Sweet And Sour

In the UK media there are many sources who make you wonder whether they fail to understand the planet they are on and literally seem to be in a world entirely of their own. One such source is The Guardian, aka Grauniad because of its many errors of the past.

There was a time before finance and emotion took it over when it was The Manchester Guardian and a useful counter balance to the stuff that came out of the old Fleet Street. Then it was taken over and moved south to London.

The lengths of idiocy it will go to be seen to be on the side of individuality and personal preferences are extraordinary at times but today, 6 May 2018 they have almost literally taken the biscuit and a very sugary one at that.

Ella Risbridger in the Opinion section has a piece "Hospitals Are Bleak Enough Already. Banning Sugary Drinks Is Just Cruel". Yes, they are bleak because they have to be clean, very clean and with only the necessary kit to fulfil their critical tasks.

The same applies to the food and other intakes patients need to sustain them for the time they are there. Haute cuisine it isn't, basic nutritious and calculated to serve the particular needs of a patient it has to be and that is difficult enough.

Two major departments to be found in hospitals are oncology and gastro-intestinal, that is the inner bits dealing with input and outputs of the body. But the body is a whole. What goes in can get all over because of the blood stream etc. and the way the internal chemistry works.

There is the medication required for the person and other chemicals needed related to the function of the hospital. In recent decades these have been transformed following research and the discovery of new chemicals and combinations. They have to be carefully balanced in any treatments.

If Ella or any of the sub-editors could have spent ten minutes on the web they would have been able to see the chemical composition of many of the "sugary drinks". These too are now are the products of the synthetic chemicals industry that are very different from the original products of the past.

They are to do with taste and flavours, colour, impact and often designed to be addictive. A large dose of caffeine can be found along with other substances. Moreover, give the price competition and costs of sale, supply, manufacture etc. the contents have to be cheap. So it is a case of consumer beware.

People are different. Some can manage to drink a good deal of this stuff without much evident effect other than the caffeine hit etc. Others do not and again it can hit the brain as well as the system. One way to be affected is to be in a hospital with all of its chemistry.

Another is to be on strong medication following treatment whose function is adversely affected by such drinks with the risk of permanent damage in the case of either an overload of one or another or reactions from one or other of the many chemicals being put into the body.

But for Ella and The Guardian all this is as of nothing.