david

How would anyone die of avoiding aspartame? Perhaps you might consider the possibility that you may be overreacting.

That was good information, thank you.

That was a fairly abusive way of disagreeing. If you think I'm so stupid for repeating what a chemistry teacher said about a chemical, perhaps a politer way of pointing this out would be to point to some of the overwhelming evidence you feel I should have noticed sometime in the last forty years, and maybe you could find it in your heart to do so without calling me a bad, stupid, parroting, moronic moron, which I personally feel was a little over the top.

I feel I can explain this discrepancy with a bit of history.

TL;DR in the last paragraph.

The EU has a numbering system for additives, preservatives, colourings etc that have been tested and approved for human consumption, so instead of putting Sodium Sulphite, you can put E221. They used to be very very commonly listed in ingredients in the UK. The difference between Sodium Sulphite (E221) and Sodium Hydrogen Sulphite (E222) is unclear and unimportant to most consumers, so manufacturers just listed the "E numbers" instead.

In the UK, when it was discovered that certain food additives can trigger conditions such as ADHD, instead of naming the specific chemicals that were causing the problem, the British media just called them E numbers.

Cue a fair bit of hysteria about how E numbers are harmful and some legitimate concerns, and suddenly the public start checking their food to see if it has any of those nasty E numbers, and they find to their horror that a lot of processed food contains a lot of E numbers, because preservatives, flavour enhancers, food colourings, sweeteners make food more appealing, and people re-buy appealing food. Suddenly it's very much in the manufacturers' interests to name the chemicals instead of the shorter E number so even today in the UK it's more common to name the chemical than the E number, which was never required anyway. To prevent hysteria over "chemicals" in food and to inform, it's become common to label then with their purposes - flavour enhancers, colours, preservatives etc.

There's still some really quite noxious chemicals that are perfectly legal to put in food. My son's A-level chemistry teacher saw him drinking the same brand of squash every day and commented "You drink a lot of that. Are you sure there's no aspartame in it? There's no way I would deliberately put aspartame inside my body." Make of that what you will.

Anyway, the media storm around E numbers dies down because the manufacturers largely just avoid naming them that way, and carry on pretty much as before. Some kids have had reactions and occasionally news stories come out, but the media persist in avoiding using chemical names.

There's some perfectly sensible advice that says that it you eat less processed food, and especially less "hyper-processed" food, and instead eat more food made from more natural ingredients, you get a more balanced diet with better vitamin and mineral intake, thus feeling feeling fuller for longer. (If the food is designed, with proper experimental testing, to get you to buy it more, it is inevitably also designed to get you to eat it more than you need to.)

But how can you tell if the food is processed or not? What's the difference between me spending half an hour mixing the ingredients and then mixing them for me and precooking it so I just bung it in the pan? Well, a random member of the public almost certainly has salt and pepper, maybe even a few herbs and spices, but probably not any L-alanine. Look out for ingredients that you wouldn't use at home, they're probably a sign that it's highly processed.

Hence the nearly good information that there aren't any artificial flavours or colours. Nearly good, because it doesn't mention preservatives and nearly good because it is definitely and certainly processed food designed to maximise profits rather than health.

So the UK food processing industries continue to aim naturally for maximising re-buying which includes reassuring the consumers that this is the healthiest (pre-prepared, highly processed, addictively tasty) low-priced convenience food they can, whilst being attractive to supermarket profits with longer shelf lives. If the bacteria and mold-killing preservatives aren't as kind to human biology as just making it yourself and eating it sooner, and a few people have had reactions, it's just not obviously bad enough for it to be something people will do anything about.

**TL;DR ** So, my understanding is that the hysteria about artifical flavours and colours was highest in the UK and the folks from the other countries aren't looking for technicalities to reassure them about the ingredients because they were never trained by their media to hunt for nasties in the small print - those that care can see straight away this is very firmly in the processed food category, and those that don't, don't.

The authors intent was clearly and obviously to dissuade people from supporting government expenditure that has anything like an aim of improving the country. You're trying to convince me that the author, (who labels Biden as anti capitalist and Sunak as anti London) isn't attempting to convince governments to spend less. It isn't working. "See how it never works! Laugh at the naivety of trying to make things better! Worry about the government spending your money! Worry about the debt you somehow personally participate in as a result of government spending!" The article is so wholeheartedly pro small government, anti big government and anti social intervention, it's absurd of you to claim it's not arguing for reduced government spending and reduced tax intake. It isn't saying it explicitly very often, but the only point against tax cuts (and the one you keep bringing up) is that they might not be self funding. It's not arguing that tax cuts always bring in more tax, no, but it is arguing for reducing taxation by spending less on "investment".

You're trying to convince me that there's no wood by drawing my attention to several trees, and even some tufts of grass. You have missed the point of the article which is to reduce government spending, especially outside London. Cuts. Cuts hurt. They hurt the poorest most. You've never addressed that point and you're misrepresenting the purpose and the message of the article.

The tax cuts tend to be accompanied by the austerity - the cuts to spending on welfare etc that you didn't mention at all, but which reduce growth because the folks at the poorer end of the income distribution don't have any income to spend. Tax cuts don't stimulate growth because they tend to disproportionately benefit wealthier folks who tend to save the extra cash than splurge it. It just takes money out of the real economy and gets turned into rental properties which takes even more money out of the real economy. If you increase benefits, you get an immediate increase in consumer activity and services because the hordes of ordinarily-incomed folks have plenty of things they need and want to spend on and couldn't. Not to mention the hardship that comes from severe lack of cash.

Small government isn't good in itself for any particular reason other than further wealth hoarding by the already comfortably off. This article is a fairly unmitigated argument in favour of small government and it takes no account whatsoever, and neither have you, of the ills visited upon ordinary folks by austerity. It's not a balanced argument, and making out that it's in the slightest bit centrist is "alternative facts".

Also, the UK is not in the slightest danger of the pendulum swinging too far the other way.

Made me chuckle, thanks. Today is Au00-82-g3

Completely awesome content, thanks. I was hoping that some older cities were more random, and I was not disappointed.

My friend in her forties is doing better than ever now she's living as herself. She looks great and is doing better at a lot of stuff than when she was trying to pretend. There's lots of anti-trans prejudice, but it seems from here that it's easier to cope with when it's coming from other people rather than yourself.

The article is called "The west has forgotten the limits of government" and proceeds to make several partially misleading talking points in favour of austerity. The author has, I think deliberately, forgotten the downsides of austerity - reduced growth, lower tax take so even worse government finances, and of course unnecessary hardship for ordinary people who didn't cause the global credit crunch, didn't cause energy hyperinflation, didn't cause greedflation and are just trying to make rent, buy food and heat their homes in the winter. Our financial problems shouldn't be taken out on them.

I actually meant 2023-08-16, but I secretly don't think my error is any more illogical than the original. More hypocritical, perhaps!

I made a stupid, stupid mistake and meant yyyy-mm-dd