I read the other day that Britain's National Health Service sometimes pays for homeopathic prescriptions.
Blah blah, insert rant here about giving taxpayers' money given to snake-oil merchants, undermining the authority of the medical profession, and generally reducing western civilisation to a smoking ruin. But the fact is, I can't get terribly worked up about this.
The Department of Health says it doesn't know how much of the NHS drugs budget is spent on snake oil, but it's "a tiny fraction (approximately 0.001%)". How they can know this figure without knowing an actual figure - is a subject for reasonable suspicion, but even if they're out by a couple of orders of magnitude, it still suggests that there are more important things to worry about. Namely, the other 99.9(99)% of the budget.
I'd bet that a considerably higher fraction of that budget goes to AstraZeneca, a company with a documented record of deliberately hiding the truth about its own products. And the company is not unusual in that; what it's been caught doing is entirely standard industry procedure.
This isn't even news. We've known it anytime this past quarter-century. And yet we continue to pay these companies to poison us and lie to us about it.
I have a simple suggestion for the NHS: it should refuse to pay for any drug or treatment that is covered by a patent. Patients who want those treatments should have to find some other way to pay for them. Generic drugs are vastly cheaper, better tested (by 20 years of actual use), and more honestly marketed. Let the NHS stick to those.
(Remember, patents expire after 20 years, so that would still allow every drug and treatment that was available before 1990, and medicine wasn't exactly in the dark ages then.)
Of course, no sooner were this rule suggested, than a thousand and one "patients' groups" would form to lobby, loudly, for this or that exception. And most of them wouldn't even pause to think that they were acting as pawns of the pharmaceutical industry.
I wonder if the directors of those companies ever have nightmares of creating the perfect drug - one that actually cures a condition, with no bad side-effects? Because that would be the death of their business model.
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Friday, August 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Whose health is it anyway?
Susan gave me a book for Christmas. Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre, based on his regular Grauniad column of the same name, deals with how the media reports science. Specifically the British media, and mostly medical science, but the principles are fairly generalisable.
This fine read has taught me a bit about experimental design and medical ethics, and quite a lot about the placebo effect. One factette that lodged in my mind: when a new drug is released, older drugs that treat the same condition actually become measurably less effective. That is to say: if they previously had a 60% chance of curing the condition within a certain time, that chance may drop to 40% when the new drug becomes available.
No-one is quite sure why this should happen. Could be something to do with experimental design or sample selection. But Goldacre's money is on the placebo effect - the doctors themselves, being subject to the ferocious marketing tactics of drug companies, have more faith in the newer treatment.
Another case is the story of fish oil. Thanks to the charlatanry of "nutritionists", most journalists now accept as Proven Scientific FactTM that fish oils are good for the brain, and feeding fish-oil capsules to children makes them perform better in class. All over the country, to hear Goldacre tell it, parents are shovelling pills into their children daily; in some schools, not doing so is considered tantamount to child abuse. And yet there's not a shred of clinical evidence to support this superstition.
Big-time win for the drug companies. They've successfully persuaded a whole generation that "taking pills" is a normal activity for healthy people.
I thought of this today when I saw this story in today's paper. "Wear gloves to avoid cancer in the car" says the headline. Even by the Herald's standards, that's a pretty opaque headline - is there some nasty type of cancer that affects drivers, carcinogens in that rubber-like material that coats the steering wheel perhaps? But no. The story turns out to be about exposing your skin to sunlight while driving. Glass, it transpires, doesn't stop all UV radiation.
UV-B is the stuff that causes sunburn, and plain ol' glass stops nearly all of that. But that nasty UV-A gets through, and according to the Cancer Society, that too is dangerous, even though it doesn't burn. I'm not qualified to comment on the health risks of UV-A, but my suspicions were aroused when I came to this line in the story:
Even these measures are only necessary if you're driving long distances, because UV-A takes a good long exposure to do harm, and laminated windscreen glass stops 80% of it - it's only exposure through the un-laminated side windows that's really dangerous. So long sleeves should pretty much eliminate the risk, at no real cost.
But as with pretty much everything health-related, there's another side to this story. No UV-B means no vitamin D. And if you're of the male persuasion, no vitamin D is a recipe for, among other things, prostate cancer.
