Edicts: #1 and #2
By: Q. Kendall,
Staff Writer
According to my unlicensed practicing pop psychology mother, my current activity level is trending towards a mild form of social anxiety mixed with an (arguably) unhealthy level of agoraphobia. I digress. And to prove the point, I’ve accepted the challenge she and my helpful Algebra instructor of last year threw down like a rock in a shallow pond. Sure, I’ll write for the iGlobe. I’ll write for every issue in fact. What is my hoped for end result? You, my readers, will write me back and in the process we can accomplish two very important things by June 2015. First, we together will prove that I am neither socially anxious nor agorapffttwhatever. Second, we might just say something that matters to someone…maybe even you.
Hence the name of this first article, Edicts. Edicts, according to Dictionary.com, are “decrees issued by a sovereign or authority.” Having read this, it got me thinking. Sovereigns and authorities can make edicts? I’d love to be someone who can proclaim something, and therefore it must be so.
However, in order to qualify to make edicts, I have to become “a sovereign or an authority.” From what I can tell, most people proclaim themselves “authoritative” and somehow garner the role. Look at global politics as an example. Exactly what qualifies someone to be President, Senator, Representative, or Dictator for Life in a modern democracy? If you do the research, all they need to qualify is their name on a ballot (or not?), and a whole lot of votes. Certification, licenses, and/or real world life experience is not required.
Wow…I say to myself not sarcastically (well maybe a little), I have little to zero real world life experience. Have I certifications or licenses to speak of? Dude, I don’t even have a diploma unless you count the one from kindergarten. Therefore, I’d say I would completely qualify as a potential leader of my generation…or at least, to lead you my fellow readers, in getting your opinions out there on anything we want to talk about. As this self-proclaimed authoritative sovereign, I’m allowed to make an edict like that on our behalf.
My column Edicts is all about talking out loud…about things we all should be talking about. Since I’m starting the conversation, I think I’ll set the soundboard, and let the chips fly where they may. Hit me back, and talk with me. Maybe it will matter. I think it will.
*Q. Kendall is accepting comments, questions, and/or concerns in the comments section below this article.
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Edict #2: Eat bacon, and avoid zombie bites
Hello my fellow readers. I thought I would share with you a personal short story, and follow it up with the horrors that the food industry is inserting in our bodies every day.
It started out like this, any regular day. My mother and I went to the grocery store together, and I was in the mood to harass her for all the food I want and she won’t buy. You know the good stuff I’m talking about. While she’s selling carrots like its gold, I’m reaching for the golden flavored cake mix.
Today, however, my sweet tooth gave sway to my savory taste buds. I wanted bacon. Would I get bacon? Probably not without a well-placed bribe.
“Hey, what can I trade you for a nice pound of bacon?” I asked, picking up the package of heavenly goodness a.k.a slices of pork salted to perfection (a.k.a. bacon).
“Probably nothing,” she groaned. “Put it back.”
“How about a social anxiety killing article to the iGlobe?” I replied with a purposefully sly grin. The Cheshire Cat would be proud.
I got zero response back. For one moment I thought I might have to sweeten the pot. Darn. That might have to include extra math practice, or worse yet, a playdate with a neighbor. As she turned to face me, her poker face didn’t give a hint that suggested my victory was at hand as her eyes slanted to catch my gaze. “An iGlobe article?”
“Yeppers. I’ll make it good too!” I replied. “Nice and long, and with extra personification with a hint of hyperbole.”
“On what?”
On what? My mind raced for a good answer. I had nothing.
“I know what I’d like to read from you,” she replied.
Of course she did, I thought, as I carefully didn’t roll my eyes. “What?”
“An article on the dangers of preserved meat like bacon, cold cuts, mystery meat that comes with those Ramen noodles you love, and…”
“Fine! You buy me the bacon, and while I nosh on its crunchy heaven, I’ll write you that informative piece of….information!”
She took my offered package and dropped it with a thud in our pushcart. “Good! Hope you don’t vomit from its toxicity!”
