Primal With A Side Of FABULOUS page 45

[Gay Panda]

Since Gay Panda didn’t feel like writing about primal, I Googled flossing to see what would turn up. This was inspired by my bewildering experience while hunting for an avatar, because I typed in ‘panda images’, and got A: pandas; B: baseball; C: cats; and D: Justin Bieber. The Internet never lets me down, and now I wonder if Justin Bieber has a furry secret. I think he does.

I hate flossing so very much, and I don’t believe that my ancestral Grok Pandas stood before reflective pools rubbing grass about their teeth to dislodge meaty bits. But, then again, I know nothing about the genesis of flossing. According to Wikipedia, which is 100% reliable for information, some jerk dentist from New Orleans invented flossing in 1815. But floss wasn’t produced commercially under much later in the century, and one of the early mentions of flossing was in Ulysses by James Joyce, around 1920. That sounds suspiciously like a book that Teenage Gay Panda got Cliff Notes to in high school.

Only 10-40% of Americans floss on a daily basis, so anyone reading this who thinks that I’m gross should know that I have plenty of company. Daily flossing can add 6.4 years to your life, so I guess that I’m going to die 6.4 years younger. I am all right with this. Flossing has a Facebook page, in which I am told not only to floss every day, but after every single meal. Really? I don’t believe a single person reading this does that. Before I click away, I notice that flossing’s Facebook page has been ‘liked’ by Anthony Weiner.

Quite possibly the most boring man alive created a blog whose sole subject was his New Year’s resolution to floss daily for an entire year. He bored himself right out of his own blog by January 16th. Up until then, entries are limited to a daily ‘yes, I flossed’, or contain wordier, senseless diatribes about Aristotle, jogging, and the Bible, and how he sustained a flossing injury on his knuckle. Gay Panda is so bored by this point that I would rather floss than read more.

And then I hit the conspiracy theories. Flossing is a scam promoted by the toothpaste companies, and why this is a thread on the Jedi Council forums is beyond me. YouTube has a video claiming that brushing and flossing cause gum disease. Giddy at the thought of presenting these pieces of information at my next dentist appointment, my good spirits end up in the muck at my next click. Damn you, Cha-Cha! Cha-Cha claims that my Grok Pandas did practice dental care, rubbing a thin twig with a frayed end against their teeth. Go back to dancing in Grease, what do you know?

I was going to end on that sour note, and then salvation came through an article about how Cavement brushed their teeth. (Oh, it’s not Gay Panda’s misspelling. The author misspelled his own title.) Cavement went their whole lives without dental care, and managed to die leaving perfect choppers behind for archaeologists to fondle centuries later. The reason for their good dental health was due to the low amount of carbohydrates in their diet.

Score. This Cavement Gay Panda is canceling all future dental appointments. Life is good.

[PixieKitten]

I've never flossed in my life. I've never wanted to either. Now, armed with the knowledge you present to us, I shall never even bother.
Also, my mum bought me a pair of screme eggs today. Being the less-than-primal piggy I am, I scoffed them both and they were green and lovely. And I thought you should know that I thought of you as I ate them, and even took a photo for you! xD



And I'm now painfully aware that my desk needs cleaning xD

[namelesswonder]

I believe that proper diet means strong everything which means you definitely would not need to floss! Gnaw on some bones =P

Pandas eat bamboo, which is very fibrous and probably cleans their teeth & stimulates their gums. Same goes for carnivores, who will eat uncooked bones & the ripping of animal flesh will keep their teeth clean & strong.

[Gay Panda]

Also, my mum bought me a pair of screme eggs today. Being the less-than-primal piggy I am, I scoffed them both and they were green and lovely. And I thought you should know that I thought of you as I ate them, and even took a photo for you! xD

PixieKitten, thank you for the picture! I've never seen those before. So gross, yet so delicious looking. Nom nom nom.

[newlifejourney]

newlifejourney, those are all much more exciting reasons than the truth!

This is an old, awful injury I sustained from when I used to work in special ed. A lot of the students in my last year were violent, and my principal had a "the more, the merrier" policy and kept stuffing new kids into my classroom. Teachers and aides were frequently injured (some permanently).

Sometimes I sleep in a bad position or use the wrong pillow and knock everything seriously out of whack, which is what happened the other night. The pain isn't quite as bad today, so I'm hoping that I won't need any more drugs by tomorrow. Then I can get back to my regularly scheduled programming.

How is primal going for you lately?

I too, have an old back injury. Although mine is from something stupid rather than selfless. At 4 years of age, I thought I could magically lower myself down a firepole by only using one hand...and the power of my mind. (sometimes I think our brains work freakishly alike...) Needless to say, I was wrong. Since then, it acts up when I abuse it (usually involves alcohol and poor judgement) , or sleep in ackward positions when one of my cats decides that my head is a great place to settle in for the night.