Over 200 people die of skin cancer in New Zealand every year. But roughly 600 men die of prostate cancer. In other words, as a man, I'm approximately six times more likely to die of too little UV-B than too much. So why is all the public-health propaganda telling me to get less sun?
The obvious answer is: sunscreen is bottled, marketed and profitable. Whereas sunlight is, as yet, still free. It's a lot harder to make money by telling people to use less of a product.
And this is why our health advice is so confusing: because it's all coming from people who have a product to sell. Nobody is disinterested. Nobody is on our side.
Health advice I believe in: eat fresh vegetables, don't get too fat or too thin, don't smoke or drink to excess, and last but not least, don't let the bastards grind you down. Everything beyond that, I'm now convinced, is guesswork based on information that is partial in every sense of the word.
This fine read has taught me a bit about experimental design and medical ethics, and quite a lot about the placebo effect. One factette that lodged in my mind: when a new drug is released, older drugs that treat the same condition actually become measurably less effective. That is to say: if they previously had a 60% chance of curing the condition within a certain time, that chance may drop to 40% when the new drug becomes available.
No-one is quite sure why this should happen. Could be something to do with experimental design or sample selection. But Goldacre's money is on the placebo effect - the doctors themselves, being subject to the ferocious marketing tactics of drug companies, have more faith in the newer treatment.
Another case is the story of fish oil. Thanks to the charlatanry of "nutritionists", most journalists now accept as Proven Scientific FactTM that fish oils are good for the brain, and feeding fish-oil capsules to children makes them perform better in class. All over the country, to hear Goldacre tell it, parents are shovelling pills into their children daily; in some schools, not doing so is considered tantamount to child abuse. And yet there's not a shred of clinical evidence to support this superstition.
Big-time win for the drug companies. They've successfully persuaded a whole generation that "taking pills" is a normal activity for healthy people.
I thought of this today when I saw this story in today's paper. "Wear gloves to avoid cancer in the car" says the headline. Even by the Herald's standards, that's a pretty opaque headline - is there some nasty type of cancer that affects drivers, carcinogens in that rubber-like material that coats the steering wheel perhaps? But no. The story turns out to be about exposing your skin to sunlight while driving. Glass, it transpires, doesn't stop all UV radiation.
Plain, clear vehicle glass blocks only 37 per cent of UV-A radiation. The main risk comes from long or frequent trips exposed to sun through side windows.Intrigued, I did a little more research into UV-A and UV-B.
UV-B is the stuff that causes sunburn, and plain ol' glass stops nearly all of that. But that nasty UV-A gets through, and according to the Cancer Society, that too is dangerous, even though it doesn't burn. I'm not qualified to comment on the health risks of UV-A, but my suspicions were aroused when I came to this line in the story:
The issue was highlighted by sunscreen maker Oasis Beauty, which urged drivers to apply sunscreen before driving.The Cancer Society, to its credit, is leery of that suggestion. It recommends instead long sleeves and, optionally, gloves. (In summer, no less.) But, I had to wonder, what sort of weight should we apply to health advice from a company that's selling a product?
Even these measures are only necessary if you're driving long distances, because UV-A takes a good long exposure to do harm, and laminated windscreen glass stops 80% of it - it's only exposure through the un-laminated side windows that's really dangerous. So long sleeves should pretty much eliminate the risk, at no real cost.
But as with pretty much everything health-related, there's another side to this story. No UV-B means no vitamin D. And if you're of the male persuasion, no vitamin D is a recipe for, among other things, prostate cancer.
Over 200 people die of skin cancer in New Zealand every year. But roughly 600 men die of prostate cancer. In other words, as a man, I'm approximately six times more likely to die of too little UV-B than too much. So why is all the public-health propaganda telling me to get less sun?
The obvious answer is: sunscreen is bottled, marketed and profitable. Whereas sunlight is, as yet, still free. It's a lot harder to make money by telling people to use less of a product.
And this is why our health advice is so confusing: because it's all coming from people who have a product to sell. Nobody is disinterested. Nobody is on our side.
Health advice I believe in: eat fresh vegetables, don't get too fat or too thin, don't smoke or drink to excess, and last but not least, don't let the bastards grind you down. Everything beyond that, I'm now convinced, is guesswork based on information that is partial in every sense of the word.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Mellow fruitfulness
April is feijoa season.
