Food & Diet 2

The issue of diet and what is good for us is still grinding on.   We discussed this in our last update but since then things have only got worse.   The absurd European Union — an organisation with no credibility at all now outside the clubs of politicians and bureaucrats — has passed into law a new Food Supplements Directive in spite of protests and the advice of its own law officers but has taken no action at all against any multi-national food manufacturer for use of poisons in their food products.

Have any of you wondered why there are no controls whatsoever on how food is shipped around the world.  Soon, the world — including the USA — will have to face up to the problems of global warming and of a steadily increasing shortage of oil. We will have to drive smaller, more energy efficient cars, stop flying around the world for no other reason than to take a holiday in a far away place; and stop flying food around the world.    In the middle of July last year, I noticed Brussels Sprouts — the vegetable, not a directive or something emanating from the European Union — on sale in Tesco.   Brussels Sprouts in July?  These had come from Australia.   Are we really so desperate for a fix of Brussels Sprouts that we NEED to have them flown in from Australia?   String beans from Kenya?   Apples from South Africa?  I do not want to take away the abilities of these countries to sell their products but they should concentrate on producing crops that we cannot produce — like coffee and tropical fruits. We can produce vegetables and apples in Europe at the right time of the year.  And if we had an EU agricultural policy that had even a brushing contact with reality, we could do it economically as well.    But the Common Agricultural Policy never makes any kind of contact with reality, so it hands out vast subsidies to inefficient farmers in France and Germany to encourage them to grow products that could be produced better elsewhere and hands out subsidies to farmers in the UK to turn their farms into theme parks.  We have told you before about the sugar scandal but it is worth repeating.   Farmers in the EU are encouraged to grow sugar beet.   This is sent to Tate & Lyle for them to turn it into white sugar and sell the stuff on world markets.    Now the cost of sugar beet and the cost of turning it into sugar are so high that Tate & Lyle cannot do it and sell on the world markets; it would be too expensive.  So the EU pays Tate & Lyle €127,000,000 every year in subsidy.   It is much more efficient and effective to produce sugar from sugar cane, grown for the most part in Third World countries.  But because of the EU daft policy and wasting of our money the Third World countries can’t sell their sugar and so people have no jobs.    At the same time as this piece of Alice in Wonderland planning is being enacted, Blair and his cronies are wringing their hands about the health of kids and the fact that they consume too much sugar.   But the government tells us not to smoke and collects £8,000,000,000 per year in taxation from those of us who do so.   And with a bit of luck enough of us will die early so that the government will not need to pay us any pension.

And they think bodybuilders need treatment for an unhealthy obsession with muscles.

We live in the world of Lewis Carroll and Franz Kafka and all our leaders are surely quite mad!

Bodybuilding in Belarus

Competitors arrive at the Sports Hall in Minsk for the 2005 Bodybuilding Championships   Big guy is Alexey Shabunya.

Belarus is one of the few unrestructured Communist republics of the old USSR still operating. The president is hardly a democrat but he has presided over a country which has seen standards of living rise dramatically, poverty much reduced, taxes lowered and has achieved better and fairer income distribution then any other state in the region.  There is less censorship than in many countries and there is free access to the internet and foreign broadcasts. Opposition is stamped on quite firmly and all anti-government demonstrations are stopped. The president, Alexander Lukashenko, is not to the liking of the West — particularly America — and lots of money has been poured into opposition parties to try to disrupt the government.  In the election for President on 19 March, President Lukashenko romped home with 83% of the vote, way ahead of any opposition party challenger. The result has been criticised as usual by Bush and Co who embrace democracy only as long as it looks like it will give the right results.

Where is Belarus, you may ask? The exact location of many former Soviet Republics is often a mystery. Belarus straddles the road between Moscow and Warsaw and the country has a population of about 10million. Belarus has close ties with Russia and there is a large Russian population.  The population is quite elderly with an excess of women — the country has still not fully recovered from the huge death rate of men in WWII when the Nazis attacked Minsk before the siege of Leningrad.

