Random stuff on a Thursday

I know, it's almost unheard of for me to do more than one blog post a week. I must have been up day and night working on this, and trying to not feel scummy for stealing the misc roundup blog post used so well by Eric Cressey and Tony Gentilcore.

The truth is that I've had some downtime this week thanks to a neck injury I'm currently trying to deal with and so I've had more time to surf the web in search of random fitness related news stuff.

• Photoshopping mayhem

I've been on twitter a bit more this week and shared this article on from there FLzine.com - http://www.flzine.com/photo-retouch-for-magazine-like-beauty/ It shows you some of the before and after photos thanks to the wonders of photoshop and magazine editors needing all their covers to look artificially perfect.

It's been well known for a long time that photos are touched up, but sometimes the extent to which they are amended is quite surprising. A shout out to my friend Laura who gave me the link to this website http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/ which is exactly as it says on the URL. It's worth checking out, if only for a laugh.

This madness has finally cumulated in Kim Kardashian having unretouched photos published and it seems to have created a mini storm in a smaller teacup. I don't know whether she was doing it for genuine reasons or to be different and get her name out there but personally, I think she looks hawt in the unretouched photos. Check them out here.

• Cereal in the news again

Oh dear, once again the words "worrying" and "shocking" are appearing in conjunction with cereals. Seriously, are researchers and journalists the most naive people on the planet? They seem to be the only ones "shocked" by the amount of sugar and crap in supposed healthy cereal. Here's some news - It's not a shock to the rest of the world.

Most people already know that most cereals are crap for you. These people are split into two types - ones that avoid it and eat breakfasts like porridge, omelette's or freshly hunted bear steaks for that extra macho start to your day. Or the other type just don't give a shit and will continue to eat it anyway.

• Omnivore's dilemma

In my downtime, Ive been ploughing through a book called The Omnivore's Dilemma. The more I read of this book the more careful I am becoming with my food selection. Admittedly, being in the UK, we don't have the same issues with beef as in the US. Either that, or it's just easier to get hold of grass fed beef.

The one worrying thing I read, and this was news to me - In the US, cows used to take 4 - 5 years before they were ready for slaughter. During the 50's / 60's, this was reduced to 2 -3 years. Nowadays, thanks to the wonders of excess corn, protein, fat and enough drugs to make a professional bodybuilder jealous, cows are grown from 80lbs to 1100lbs in roughly 14 - 16 months.

That just can't be a good thing to want to eat. True it has meant that more people have access to the meat because it's cheaper but considering what the cows are pumped full off to reach that state and people are eating it - I'll stick to finding grass fed beef!