Energy Drinks Industry Secrets

The thing is, our body doesn’t want all the energy 24/7.

Photo from nattu’s flickr

Coffee is no longer the only beverage to keep us awake and alert. Energy drinks tipped its popularity and valuation is in billions of dollars. The market is even expected to reach $52 Billion by 2016.

Effective or not, it doesn’t matter for me. I drink it because of the premise of extended performance. Knowing that I should perform longer is enough to push me to do more.

But studies show that energy drinks can really sustain energy for up to 90 minutes after consumption. Athletes perform better and drivers counter their sleepiness. Since these benefits are real, these drinks should be good right? We are not given all the facts.

We are not supposed to devour on energy drinks everyday.  Franca Alphin, director of health promotion at Duke Student Health, said it well: “caffeine is not a substitute for sleep”. I know no one wants to sleep when we demand more time from us but drinking anything will not do the sleeping for our body. We still need to rest.

But energy drinks can be addicting and people will drink it everyday. People will think that an energy drink is a necessity for concentration. Tracy Falba, a faculty who studied addiction, claimed that energy drink addiction is in the same isle of alcohol or smoking addiction because people suffer the withdrawal symptoms after halting the consumption.

Bruce, et al’s (2000) study shows that caffeine dosage of 6 mg/kg body weight has the same effect with 9 mg/kg body weight. It doesn’t matter whether you drink more – you get the same benefit of increased performance. Nonetheless, certain energy drinks can contain caffeine of 7 cups of coffee.

More is worse. Cans after cans of energy drinks could lead to caffeine toxicity. Signs of too much energy are anxiety, nervousness, nausea and the list goes on.  Seizures, manias and strokes are not unheard of. Death incidents are also linked to the head players in the industry including Monster and Red Bull.

Energy drinks are very high on sugar, which is one of the reasons why it’s very hard to combat diabetes. A ploy to escape the sugar content is using artificial sweeteners instead. Certain artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose are hazardous chemicals. Heck, sucralose is even harmful to plants and animals; and the human body won’t even recognize them as food but toxins.

It’s delicious, but the myriad of ingredients are too much for the human body.

How frequent do you consume energy drinks?

Sources:
Experts: energy drinks can be addictive; The Chronicle
What happens if you drink too many energy drinks?; Livestrong
The Dirty Secrets of Energy Drinks; Natural Commando
Energy Drink Side Effects; Energy Friend
MarketsandMarkets: Global Sports and Energy Drinks Market is Expected to Reach $52 Billion by 2016; PRNewswire
Energy Drinks: An Assessment of Their Market Size, Consumer Demographics, Ingredient Profile, Functionality, and Regulations in the United States; Comprehensive reviews in food science and food safety

Search Engines Industry Secrets

If not present in search engine results, the business has no business in the internet.

Photo from photoXpress

Google is a titan of the internet. It has been and still is. Bloggers and businesses have to abide by the guidelines of Google to be present in the web. Having more publicity accords higher ranking, more clicks, and more profits for most.

Not many will take time to know it, but it costs money to operate a search engine. These companies will have warehouses full of computers working as a system to fit the demands of worldwide searches, that is, 3 billion searches every day.

Searches can be optimized to rank on top. JCPenny, a retail store, took the “black hat” to be the earnest result when you searched for “jeans”, “furniture”, and other related products. This happened during the holiday season; and even if you typed in “Samsonite carry on luggage,” JCPenny will still be number one in results instead of Samsonite.com. Their online shopping sales spiked up.

The “black hat” is against the guidelines of Google. It is deceptive and is cheating. It is a monopoly and is unjust. Google has a robust preventing action against these modifications. Even overdoing SEO optimization, a legitimate way of increasing site rankings, can sink the site off the Google results. Google’s corrective action against Penny?

“On Wednesday evening, Google began what it calls a “manual action” against Penney, essentially demotions specifically aimed at the company. At 7 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, J. C. Penney was still the No. 1 result for “Samsonite carry on luggage.” Two hours later, it was at No. 71. At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Penney was No. 1 in searches for “living room furniture.” By 9 p.m., it had sunk to No. 68.

In other words, one moment Penney was the most visible online destination for living room furniture in the country. The next it was essentially buried.” (Segal, 2011)

I say it’s too late. Millions of online shoppers visited and sales are already made. It only shouts embarrassment for the company. German company BMW was also caught bringing out the “black hat” and suffered the same fate in 2006.