As for primal for me lately. I was kind of thinking I had a kindred spirit when you said that your body was super sensitive and would gain weight the second you fell off the primal wagon. Then you admitted your weight was only up maybe a pound..... My system is actually super sensitive. If I don't follow every rule to the letter, my weight is affected. Thus, the stress of the past week, maybe a little less sleep than is optimal (had to write a paper that I procrastinated doing) and little food sensitivities that I seem to get away with when I am unstressed (a little feta cheese on my salad, pumpkin spice tea, onions) are bothering me currently. Not totally sure which, but I am up 3 pounds for over a week and a half now and my face has been puffed up like a balloon. NOT HAPPY! So, going back to my primal basics to get everything working again. That means total basic eating, early sleep schedule, and working on de-stressing. I find out tomorrow if I got this job I applied for at an upscale restaurant in my city...considering I have two extra days in my work week to fill up now that I am in school part time, I won't mind some extra cash coming my way...which should help me feel less stressed. I need clothes (and to repay tuition in January..)

[Gay Panda]

PART ONE: Today Sherlock Panda is on the prowl for a refund.

Years ago, I took a class on nutrition. I learned about the evils of saturated fat, the necessity of grains, and that weight loss could only be achieved through exercise and calorie restriction. Since all of this is false, and since it was known to be false at the time, I believe that I am owed a refund. I’m not sure who is liable, however. This information is known in some scientific circles, but since it conflicts with current dogma and industries, it is not promoted. Those who do put it forth are dismissed.

All that I learned from that class, I taught to Lady Friend. We have commiserated on our unsuccessful weight loss for a long time. All I did was contribute to her weight problem, and I’m so sorry to have done that. I was the carrier of bad information to Lady Friend, as my teacher was the carrier of bad information to me. It wasn’t her fault. But bad information comes from somewhere. I’m afraid that the statute of limitations for my refund has likely passed. So, people of Denmark, this is for you.

Days ago, Denmark began to tax foods high in saturated fat, such as meat and cheese, oils and butter. This made Gay Panda squawk in horror. My grocery bill is steep enough as it is. It should not be that the food making me sick did so cheaply, and what is making me healthy costs an arm and leg and fuzzy panda ear. Where did the Danes get the idea for a fat tax? Why them of all people? Denmark has a low rate of obesity. I never read hysterical opinion pieces about bulbous Danes. Medical communities do not hold up the citizens of Denmark as the diabetic, blubbery nightmare we are all headed toward. (They hold up Mississippi.)

Finding information about this is next to impossible, made worse because I took Latin in college instead of Danish. Hindsight is 20/20. There is scant information from two articles in mainstream American news. The former health minister of Denmark claims that saturated fat can cause obesity and coronary heart disease and cancer, and limiting the consumption of saturated fats by making them more expensive will lead to a higher life expectancy, since people will have to eat something else more affordable, and presumably healthier. But the rate of cardiovascular disease was already plummeting in Denmark before they took on saturated fats, so how can this be a cause?

The former health minister was a man named Jakob Axel Nielsen. This sounds like a total rock star name to Gay Panda, not someone who promotes legislation*. But many artists are versatile. He introduced this idea two years ago. It was very unpopular, and yet a large majority of their parliament voted it in. The Copenhagen Post Online states that the purpose was twofold: to force Danes to get thin since they can’t afford fatty foods, and to make the state money through the tax. Nutrition scientists and experts and industry had a cow (which has gone up in price for its saturated fat content).

Jakob Axel Rockstar has been out of this office since early 2010, succeeded by Bertel Haarder (which sounds like a European adult film star name). Tucked away in an obscure article printed over the summer was a quote from Haarder, who said that the fat tax will do next to nothing to get Danes to change their eating habits. There’s a glowing recommendation from your health minister. But still this law has been enforced by Denmark’s new government. Gay Panda cynically wonders if there is more truth to the Copenhagen Post’s second reason for the tax: it’s about revenue, not health.

[Gay Panda]

PART TWO: If Gay Panda were to tell you to give me your money because my wallet is hungry, you wouldn’t. If Gay Panda were to tell you that Primal Coach Kitty was very, very sick** and needed expensive medication, and you would go to Valhalla for helping, then you might. There’s something in it for you. People would be disgusted if the government just said that it didn’t have enough cash and was going to take yours; this whole issue is averted if you’re told that it’s for your health. We will live longer! We will live healthier! Our government is looking out for us! See? They DO care.

