The age-old adage “garbage in, garbage out” rings out in every Introductory Computer Programming class across the nation. Yet the Filipino, narrow-minded as he is, is unable to apply the same logic to his very own everyday life.
There is a covert conspiracy with the major players of the economy in cahoots to siphon from the common Filipino his hard-earned money by offering in exchange – junk. The Filipino (in his signature self-destructive fashion) is naively oblivious of the fact his appetite for junk will eventually take a very high toll on him and Philippine society.
Junk Food and Drinks
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Many Philippine food and beverage companies advertise and sell junk. Just observe how half of what fills up your grocery basket is addictive unhealthy garbage, and Filipinos are all lining up in fast-food chains gobbling up oil, lard, sugar, salt and preservatives at toxic levels. Filipinos are essentially digging their own graves with spoons and forks.
Pinoys get duped to believing heart-clogging margarine is good for your body by making you taller. The Pringles tagline chant goes “Once you pop, you can’t stop”. True indeed – chemicals on the junk that these conglomerates peddle are specially formulated to make you get hooked (as in nicotine/drugs) to crave for even more, all in the name of the game called “profit” at your health’s expense.
Filipino food can hardly be lined up with the great Asian cuisines like Thai, Japanese, and Vietnamese sought after by the health conscious. Reason is: Filipino dishes are basically filled to the brim with vein-clogging kidney-damaging ingredients. Adobo, a reason for Pinoy pride as a dish that made it to the English dictionary, is meat floating in a concentrated concoction of oil, fat and salt.
The national beverage Coke, along with Tang and Zest-O, to quench the thirst of our youth is like drinking a cup of pure liquefied processed sugar. Just the artificial taste should raise red flags in the Pinoy’s coconuts that these are loaded with ingredients that are likely to be carcinogenic (cancer-causing).
Junk-Promoting Media
Our media makes a killing earning from ads made to subliminally program viewers to buy these deadly “products” while making a mockery of the Filipino’s intelligence (or whatever’s left of it) by showing a ripped-fit fair-skinned actor/actress consuming burgers & fries loaded with grease, carbohydrates and salt, the levels of which should turn any hypnotized victim into an obese pimples-riddled freak.
Filipino media content itself is mostly junk that continues to dumb down the zombies which make up the majority of this nation’s voters. As one commenter (Nick Tambolero) once heard Vic Sotto himself confess in their show “Yumaman kami ng dahil sa katarantaduhan” (we got rich by fooling around) – now that’s straight from the horse’s mouth.
The ‘AlDub’ love-team is a phenomenal hit in the Philippines.
And the Filipino wonders why everything in their society is so corrupt and perverted, with the cities and country sides looking like a glorified junk shop. Filipinos have taken in so much junk through every open hole on their heads to the point that whatever originally good thing (like democracy) the Filipino lays his hands on turns into junk itself.
Junk’s Toll on Health and Society
Finally there’s the whole medical and pharmaceutical industry taking their bite at the Filipino’s meager income by “caringly” providing treatment to fix what the former batch of sharks (food and media) have inflicted on the body and mind.
The moment you enter into this world till your last breath, the “powers that be” (oligarchs, corporations, government) all churn you through their gigantic processing machine called the Philippine economy to suck in as much juice as can be wrenched from you – their voluntary hapless victim. At the end of the production line, you are faced with skyrocketing medical bills brought about by all the accumulated junk that’s messed you up (cancer, heart ailment, kidney trouble, etc.).
Then ask why a Pinoy can’t save money for capital to start a business. Well he used all of what he could have saved on junk, and even had to borrow more money in the process.
In 2013 there were more than 27,000 suicides in Japan. Pinoys may be unable to fathom this Japanese mentality/behavior due to the Pinoy’s inherently self-preserving me-first culture. But did you know that by consuming all the junk offered left and right, Pinoys are basically committing slow-motion suicide?
Say NO to Junk
The Apo Hiking Society’s hit song goes “American Junk – get it out of my system”. It’s high time we take this song and replace the first word with “Philippine” instead.
Like smoking, it may be difficult to abruptly stop consuming junk, but at least we should take the effort to slowly curtail the volume of junk we take in. While doing our groceries, or choosing food in a restaurant, let’s think: “Only take in as much calories as you can burn” knowing that anything beyond that will reside as belly fat.
Well people, it’s a free country – we all have the right to choose. Shall we simply follow the bandwagon in succumbing to harmful cravings like all the other Filipino zombies around us munching their junk food, listening to junk music, and watching junk programs?
Or can we break free from the spell and turn to the side of reason and logic to finally think of what’s genuinely good for us? If we can’t even tell what’s good for us as an individual, how can we be trusted to know what’s good for Philippine society as a whole?
It will take old-fashioned iron-clad resolve and discipline to say “NO” to junk, but you will likely reap a good reward to see yourself live out a long productive life well into your 90’s. Wouldn’t it be great to sit in your rocking chair as an old lolo or lola sipping a cup of tea, reflecting on how you contributed to making this country great again?
Zealous revolutionary advocate of bringing back common sense for the common good in a land of dysfunctional and delusional zombies.
Oh, I just love this, I just zaxx it.
One million likes.
Hi-5, man. ????
Yes, people, let’s go for a healthy body, so that we can have a healthy mind.
And let’s go for a healthy mind, so that we can have a healthy body. Turn off the TV, and let’s read books.
