Daily Lemon: Committing suicide without knife or fork, Five things you shouldn't buy used

Committing suicide with neither knife nor fork.
There's a saying that roughly goes "Most suicides are committed with a knife - and a fork." This may well have to be changed, because now it seems we're softly killing ourselves without any cutlery at all. The Guardian has a bone-chilling, gut-wrenching special report on fast food and how the fast food business have succeeded to change our eating habits, generating huge profits for themselves and obesity and diabetes for the rest of us. One of the series of articles present an extract from Eric Schlosser's explosive new book; Chew on This, where he picks up where he left us after his first book, Fast Food Nation. In the new book, Schlosser again looks at the fast food industry - how it all began, its success, what fast food actually is, what goes on in the slaughterhouses, meatpacking factories and flavor labs, global advertising, merchandising in UK schools, mass production and the exploitation of young workers in the thousands of fast-food outlets throughout the world. Sounds like a chiller. If you haven't read Fast Food Nation, do. If you haven't ordered Chew on This, do.

One of the Guardian series of articles goes into the details of a strawberry milk shake. Here's a short excerpt:

"The 59 ingredients in a fast-food strawberry milkshake.
The phrase "artificial strawberry flavor" offers little hint of the scientific wizardry that can make a highly processed food taste like a strawberry. For example, if you wanted to make a strawberry milkshake at home, here's all you'd need: ice, cream, strawberries, sugar and a touch of vanilla.

Now take a look at the ingredients you might find in a fast-food strawberry milkshake: milk-fat and nonfat milk, sugar, sweet whey, high-fructose corn syrup, guar gum, monoglycerides and diglycerides, cellulose gum, sodium phosphate, carrageenan, citric acid, E129 and artificial strawberry flavour.

And what does that "artificial strawberry flavor" contain? Just these few yummy chemicals: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphrenyl- 2-butanone (10% solution in alcohol), ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, undecalactone, vanillin and solvent."

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is available on Amazon. The New book, Chew on This, is available for pre-order from Guardian Books where it is GBP 5:99 (about USD 11:-) or from Amazon at USD 10:88.

25 April 2006

5 things you shouldn't buy used.
Netscape's Home & Real Estate has a story on used stuff you should stay away from. Most of it is pretty predictable; computers, digital cameras, plasma TV's and other appliances. We all know the tech race is on with these things, and virtually all electronics you buy is pretty much obsolete the moment you leave the store. But still, they have a point. New computers are faster, megapixels are getting cheaper by the minute, plasmas too, and used appliances... well, I see the point. But none of this is really important compared to the one item on the list that surprised me. And that was – cribs. (And by that I mean baby beds by the way, not apartments.)

It seems that according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, buying used cribs can be a really dumb idea if you're not extremely careful. Each year 16 kids die because of cribs that break down, or simply have unsafe designs. Is the risk worth the few bucks you'd save? Same goes for other kid-related merchandise like strollers and car seats. I know that becoming a parent for the first time can be pretty overwhelming, both mentally and financially, but do as the man says on this one. Buy a used plasma if you like to, but get the new stuff for baby, OK? He or she is worth it. Read the full story on Netscape Home & Real Estate here.

17 april 2006

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