Two whole years of harshness, volatility, and gripping content that is simply not to be found elsewhere. And that's for good reason. When we started the Latewire, a multi-author, pan-topic, uncensored stream-of-unconsciousness antiblog seemed like a pretty bad idea. We did it anyway. Two years later, it seems unconscionable, but you're still reading it -- in fact, more of you get lit up by the Wire every month, your strange legion now well in the thousands.
"The truth is mixing with the lies to create some potent new reality." - Josh Kornbluth in "Haiku Tunnel"
Latewire has been on top of some pretty vital issues, earlystyles. This is nearly incredible for a totally unorganized collective of deeply bizzarre posthumans. Organizing against bank bailouts? LW was there first. Emo capri pants on males? LW enthographers spotted them in the field. Exclusive interview with Ken Lunde? Only on Latewire. Realization that not all reggae music sucks? That epiphany brought to you right here.
Different readers use Latewire in different ways. To some, it's the place to go for Austrian-style economics analysis infused with black humor. To others, it's a reliable source of morose comedown prose and doomed poetry. Still others look to LW for an image reservoir and original* graphic art that bests the most popular imageboards on the intarweebs. Some come to Latewire for radical and reasoned thinking on eating and growing food. And some look forward to articles by particular writers : the terrifying clarity of Dr Roe; certifiable voice-of-the-damned 1m1w; the graphic arts genius of DeadcowX; the stark insight of Bill. See, LW is like a jar of mayonnaise. What you do with it is your business. We don't want to know**. Just keep coming back and we'll keep serving it up, even with the end of the world coming up and all.
Latewire. Fortunately for everyone, there's nothing else like it.
"Mens insana in corpore sano"
-Hank 04-01-2010
*Provided that your definition of "original" includes stealing images from other sites, messing with them, and then writing "LATEWIRE" across them
**Actually, we kind of do want to know. In fact, send me an email to Hank [at] Latewire (diddot) com about why you Latewire in 500 words or less. Please include aphorisms. The author of the one we like best wins a free Latewire Latewear T-shirt of their choice (see link at sidebar). (41,189)
OK, serial novella, LW-style. Finish this one up for me, cro-mags.
__
I had a horrible toothache, so I made an appointment to see the dentist. The rest of my work day was a living hell, as I tried to keep my face from screwing up into a mask of agony during meetings and snapped inappropriately at people on the phone. I heard that the boss was mad about my behavior but managed to sneak out of the office before he could chew my face off. My drive home was pockmarked with near-misses and roiling road rage as the tooth beagle kept gnawing away at my nerve. When I got home, my wife gave me a kiss on the cheek which sent swords of pain through my jaw and into my cranium. I took a bunch of Ibuprofen, cursed the fact that I hadn't saved any Vicodin that I had left over from my foot operation, and headed to to bed. Of course, sleep was impossible until sheer exhaustion overtook the machete sensation and I passed out.
When I woke up I was starving, but I forewent my customary bowl of "Kashi" brand cereal due to the blinding pain in my head. At this point, I was totally unfit to drive and couldn't even really speak, so my wife took the morning off from her job and drove me to the dentist. I signed my pathetic name on the sign-in sheet and sat twitching in the waiting room until the nurse called me.
I walked into the white room and sat down on a dentist chair so high-tech that I'm surprised it was declassified. Even through the pain I could tell it was really cool and was barely able to suppress an urge to bark Picard-style space commands. The nurse came back in and took my blood pressure, which I thought was odd for a tooth extraction, but whatever. The nurse looked pretty hot; her "Spongebob" scrubs were about a size too small and her short hair was tinted a kinky purple. This didn't really help ease my blinding discomfort, however.
The doctor came in, looking very much like a thinner Gene Hackman. He had a big bluish birthmark on the side of his cheek and I remember that he smelled like Tabasco.
"Hi, I'm Doctor Cartwright. Looks like you're in some pain, huh?"
I nodded gingerly.
"OK, Hank, you just hang in there. We're going to get you all fixed up. Edie, let's get Hank set up -- administer the anesthetic and get him secured."
The nurse, Edie, said "You'll feel a pinch" and inserted an IV of clear fluid into my arm and began to manipulate some apparatus behind my chair. Within a few seconds, the murderous pain had dulled to a throb and I was feeling more relaxed. Edie swivelled some metal pieces out from behind the chair and snapped them in place at the side of my head, locking it in place.
"Hey!" I drawled.
"Don't worry, Hank," Edie said with a wink. "This is just to immobilize your head so it doesn't move while we're working." In my peripheral vision, I could see that she was doing something with the IV.
Shortly thereafter, I felt a metallic chill and started to hear things in a weird, crunchy, amplified way, like as if I was listening to the world through a paper cup.
The doctor popped back into my frame of vision. He looked different. He said, "How we doing, Hank?" and his mouth curled in a sickening, inhuman smile. Behind his eyes I could see a bonfire of hate, and I would have screamed. But in fact, I couldn't speak at all.
So this is what it's come to. We've spent all and now are compelled to face the true reality of the situation we've chiseled out for ourselves. All these years trying to get more, get more, and get more independent have really all been spent mortaring ourselves tightly inside the chamber of the Hate Goat.
The Hate Goat sows confusion and harvests the gutted husks of dreams from within the foul Abbatoir of Hope. He rejoices that we've invested so much of our blood and effort, only to finally join him in his vile abode.
YOU LIED TO ME YOU SAID YOU'D NEVER TURN FROM ME YOU LIED TO ME YOU LIED TO ME (45,308)
The pop-critic establishment is already busy disparaging th' new release from Massive Attack, the English group responsible for welding R+B, dub, and pure burning hopeless doom into a mesmeric sound that rips lives out of living humans. The previous release under the Massive Attack name, "100th Window" was a grody platter of hot sleep garbage, so my hopes weren't all that high for this record, th' geographically-named "Heligoland." However, after listening to this joint on repeat for the past week, I can say with confidence that the critics hating on it either haven't listened to it (I'm looking at you, Pitchfork) or have no idea what Massive Attack are supposed to be about (hey bloggers!). The raw fact is that this record is exactly what a Massive Attack record is supposed to be : adventurous, unpredictable, and capable of sending the listener into a melancholic reverie.
