The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
― Voltaire
I was going to write about salt today, but before I could sit down and do so, I found an interesting article. Two actually. One is from the New York Times, the other from the LATimes. We’ll start on the West Coast since that’s closer to me.
You’ll be thrilled, excited, and basically all-around adrenalized to see the headline: “FDA Approves a New Artificial Sweetener.” I know I’m beside myself.
Worldly riches are like nuts; many a tooth is broke in cracking them, but never is the stomach filled with eating them.
–Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
If you putter around the low carb world for very long, you’ll see that we have a strange relationship to nuts. On the one hand, you’ve got people using pounds of nut flours every day in their cake-that-aren’t-cakes recipes. On the other hand, you’ve got spear-throwing Paleo types talking about them like they’re almost as bad for you as grain. So what’s the truth?
Well, if you think I can tell you, you’re nuts.
Diet Coke with lemon…didn’t that used to be called Pledge?
–Jay Leno
Not long ago I was at a friend’s house. My friends are pretty typical Americans. They have a large kitchen with two long counters, a normal American-sized fridge and freezer, above- and below-counter cabinets, and a pantry. Here’s what was in them:
Thus it appears to be the necessary duty, and the interest of every person living, to improve his understanding, to inform his judgment, to treasure up useful knowledge, and to acquire the skill of good reasoning, as far as his station, capacity, and circumstances furnish him with proper means for it.
–Isaac Watts
There’s always things to read. Keeping up with it all is impossible, but keeping up with some of it is good for you! An educated mind is not easily coerced, enslaved, or deceive; and by “educated” I don’t mean “got a degree in business administration” or “went to plumbing school.” I mean a mind that seeks to know what it can about as much as it can. With these salutary thoughts in mind, let’s look at what’s going on in the world as you head into the weekend.
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.
–Leonardo DaVinci
If you read any news from the low-carb/Paleo sort of world, you can’t help but have been assaulted recently by all the screaming about resistant starch. It’s the New Big Thing.
Now, don’t let my sarcasm fool you. There might really be something to it. The theory seems sound. It’s just that a lot of stuff remains unproven and is down to personal experience. That doesn’t mean everyone promoting it won’t be proven correct in the next few years. It just means a lot remains unknown. Plus, I’m always leery of the New Big Thing. So let’s talk very briefly about what it is and what’s going on. I’m just going to do a basic rundown because there are far better, in-depth analyses of this that have been done by others. If you want to really get into this, I recommend these:
Ask Me How It Happened 