Reactions to the latest events on a personal or global level, ConnectionZen's series of blogs will enrich your outlook on life and put a Zen perspective on current affairs.
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In an interesting interview with Jamie Olivier this weekend in The Guardian, he describes somewhat his motivation to improve children's eating habits. He clearly comes across as someone who cares dearly about making sure that people eat well.
New York's decision to prevent meal ticket holders buying soda has caused a lot of people to write that everyone should be free to eat what they want.
Some commentators have pointed out that it's not necessarily possible to fully choose your food because of the power of supermarkets and the availability of fresh or locally produced food. This is a valid point, but to be honest most people can find most types of food available in their local vicinity. Food freedom is not a reason to criticize supermarkets. There are other reasons to do so.
The Mayor of New York would like to ban the use of federal food stamps to purchase soda. According to New York City, there is a strong colloralation between the consumption of soda and the incidence of obesity. Therefore it makes sense to prevent poor fat people getting fatter.
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Should you feed your kids chicken nuggets made from mechanically recovered chicken? A wonderful image has been making the rounds of the internet.
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Bill Clinton shocked and astounded the world last week by admitting to Wolf Blitzer on CNN that he was following a near vegan diet. President Clinton claimed that he had decided to eat mainly fruit and vegetables in order to reduce cholesterol build-up in his veins and was delighted with the overall health benefits this diet brought, including a 24lbs weight loss.
Many of the topics that are discussed on ConnectionZen could be considered to be “extreme” by the “General Public,” such as veganism, CrossFit, barefoot running or co-sleeping. Does that mean that being Zen is all about doing extreme things. Are all extreme things therefore good?
I just love this quote from Haruki Murakami’s book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.” School sports for me was very traumatic and, despite being there for good reasons, thoroughly turned me off physical activity, including running.
For many years we have been bathed in messages from the health industry, government and food processors that we need to eat foods low in fat. Moreover, industry has been telling us that we can eat the junk food we like because they’ve created low fat versions that will keep the fat off.
The population of animals in the arctic has been recorded over a 34 year period. Some have increased and some have diminished. While it’s not clear yet the impact of climate change, there are some indications that warming may be effecting arctic populations.
A research group at Princeton University has recently discovered that High-Fructose Corn Syrup is more effective in making people fat than other sweeteners. So if you want to put weight on, make sure that you’re consuming a lot of this product.
In the study, rats were given a diet which included water either sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or table sugar, sucrose. The weight gain in the HFCS fed rats was 48% greater than that in the sucrose fed rats, with much fat added around the abdomen.