by Cracked. com
Well, in the 1950s, fundamentalist Islam made a huge comeback, bringing with it outdated and dying traditions like the veil. You can thank the followers of a fringe eighteenth-century scholar named Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who insisted on taking Islam back to its roots . . . which in this case meant an imaginary past where “progress” of the past fourteen hundred years never happened. It’s ironic, considering that during his lifetime, Abd al-Wahhab was taken about as seriously as Pat Robertson is taken today in the West.
The lesson here is that cultures aren’t all on a straight upward path toward progressive enlightenment and equality for all. They’re more like the Batman franchise, going through highs and lows and reboots. Abd al-Wahhab was Islam’s Joel Schumacher.
7.A
Everything You Know About Food
Is Conspiring to Make You Fat and Dead
Americans spend trillions of dollars on food each year, which puts the food industry right up there with oil and banking for the number of Ivy League–educated people employed to lie to you. As a reasonably intelligent person, you probably know not to trust the health claims in commercials for marshmallow cereal. But you might not realize how many of the most basic assumptions you make about nutrition are misguided and downright deadly.
THE MYTH: Health foods are, you know . . . healthy.
Who among us hasn’t had a bran or blueberry muffin instead of a doughnut at Starbucks and made a mental note to thank ourselves later when we’re showing off our health-cake-winnowed abs at the beach?
Many of our food-based decisions are guided by a “just add nutrition” philosophy on ingredients: To turn shitty food into health food, just add healthy-sounding buzzwords. We happily drink $700 million worth of vitaminwater each year, because, as the name clearly states, there are at least two healthy ingredients in there. We consume high-protein, low-fat foods such as granola bars and protein shakes like we’re eating our way to a longer life.
THE TRUTH: Health foods are trying to give you diabetes.
Unfortunately, adding bran to a fist-size chunk of cake does not turn it into health food. It’d be great if that’s how chemistry worked. Carrot cake would be as good for you as a salad! Adding a nonalcoholic lime wedge to your nine vodka tonics would make you OK to drive home. Here in the real world, your average bran or blueberry muffin has just as many calories as a McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin.
Also, turning a candy bar inside out and naming it after granola doesn’t magically make it good for you. Like most packaged foods, the granola bars that are good for you taste terrible. The Quaker Oats True Delight bar, on the other hand, contains raspberries and chocolate and allegedly tastes pretty good. And it’d better, because pound for pound, it pretty much has the same amount of calories as a Snickers bar and more fat than a 3 Musketeers.
Speaking of which, you’ll need a Snickers bar with your vitamins and water if you want to re-create the nutritional value of Vitaminwater, since each bottle contains thirty-seven grams of sugar, which is the same as a Snickers.
FIGURE 7.2 “Can we just list ‘health’ as an ingredient?”
THE MYTH: Spinach has as much iron as red meat.
When it comes to vegetables, spinach is a statistical anomaly. Despite having none of the delicious cow flesh taste of red meat, it somehow manages to pack just as much muscle-building iron as a steak. That’s probably why Popeye carried it around. A can of spinach has a much longer shelf life than a piece of meat, and carrying around rotting pieces of animal flesh is no way to attract the anorexic babes. So eat your spinach, kids, and you’ll grow up to have freakishly large forearms, just like Popeye!
THE TRUTH: Spinach has low iron, just like any other fruit or vegetable.
The myth that spinach is jam-packed with iron can be traced to the source of countless other misunderstandings throughout history: a simple typo. A German study in 1870 accidentally printed the decimal place for the iron content of spinach one space too far to the right. In other words, it mistakenly listed spinach as having ten times more iron than it actually does. Unlike most other typos, though, this one has managed to survive for more than 140 years. It’s still not uncommon to see mentions of the insanely high iron content of spinach in encyclopedias and online resources. Meanwhile, you’ll see no mentions of that sort when it comes to watermelon, which has pretty much the exact same amount of iron as spinach but 100 percent less of that “yard grass marinated in dirt and filth” taste.
MYTH: You need at least eight glasses of water a day to be healthy. At least.
Anything less and you might as well be a walking mummy, one sneeze away from crumbling into ashes, Voldemort style. (Whoops . . . spoiler.)
THE TRUTH: Put down the five-gallon water jug. Everything is fine.
Unless your diet consists wholly of dehydrated biscuit powder, you’re already getting most of that water in your food.
The whole idea of needing eight glasses of water a day seems to stem from a misunderstanding of a 1945 study that recommended that specific amount of water for the average person. What researchers in that study understood, and people parroting their conclusions don’t, is that unless you’re an astronaut eating astronaut food, food also contains water.
Steak, pasta, fruit, bread, haggis, live bats, you name it—most of what you eat has water in it. They were recommending eight cups total, not eight cups of pure water in addition to your fairly waterlogged diet. The other claim is that drinking water (especially cold water) helps you lose weight, saying that “cold water is absorbed more quickly into the system,” or that it burns calories somehow.