Dynamic societies are a people that devour books. We have to be a people that should be continuously asking ourselves, leaders, and influencers WHY. Let us not settle for answers to What, When, and How. What is bad in the Philippines, Who seems to be the only preoccupation, which is why we seem to be stuck in the mud and the national obssession for fairy tales.
Yes, great article that nails a whole list of related Pinoy disfunctions. The problems zaxx mentioned are a prime factor in keeping Pinoys poor: P5 or P10 on a bag of puffed-corn snacks might not seem like a lot, but the manufacturer made it with P1-worth of starch and chemicals. Likewise with Coke and other soft drinks. Pinoys are giving their money away to rich people and then complaining that (a) they’ve got no money and (b) rich people have too much money. What do they expect, exactly?
P5 a day is P1800 a year. With P1800 you can buy ten top-quality grafted fruit tree seedlings … or thirty citrus trees, or fifty banana plants, or five hens with chicks .. any combination you like. You’ll have free snacks for the rest of your life plus more left over to sell.
Every Filipino in the provinces has enough land for 50 trees, but instead of planting 50 trees, he just throws trash on it and burns stuff until the soil is destroyed. Which comes back to the intellectual poverty zaxx and Add mention: if you don’t know how to create wealth and can’t be bothered to find out, you really only have yourself to blame.
Not exactly books, (wattpad novels and fiftyshades count as books too) – but literature.
Reading can influence the mind a lot more than tv. In order to absorb what you’re reading, one must be focused, and the side effect is the attention to detail is more concentrated, and the imagination is stimulated when due to the lack of audio or visual cues (imagery).
A most fitting Addendum! Thanks Add & co. Hi-5!
Get Real Post, home to prurient Puritan grannies.
Never would’ve suspected this is what you meant by “iron-fisted”, zaxx — would your dictator even go so far as to command everyone to eat malunggay OR ELSE???
So what’s your point, pallacertus? Is the author wrong? If so, let’s hear your critique, instead of a ridiculous butthurt reductio ad absurdum.
The author is right to decry junk food consumption when other healthier alternatives abound. This has its limits, of course — when some junk food can be had for as little as a peso, one can understand how it and a kilo of NFA rice can suffice for the desperately poor. (What’s the price of pagpag? Anyone?)
The author is wrong to point to “iron-clad resolve or discipline” as a way to avoid eating junk food. For some of us, the choice really is between eating junk food or eating none at all. For most of the rest of us, we can choose to eat health food or we can choose to eat junk — but we guard the freedom to choose jealously, and with reason: we simply don’t like to be ordered around by people who have it in their heads not only that they know what’s good and will stop at nothing to hammer it down.
So chalk it up to a difference of perspective, and thus not an objective critque, if you will.
zaxx is most likely referring to SELF-DISCIPLINE.
Pallacertus: as T. already said, zaxx is talking about SELF-discipline, not Duterte-style discipline. I certainly wouldn’t like to see people forced to eat a government-mandated diet. However, Zaxx is merely pointing out what happens when you choose to waste your money on trash. It’s not HIS fault those things happen.
>> For some of us, the choice really is between eating junk food or eating none at all.
I assume by “some of us” you mean poor people. This is an idea that’s been shoved into people’s heads by food manufacturers. It’s self-evidently untrue: a business makes profits on its inputs, therefore the products on the shelves cost more than their inputs. Therefore they can be made at home (mostly) either at lower cost, or with higher quality.
A home-prepared meal is going to be cheaper, especially when you factor in all the costs of packaging, retailing, taxes, etc. It’s going to be cheaper still if you grow your own food (which 80% of Pinoys COULD do, but choose not to).
Concrete example: a Jollibee meal with a burger, fries and drink is, what, P80? If you’re a typical Pinoy with a 500m2 yard, you should have a dozen chickens out there, some sweet potatoes, a fruit tree, and some forage for the chickens.
So: slaughter a chicken, find an egg, dig up a potato, buy some flour, make some batter. Fry the chicken and the potato. There: you have a very nice meal for 4 people, fast-food style (even if it’s not actually “fast”). Squeeze yourself some fruit juice. Your total cost is – what? P20 or so for the oil (which you can use again), P10 for some flour, and P10 for the fuel, or P8 per person. One-tenth of the Jollibee price, and nutritionally superior.
So no, poor people aren’t forced by circumstance to eat junk food. They do it to show off, or because they’re lazy, or because they can’t manage their money properly. This isn’t a difference of perspective. It’s math and home economics.
Now, of course the Pinoy has the right to make wrong decisions. However, he has NO right to insist that the government fix the inevitable outcome of those decisions. He has no right to moan and whinge about how poor he is, or how much his diabetes medications cost him. If he doesn’t like those things, he can choose the right decisions. As benign0 likes to say, it’s simple, really.
People, please note this comment of marius. You have just been allowed to have something equivalent to gold.
A city boy of lower-middle-class income doesn’t usually have a lawn he can call his own let alone plant a garden or have chickens cluck and pluck to their hearts’ content, or if he does have one, it’s either converted into additional rooms for additional family members or turned into space for a sari-sari store. As a former dweller of that socioeconomic substratum, you can probably imagine my family’s house sight unseen — the only oddity being me.
If this is the case for my family back then, what of the truly, desperately urban poor?
sorry, that’s P10/person, isn’t it …
Anyway, the point stands, I think.
Inb4 more mental gymanstics about how they typical Pinoy is helpless in choosing to do away his baf habits through BS theory and contrarianism. All Palla approved.