[Image: HortResearch]
For the benefit of those who, like me until five years ago, have never heard of feijoas: it's a fruit. A small, green, ovoid fruit, in appearance a bit like a lime, but smoother and softer. The flesh is sweet and perfumed and slightly gritty in texture, a little like a fresh fig, or a lot (I'm told) like a guava. It's usually eaten by slicing it in half and scooping the flesh out with a spoon.
I've never seen the things outside New Zealand, although Wikipedia tells me they exist in other places. The fruit has a short shelf life and bruises very easily, which means it's seldom transported any serious distance. But here in Auckland, they're a positive plague. Every second garden has its own feijoa tree/bush, and not surprisingly they all fruit at the same time - which means that even if you personally don't have your own tree, you almost certainly have friends, colleagues and/or family members who do, and who can't possibly eat all that fruit by themselves...
Some enterprising souls set up little roadside stands to sell them. Even the supermarkets get in on the act, for the brief few weeks of the season. Lord knows who buys them, though. Everyone I know has their work cut out just to eat the free ones.
The fruit are so sweet, and so easy to eat, that they're almost universally popular. For about three weeks every autumn, the people of Auckland - most of whom wouldn't normally eat fruit if you dared them to it - actually get within shouting distance of a healthy diet.
Which is just as well, with swine flu breaking out all over.
[Image: HortResearch]
For the benefit of those who, like me until five years ago, have never heard of feijoas: it's a fruit. A small, green, ovoid fruit, in appearance a bit like a lime, but smoother and softer. The flesh is sweet and perfumed and slightly gritty in texture, a little like a fresh fig, or a lot (I'm told) like a guava. It's usually eaten by slicing it in half and scooping the flesh out with a spoon.
I've never seen the things outside New Zealand, although Wikipedia tells me they exist in other places. The fruit has a short shelf life and bruises very easily, which means it's seldom transported any serious distance. But here in Auckland, they're a positive plague. Every second garden has its own feijoa tree/bush, and not surprisingly they all fruit at the same time - which means that even if you personally don't have your own tree, you almost certainly have friends, colleagues and/or family members who do, and who can't possibly eat all that fruit by themselves...
Some enterprising souls set up little roadside stands to sell them. Even the supermarkets get in on the act, for the brief few weeks of the season. Lord knows who buys them, though. Everyone I know has their work cut out just to eat the free ones.
The fruit are so sweet, and so easy to eat, that they're almost universally popular. For about three weeks every autumn, the people of Auckland - most of whom wouldn't normally eat fruit if you dared them to it - actually get within shouting distance of a healthy diet.
Which is just as well, with swine flu breaking out all over.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Thought for food
Remember how, last year, there was a spate of horror stories about how products made in China weren't necessarily, let's say, up to code with all those pesky rules and regulations that we cossetted Westerners insist on? Things like products not containing more than a limited amount of lethal poison.
I thought then, and I still think, that this ruckus was thinly-disguised protectionism. When I was a kid, I had a number of toys made of lead. It's an excellent material - cheap, easy to mould, satisfyingly heavy and durable. To say nothing of the paints, which (we took it for granted) would contain lead, if nothing worse. I assume that's why my parents kept shouting at me when I ate it.
Which is why, this Easter, my reaction to stories of nasty egg-related experiences was more smugness than horror. Summary: some Easter chocolate products have been found to contain creepy-crawlies.
We're talking respected brands here. Cadbury's and M&Ms are the two that have failed to keep their names out of the story - I don't know what others may be involved. Nor do I know where these products were made. But I'd bet good money it's not China.
This is not what I call consumer protection. When you bit into your Easter egg, did you think "what this really needs is something living inside it"?
Of course it could be that someone is simply taking the symbolic significance of the Easter egg a bit too literally. But more likely, they're just careless.
Food handling is a curious blind spot in the factories and supermarkets of New Zealand. We are resigned to carefully sorting through the mildewed, crushed and parasite-infested fruit; cautiously wiping the leaking blood off badly packaged meats; gently testing the temperature of milk by hand; glumly inspecting the mold on the inside of vacuum packs of cheddar; religiously checking the dates on short-life products such as coleslaw and dips. I've seen shelf stackers in the supermarkets piling crates on top of soft fruit without a thought. If I saw any of this in Tesco's in England, I would expect the section manager to be sacked on the spot; here, it never occurs to anyone that there is even an issue.
