HFCS

     HFCS, known more precisely as high fructose corn syrup, is taking hits from sundry parties as being a bad actor in the myriad of junk foods we consume.  A push is on for soda makers to switch from HCFS to cane sugar.  Doing so is being touted as a health measure.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Cane sugar is not one iota healthier than corn syrup.  The difference between the two is slight.  HFCS is 55% fructose and 45% sucrose.  Table sugar is about 50-50.  In all of its forms, whatever might be the nomenclature, it is among the least healthy substances you can pour down your gullet.

     So, replacing HFCS with cane sugar will not improve the health of the population one iota.  In fact it might make it worse since some people will assume they can consume more cane sugar because it's "healthier".  Galloping bollocks of course but whatayagonnado? 

    A similar situation is the current increasingly popular replacement of seed oils with tallow at fast food restaurants.  This is actually a tiny step more reasonable than the HFCS imbroglio, but french fries cooked in tallow, which actually is healthier, are still furshlugginer french fries.  They are still potatoes which are virtually 100% carbs which won't do your gut or overall health any favors.  So a slight gain, but operationally it's pretty much a wash.

     I do not expect to live long enough to see the FDA or the medical establishment accept that excessive carb intake is a root cause of a wide variety of medical conditions.  Or to admit that grains, vegetables, and fiber are not in the least necessary for good health.  Such a huge mental inversion of what is actually a proper human diet is unlikely to occur in the next half dozen decades, if then.  The medical, pharmaceutical, and cultural headwinds against such a move are Cat. 5 powerful.

      

        

Mar$

        Whoever manages the feat, whether it's Elon, the Chinese, or some other enterprise, establishing a  colony on Mars will be a money losing situation for decades, if not centuries.  And by losing money I mean many billions of dollars, possibly trillions, for the reward of bupkis.  Oh sure there will be research value, but not trillions of dollars' worth.  There is also the trope that we need to establish an off earth populace to distribute our eggs into more than one basket.  Cogent sentiment, but there are just too many problems to overcome.

     First is getting there and back again.  With current, or even foreseeable, technology the route between Mars and earth will be absurdly time consuming.  And there will have to be a lot of trips back and forth to support more than a handful of people for long periods.  Need a critical part for some machinery?  It'll be an absolute minimum of six months before that part will arrive.  And it could easily be twice that long, or more, if the orbital mechanics of the trip are unfavorable.  Mars and earth spend considerable parts of a year on different sides of the sun.

     Unless spacecraft propulsion takes a huge leap forward in the next few years, and it shows no sign of doing so, lengthy travel times will be unavoidable.  A hyper-advanced nuclear propulsion will be required to significantly shorten transit times.  And you can be certain that such propulsion systems will be hideously expensive to field.  And even if by some miracle the tech is reasonably priced, it might only shorten transit times by a few weeks, if that.   It could be that E.M has an advanced propulsion system already in hand and is keeping a lid on the tech until the time is right to spring it on the public.  I wouldn't bet good money on that scenario though.

     Speaking of money, it's going to take a bottomless barrel of it to make all of that possible.  The ROE?Negatory good buddy.  E.M. could spend every last dime on the enterprise without even the ghost of a positive return.  My sense is that a monstrous negative return is likely well into the next century, if not. the century after that.  And anyone hitching their wagon to M.'s starship will see the same return, nada.  The prospects of a Mars colony being entirely self-sufficient are very dim indeed and will hardly be attractive to even the most altruistic gazillonaire.

     Altruism, even E.M.s, has its limits.  "Capitalists!" I hear you sneer, as if trillionaires are nonchalant about sinking hundreds of billions into an enterprise that won't really benefit anyone in the near term, or long term for that matter.  The same goes for the moon despite how long moon colonies have been a common trope of science fiction.  

     At least the travel times to the moon are manageable, and communications will only lag a few seconds instead of several minutes for Mars.  But, Mars and the moon have a common problem in that surface gravity on Mars is one third that of earth and the moon is only one sixth.  Spend years on the moon or Mars and you'll no longer be capable of tolerating earth gravity.  And we have yet to determine how that much lower gravity will affect the body after years or decades.  That simply can't be determined without putting people on both Mars and the moon for decades.  It's just too complex a problem to solve by simulation.  In short, a Mars colony is a pipe dream, and the pipe doesn't have tobacco in it.  At least until someone invents artificial gravity.  Don't wait up.

      

 

Party On.

     Following the shooting of a health insurance company CEO, the knives have come out, with many expressing glee at his demise.  Any cost-cutting measures instituted by insurance companies are savagely attacked as mere greed on the industry's part.  While "greed" may indeed play a part in all this, what is being ignored is the other side of the health care coin.  If greed is the face side, the obverse is the fact that as a population we are one sick bunch of puppies and rapidly getting sicker, who need ever more medical interventions to combat the epidemic of obesity and all its attendant, debilitating, and expensive auto-immune conditions.  And costs aside, a case can be made that the vast panorama of drugs addressing auto-immune conditions actually make things worse rather than better.

     The general population is far more interested in popping one pill after another than changing lifestyles, lazy mofos that we are.  It's as if we have some divine right to eat whatever the frack we want to, in any quantity, of any type of food, soak in alcohol, smoke like chimneys, and then blithely expect the health care system to bail us out of the consequences of the manifest idiocy of our lifestyles.  The gummint, and the medical establishment in general, is no help at all in combating this, and in fact with their idiotic carb heavy food "pyramid" they are contributing to the problem not alleviating it.

     And now?  Well, now there are pill/shots for obesity so let's pop/stick that sucker so we will not want to eat quite as much garbage food as we normally do.  Problem solved!.  Party on dudes and dudettes.  Time to live to eat instead of eating to live.  Lemme at those donuts, fries, pastries, tater chips, Cap'n Crunchy, ice cream, brewskis, peanut butter, bananas, bread,  etc. etc. unto a google of etcs.  But not to worry.  Your new expensive pill will make you want to eat less of all that sugar saturated dreck.  Win win eh?

     Sadly, and tragically, "health care" these days is largely about rewarding bad nutritional and lifestyle behavior, because heaven forbid we should exercise some restraint ourselves, so let's make a drug that will save us from our dietary and lifestyle malfeasance.  The current medical system solution to not having to wrestle with a recalcitrant lazy carb-addled population is the expedient of prescribing ever more side-effect laden and expensive pharmaceuticals.  This will not end well, depend on it.  It is in fact already not ending well for most of our population.

     Complaining and carping about high medical insurance costs is simply not going to change the fact that the large majority of our current auto-immune epidemic is our own damn fault.  In this area of life, we are our own worst enemy.  The increasingly expensive hyper-demand for "health care" is our own doing, and at some point it will collapse under the weight of the wretched food we eat and drink.  Party on.