Marius, the problem with most pinoys are they are to lazy to plant crops and raise chickens. Most just like to ask favors from neighbors, if they were not given enough, they will bitch, whine and complain.
captjoe: not exactly lazy. Pinoys are quite happy to waste away their day on unproductive labour. All my neighbors have several roosters (which cost a load of $$$) and spend half an hour a day burning stuff. It seems like they’re deliberately selecting tasks that make their lives turn to shit so they have something to complain about, and excuse to go ask for favours.
Incidentally, my neighbour (who DOES grow things) has neighbours who don’t bother asking him for favours – they just steal his crops. So possibly that’s another reason Pinoys don’t grow anything.
OK. But you do realize that that’s quite impossible in the NCR. Especially the planting part. And especially among the desperately poor here.
Raising chickens ain’t especially hard either, if you and your family don’t live on less than a dollar a day. You can probably imagine raising a brood of them for meat and eggs without sufficient capital to invest on living spaces, chicken feed, et cetera — they way you talk makes me think you have your own garden and chicken coop to tend to, or at least know people who do and are good enough to inform you of the intricacies.
So I guess there goes my contrarianism, Sarge — I’m a city boy through and through, and know near jack about agriculture, so I can relate to my fellow, and far poorer, city folk when it comes to farming. Of course it goes without saying that I can’t be as good at surmising what goes on marius’ part of the country — where do you live, marius?
>> But you do realize that that’s quite impossible in the NCR
Well … the simple answer to that is, don’t live in the NCR. I cannot understand why people with no skills and no money want to live anywhere near Manila. What’s the point if you’re homeless, have no chance of getting a proper job, and can’t afford to spend money on the stuff a city offers?
Every person I’ve met in Manila has family out in the provinces, often with vast tracts of land that are standing idle. I would guess many of the homeless immigrants do, too. So go back to the farm, get out on the land, and grow some food.
I do understand that the average Pinoy has no ready cash, but it would all be a lot easier if they would help each other. If neighbor A has no money, but neighbor B is unemployed, what’s wrong with B helping A to get his farm up and running? B can then pay him back with food at some later date.
Pallacertus, I live in the middle of nowhere. I have a farm. Of course I had to spend cash to acquire that farm and hire labour, but the Pinoy who already has land (and a huge family) doesn’t have that problem. In theory.
Get rich quick. Or at least make more money while working less. That’s been the lure of an urban center like Manila for who knows how long. For let’s face it: farming (and fishing and animal husbandry in general to a certain extent) ain’t easy work, nor do they make you well off, not without a certain amount of acquaintance with the latest in technology and agricultural practices. And the likelihood is that the poorer you are, the less you know.
But since you do have a farm after all, I’ve been wanting to ask you: what’s the state of the farm-to-market roads in your locale? I’ve been told all the post-1986 administrations have made building and maintaining them a priority (it helps that two of them are hacienderos or at least have working concerns with the land), but how good are they on your locale?
>> I’ve been wanting to ask you: what’s the state of the farm-to-market roads in your locale?
Sorry, I thought I replied to this but it’s disappeared.
I had a rant about the roads in another post. We have an enormous 4-meter road going past my farm. I saw them building it. It probably has a 10-ton axle rating. The only thing that ever moves along that road are carabou and shoeless people – principally because it goes from nowhere (the river) to nowhere (it stops halfway to the main highway).
If whoever commissioned it had had even half a brain, they could have used the same amount of concrete and labour to make a 1m-wide road with passing-places, all the way to the highway. That’s plenty big enough for a cart or a motorcycle. But nooooo … the point of a road-construction project is to provide opportunities for theft, not to actually provide a functioning road.
sorry, carabao, not caribou 🙂
Pallacertus will argue just for the sake of argument—without really having a point.
I’m now suspecting that he’s jonas because he comments like him. I bet he still wants to sabotage this site with his point-missing rhetoric.
hello there, pallacertus, you emotional basket case! ready to get irrational again? i wonder what else you will nitpick on? oh well, no reasoning with you, so i’ll just play spot the fallacies with your comments. breakdown: zaxx simply said “iron-clad resolve”, you reiterated it as “iron-fisted”. (wala na nga sa context, mali pa pagiintindi haaay. go ahead, do a search on zaxx’s article for a line that says “iron-fisted”). Then you went all strawman by equating “iron-fisted” to “dictator who commands”. really classy, man. really classy.
Guy has a hard on for GRP for a long time. Best ignore the guy. Probably nothing better to do.????
Malunggay is good for you.
Indeed. He’s already consuming too much red meat. He might gonna die for doing that.
*He might gonna die by diabetes from doing that*
Fixed
Yes, but who wants to be told to eat it OR ELSE!!! The masochists maybe.
Also, domo — I’m gonna die eating anything anyway, so I’ll make sure to choke to death on spaghetti. Some people swear on wine, others on red meat, still more on veggies — I go swear upon my spaghetti. Take it as you will, and enjoy your life eating something that’s more to your liking.
Then you’re just wasting your precious life. Where did you go so wrong? Did your parents always treat you like shit?
I mean, what is the meaning of life for you then jonas? “It’s always like this so let it be” in your mind? Pathetic!
Add hits the nail on the head with the suggestion to turn off the TV and read books.
Some of my fondest memories are going through old bookstores in Wollongong NSW (a former industrial town) and finding overlooked gems, or just sitting at the public library for hours on a cold wet winter’s day and listening to music in their music library or just browsing through their new arrivals section.
Even after moving to Corrimal, 6km north, I enjoyed going to the local library and using the free internet service and later borrowing books and magazines.