Search engine keywords messes up with creative writing. Online writers and publishers are not free to use words they will. They have to ensure that people will find them, and keyword is the way. HuffingtonPost forced keywords in “What Time Does The Superbowl Start” and it rewarded them rankings. I don’t do this; I’m for the freedom of word choices. However,

“..until Google stops rewarding bad writing and various annoying tricks, they’ll proliferate on the Web. Because, if nobody is reading the page, it doesn’t matter that it’s actually better written and contains more useful content than the pages that the search engines are sending readers to.” (Joyner, 2011)

Everything is one search away – publicizing everything. You can search the map to peek at the Imrali Island, a military forbidden zone. Military grounds, air bases, and highly secured prisons in Japan, Germany, Turkey, USA, and anywhere on Earth is searchable.

And when you have an interview or a date, you can know everything about the other person by merely searching the name. The ease of instant information has questions of security and ownership.

How does this industry secret rank to you?

Sources:
Search Engine Optimization Dirty Secrets; Outside the Beltway
The Dirty Little Secrets of Search; The New York Times
Some Clear Facts About Google’s “Transparency” Report; RIAA

 

Aviation Industry Secrets

An airline is accused of hacking a person’s email.

Photo from Yuichi Kosio’s flickr

Airplanes are the safest mode of transportation. In 2002, there were 6,316,000 car accidents in US alone, compare that to 339 near collisions between airlines. The safest seat you’ll be was in the back of the plane, having 40% more survival rate in case something unwelcome happened (based on Popular Mechanic’s study of plane crashes since 1971). That’s the dilemma, comfort was in the front, safety was in the back, where would you be?

AskMen.com named Iran Airlines, China Airlines, and Cubana Airlines as the most dangerous airlines in the world. Iran Airlines’s had three accidents in the last 10 years and its safety issues earned a banned status from European Union. China has high number of casualties, the latest it had was in 2002 where 225 lives were lost. Cubana Airlines has the lowest success flights between accidents.

The approximate starting salary of a pilot was $18,000 a year. A janitor’s salary was $21,000 while a New York taxi cab’s salary was $22,000. To get proper training, a pilot aspirant pays $40,000 to $50,000 in average and needs to pass three licenses. Captains earn gigantic if he had miraculous hours of flight.

Dr. Davis Stork said that the filth on airplanes are hazardous to health. Blankets and pillows are unwashed, tray tables are unsanitary and floors are soiled. Try not to touch anything or have a hand wash for your aid.

Kate Hanni sued Delta Air line Inc., accusing the company hacked emails from her computer. She is associated with FlightsRights.org where passengers voice out about the service of the airline. Whether it’s true or not, a company could go to the extreme to save their face, even to the point of privacy breach.

Order canned or bottled refreshments. EPA testing confirmed 13% of the tested aircraft contained coliform bacteria in their drinking water. The bacteria is found in the fecal matter.

The sky is not entirely clear space – birds can fly too! US Air Force reported 5,000 bird strikes in 2007 due to collision with aircrafts. Other than that, no one’s tracking how many birds were sacrificed for your flight.

What would you like to improve in airlines?

Sources:
Airline industry’s ‘dirty little secret’; CNN
Airlines’ dirty little secret; CBS
8 Terrifying Airline Secrets; MainStreet
Delta is Hacking E-mails?; MainStreet
Safest Seat on a Plane: PM Investigates
How to Survive a Crash; Popular Mechanics
How Much Does It Cost to Become a Pilot?; eHow
Car Accident Statistics; Lawcore
Top 10: Most Dangerous Airlines; AskMen.com

 

Fitness Industry Secrets

The fitness industry is more marketing and psychology than physical.

Fitness Membership. Photo from fitfreedom.wordpress.com

The fitness industry has a spur of growth these recent years, due to illnesses like diabetes and obesity. And of course, thanks to Hollywood we all want to be hot. And that’s the promise of the Fitness Industry, be it a club membership or DVD take-outs – you will be hot and sexy when you buy their products and services.

You decided to join a fitness club. On the façade you saw beachfront bodies, hot, sexy, and sizzling! Expectedly, models are the lean and muscular ones. It doesn’t mean that they got fit in that gym, but seeing them makes you believe. Admit it, most people are visual people. Seeing what you want to be is enough to persuade you.

You may or may not notice, but the trainers are marketing savvy. You signed the contract and gave them permission to bill your credit card. Often times, they still make you choose your personal trainer. And you’ll see, some are more expensive than the others. Paying them more doesn’t guarantee you better results. It’s still all you, you do the work for your own body, not the jam-packed trainers themselves.

