Archive for the ‘Eating’ Category

The Brutally Honest Coca-Cola Commercial You'll Never See On The Air

Posted: February 27, 2013 in Diet, Eating, Food, Food Contamination, Uncategorized
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Reblogged from digger666:

The Brutally Honest Coca-Cola Commercial You'll Never See On The Air.  Reblogged from Upworthy, 26 February 2013

'Nuff said...

Switzerland Farmers Eating Cats and Dogs With Meals

Posted: January 7, 2013 in Animal Welfare, Cats, Dogs, Eating, Eating Animals, Farmers, Switzerland
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Farmers in Switzerland routinely EATING cats and dogs with their meals

Reposted here also:-

  • Practice still common among farmers in areas of Switzerland
  • The most popular type of dog is a breed related to the Rotweiler
  • Commercial sale of dog meat is banned in the country, eating is not

By ALLAN HALL

It is a practice more usually associated with Far Eastern countries such as China and Vietnam.

But a report by a newspaper in Switzerland has revealed that dog and cat meat is still part of meals in the Alpine nation.

The Tages Anzeiger said farmers in the Appenzell and St. Gallen areas in particular slaughter the creatures to eat themselves or to pass on to friends.

Canine snack: Eating dog meat is still common practice in some areas of Switzerland, a newspaper in the country has found
Canine snack: Eating dog meat is still common practice in some areas of Switzerland, a newspaper in the country has found

The favourite type of meat comes from a dog that is related to the beefy Rottweiler.

‘There’s nothing odd about it’, a farmer told the paper. ‘Meat is meat. Construction workers in particular like eating it.’

Another farmer told how he raised animals and then called in a butcher friend to kill them when they were ripe for slaughter. Still one more described how he either shot the creatures, usually adored as pets throughout Europe, or bludgeoned them to death.

According to the report, people ate the meat as ‘mostbröckli’ – usually a form of beef or ham that is marinated, but this one made from dog or cat.

‘No-one knows what it is when you prepare it in this fashion,’ a farmer added.

Dog's dinner: Although human consumption of dog meat is mostly associated with Asian countries such as China, pictured, Swiss farmers confessed to breeding dogs for their meat
Dog’s dinner: Although human consumption of dog meat is mostly associated with Asian countries such as China, pictured, Swiss farmers confessed to breeding dogs for their meat

While not taking place on a commercial scale, the practice horrifies animal rights activists in Switzerland where the eating of such creatures is not forbidden by law, as it is in nearby Germany.

In Switzerland the person who wants to kill a cat or a dog will only be prosecuted if the killing is itself cruel.

DOGGY DINING

Dog meat is eaten in a number of countries across the globe, but the practice is mostly associated with Asian nations.

It is most common in China, South Korea and Vietnam where earing dog  is believed to bring good fortune

Koreans even have a special ‘meat dog’ breed called Nureongi which is bred for human consumption and very rarely kept as a pets.

And the flesh cannot be sold commercially, even though some communities have pressed in the past for it to be sold on market days alongside the usual fare of beef, pork and lamb.

The newspaper added; ‘The surveyed farmers spoke about their special preference only through the assurance of anonymity. All feared a hostile reaction from animal welfare activists and animal lovers.

‘Animal welfare organisations and farmers assess the consumption differently, but it is particularly popular in the Rhine Valley.

‘One farmer said he had stopped eating it purely because it is “frowned upon” by society. He sees this as the hypocrisy of a society “that can get otherwise not enough meat.”’

There are no official figures about how many of these animals end up on the plates of the Swiss.

The country also has a small but thriving trade in cat pelts for coats and bedspreads. The Swiss parliament rejected changing the laws to protect dogs and cats for human consumption back in 1993.

Edith Zellweger of the Salez animal welfare group said; ‘How unscrupulous can a society be that man eats his best friend?’

She was behind the drive 20 years ago to get the law changed and will press for fresh legislation again.

The Federal Veterinary Office said it was a ‘cultural matter’ and pointed out that in some countries dogs are reared specifically to be slaughtered and eaten.

More…

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255684/Farmers-Switzerland-routinely-EATING-cats-dogs-meals.html#ixzz2HBjBWGnR

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There Is No Biological Reason to Eat Three Meals a Day — So Why Do We Do it?

Posted: September 26, 2011 in Diet, Eating, Fasting, Food, Lifestyle
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There Is No Biological Reason to Eat Three Meals a Day — So Why Do We Do
It?
For most of history, meals were very variable.
September 23, 2011  |
 We grew up believing in three meals a day.

When we skip meals, eat extra meals or subvert paradigms — spaghetti
breakfasts, pancake suppers — we feel naughty, edgy and criminal. “Three meals
a day” resonates like a Bible phrase.

But it’s a cultural construct.

People around the world, even in the West, have not always eaten three
squares. The three-meals model is a fairly recent convention, which is now being
eclipsed as, like everything else, eating becomes a highly personalized matter
of choice. What and when and how frequently we eat is driven less and less by
the choices of our families, coworkers and others, and more and more by impulse,
personal taste and favorite nutrition memes, and marketing schemes such as Taco
Bell’s promotion of late-night
eating known as “Fourthmeal: the Meal Between Dinner & Breakfast.” Selecting
how and when we eat is like loading our iPods.