In my 39 years in Australia, I never saw one bad library, but in my 7 years in the Philippines, I have never seen one good one, just sad and dismal places that could have been something much more, but died stillborn.
I’ve never been sure if it’s due to practicality or preference why the local ‘convenience stores’ exclusively sell packaged crap with no fresh fruit, vegetables or non-tinned meat in sight. Can they not be bothered with daily deliveries, or is there just no demand? At least there’s always a healthy stock of the essentials like cup noodles and adult diapers.
If you go to 7-Elevens and Family Marts in neighbouring countries you can at least pick up a salad or deli goods, but where I live there’s no real nutrition closer than the mall supermarket. Unless you’re happy to eat wet market produce seasoned by jeepney fumes and bugs.
The sky hi cost of decent food in the Fails is one reason people are forced to eat shitty food.Low wages and hi food prices are just a recipe for ill health.
U know, when a country has McDonalds and it is a step up from the shittier foods in the country…u know its bad news !!
Seriously, that ‘Jollibee’ food is ,sadly, fuckin DOG FOOD. and yet most of the ‘Jollibee’s in the country are thriving/packed with Filipino’s scoffin that shit down…..unhealthy to say the least, can it be long before the national life expectancy is not even 60?
it is shocking to a Westerner that goes to Asia and thinks the food will be great and only to find out it is flippin horrible, YUCK!
its not a difficult decision to make, in a country where citrus fruits are in abundance, to eat:
A mango or a bag of ‘Chippy’…
Eat a Pineapple or eat at ‘Jollibee’,WHAT?
even the chips and fast food in the country suck and yet people woud rather eat that crap than enjoy a Coconut? IDGI.
OOB-AH-LOOB-AH,
Citrus fruit like kalamansi and other favorite like lanzones, langka, guyabano, and pinya used to be in abundance. Not anymore. The greedy “Fliptard” real estate developers have tranformed these once fertile farmlands into “concrete wasteland” of subdivisions, shopping malls, and other commercial properties. It’s FOCKED UP.
Aeta
I remember that time when Krabs sold his fastfood to Krabby o Mondays…..
Or that time when Krabs and Plankton competed by putting more grease in their burgers…..
It feels good reading and sipping your hot beverage while it rains. Then play classical music (mozart, vivaldi, etc.) in the background.
Well, when the common filipino guy can only afford instant pancit canton or a can of sardines for meals, other junk foods, be it from jalibe or jak en jil or mang juan is already a luxury. When the media themselves portray the consumption of such items as “good” in contrast with their more natural, healthier counterparts, then the overall health of filipinos is in trouble. My kids can attest to this, as they are being laughed at when their snack at school is a lowly banana, while their classmates have mang juan.
Media on the other hand is easier, more people are now subscribed to satellite TV which gives them more affordable access to more substantial TV shows. Otherwise, just turn off the TV. Junk FM stations also abound, I miss those city light FM and the home of the nu rock days. With junk radio stations just the same, turn off the radio and play your own MP3s.
In any case, the interweb contains infinite information, it just depends on the filipino what kind of information does he want inside his brain. It is still ultimately up to the individual on what he uses his brain cells for.
>> My kids can attest to this, as they are being laughed at when their snack at school is a lowly banana, while their classmates have mang juan.
Yep, media is the problem here, teaching people to be stupid. Sadly the education system is so poor that most Filipinos believe what they hear in TV advertisements.
Presumably your kids aren’t fat, unhealthy and stupid like the other kids. Keep giving them bananas … and send them to karate class, just in case. If there’s one thing the Pinoy failure hates, it’s someone who’s failing less than he is.
The poor people in America are the same way.. FYI
Yes, and? Should we use that as a feel good measurement to this vice? We don’t have to.
Short of imposing a ban on junk food, this sturm und drang really is a waste of time — or the butt of jokes at best. (One need not look further than the disastrous — and disastrously hypocritical — experiment that was Prohibition to know that iron wills and fists are no match for desire, and probably should be.)
Oh, stfu. Healthy choices =/= dictatorial decree. Stop getting drunk on the freedumb juice and you’ll realize how retarded you sound.
You don’t need to ban junk food. Just ban the medication for heart disease and diabetes. Natural selection will take care of the rest.
Brilliant! That idea is worth a thousand hectares of land and prime properties that will be saved from getting flushed down the drain hole of disease.
I am not a big fan of funding disease myself. Maybe we can at least give complementary pain killers to show we still have a humane side though.
In the USA you can go into a dinner or fast-food ‘french fry’ hell and see a line of FAT mofo’s that are only getting fatter and sicker by the meal.
A never ending line akin to a herd of elephants with a really bad diet and,for the most part, lower intelligence..
Terrific Article by a person who is a critical and forward thinker…I can certainly understand the reasons behind eating junk foods,but in no way condone it !! Im sure the way companies that produce these liver melting “foods” have laboratories where these products are tested and tweeked with sugars,salts and fats to be tasty,satisfying and addictive.If its any consolation,these foods are consumed in great quantity in the USA,and we have obesity,high blood pressure and Alzheimer’s disease,just to mention a few,as a result.It is absolutely a crime against humanity ! However,as much as I want to blame these big food conglomerates,your health is truly a matter of personal responsibility…take a long hard look at yourself,at the marvels of the human body,just being able to walk down the street,or to look across the room and process it all,is a thing of wonder,and yet we take it for granted…we should never forget that your body is a temple,and should be treated as such…
Everything in the Philippines is Junk. From the President to Senators to Congresspeople, to political candidates. The food is junk. The entertainment is junk. The Culture is dysfunctional and junk.