Pitchfork's review goon intones that Massive Attack fail to 'engage current music' with this release, rattling off a list of recent genres like 'dubstep' and 'UK funky' in an attempt to sound hip and asking why th' band doesn't do something in relation to those styles. This is silly. Massive Attack has never been interested in following or 'engaging' current music trends, they are in the business of creating fresh music styles. Suggesting that the band should have incorporated obvious dubstep references into this album is like saying that "Blue Lines" should have had acid house splashed all over it.
While it wouldn't be fair to say that this is a retro album, the 90s do creep up pretty big here. The vocal spots by Blur's Damon Albarn and Tricky's Martina Topley-Bird, th' recklessly unpolished beats, th' wild assemblage of genres. In fact, th' record that sounds most like "Heligoland" is Tricky's own "Nearly God," wherein th' mush-mouthed master of paranoia explored all kinds of new craggy musical forms in underproduced, rough, and totally enveloping tunes. That same kind of punchy excitement is here on "Heligoland" as well.
It kicks off with "Pray for Rain," a number sung by that guy from TV On The Radio. This tune is strongly reminiscent of "Remain in Light" era Talking Heads or classic Peter Gabriel. A vaguely witch-doctor midtempo loop prods Tunde Adebimpe along in his lyrics which evoke some kind of weird tribal ritual. The climax of this tune has a cache of lyrical gems like "Drops on rocks fall fast and fleeting… hidden laws unleash their meaning." The vibe is tense and anticipatory, rather than tense and paranoid. Some complain that this tune is overlong, but in fact, it's just right for sending you zoning into a harsh rude daydream.
Th' next cut, "Babel" is a little jarring with its fast straight drum-and-bass loop and more Talking Heads guitars, but then Topley-Bird's sly, streetworn voice floats in and recalls in tempo and knowing authority her performance of "Black Steel in The Hour of Chaos" from 1995. The skittering drums might be distracting for some (they're certainly quicker than anything else Massive Attack has done), but it's no cookie-cutter Metalheadz beat, and the twitchy speed creates an ill mood.
The sole vocal appearance by much-needed Daddy G follows, on posse mope "Splitting the Atom." This is a crypto-rocksteady tune that is just glum enough while also grooving steadily. Horace Andy thankfully reappears for the first time on this track.
No lead-in could prepare the listener for "Girl I Love You," a generically-titled song that is by any measure, the equal of any other Massive Attack tune. With Horace Andy's plaintive voice floating over an urgent-sounding rock bass and terrifying horn chart, this tune immediately ensnarls you like a barbed wire tumbleweed. Th' uncertianty and fear in Andy's voice is almost unbearable, and this tune has the kind of dynamics that are bound to blow an addled mind.
Next up is th' unfairly-maligned "Psyche," a tune so minimalist that it borders on Minimalism. Again, Topley-Bird mics it here, with good lyrics and her characteristic after-hours tone. Some folks find this jam overly simplistic or boring, but if you ask me, it's kind of fresh and has a deep structure that really sneaks up on you.
The "Flat of the Blade" is next, wherein some guy from a band called Elbow proceeds to maximally creep out over a very Bjorky percussion and drone track. I'm not a fan of this individual's singing, but the track gets gold (or is it grey?) stars for spooky atmosphere.
Two of th' remaining tracks, "Rush Minute" and "Atlas Air" are showcases for Robert "3D" Del Naja, who as on "100th Window" abandons rapping for a strange kind of flat-toned singing. The difference between these tracks and the mess that is "100th Window" is that the actual music here has a lot more ideas to offer and is not pandering. Both of these cuts are heavy on synth elements and have a kind of weary New Wave feel. The fact is that 3D sounds better rapping after all and is kind of stiff and unswinging in his production, but the tunes are still worth listening to.
The other two tracks, "Paradise Circus" and "Saturday Come Slow" are stone brilliant. The former is a ghostly exercise in chills featuring Goth poster girl Hope Sandoval. This jam has the kind of shifting, spare, slow beat that really gets those mope juices flowing. "Saturday Come Slow" is a love dirge right at the cusp of bleak sentiment like "Dissolved Girl." Damon Albarn lets loose some of the most sorrowful wails he's done since "Tender" dropped; this limey is hurting! People tend to associate Albarn with puckish Britpop pogoing and general punkitude, but anyone who's seen him do "This is a Low" or "No Distance Left to Run" will know that he can really tear up that sad mic thing. His ragged voice telegraphs profound heartbreak better than nearly anyone else.
I think that the bitter mistake all these reviewers make is in trying to compare this joint to "Mezzanine." "Mezzanine" isn't an album, it's a giant shard of volcanic glass that plunges straight into the soul of anyone who dares to listen to it. It's monolithic, oppressive, and non-reproducible. Comparing anything to "Mezzanine" is like saying "Oh well this roadside ditch isn't as cool as th' Marianas Trench." Stupid. "Mezzanine" is an artifact of its time that could not be any other way or from another time; any attempt to recreate or follow it now would result in abject self-parody. People tend to forget now, but Massive Attack's other two classic albums -- "Blue Lines" from 1991 and "Protection" from 1994 -- were totally different from each other and from "Mezzanine," and took a lot of getting used to. i remember how people would talk smack about "Protection" when they bought it after having loved and crumbled to th' narcobludgeon of "Mezzanine," only to come back two months later and crow about how brilliant it was when they finally 'got' it. So, like those other two classic albums, give this one some time and repeat listens late at night, and I think then that all th' irrelevant comparisons will drop away and you'll be able to soak in this record properly. It's funny, just today I was rapping with my pal and CERN inhabitant monster -- he said "I've listened to 'Mezzanine' hundreds of times, but can't really name a favorite song." It's just not possible to cleave up that LP -- it's a complete and matchless monument of psychedelia.