But the Danish government didn’t make fruits and vegetables cheaper. This seems like the logical follow-through: if they believe that saturated fat is bad, make meat more expensive and reduce the cost on apples and asparagus. But where are they getting their information that saturated fat is bad?

Gay Panda giggles at a protest by the food policy manager of the Chamber of Commerce, who states that the tax will increase life expectancy by 5.5 days after 10 years of putting the tax in place. This is the higher life expectancy that Jakob Axel Rockstar is talking about? Someone lobs back that it will increase expectancy by years. Fight! Another article catches my eye, about a Danish study of 53,000 Danes showing that white bread does more damage to your heart than saturated fats. The nutrition researcher in charge states that bread is more dangerous than butter, and that health authorities refuse to accept the conclusions of this study.

Well, that’s interesting. I wander into an article quoting Dr. Jorgen Dejgard Jensen, who pounded the last nail in the coffin of names starting with the letter J after the loony Duggar family had their turn. Saying that there has never been a tax on fats like this before, it will give insights over the next few years about whether it changes what Danes eat. He works at Copenhagen University, and the article states the Copenhagen University is the institution responsible for proposing the fat tax.

But I want to know whom specifically came up with this idea, and based on what research. An institution does not come up with a fat tax proposal; a person did. Time passes while I mess around on the university website, crossing my eyes and squinting to see if I can make Danish words transform into English, and then I notice that if I just press the word ENGLISH right there on the top of the page, the computer will do the magic for me.

At this university is one Arne Astrup, M.D. I contemplate the amount of alliterative abuse going on in Denmark, but that is a topic for another entry. He is an honored scientist who studies obesity, pioneering a study that showed the satiety effect of protein. As he states, it has not been proven that saturated fat triggers disease, and if people replace that fat with cheaper carbohydrates like pasta and bread, the risk of heart disease will increase. He criticizes the fat tax as not being the result of evidence-based science, and that this policy will do more harm than good.

As I continue to click about on the university website, I see that J-abuser Jensen himself was part of a study addressing if food taxes can be used to combat health problems such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and more. It seems like the Danish government is ignoring the scientific research from one department of their state-run and state-funded university while accepting the tax proposal from another department of their state-run and state-funded university, both departments belonging to the same damn university. But where is this department of the tax proposal getting its bad information that saturated fats are the cause of our dietary-based ills?

[Gay Panda]

PART THREE: It is assumed in this tax study that saturated fats are bad, right up there with sugar. What is interesting is that Denmark already created a tax for sugary foods, and the study relays that when sugary items become more expensive, consumers will simply reduce their sugar consumption and replace it with fat. And now the government is taxing fat, so they’re winning both ways. I read the references to find what source gave the researchers information that saturated fat is dangerous.

It’s a WHO fact sheet from eight years ago, recommending fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and reducing saturated fats. I also see the International Obesity Task Force, and the name Marshall keeps cropping up. Tom Marshall did a study in the late nineties about fiscal food policy and ischemic heart disease. He stated that by taxing saturated fats, up to 1000 premature deaths could be avoided, and connects diet to cholesterol concentrations, and those to heart disease. (There is a pile-on of other scientists refuting this and saying it is a much more complex topic than Marshall made out.)

And then Gay Panda sees that Marshall is using the work of Ancel Keys to bolster his taxing saturated fats idea, namely Serum Cholesterol Response to Changes in Diet: Particular Saturated Fatty Acids in Diet published in 1965. You’ve probably heard Keys’ name in reference to the controversy over the Seven Countries Study, since he chose countries that would support his hypothesis of the relationship between the consumption of saturated fats and a high incidence of heart disease.

So the Danish institute that proposed the fat tax to protect the Danes from beef is working off almost fifty year old misguided scientific information from Keys. Now we’re getting somewhere on our refund claim! Let’s go after Keys. But we’re too late. In 2004, he died in Minneapolis. The online Find a Grave lists no cemetery where he is buried. Further investigation reveals that he was cremated, and his remains are sequestered.

Damn. We will always be thwarted.

[Gay Panda]

UPDATE: (in explanation of *) He looks like a dweeb in his picture. A dweeb with wheat belly.

(in explanation of **) She isn’t. She stole my recliner when I went to the can and is now licking her gigantic belly there while I type uncomfortably on the loveseat.

Note of Interest (Disclaimer): Gay Panda is not an investigative journalist or a real detective, no matter how fabulous I look in my Sherlock costume. I'm just someone with an Internet connection and a lot of free time.

[Uncephalized]

I only floss when I have something stuck in my teeth that I can't get out. Otherwise it's occasional brushing only.

I think I only get things stuck in my bottom teeth because they're not perfectly straight. Nothing ever seems to get wedged in my uppers like that.