Don't get me wrong: our food is excellent. New Zealand is justly famed for its farming. Our restaurants compare well with any of the 15 or so countries I've experienced. We had roast lamb for an Easter feast - finest New Zealand-grown baby sheep - and I can officially pronounce it delicious. And the wine! - New Zealand wine, as anyone who's been paying even the slightest attention must know by now, is the best in the world. Even Foodtown can't screw that up.
It's not that hard, people. This is 2009: problems like this were already boring in the 1980s, when I studied production engineering. If you can't do it, resign, and give your job to someone who gives a damn'.
I thought then, and I still think, that this ruckus was thinly-disguised protectionism. When I was a kid, I had a number of toys made of lead. It's an excellent material - cheap, easy to mould, satisfyingly heavy and durable. To say nothing of the paints, which (we took it for granted) would contain lead, if nothing worse. I assume that's why my parents kept shouting at me when I ate it.
Which is why, this Easter, my reaction to stories of nasty egg-related experiences was more smugness than horror. Summary: some Easter chocolate products have been found to contain creepy-crawlies.
We're talking respected brands here. Cadbury's and M&Ms are the two that have failed to keep their names out of the story - I don't know what others may be involved. Nor do I know where these products were made. But I'd bet good money it's not China.
This is not what I call consumer protection. When you bit into your Easter egg, did you think "what this really needs is something living inside it"?
Of course it could be that someone is simply taking the symbolic significance of the Easter egg a bit too literally. But more likely, they're just careless.
Food handling is a curious blind spot in the factories and supermarkets of New Zealand. We are resigned to carefully sorting through the mildewed, crushed and parasite-infested fruit; cautiously wiping the leaking blood off badly packaged meats; gently testing the temperature of milk by hand; glumly inspecting the mold on the inside of vacuum packs of cheddar; religiously checking the dates on short-life products such as coleslaw and dips. I've seen shelf stackers in the supermarkets piling crates on top of soft fruit without a thought. If I saw any of this in Tesco's in England, I would expect the section manager to be sacked on the spot; here, it never occurs to anyone that there is even an issue.
Don't get me wrong: our food is excellent. New Zealand is justly famed for its farming. Our restaurants compare well with any of the 15 or so countries I've experienced. We had roast lamb for an Easter feast - finest New Zealand-grown baby sheep - and I can officially pronounce it delicious. And the wine! - New Zealand wine, as anyone who's been paying even the slightest attention must know by now, is the best in the world. Even Foodtown can't screw that up.
It's not that hard, people. This is 2009: problems like this were already boring in the 1980s, when I studied production engineering. If you can't do it, resign, and give your job to someone who gives a damn'.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Disasters
Bad things happen in threes.
I'm not quite sure where I picked up that bit of folk idiocy. I suspect my mother is to blame. But anyway, it's bugging me now.
Two weeks ago, I ran the car into a small rock that someone had thoughtfully dropped in the middle of the road. The impact bent the arm of the suspension, and made the car unnecessarily interesting to steer. It cost $400 to fix.
Last week it was the TV. That only cost $100, plus a week of Making Our Own Entertainment.
All this is bad enough, but what's worse now is waiting for the third shoe to drop, if you see what I mean.
Has it already happened? Is it the nice house we saw last weekend, that - by the time we got around to making an offer for it - had already been sold, for less than we were willing to offer? (I blame that one mostly on the bank, but partly on my own incompetence.)
Is it something health-related? Susan is currently struggling with a cold, and I've been fighting an ongoing battle with my innards for longer than I care to tell you.
Or is there something worse, something more dramatic and acute, lurking around the corner to complete the set?
I don't know. If no-one had ever told me that bad things happen in threes, I wouldn't be worrying about it. But on the other hand, I wouldn't have understood all those cultural allusions and references either.
So I can't really blame my mother. Blame myself, rather, for not believing me when I tell myself superstition is bollocks. I'm such an idiot.
I'm not quite sure where I picked up that bit of folk idiocy. I suspect my mother is to blame. But anyway, it's bugging me now.
