About twenty years ago, I worked in a research establishment whose human research division decided that the staff canteen must no longer add salt to food. Since the director of the institute was one of those human meddling types, the edict was duly passed.
We all added salt at the table. So they took away the salt shakers.
We all went out to the pub for lunch. Eventually the penny dropped and the institute's management finally accepted that a research division should not be involved in running the canteen. Many returned to having lunch in the canteen. Many did not. The damage was done.
While the canteen was popular, the human meddling department had at least some control over the staff diets. Healthy and vegetarian options were available, plenty of fruit and veg, meat but not fatty meat. No burgers or sausages or processed foods. It was pretty good food overall. Not fantastic but pretty good and it was on the premises, so it was handy. Well, apart from that period when it was rendered inedible by the human meddling department.
After they ratcheted up their control to silly levels, even after they relented, many staff decided they preferred a pie and a pint for lunch after all. Often, one or two didn't make it back after lunch. Meddling made things worse. It always does.
Various commenters have pointed out this story, and Letters from a Tory has already commented, as no doubt have others I haven't spotted yet.
New York's Righteous have banned so many things they are now down to the level of controlling condiments. You just know it won't be long before it starts here too. So far it's reached the level of pretending that the only source of sodium in any kind of food is salt, and putting fewer holes in salt shakers. Oh, and of course those heart attack figures are all down to salt now that the antismokers, antidrinkers and antifatty groups have finished with them.
What's next? Calls for minimum pricing on salt? A duty ratchet? Age restrictions on buying it? Restaurants having to keep the salt shakers in special non-enclosed areas outside? Fines and prison for allowing someone to salt their soup in a public place? Second-hand saltiness? Employment ads stating that the workplace is a salt-free environment and salt users need not apply? Children taught in school to nag their parents about salt in case their parents die of heart attacks?
They've done all that to smokers. And more. They're doing it to drinkers and the overweight right now. They have started on Electrofag.
If there was too much salt in the food served in restaurants, we wouldn't go to those restaurants. I once had a prawn curry that might well have been made with seawater. I never went back and neither did anyone else. If the food is salty enough, I don't add any. If it's not, I do. If I am served salt-free food and don't like it, I won't go there again. It's not complicated. There used to be a children's story about three bears and a little girl called Goldilocks that explained it very well. It's probably long forgotten now because children are taught that porridge is racist, the bears have been killed off by global warming and Goldilocks now has a child and a council flat.
This salt ban will wreck the restaurants in New York and since the antismokers have claimed that pubs can survive the smoking ban by selling food, it will further wreck the pub - and restaurant - business here. It will come, and like all the other insane business-killing measures, it will stay no matter how many more join the dole queue and the bankruptcy list.
Unlike that human meddling department, the current Righteous won't admit their mistake and back down.
16 comments:
I happened to watch an episode of the terrible 'I'm a Celeb Get me out of here' last year and remember the Italian chef Gino DACampo selecting his prize after winning a jungle trial. He had the choice of boxes of chocolates, loads of booze, various tasty treats etc. To the horror of the rest of the camp he asked for a salt shaker.
For 2 weeks of eating 'bland and tastless' food he said enough was enough.
I doubt if salt will ever be banned from Italian restaurants.
Hi,
just to say that I have been reading your blog for
some time and u consiritanly enjoy and despaier
at your musings.
Any way the rightous want it all, u , I , and everyone else
are not only wring , we are a danger to all, u , I, and everyone else.
They must and wil save us , even those that do not want to be saved.
God I hate the rightious
Ps sorry about the appalling spelling .
To much time drinking , however looking forward to the
rightious sorting that as well . hic :-)
So what can we actually do? In reality, very little. The masses just accept what comes along and meakly submit to everything that is put on the statute books because 'it is for our own good'. They don't question the 'stats' or 'facts'. This leaves us not only having to fight the authorities but our own fellow citizens complete apathy.
We are, to all intents and purposes, the 'resistance'. We can expect little help from our fellow citizens, our MP's or the MSM so are we wasting our time for even trying? ... many would and indeed think so.
But not to worry, when the righteous deem to ban Coronation Street, Eastenders, X-Factor and the like for whatever reason supported by some bogus studies ... they will come over. :)
ln the meantime, one will carry on being a pain in the ass to the righteous and their acolytes ... and using that marvellous word 'No!'
Perhaps their goal is to shut restaurants down - they are, after all, places of congregation.
If there is a salt ban, price escalator or similar, people will switch to salty foods, like bacon.
But since that is meat, and fatty, that might go, too.
Unrefined sea salt is good for you - possibly to to some iodine content. A salt and sugar mixture has been used in Third World countries for generation, to combat dehydration - they provide an electrolyte solution.
And as you've mentioned before, fat is essential for health.
I hope some HoC whistleblowers will video the Food Fascists sprinkling their food with salt.
Anon 1:28 - you're still more legible than the average A-level student, even when plastered.
I'm at the Ledaig tonight so the spellchecker is working hard here.
Spartan - use the Righteous weapons. They've blanked all those minds and conditioned them to believe what they are told.
So tell them the country owes more money than exists and the benefits will be cut and cut until they're gone. The first cut (there will have to be one, whoever gets in)will then register with the implanted idea that they plan to cut them to zero.
Tell them that if they smoke, drink, have a bit of a belly, like salty food, then all the main parties hate them. Proof? They have banned smoking, are cranking up drink prices, cutting fat and salt from their food.
