UK Ban on Junk Food Advertising

low carb for life

The UK government is to announce a ban on junk food advertising before 9 pm on TV and online from 2023 in a bid to tackle the UK’s growing obesity crisis. The online ad ban would also affect all forms of digital marketing, including Facebook, Google, Instagram and Twitter.

Boris Johnson having changed his view on personal health after his hospitalisation with coronavirus last year is said to blame his own health issues for contributing to the outcome. Overweight people are at greater risk of severe illness or death from Covid19. Research shows that one in three children leaving primary school are overweight or obese and almost two-thirds of adults in England. A government consultation last year estimated that children under 16 were exposed to fifteen billion junk food advertisements online in 2019, compared with 700 million two years earlier.

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Processed Food – Evolution Gone Wrong

low carb for life

As we look 30 years into the future, it is said that we will need to feed two billion more people and the question of diet has taken on a worrying urgency and the foods we consume over the approaching decades will have profound implications for the planet. Some scientists claim that a diet that is high in meat and dairy will deplete the planet’s resources and therefore push for everyone to consume grains, nuts, fruit and vegetables.

Before the advent of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, all humans existed on hunting and gathering but as farming expanded, the hunter gather became constrained to forests, arid grasslands, remote islands and arctic Tundra’s. Only a few of these tribes still exist and the race is on to learn as much as we can about the ancient diet and way of life of the hunter gatherer before these “living fossils” disappear completely.

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Life on the Island of Crete

It’s been almost 20 years since we moved to the Island of Crete. When I first blogged about this most of you will remember that my partner and I were running a small business called “Apicius Sauces” and because the sauces were made from original ancient recipes we were able to sell them at most Museums around the country in England and at the Re-enactment markets where we occupied a small stall. In 2002 we closed the business which had been running for nine years and moved to Crete,Greece.

Once we were settled in our first home in Crete we realized just how much there was to do in order to become a citizen which involved much paper work having to be signed especially where the medical aspect is concerned and seeing that we did not speak the Greek language. However, the offices concerned were very helpful and we finally received our medical books with a special Ika no which you always have to take with you when visiting the doctor or hospital. On that note I must praise all the medical staff on how they take pride, especially in their job on looking after the elderly people. For instance, we have an automatic monthly appointment with our doctor who checks to make sure we are alright in health with the medication he prescribes for us, I am diabetic and my partner has a small heart problem. Also every three months he sends us to the medical centre for blood tests. In fact, the Greek people in shops, offices, hospitals etc., are always willing to help

There are several pharmacies in the town of Agios Nikolaos but we have always used the same pharmacy for the past 19 years, therefore they know our medical history and treat us like one of the family,so if I ask for anything which contains sugar, whoever is serving at the time will say Oh ! no no Rita you can’t have that . I consider they are looking after our well being, which brings me to where the Covid pandemic is concerned. Greece is doing it’s very best and I feel that if some do not want the vaccine they should appreciate what is being done through hard work and sleepless nights of all medical staff who are helping to prevent those people from catching the virus.

To continue with Life on the Island of Crete

While working as a volunteer at the Institute for Aegean Prehistory Study Center for East Crete I was fortunate enough in being able to work on the ancient Minoan and Mycenaean pottery where I became familiar with the shapes, sizes and names of the individual pots. After ten years I felt it was time to retire. However, I still needed a project of some sort to work on from home, this is when I began the study of the ancient Mycenaean Linear B script writings which some of my blogging friends will already know. These scripts were written on clay tablets and many of them were found by Sir Arthur Evans while excavating the Archaeology site of Knossos. I have worked on the Linear B tablets for the past 5 years and finally achieved a BA degree with the help from my teacher Richard Vallance. Now, I have decided I would like to study the Minoan Linear A scripts, even though they have not yet been deciphered and hopefully i will be able to translate at least some of the tablets.

 

Akrotiri Finds

Μιλαώ Λίγο Ελληνικά

The web site of the newspaper Η Καθημεριμινή reports on new finds from the Christos Doumas excavation at Akrotiri on Santorini. Celebrated in the media as “Greece’s Bronze Age Pompeii”, the remains at Akrotiri provide an insight into what a Minoan town looked like – I’ve written about it before.

Below the image is my translation of the newspaper report. My interpolations to ease reading are in italics. As ever this should be viewed as an approximate translation – I’ve combined Mr Google and my various dictionaries. I’m not convinced that the references in the text agree with the sequence of pictures in this article (Figure 6 appears to be missing from the Η Καθημεριμινή article). The original article and related pictures are here.

Faience shells from the new discoveries at Akrotiri

“Significant new evidence has been revealed during the continuing excavation at Akrotiri on Thera under the…

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Ancient undersea middens offer clues

Ancientfoods

original article from theconversation.com

Katherine WooMarch 21, 2021 9.08pm EDT

The world’s oceans hold their secrets close, including clues about how people lived tens of thousands of years ago.

For a large portion of humanity’s existence, sea levels were significantly lower (up to 130 metres) than they are today, exposing millions of square kilometres of land. And the archaeological record is clear: people in the pastlived on these coastal plainsbefore the land slipped beneath the waves.

Archaeology already tells us these drowned landscapes played significant roles in human history. Major events such as human migrations across the globe and the invention of maritime technology took place along these now-drowned shorelines.

But these sites can be hard to find.

Intwopaperspublished this week our team reports on a breakthrough in detecting and excavating one particular type of coastal archaeological site — shell middens — on what…

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