Two weeks ago, I ran the car into a small rock that someone had thoughtfully dropped in the middle of the road. The impact bent the arm of the suspension, and made the car unnecessarily interesting to steer. It cost $400 to fix.
Last week it was the TV. That only cost $100, plus a week of Making Our Own Entertainment.
All this is bad enough, but what's worse now is waiting for the third shoe to drop, if you see what I mean.
Has it already happened? Is it the nice house we saw last weekend, that - by the time we got around to making an offer for it - had already been sold, for less than we were willing to offer? (I blame that one mostly on the bank, but partly on my own incompetence.)
Is it something health-related? Susan is currently struggling with a cold, and I've been fighting an ongoing battle with my innards for longer than I care to tell you.
Or is there something worse, something more dramatic and acute, lurking around the corner to complete the set?
I don't know. If no-one had ever told me that bad things happen in threes, I wouldn't be worrying about it. But on the other hand, I wouldn't have understood all those cultural allusions and references either.
So I can't really blame my mother. Blame myself, rather, for not believing me when I tell myself superstition is bollocks. I'm such an idiot.
Monday, February 23, 2009
How the Internet will kill you
Spending too much time online, apparently, causes high blood pressure. Also heart disease, cancer, dementia, sleep deprivation, diabetes, and Dr House's favourite: lupus.
This story comes to us from Biologist, the strictly non-sensationalist journal of the British Institute of Biology, via El Reg. I'm torn, for a response, between "you're making it up as you go along" and "well, duh."
I think this conflict arises from the outrageously wide remit of the paper. It's as if the author were briefed to look at all the studies linking health effects to either online behaviour or social interaction of any sort, to find all the possible biological connections between "getting ill" and "spending too much time typing away at a lonely screen", and then write a paragraph on each one. There's no coherence to it.
In fact it looks very like dozens of articles I published in my time on a similar journal, although of course "social networking" hadn't been invented then. (And in justice to myself: if they were this bad, I'd generally send them back to the author and tell him to try again. I was a better editor than this.)
In short: the part I can both understand and believe says that (a) if you spend a lot of your time and energy "socialising" online, you don't spend as much time and energy meeting people physically; and (b) spending time physically with other people, preferably in groups, is important for health.
This much seems (to me) obvious. What's not so obvious is the detailed process by which loneliness translates into illness. The paper touches on the usual culprits - stress, depression, lack of confidants, and so forth - but also covers a wide range of biological mechanisms. Sadly, it doesn't provide enough information on any of these for me to understand what it's talking about.
Take the discussion of leucocytes and cytokines, for instance. Citing "Recent research at the UCLA School of Medicine", it seems to be saying that social interaction increases the efficiency of our immune systems. In other words, not only do we share germs with other people, but also immunities to germs that they've previously been exposed to. To me that seems far-fetched, but I don't know enough to argue it either way.
"Regular religious group participation", it says intriguingly but uninformatively, "is a significant predictor of elevated IL-6 [interleukin-6] levels and lower subsequent 12-year mortality." So there you go. It's not the power of prayer, it's the power of churchgoing; it doesn't matter what god you worship, so long as you do it with others.
What makes this paper frustrating, for me, is the shopping-list feel. The authors make no attempt to conceal the fact that they started out from what (you might think) should have been their conclusion - that online life increases physical isolation, which is bad - and gathered evidence only in support of that belief. They make no attempt to develop arguments from one point to another, nor to explore alternative explanations of any of their "findings", nor to explore the full implications of what they did find, or otherwise present any kind of balanced picture. So although I'm inclined to believe that they're probably right, for limited values of "right", I'm left frustrated and dissatisfied.
And now, instead of heading down to the pub to bore the earlobes off some poor sap in real life, I'm blogging about it. That'll show 'em.
This story comes to us from Biologist, the strictly non-sensationalist journal of the British Institute of Biology, via El Reg. I'm torn, for a response, between "you're making it up as you go along" and "well, duh."
I think this conflict arises from the outrageously wide remit of the paper. It's as if the author were briefed to look at all the studies linking health effects to either online behaviour or social interaction of any sort, to find all the possible biological connections between "getting ill" and "spending too much time typing away at a lonely screen", and then write a paragraph on each one. There's no coherence to it.
