Coffee and tea, chemicals and electronic gadgetry!

A friend sent me some information about coffee. Coffee, it seems, is the best thing in the world for your health. Why? Because it's full of anti-oxidants! I'm not entirely sure what antioxidants are. My first reaction has always been to suppose it has something to do with stopping you from going rusty. Maybe that is the case. Perhaps rust in the brain causes all the diseases connected with dementia. 

I looked up antioxidants. It's all to do with atoms and free radicals and stuff like that. Basically, the human body is one big chemistry laboratory. Unfortunately it doesn't come with a very clear instruction manual. Here's a quote from a website about anti-oxidants:- "Antioxidants are substances that may protect cells in your body from free radical damage that can occur from exposure to certain chemicals, smoking, pollution, radiation, and as a by-product of normal metabolism. Dietary antioxidants include selenium, vitamin A and related carotenoids, vitamins C and E, plus various phytochemicals such as lycopene, lutein, and quercetin." 

So there you go. Saying that they stop you going rusty is not too far out. However, I have no intention of finding out exactly what phytochemicals are. And when you start to talk about lycopene, lutein and quercetin, well, I just give up! (Almost all of these terms are not recognised by the spell checker on my computer! What does that tell me?) I just want to eat food, not a list of chemicals. 

Be that as it may, it would seem that drinking coffee makes you live longer. They suggest five cups a day as maximum. You can drink more but you don't get any extra benefits. You just get twitchy. My research shows that you can get some of the same benefits from green tea, which has caffeine but less than coffee. So you get less twitchy. 

Now, the person who sent me the original information has always, as long as I have known her, which is well over thirty years, drunk lots of disgustingly strong instant coffee. I wonder if you get the same benefits from instant coffee as you do from the proper stuff. 

Green tea and coffee also increase your body's fat-burning capabilities. At least that's what I read. So you can smoke to curb your appetite. Then you drink lots of coffee and green tea to burn more quickly any fat you have ingested, while at the same time combating the bad effects of smoking tobacco. It sound like a lot of nonsense to me! 

What I like most about such articles is the way they try give a certain authority to what they say by including all the scientific terminology. Blinding the reader with science is a way of persuading them to follow the often outrageous dietary ideas. Or, alternatively, convincing the reader that he/she can carry on eating loads of rubbish but the magic ingredient will keep them slim and healthy. It has always been that way and probably always will. 

Other things I have been reading and listening to suggest, once again, that too much technology too early is bad for children. They say that young children who spend too much time with tablets (electronic not medicinal) and iPads do not learn to control their emotions. I know a few like that. On the radio I heard of somewhere in Ireland that is employing a team of speech therapists to help children who arrive at school with severely underdeveloped speech skills. This is considered to be the consequence of parents who spend too much time on their mobile phones and not enough time actually speaking to their children. One of the mothers agreed that her children spend too much time with electronic gadgets. She became concerned when she saw her child looking at the display in a toy shop window and trying to swipe the window to make the display change. I've heard of that sort of thing before as well. 

A child's wish to play with his mother's iPad had potentially dire consequences in the USA yesterday. A small boy rummaged in his mother's bag, looking for her iPad and found her gun instead. He fired it, managing to injure both his parents. The parents are being investigated for negligence. Someone has recognised that carrying a loaded gun in your bag, which your toddler might rummage about in, is not good parenting. This is the third incident of this kind that I have come across in recent weeks. And this country believes its way of life should serve as an example to other countries? 

On matters electronic, we are told that our electronic gadgets (and I confess to having a few and using them quite a lot) should all "speak" to each other. My iPhone connects to my iPad, which connects to the computer, which connects to my kindle. You know the sort of thing. Well, in my kitchen, when the kettle is boiling the toaster begins to vibrate in sympathy. Could they be said to be "speaking" to each other? 

 I was only asking!