Oooh Aaah Just a Little Bit More...

Today its all about too much food. If I lived in the US I would no doubt be this big:

But maybe I wouldn't wear that shirt... 

Anyway, my point being that I'm big enough as it is, if I lived in a country where the average portion size was 150% bigger than what we're used to, then it goes without saying I would be MASSIVE. The Americans just love everything big. Bigger is better, and why give you one quarter pounder, when a half pounder burger is better. 

There's a show on cable called Man Vs Food, which basically shows this guy going round the US trying out loads of food challenges. Most of them include him eating what amounts to a whole cow, sheep or pig in cooked meat form. The food eating contest scene is so popular in America that they're actually canvassing it to be included as an Olympic sport. If you don't belive me go and have a look at The International Federation of Competitive Eating or  Major League Eating as they like to be called for short. 

Believe it or not, she could eat you under the table

So they actually class overeating as a competitive sport. If you fancy yourself a bit of a competitive food eater, then you're living in the wrong country. What is quite funny though, is that a lot of the competitors in the eating contests are actually rather skinny. Including this lovely lass Sonya Thomas, she ate 11lbs of Cheesecake in 10 minutes. Wow. I mean I love cheesecake, but eating more than a 1lb a minute..

Unfortunately as well we know the US is far and away the most obese nation in the world, and although not everyone takes part in competitive eating, the fact that they watch it as a sport, pretty much sums up one of the main problems with the country. And sadly, we're now not too far behind at all. As a country, we may be lacking in some sports, just see our dismal World Cup display. But we can now proudly boast that we're the most obese country in the whole of Europe. How about that for some top bragging rights. 

I must stop at this moment to post this clip, which has to be one of the funniest and most bizarre things you will EVER see in your life. One of the all time great competitive eaters Kobayashi (not the one from The Usual Suspects) faces off against a Giant Bear. Not a man called a giant bear. Literally a GIANT BEAR. I tip my hat to you people. Genius. 

So we now know we're the most obese nation in Europe, and that's not going to suddenly get better. Our current overstretched NHS spends more than £4.2 billion on obesity per year, and this is increasing at a rate that we can't afford. So when we wonder why the NHS is in such a state, it's because of all those fatties and Vanessa Feltz having gastric bypass surgery. 

You're probably thinking 'OK Mr. Cleverclogs, what's the solution?'. Well obviously there is no real easy solution, but I would say that one of the main factors is how children are being raised, which is a start. You only need to look around at how much food is available for kids at such a young age, and how so little of it is actually good for them. A 3yr old is more likely to recognise the Maccy D's and Disney logo, more than any other. 

I think that we're probably fcuked. To be honest. It's all down to the individuals, and at the moment people seem more interested in surgery or the latest diet pill, rather than the seemingly harder job of stopping eating crap and exercising.

Did you know that the healthiest people in the whole world live in Okinawa, an island near Japan. How are they so healthy? Well they believe in Hari Hachi Bu, which simply translates as eating till your 80% full. On Okinawa island, they have more people who live older than 100 than anywhere else in the world. They also have the longest life expectancy than anywhere else in the world. It's no coincidence, that they live on a diet of whole foods, seeds, grains, vegetables and fish, along with a daily exercise routine. Just read this to be amazed. They also manage their intake of calories, so they only ever eat till they're 80% full. I'm not saying we should all practice that, but it does make you think. I'm sure some people would say that they'd prefer to live to 65 and be able to eat chocolate and processed crap till they couldn't eat any more. But personally I'd like to live till at least 100, well I would imagine that by then my time machine will finally be working, and I can take over the world. MWAAHH MWAAAAHHH. 

So the next time you want go large in Maccy D's, think about Hari Hachi Bu. 

The Diet Trap

I know that some people can't understand when I tell them I'm not 'on a diet', as they're so caught up and brain-washed with the whole diet trap that it's not easy to see the wood for the tress so to speak.

Generally we've all gone on a diet at some point in our lives, even people who are not over-weight go on a 'diet' to lose a few pounds before a holiday, or to get into that particular dress or dinner suit. But the problem is that most of the time we're bloody miserable. Diets are horrible things, that seem to spend more time telling you what you're not allowed rather than what you are. 