In fact it looks very like dozens of articles I published in my time on a similar journal, although of course "social networking" hadn't been invented then. (And in justice to myself: if they were this bad, I'd generally send them back to the author and tell him to try again. I was a better editor than this.)
In short: the part I can both understand and believe says that (a) if you spend a lot of your time and energy "socialising" online, you don't spend as much time and energy meeting people physically; and (b) spending time physically with other people, preferably in groups, is important for health.
This much seems (to me) obvious. What's not so obvious is the detailed process by which loneliness translates into illness. The paper touches on the usual culprits - stress, depression, lack of confidants, and so forth - but also covers a wide range of biological mechanisms. Sadly, it doesn't provide enough information on any of these for me to understand what it's talking about.
Take the discussion of leucocytes and cytokines, for instance. Citing "Recent research at the UCLA School of Medicine", it seems to be saying that social interaction increases the efficiency of our immune systems. In other words, not only do we share germs with other people, but also immunities to germs that they've previously been exposed to. To me that seems far-fetched, but I don't know enough to argue it either way.
"Regular religious group participation", it says intriguingly but uninformatively, "is a significant predictor of elevated IL-6 [interleukin-6] levels and lower subsequent 12-year mortality." So there you go. It's not the power of prayer, it's the power of churchgoing; it doesn't matter what god you worship, so long as you do it with others.
What makes this paper frustrating, for me, is the shopping-list feel. The authors make no attempt to conceal the fact that they started out from what (you might think) should have been their conclusion - that online life increases physical isolation, which is bad - and gathered evidence only in support of that belief. They make no attempt to develop arguments from one point to another, nor to explore alternative explanations of any of their "findings", nor to explore the full implications of what they did find, or otherwise present any kind of balanced picture. So although I'm inclined to believe that they're probably right, for limited values of "right", I'm left frustrated and dissatisfied.
And now, instead of heading down to the pub to bore the earlobes off some poor sap in real life, I'm blogging about it. That'll show 'em.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Pulp non-fiction
One of the many things I miss, from home, is freshly squeezed orange juice.
Not, I should explain, juice freshly squeezed from an actual orange. That's way too much like hard work, even without the mess. What I'm talking about is bottles of orange juice untreated in any way - not reconstituted, not pasteurised, sans preservatives or any other ungodly treatment visited upon its natural pulpy goodness. Typically, it has a shelf life of about a week.
It's a universal pick-me-up: a drink whose natural sugar levels give an instant boost, no matter how tired or run-down or hung-over I am, without the inevitable subsequent carb-crash of a soft drink; whose liquid rehydrates my tissues; whose vitamins I can practically feel hunting down and beating into submission all those nasty free radicals unleashed by whatever good times I've had lately.
(I am aware that certain scientists, sponsored by I-know-not-whom-but-I-have-my-suspicions, claim that there is no health benefit to "freshly squeezed" orange juice. Those scientists are idiots, as indeed is anyone who thinks that "benefits" can be measured by lab equipment. They should try drinking it.)
Given that the UK is not exactly famous for its orange groves, the fact that you can get this stuff, year-round, in any decent British supermarket is a testament to their phenomenal logistical abilities. But one quickly gets used to such luxuries.
New Zealand supermarkets, I regret to say, are not in the same league. Sometimes I wonder if they're even playing the same sport.
The "pure squeezed" juice we encounter here, in our weekly shopping, is from two suppliers: McCoy's, a French-owned brand that basically sells soft drinks and reconstituted juice, with "squeezed" juice added to the product line pretty much as an afterthought; and Charlie's [warning: website will screw with your browser window and, if you're not careful, play offensive music at you], a brand whose idea of "honest squeezed orange juice" includes pasteurisation and "added Vitamin C".
Both of these products are a feeble, whispering shadow of the drink I've been hankering for. Compared with the mulish kick of Tesco's or Sainsbury's own brands, they're about as stimulating as a prod with a dry sponge.
So imagine my unbridled joy when, a couple of weeks ago now, I discovered a new brand on the shelves of New World. A brand whose "Best Before" date, instead of months ahead, was less than ten days away. We instantly bought three litres of the stuff.