The next step is to measure your current fitness or health status. How can you know if you are obese, overweight, fit, or underweight? They measure your BMI (body mass index). This scale, created by the US government is flawed! Its purely based on height and weight butwhat about fats proportion? What if you just have huge bone density that adds to your weight? And all other considerations are not accounted. According to this scale, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Michael Jordan are all overweight. However, it’s the most popular and easiest measure. But if your BMI surprised you, you may just have the body of Brad Pitt.

They offer the services of in-house nutritionist. They will give you a tease, and make the nutritionist assess your diet for the first time and recommend some changes. Diet and nutrition is common sense. Eat what the caveman eats, all natural and avoid processes and you’re good. Paying extra for nutritionists or books is expendable.

Gym Equipment Exercise. Photo from inletfitness.com

You got started. The leeway to steadfast weight trimming and strength building is the equipment and machinery. But you and your trainer will spend less time in it. Instead, your trainer will drive you to “stability balls, resistance tubing or bands, and balance tools”, more on exercises you can’t do alone. These trainers are told to veer away from constant use of equipment, because when the person learned how to use them (and it’s damn easy to learn), they won’t need trainers and will stop the service (DeFranco, 2012).

It’s a psychological game! They get you psyched up in the start, then when it’s been months and you do the same exercises over again, they intervene and re-psych you up to keep you paying the membership. It’s an industry, meaning a business. It doesn’t care if you get healthier or leaner. What it cares about your money.

Their programs may not work out for you, really. Our genetic makeup is part of the equation, but would they say it? No. They trick you to believe what the best looking body is, but each of us look at our best differently. And then they promise you that the best way to achieve it is through their gym.

If you noticed nothing’s changed, or at least on the timeline they promise you, it’s also planned out. They’ll say that despite the program, diets and supplements they served you, it all falls down to individual differences. It didn’t work out for you because it isn’t right for your body, and you keep on finding what works for you. Yeah, you’ve gotta pay them more.

Their gym is a breeding ground for germs, thanks to the sweaty bodies all around. From athlete’s foot to flu, they have it. And these clubs, not all of it, are not mandated by law to handle medical emergencies. Some trainers can’t even do CPR. Thing is, we are prone to injury when exercising, isn’t it? And heart attacks, due to improper exercise or overexercise, will need immediate help in matters of minutes.

Fitness industry doesn’t have a federal regulation to keep private data. Doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers, all these professionals are ruled by law to preserve nondisclosure of any private information you shared with them. But the fitness industry doesn’t have that, and unfortunately you have to share your medical history to them at the beginning of your program. Be prudent as these people are free to gossip about you.

It’s hell hard to terminate a membership. Even if you communicate that you want to quit, chances are you signed a contract in day one and they’ll keep earning from you credit card even after you stopped. You better read before you sign, because if you sue them, they just present your signature and they win.

I’ve been a member of a nationwide fitness club. I know many success stories. Sure, there are people who got their magazine cover body, and fitness clubs helped them. But victim here, not all trainers are qualified to be one. Their management will employ many to meet the sky high demand, and see for themselves if they’re good with being a trainer. If not, oh well, drop him and get another.

Personal Trainer Encouragement. Photo from methodfitness.com

Even the professional and ethical can’t escape the demands of business, and what kept their growing bank account are some tricks here and deceit there to get you excited and believe all the miracles they claim.

I’m not implying that we quit our membership. Our body will always clamor exercise, and their services shot straight to that humane need. But you deserve to know all their secrets; and you can be fit at home, at work, at school, at Disneyland park, wherever.

How was your experience in fitness clubs?

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Sources:
Fitness Industry Secrets;   Fergus Niall Personal Training
Seeing Is Believing If You Want To Burn Fat – Or Is It?; FatBurning Furnace
10 Things Fitness Clubs Won’t Tell You; SmartMoney
5 Secrets the Fitness Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know; Ezine Articles
What the diet industry won’t tell you; Low-Carber

10 Things Your Personal Trainer Won’t Tell You; IDEA Health and Fitness Association

Fast Food Industry Secrets

7 ingredients to make Chicken Nuggets, including Silicone – yeah, that one they use for breast implants.

Photo from photoXpress

Fast food is in every corner of every major city of the world. And how can they ever run out of business, people would prefer to watch streamed TV shows rather than cook. We don’t have all the musing time and we have priorities to focus on. It’s rather paradoxical that eating quality food, that which is the basic necessity for our survival, is the most neglected and crammed.

We trust other people to prepare foods for us; but there’s no way can we be assured of the utter cleanliness of the ingredients, the preparations, and the promises of the fast food chain. For all we know, we are eating one week old refrigerated veggies marketed as fresh salad.