Drop a rumour that there will be alcohol-free places and they will spread until there is nowhere to drink. Alcohol-free places already exist in many towns and alcohol-free restaurants are a matter of weeks away now, if they aren't already here. Those pubs trying out alcohol-free kid's nights? They are testing the water.
It only needs one actual instance to set the chain of implanted thought in motion.
Look at second hand smoke - not even one case of any actual harm, so they pull Roy Castle out of his grave and hold his lungless corpse in view. He is the only example they have and did not even die of a smoking-related cancer.
Every picture on those cigarette packets is fake. The teeth are dental caries on baby teeth (look for the canines). The lung was a coal-miner's. The aged hands got that way though age (no nicotine stains on those teeth or fingers). The corpse isn't even really dead. According to them, smoking damages sperm but if that were true, we'd all be mutants now. It also causes impotence but if that were true, the sperm claim is irrelevant and all those council estates would have no children in them. All lies, all exaggeration and it's all accepted by pliant minds.
You can't fight Righteous exaggeration with plain truth, you need a bit of exaggeration of your own.
A grain of truth to plant the seed. The rest is linked and does not have to be real. Just plausible.
Don't fight fair when your opponent isn't. You'll lose every time.
Salt to taste - Italian third-gen here. I'm stocking up on salt.
One of my brother's kids went through a phase of eating nothing but spaghetti with salt on it. He is unharmed by that phase and I tried it - it's actually pretty good. Not for everyday, it's a bit bland, but for a snack it's not bad at all.
Fausty - it's easy to get salt from seawater, just let it evaporate, but you have to be careful not to concentrate nasties too. There are too many sewage outlets nowadays and you'll need to collect the water well away from them.
There are also toxic algae to watch out for, so no collecting when there's a red tide, or when there isn't an 'R' in the month. It's the same deal as with oysters. In the summer, the algae grow faster.
Spartan: I recently bought a cheap little badge (birthday card style) which I am overpainting with a plain background and the word 'No' painted as neatly as possible. My aim is to wear it in the hopes that others, if only in supermarket queues, will ask what it means. People are not mind readers and this is a way of communicating without making a nuisance of myself. Many would see me as just another nut, but I no longer have anything to lose by it. Soon, neither will they. Maybe then...
Leg Iron: your use of suggestion (particularly that benefits will disappear) is brilliant. Everything that the EU or the puppet hogs of Westminster do is going to nurture the seeds you have sown. The very first cut to benefits will verify what you have predicted. You are utterly wasted in biology.
Fausty: "Perhaps their goal is to shut restaurants down - they are, after all, places of congregation."
Oddly that was the conclusion I came to as well - they don't want people congregating anywhere they don't control. Especially as they're going to remove the excemption for public performance licenses from church halls, charites and the like as reported by Cranmer
Leggy, you might want to read my latest post, did a tally down of advertising of salt denormalisation and the barking insanity that drives it.
http://protagonistknight.blogspot.com/2010/03/salt.html
Closet England lover - I think you can get little badge-making machines. They used to be marketed as toys, I'm not sure if they are still around.
Giolla - I've noticed that even at bus stops and on railway platforms, people rarely strike up conversations with strangers now. One effective ice-breaker used to be 'Have you got a light?'
Pavlov - perfect timing. ;)
Closet England Lover, time was when you could make a free badge by stuffing a penny into the back of a bottle top through your jumper, they put paid to that too, bastards.
L-I, I am not clear whether you work in the public or private sector. If the former then it is no surprise that the dining dictators abolished your salt just as they stole the salt shakers from schools some years ago.
Some while ago I posted on the rehabilitation of Milk and my latest effort reveals that Eggs are now Superfood having previously been vilified as Evil Incarnate for a couple of decades, perhaps salt will make a comeback sometime in the future.
"...Goldilocks now has a child and a council flat" LOL.
Banned - I worked in research institutions that were part-funded by tax money and part by commercial.
I was made redundant when a nasty piece of administrative work decided he didn't like our department - took away education income, took away research money and then told us not to do the commercial work, and finally claimed we weren't making any money.
Before his intervention we were the most profitable department in the place.
I took the money, noted they had just shut down the only department that could compete with me, and set up as self-employed.
The head of department took early retirement, the rest of the staff were technicians, and good ones, and they all found other work. All of us are still making money, just not for that organisation any more.
When the head retired, his best line was along the lines of 'When I started, research was about learning new things. Now it's about making money'.
He was right, partly. Science is about control now. There is a groups of 'big names' behind all this policy and they don't care about the science any more.
We're going back to Darwin's day when the real scientists were those who did it because they liked it and cared nothing for what society thought about it. They were few then ,and they are few now.
Too many have taken the King's Shilling these days.
I'll test anything that interests me. My pricing depends on how interested I am in the work. If it will work but looks dull, it costs more. If it looks like a killer idea, I'll do it for a share in the profits.
If I think the idea is not going to work, I say so and have refused contracts on that basis. Sure, I could get rich by taking on duff projects and applying spin to the results, but I don't need much money and I don't want to pay more tax and integrity is more important to me than cash.
Thank you for that Leg_Iron.
Their ultimate aim is to stop nerve conduction by eliminating sodium ions from the diet. We will all cease to move and of course cease to think. Perfect for THEM to then load us into matrix tanks to control every molecule within us. Don't they know why many animals have and use salt licks? Don't they know that salt is essential for life (not just in the bloody desert)? Don't they know why we have salt receptors on our tonges? Don't they know the blood and body fluids are isotonic with.......SALT? Bloody hell. Our ancient ancestors evolved in the sea and this is our legacy. BASTARDS!
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