"Heligoland" is something different but equally needed : a collection of diverse fresh tunes, fearlessly chosen and correctly sung. Massive Attack have refused to try to replicate the hazy druglike syrup of of 1998 and instead are exploring a quicker-stepping, more raw style that demonstrates how unsettling sounds don't always come at plodding molasses tempos. I strongly recommend that all freaks, goths, and sad pandas obtain a copy of this; it's adventuresome, worth your brainspace, and an antidote to the stale. Wait until 2 or 3am, sit back with spooky lights on, and devolve to th' destructive sounds of this joint. Now, if only it came with a reason to get out of bed th' next day.. (54,519)
There's a thundering hailstorm in Phoenix today, sending drops of frozen hate clattering across the skylight and beating the life out of weak trees. On the outskirts of my peripheral vision, I caught a glimpse of something white and jagged -- the future.
Life as a human right now is akin to having woken up inside the chute of a woodchipper. We may not even recall how we got inside the woodchipper in the first place. The one thing that is clear : the inevitability of the blades.
A feeling like saws chewing into my neck. The sounds of weeping just outside my door. And a cold light knife into my pupil reminds me : This is a world divorced from hope.
When facing a suffocated reality of nonexistent future, what do you do? Here are some options :
1) Lie down and wait quietly for the ice weasels to come. 2) Cry until you're too tired to cry any longer, then die. 3) Fight until death. 4) Put on heavy metal records and rock out for as long as possible.
Now, I don't know which of these sounds most attractive, or which you, the reader, may already be doing. I choose option #4. Here's why :
* Metal music is brain floss. * Metal music improves blood flow to the face. * Metal music is not a norm. * Metal music has no sympathy for your suffering. * Metal music remembers when you were only an animal. * Metal music hasn't heard about your regrets, but it can drench them in molten @#$%^& * Metal music will survive long after the Universe is toast. * Metal music recognizes your true form and can restore it if lost. * Metal music connects you with that aspect of youself that you forgot about. * Metal music is truth erupting from a sea of lies.
There's no future. But with metal music, the present can be made to rock. In these bleak and doomed days, everybody looks for help. Some go to shrinks, some watch TV, and some try in futility to numb the pain with drugs. Well, you all are welcome to your 'cheese' heroin, 'lean,' and amphetamines. I'm an Earache man myself. (52,945)
Last time on Poisoned foods, I ended with a teaser about the artificial sweetener Aspartame (NutraSweet) and made the blanket statement that it shouldn't be used by dogs, cats, rats, or, I guess, you.
There's this old lore floating around which may or not be true regarding the Romans and lead pipes. Roman plumbers used to use lead because it was cheap and extremely easy to work with--low melting point, very soft, etc. In fact, the latin word for "plumber" is named after their word for lead, "plumbum." Lead is a rather annoying poison with subtle effects like infertility, anemia, and mental retardation when exposed at low levels for long periods of time. Some even claim that lead poisoning contributed to the decline of Rome.
It's a fascinating story, but it may not actually be true. The Roman people were exposed to a lot of lead, but the pipes may not have been to blame. Sucrose (found in cane sugar) was extremely scarce in ancient Rome, so they sweetened their foods with, among other things, defrutum, carenum, and sapa. These were basically all the same but sapa is the most concentrated form, and was highly sought-after. Roman prostitutes were sometimes even paid in sapa. The problem with these sweeteners was that one of the main components was, you guessed it: plumbum.
Cato (a Roman senator, philosopher, and cooking hobbyist) wrote about how sapa should be used in moderation--noting the agitation and nervousness accompanying acute lead poisoning. However, since it didn't actually kill anyone, and the health effects were subtle, their use continued to be very popular.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Organic Foods
Unfortunately, like many subjects on the internet with maybe a tiny glimmer of truth to them, google results for "Aspartame" are inundated with a shitstorm of nonsense. Most of this, of course, is propagated by morally gray competitors and cult-like followers of "organic foods."
In the case of aspartame, I believe the main driving force behind most of the FUD can be summed up in a single word: Stevia. Stevia is a "natural artificial sweetener." That's right, it's both natural and artificial. Mind-blowing, isn't it?
Like all things natural, it has to be better for you.
Here are some other things that are natural (and therefore "good for you"): - Cyanide - Arsenic - Acetone (paint thinner)
Cyanide is a deadly poison found in cashew nuts (especially the shells). Arsenic is found naturally in soil (especially in Bangladesh--where it gives cancer to thousands every year via the groundwater). Acetone is a "ketone body" made in tiny quantities by the liver when you haven't eaten in a few days. In larger quantities, it is deadly-toxic to the liver and kidneys.
So now that we're sold on natural bull-crap, we'd better turn around and put some hate on heavily synthetic products like aspartame. Let's just find all the dumb-ass, nonsensical FUD we can and repeat it like it's gospel.
....
Unfortunately, this is the thinking that wasted a good half hour of my time today when I went to research this subject.
Aspartame IS bad for you. However, that doesn't mean 99% of what you read about it isn't BS put out there by Stevia salesmen and natural food ex-hippie failures to get you to switch to their products.
As an aside, according to this wikipedia article, among the patchouli-infused cloud-O-stupid that surrounds this issue, there was some sort of elaborate hoax related to spreading rumors around about how aspartame managed to get through FDA approval due to some mass corruption in the system. Actually aspartame did have a tough time getting though, but there was no actual documented corruption, as far as we know.
Of course, this begs the question: even if aspartame did manage to get through the FDA smoothly, does this mean shit? Not only can the FDA not find their ass with both hands, but they really only test what they can find in laboratories. Can lab rats tell you if they have headaches or feel lethargic? Is this some new hip music that I don't understand?
Insulin
By whatever mechanism, aspartame does raise insulin levels. This causes lower blood sugar and increases appetite. Though it likely doesn't result in weight gain directly, it would definitely make it harder to exercise and lose weight. Studies have shown people who switch from regular soda to diet do not lose weight (or the other way around). This is probably why.