“What? Please…toxic? It’s going to take a lot more than rumored poison to keep me from eating it!” I glanced down in the cart as it lay on the cold metal. I could imagine it on the grill at home, and my mouth watered at the thought of a lunch filled with fat.
When you google 'BHT' and 'BHA' by themselves on the internet, nothing shows up. It's as if even the internet doesn't want you to know what's in these preservatives. When I put in the acronym ‘BHA’ what came up first was a referenced to The British Humanist Association. Apparently, they are more popular than science. Didn’t people ever Google food preservatives? Probably not. I didn’t want to know either. But I did promise an article, therefore I put in the extra effort to be a bit more specific, and keyed in my search bar the words PRESERVATIVE, BHA.
Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA) is...
My first thought upon reading the definition and what came next was this: are the people naming these things four years old? It's like they threw a bunch of letters together and called it a chemical. Spell check doesn't even recognize the name. For a second, I doubted myself and the crunchy snack sitting not so far away from my keyboard. I'm not entirely sure I want to eat things even spell check doesn't know about. When I can't pronounce the actual words, we know we have a problem.
I looked over to my piled high plate of meat. If Butylated (rhymes with mutilated?) whatever is in my bacon, I’m going to be…actually, I’ll still eat the bacon, I decided on a whim. How dare I be wrong.
However, article after article went on to list the consequence for letting my taste buds rule what happens to my body at the chromosomal level. There are always risks when it comes to the unnatural (dun dun dun) preservatives found in processed food. With BHA/BHT, one of the worst risks would be cancer. Both BHT and BHA are oxidants, which form cancer causing compounds in the human body. I read that BHA, or Butylated Hydroxyanisole, is used in things like food (obviously), animal feed, food packaging, cosmetics, petroleum products, and rubber (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butylated_hydroxyanisole). Why in the world would I want to eat anything used in rubber? Oh well, at least it tastes good, right? Right? Right.
But if these chemicals are so bad for us, then why are we allowed to eat this stuff off the grocery store shelves? According to the ever-reliable (sarcasm intended) scientists that are responsible for making sure we don't die from these mean ol' preservatives, they claim these chemicals are filtered out of our body as they digest, and are perfectly safe in small doses.
The food industry wants these scientists to let us know how safe their products are. That’s because the food industry makes a lot of money selling you their sugary sweet cereal, their processed meat bags, and their canned green beans. Without preservatives, they’d have to find another way to feed the masses.
That said, I thought to myself, couldn’t there be another way to preserve food? After all, people didn't have these chemicals during the middle ages. And I was sure I had read something in my history class about salt being used to preserve food...lots of salt.
I Googled it and learned that preserving food with salt wasn’t necessarily the preferred technique for staying healthy. It could kill you too by being inferior to modern practices. To make it work, one had to use a lot of salt, and you had to remove all water from the meat. Wow, that would be one dry piece of cow. I'm not entirely sure Gordon Ramsay would approve. You could also add sugar, mostly to try and soften the taste of salt. And then there are nitrates. They help kill off bacteria like a bad character who has run his course on a worse TV show, and they add flavor/give color to the meat. Why do you think some meat is so red? And equally unhealthy.
Bottom line I came to is this: eating is a health issue. If everything isn’t done perfectly using good old fashioned techniques you could die from...something. Bacteria probably. Not to mention the food industry would lose a chunk of money while they juggled law suits for using too much salt, or other preserving techniques that can also make one ill. I'm 93.2% sure they wrote up some of the articles telling us “No! No! Don't cure your own meat! There are health isssssssssuuuuuues!”
By the end of my research, I came to the conclusion the rumors associated with food preservatives may result in this: a girl could die from eating too much bacon because of the preservatives in it. You might die from BHT/BHA. You might die from not-properly-cured-meat. You might die from soda-pop. If exposed, you could probably die from Ebola. If bitten, you will die from a zombie bite. Pick your poison, people; there is nothing in this universe that is 100% safe.
Personally? I like bacon.