Contaminants

Since at minimal amount it can’t affect your body, it is legal to contain traces of maggots, rat poop and the like in products of fast food. The Dateline crew, in their research,  found “rodents and insects (alive and dead), grime and debris in several chains”. (AskMen.com)

Documentary Food, Inc. showed that most cow meats are all mixed up in one grinding machine. If one cow is diseased, the rest is contaminated. Hamburgers and other meat are very susceptible to malicious bacteria, especially E. coli. How they clean it? They let it pass through ammonia gas. Ammonia is what you pee and what you clean your toilet with.

Certain fast foods admit that their products may contain additives that could irritate your allergies. They just won’t specify which products.

“The most common violations in fast-food chains? Employees not washing their hands (in some chains, there was no soap in the bathrooms), improper food holding temperatures, undercooked meat, and employees handling food with their bare hands.” (AskMen.com)

Expenses: Us and Them

Only 19% of cost you pay for your fast food product is accounted by food itself. The rest is just operations, packaging, marketing, and the aircon to keep your face fresh.

In 2009 alone, $4.2 Billion was spent on fast food advertising. Strategically, they targeted children more.

$1.6 Billion was the annual cost for online and TV advertisements for kids alone.

These fast food restaurants have high turnover, but they pay ridiculously low wages.

The food industry is serious about keeping silence from critics. If a party has a revealing study that could harm their industry, expect “heats” from multiple sources.

At Counters

Longer lines will make you buy more – due to exposure to temptation.

Fast foods have healthy options, hidden and more expensive; while value meals have blinded you to spend more since not all people like all to eat everything in the combo but coerced to by the offer.

Labels

Don’t trust their calorie count because it may be erroneous. An overstated net weight is more likely to be penalized by FDA than the understated, so they understate it more often.

“Low fat” label is just an illusion of a product being healthy. Check the calorie count because a  “low-fat” chicken quesadillas have 742 calories.

A “zero trans fat” label meant there’s a lot of saturated fat.

“Sugar free” contained high fructose corn syrup.

At least 50 different chemicals are found in the average strawberry milkshake of fast foods. And since FDA’s definition of natural ingredients is anything derived from a natural source, these fast-foods can call a strawberry milkshake ‘natural’ when in fact it was from an animal derivative.

Ingredients

Wendy’s Frosty took at least 14 ingredients to make, including the chemical used as electronic cigarette’s filter.

McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets contain at least 7 ingredients to make, including silicone – the same substance they put on breasts implants.

McDonald’s Salad contained a chemical that is not even approved for cat food because its safety isn’t warranted.

Cellulose, a derivative of wood, is mixed with most processed foods to give texture. Cellulose took the place of oils and flours just because it is inexpensive. In turn, we get zero nutrition. Our stomach can’t digest cellulose, so it’ll be released as is.

The berries that topped the muffins are fake. Starting 2010, fake berries are in production. Ingredients? Food colorings and a bunch of chemicals interplay to mimic the chewy berries that we love. It’s cheaper than that of nature, but with zero health benefits.

French fries, the one that’s always hanging with our combos, are meat flavored, not potato. There’s even a time when McDonald’s French fries contained more saturated fat than their burgers. Due to the controversy, they’ve modified it, yet an ingredient was from an animal still. And fries, when refrigerated, became colorless. Hence, a chemical intervention. They even fry it with hydrogenated oil too keep its crisp, but that special kind of oil is toxic to our body, linked to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Chicken products, like nuggets and sandwiches, contain beef as well to add taste.

The more lean you chose your beef to be, the higher sodium content it has. That is to make it juicy, because a lean cut took it off.

To keep it simple, there’s nothing simple in fast foods. All their products are bombarded with numerous chemicals and ingredients other than, say, chicken, beef, salad, potato and milk. Primarily, it is for prolonged preservation and unique flavor that would urge you to crave and come back. The real best trick is to eat raw food, it has the nutrition and it keeps you eating less.

If you have worked with fast food industry, or you have any additional dirty secret we opt to know, share it here.

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Sources:
15 Shocking Food Industry Secrets; Yahoo! Health
Things Fast-Food Companies Won’t Say; Yahoo! Finance
Fast Food Industry Secrets; AskMen.com
The 6 Most Horrifying Lies The Food Industry is Feeding You; Cracked.com
7 Dirty Secrets Fast Food Chains Don’t Want You to Know; OrganicAuthority.com
Top 3 Shocking Fast Food Industry Secrets; FilthyLucre.com
10 Secrets The Processed Food Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know; CoachdebFitness.com
3 Fast Food Ingredient Secrets: Industrial Chemicals, Synthetic Meat; NaturalSociety.com