85 movies you must see...sez Scorsese!

There was a link posted on Facebook today, listing 85 movies that the master says you should see immediately!

If you have already seen them...good for you! If not, get on it!

Here's the link:

85 movies you must see, by Scorsese

So...why did I vote?!

I have been asked this question over and over for the past week. It was the presidential elections in Iran and based on what happened in the previous elections and the results got rigged, many (including me until 2 weeks before the elections) thought that voting is pointless. When they are the deciders of what going to happen eventually, then why bother?!

One of the arguments that the boycotters had was that with a large turnout at the elections, we are validating this regime. Well, that is not entirely true. First off, the authorities are going to film the crowded lines they find or pull some footage from their archives to show that there was a huge turnout anyway. So, it had been proven in the past that boycotting for this reason has not been helpful. So isn't it better to vote for someone who is a reformist or "has reformist intentions" rather than a hardline conservatives to show that we are against this regime, which is mostly ruled by the Islamic fundamentalists and supporters of the conservatives?

Many say "why do you care? You're not living there, yet you are deciding the fate of the ones inside of Iran?! Let them do it themselves!"

I have even heard some Iranians say "it is no longer our country" or "as long as it is ruled by these scums, I don't care"!

Well, I am not deciding the fate of Iranians inside the country. I am deciding my own fate. I am an Iranian...I love my country and my people...and I would do anything to make it a better place for myself and for my loved ones so I can go back and live where I belong. As my mom always says, we are counted as second-rated citizens in Western countries. So, instead of staying here and trying to prove that I am something that I am not, I would rather put that energy into good use and help build my country over again and turn it into a better place. I would rather vote and help my people pull out of the chasm they have fallen into over the past 8 years than not vote and let yet another despicable figure represent me and my country and cast yet another shadow upon the lives of the people who are falling deeper and deeper into despair everyday. I want someone worthy of me, worthy of my people represent me in the world's eyes so I can stick my head up high and once again say proudly that I am an Iranian, rather than get into arguments to prove that we are not all hostile towards the world!

I know my vote was most probably not counted and was just counted out of curiosity for the officials to report back what the Iranians outside of Iran are thinking and who are they voting for, that would suffice for me! I just want to voice my opinion, voice my opposition towards their policies by voting for a person who they don't approve as much as others than sit and do nothing.

Yes, I do too agree that the elected president was basically the same as the other candidates and that he is no saint. He has done his fair share of wrong doings over the past and his hands are, as we call it, covered with blood! But I do believe that for now, we need someone who the supreme leader somewhat approves and we need to take baby steps to get to democracy.

Changing the whole country overnight is not only impossible but the people don't have the so called "political/social maturity" to appreciate the democracy and guard it once they get it. Unfortunately, most of the population in Iran, mostly consisting of the youth, think of democracy as "being able to have fun without getting caught"! Of course, I don't blame them. It is quite normal at this age to want to go out with friends and have parties but for the past 30-something years, this energy has been suppressed extensively by the government or better yet to say, the regime. So, it is natural for people to want what they have been deprived of and for many young adults, who are not that much in financial distress, being able to have fun is the goal! So you see what I mean? This country is not ready for the big step yet.

Some of the boycotters said, voting doesn't help anything and we want the situation to get so bad that people wouldn't be able to stand it and overthrow the ruler.

Well, first of all, the lives of the people you can talk so easily about, are the same people that you belong to. They are you parents, your uncles, your cousins. Many of whom want to escape this hell of a mess but can't and many who choose to stay because they belong there. It is their right to stay in a place where they know as home and hope for a better day to come. I can't wish for a disaster to happen just so the dictator is overthrown!

Moreover, it is not possible right now. For those who think they can change the country, not by voting, and in a bigger scale, who basically are expecting a miracle, I say more power to ya! But who are you going to replace this regime with? Who is going to be your leader? Without a leader, any revolution would be doomed to fail. More importantly, starting a movement without clear objectives, without a solid and reliable leader, a leader would be chosen for you (almost the same thing that happened in the Iranian revolution 40 years ago).

So why repeat the past? Also, again I can't emphasize this enough, the nation is not ready for that. I don't want them to go through another rough patch yet again. Our people have suffered enough. What I want is a steady government (the same as Khatami's for now will do), a government and a president who are moderates and who can stabilize the country, especially the financial aspect, so people once again can put their heads down on their pillows at night more serenely, without the fear of what might happen tomorrow, if there will be a war break out, if they will go hungry, if they can secure a good future for their children and themselves.