Aspartame mongers will respond to this fact by referring you to the recent large study done of aspartame and insulin. In this study, participants saw no significant changes in insulin levels. However, this is kind of moot, because all the participants were type II diabetics, who are by definition jacked on insulin and resistant to it at the same time! Other, smaller studies done previously show the correlation quite significantly.
Personally, I'm not a diabetic, are you? You are? Oh, okay, you may eat aspartame, but the other 92% of Americans will have to abstain.
While I seriously doubt aspartame products raise insulin levels high enough to cause severe hypoglycemia (life-threatening), moderate hypoglycemia (AKA hunger) is still not good for losing weight or resisting the urge to punch people in the head at random intervals throughout your day (it's harder for some of us than others.).
Naughty Bits
Aspartame, when broken down in the body, turns into four chemicals (by the way, the first 3 are all naturally-occurring): Methanol -- The shit in moonshine that makes you go blind. Phenylalanine -- The shit that is a cause of severe mental retardation in infants. Aspartic Acid -- an "excitotoxin" that damages nerve cells. Aspartylphenylalanine diketopiperazine -- May turn into a chemical that causes brain tumors.
Now, the question is: how are the above tolerated by the human body in the quantities included in, say, the standard 16oz Diet Coke. That's the question right there: Given that all these chemicals are bad, are the low doses ingested with every piece of gum or soda enough to cause illness?
The truth is fairly complicated, and the research (what little there is) states that whatever the health issues with aspartame, they're probably fairly subtle, unless you have a predisposing medical condition.
One of the problems with research is that poisons can work very differently. In the case of carcinogens, low levels for long periods of time can kill you. In the case of acutely poisonous materials, it's more about blood-concentration than total amount. The body can handle almost anything as long as it doesn't overpower the natural metabolic pathways, but once you get past those, the poisons can wreak serious havoc. It all depends on the poison.
Another problem is that it's nearly impossible to detect extremely diffuse damage. If 1,000 random and non-contiguous neurons die in your brain within the next 5 minutes, you might notice, but tests would reveal nothing--even if they opened up your skull and dissected your brain!
Keep that in mind when reading studies: They can only report on what they can quantify, and they can only quantify what they can detect with equipment. If a test subject says "Yo doc, I feel like festering putrid ballsack over here," the study may not have a standardized ballsack detection device on hand to verify his "anecdotal" claims. Therefore, that information may get thrown out--especially if the data is collected by worthless good-for-nothing grad students.
Let's start with methanol. Methanol does cause blindness and even death in large doses. The aspartame manufacturers claim that since there are higher levels of methanol in say, an apple, than in a diet coke that it makes aspartame safe by comparison. While, strictly speaking, there is more methanol in apples than Diet Coke, this argument discounts the fact that the blood level of methanol goes up disproportionately higher in aspartame-laden sodas than in an apple. This is because apples have pectin and fiber and junk that slows the rate at which the methanol enters the blood stream. In fact, much of the methanol in fruit does not get absorbed at all!
It's common sense: taking any chemical on an empty stomach will increase blood-levels faster--same principle. Does methanol cause problems for people who eat aspartame? I don't know. What I do know, however, is that it passes through the blood-brain barrier much easier after physical activity, which may not have been factored into the big aspartame studies.
Phenylalanine is kind of a mixed bag. Phenylalanine is a vital amino acid, which means it's necessary for people to consume at least some of it in their diet. For some people, however, high doses can have serious side effects. When fetuses, infants, or small children are given high doses of phenylalanine, it causes severe mental retardation. This doesn't actually occur very often, because the body is quite good at breaking it down. However, in some people, this is not the case, and they (or their children) suffer. The inability to break down phenylalanine properly is called phenylketonuria (PKU). In this rare but serious disease, blood-levels of phenylalanine can be extremely high. In adults, this doesn't usually cause problems... unless they're pregnant. Pregnant mothers with PKU need to watch their diet, or risk poisoning their unborn children. Children are regularly screened for PKU so they can be put on a low-phenylalanine diet until they grow up.
Phenylalanine is definitely okay and even necessary for the vast majority of people--not that it matters, considering the levels in aspartame containing foods are not really that high. Interesting note: Phenylalanine is also metabolized into adrenaline.
Aspartylphenylalanine diketopiperazine is a weird one. Apparently it could possibly turn into some chemical that might cause brain tumors. I call bullshit, this seems a little far-fetched to me.
Aspartic acid, on the other hand, is kind of a wild card. It is an excitotoxin, which means it does increase neuronal activity and, in high enough concentrations, neuron death. Not a whole lot has been studied with lower aspartic acid levels as far as clinical effects, but it is likely the source of the anecdotal reports of headaches (which are very real, and I've personally done double-blind experiments verifying them). Whether or not aspartame products raise the levels of aspartic acid high enough to cause damage, let alone significant damage, is unknown at present. What we do know is what it does in higher doses is scary.
So what?
In cases like aspartame, you have to go with simple facts: half of its byproducts are evil poisons, and there are plenty of alternatives out there. It seems aspartame fans and manufacturers are making an awful lot of excuses to try and keep people on the stuff. What a total waste of time: it's sketchy biochemistry and it's a totally unnecessary product attempting to supplant many that were already proven cheap and safe.
I'd recommend just stop trying to cheat calorie intake and use good old-fashioned sugar in moderation...
Woops, I forgot: this is America... Moderation is not an option, let's all switch to Splenda. (99,236)
So in the vein of keeping yourselves and hopefully your loved ones relatively carcinogen and poison free, here is a great resource for discovering what personal hygeine products are (relatively) safe.
As it happens, the FDA and many other so called consumer watchdog groups worldwide don't really monitor what goes into many consumables. In fact, not even many companies monitor what they put into their own product formulas! And these formulas are constantly changing. Remember, these are substances you allow to contact your body daily possibly even more than once a day! Some of the ingredients are quite minor and cause no great threat, but some are known carcinogens. If you don't smoke cigarettes because you don't want tar in your lungs, what sense would it make for you to use a shampoo containing tar as a major ingredient? The website ranks these ingredients on a number scale from 0-7 (or 8 or 10) depending on how harmful the ingredients are and sometimes even contains links to studies etc. Browse around and check out some of the brands you have sitting around in your shower, you'll be suprised!