And imagine my dismay when I read, last weekend, that it's a "limited edition", only available for twelve weeks. Which, by my reckoning, should end in late April.
The best I can hope for is that it'll be such a smash hit, others will see the market niche and move whatever parts of heaven and earth are necessary to fill it. I've been doing my part, putting it away faster than a Pennsylvanian judge. Come May, we'll see if it's been enough.
Not, I should explain, juice freshly squeezed from an actual orange. That's way too much like hard work, even without the mess. What I'm talking about is bottles of orange juice untreated in any way - not reconstituted, not pasteurised, sans preservatives or any other ungodly treatment visited upon its natural pulpy goodness. Typically, it has a shelf life of about a week.
It's a universal pick-me-up: a drink whose natural sugar levels give an instant boost, no matter how tired or run-down or hung-over I am, without the inevitable subsequent carb-crash of a soft drink; whose liquid rehydrates my tissues; whose vitamins I can practically feel hunting down and beating into submission all those nasty free radicals unleashed by whatever good times I've had lately.
(I am aware that certain scientists, sponsored by I-know-not-whom-but-I-have-my-suspicions, claim that there is no health benefit to "freshly squeezed" orange juice. Those scientists are idiots, as indeed is anyone who thinks that "benefits" can be measured by lab equipment. They should try drinking it.)
Given that the UK is not exactly famous for its orange groves, the fact that you can get this stuff, year-round, in any decent British supermarket is a testament to their phenomenal logistical abilities. But one quickly gets used to such luxuries.
New Zealand supermarkets, I regret to say, are not in the same league. Sometimes I wonder if they're even playing the same sport.
The "pure squeezed" juice we encounter here, in our weekly shopping, is from two suppliers: McCoy's, a French-owned brand that basically sells soft drinks and reconstituted juice, with "squeezed" juice added to the product line pretty much as an afterthought; and Charlie's [warning: website will screw with your browser window and, if you're not careful, play offensive music at you], a brand whose idea of "honest squeezed orange juice" includes pasteurisation and "added Vitamin C".
Both of these products are a feeble, whispering shadow of the drink I've been hankering for. Compared with the mulish kick of Tesco's or Sainsbury's own brands, they're about as stimulating as a prod with a dry sponge.
So imagine my unbridled joy when, a couple of weeks ago now, I discovered a new brand on the shelves of New World. A brand whose "Best Before" date, instead of months ahead, was less than ten days away. We instantly bought three litres of the stuff.
And imagine my dismay when I read, last weekend, that it's a "limited edition", only available for twelve weeks. Which, by my reckoning, should end in late April.
The best I can hope for is that it'll be such a smash hit, others will see the market niche and move whatever parts of heaven and earth are necessary to fill it. I've been doing my part, putting it away faster than a Pennsylvanian judge. Come May, we'll see if it's been enough.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Fitness equipment for geeks
Our star Christmas prezzie to ourselves was a Wii Fit.
For those of you who aren't entirely au fait with this latest in couch-potato fitness accessories: a Wii Fit is, basically, a very sensitive electronic scale that connects to your Wii (games console) and encourages you to do all kinds of exciting physical stuff to reduce your weight. You stand on the doodad and perform yoga, muscle, balance or aerobic exercises (per instruction) as the mood takes you; it tots up your time and chimes a happy validating little chord when you've clocked up half an hour.
Yogic deep breathing, for instance, can earn you two minutes. Jogging (running on the spot) can be variable length -- novices like me get a five-minute course, but by June I daresay I'll be up to the half-marathon level. And it has the advantage, over real jogging, that nobody can see you. Step exercises can earn you anything up to ten minutes in a single hit.
Then there's the balance games, which are video games controlled by leaning your body this way, that way and, for good measure, the other way. Skiing, ski-jumping, snowboarding, a penguin on the ice -- these frosty occupations will earn you about two minutes per hit -- for playing games. While you play, the trusty scale tracks your centre of gravity and uses this information to control the game.
Then it judges me -- assigns my "Wii Fit age" -- based on my powers of balance. The ability to stand perfectly still is highly prized in Wiiland. And it's harder than I'd thought.
Now, the first thing the scale told me, when I loaded myself onto it on Christmas Day, was that I was overweight. Bastard, I thought, and set myself a target to shed two kilos within two months, which will put me well within the "ideal" weight range.