You can just walk around Metro Manila; and find people living in Junk Houses (Squatter Shanties); living around a Junk Mountain (Garbage Dumps), that is the source of their livelihood.
If we consume junk in our body…we will get junk brain/thinking, and junk body function.
This maybe one of the causes of the dysfunction of Filipino mind, culture and politics.
Oishi shrimp> sky flakes> fita> chocolate mallows> oishi pillows> piatos> chiz curlz > tostillos> nova> Mr. Chips> chippy>vcut
all in moderation, all in moderation.
Just to clarify on…
“old-fashioned iron-clad resolve and discipline”
Watch this video from my inspiration and you’ll get what I mean:
Why is brown rice so expensive? I say the NFA should start selling brown rice really cheap so that the poor can get more nutrients and fiber.
Also since its not appealing to the palate of the normal pinoy, the poor who are stuck eating brown NFA rice will work harder and earn more money so they can afford white rice.
In tropical countries, brown rice has a lesser storage life than white rice, around two weeks.
http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/step-by-step-production/postharvest/storage
Nonetheless, brown rice is great. Even if it needs more water than white rice, it taste great and makes one feel full faster than white rice. Plus it got more vitamins and minerals than white rice.
The solution to the brown rice rotting problem is in the drying process. If you dry the rice properly from the get-go (i.e. through proper post-harvest drying facilities and not through road-side banigs, you can get brown rice to keep).
In any case, I don’t think storage will be a problem. NFA can store it really carefully, the Filipino family does not even need to invest in proper storage since we know that the average NFA rice buyer is a “tingi” buyer. The rice he buys will be gone within a week or shorter.
Thanks for the input!
Mahilig naman talaga sa garbage ang pilipino, sa tingin ba ninyo tatagal ang mga chichirya, family politicians at eat bulaga kung walang kumakain ng recycled toilet humor nila? Pag basurero ka tulad ng aldogs, vice ganda fans at mga naniniwala kay ngoyngoy, hindi ka na maghahangad umangat ang buhay mo kasi nasanay ka na sa mikrobyo at pampatuyo ng utak.
Just a hypothetical question guys: What will happen if government bans all forms of junk (food, drinks, media) in the Philippines? -based on the logic that things that are harmful/detrimental to society (like narcotics, pornography, weapons) are banned or controlled.
one step closer to north korea
i need my sugar
@ice cube
So is Singapore (which has banned chewing gum) 2 steps closer to north korea?
BTW, you don’t need sugar – you WANT sugar (there’s a big difference)
How long you wanna live in a society without sugar?
BIG BROTHER ZAXX TELLING US “you don’t need sugar”?!
Goodbye Goldilocks! Goodbye Magnolia! Goodbye Coca Cola!
No cakes! No ice cream! No colas!
NO LIFE!!!
>> Goodbye Goldilocks! Goodbye Magnolia! Goodbye Coca Cola!
Good riddance!
This is exactly what the article was about.
No life? Those things will kill you, especially in the quantities Pinoys cram them down.
OTOH I don’t think these things should be banned. In moderation, there’s nothing wrong with them. But sugar producers should not be subsidized and supported as they are now. A tax would be fair, considering the damage those products do to society and the cost burden on PhilHealth.
Actually, people don’t just want toxic levels of sugar – they are addicted to it. Boring U’s reaction is exactly what the big corporations want from every Pinoy. They want us all to become addicted.
A drug addict will kill to get his marijuana. But does a drug addict need marijuana to live?
A “need” is something you can’t do without (like air, water, job, toilet, …). A “want” is something you “think you need” but can actually live without. Gets?
Please tell me – Will you die without Coke? If not, then it’s not a necessity. It’s a want.
Yes, tell us again how your iron will and discipline isn’t totally a stand-in for wistful authoritarianism or at the very worst sanctimonious hypocrisy.
@Pollacertus, If you were the teacher, how would you handle a bunch of wild unruly 3rd graders going haywire bananas in your class room? leave them to their own devices?
You teach them to become disciplined responsible citizens. Just compare Singapore and the Philippines. Where would you rather live?
The goal is to reach “Singapore” (clean orderly disciplined) status in 30 years. So people need to stop wasting their time and resources on junk to have capital/brains for business & development.
Everything in life involves discipline. Even this very blog-site took the discipline of Benign0 and co. to start, run and maintain; the internet and the smartphone/PC you are using required enormous discipline to realize.
So what is it with your being so allergic to anything that has iron/discipline?
If you’re assuming the laws of America (land of the free) can be readily applied to a society like the the Phil, you’re gravely mistaken. PH masses are centuries behind in almost everything – values, mindset, train systems, technology… you name it. You are in the “middle ages”!
But as I said – It’s a free country. And yet Pinoys have proven time and again how miserable failures they are in handling any kind of freedom. Instead of “freedom from…” they want “freedom to…”
So what’s your suggestion? How will this country become a Singapore? Drink Coke and die of diabetes at 45?
Thanks, but I have a vision for this country that’s grander than what today’s lot of politicians can even think or imagine. So I think I’d I’d like to stick around a bit longer.
So long live IRON MAN! What this country needs is a Robotics Industry! So get your Arduino’s & servo-motors guys and churn out them lines of code!
If I were a teacher… well, no, I’m not. I never was, I don’t have the temperament or patience or goddangit to be one.
