If one day someone solve erect a monument in a public square frustrated the good intentions of scientific thought, could be a monumental statue of a plate full of white powder. Thus congratulate at once three mistakes scientists: a refined wheat flour, white sugar and cocaine.
Three post acetic and almost identical, three fruits of thought that dominated the last century and a half: the scientific reductionism. Three killers of people.
It is no coincidence that the three are so similar. All of them are the result of a process of “refining” of a plant – wheat, sugar cane and coca. Refining! Sounds almost like irony use this fancy word to define a process that, in more precise terms, should be called “lynching plant” or something. Basically the plant is subjected to all kinds of abuse imaginable: crushing between two steel cylinders, fire, razor cuts, acid attacks. Until it has destroyed or is separated from the whole plant under its “essence.” In the case of wheat and sugarcane, pure carbohydrate, pure energy. In the case of coca, something quite different, but that looks the same. Not the energy that moves things in the carbohydrate, but the sense of boundless energy, injected directly into brain cells.
Began to refine wheat, sugar cane and coke more or less the same time, in the second half of the 19th century, with more intensity by 1870. Scientists were ecstatic, because they believed that the way to understand the universe is to divide it into small pieces and study a little bit at a time, that’s just scientific reductionism. Nothing better for them then, than just study what matters in plants, and not that useless junk – fiber, minerals, vitamins and other debris.
The industrial capitalists also enjoyed a lot. A refined powder is very profitable, very easy to produce in huge quantities, hardly spoils, can be transported over very long distances. The junk food industry flourished and his money financed the research of scientists who, thrilled, wanted more.
Do you know why these refined post does not spoil? Because virtually no nutrients. Bacteria and insects are not interested in that has no nutrient.
The three have similar effect on us. They throw us in the sky with a burst of energy and, minutes later, let us fall. So we want more. As they were separated from the tougher parts of plants – fibers – our body absorbs them like a drain, at once. His electrifying effect sends signals to the whole organism, the metabolism speeds up. Then the effect goes away suddenly. And the body is caught in contradiction.
Cocaine, flour and sugar were The Well in the late 19th century. Were achievements of human ingenuity. They were living proof that science had yet to conquer all, that man is greater than nature, that progress is inevitable and beautiful. Cocaine was the “elixir of life.” In the words published in a magazine of the 19th century, “a substitute for food so that people can possibly spend a month without eating.” Flour and sugar gave rise to fantasies of science fiction, such as the pill would avoid the human and the animal act and less to eat.
The misconception of cocaine was shown earlier, in the first decades of the 20th century. Drug patented by Bayer, became a “drug”, prohibited, while exterminating a population of addicts. The prohibition amplified its ills, transforming it from something that affects some in something that hurts the entire planet, moving the trafficking industry, which supplies almost all the organized crime and terrorism around the globe.
It would take too long until the other two cohorts were unmasked. Until the 1990s, flour and sugar were still “The Well”, while “Evil” was the fat, cholesterol. The doctors recommended that if it substituted for carbohydrates and fats Western world is clogged flour and sugar. There began an epidemic of type 2 diabetes, caused by sudden blows which give flour and sugar in our body. He also started an epidemic of obesity. Not to mention that it was revealed that sugar and flour are involved in the plot to oust fruit, leaves and vegetables in our dishes, which is exterminating people with cancer and heart disease. Such as cancer and heart are the leading causes of death of the urbanized world, one comes to the painful realization:
Flour and sugar are actually more lethal than cocaine.
It’s just addicted to cocaine, but sugar and flour almost everyone hooked. Now the three are white powders “Evil.” Humanity is mobilized to exterminate them. There’s even a new diet by selling tons of books which is cut all carbohydrates from the diet and eat only fat.
In 1870, we fall into the illusion that it was possible to “refine” their plants to extract the absolute good, just to convince ourselves that decades later we had created the ultimate evil. But is that the problem is not so obsessed human to separate things from “The Well” and “Evil” instead of understanding that the world is more complex than that and that’s good and bad in every thing?
Wheat, sugar and coca, chewed up whole – whole – are nutritious and harmless and protect against chronic diseases. We need to stop trying to “refine” the nature and understand that it is better to complete.
