September 17, 2010

Three Things About Islam

Are they peaceful, no.

Free Healthcare with No Responsibility? No Surprise.

Dear Sirs:

During my last night’s shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B; tune for a ring tone.

Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid.

She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer. And our President expects me to pay for this woman’s health care?

Our nation’s health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture – a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.

A culture that thinks I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me.


Doctor Roger Starner Jones is a seventh generation Mississippian and his extracurricular interests are golf, hunting, fishing and college football. He specializes in emergency medicine at The University of Mississippi medical Center.
This Letter to the Editor, written by Doctor Jones about health care in America, is from the August 29th edition of Jackson, Mississippi’s newspaper, the Clarion Ledger.

September 14, 2010

McDonald's targeted in US health ad

I really wish more videos like this would come out. 'I was lovin' it' is a nice ending to the ad along with the McD' arches.

It is an image to sap the flabbiest of appetites. An overweight, middle-aged man lies dead on a mortuary trolley, with a woman weeping over his body. The corpse's cold hand still clutches a half-eaten McDonald's hamburger.

A hard-hitting US television commercial bankrolled by a Washington-based medical group has infuriated McDonald's by taking an unusually direct shot at the world's biggest fast-food chain this week, using a scene filmed in a mortuary followed by a shot of the brand's golden arches logo and a strapline declaring: "I was lovin' it."

The line is a provocative twist on McDonald's long-standing advertising slogan, "I'm lovin' it" and a voiceover intones: "High cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks. Tonight, make it vegetarian."

The commercial, bankrolled by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), goes further than most non-profit advertising and has drawn an angry reaction from both the Chicago-based hamburger multinational and the broader restaurant industry.

The National Restaurant Association criticised it as "irresponsible" and said it was an attempt to scare the public with a "limited" view of nutrition. A McDonald's spokesman said: "This commercial is outrageous, misleading and unfair to all consumers. McDonald's trusts our customers to put such outlandish propaganda in perspective, and to make food and lifestyle choices that are right for them."

The commercial, to be aired initially in the Washington area but potentially in further US cities, comes amid an increasingly lively debate in the US about healthy eating. The first lady, Michelle Obama, has made nutrition a signature issue and is leading a campaign to encourage physical fitness and improved diets – particularly among American children, a third of whom are overweight.

The recession has hardly helped the healthy eating cause. McDonald's has enjoyed a relatively prosperous financial crisis as diners opt for its affordable offerings in place of more expensive high-street restaurants. Its global profits for the six months to June were up 12% to $2.3bn, powered by sales rises both in the United States and Britain.

The PCRM's director of nutrition education, Susan Levin, made no apologies for singling out the golden arches: "McDonald's is one of the biggest fast-food chains in the world. Its name and its golden arches are instantly recognisable. We feel we're making a point about all fast food when we talk about McDonald's."

September 12, 2010

The Only Great Start to Your Morning

The next time you're on your way to Japan, make sure you give this a try. If you want the taste of drinking pancake batter without the health side effects of drinking pancake batter, then Japanese food manufacturer Morinaga has what you're looking for. On September 8, the company released a drink they call Hotcake Milkshake, which is basically a canned drink that tastes like a fresh pancake breakfast.

It costs about $1.40 and each can contains 10 ounces of the milkshake drink, which tastes like a pancake, but doesn’t have any of the nutritional benefits of the pancake. Apparently, the Morinaga pancake mix is a Japanese tradition, like Bisquick or Aunt Jemima in the States.

This is just a way for the Japanese to get their pancake on without having to bake flapjacks in the morning before heading out to catch the bullet train. If you want food on the go, there’s no solution like a canned sandwich washed down with a canned pancake milkshake! Sound yummy?