised to think so many different ways about food: fat is bad. Fat is good. Eat your pasta. Pasta kills. Sugar's bad, sugar isn't bad, it's calories that are bad.

We swallow all this bullshit whole and choose Diet Coke instead or regular Coke, thinking somehow that that's healthy.

Think about that for a second: there are actually people who drink Diet Coke instead of regular Coke and they think they're being healthy.

Human beings were never designed to drink ANY Coke and it's only in the last half century that Coca-Cola has become the most recognized two words in the planet after "OK."

Coca-Cola is the most recognized two words on the planet after OK.

I know, I know: so the fuck what?

Well, consider your microbiome.

Consider the utter confusion that reigns inside your digestive system, day in, day out, as you feed it with bizarre food after bizarre food, shovelling in sugars and lard and chemicals that completely overwhelm any semblance of a healthy ecosystem—just like clear-cutting your digestive tract and planting vast fields of corn and palm oil trees, then burning down the rest of it to build condos and amusement parks.

You know deep inside yourself that all this is not going to end well.

Okay okay, you get it, you get it, but what are you gonna do about it?

You're at a crossroads.

Like I told you, you have the decision: do I want to live till I'm 90, or do I just say Fuck it, I'll take my chances and keep eating and drinking the stuff I've always eaten and always loved.

It's up to you. Are you going to put that bullet in the gun and spin the chamber, or are you going to put the gun away in a place no one will ever find it and forget it ever existed?

I just received an email from a good friend who's been following this project. Here's what he says:

Je remarque que dans les dernières semaines, tu as énormément travaillé sur ton corps et ça semble donner d'excellents résultats, et que ta santé s'améliore. Tu devrais penser t'ouvrir une école de santé, avec participants "sérieux" seulement !  

J'ai toujours trouvé bizarre que les gens, en général, n'hésitent pas à dépenser de grosses sommes et beaucoup de temps pour s'occuper de leur voiture. Mais quand c'est pour leur corps et santé, ils sont hésitants à prendre du temps et à dépenser... Ça n'a pas de sens !

Thanks for that, Mario.

NEXT TIME: Getting Your Shit Together

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