Since then, my weight's been up and down like a stock market. But it has shown a slightly downward trend. On Sunday it told me, for the first time since I started, that I was no longer overweight.
I presume that's because I was taking the test before breakfast. (The device says that I probably fluctuate by about 1 kilo over the course of a day, so for consistency it's best to weigh oneself at around the same time daily.) Since then, I've been avoiding it. I figure the next news is probably going to be bad, so why rush it?
Interesting things I've noted:
Susan, however, has been going nuts. She's probably clocked enough hours on the Wii Fit to earn some kind of pilot's license. While on holiday -- from Christmas until this Monday -- she would take the test three, four times a day. And because she was burning so much energy, of course, she's been mainlining candy canes and similar health-giving foods.
So although she's unquestionably toned and beautiful, she's not losing weight. That's not a problem in theory -- she's already comfortably in the "ideal" region -- but the damn' device itself encourages us to set goals for weight change. "Staying much the same" isn't an option, as far as I can see.
On the whole, it's quite fun. And it speaks with a good English accent, which is nice. But I do wish it could be localised to the southern hemisphere. Being told to watch what I eat during these winter months is mildy annoying; come June, I anticipate being told to get out and enjoy the sunshine, which will be irritating beyond measure.
For those of you who aren't entirely au fait with this latest in couch-potato fitness accessories: a Wii Fit is, basically, a very sensitive electronic scale that connects to your Wii (games console) and encourages you to do all kinds of exciting physical stuff to reduce your weight. You stand on the doodad and perform yoga, muscle, balance or aerobic exercises (per instruction) as the mood takes you; it tots up your time and chimes a happy validating little chord when you've clocked up half an hour.
Yogic deep breathing, for instance, can earn you two minutes. Jogging (running on the spot) can be variable length -- novices like me get a five-minute course, but by June I daresay I'll be up to the half-marathon level. And it has the advantage, over real jogging, that nobody can see you. Step exercises can earn you anything up to ten minutes in a single hit.
Then there's the balance games, which are video games controlled by leaning your body this way, that way and, for good measure, the other way. Skiing, ski-jumping, snowboarding, a penguin on the ice -- these frosty occupations will earn you about two minutes per hit -- for playing games. While you play, the trusty scale tracks your centre of gravity and uses this information to control the game.
Then it judges me -- assigns my "Wii Fit age" -- based on my powers of balance. The ability to stand perfectly still is highly prized in Wiiland. And it's harder than I'd thought.
Now, the first thing the scale told me, when I loaded myself onto it on Christmas Day, was that I was overweight. Bastard, I thought, and set myself a target to shed two kilos within two months, which will put me well within the "ideal" weight range.
Since then, my weight's been up and down like a stock market. But it has shown a slightly downward trend. On Sunday it told me, for the first time since I started, that I was no longer overweight.
I presume that's because I was taking the test before breakfast. (The device says that I probably fluctuate by about 1 kilo over the course of a day, so for consistency it's best to weigh oneself at around the same time daily.) Since then, I've been avoiding it. I figure the next news is probably going to be bad, so why rush it?
Interesting things I've noted:
- I tend to gain weight on working days. No surprise there: going to work is bad for me. It's official.
- By far the most effective ways of losing those Christmas kilos don't involve exercising at all: they're bathroom-related. (A long soak in a hot bath removes an astonishing amount of fat. What did you think I was talking about?)
Susan, however, has been going nuts. She's probably clocked enough hours on the Wii Fit to earn some kind of pilot's license. While on holiday -- from Christmas until this Monday -- she would take the test three, four times a day. And because she was burning so much energy, of course, she's been mainlining candy canes and similar health-giving foods.
So although she's unquestionably toned and beautiful, she's not losing weight. That's not a problem in theory -- she's already comfortably in the "ideal" region -- but the damn' device itself encourages us to set goals for weight change. "Staying much the same" isn't an option, as far as I can see.
On the whole, it's quite fun. And it speaks with a good English accent, which is nice. But I do wish it could be localised to the southern hemisphere. Being told to watch what I eat during these winter months is mildy annoying; come June, I anticipate being told to get out and enjoy the sunshine, which will be irritating beyond measure.
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