Chuzzlewit, Chapters 11 - 12

[Hilary]

Actually Tristram there is some health correlation between cigarette smoking and decrease in some particular illness. I'd have to check with my husband who is an expert on these sorts of things. My guess would be, however, that the dangers of cigarette smoking would far and away outweigh any other spurious health benefits. A couple of pipes a day may well be healthy as a way of de-stressing. It's true there can be allied problems with the throat, but then I have a friend recently diagnosed with throat cancer who has never smoked in his life!

Everyman, I love it. If only they would sanction all the things that we love! I wasn't aware that the tuna/mercury scare was still ongoing. I love canned tuna; rarely get to eat fresh. It has stamped on the cans 'dolphin friendly' so at least I know that no dolphins have been tangled in the tuna nets. Oh dear, I'm maybe exceeding my daily allowance of poison then! My younger son 17 (18 on the 4th July) is always getting on my case about drinking things with aspartame in them. I always say that otherwise I shall drink loads of sugary drinks and my weight will balloon even more so thus affecting my already bad health for the worse. I guess it's the lesser of two evils, although I had an uncle who said that philosophically 'the lesser of two evils' is a misnomer. What do I know?!
La de da.

[Kim]

Everyman wrote: Everything comes in and out of favor. Butter and eggs were evil, evil, evil only a few years ago, and now they're practically health foods -- butter is now actually considered better for one than margarine."

When I was a kid and having grand mal seizures pretty often my doctors talked about putting me on a diet called the Ketogenic diet. My mom told me that on this diet you eat no fruits or vegetables, almost no meat or bread, and lots and lots of eggs, butter and cream. She told me I'd have to eat entire sticks of butter a day, plus drink only cream or eggnog and this would supposedly stop my seizures. They never did try it which I was extremely happy about because I did not want to eat a stick of butter and nothing else. I'm not sure how accurate this is though, my mom tended to exaggerate at times.

[Everyman]

Tristram wrote: "The same way, I'm still waiting before I give up smoking completely - because maybe actually they'll find out that one or two pipes a day are actually a healthy thing to have. Dream on, Tristram! "

Hang in there. Tobacco was once considered a healthy drug, and I'm sure that time will come around again if you can only wait long enough.

[Tristram]

Everyman wrote: "Hang in there. Tobacco was once considered a healthy drug, and I'm sure that time will come around again if you can only wait long enough. "

The problem being that one cannot wait longer than one lives ;-)