And that’s the point — I am (or you are) not a teacher, my (or your) fellow citizens here are not my (or your) students, and there is no guarantee that what you bring to the table is in any way superior to theirs.
This aggrandizement — the logic that I know more, so I have every right over you, and if you don’t like it or you’d want to get a word in edgewise, fuck you, I’ll fuck you straight anyway — is the sort of shit one saw with the Spaniards when they conquered the Philippines — we were “savages” who lacked manners and morals, so off our heads went. Again with the Americans — we were again “savages”, again fit to be civilized and Christianized, so off our independence went. And once more with the elite, both intellectual and moneyed — we’re not quite savages, but because we don’t look like them, we don’t act like them, we don’t eat like them, we don’t shit or piss or sweat like them even, we might still be savages, but peace! they can be improved! or not, because stereotypes stereotypes endless stereotypes.
But I presume you’d want me to answer your question, so let me assume a position more to my liking.
Let me be mayor of a small town, with its set of problems that I have to attend to. What do I do? Attend to them, listen to all parties concerned, do what I have to do to solve them, delegate, bring it up to higher authorities, seek the help of people with more knowledge of certain particulars, get people involved generally. The works. Sure there will be hitches, misunderstandings, misapprehensions, but what the fuck, that’s life. The key to me is: talk to people. More often than not, they’ll clue you in. Maybe it’s nothing more than my books kicking me into a corner that I want and deserve, but I believe in democracy, I believe in participatory government, and by the good Lord that I don’t believe in, if I forsake those, may he first sever my right arm then drown me in a plane strapped to the seat as I flee!!!
Pallacertus, Got your point. You value your freedom. You firmly believe in democrazy.
But is the military a democracy? Are large corporations a democracy? Does a construction project or ship operate through a democratic organization?
Do the soldiers and laborers choose who leads them? No. There are people on top who call the shots unquestioned. Henry Sy does not have to get the vote of every Saleslady to get permission to start a new Mall in Palawan. He’s the boss and he knows better for his company. That’s why they are so lightning fast and effective. People on top know the goal and tell those at the bottom how it can be achieved, while commanding authority and instilling discipline.
That’s what made Singapore the state it is today. And that’s what the Philippines needs. So if the State says “No Bubble gum coz it messes up our sidewalks and is detrimental to our tourism industry.” So be it. It’s for the common good – I’ll happily comply. I can always eat Durian instead.
Meanwhile in the Philippines: Freedom = Squatters = Garbage all over the place = Inefficient dilapidated facilities = etc. etc. etc. and every rotting filth you can imagine
Conclusion: American democracy doesn’t work on Zombies!!! We need to instill discipline.
In the article, I meant self-discipline. But if that doesn’t work, we need someone who can instill discipline in society (like a teacher in a grade-3 class) and make this country one effective machine with every part working towards the goal. Still any qualms?
Again you choose: Do you want to live in a Singapore that is clean, orderly & disciplined, or do you want to live in a filthy dysfunctional Philippines?
If the latter, then so be it. But don’t blame me the next time you step on dogshit on the sidewalk on your way to work. You want your “freedom to do anything” democrazy, then live with the consequences.
So you’re proposing that a military or corporate state — or God forbid both — is better than what we have now?
Then most of Central America under the United Fruit Company (with a revolving door of military dictators that treated any clamor for democracy as prima facie evidence of Communist intent — or, for the more honest ones, as treason to corporate America) is where we should be heading, not Singapore — except that, of course, it’s all past, and Guatemalans even had the gumption to elect a comedian as president recently.
Pallacertus: the Philippines already IS a military/corporate state.
Why do you view everything as either one extreme or the other? Can you not envisage something in the middle? Other countries aren’t perfect, but many of them have managed some sort of compromise between brutal dictatorship and a shambolic free-for-all.
Well, corporate, yes, very incredibly much so — but military? I’ve been very critical of military policies with regards to Mindanao, but Mindanao isn’t the whole country. The armed forces have largely kept out of politics since 1986, RAM and Magdalo aside, and if there’s one thing that we don’t need from our armed forces, it’s politics. Let Thailand have its coups, let Chile break itself in half to accommodate Pinochet and his Chicago boys, but our military should keep out of the rought and tumble of politics.
Anyway, marius — what do you mean by “middle”? If I speak of extremes here, it’s because even those that compromised between dictatorship and “shambolic free-for-all” as you put it, eventually had to choose between perpetuating themselves in power at the expense of the people they were supposed to serve and submitting to protests and pleadings to become democratic or else return to democracy as a surer check upon state behavior among other things. Whether it be Spain, the Central Americans, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, South Korea, even Thailand with its periodic coups but rock-solid democratic institutions — all of them had to choose. Some of them chose to prolong the inevitable. Some of them died before they had to agonize themselves in the choosing. Others chose the inevitable and made out with whatever privileges they could extract from their successors, as had happened in Chile especially. So I really don’t get what you mean by “middle”.
A hypothetical question? Not so fast.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States
Also, I’m an avid consumer of pornographic material. Grimwald has earlier admitted his voyeurism.
Bite us, please sanctimoniously bite us.
Grim and you seems to be responsible and intelligent individuals which means you can take junks or sugar in moderation or devour porn materials without endangering yourselves or anyone. Also, the two of you don’t seem to neglect your role as a citizen of this country seeing you’re both regular here, making an argument and sharing your ideas. I’m afraid that can’t be said with most Pinoys.
