Knowledge is Power
I started to watch series two of The Bear on Monday night. It was recommended to me by a Shredder.
At the start of the first episode, a warning appeared at the top of the screen: TOBACCO DEPICTIONS.
This was a warning that viewers would see people smoking!
I’m old enough to remember what it was like 30 or 40 years ago.
Cigarettes were put on cake stands and ferried around wake houses.
Children were packed into cars with daddy puffing his lungs out.
Movie stars smoked all the time because smoking was cool.
It seemed like everybody smoked.
Now, this is what you need to remember.
As far back as the 1950s, a library of medical research had clearly shown the harmful effects of smoking.
In 1964, The US Surgeon General Report stated that smoking was a cause of premature deaths from lung cancer and chronic bronchitis.
Warnings first appeared on cigarette packets in the USA in 1966.
Nothing happened in Britain or Ireland until 1971.
Public health experts called on governments to take more stringent action.
Governments knew that cigarettes were harmful to their people’s health.
But tobacco companies were still allowed to advertise on TV, magazines and newspapers. They could also sponsor sporting events and their products could be placed in films.
It was decades before governments were willing to face down the tobacco companies.
So never underestimate the total incompetence of governments!
The exact same conditions now exist with ultra-processed foods.
History is repeating itself.
It’s now estimated that:
⚠️ 1 in 4 adults are obese.
⚠️ 1 in 5 children aged 10-11 are obese
We are getting fatter.
While many people are continuing to live into their 70s and 80s, their quality of life is awful. They are being kept alive with medication. It’s an existence.
Overweight and unfit, they lack the strength and mobility to enjoy a quality standard of life.
But it’s not always going to be like this.
In the future, it will be different.
Walk into a supermarket in 2050 and you’ll see clearly visible health warnings on ultra-processed foods.
The warnings will be explicit and clear.
Written in large print at the front of a big bar of chocolate, a health warning will declare: ‘BEING OVERWEIGHT INCREASES THE RISK OF CORONARY HEART DISEASE, SOME CANCERS, STROKE AND TYPE 2 DIABETES’
I want everyone doing THE SHRED to realise how ridiculously easy it is to be overweight in the modern world.
If you drive to work, come home, make dinner, then take your children to various activities - you’re not going to be burning many calories in a day.
For the typical woman, it will be 2000 calories. For a man, it’s 2500 calories.
To start putting on weight, all you have to do is eat more than 2000 or 2500 calories a day.
That’s unbelievably easy.
A scone with butter and jam and a cappuccino has more than 500 calories.
You need to know the game is rigged against you.
The dice is loaded.
The cards are stacked.
But knowledge is power.
Knowing that the game is rigged gives you an advantage.
Armed with this insight, you need to create your own vision and your own world.
You want to be lean, fit and strong, not just now, but for the years ahead.
You don’t want to see out your days confined to a chair while guzzling down a tonne of pills every day.
You are going to keep your bones strong by lifting weights.
Resistance training is going to maintain your muscle mass - the single greatest indicator of quality of life.
Hitting the gym will improve your posture and your mobility.
Constant movement will maintain and enhance your cardiovascular fitness.
Eating clean, wholesome food will keep you at a healthy weight, reducing the risk of multiple illnesses.
You will be able to lift your grandchildren who will marvel at your biceps.
‘I’ve Paddy Heaney to thank for those bad boys,’ you will say to them smiling, the tears streaming down your cheeks in heartfelt gratitude.
And in 30 years’ time when you’re watching TV with your grandchildren, the warnings on the programmes will say: ‘ULTRA PROCESSED FOOD DEPICTIONS’.
Sitting on the sofa with the kids while shamelessly showing off your guns, you’ll say to them: ‘If you want to be lean, fit and strong like me, you can’t be eating that shit.’
You'll want to them know.
Because knowledge is power.
PH
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