People also claim that water can fill you up so you won’t be as hungry. Actually, thirst and hunger are separate systems, and studies have shown that drinking water before or during a meal doesn’t affect appetite at all. You know what can fill you up, though? Water-filled foods. So have some pasta salad or grapes instead of forcing water down your throat. But, you know, it’s your choice whether you want to feel full or just go to the bathroom ten times a day.
How People Get Fat
THE MYTH: Your metabolism determines how skinny or fat you are.
“I have a slow metabolism” outranks even the beloved “I’m big boned” on the list of reasons people use to explain why they’re overweight. You can clock all of the hours you want on the treadmill or embarrass yourself and everyone who loves you by playing Just Dance on expert mode, but it’s all for naught, thanks to your slow metabolism. You’ve even taken to eating breakfast every day to kick your metabolism into high gear, just like the doctors from breakfast cereal commercials recommend, but with no luck. Meanwhile, that skinny bitch you went to high school with went on to take the competitive butter-eating circuit by storm and still looks like a supermodel in her Facebook photos. Curse you, unfair metabolism!
THE TRUTH: Losing or gaining weight is all about calories.
If you want to know why you’re fat or skinny, take the number of calories you put into your body and subtract the number of calories your body is using. The further that number is from zero, the fatter you will become. It’s as simple as that; metabolism has practically nothing to do with losing weight. You may live on a diet of nothing but salad and fresh air, but if you couple it with a fitness regimen that consists mostly of walking from the bed to the couch, you’re still going to gain weight. And there’s nothing your metabolism can do to help you.
In fact, a study by the Mayo Clinic found that metabolism works in the exact opposite way than most people think. Skinnier people tend to have slower metabolisms, while the heftier folks have faster metabolisms. How could that possibly be? Well, “metabolism” basically refers to the amount of calories your body burns by performing regular functions like breathing and carrying blood around to your thirsty little organs. In larger people, the body has to work harder to do these things, so it naturally burns more calories while doing them. In other words, it’s not something you want to count on for bailing you out.
As far as the p
roper time of day to eat, there is no proper time. In fact, scientists who aren’t in the business of inventing cookie-based cereals think that breakfast is the most important meal of the day to skip if you’re trying to lose weight.
Things You Learned About Drinking and Drugs That Can Kill You
Drinking and being a teenager are the only two activities that have been shown to make human beings stupider in direct proportion to how much smarter they think they are becoming (see Figure 7.3). This is why teenagers and alcohol have been ordered to stay at least one year apart from each other, and also why they so consistently ignore that restraining order. This means that most of what you will learn about drinking and drunkenness will be taught to you by teenagers, while you’re still a teenager, and while everyone involved is, you guessed it, drunk.
FIGURE 7.3 Other myths that drinkers commonly believe include “I’m not talking loud, you’re talking loud!” “I’m a suave sex pirate. Let’s dance!” and
“This is seriously the best burito I’ve ever tasted.”
THE MYTH: “Let him sleep it off.”
If someone drinks to the point of passing out, the best option is to toss him in bed, draw some dicks on his face, and let sleep work its healing magic. Finishing said friend’s lukewarm Colt 45 after returning to the party is strictly optional.
THE TRUTH: Tossing friends in bed after they’ve passed out drunk is a fantastic idea, provided you’re hoping your friends drown in their own vomit.
The problem is that passing out and falling asleep aren’t the same thing. People who have passed out as a result of alcohol intoxication are unlikely to be awakened by the need to hurl. If they happen to be lying on their back when the spewing starts, the chunks have nowhere to go except into the lungs, as multiple dead rock stars can attest.
Instead, you should turn them on their side and, between shots of tequila, try to make sure they haven’t stopped breathing at some point. If their breathing becomes irregular or they start vomiting without waking up, they have alcohol poisoning. Call for help. In the morning, they’ll thank you for being responsible and taking care of them in their time of need. At least until they see the collage of penis swastikas you drew on their face and arms.
THE MYTH: “Take a drink, it’ll warm you up.”
Go take a shot of booze if you have some around. You feel warmer, right? That’s what’s known around frat houses and homeless shelters as a “beer jacket,” the warm fuzzy glow that can save you thirty-five dollars at the Burlington Coat Factory if you play your cards right.
THE TRUTH: Alcohol makes you feel warmer in the same way that it makes you think that you’re an amazing karaoke singer.
Booze makes you feel warm and turn beet red because it causes your blood vessels to dilate. This brings the blood closer to the surface of your skin, which makes you feel warmer because it’s pulling blood from the inner, warmer parts of your body and drawing it toward your skin. That warmth you’re feeling is actually your body heat bleeding out of your body into the cold air. So while sitting in your unheated apartment in the dead of winter pounding vodka might seem like a decent idea, your skin and Russian history are leading you astray.
If you find yourself stranded at the top of a mountain with a few buddies and a crate of schnapps, you’re probably better off ignoring the booze and using each other’s body heat for warmth (it’s only gay if someone sees you). If a Saint Bernard shows up with a shot of brandy around its neck like cartoons promised (see chapter 2), feed it the shot and then drape its passed-out body over your icy torso.
