Hairtech I wrote this almost 10 years ago and gave it as a speech among many other speeches and I consider myself a big time amateur. The audience laughed a little and learned a little. It is somewhat diabetes related. Contrary to what some on some of the forums have written about me I like to read, write and help people because that is what I like to do. I get excited when presenting new ideas or trying to get at the truth.
When I was about 10 years old in the early 70 s I thought I knew what health food was, if fact I was quite sure. I was on the same nutritional program as the astronauts. Now your probably thinking how does a 10-year-old get a hold of this information. Well it wasn t as hard as you might think. I got it from the man on television. What was this superior nutritional program I was on, space food sticks and tang. Surely this would give me the strength and stamina that the astronauts had, the commercial said so.
Imagine, there I was sitting on the recliner, I mean in the capsule, getting ready for blast off, my body could withstand the G-forces it was experiencing because of my special diet, I was going to the moon. In reality the only thing that was blasting off and going to the moon was my blood sugar level. If we look at the main ingredients in both those products, it s glucose syrup and sugar. Neither one contributes to health, in fact they both have the opposite effect. The list of ill effects is long, and I ll go over a few of them, in a minute.
I believe at the time this product was marketed more to boys then to girls and a good marketer always knows his customer. In order to know your customer you have to understand his psyche. When it comes to little boys there are several aspects that need to be met. I am going to give you just 2 of those aspects that both these products meet. One would be the need for power, boys are continuously in search of icons of power, they have a need to be the fastest, strongest, or jump the highest. Who better to have use your product then an astronaut, they are the best of the best when it comes to their physical condition.
The second need is the need to be brave. We have all seen the kid that wears a cut or scrap as a badge of courage. An astronaut is perceived as being extremely brave, you would have to be, your basically strapping yourself to a rocket. So when a child sees this commercial he associates, eating and drinking these products with power and bravery.
Is using an astronaut to market your product wrong? No, not at all, if the astronaut truly developed his physical power and bravery from the product there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Somehow I highly doubt that taking in loads of sugar all day long contributes to these qualities, if fact I am quite sure this wasn t the case.
So what kind of person would attempt to deceive a child into eating something that they knew was bad for their health. Think about that question. We see advertisements for products aimed at children that we know are bad for them, what kind of person would be willing to cause harm to a child, just to make a buck.
I think what happened here was there was a big board meeting and the head of purchasing said listen we bought loads of corn syrup and sugar because it was so cheap, but now the warehouse is filled to capacity, what are we going to do with all this stuff. The head of product development chimes in you know what, I got an idea, we can heat it up, add some flavor, press it out like a tootsie roll, and will tell all the boys and girls this is what the astronauts eat, and since sugar is so addicting they be eating it all day long. Moms will love it they won t have to cook and they will think that the kids are eating a nutritionally complete meal. Hey, it s a win win.
This all happened in the early 70 s and maybe your thinking well times have changed, and advertisers don t do that anymore. Well the fact is they do it more then ever. When Michael Jordan is sweating those orange droplets of Gatorade sweat and a voice says is it in you what are they saying, if I drink loads of there flavored sugar water, so much if fact that it starts to come out of my pores I will be a great athlete, what does sugar water have to do with performance, absolutely nothing, but children make this association and don t have the cognitive ability to discern fact from fiction.
So what does all this sugar do to the human body, the list is very long, so I ll go through just a few, dental decay, heart disease, depression, senility, hypertension, and cancer.
Sugar also makes you fat, and this is how. When you eat it your blood sugar levels rise very rapidly, your body produces insulin to deal with the situation, storing some of it in the muscles and liver as glycogen which is basically a energy reserve but once those are filled the insulin is forced to convert the rest of the sugar into triglycerides which is deposited as adipose tissue, adipose tissue is body fat. As person becomes fatter from the sugar, their body becomes more and more insulin resistant, so the body responds by producing even more insulin. Eventually the insulin receptors on the surface of the body s cells are blocked from carrying out their function. This is one reason why overweight people are tired much of time. Insulin is no longer effective, you have become a fat producing machine. Eventually you end up with diabetes. Now diabetes is not good thing, in fact if you re a man, it can make you impotent.
Has anybody here seen that commercial where the young, healthy looking baseball player is touting Viagra, I think maybe he drank a little too much Gatorade.