I realize this post applies more to woman than to men, so for all of our 3 ladywires, here ya go. And for those about to douche, we salute you! (40,274)
Last time on poisoned foods, I explained how PhDs are full of crap, and how it is that this comes to effect doctors and their advice to patients (you).
Unfortunately, this time I'm going to have to get a little bit more scientific on you. Sorry for the diversion, but once you understand at least some of the science behind metabolism, you too will be able to "call bullshit" on the PhDs. They'd like to keep science confined to the narrow confines of their tiny pinheads, but the reality is that science is for everybody, and it doesn't take an especially smart person (or someone who just thinks they're smart, in the case of the PhD) to come to conclusions based on scientific fact.
First, we're going to talk about insulin. If you get nothing out of this article, you should associate insulin with weight gain. So if I were to say that "this food stimulates insulin release", you would say ....? ...? That's right! it makes you fat!
Insulin, under normal circumstances, is created and released by the pancreas usually, BUT NOT ALWAYS [ -- Note this], in response to a rise in blood sugar. The insulin is merely a SIGNALING hormone that tells your muscles, fat cells, etc, to take up sugar from the blood (sugar is actually converted to fat in the liver and dumped into the blood, then the fat cells take it up and grow plump). These muscle/fat/liver cells are primed and ready to suck up the free sugar. As soon as insulin gives the go-ahead, *FOOM* the sugar is burned / stored like an inferno from that movie Backdraft. This is why when diabetics inject insulin and forget to eat, they can put themselves into a fucking coma™ due to lack of blood sugar.
So, to kind of summarize: in the same way that 'roids tell your pecs to turn into a couple of chest-hams and balls to turn into peanuts, insulin tells your ass to get fat and your belly to inherit the Earth.
Resistance
You may have heard of insulin resistance. I'm not going to cover that here in detail, but it's incredibly important to understand:
Insulin resistance is caused by hormones released by fat cells in the belly and it forces the pancreas to secrete more insulin to compensate. The fatter you are, the more resistant you are, and the more insulin your pancreas releases;
The liver is immune to the resistance hormone, so while muscles aren't eating and burning the sugar, the liver's responding to the high insulin levels by going crazy turning the sugar it into fat, leading to weight gain and even hunger! Therefore, in a person with insulin resistance, more ingested sugar is going to be converted into fat than in a person without resistance.;
Eventually, the give-and-take between insulin and the resistance hormones may result in the pancreas being overworked, damaged, and eventually being unable to compensate. This condition is known as Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus [Pro tip: This is how most diabetics acquire their condition.];
Often, the pancreas will get so chewed up that the person can give themselves a big fat case of Type 1 Diabetes, meaning that even after the person loses the resistance-hormone-secreting fat cells (think treadmill), they will still have overly high blood sugar.
Almost everyone has some small amount of fat cells making them insulin resistant. We're going to assume that you haven't gotten to the point of extreme insulin resistance... yet. However, insulin is still a great barometer to determine how fat something's going to make you. Remember, MORE INSULIN = MORE FAT.
The Carb
Now that you've learned the magic of insulin, you're probably wondering how you're going to use your newfound knowledge to control your weight.
Sadly, there's no way around this: Carbohydrates stimulate insulin release. I know, it's sad, but those low carb numb-nuts actually had a point. Atkins is an extreme example, but really any amount of carbohydrate abstention helps.
You might be asking: "So how does my bagel become sugar in my blood? It doesn't taste sweet, it must not have sugar!" You know what it takes to turn starch into sugar? Saliva (spit). Starch (the main source of carbs from wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, and others) is actually just a whole crapload of sugar linked together in a weak chain. One tiny snip by an enzyme (present in saliva and elsewhere) and a little bit of water added and they turn into single-monomer sugar molecules that float into your intestine cells just as fast as a Jolly Rancher candy.
Carbs are pretty much all the same. The only difference is what other food you mix it with to change the peak and duration of the sugar high. FYI: Though I wont go into too much detail on it, the peak and duration of the sugar high is called the "Glycemic Index."
The fact is, carbohydrates have ZERO nutritional value outside of providing energy for cells. If you're overweight, you already have more than enough energy in your body to burn for a while. Therefore, you don't actually require any carbohydrates if you have sufficient fat stores.
By contrast, in order to burn ingested protein, the body actually has to tune down the insulin and increase levels of the antagonistic hormone glucagon.
A study done of Atkins dieters found that they routinely consumed fewer calories than those not on the diet. The rules don't say they have to do this, but the dieters found they were compelled to eat less due to the the satiety caused by the foods they ate due and due to the lack of an insulin-induced blood sugar dip (which leads to people getting hungry again quickly after carb-rich meals).
The brain, unfortunately, loves to eat sugar. It cannot eat fat directly, so the only choices are ultra tasty sugar and unpleasant, slow burning, ketone bodies, which is like leaving your brain stranded on a desert island with nothing but mulchy disgusting powerbars for eternity--you're alive, you're technically healthy, but you wish you weren't.
That's why a lot of diets simply encourage cutting back on carbohydrates and not eliminating them. The goal is to burn stored energy, so don't be a fool and introduce more energy into the system than you have to, however, keep in mind the only diet that works is one that you can stick to. Carb cravings can drive you nuts, so cutting back may be more to your liking than abstaining completely.
No Fat? No Deal!
You're probably wondering: if the goal is to consume less energy, why not ditch the energy-rich fatty foods instead of that tasty CocaCola? After all, Fat has about twice the calories per weight than carbohydrates, and it can dissolve directly from the food, float right through the intestinal wall, and fly right into that adipose tissue on your already overly-plump posterior.
The fact is: if you're overweight, you're probably already insulin resistant. If you're insulin resistant, more of the carbohydrates you eat go into making fat than being burned by muscle (when compared to a normal person). Also, since the insulin levels are higher than normal in the resistant, the liver will be making fat out of the sugar long after your blood sugar has normalized. This will actually cause low blood sugar, making you even hungrier!
