The ChemConnector Blog by Antony Williams

My friend “Halbstein” has started his own blog - American Citizen. Recently he and I sat for lunch and talked about the politics of health care in the United States and we reviewed a very interesting article together. He has commented about this on his blog and I recommend people interested in the costs of health care in the USA to browse it. Very revealing …go to his blog for info.

In response to his post I waxed lyrical about the movie Field of Dreams, Burt Lancaster and my doctor when I was growing up. Halbstein took it one step further…and does it in a way that might stimulate you all to remember what medicine used to be like. While technology and  medicine have advanced I have to ask the question whether patient care and doctor-patient relationships have balanced it by going the other way? Read about Dr Lipmann.

I am an iPod user. I couldn’t wait to see DVDs in Blu-Ray format. I believed (twice…mistakenly) that German cars would be better than Japanese (I was wrong!). The majority of us are powerfully influenced by marketing. Specifically it is impossible to miss the latest “bandwagon jumpers” from the food companies when there is yet another way made available to them to manipulate the public. How many unhealthy foods do you see labeled as “cholesterol-free, sugar-free, fat-free, blah-blah-blah”. Ok, so a food can be cholesterol free but does that mean it’s good for you? Fat-free…whoo-hoo…balance that with “stocked with calories from a gazillion sugar calories” and who really cares. It shouldn’t be that difficult to have a gut-level instinct around what’s good and what’s bad to put in your mouth and down to your stomach. I DO put bad stuff in there…chocolate, french fries etc. but I am under not under an illusion that they might be bad for me…I know they are…but moderation and life balance takes care of that.

Why the rant? Trans-fat. TRANS-FAT!!! Ok, so there’s science to the outcries to remove it from food. Personally I prefer butter over margarine now despite the “butter is bad for you…eat this pot of chemistry called margarine” pitches over the years. And yes..I listened and ate chemistry for a long time. It’s not the science behind trans fat that worries me …it’s the vampire marketers using it to their advantage. Look at the image below. Why the hell are they labeling 100% sugar as Trans-fat free? Don’t the public know that sugar isn’t fat? Does labeling it trans-fat free make a bag of pure sugar good for you? Whoo-hoo..grab a spoon. Come on people…wake up. Manipulation is the art of the marketer. What’s next …a bottle of water labeled as trans-fat free, sugar free, cholesterol free? Maybe it IS appropriate to label a GLASS BOTTLE of water as “plasticizer free”…take a whiff of a PLASTIC bottle of water when it’s sat in the car for a week. Let’s not be sheeple to the marketers…