It's a common fact that as soon as you say to someone 'Please can you not touch that large piece of chocolate cake, I'm saving it for later'. They automatically want that piece of chocolate cake more than anything else. It's what is commonly referred to as the Adam Complex (well when I say commonly - I just made it up. But it sounds good!). As in Adam & Eve. According to legend, and not truth - Adam could have anything he wanted from the Garden of Eden, apart from that sodding apple. So why did they eat that Apple? Because they were told they couldn't have it, and allegedly there was some talking snake who was not helping matters. 

Just one wafer thin Apple. Oh No I can't I'm stuffed. Oh go on, go on etc

Before I go on a religious rant here,  I can't let the talking snake pass. As sane individuals, we're meant to believe in god. The same god who made this snake talk, and then apparently because it was so evil took its ability to talk away for all future snakes. Well that's clearly bollocks is it not? Hands up who believes in god. Ok that's quite a few of you. Now hands up who believes in talking animals. Well apart from Dr Dolittle over in the corner, it's all gone a bit quiet. It's not like there's loads of talking animals around. Anyway - I'm diversifying and this was not a religious post, even though I am Rev Food. 

So back to the Adam Complex. This is fundamentally the basis for all diets since the beginning of time. Whatever diet you go on, they're all saying it's good to eat this and that but whatever you do, don't eat THAT CHOCOLATE BAR, or if you do, you're only allowed 1/4 of it. So obviously we spend all our time thinking 'I can't eat that chocolate bar, but I WANT IT'. So when you're on a diet you spend all your time trying not to think of what you're not allowed to eat, or using your will power to stop yourself. And generally you're pretty miserable. I don't remember many times when I've been on a diet and was truly happy. I lost over 2 stonne on the Slimming World diet, and thought at the time it was brilliant. But as the diet stops you from mixing carbs and protein it's not workable on a long-term basis, and sure enough once I'd lost the weight it soon started to creep back once I started to eat 'normally' again. 

How do you get off the Adam Complex? Well it's actually quite easy really. It''s just a case of realising that you're really not missing out on anything at all. I can eat chocolate if I want to, but why would I want to? There will be times when I choose to have some nosh, but it's my choice. I know it's hard to explain, so for now I'll just tell you about a new fad diet that I've just come up with. I'm going to make my millions from it. 

I call it the 5 ITEMS OR LESS DIET. In a nutshell - from now on - don't eat packaged food that has more than 5 ingredients in it. Simple. You'll find that you'll end up cutting out nearly all processed food from your diet and that's not a bad thing at all. And don't eat anything that you don't know where it's come from. So no random meat product. Most packaged food you buy has a lot of extra ingredients that you don't need. The items that you buy that have less than 5 ingredients, will not contain any extra sugar, salt or processed E numbers. Now go to the supermarket and see what you can actually buy with 5 items or less. You'll be amazed how little there is. 

A prize for anyone who knows what the hell this is? It sounds truly disgusting

See what I've done there. I've gone and slagged off diets, and then gone and added another one to the mix. But if I can make my fortune off it, then you can all stay fat for all I care. I'll be rich, rich I tell thee. 

A juice a day, helps you work, rest & play!

You may have no interest in getting fit or changing your diet and being more healthy. But if there's one thing that everyone should do, is find 10 minutes in their day to make a hugely nutritious and yummy juice. 

So dust off your juicers, bring them out of the cupboard of useless kitchen gadgets, it's next to the Breville Sandwich Toaster and just in front of the Smoothie Maker, and next to the Bread maker and Ice Cream machine. Right got it. 

Give it a clean up, go to your nearest fruit & veg stall and here's the recipe or guide to what you need to buy. 

One of these every day could replace breakfast, lunch or your mid-morning snack. DOOO EEEET. It's called the Dr Juice as it contains all of the fruit or vegetables you would need in 1 day in a healthy juice. 

1 raw beetroot

3 or 4 carrots (depending on size)

3 apples

1 pear

1 stick of celery

1cm of raw ginger

1cm of lime (with skin)

Throw them all in the machine and you should end up with the most amazing looking juice. It has a bright deep red colour and has a sweet taste, with a slight ginger and zesty tang. Pour it over a tall glass of ice, and VOILA your very own Dr Juice. One of these every day, will guarantee to keep you going through the winter. By the way - the ingredients above make enough for 2 large glasses (a good pint or so of juice), so you can reduce the quantity if you want. 

Personally I don't like beetroot, never have done and can't stand it in salad. But juice the fecker and I LOVE IT. So my only recommendation for the day is JUICE JUICE JUICE. 