So, to summarize, with sugar: you eat, you spike your insulin, you crash, you feel hungry, you eat again.
"Okay!!" you say "But what about fat? You said you were going to talk about fat, stop stalling!!"
I only mention carbs so that you can keep it in mind when you compare it to fat:
Fat does not spike insulin, period. It also increases satiety directly by release of special hormones.
Fat decreases the rate your stomach empties into the small intestine, leaving you feeling "full" for longer and therefore decreasing your desire to eat
Fat, when combined with a regular helping of carbohydrates, can actually reduce the rate at which it is absorbed, lowering the insulin spike. This reduces the 'crash' effect and therefore reduces the urge to eat again later.
Fat is burned highly effectively by muscle, and does not increase lactic acid levels (so you can work out longer and harder than you can on sugar).
Products that change recipes to gain their "low fat" moniker almost always raise sugar to compensate for taste. This decreases the satiety caused by the fat and increases the urge to eat again later due to the sugar
It's the combination of all these facts that lead many, including myself, to believe that the "low fat" diet craze is one of the prime reasons for America's obesity problem. Fat is not good for you, but it's a necessary addition to carbohydrates, and certainly not any worse. Fat may be more "energy dense" than carbs, but that hardly matters when you're eating three times the food twice as often because it's not filling you up, and it's making you more hungry.
Fiber
For God's sake. Eat more fiber.
Fiber lowers the rate of absorption of carbs, so eat high-fiber bread.
Fiber increases satiety, so eat more fiber.
In the same way that sawdust is used to clear up oil spills, fiber absorbs fat and cholesterol in the gut and prevents absorption--decreasing blood cholesterol and therefore the risk of heart disease. So eat more fiber.
Fiber is incredibly important for GI health and prevents a long list of possible ailments including diverticulitis.
Perforated diverticulitis is where your colon blebs off, fills with puss, gets inflamed, and then pops. When it pops, it leaks out puss into your abdomen, sending you into septic shock. Your immune system goes nuts and starts telling your platelets to clot all over your body so you get little bloody patches on your skin and your internal organs. You start out with blistering fever but the shock is so bad you don't have enough blood to fill your vessels so you get very cold. In the event you survive, you have severe damage to every organ in your body including your brain. This isn't something that takes long to develop, either. The patient I first saw this in was 30. So you're going to eat your fiber now, right?
Oh, fiber also prevents colon cancer. Heard of it? Yeah, fiber's the most important factor in preventing colon cancer behind genetics, so eat more fiber.
Fiber has somewhere between zero and almost zero calories, so why the hell aren't you eating it? Shut up, I know you aren't.
High(er) Protein
Disadvantages (?):
I'm only going to say a few words on protein. First of all, you've probably heard that the Atkins "high protein" diet causes kidney problems. Most of the hubbub about this was from exaggerated claims made by puppet organizations setup by PETA (a pro-animal and therefore anti-high protein diet organization).
Even if that were true: Far and away, the #1 and 2 causes for for kidney failure in the US are Obesity and Tobacco (I don't know which is #1, sorry). Being fat is way worse for you, stop making excuses! Having diabetes is going to eat your kidneys faster than any steak, even that one John Candy ate in "The Great Outdoors."
Luckily, it's not actually true. High protein diets will not wreck your kidneys... unless you're dumb, but dumb people run into trouble with many things.
One of the results of increased protein in the diet is an increase in ammonia (ammonium, actually, but it's almost the same) concentration in the urine. This is normal and natural in animals, and the ammonia in the urine of animals is a necessary part of the ecosystem. If you were to somehow eliminate all the ammonia from the waste of all the living things around the world, it would literally end most life on earth in a matter of months.
If the world ends, what's the body count on Panda bears?? Take that, PETA!!
Alright, fine: Theoretically, higher ammonia concentrations are bad. It may have actually resulted in one or two people suffering some problems. That's why we're going to drink more water, which lowers the concentration of ammonia to safer levels, right?
If you're losing weight, you should be drinking more water anyway. Just add another little bit if you choose to augment your diet by eating more protein.
Advantages
Protein does not increase insulin. In fact, you need to lower insulin just to convince cells to burn protein as fuel.
Protein also increases satiety, meaning you feel full faster.
When insulin and sugar levels are low, the body makes new sugar (to feed the brain, heart, and red blood cells). It sucks ass at this. I mean it's pathetic. Animals are terrible sugar-makers, and they know it. That's why they only do it when they're hungry. In order to make sugar, the body combines protein with stored fat. The body stores fat, but it doesn't "store" protein, so it has to cannibalize itself to get it. With low insulin levels, muscle protein is broken down. This is why when people lose a lot of weight, they tend to lose muscle mass as well.
With a high protein diet, instead of burning muscle, your body will use the dietary protein, leaving the muscle intact. It's actually been proven that high protein dieters end up with more muscle mass after they lose weight than people who diet without high protein.
Verdict
When losing weight, you probably want to eat more protein and definitely want to drink a lot more water. Higher protein will keep more muscle and may allow for faster weight loss.
As an aside, it's not a choice between the Atkins "I ate Bambi's Mom" diet and the Vegan "Suck my Potatoes" diet. That's the kind of binary PhD nonsense that you see all over the literature on this. Some sources on this subject made it seem like you couldn't even eat oranges because it made Dr. Atkins hit-list. It went on to complain that this meant all higher protein diets resulted in scurvy, and that this was the reason "all low carb diets are bad." I'd just like to say that I can eat whatever 'the fuck I want, thanks very much. Yes, it's possible to eat lots of healthy foods, eat fewer carbs, and consume more protein all in the same meal, or at least in the same diet.
Diet Sweets: The Devil You Don't
I wanted to conclude this edition of Poisoned Foods with something definitive and instructive, but really everything I've told you so far is solid fact, and why start pointless controversy by mentioning specifics?
However, one of the things I can say specifically is: avoid artificial sweeteners. No, this is not a "maybe just a tiny bit" situation. Just don't.
Recently, a team of researchers discovered what many of us have already known: artificial sweeteners increase insulin levels.
