If the fat don't getcha than the sugar will...

It’s the sugar’s to blame

An American doctor has shifted the blame for obesity from fat to sugar. He’s done the research / maths / guesswork / lab rat studies / whatever it is they do. Fat is out of the frying pan, and sugar’s in the firing line.

Unfortunately, this:

“It’s sugar rather than fat…”

[Brief ‘yay’ moment. Not so bothered about sugar. Do like breakfasts, chips, curries, crisps, and the like. Dipping bread into olive oil and a drop of Balsamic? Irresistible.]

All to soon was followed up with:

“that does not mean that you don’t need to cut down on the fat intake, too…”

Another Dr No (fun) then.

Bits made me laugh, though. He said sugar is addictive, and the food companies sneak it into everything processed and pre-prepared to keep the punters coming back for more. “It seems okay for them to do that with sugar” he said, “there’d ba a huge outcry if they were doing the same thing with morphine.” He went on to say “it’s not just the mountains of burgers consumed that have led to the crisis, it’s the rivers of fizzy drinks.”

Mountains of flesh and rivers of blood, eh? There’s fire and brimstone in them there hills.

The man who wasn’t there

A Coen brothers film I’d missed until yesterday. Billy Bob Thornton plays a laid back, chainsmoking barber, married to Frances McDormand (who’s the lady cop in Fargo and Brad Pitt’s co-gym instructor in Burn After Reading). Before things become hopelessly tangled, he blackmails her boss (James Gandolfini – Tony Soprano) to invest in a dry cleaning business.

It looks beautiful in black and white, I loved the dry, laconic voiceover. True Grit tomorrow. It the international Coen brothers catchup weekend.

The Godfather, I, II, and III

I’ve recently re-watched these, too. They’re such brilliant films. I wondered if they might be creaking with age, but not at all.

It’s now clear that every culture has a mafia. Triads. Yardies. There’s always someone screwing everyone else over. Here it’s the licensed activity of the upper classes to pass the wealth and power among themselves, trousering huge amounts at the expense of the working classes.