The Ghost of Ava Dog

Now deceased Hound of interest. I lived with my human, the Underdog and Hiltoncat. Tweets = disguised woofs for which I no longer have responsibility.

[Gareth Noble @GarNob]

The Donald coming through Castleknock. The enthusiasm for him is palpable 😂😂😂

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@comicgal40 @autcareandshare *a search!

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@comicgal40 @autcareandshare Many thanks. I'll have search over the weekend.

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@Tom9296031114 Yay!

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@electra_rhodes We're a cultural household so we love #1.

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@autcareandshare Yay!!

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The year is 1911. Cottonseed is the rubbish left when the cotton comes off the crop, and it goes into soap and lamp oil because it is inedible. Bitter, cloudy, and it stinks. Procter and Gamble hit it with caustic soda, run it through bleaching clay and steam it under vacuum until the smell is gone, because it is rancid before that. Then they harden it, print a cake on the lid, and call it Crisco.

The year is 1961. The American Heart Association, turned into a national institution thirteen years earlier by a radio contest Procter and Gamble paid for, tells a country to take out the fat it has eaten since it had teeth and put in oil from a press. Your mother changes the tin under the sink. The margarine in it began life in 1869 as churned beef fat. There is none in it now.

The year is 1985. Rapeseed was an industrial lubricant, too bitter and too high in erucic acid to eat. It is bred down, renamed canola, cleared by the FDA, then crushed and washed in hexane, a solvent refined out of petroleum, and bleached and deodorised like all the rest. Cottonseed took fifty years to reach your kitchen. This takes ten to reach everything.

The year is 1988. A businessman in Omaha buys full-page adverts headed The Poisoning of America and names the firms putting palm and coconut in your biscuits. Ralston, Borden, Pillsbury, Quaker, Keebler and Pepperidge Farm all reformulate inside a year. Out goes the lard, out go the tropical oils, and in goes partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Your biscuits, your crackers, your salad cream. Gone in twelve months.

The year is 1990. The same man turns on the fryers, and inside a month McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's have dropped beef tallow. Every fryer on every high street follows. The oil sits at 180 degrees for eighteen hours, going darker and thicker as the day wears on, and what lifts off it is aldehydes. That catch at the back of your throat outside a chip shop is the oil coming apart.

The year is 1999. Soybean oil consumption has risen a thousandfold in a century, and the linoleic acid in what you eat has gone from under three per cent to over seven. None of it passes through. It is built into the fat on your hips and the wall of every cell you own. Your grandfather's body fat and yours are different substances. Obesity has doubled and diabetes is behind it.

The year is 2015. The regulator rules that partially hydrogenated oil should never have been in food. The tub is not withdrawn. Trans fats out, palm and interesterified fat and more seed oil in, new label, same price, same shelf, same aisle. Eighty years of this, and the men who ordered it are on television explaining that the problem is your willpower.

Now it is today.

It crept in over fifty years and took everything in five.

The bottle in your cupboard was rancid before they bleached it and is rancid again in your pan.

Every step was progress. Every step was settled science.

It has never once been a food.

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@philipnolan1 Yay! More progress.

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@AndyWoodturner Love that!

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@chadpbyrne Had lunch at Cora's today. Really good!

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@chadpbyrne Local to me, sounds great!

[The Sandymount Hotel @SandymountHotel]

Step inside, slow down, and make yourself at home. ✨

 At The Sandymount Hotel, every stay is filled with genuine hospitality, thoughtful comfort, and space to unwind. Discover Dublin while feeling right where you belong. Your home away from home. 🏡💚

 #IrishHospitality

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@arthistorynews Nicely put. What a loss, what a legacy.

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

Sad to hear of his death. I dreaded the day we would run out of David Hockney.

[🇮🇪 This is Ireland 🇮🇪 @ThisIsIreland3]

In the whole of Europe, this flower grows in the high Alps & the Arctic tundra

In Ireland, it grows at sea level, in the Burren, on bare limestone, in the wind off the Atlantic

Spring Gentian shouldn't be here. But every April & May, it blooms across the grey stone of Co. Clare

[Reuters @Reuters]

King's College Hospital in London has opened a rooftop garden for critical care patients. Its first patient, a 29-year-old woman dependent on feeding tubes, said the outdoor space gave her 'a real boost to keep on going

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@hermionegingol1 @bbcpaddy Love BH.

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

@bbcpaddy Didn't watch. Spent the evening down a Johnny Logan rabbit-hole.

[The Ghost of Ava Dog @Avadogg]

For the night that's in it. Johnny Logan is so much more than Eurovision. This is simply lovely. https://t.co/ERWpnlnQeN