Unfortunately, the study only tested Nutrisweet (present in nearly all sugar-free gums and beverages). We'll assume (because let's face it: it's true) that this applies to all artificial sweeteners, not like it matters because if we can get people to stop drinking diet coke, the world's going to be a better place hands down.
Side note: I wrote a report for my organic chemistry class on aspartame (nutrisweet). I may make the next edition entirely on that, you're gonna flip when you see the evil. EVVVVILLLLLL!!!
Remember when I said insulin decreases blood sugar in part by increasing the creation of fat? especially in people who are already fat? Hint: I said it like 10 times already.
YES: Diet drinks have no sugar, NO: You will not lose weight if you drink them.
Studies have definitively indicated that switching from regular soda to diet soda will not automatically lead to weight loss. Now you know why.
When you eat carbs, your blood sugar spikes, your insulin spikes, your blood sugar declines, you gain weight, you crash, you get hungry again.
When you consume artificial sweeteners, the exact same thing happens, only without the blood sugar spike. Artificial sweeteners make you hungry for real food, which you have to consume more of to make up for the blood sugar you've locked away into your fat cells.
Usually, these products mask some of the crash effect by being mixed in with caffeinated liquids. In the case of aspartame (nutrisweet), part of the molecule is actually converted into adrenaline (yes, that adrenaline). These effects may not be entirely obvious, but they are occurring.
I'm not saying you should switch from Diet Coke to Dr. Pepper. That would be stupid, now wouldn't it?
What I am saying is: if it tastes sweet, don't eat it if you want to lose weight. Especially soda.
In fact, there was a study done of childhood obesity. It found there was one unifying characteristic of most obese kids. We're talking undeniable correlation here. What was it? The one thing that commonly separates fat kids from skinny kids?: Soda.
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That's it for this edition. Join us next time. (92,762)
So I'm sitting up here in Cake City trotting through my second year of medical school and I thought it was time to stop and take stock of some of the things I've learned.
For instance, I can tell you first-hand now that the reason doctors give conflicting advice is because the professors from whom all us pre-doctors learn the academics of our profession don't actually profess correct information, but actually a mixture of up-to-date facts, out-of-date facts, and outright lore in unknown proportions they've concocted from many years of palling around with fellow squirrel-faced PhDs.
Let me tell you about PhDs. PhDs are funny. If you get a medical doctor (or DO) in a room with two PhDs and ask them what the best flavor of ice cream is, the two PhDs will debate for hours and then pat themselves on the back, for they have somehow served "the scientific community" by spurring debate, though they have not reached a conclusion. Meanwhile, the real doc has walked out hours ago, leaving a note in his stead reading "Best flavor? sometimes chocolate, sometimes vanilla, and sometimes PhDs are as useful as sex organs on a pair of Nikes."
After the two PhDs are done giving each other high-fives and reach-arounds, they'll meet up with the D.O. at the bar, much to his dismay. Some girl will walk up eyeballing one of the three, introduce herself and gesture for reciprocation. The PhDs seem to always push their title around like it demonstrates some kind of social prowess, so they'll answer Drs. Douchebag and Pedant, while our buddy the MD will simply say "Jim." It's baffling, really, because all a PhD represents is that you had a masters degree and then fellated a few other PhDs for a couple more years--sort of a bizarre hazing ritual--in lieu of joining the workforce. With the infinitely more expensive, difficult, and humbling feat of a medical degree, one would think medical doctors would be showing off their "Doctor" status at every occasion; not so. In fact, we call those kind of doctors "assholes." You can look it up in Dorland's medical dictionary.
With their anal-retentive attention to detail, one would think that PhDs would be the prime source of accurate and up-to-date information in their respective fields. This is not always the case, since PhDs are also incredibly lazy. They complain endlessly about their "terrible" jobs in which they have no responsibility but to read, word for word, the same slides they wrote 5 years ago at least 3 hours a week. It is true that some PhDs do revise their lectures and put in some effort to teach effectively, however it is not a requirement for employment.
Luckily, medical students like myself don't have to suffer PhDs and their ilk for more than the first two years of medical school. The last half of "school" is on-site training. Unfortunately, the poisoned seeds of misinformation have already been planted in our minds and we'll carry those with us until such time as we can have patients of our own to recommend chamomile tea instead of nitroglycerin--just like Dr. Douchebag told us to.
Obviously wrinkles in reality such as substituting vasodilators with diarrhea-flavored herbal teas would get ironed out in training. However, things such as patient education are very commonly tainted with the narrow-minded pea soup that gets sprayed on us daily in our first two years of hell (think Gallagher stand-up).
Calories Are BULLSHIT
The first thing PhDs will tell you about dieting is the synopsis we've all grown tired of: Eat fewer calories and burn more energy, and the pounds will disappear magically!
Yeah, no shit. Thanks Dr. Dipshit, who's you're employer? I want recommend they promote you to full fucktard.
Yes, everybody knows they need to exercise more, eat less, blah blah blah. That's of course technically correct, and I'm sure Dr. Obvious will roll you around in the dry-rub of thermodynamic laws for a few minutes before baking you in the "energy dense foods" oven. I'm sure that's what Dackow was really all about: just a friendly debate between the prison guards about calorie counting.
What people really want to know are what foods to eat, not how much of it. Obesity essentially fries your hormones and makes plain "calorie counting" extremely difficult. It takes an incredible amount of willpower for an obese individual to lose 10% of their body weight without use of a malignant cancer (which you may order from our online store any time!)
Of course if you eat enough of anything with any nutritional value, the body will retain weight, but there are simple things you can add to or subtract from foods to actually increase satiety--the feeling of fullness--so that you will not feel the need to eat so much.
This doesn't just work on the obese, it works on anyone, including the mildly overweight and even athletes.
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Well this is my intro to the 56-part series on "poison foods".. it may be two weeks for the next one (95,875)
Here’s another installment in the lead-up to Dr. Daniel R_e’s mind-opening series on nutrition and poison foods.
