Skratch Labs Sport Vegan Recovery Mix

jaymack wrote:

Alternatively you could just eat real food, you've probably got some at home already.

Stuff that's real is becoming a rarity in our post modern lives. Highly processed artifice consisting mostly of packaging, PR and pulverised feedstocks which themselves are often putative (believed by the naive to be foodstuffs but actually having low nutritious value plus a lot of carcinogens employed to make them grow bigger whilst killing any wildlife that dares to enter the growing place) - this is now the majority of supermarket and similar fud.

It now takes significant time, effort and spend to find "real" foodstuffs. One must go about the small growers and sellers that may be found attempting to grow unadulterated high quality stuff and the small makers using these stuffs to make actually nutricious bread, pies et al.

For we lucky boomers who have a pension and no cash-sucking landlord to service, there is time to find & use basic "real" ingredients to cook up fine and nutricious eats, even the sort that can service we avid cyclists with our energy & health requirements. Many have no such time, or the money, to buy proper food since they have 3 gig-economy "jobs" per householder as well as that landlord sucking out their wallets ...... .

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Why do websites like this go along so readily with the purveyors of ever more expensive stuff (including spurious goos and powders like the subject of this review)? Is cycling actually becoming the new golf, with only what used to be called the middle clarsses able to afford even the most basic of equipment and accessories to a cycling life?

Cue Toryites with bleats about "choice".

I mean, you are talking complete rubbish. Its never been easier or quicker to make cheap and nutricious meals. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the food that you can get from supermarkets and the choice is mindboggling. This country has a health epidemic because people are lazy and can't be bothered, not because of a lack of availability. We get a shop delivered to our house whenever we want within a 1 hour timeslot. Cooking a nutritious meal doesn't need to take much time and if you really want to push the boat out you could even batch cook to save time. 

This weird fetish for making up excuses for people does no one any good. A tiny tiny tiny fraction of the population has no time to cook. Absolutely tiny. The vast majority would just rather sit in front of the TV for hours every evening doomscrolling their social media instead of cook. 

Back on topic, yes this is ridiculously expensive and yes people do have choice. That has nothing to do with politics but that is quite hard for a lot of people not to sneak into every argument these days isn't it.

Perhaps I'm just a Tory and I don't realise it.

mctrials23 wrote:

... This country has a health epidemic because people are lazy and can't be bothered, not because of a lack of availability.  ... This weird fetish for making up excuses for people does no one any good. A tiny tiny tiny fraction of the population has no time to cook. Absolutely tiny. The vast majority would just rather sit in front of the TV for hours every evening doomscrolling their social media instead of cook. 

Back on topic, yes this is ridiculously expensive and yes people do have choice. That has nothing to do with politics but that is quite hard for a lot of people not to sneak into every argument these days isn't it.

Perhaps I'm just a Tory and I don't realise it.

You are Lee Anderson ("top nutrition advocate") and ICMFP!

This is like "people could walk and cycle but they drive cars because they're lazy".  You are quite correct.  However - when have people not been lazy?  Has there been a moral collapse?

"It's the environment, stupid" - with the addendum that the environment includes "culture" e.g. other people and interpersonal relations.

Historically we are in an unprecedentedly resource- and possibility- rich environment (and no-one is shooting at us etc.)!   However that environment is also obeseogenic and driveogenic.

Again you're correct - it's never been easier to do many things.  However our inbuilt biases (do what other "successful" people are doing, conserve energy, feasting / fats / sugar are good...) will tend to direct our behaviour down certain tracks.  And there are lots of new paths which also lead to "drive to sedentary work, pick up ready meal on way home to watch in front of TV / while on internet".  You can certainly opt in to more movement, exercise, better food etc. However you will have to make mental effort to steer onto those tracks and once you're there the environment (other people!) will tend to nudge you back.

I'm not saying there aren't reasons for it but making excuses like "healthy food is expensive" and "people have no time to cook healthy food" is complete BS. Its just easier not to eat healthily. Simple as that. I could always make a healthy meal for less money than it costs to eat something pre-made that is unhealthy. 

Part of what you are saying, which is entirely true, is that society is setup to push a certain consumption. Part of that however is normalising the idea that its entirely external factors that are preventing you from being healthy (no time, expensive) and absolving the individual of personal responsibility. "Its not your fault you're unhealthy, its societys fault".

mctrials23 wrote:

I'm not saying there aren't reasons for it but making excuses [...] Its just easier not to eat healthily. [...] society is setup to push a certain consumption. Part of that however is normalising the idea that its entirely external factors that are preventing you from being healthy (no time, expensive) and absolving the individual of personal responsibility. "Its not your fault you're unhealthy, its societys fault".

