Everything we see or hear is bound to affect our judgment and thinking ability to make a decision. Yesterday, at a dinner with friends I decided never to touch mineral drinks again and switched to ordering for soda with lime instead. Belated, I went home and realized that soda was an aerated drink too, but the realization was far too late by than to remedy the situation. The deed was done, so with a renewed interested vested on discontinuing the same mistake again for my peace of mind, I logically consoled myself before drifting off to sleep.
Not many days ago, along the lines of that same theory, a friend of mine decided to turn into a vegetarian this year to avoid increase in blood pressure. I would have liked to turn into a vegetarian too to reduce the intake of huge calories during food consumption and fight heath hazards as predicted by researchers. This morning, interestingly enough, something in the daily newspaper caught my attention. This issue didn't gall me before, today the article starred back at me, vying my interest:
"We use a 'medicine' to help the bananas ripen faster and get a nice yellow colour," said a wholesaler. According to a study by Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (Bari), toxic chemicals are being widely used to enhance the production of vegetables. Traces of toxic chemicals and pesticides can be found in the produce even four months after these are applied on. World health organization graded the pesticides into three different categories in terms of intensity of poisonous effect -- Hu-1, Hu-2 and Hu-3. Hu-1 grade pesticides, extremely hazardous to human and other mammals, are primarily used to kill poisonous snakes and deadly insects that live in tea or rubber plantations. Hu-2 grade is less poisonous while Hu-3 is the least. The agriculture ministry of Bangladesh banned the use of all of these three grades of pesticides on fruits and vegetables in the country.
Read "Eating poison with fruits and vegetables" at:
I was appalled to read this piece today after my recent decision based on aerated drinks which had originated two days ago, following a movie I saw.
The movie “Corporate” is based on the life of power hungry people in the corporate world, the movie depicts deceit, corruption to the extent of manipulation and bribery. Fame and success is fought over and rules don't exist. In the movie, an example was shown of a desperate profit making scheme taken by the company to launch a new product in the market. This included a mint based mineral drink. To beat competition, the drink was launched even though the quality control results were shown to have poisonous pesticides present in the drink which was not easily detectable. Drinking this new drink could cause cancer, infertility and several other heath hazards. As the movie enfolded, management decision of the company was to bribe the authorities and replace the drinks with better quality once the launching program was over.
It was just a movie, but I decided never to drink aerated drinks again for health reasons.
Ironically a friend of mine wanted to give up smoking for its bad effects on health and made a new year resolution to give up smoking this year. Now, if we compare the situation of the unhealthy food available in this part of the world to other obvious unheathy habits it makes one wonder. “Is smoking really worse than consuming small amounts of poisonous substances used to kill deadly snakes?”
Nobody has all the answers of course. It is very easy to become frustrated after hearing yet another news report about a particular food or substance that causes serious health issues and than then months later, hearing about the same substance doing exactly the opposite from different sources. At times, it's hard to know what to believe and what to decide to formulate a sane decision on consumption, streamline risks and live a longer, happier, healthy life regardless of the countless amount of risks we encounter every moment in our daily life.
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