But Belarus is a hotbed of Bodybuilding.  The Belarus Today website gives a photographic report of the Belarusian Bodybuilding Championships in Minsk — could you imagine that happening in the UK or USA?  We have seen many competitors at NABBA Universe contests in recent years and some have been of a very high standard.   Bodybuilding is thriving all over the country even if, by Western standards many of the gyms are very basic.  Top man at the present time is Alexey Shabunya shown above and on P1.   The lower picture is of LHW Victor Shamin at the Russian Championships in 2005.

If one of the Bodybuilding organisations can get to encouraging more European wide contests and particularly for Pros, we will get the chance to see more of these high quality physiques from the East.

p4

Tad Inoue is an American Bodybuilder based in California.   Although he was born in California, his ethnic background is Japan and Hawaii and his full Christian name is Tadayoshi — Tad is easier to remember and to spell.  He managed a 2nd place in the LHW Class at the Border States at the end of September and will be going all out to improve his performances next year.  He has his own website, where he talks about bodybuilding, competing, diet and nutrition and other more general subjects.    He does see a lot of films.   If you are interested check him out at www.tadinoue.com. 

Commonwealth Games

Congratulations to the English Cycling Team on their Gold Medal in the 4000 metres Pursuit at the Commonwealth Games. Chris Newton, Rob Hayles, Paul Manning & Stephen Cumming came in a full 3 seconds ahead of the Olympic Champions Australia — and that is a long way in pursuit cycling.

We have to say well done also to the Scotland Team of Chris Hoy, Craig McLean and Ross Edgar who took the Gold Medal in the Team Sprint beating England by 0.027 secs.   This is Scotland’s first ever team gold medal in cycling

Best wishes to everyone else from the UK who has won a medal so far

Joe McCarthy Lives

The Congressional investigations in the USA have revealed nothing new about steroids.  But bodybuilders have taken the brunt of the fall-out.  The front-line of those attacking sportsmen and bodybuilders for their use of steroids has been occupied by the same bunch from the anti-drugs lobby that have been rabbiting on for the last 10 or 20 years. They never produce real supporting evidence for their case. Their simple argument is that anabolic steroids should be banned because they are very dangerous. Do they ever explain why it is OK to use these drugs for treating the sick but they become exceedingly dangerous when used by young healthy athletes? There may be some significant side effects; but most are not dangerous and disappear when use stops.

The sickest part of the Congressional hearings has been the reporting of the suicides of three teenagers who had used steroids.   Their parents claimed that it was the images promoted by their heroes in baseball and American football that had encouraged these young men to use steroids and the depressions caused when they came off had driven them to suicide.  We will all feel for the parents who have lost their sons and even more for the lives ended so prematurely but can they say that steroids were the cause?   I checked the figures for suicides in the year in question.    In 2003 in the USA there were over 5,000 suicides of boys and men between the ages of 10 and 25 years and, in addition, another 45,000 tried to commit suicide.   So, out of 50,000 who tried or succeeded in committing suicide, as far as we know, 3 were steroid users.   This is less than the number of steroid users we would expect to find in an average sample of 50,000 American males in that age group.   So, can we conclude that steroids were not a principle cause of the suicides.     In the UK, in the same year the number of successful suicides in the same age group was under 500 and the number of attempts was about 3,000.

Is Senator Joe McCarthy still around?  It seems that the witch hunt goes on and no lack of evidence is stopping it yet.   Many experts in the recreational drugs business are asking questions about whether there is any point to these investigations. Vast amounts of public money have been spent on investigations which will lead to little more than a reprimand. In France and Italy there have been thousands of policemen chasing men on bikes.   The investigation following the 1998 Tour de France drug scandal cost millions of pounds and those convicted paid fines of £2,000 or got suspended prison sentences.    Was there any point other than to satisfy the moral indignation of a politician?

As George “Born Again” Bush demands that America rid itself of anabolic steroids, we must forget about the chaos in Iraq; the slaughter of American troops;forget about the ever increasing US government deficit — total bankruptcy beckons; forget about New Orleans; forget about the care of the poor, the sick and the elderly; forget about the crime and recreational drug use.   No!   What we have to do is concentrate on the use of a few drugs by young men trying to grow a bit of extra muscle.