A Casual Encounter
We're Winning the Propaganda War
This afternoon I walked into a pub in the hills, and on the way in I saw an exciting looking motorbike. I used to love motorbikes.
There was a man sitting near it with a helmet, so I said to him:
-- That looks like fun, 250cc trailie?
And he said:
-- "It's not a 'trailie', it's an enduro bike". He sounded a bit miffed.
-- Oh, what's the difference?
-- About twenty horsepower. You could use that bike in a competition.
-- Ooh, did you use to compete?
-- Yes, I used to compete internationally, but I've damaged a disk and now I just ride it for fun sometimes.
-- Oh, bad luck!
-- "Well I am sixty-two", he said, “you don’t last forever at that game.”
I looked at him in disbelief, I would have thought he was about forty. He was eight years older than me, not fifteen years younger.
-- “Christ”, I said, “you look bloody good for sixty-two!”
-- "Thanks" he said, looking slightly mollified. He was sitting with his shirt off, in the full sun on a cloudless day, with excellent skin. We are having a bit of a heatwave at the moment. I went inside to get a drink.
Once inside I started thinking, "That guy looks like one of those 60-year olds on Kitava, no real sign of aging yet. And he's obviously not scared of the sun."
And I realised I'd made a prediction. When you make a prediction you should check whether or not it’s true.
So when I went back outside to sit in the garden I said to him:
-- Sorry to bother you again, but I wanted to ask you, how much vegetable oil do you eat, do you know?
And he said:
-- Haven't touched the stuff for two years.
And then he said:
-- And I've lost two stone1 in the last two years.
-- "I thought that might be the answer", I said. "Why did you stop eating it?"
-- "I did my research", he said, "It's inflammatory and it's bad for you."
I didn't bother him any further, he was with a friend, but I did look at him occasionally. There was no shine to his skin. I don't think he was wearing any sort of suncream.
About 13kg, foreign friends.
Just when you master the weirdly newfangled units of the French revolutions, the throw literal stones at you..
Two anecdotes re seed oils.
Several years ago by chance I saw an obituary of a man whose photo showed he had a face like the full moon and no neck, just cascading jowls. Before reading his obituary I said to myself "a victim of seed oils if ever there were one". And it turns out he owned and ran a cottonseed mill !! He did live into his early 80s, but he looked his age in full.
A few years later I happened to read another obituary, of a doctor who lived to 91. The obituary photo was of him as a very handsome young man, and the obituary stated "The only thing the man was afraid of was carbohydrates; which he adamantly refused to eat. As a result he died a hot, fine and handsome specimen to the end with gorgeous blue eyes!!!" In other words he ate very few seed oils - no pastries made with seed oils, no potatoes fried in seed oils etc. Perhaps he ate chicken and fish fried in seed oils and used salad dressings made with seed oils, but his seed oil consumption (by accident) was probably less than 10% of a typical American.
These two obituaries, both separately and taken together, have reinforced my determination to avoid seed oils as much as possible.