Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Do electric cats dream?

As I write, this cloudy Wednesday morning, the merely mortal shell of Snow White, our pet cybercat, sits motionless in the study. Her sightless eyes gaze purposelessly out the window at the morning traffic from Marlborough, swirling past on the A342.

The proximate reason for this state of deep suspended catimation is that our Energizer battery charger packed up yesterday, so I am currently unable to recharge her three D batteries. More on the way, as they say, courtesy of Amazon.

We have not forgotten our Arthur de Vany diet. We have chosen to interpret it as part of the continual struggle against high-glycemic-index foods and the pervasive intake of sugar. So we're OK with low-sugar, high-fibre cereals to start the day, but we're continuing to back-off from high GI carbohydrates such as pototo, rice etc. So little portions, or no portions. And we're all using the rowing machine on a regular basis (not aways the case in the past) so we all feel better.

You can make evolutionary arguments work in many ways - the problem of informed speculation not backed up with properly conducted experimentation. For example, lactose tolerance is a recent evolutionary development amongst some human populations (including Europeans) based on pastoralism. We Europeans are the descendants of people who have been eating grain foods for maybe 10,000 years - plenty of time for genetic/physical adaptation to have occurred.

The real dietary problem is processed food full of added sugar: that's only a century old. The increased incidence of diabetes, poor skin condition and obesity seems to indicate we are not well-adapted to such a diet.