I can remember my mother often saying to me, “A
little knowledge is a dangerous thing David.” Which is probably why she played
it safe and seemed to blissfully know very little at all about the world. Her
main concerns appeared to me to be; a spik-and-span house, enough food on the
table and plenty of home baked cakes and biscuits stored in tins.
In a way, even tho’ I miss her, I
am glad she is not alive to see the arrival of home computers and the tidal
wave of information that is sweeping the World. I am sure my mother thought all
kinds of food could be eaten as long as you liked them and they were not too
spicy. However, we know these days, that many of these really delicious foods
are unfortunately tainted by what scientists know about them.
A good example is the controversy
surrounding the consumption of soya bean products. I have been talking to Dick
James recently and he has really put the wind up me. Dick breeds caged birds
and lives out at Mcleods Bay (Whangarei Heads). He got involved in the campaign to ban soy milk for infants
and children after he noticed his prize winning parrots karked it after eating
bird seed “contaminated” with soya beans.
According to him, the soya bean
in any form can be dangerous due its high levels of estrogen and he referred me
to a very interesting websbite – (soyonlineservice.co.nz). His concern is that
soya products are so common now in processed food that it almost impossible to
avoid eating them.
So what is so dangerous about
estrogen? Apparently, it is a powerful hormone that can lead to deformities and
cancer if women eat too much of it. In men, estrogen affects masculinity by
lowering testosterone levels and interfering with the process of boys growing
naturally into ‘normal’ men.
Food is not the only source of
hormone affecting chemicals. Many newly manufactured plastics also give off
toxic fumes and friends of mine refuse to store food in plastic wrap and avoid
using plastic crockery. As a potter, I heartily agree with this idea. In my
humble and totally biased opinion, there is nothing that can match drinking
coffee or tea from a well made, hand thrown pottery mug!
The plastic interior of cars also
can give off fumes especially when new and left outside to heat up in the sun.
When my car was much newer I left the windows open, whenever possible, to vent
any unwanted gases. These days I do the same but more often to cope with the
unfortunate consequences of accidentally locking my semi neutered tomcat inside
the car overnight.
For many of us middle aged males,
this advice about avoiding environmental estrogens might have come a bit too
late in the day. Way back in the days when “The Sensitive New Age Man” was
fashionable and politically correct, little did we know the sinister influence
our food and lifestyle was having on us. There we were, thinking we were nobly
suppressing our naturally aggressive instincts, when all along we might have
been unconsciously been affected by chemicals mucking around with our hormones.
Still, the news might not be all
that bad. The Green Party’s co-leader, Jeanette Fitzsimmons, has claimed that
the Waikato River is so polluted with estrogens (amongst a noxious group of
other chemicals) that Aucklanders should think twice about using it as their
water supply.
I would expect that most men in
that city would probably ignore this warning. With this in mind, I wonder if we
might in time see more docile driving habits from beardless, breasty men stuck
in daily traffic jams on the motorway and Auckland streets.
Jokes about women drivers could
well be replaced by new humorous comments on being a jaffa man.
Jaffa….? “Just Another
Feminine Fellow Aucklander!”