Outbreak 2: Food Pandemic

Forget possible swine-flu pandemic's. I know of a bigger pandemic... and as we all know bigger = better. The biggest pandemic human kind has ever faced, has been raging, unabated, for over 5 billion years, killing in the region of 99,000,000,000 people. It's name? The Food Pandemic. Whilst it is unlikely that we will see Dustin Hoffman in 'Outbreak 2: Food Pandemic' anytime soon, rest unnerved - but assured, that food is the biggest killer.

In his article 'Eating Food Will Kill You', Alan Caruba of the National Anxiety Centre (these people actually exist) states:

"No one who has eaten food in the past is alive today and everyone currently eating food will die."

Sombre stuff, however, is it the eating of food that actually kills us? ... well yes, kind-of. The aim of Mr Caruba's article is to poor scorn on those who overstate the role of meat in causing cancer. Whilst it may be true that certain foods increase our risk of an untimely death (although, Highlanders aside, if we were to live indefinately we would eventually succumb to cancer in one form or another anyway), it is also true that the eating of ALL foods leads to our demise.

Lewis Wolpert, a Biology Professor at University College London, explains the science (in his article 'Why eating not only makes you fat but kills you too'):

"Oxygen is required in the cells to produce energy from the molecules derived from ... food. This production of energy is fundamental to life, and takes place in small structures in the cell called mitochondria. Free radicals, which are highly reactive molecules, are a natural product of this process; they can damage the mitochondria and this leads to less energy production, which is a characteristic of aging. This damage to the mitochondria leads to the release of more free radicals, so setting up a positive-feedback loop which makes things worse and worse."

The more you eat, the more you age, the quicker you die. Time for another burger.

P.S. For lunch today I had turkey on potato bread.