We, well not we per se, but our ancestors have fought hard for the right to vote and I am clasping hard to it. I don't want to let it slip from my hands so easily and I don't want it taken away from me on the grounds that I don't use it...so why have it?!

I have boycotted before and that time the result turned out to be an 8-year torture! The number of boycotters was more than the number of votes cast in the president's favor. So you can see where we went wrong.

Furthermore, I know that every time I am voting, I am taking a chance...I am making myself vulnerable...I am putting my vote out there where it can be dismissed...but I gain two precious things in return.

First of all, they might rig the elections whenever they want but I am not letting them get what they want that easy! They should fight me, and all my brothers and sisters who voted. So I am actually making them vulnerable, not myself!

Secondly, if I don't vote, and the elections do get rigged, I have no right to ask where my vote is! Many of the boycotted the elections in respect of the people who died protesting in the post-elections clashes with the government (or regime actually). I hear ya, and I am with you. Every blood shed 4 years ago is sacred. But I want to have the chance to fight for their right, help get their efforts acknowledged, than standby and see that the fight they started is being neglected and going to waste. You can have your way of showing your respect for them, but this is mine. Their fight and their blood shouldn't go to waste...I don't want them to be forgotten. I am sure you would say we don't want either, but remember what their ideology was...what they were doing when they died...and the only way to make sure they won't be forgotten is to continue their paths.

I wanted to take a step which will make things ready so that my last elected president, Moosavi, and the rest of the activists detained after the last elections be freed and can join their families and loved ones once again.

Last word, the first spark of the inclination to vote in me started when I thought that should I ever become a journalist, I have a responsibility towards my country and I can't ever claim to have been interested in the fate of my country and my people if I didn't take action and did the least I can do right now, which is to VOTE!

A Nation Addicted to Sugar

Many people ask me what I have found interesting about the United States as a foreigner who has recently moved here from the "third world". At first I didn't know what to say. Mostly because my siblings had lived here before me and my parents had been here a few times and all the mysteries had unraveled for me. It wasn't as shiny for me as it could have been for others. It was kinda disappointing in a way because I was expecting some place like Europe and I was let down.

I always give this example to my friends. In America everything is mass produced. It is a Capitalist system so it is natural to be this way. When you go to a store, there is no such thing as buying 1 pen, or 1 lighter. No, you'd have to buy a whole pack of lighters that if you're not a smoker, won't know how to use before they expire! So is the case with the buildings. It seems like they had decided to build a bunch of buildings and scatter them in one place. Especially the shopping centers (not sure if they're called centers) but the places like Target, Best Buy, Trader Joe's, TJ Maxx, and all the like that are accumulated in one place in every city that you go in the states. You can't find a super market to buy your every day needs, except for few seven-elevens here and there. And another interesting thing that I knew of before moving here, as I had read it as preparation for TOEFL, was how the car companies had cast a shadow on public transportation system and made America a public-transportation-free country! So, basically what it means is that if you don't own a car, you're screwed! (Except for Amherst which we have been blessed with an extensive free bus system which was quite surprising for my dad because he wasn't expecting something like that from America...a "free" "bus" system?!)

It was also the case in the metropolitan. New York City was a slap in the face for me! (Except for Time's Square which was as awesome as I had heard it to be!). *[Although, this changed after visiting there for the second time a few weeks back, after writing this post, so the above part doesn't apply as harshly as before!]* We had been through other cities as well: Indianapolis (which as I had explained before looked like a city from a futuristic SciFi movie where everything had been destroyed by robots and smoke was coming out of factories...a very depressing scene it was), Boston (which was better than NYC for me and restored my hope in finding a nice city in the US but still wasn't what I was hoping for), St. Louis (this one actually has two parts...the part where you are entering from Illinois is as bad as any other one that I explained, but then there is the western part of it which is actually quite nice and in some parts even resembles that of a French or European city...even the shopping centers didn't look mass produced there and were "real" buildings!), and Cincinnati which we only passed through but actually seemed to be pretty! Then there is San Francisco which by far is the best I have seen, mostly because of its awesome whether (not for everyone if you're not a rain-loving person) and the fact that it reminded me greatly of Istanbul, one of the cities I worship.

The second surprise for me which so far is the biggest mind-blowing one, is that in TV advertisements, the companies use the name of the companies they have competition with and praise themselves against them, which I find quite odd. I don't watch TV so it hadn't hit me until recently when I was watching TV and this commercial came on where it said something like Verizon is much better and faster than AT&T! "What the hell?!" that was me gasping! Then another one came on, which said our brand of toilet papers is much better than that of X's (I can't remember the name). I had never seen such a thing in my life. I had seen commercials where brands would claim they are the best or the pioneers or something, but I hadn't seen one that would actually use their counterparts name as reference! Again...Capitalism!