I’ve been a food freak for as long as I can remember. I love eating food, cooking food, and learning about food. I’m in the process of training to grow my own food. I’ll eat darn near anything except lima beans and Rocky Mountain oysters*. I have certain favorite dishes that I seek out in every place I can, and really dig comparing notes on various restaurants with other chow fanatics. For example, between 1995 and 2005, I ate dozens of Reuben sandwiches, ordering them in many states at every joint I visited that featured them on the menu, searching for the ultimate. [Pro tip : the grand winner was and remains Chompie’s ‘Grandpa Ruby’s Reuben’ – nonpareil, and available in Tempe or Scottsdale.] Currently, I’m on a grilled cheese safari that started in June of 2008. [Current point leader : Mile High Grill in Jerome, AZ]
Sounds like fun, huh? It is. But there’s a catch. Something else that I started in June is the transition from the poison to the Poison-Free Lifestyle ™ . For those not in the know, the Poison-Free Lifestyle™ is concerned primarily with excluding from one’s eating patterns such things as chemical additives like BHT, highly-processed ingredients such as modified corn starch, animal products that have been subject to the use of antibiotics, cannibal feed, or other nasty manipulation, and produce that has been grown with the addition of chemical pesticides or fertilizers. These excluded products are broadly construed as ‘poison’ for varying reasons. The chemical pesticides are kind of a no-brainer – those are literally poison, petrochemical compounds that you wouldn’t put in your mouth under any reasonable circumstances. Ditto known FDA-approved poisons like aspartame, which has been conclusively proven to be carcinogenic. The logic of excluding chemically modified and manipulated ingredients is a little more conceptual : even though eating pure modified corn starch or soy lecithin (for a terrifying and true account of how this stuff is produced, read the excellent and unbiased “Twinkie, Deconstructed”) hasn’t been proven to be harmful, the basis for rejecting it (and a great many other things that are hidden in the ingredient lists of nearly every item in the grocery store) is that it’s a food that’s twisted out of its basic form by processes that the consumer doesn’t understand and which involve harmful chemicals and is then tucked away into foods that you’d think would be perfectly free of weird synthetic ingredients without the consumer’s knowledge. Poison-Free eaters avoid these because a) the agents used in processing these ingredients are usually literal poisons, and we don’t trust manufacturer assertions that all the poisons ‘evaporate’ or are otherwise neutralized by the process end, and b) because we object on principle to having this chemical garbage snuck into our food in the first place and then told that it’s part of a wholesome and nutritious breakfast.
‘OK’, you say, ‘Good for you, champ-o, but what does this have to do with being a food freak or your grilled cheese quest?’ Here’s the nut. If one adheres strictly to the Poison-Free rule of “Read the label and don’t eat it unless you’re OK with every ingredient on there,” it’s nearly impossible to go eat at a restaurant and it just doesn’t make sense to eat at one. See, if restaurant food costs more than home-cooked food (which it always does – often by something like a factor or eight to ten), and at the same time, the restaurant food uses ingredients that are not poison-free (which very nearly all restaurants do), then it makes no sense to pay a huge premium to a restaurant for food that you wouldn’t pay for in a grocery store in the first place. Let me repeat that : it makes no sense to pay a premium in a restaurant for food that you’d reject for your home table as ‘poison.’
So why not, you ask, only go to poison-free restaurants? The answer is simple : because they are few, and the those that exist are generally lacking in menu, quality, service, vibe, or some combination of the above. When we go out to eat, it’s for pleasure, not to force a dry quinoa steak with patchouli sauce down our gullets while the bedreaded cook inadvertently shakes hair fragments and week-old cannabis seeds from his dome into our dessert. We want a delicious variety of food served competently in a place with a hip vibe.
OK, whiner, you reply, why not just stop going out and eat at home? Well, this is the obvious solution, but what fun is that? Sometimes, we just want to get out and chill with delicious food somewhere other than the domicile, hip as it may be. Also, it’s pretty hard to engage in safari behavior when you’re the one cooking the dang quarry, since by controlling every aspect of the production, you have a pretty good idea what the results will taste like.
The essential fact is that the problem is at present insoluble. We want to go out to eat often, but it’s illogical and bad form to pay someone to poison you. If one has kids, the folly is compounded. It’s impractical and annoying to demand to see the ingredient list for every item in every restaurant kitchen. We do seek out joints that are putatively poison-free, but they are so lacking in numbers that when one adjusts for the average “bad food, bad service, or just wack” restaurant-pool attrition, they might as well not exist at all.
What we’re doing right now is allowing ourselves a certain number of poison lunches or suppers pre month so that we can satisfy our restaurant addiction. This is a stupid solution, though, and we really feel the sting of stupidity when we drop $75 for a fancy dinner that is laden with high-fructose corn syrup, gross factory-farm dairy, and pesticide-dunked leafy greens. I don’t know how long we can keep acting like idiots in this way.
In a world where almost all commercial food products are chock-full of terrible manipulations and outright deadly poisons, and the thinking household really has to be careful and read the label of what they buy to eat if they want to avoid being dogs at the antifreeze puddle, where does the restaurant trade fit in? We go to restaurants because they have tasty food and cool atmosphere. But if the food is food that we wouldn’t eat if offered to us for free in another setting, much less pay for, how can we reasonably buy it from the restaurant? We can’t, that’s how. It’s dumb, stupid, and makes no sense.
To restauranteurs : you better get wise before we do, and start making sure, when you present that bill for a costly supper, that it doesn’t represent a Jonestown bargain. (41,986)
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As an aside, it's not a choice between the Atkins "I ate Bambi's Mom" diet and the Vegan "Suck my Potatoes" diet. That's the kind of binary PhD nonsense that you see all over the literature on this. Some sources on this subject made it seem like you couldn't even eat oranges because it made Dr. Atkins hit-list. It went on to complain that this meant all higher protein diets resulted in scurvy, and that this was the reason "all low carb diets are bad." I'd just like to say that I can eat whatever 'the fuck I want, thanks very much. Yes, it's possible to eat lots of healthy foods, eat fewer carbs, and consume more protein all in the same meal, or at least in the same diet.
