In your cups

The first thing I noted on reading this response to Mayor Bloomberg decision to phase out over 16oz soda cups was it seemed in tone as if it was talking about drugs.

I could have sworn that it was talking about "soda" in this way, precisely because the anti depressant/anti psychotic meds that are increasingly prescribed are off limits. Clearly, something's got to give and as usual its anything associated with fatness.

But the truth is that soda isn’t just mildly unhealthy — it’s really incredibly bad for you, and it’s addictive, and it has no nutritional value whatsoever.

Leaving aside the crude dualism of healthy/unhealthy. What most concerns is the fundamental ideological construct at the heart of this, stemming from the point blank refusal to accept how our bodies actually function.

The idea that sugar, which is the issue with "soda" has "no nutritional value whatsoever" is false. It is one of those lies this kind of mindset tells for its own convenience, rather like weight loss and weight loss dieting are the same, when they aren't.

Everyone then erases the fib and behaves as if its true.

The number one nutrient required by the body is food energy, calories. Yes, even if some don't like it, or it upsets their fee fees or something.

Because the underlying concern is fatness, the avoidance of, that central fact is felt to be something that can and should be overlooked,  in favour of focusing on micro nutrients vitamins and minerals. It is these that processed sugar lacks.

Hence the no (micro) nutrient falsehood.

Not that I give much of a shit about other people's politicisation of food. No the bigger problem is this disinformation doesn't change the functioning of our bodies. We do not just eat, we are designed around eating.

I'd hazard a guess that all life forms are designed around the processing of their essential fuel. If humans didn't eat the way we do, we would not be the human beings we are.

We wouldn't need to be.

The stomach and viscera of our abdominal cavity are there merely because we do and other organs such as the brain would have to be redesigned to work without the way we take in food, our FUEL.

This means we are designed around taking in calories and to seek to do it as efficiently as possible, whether we are fat on all sides or not.

So when someone negates and obscures that, it leaves a conundrum, namely, how do we explain our attachment to the calorie laden foods we are designed to seek out? If you notice, most of our meals are based around macro calorie dense nutrients, fat, protein, carbohydrates.

Enter addiction.

Not being able to redesign the body to crave what it oughta plants such as, leaves, grass, the marrow and nightshade families, berries  and other water logged fruit and veg, means what we are designed to seek becomes addictive.

This ideation marks the turning point in our relationships with ourselves and our bodies. With original shame turning from our sexual to our eating parts.

It's almost as if we need to feel profoundly ashamed of something central to our existence.

It has already been noted that there is a parallel comparison to religious fundamentalist fixation with human sexuality and regulating it. This is a secular replacement. Instead of a profound shame about how we mate, it is a profound shame about how we nourish ourselves.

It is peculiar.

What both have in common is a profound disgust and rejection of human design. This causes them to impose a "redesign" more in keeping with their sense of decorum. The heart of it is an axis of loathing body weight-fatness for a start plus and the means of choosing to manage it, through energy manipulation.

The latter is the real source of the problem.