A torrent of new studies explores the health effects of eating three squares.
Their findings are far from conclusive. A US Department of Agriculture study
found that eating just one large meal a day versus three normal-sized meals
lowers weight and body fat but raises blood pressure; three meals per day lowers
blood pressure. A National Institute
on Aging study found that eating one large meal a day rather than three
raises insulin resistance and glucose intolerance: two key features of type-2
diabetes.

A University of Maastricht study found that eating at least four small meals
daily reduces obesity risk by 45 percent. This Dutch study also found that
people who skip breakfast are five times as likely to become obese as regular
breakfasters. Yet a University of Ottawa study found that eating many small
meals doesn’t promote weight loss. So did a French National Center for
Scientific Research study, which trashed grazing: “Epidemiological studies which
have suggested that nibbling is associated with leanness are extremely
vulnerable to methodological errors,” its authors warn.

A UC Berkeley study
found that “alternate-day fasting” — feasting one day, fasting the next, ad
infinitum — might decrease the risk of heart disease and cancer.

Researching the effects of meal frequency is notoriously tricky, because it
involves so many variables: nutritional content, time of day, exercise,
genetics. So the scientific jury is still out.

“There is no biological reason for eating three meals a day,” says Yale
University history professor Paul Freedman, editor of Food: The History of
Taste (University of California Press, 2007).

The number of meals eaten per day, along with the standard hour and fare for
each, “are cultural patterns no different from how close you stand when talking
to people or what you do with your body as you speak. Human beings are
comfortable with patterns because they’re predictable. We’ve become comfortable
with the idea of three meals. On the other hand, our schedules and our desires
are subverting that idea more and more every day,” Freedman says.

For most of history, meals were very variable. A medieval northern European
peasant “would start his morning with ale or bread or both, then bring some sort
of food out into the fields and have a large meal sometime in the afternoon,”
Freedman says. “He might have what he called ‘dinner’ at 2 in the afternoon or 6
in the evening, or later” — depending on his work, the season and other
factors.

“He wouldn’t have a large evening meal. He would just grab something small
and quick. Dinner back then tended not to be as distinct as it has become in the
last two centuries.”

And it tended to be eaten in daylight — not because eating earlier was
considered healthier, but because cooking, consuming and cleaning up is
difficult in the dark or by firelight.

“People who were not rich tried to get all their meals eaten before dark.
After electricity was discovered, initially only the rich could afford it,”
Freedman says. “From that point onward, one mark of being rich became how late
you ate. Eating way after dark because you could afford electric lights was a
mark of high status, urbanity and class.”

Eating late — or at random times, or more or less than thrice daily — also
reflects one’s distance from the two main forces that standardized three squares
in America: conventional work schedules and traditional family life.

Throughout most of the 20th century, most workers could eat only at specific
times.

“When that factory whistle blew at five o’clock, it was time to go home and
be fed. But now all kinds of Americans are eating later and later because they
work longer hours than they used to, or because their hours are now more
flexible. We are very much losing the three-meals-a-day model, thanks to grazing
and thanks to different members of a household having different schedules, and
to the fact that the kids might not want to eat what their parents are
eating.”

The idea of children being allowed to choose their own meals and mealtimes
would have been shocking a few decades ago, when “Eat what’s on your plate” and
“Eat your peas or no dessert” were family dinner-table mantras. But the family
dinner table is verging on the obsolescent. Which came first: the dissolution of
the standard nuclear family or the dissolution of three meals a day?

“American parents have a particular kind of guilt about the disappearance of
family meals,” Freedman says. Perhaps for good reason: A recent University of
Minnesota study found that habitual shared family meals improve nutrition,
academic performance and interpersonal skills and reduce the risk of eating
disorders.

Electronic devices are also undermining the three-meals model. They’re at
once entertainment centers, workspaces and almost-human companions. Their
portability and nonstop availability let us eat whenever we like without having
to stop working, without having to be bored, and without having to feel that we
are eating alone.

“The disappearance of family meals antedates the invention of hand-held
electronic devices,” Freedman says. “It was not initiated by them, but it is
exacerbated by them. These days, even if everyone’s sitting around a table
together, it’s not clear that they’re all paying attention.”

The three-meals model is also being fought by the food industry.

“The food industry wants you to buy more food,” thus it urges us to eat as
much and as often as possible. It’s an easy sell, “because Americans have always
liked snacks.”

A snack boom began in the mid-20th century and hasn’t stopped. Thriving
through a wrecked economy, the global snack
industry is predicted to be worth $330 billion by 2015. In the US alone,
retail sales of packaged snacks increased from $56 billion to $64 billion
between 2006 and 2010, and are expected
to reach $77 billion by 2015.

The blurred borderline between snacks and meals has changed everything.

“The long-term effect is that any time of day has become a time to eat. The
decline of three meals a day and the rise of snacks are related, although I
wouldn’t say there’s a direct causal relationship,” Freedman says.

Another food-industry strategy is the creation of food niches, based on age,
ethnicity, gender, lifestyle and locale. A few decades ago, everyone ate the
same foods.

“But now there’s kid food, there’s teenager food and there’s grownup food, so
some parents end up buying three times as much food” as their own parents
did.

“They’re being manipulated into it, guilted into thinking: I’m so busy all
week and I have so little quality time with my kids that the least I can do for
them is let them eat as they like rather than making a stand and insisting that
we all eat the same thing together.”

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