[Rabbit hole alert]

Now this is a subtle point. The difficult truth is that not all human choices are as "free" or rationally made as we like to think.  Not only that but this varies over circumstance, time and even within an individual.  Will a logical intervention have unintended consequences because humans have their own range of sensitivities (not to say triggers) and our decision-making is primarily emotional / based on pattern-matching?  (Also ignoring the fact that when unsure we often rely on trusted others - who will have their own agendas).

It's tricky because people can see a different message than the one you think you're putting out and do react to those messages (even if implicit).  Trivially - like telling people not to think of an elephant.  Or like never seeing someone who looks like you in certain roles.

If you "treat the symptoms" and say "lots of people *are* making less healthy choices; let's look at the system and see if something there can be changed" it's possible that people will think "I'm powerless" or "it's not my responsibility".

On the other hand trying to effect change by judging them and making it a moral thing ("lazy") may work to motivate some, sometimes.  The parent / teacher / sergeant major shouting at you or the lure of a role model saying "be like me" can work.  But negative motivation definitely alienates and demotivates lots.  If your "intervention" relies on persuasion alone then causing people not to engage is totally counter-productive in their cases.

Of course - the poor are undeserving, lazy, stupid and the cause of their own degradations. Tory spivs and mafia-like businesses are just an excuse since everyone not getting a high-paying executive position or owning plenty of lucrative shares is just a loser! They should spend their one hour leasure time a day picking and boiling nutricious whelks or nettles, not relaxing, the rascals.

On the other hand, I've found that the rather more realistic explanation for being able to avoid the degradations of our current SSO (society-shaped object) allowing a little prosperity goes more like ..... : 

I was lucky enough to be born at a time and place with curbs upon the Toryspiv and profiteering criminal-types, so had some real & decent choices; and was encouraged in all sorts of ways to take them, not least by receiving a fine & free education after the malt, rosehip syrup. school milk and jabs.

But for that Attlee and his pals, I would likely have been just another dead child full of some filthy disease accelerated by malnutrition; or perhaps a miner-slave dead of lung rot at 50.

However, seeing as how Toryspivery is now the only available option, perhaps we can all take the advice of that recent tele program skit to eat each other, epsecially the tender but surplus children? (They stole the notion from Jonathan Swift, mind). This will be a  proper and fitting exercise in Social Darwinism, as proposed by any number of pin-striped gharks & hoos.

mctrials23 wrote:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the food that you can get from supermarkets and the choice is mindboggling.

Some of it is fine (fresh/frozen fruit/veg, dired foods etc) but much is ultra-processed 'food'.

There are lots of choices. However, much of this comes from liberal economics treating the ecosphere as a free dumping ground for waste and a source of resources at minimal cost. 

levestane wrote:

mctrials23 wrote:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the food that you can get from supermarkets and the choice is mindboggling.

Some of it is fine (fresh/frozen fruit/veg, dired foods etc) but much is ultra-processed 'food'.

It's very difficult to know which of the foodstuffs sold in supermarkets and elsewhere are truly "fine" - created without many of the dangerous processes & substances often employed in not just (over) refining edibles but in growing the basics such as fruit & veg. Its increasingly difficult to find fresh food that hasn't been sprayed with many kinds of insecticides, growth factors and preservatives that are suspected as possible causes of all kinds of harms, from cancer to alergies. Of even the functioning or survival of essential pollinaters.

The latest research indicates that many highly commercialised food production processes have introduced attributes of what is sold in the form of many kinds of harms, both to the consumers and the environment in general. The investigations, checks and regulations supposedly made to curb these harmful factors have been suborned by the producers and their political helpmeets, via so-called self-regulation, the "cutting of red tape" and even the infiltration of academic science departments by bought & paid for (by the food producers) agents.

So, even if a few of Mr 23's undeserving and lazy poor manage to find the time, money and motivation to employ supposedly prime ingredients to make what they eat, there's no guarantee that the super or other mass market items will be either a healthy or an inexpensive choice. Profit making, in the form of cost reductions or plain greedflation, is now the be-all and end-all. Advertising and ever-increasing monopolies in the supply chain make sure we go along with this. No choice at all, for many.

I don't disagree with much of what you are saying but basically no one in society is eating completely "clean and organic" produce from those people earning more in a day than most earn in a year all the way down to those earning a pittance. 

Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with the mass produced food we eat. The average person is doing far more damage to themselves from the million decisions they have complete control over than the small amount that might be done by the way fresh fruit and veg is grown these days. 

Before I gave even a second thought to eating organic, unadulterated produce as a priority there are a dozen other things I could do that would make far more difference to my health and I am in good shape. 

 If you aren't engaging in even the simplest of act like cooking your own food and eating plenty of veg then you can't start to complain about the adulteration of our supply chain.