Only if we can learn from the margarine producers and marketeers....A friend e-mailed me an article about how bad margarine is. It begins this way:
Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys. When it killed the turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a payback so they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this product to get their money back. It was a white substance with no food appeal so they added the yellow colouring and sold it to people to use in place of butter.The concluding paragraphs of the e-mail are reproduced as follows:
Purchase a tub of margarine and leave it in your garage or shaded area. Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things:
- no flies, not even those pesky Fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)
- it does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value;
- nothing will grow on it even those teeny weeny micro-organisms will not a find a home to grow.
Why? Because it is nearly plastic. Would you melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?
The conclusions about margarine can also apply to salt and many other things. Neither does salt attract fruit flies, nor change if left in Steptoe's junkyard. Excessive consumption is bad, but we do need salt in the blood so that oxygen can be transported to the right places within the body.
Water has no calories or nutritional value, but it keeps your blood and you going. Do you drink spring water? Someone could be having a swim or doing some business upstream. We may even classify spring water as "organic". You probably pay a lot for Sports drink which is water with a bit of potassium salt and plenty of glucose. Squeeze some orange juice, and you will get extra natural vitamin C in the drink.
Palm oil is just as risky, and a possible cause of cervical cancer. It has been used in many products, e.g. biscuits, instant noodles, and processed foods with ingredients labelled as 'vegetable oil'.
Many colouring, food flavouring and chemicals can be bad or even toxic to the body. Without the use of these, you won't be buying the soft drink, dark soy sauce, ice cream, bakery products, etc.
Do you burn fragrant oils, put on lip sticks, or even use excessive tooth paste? These chemicals get to you blood stream, just as bad as you ingest margarine.
We can also argue that mature cheese stings like my wee, and deep frying Chau Taufo (stinking Taufo) can be smelt many streets away from the hawker stall.
Jee Yau Jah (dry fried pork fat) can't be that bad for the heart, because almost every single bit of the fat has been released and melted through the heating process.
Oil is essential for the body for lubrication and elasticity. On hot days, body produces and releases oil, coating the skin. In my opinion, this is a natural process to block off the harmful sun ray to prevent skin cancer. Yet, many people wash it away quickly with soap made up of many chemicals and some are derived from heavy metals - chemically speaking. The next stupid step is to replace the washed away oil with body lotion, which is another chemical product.
There is a Chinese saying, "eating heart is good for the heart, eating brain is good for the brain". Well, scientists have now proven that pig's heart is closest to a human heart in almost all aspects, and could be used for future heart transplant as human heart substitute. The so many trace elements and natural chemicals in offal and meat cannot be synthesised in laboratories, and therefore, it is best that we learn to eat as many edible things as possible.
Who in the right mind drink wheat grass juice or eat raw vegetables? Can a human body produce the essential enzymes like the cows or horses to break down these plant chemicals effectively?
Now many people drink Yakult just to put good bacteria in the stomach, and yet they are too frightened to eat pig's intestine - small and large intestines.
Climbing Mount Everest, sky diving, or riding on a large fairy wheel are challenges. To face those challenges, you have to remove the psychological fear and those barriers which stop you from doing it. Be adventurous with foods - just take your next step, try eating something new and don't ask what it is, just eat it! I never want to think about yogurt as curdle milk and the green stuff on cheese as mould. I prefer butter, but I also consume margarine. In fact, I am using spreadable butter, which is butter plus canola oil. For frying, I use sunflower oil, which is better than olive oil in that olive oil burns at lower temperature.
Some scientists reckon sunflower is good for the brain, but one thing for sure, it has fewer chemicals and is cheaper, and hence good for my pocket!
If we all learn from the margarine producers and marketeers, we'll be wiser and richer than what we are now!