I will also admit that I’m a very lazy worker but that might change once I get a new job that isn’t home-based and pays better…
I don’t know if it’s the same with you, @Grimwald, but here’s my equation to being a lazy worker:
1. idle time at work = laziness = read / watch / create something from your passion / rest
2. hate job = laziness = read / watch / create something from your passion / rest
😀
According to William Allen White, American journalist, a leader of the Progressive Party, commenting on the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s crusade on Coke during Prohibition —
“At the spectacle of men returning home, sodden with Coca-Cola, to beat their wives, [or] the sight of little children tugging at their fathers as they stand on the Coca-Cola bars long after midnight… we remain unmoved.”
You can imagine my reaction at your not-so-hypothetical question. Something along these lines, yes?
The food Pinoys prefer also shows how much of their brain is being used or their lack of knowledge on healthy living and food budgeting. If it’s lowly banana or something healthy, you’ll get to be laughed at. If it’s junk foods, cheap and delicious, you’re thought to have made a good choice because you satisfy your hunger and taste buds and with what you think cost you very little. Oftentimes I was accused of being on a “diet” by certain workmates and housemates just because I eat more fruits and veggies, I drink juice instead of soda or ice tea, and there are days that I prefer to eat wheat bread instead of rice or not eat rice at all. And healthy diet, same with exercising or working out, to most Pinoys means “nagpapapayat” “ayaw tumaba” “nagpapabata” or “nagpapaganda ng katawan” when it simply means you care for yourself that you take in or do what’s good for your mind, heart and body. And there are many ways good foods can be prepared into something delicious way better than junk foods. Besides, being unhealthy or being sick due to wrong food choices will not only affect us but our love ones as well. Sa Pilipinas pa naman, mahal magkasakit lalo maospital. Paano kung mahirap ka pa?
Pinoys “bahala na” attitude is also at work here. Enjoy junk foods while you’re young, bahala na when diseases appear later or when you get older. Eat as much as taba ng baboy, chicha, noodles and rice, drink as much soda, bahala na kung mamatay nag-enjoy ka naman sa kinain mo. Everything has to be cheap, cooked fast (para tipid sa Gasul or kuryente when using electric stove), kasi mahirap ang buhay sa Pilipinas, kasi pagod ka na sa trabaho wherein you earn little or just enough so you have no time to prepare a better meal. Funny because aren’t we suppose to get wiser to avoid unwanted expenditures and have something left to save or invest for our future? But here we have people who don’t care about their health and financial stat easily being influenced by what they watch and spend more on advertised food due to laziness to learn and prepare save-more but healthy and hearty meal for one self and family. It’s easy to make wrong decisions if one let their ignorance and piteous circumstance work for them instead of using their education or seek solutions that they can already and personally apply.
Here’s a question we should all ask ourselves: Which would you rather choose?
(A) live till 45 years-old but get to enjoy all the toxic junk food/drinks you like, or
(B) get to reach 90 but living on a largely fish/vegetable/fruit/tea/juice-based diet?
Hard choice huh!
WARNING: How well you answer this question will show if you have enough common sense to vote for our future leader. So choose wisely, or else – you’re “disqualified”!
APPEAL: To the “disqualified”, please kindly leave it to the people who have common sense to vote in the next elections. Have mercy on your country and give it a chance – don’t vote! Please.
Eat right. Exercise. Die anyway.
Die Anyway??? What’s the meaning and purpose of life then?
Eating pandesal, I guess.
For seconds, maybe reading Ecclesiastes?
Die anyway because of the toxic air I breathe; or die from a random mugger whom despite my cooperation to let my possessions get taken away, proceeds to shoot me anyway; or die from my injuries from a random accident, to which the hospital I was taken to refused emergency treatment because I have to pay them first or I don’t have the money to pay them in the first place.
Am i right?
My friendly neighborhood cockroach seems to have more fighting spirit and purpose for living than a lot of Pinoys, even from the most intellectual cream if the crop in this site. How come?
Why not take both? Certainly a lot of people choose to eat their malunggay and drink their water one minute then pick off an egg and bacon the next and still live pretty long lives. There’s no need for a dichotomy — some choose to gorge, some choose to sip, most choose as the spirit moves them, practicing moderation in food as well as in life. The important thing here is that they get to choose, and for the love of life I would not deny people their right to choose, just as I wouldn’t allow anyone to pick off any of the nice steaming pandesal I have on my table right now and replace it with oranges. I like it hot.
Aye.
Steve Jobs cofounder and innovator of Apple Computer died on October 5, 2011 from complications of pancreatic cancer, he was 56 years old. (draxe)
If you’re happy to join his club – why not?
But just imagine what kind of world we’d be living in if he lived to reach 90??? Sayang!!!
AMA has already reversed itself; egg is healthy. >>> Eggs Are Back: The Elegant Simplicity of the New Diet … >>> http://goo.gl/IIV9G9
Here’s one more food for the thought:
Think of life as a role-playing game where you start off with a life-bar of 90 years.
Then every time you eat junk your lifetime bar goes down. For example,
eat 1 pack of Chippy —> minus 1 day
drink a liter of coke —> minus 1 day
eat greasy fries ———> minus 1 day
Then as life goes on, your max. lifetime keeps going down and down.
So you can play with moderation on junk, but remember you are trading it with your lifetime bit by bit.
Time is gold. I’m not sure every Pinoy values it though.
how would a bullet to the head translate in this scale????? cheat code?
You’ll need an Iron man suit to dodge for that one 🙂
Long live Iron Man!