I'll post any more great recipes I find or come across, so do let me know if you know of any other great juices. 

I'm 1,000,000% Sure

Whether it's the Apprentice or X-Factor, advertising or some other news or random snippet, the world is currently full of totally and completely unnecessary over the top hyperbole. I think the rate we're going the world will soon EXPLODE under the weight of all this utter hyperbolic SHITE. Yes EXPLODE. See - that's one just there. 

Simply not good enough. TRY HARDER.

I blame 'The Sun', no, not the large glowing orangey yellow globe that keeps us alive. I'm referring to the trashy red top which is bought buy the white van man population. They started it, with all their ridiculous 'news' stories having text in BOLD to EMPHASISE the importance of the over the top nonsense they were spouting. When really it's no big shock to read that another footballer was having it away.


It's also spread into advertising and into every area of our lives, that we're now used to it. It's so prevalent that really each time someone is trying to say something, they have to make sure we fully understand they REALLY mean it. Hence the current wave of percentage overload. By this I mean that 100% is simply not enough anymore. We all know that giving 100% is ok, but it's not perfect. Especially when the minimum expectation is now 110%, or ideally 150%. 


So when I run or walk, I'm not giving it 100% effort, I'm making sure that I'm putting all my effort in and giving it at least 200%, but I fear that may not be enough. 


This hyperbole is disguising the verisimilitude (biggest word I know - FACT. It means 'truth of things' to save you looking it up) that is inherent in our everyday lives. We really don't need such exaggeration as life has enough of it as it is. One of the growing types of hyperbole, which is now superceding all the other types for me is what you find in your local supermarket. 


I'm a lot more aware of what I put into my body, and I don't even need to study all the small print labels of every single food. The reason is that so much is now put on the front in plain sight. For example - something which is FAT FREE, is usually full of sugar or asparatame to compensate. Or they love putting 90% FAT FREE. Which means it still contains 10% fat. It's the same trick that retailers have been using for years. How many times have you picked up something that's priced at £14.99 and gone - ooh that's quite cheap. Yet the same item next to it could be £15.03 and we'd be like - 'oh, that's quite pricey'. It's not a coincidence that so many products are priced with 99p at the end. 


So it's no coincidence that we now see such hyperbole as FAT FREE, LOW IN FAT, NO ADDED SUGAR, NATURAL FLAVOURING. If you actually think about all this nonsense, a lot of it doesn't make sense. When you go into your local Lidl (or Aldi if you're not quite as posh) and pick up an Apple. You're not looking for the big signs which say FAT FREE, NO ADDED SUGAR etc, because we all know that fruit is fruit. Yet when you then go to any other isle, there's literally 1000s of these little slogans and hyperbole which overwhelms us. A good example of this is when I was using up a tub of coleslaw in our fridge and it proudly stated 'LOW FAT, 'REDUCED SUGAR', 98% FAT FREE - but it had so much crap in it the label for ingredients took up most of the side of one tub. I don't understand it. Coleslaw is just carrot, cabbage, a bit of oniion and some dressing. So why does it need to have artificial sweetener and fructose and about 5 E numbers, amongst a lot of ingredients that didn't even sound like they were written in English. The mind boggles. 

NO ADDED SUGAR  AND NATURAL FLAVOURING ALLEGEDLY

I know that you probably think I'm some health freak who needs to get a grip, but when you actually look at things and see how ridiculous they sound you'll realise what I mean. It's all a cunning psychological trap to fool our brain into thinking what they're selling is actually good for us, and not full of hidden crap. If the front of the label told the truth, then we obviously wouldn't buy a lot of it. 


All kids love Cocoa Pops, but no sane adult would give their children heaped spoonfulls of sugar in the morning, yet quite happily let them have a bowl - even as a treat. It contains more than 30% sugar. Each little brown bit of rice is made of 30% sugar. Madness I tell thee. Would it sell so many if proudly on the front of the box there was a big splash saying 5 spoons of sugar in every bowl. Or GUARANTEED TO ROT YOUR TEETH AND MAKE YOU FAT.  

The double whammy of having a 9 at
at the end and using a cute monkey

I'm sure it won't be long before some products start proudly stating that they're 150% good for you. So I'll leave you in peace for now. But please don't be fooled by all these ridiculous claims. Set yourself free and see the advertising for what it really is 300% NONSENSE, I'm actually DEVASTATED by the cunning of all these brands. TOTALLY DEVASTATED. They've completely THROWN ME UNDER THE BUS, and I'm going to have to THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX from now on. 

Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)

We all feel it. We all have on a daily basis feel pressure. Some people get affected by it more than others, and this leads to stress, worry and anxiety. But I'm not going to bore you with a long drawn out post on handling pressure in the 21st Century. Regular readers know that's not my style. 

Instead, I'm going to focus on the most heinous type of pressure, what we call 'Peer Pressure'. This quite horrible term affects us all from a very early age. I can speak from experience to say that I've suffered from my fair share of peer pressure. Whether it was bowing to pressure and lighting up the death ciggie for the first time, or being dragged along to some event or social thing that I really didn't want to go to. But as I've got older I've realised that all this peer pressure is really quite pointless, and mindless. 

I've never understood the peer pressure when you start working at a company to join in with the 'drink at pub till pissed' culture, and if you don't immediately become a part of the group, then you're seen as the dull one, or the person with no social skills. I think people do it mostly  without thinking about it. I remember when i was at school there was always a group of us that had the homework discussion, which went something like this:

"You doing your homework for Miss Clarke tomorrow?"

"Nah, going to play football after school instead, you?"

"Nope, I'm going to be playing Sensible Soccer with Mark later."

"Me neither, it's pointless anyway. Doesn't mean anything.

So of course I didn't worry about my homework, and played Sensible Soccer till my fingers were sore. And then you can guess what happened, the following morning I'm the only feckin idjeet who hasn't done his bloody homework, because my so called mates clearly had no intention of not conforming to peer pressure and like little swots did their homework. So I was the one that ended up having to rush to the library and do it during my break time. 

I'm sure we've all got similar stories, although many will be a lot less tame than that one. All through life, we spend far too much time bowing to pressure and doing things that in our right mind we never ever would do. I'm pretty sure without peer pressure I wouldn't have drunk a whole bottle of Jack Daniels and laid on the floor screaming 'I want more alcohol'. I definitely wouldn't ever have gone to a few of the seedier clubs around Camden and I guarantee that I wouldn't have gotton that blow job of that she-male prostitute in Amsterdam either*.

At first Sally thought the 'White Vest Gang' were the best thing since sliced bread. But getting her to sit on an uncomfortable park bench was one step too far. 

One thing that now bothers me about peer pressure, apart from that it's still invasive in your life no matter how old you are. (I can imagine being 80 and arguing with my friends about my reluctance of going to Holographic 4D Bingo in Hyper-Deluxe Interactive Digital)

But why is there no 'good' peer pressure? By this I mean if you have 10 people sitting down in a restaurant and everyone has eaten their main courses and the dessert menu comes round, chances are there will be general exclamations of 'Oh, are you having dessert? If you are then I am.' 'I'm going to have the chocolate fudge cake, but only if you have the cheesecake'. And what happens? You end up ordering something you don't really want, but because everyone else is, you go along with it. 

If you have friends over and you pick an apple out of the fruit bowl, you don't go round insisting that your guests have an apple, but why do we do this with chocolate or biscuits or tea or bad food in general? I can't ever remember being forced to eat fruit salad because everyone in the group was having a bowl. I may have had a chunk of chocolate cake, and then as a cursory afterthought added a few bits of fruit to make me feel healthier. 

Getting serious for a second, I do think this is fundamentally why so many people have such an issue about food and drink. It's because we feel obliged to eat or drink what other people are having. I remember there's been a few times when I've got out for drinks after work and not wanted to drink, so ordered a lemonade and told people it was vodka and lemonade. 

I can't think of many examples where in a group of people we're forced to eat or drink something that is actually good for us. It's generally the crap stuff that we end up feeling forced into eating and drinking. By changing my diet and eating healthily it's added an extra dimension to the peer pressure, as I'm now being watched even more closely. 

It's probably one of the harder aspects when you change your diet, but as I'm an old war horse who's been around the block a few times (cough!),  I feel comfortable not bowing to peer pressure any more. 

So next time Mrs Doyle asks if you want a cup of tea and says 'Go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on, go on,  go on.' 

Do you really want one? 

* Just to reassure the more gullible readers, that was a joke. I'm pretty sure she wasn't a she-male, it was too dark to tell**. 

** Another joke. Honest.