THE MYTH: “Take some aspirin before you drink. Boom, no hangover!”
All experienced drinkers think they have some ingenious hangover cure. One guy will claim to have a scientifically precise mixture of liquor that will cancel out the effects of a hangover via some mysterious chemical reaction. Another recommends a huge breakfast. But one of the more timeless techniques is the easiest: just pop an aspirin or two prior to drinking.
THE TRUTH: First of all, what kind of magical aspirin are you taking that has the tenacity to still be fighting a headache twelve hours later?
Even if popping an aspirin before drinking did fight hangovers, its powers would have run their course long before you needed help.
But wait, it gets worse. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that ingesting aspirin actually slows the rate at which your body metabolizes alcohol. Not only does that increase blood alcohol levels, but it makes the effects of the alcohol last longer. So if you feel better than usual when you wake up in the morning, it probably means you’re still drunk. And while that may sound like a pretty awesome solution, especially if it gets you to work on time, you’ll think differently when the delayed hangover hits you like a truck a few hours later. Or when you literally drive head-on into a truck on the way to work because you’re drunk and hungover.
So is there any such thing as a hangover cure? Well, dehydration is the real enemy. Try drinking eight ounces of water between drinks. It won’t completely prevent a hangover, but you’ll spend so much time running to the bathroom that you’ll have less time for chugging contests. Alternatively, you could do what the truly sad do and just drink indefinitely.
BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW: Straight from the Too Good to Be True Department (aka Science): The best enemy of a hangover after a night of heavy drinking is a bacon sandwich. You’re welcome.
THE MYTH: “You need to sober up. Here, drink some coffee.”
How many movies have you seen where someone summons a cup of coffee to quell a pal’s drunken shenanigans? Ten minutes later, the drinker in question has sobered right up, as if coffee were a liquid time machine that can undo an entire night’s worth of bad decisions.
THE TRUTH: Coffee is a stimulant. Alcohol is a depressant.
The thinking here is that, in the war for control over your bodily functions, stimulants kick all sorts of depressant ass. You know, like how if you take a shot of whiskey and a Red Bull, you feel as normal as if you’d been drinking a glass of water. That’s what happens, right?
What actually happens is similar to the warming effect above—coffee only makes you feel less drunk. Your system is still suffering from all of the usual effects of trying to metabolize a whole bottle of poison. That false sense of alertness is the stuff that DUIs are made of.
THE MYTH: “Fine, so you caught me with some beer in my bedroom. And yes, those are my cigarettes. God, Mom, it’s not like I’m doing drugs.”
THE TRUTH: If the concern is purely how much trouble you can get into with the police, then yes . . .
. . . it’s way better to get caught drinking a bottle of malt liquor with a Marlboro hanging from your lips than to get caught with a joint or a bag of meth. But if the parents’ concern is whether their kid will freaking die, it’s no contest:
FIGURE 7.4 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it should be noted that marijuana figures do not include collisions caused by stoned people going 25 mph on the highway.
FIGURE 8.1 Until these glasses are publicly available, understanding what exact type of stupid we are is probably our best bet.
8.A
Your Brain’s Misleading User’s Manual
Silly Urban Legends That Never Should Have Made the Cut; Crucial Information They Never Should Have Left Out
Your teachers are so busy cramming your brain full of bullshit that they never get around to teaching you how to use the damn thing. Sort of a wasted opportunity, since your brain is probably the most amazing machine humanity knows about. That’s not us blowing smoke up your ass. Just because your brain is capable of amazing stuff doesn’t mean you’re going to know how to use it. It’s also complicated, constantly malfunctioning, optimized for a world that no longer exists, and from a usability perspective, so nonintuitive that it’s almost like it was designed to trick you. And they just sort of kicked you out into the real world with a handful of memorable lies that get endlessly repeated by morning
zoo DJs and whoever makes up the information in e-mail forwards.
How the Brain Is Organized
THE MYTH: Your personality is determined by your left- or right-brainedness.
You’ve likely grown up hearing that people who are left-handed tend to be more creative. Why? Because being left-handed means that the right side of your brain is predominantly in charge (it controls the left side of your body), and the right side is the “creative” side of the brain that handles things like writing hit songs and convincing people that paint haphazardly splattered on a canvas is “art.” Meanwhile, the left side of your brain is the “logic” side, which is responsible for the boring stuff like making dinner reservations and reminding you that unprotected sex with a prostitute is a bad idea.
THE TRUTH: Neither side of your brain is in sole control of logic or creativity.
The brain does indeed have specialized structures that handle certain functions, but they don’t all huddle together on separate sides like the rich kids and poor kids in a high school cafeteria. For example, while grammar and word production happen on the left side of the brain, intonation and emphasis happen on the right—so good luck forming a meaningful sentence without using both sides of your brain. In fact, when functions on one side of the brain are damaged, oftentimes those functions will be picked up by the other side. We’re assuming this is the reason Gary Busey can still speak.