I wish I could use mods…
I value and treasure my life, but not so much that I’ll keep myself straitjacketed inside a plastic bubble in a sealed-in and fluffed-out room, with helmet on and tongue covered with something teeth-resistant so as to preclude death by mastication.
Because seriously, being paranoid about food is totally the wrong way to live life. Sometimes you gotta chug a Guinness. (No, I’m a teetotaler by habit — it’s an example.)
I once provided financial assistance to my maid because her child was suffering from failing kidneys. The child had a steady diet of instant noodles, tender juicy hotdogs, and Jollibee. The doctor ordered the child to stop eating processed junk food and start eatng fresh food like fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed meat. In a year the child’s health greatly improved and after a few tests the doctor pronounced the child fulky recovered. Alas, the foolish mother started feeding her son the same junk food once again. I confronted her about it but she told me that she just want her child to “experience and enjoy his childhood.” I tried to convince her otherwise but she simply hid from my site the the junk food she fed her child.
To make a long story short, the kid is now a dyalisis patient. This really frustrates me and shows the power of mainstream ads like Jollibee and Purefoods (tender juicy!!!) have over people like my maid.
My gulay! What kind of mother is that maid of yours? As in please – just a little common sense is all we’re asking.
Pallacertus, since you keep defending the “right” to consume junk so much, how about donating a kidney to this poor little kid?
I am beginning to think Junk shouldn’t be a right of stupid people anymore; it’s a massive and costly wrong!
Do you still employ her? I’d like a talk with her, under some pretext of course (since I don’t think “a couple of guys including your amo talked about you in a blog” is good form). Or at least give me an address, so I can go knock up her door myself. Not now, of course — but I’d like to know her side of the story, for I think that phrase you quoted — “experience and enjoy his childhood” — is indicative of something besides deliberate negligence (too mild?), though of course as a mother she should know better than to consistently feed her son food that has imperiled his life once before, and has indeed put him on dialysis, and thus cannot escape blame on her child’s plight.
Good read. Though I have to confess that I too am guilty of junk-consumption, in the form of porn. Relieves pressure instantaneously so I can think clearly again. In that sense, porm is not junk after all.
Sugar coated poison has been the downfall of many seeking maintain a healthy diet and lose weight.The tempting power is indeed very hard to resist.
Well here’s a simple exercise you may want to try. It’s called the Choco bar trophy.
Buy your favorite junk food like a Choco bar. Place it on top of your refrigerator and hang a piece of paper below it. For every day you resist the temptation of opening it, add one line on the paper.
If you reach 30 lines, then congratulations! You made it. You can now display that Choco bar as a trophy and testament of your successful month-long fight against junk.
Mawawala yung choco bar sa min. Andaming langgam. LOL
Pero dispilina lang yan. May cheat days ako for a bag of chips and soda. Pero regular home-cooked veggies, fish and chicken breast ang baon ko. 🙂
Kung ayaw ng ibang Pilipinong mabuhay nang hindi nakakaramdam ng sakit bago mag-40, hayaan mo na. Para hindi sila dumami. 😀
sure – Kung mababawasan ang engot sa mundo – bakit hindi?
Mas matalino pa yata langgam kaysa mga Pinoy e. Sila kahit walang Pangulo marunong silang magtulungan at magkaisa tungo sa isang layuning maging handa pagdating ng bagyo.
Like pornography, junk food might be tough to define but you know it when you see it.
You ask a person in the street what their idea of real food is…chances are they will point to the nearest fastfood (with plenty of unli–whatever) with colorful advertisements or to the nearest grocery with shelves full of branded processed food.
Maybe one of the reasons this generation of Filipinos have turned stupid and decadent Pinoys is because of a lot of synthetic chemicals in their bodies.
They can have all the plastic and GMO food in the world to feed their gluttony.
The new Filipino should earn and deserve real organic Filipino farmer-grown food.
And have you noticed a lot of children a generation after ours have A.D.D.? As in almost every other family i know now has a kid with a “dumb gene” issue. Creepy – like we may someday wake up surrounded by half a population of biohazard zombies.
Junk food is everywhere today. we can’t defeat the power of junk food. but we can change our lifestyle and diet. here is mine:
wake up at 530am
drink water with cucumber + lemon
take 1 fish oil capsule
workout of the day:
5km run
can be replaced by HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)
Post workout meal:
1 glass of enervon hp
1 oatmeal bowl
my snacks
Subway tuna or grilled chicken + all veggies
or salad = tomatoes + potatoes + onions + corn + red/green bell peppers
grilled chicken breast with pepper only
tuna pesto
my junk food:
lays = 0% cholesterol, Potassium = 250mg
Pringles = 0% cholesterol
Cassava Chip = 0% cholesterol
Just check the amount of your Sodium intake
Regarding Junk information / tv shows, i rather watch the following: The Walking Dead, Limitless, Fringe, Lost, CNN/BBC, BBC documentaries / Nat Geo
It’s an awesome feeling about these chips of jack n jill because it doesn’t just have a good taste, but a good flavor in it… I always eat it for snacks and partner it with a juice or soft drinks weird right? But taste so good and relaxing 🙂 I always share this with my brothers and niece… That’s why I also Order it online (https://www.goods.ph) because of my hectic schedules at work I don’t have time to go to market now a day 🙂 weekend with my family is what I value the most.. 🙂
Let’s all welcome Du30’s new taxes…
http://www.mb.com.ph/govt-plans-p10liter-sin-tax-on-sugary-beverages/