This post wasn't supposed to have such a long intro! I just wanted to give you an example of the things I found odd in the US. But I'll get to the point now.

It is no secret for the world that the US is dealing with an obesity epidemic. As a nutritionist working on my project (sleep being a mediator between nutrition and health related problems), I had to do an extensive literature review. Almost all the articles that I read started with a statement like this: 'Two-thirds of Americans are overweight and one-third of that population are obese (only 1/3 being normal weight). Over the past 3 decades, the prevalence of overweight/obesity has tripled and the number of people suffering from diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease has gone up in accordance. The amount of sleep people get has seen a one-hour drop in duration on average, making more people sleep-deprived.'

So this raises few concerns. First of all people are sleep-deprived. America is a place where you have to work your a** off, otherwise you're not getting anywhere. Also, it may be the only developed country in the Western world, not providing paid leave for its working population, which can help in the promotion of sleep deprivation phenomena.

Secondly, why are people gaining so much weight? It has been said that the average size for women went from 8 back in the 50's to 14 in the beginning of 21st century. So, what has changed in the lives of the people living here that has made this transition towards unhealthy lifestyle raising all these health concerns?

Let me first start elaborating the answer to the above question with the activity aspect. 30 years ago was about the same time that computers made their break through leading to more sedentary jobs and lifestyle from the labor intensive jobs that dominated the job market before that. Also, with the growth in population and expansion of cities, more people had to commute to work using cars and other transportation systems instead of walking. So what we had was less physically demanding jobs, more cars, and a computer-run world. But this couldn't be the only reason, right? Because the so called "office jobs" had started to take over the country starting in probably 50 years before the time we're talking about. If the diet had stayed the same, people most probably would've started to gain weight anyway but unfortunately this wasn't the case.

At the same time, since more people were working, they had less time to prepare foods at home. It used to be that women would stay at home and make food but now they were starting to work as much as men did. So they had to find other venues to meet their needs. And here enter the food companies and restaurants.

Now we get to nutrition. By that time, almost all kinds of foods and food products were available. Food companies were trying to come up with new products that would make their products special in a way that would attract more people. We used to have biscuits, but let's make them sweeter to make it more palatable! People don't want to buy plain yogurt? Let's put a pound of sugar in it and throw in few pieces of fruit and call it fruit flavored! People want to buy coffee on their way to work, but they're tired of drinking the same black coffee everyday. So, let's make different kinds and throw in a bucket of sugar to give people the energy boost they need in the morning! And the list goes on with coke and other sugar-sweetened beverages.

But sugar wasn't the only problem. With the rising demand on store-bought microwavable foods and fast foods with their drive-thru, again companies had to add extra pinch of salt and extra fat to make their foods more delicious and attract more customers.

If you don't know how the taste buds work, let me explain it a bit. The taste buds are really flexible. They get used to the taste, whether it is sweetness or saltiness, and if you get used to consuming more sugar, the less sweetened food products will taste bland, whereas it might taste quite sweet for people who are not used to consuming that much sugar. And so is the case with other tastes, especially salt.

I was also watching a TED talk on YouTube, where Malcolm Gladwell was talking about how Howard Moskowitz has revolutionized the food industry by consulting different food brands and telling them how people need different and more diverse food options and how they can increase their profits by bringing more options to the stores (you can watch the video here). Having a more diverse market place is another reason that I think might be contributing to this matter and not only does it make people buy more stuff and try different brands but it has also led to a competition between companies which again have made them put more "unhealthy" ingredients in their products to make them more appealing.

One other factor is the increase in screening time. Nowadays, almost everyone either owns a TV or a computer and many people spend a considerable amount of their awake time in front of their monitors and don't even get me started on video games! The increase in screening time affects weight in two different ways. The first one, as you might well be aware of, is the fact that it increases sedentary behavior. But studies have shown that it also can cause increase in food consumption because people usually like to munch on something while they're watching TV (as I do too!), but also the food commercials they see on TV or online can also cause consumption of more food especially that the foods that we see in the commercials are usually the non-healthy ones.

However, in recent years more attention has been brought to nutrition and its importance in health and more people are getting more conscious about the adverse effects of poor diets. In accordance, food companies are now trying to introduce new lines of products with different labels of "fat-free", "sugar-free", "diet", "zero", and so and so. But what is wrong with this action? Why doesn't it change anything? Well, again there are two aspects to this. First of all, the so called diet-versions are not actually as healthy as they seem to be. Many of the food products advertised to be "fat-free" or "low-calorie" are packed with sugar or sometimes with salt. Secondly, some people think that it's only the calorie that counts and even if you consume 1200 calories of pure sugar, just because you've cut down your calorie count, it will make you slim down. Wrong! The proportion of different nutrients is as important or even more important dare I say, than only reducing your energy intake.

