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I mentioned yesterday the recent Bradley Cooper – Lady Gaga film ‘A Star Is Born’.
Another film I’ve watched recently(ish) was Bohemian Rhapsody.
I loved it.
Barring the obvious historical inaccuracies, I thought it was great.
The bit, from Freddie making up with his Dad to the end really got me.
Having three boys, anything involving fathers and sons tugs at the heart strings.
And I was watching it sat in a camping chair, looking up at one of those giant screens at Aintree Racecourse, so the last bit felt very much like being at Live Aid.
I downloaded a load of Queen songs after.
I’ve always liked them since my parents played them on a near constant loop through my childhood.
I was listening to one I’ve not heard in many years the other day.
“Too much love will kill you”.
I didn’t realise until I just googled it that Brian May released this first, the year after Freddy died.
He’d written it four years earlier in reflection to the break down of his first marriage and attraction to future wife Anita ‘Same Haircut’ Dobson.
As far as I know, Dirty Den never revealed his feelings on the whole situation.
It was re-release in 1995 as Queen song with Freddy’s previously recorded lyrics.
Anyway, back from the dated (and pointless) references.
“Too much love will kill you
Just as sure as none at all”
Like most things.
There’s an optimum amount (or range) of a lot of stuff.
Too much not good for us.
As is too little.
Doesn’t mean somewhere in the middle isn’t a good shout though.
Over the years, we’ve been told that pretty much everything is bad for us.
Fat, carbs, protein, calories, meat, red meat, processed meat, and more.
Headlines screaming out about how they’re going to kill us.
When you read the actual studies, many of them show that it’s only the highest consumption level groups that are worse off.
Often followed by lowest consumption level groups.
Then those that consume within a recommended range, the best off.
We’re all for people choosing to be vegetarian, vegan, plant based, etc.
If it’s a moral choice, that’s great.
I’ve recently substantially reduced my own meat consumption for such reasons.
If as a hard and fast rule it enables them to eat ‘better’ than they were before, that’s also cool.
But most massive, published, peer reviewed, controlled studies show that we, as humans, find a good balance of meat, veg, etc to be optimum for health.
Followed by diets with no meat.
Followed by eating like a maniac.
—————- Massive over simplification of the centitles there but you, hopefully, get the point —————-
Some studies show statistically equal health measures and all cause mortality between the no meat groups and the ‘recommended amount’ meat groups.
But no particularly robust studies seem to show none to be better than recommended, at least.
And I’ll take those massive, published, peer reviewed, controlled studies over Netflix documentaries any day of the week.
And, again, there’s nothing wrong with those meat free diets for moral and / or ‘finding it easier to stick to than not eating like a maniac’ reasons.
The ‘best’ approach to eating for us is the one that works best for us, for a variety of reasons and not the one that’s ‘best’ on paper.
And sure, too much protein can exacerbate existing kidney issues.
And can, potentially, cause them if you go really high (like, really high).
But we’d die (within about 70 days studies suggest) with none.
Similar with carbs and fat (with other health issues).
Too many calories makes us gain weight.
Too few also makes us die.
An amount of red meat in the diet can be beneficial.
Too much is bad.
A little processed meat won’t make any difference, but I would keep that one pretty low.
You get the point.
It might be true that “Too much love will kill you, just as sure as none at all”.
But, like with foods, it’s doesn’t mean that there’s not an Option C somewhere in between that’s a pretty good idea.
Much love,
‘Dirty’ Jon Hall
