I’ve cut down my coffee intake over the past few years, and now prefer to drink just one or two cups of decent coffee per day rather than several cups of rubbish instant stuff.

New research suggests that the increasing popularity of coffee in the UK culture could lead to health problems, with the average person drinking 3.5 cups of coffee per day, and often opting for stronger brews.

Most people know that too much caffeine isn’t a great thing, but now the protein in coffee is being scrutinised for its health implications.

A YORKTEST spokesman said, “We’Â’re not saying don’Â’t drink coffee, but itÂ’’s obvious we are drinking much more than we used to and there appears to be a tipping of the scales in terms of what the body can take. The high street is full of coffee shops and people have coffee achines at home producing stronger coffee.

“Basically, more people are drinking more coffee and more tests are showing a positive result. Other factors may stop your digestive system from working effectively like stress and lack of exercise and that may contribute to why some items we put into our bodies, including coffee, can cause health problems.”

So, basically, coffee isn’t evil, but it’s best to limit how much you drink each day, and try not to be a slob that takes no exercise, and gets stressed out by all these health reports.

According to the BBC, some of the UK’s favourite chocolate bars, including Milky Way, Bounty, and Minstrels, will now be made using animal rennet, and will so be unsuitable for vegetarians.

But wait, it’s OK! Paul Goalby, corporate affairs manager for Masterfoods, said, “If the customer is an extremely strict vegetarian, then we are sorry the products are no longer suitable, but a less strict vegetarian should enjoy our chocolate.”

Oh, you mean the type of vegetarian who’s not really that bothered, would prefer not to eat beef, but is quite happy to tuck into a bowl full of calves’ stomachs? Yes, you get a lot of those, don’t you Paul?

I’m not a vegetarian, but I do think it’s bizarre that products previously made without animal rennet are now being made with animal ingredients, due to it switching the sourcing of its ingredients.

Probably a cost-cutting exercise.

Though I do eat meat, I don’t think it’s a great idea to be loading up lots of products with animal fat and other ingredients when it’s perfectly possible to make them without. There are health benefits to cutting back on this type of product, whether or not you choose to become wholly vegetarian or not.

The Vegetarian Society is ‘extremely disappointed’ and I’m not surprised.

Bizarre.

I’ve just read an article at the Canadian Financial Post entitled The CFL mercury nightmare which is just one way of highlighting the environmental mess we’re in on this planet.

On the one hand, we know that standard, incandescent light bulbs are not as energy efficient as they could be. Greenpeace say that they are 95% inefficient, and it’s clear that they don’t like them very much.

They, alongside others, would like us to switch to low energy (“energy efficient”) compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

The problem here is that they contain mercury, and so not only require specialist disposal (though I wonder how many consumers realise this, and simply throw them away at the end of their long life, to be consigned to leak mercury into landfill sites) but are a potential hazard in the home:

How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn’t include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.

Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favour of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.

Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a “low-ball” estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn’t cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.

The trouble is, traditional methods of power generation such as coal burning power stations also generate mercury. It’s just that this isn’t directly linked to the home.

So is it worth the risk to personal health using energy efficient light bulbs, or should governments be looking to generate enough ‘green’ sustainable energy to power less efficient, but arguably safer, traditional light bulbs?

We can all improve our energy efficiency, but light bulbs aren’t even the biggest culprits. Leaving equipment on standby, using inefficient home appliances, and simply being selfish in overusing resources, are much bigger factors in the human-led environmental carnage.

Aren’t they?

The article suggests that environmentalists are effectively encouraging us to put more toxic chemicals in our homes for the sake of saving some electricity.

That’s very simplistic, and there are all manner of hazardous chemicals and substances that enter and live in most of our homes every day, but it is an interesting thought, and one that hadn’t really crossed my mind before.

I knew that these CFL bulbs were efficient, and we use them wherever we can, but I hadn’t appreciated what was in them.

Surely proof that we’re getting into such an environmental mess that some of the actions we take that are supposed to help the environment simply refocus the problem, rather than solving it.

Catch 22.

Update (28th July 2008): Here’s an interesting interview with City University of Hong Kong’s professor Ron Hui, chairman of the electronic engineering department, who talks about the poor lifetime and environmental impact of electronic CFLs, and how we should really switch to magnetic CFLs, which can be recycled and last longer. The mercury issue is again raised.

This isn’t the usual sort of topic I’d post about on this blog, but I found the following article from WIRED interesting, if a little queasy: “Scientists Disagree About Circumcision Sensation”

Measurements using filaments. Great.

Last week I wrote about LA Fitness’s appalling admin and their inability to cancel a gym membership.

After a lot of stress and the threat of legal action, LA Fitness Head Office have finally apologised – to a point.

Despite the fact that we’ve paid them 120, they were willing to refund just £40, because (despite the stupidity of staff at the Epsom branch) we didn’t follow their terms and conditions – despite the fact that the Epsom manager openly admitted that mistakes had been made during the transition from Dragon’s gym to LA Fitness.

So, effectively, LA Fitness have still got the £80 that they claimed we owed them, and caused us a lot of stress with it.

I just hope that ARC Debt Collectors charged them a LOT of money for running crying to them, when they couldn’t even be bothered to send us a personal letter first.

Yes, LA Fitness, you whine on about how we should have sent a recorded delivery cancellation to you. Perhaps you should follow your own ‘advice’ with regards to customer relations.

LA Fitness is one company I hope never to have to deal with again. I suggest you avoid these thieves, too.

Here’s a word of advice…

If you’re the sort of person who might ever cancel a gym membership (and let’s face it, that’s most people) don’t EVER go to LA Fitness (at least, not the one in Ruxley Lane, Ewell).

Not unless, when you cancel your membership in the way expressly recommended by the (incompetent) manager, you still receive threatening letters from debt collection agencies.

The idiots at LA Fitness Epsom have threatened my wife, without any prior warning, with a debt collection thuggery agency, demanding an £80 payment that was never due.

Added to which, they took at least 2 months’ payment after the original membership was cancelled, before we stemmed the flow of cash by stopping the direct debit from our bank account.

So, don’t EVER join the idiots at LA Fitness. They don’t listen to complaints. They have no system in place. And to be honest, if they can’t handle basic administration, what chance have they dealing with something of the utmost importance: your health?

Thanks for nothing LA Fitness. You’re a bunch of cowboys and you deserve to publicly ridiculed. Hence the post.