The same goes for foods prepared in restaurants, fast foods, and store-bought ready-to-eat foods.
One other explanation could be that people simply don't want to choose the diet-versions and they prefer the regular-sodas and foods.

We had a course last semester about minerals and one of the students had a presentation on Sodium (on of the main minerals in the structure of salt) and she had done some research and had found out that even in the foods offered in Panera Bread, which counts as a "healthy" restaurant, the minimum amount of sodium found in their menu is more than 800 mg! (the maximum amount recommended for daily consumption is 2400 mg for the whole population and about 1400 for those prone to hypertension!). I have nothing against this restaurant chain of course. I still consider them to be one of the healthiest but I just wanted to give you an example of how things are out there. The same student also told us that she had spent some time in a culinary school and while she was there they had taught them that whenever you taste a food you've prepared and it seems to have the perfect taste for salt, throw in another pinch! That's how chefs have been taught to prepare your food guys and that's probably why you keep going back because there's no argument in the fact that more salt and more sugar and even more fat make food more tasty! I know, I know...it's not fair but the truth is bitter!

Another thing is that artificial sweeteners such as Aspartam, used in diet sodas, don't actually contain sugar and don't have any adverse side-effects but they have a hidden down-side to them. When your brain detects sweetness, it signals your body "get ready, sugar is on its way!" But when you trick it and it doesn't detect glucose afterwards, it starts wondering where it is! But it has already started the process right? So when body asks where the hell is my sugar? Your brain says I'll check and get back to you. It's an embarrassment for it...he can't look bad! So he pushes you to consume sugar so that the strike would end...and that's how you crave more sugar after consuming foods containing artificial sweeteners and if you don't resist the urge then you will eventually consume more sweet foods subconsciously, again leading the way to diabetes and weight gain.

Another reason why with the increase in knowledge of food and nutrition nothing is changing is politics. Yes...that damn politics again. It's so sneaky that it even finds it way into your daily life food consumption. Many people have tried to warn against the high rates of meat consumption (it's no secret that Americans are a meat-loving nation) and sweeteners but they haven't been successful because the meat industry and the corn producers (the product subsidized in the US and I believe the leading agricultural product, and corn syrup being used in high quantities as sweetener) have lobbied against this. They would experience huge loss in their profits and who would want that?!

Anyway, what prompted me to write this piece was because the other day we went out for lunch with my friends and they ordered a plate of chicken, beef, and ribs, and as a side to their order was corn "bread" in their plates. They tasted it and said is this supposed to be our dessert?!

I mean it was that sweet! We would call that a cake not a bread...it's past the sweet limit for a bread. And they were supposed to eat it as a bread with their lunch which was odd for all of us. And we started discussing how the Americans are addicted to sugar and the whopping amounts of sugar they consume.

I even remember the first semester I was in school here, I had taken this course called Nutritional Problems in the US and we were discussing yogurt in class where the professor was saying any yogurt containing more than 12 grams of sugar actually has sugar added to it and is not plain. Then one of the guys turned to her and said "who would eat plain yogurt? It's so bitter...it's gross!" My jaw was literally dropped! What do you mean bitter?! It's yogurt! It's like saying...I don't know...why does cheese taste like cheese! That was the moment it dawned on me what the nutritional problems in the US were stemming from...he wasn't at fault...he had grown in a place where sweet-flavored yogurts had taken over. I also feel the need to point out that the person making this statement was actually a grad student in kinesiology, a person who had studied in a health-related major...so you can imagine how the other people living here who have no background on health issues must be thinking like.

I don't know if you know this but actually the Oreo and KitKat produced in the US, have higher sugar contents compared to the same brand produced in Europe!

My final conclusion is that nothing would change unless politicians decide to put their foot down, and together with the help of nutritionists and other health organizations prepare a better environment for a healthier generation. Otherwise the consequences are unimaginable. They also need to provide a better environment, a safe one, so people can exercise and be more physically active and have incentives to make people motivated, which is quite a big realm which I don't dare to delve into right now.

By the way, if you're wondering about the definition of "whopping", I had prepared a presentation for one of my courses last semester and I had to prepare some background statistics on the problem in hand. So, I looked for the statistics on medical costs for diabetes in the US, and the number was...ready? It was roughly 109 billion dollars. Yes, billion...with a B!