Back by popular demand, it’s Ask Fatty Felicity, the write-in column where you get to ask all your burning questions about Fat, Diet, and the Meaning of Life!
Let’s get right to today’s burning questions:
Dear Fatty Felicity,
I thought you were going to do a post on vegetarianism?
—Bernard Blackmantle
I thought I was too, Bernard, but then I got ill. I’m too tired to do all the research just now. But I’ll tell you what is very interesting: I want desperately to eat sugar. I don’t usually crave it, but since I started falling ill I suddenly can barely keep away from these chocolate-covered almonds I was given for Christmas.
What’s going on? Carbohydrates are super easy to digest and provide nearly instant energy. When you’re fighting something, your immune system is anxious for all the energy it can possibly get for what it quite rightly views as an emergency situation. It can’t really be bothered waiting around.
Of course, sugar is not what I need to be eating; but some bland starch is probably a good idea. Or possibly those nuts. Excuse me while I go get them.
Hi Fatty Felicity. What do you think about Veganuary?
-The Flying Dutchman
Well, Dutchman, if we were living in a dystopian YA novel, I would consider the concept of Veganuary to be an immature writer’s attempt to make the grimmest month of the twelve sound even more disheartening, for emotional manipulation and a cheap plot trick.
Spindle Tannercreek had heard that Christmas (or was it Xmas? Or perhaps Kwanza? It was very difficult to know about things when they happened so very long ago, and the names were muddled in her head) had once been a time of joy, laughter, feasting, and fellowship. Yet this was so long ago that none could remember; not even The Aged Ones who kept watch over the Function Swards from their Daremarks high above.
What must it have been like to know light and warmth in the frozen time? Since the rise of the The Benevolence there had been no break from labor in the Function Swards except the ones regularly scheduled once every fifteen days. The only exception was the Day of Celebration, when all were given an extra ration and time off to remember when The Benevolence had wrested power from the Lords Dyad and freed Pneumania from their oppression.
At least, this is what they had all been taught as children. There were a few who, in hushed, secretive whispers, spoke of the The Benevolence as oppressors and despots who had murdered the good Lords Dyad; but once again the event was so long ago that it was impossible for any living to say what was the truth of it.
In the darkness of the second moon of the frozen time, The Benevolence had made a food decree. They said it was a revelation of The Way and all must follow it. It was known as The Way of Veganuary, and it was the time that Spindle hated the most. At the best of times, those who labored in the Function Swards had precious little meat to eat; but during the whole of the second moon of the frozen time none could eat of the meat nor or the milk of the animals. This, The Benevolence decreed, was for their faith and patience, and for the good of all Pneumania.
If you’ve not heard, Veganuary is a “thing” primarily in the UK, though it is gaining speed here in the United States, as well. You simply give up all animal products–like meats, fats, and dairy–just as you’re feeling particular depressed by the end of the holiday season and the long dark of winter. If you’re British, this is especially jolly coming as it does during Dry January, when you’re also giving up all alcohol.
What a treat.
Diets low in fat, and particularly saturated fat such as animals tend to produce, are closely associated with depression. Now association isn’t causation, as we all ought to know by now, but there is a possible mechanism to explain this. Most of your hormonal production system relies on saturated fat. Deny your hormones the right building blocks, and your seasonal affective disorder is liable to get far worse.
Not to mention that meat is delicious and January is cold and dark.
Fatty Felicity, #metoo is all the rage, and some powerful Hollywood women are bravely standing up to systemic sexual harassment by donated enormous amounts of money that they’ve had for decades and wearing black to red carpet events to raise #awareness; and what I want to know is why Meryl Streep couldn’t be bothered to do that years ago?
-Grey Rhimes
Hard to say, ain’t it? The important thing now, though, is that we all celebrate the bravery of these wealthy and powerful Hollywood starlets standing against #Badthings now that it is the cause de jour and so perfectly safe to do so.
Speaking of bravery, the wealthy and powerful men of Hollywood–at least the ones who haven’t yet been caught–have announced they shall stand with the women against all #Badthings. In an act of reckless virtue signaling fearlessness, they too will be wearing black to all the toniest red carpet events this season.
Men wearing black tie and coat to formal black tie and coat events is sure to make an impression that sexual harassers and predators won’t soon forget.
Well, that’s all for today, folks! Join us next time to feast on the incisive wisdom of Fatty Felicity! If you have a burning question for Fatty Felicity, feel free to leave it in the comments.
Plato says he’s hungry
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Most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own.
–Derek Sivers
Today, I have in my home five workmen drilling holes through various walls in an attempt to rig a fix to an enormous plumbing leak. The apartment I rent here in Asia was built along the usual model, which was obviously inspired by Ed Wynn’s part in Babes in Toyland:
The buildings here are lucky to last ten years without enormous, expensive problems. Partly this is because companies skimp on all the cheapest materials they can get (often used) and then run away with their money after selling off the apartments. The water pipes are a particular issue.
The water has been off for some days and now they’re here drilling holes through various walls to run pipes in different directions. They have the World’s Largest Drill, which about ten minutes in blew the fuse to the kitchen and bathroom. When it did, they reasoned the thing to do was to flip the breaker and do it again. And then again. And then, the next time, it blew that fuse and the one for the whole apartment.
That’s when I started yelling.
I turned my back for a moment after yelling, and the guy tried it again. In the end, I had to physically prevent them from plugging it in again and then throw them out of the house till they replaced the fuse on their drill.
You’re probably scratching your heads. You may even doubt my story (though my readers who have lived in this part of Asia are chuckling to themselves knowingly at this point). What’s the matter with these people?
The matter is that they have no idea how to reason. Not because they are stupid, but because they were raised and educated in a system that actively beat all independent thought and reasoning curiosity out of them from a young age.
But sadly, they’re not the only ones.
Back in August, a “dietician” wrote this article about her attempt to go without sugar for thirty days. It is a beautiful example of bad thinking, wild assumptions about health and diet, and parroting of ideas she clearly has been taught but does not fully understand. Let’s have a look at her opening line:
As a dietitian, I’ve heard of every crazy diet. No dairy, no carbs, no sugar, no tomatoes, no gluten, no fat—you name it, I’ve heard of it (and have probably rolled my eyes at it).
Often we have to read a bit to get to the insane stuff, but she helpfully lets the crazy right out in the first lines.
I wasn’t aware that sugar was an essential food group. Perhaps I could get concerned if someone is eliminating a whole food group from their diet unnecessarily; but how is sugar one of those? We think that sugar was first used by the Polynesians, who took it to India, where the Persians found it in 510BC and started growing it for profit. Prior to 510BC, nearly every human on the planet was eating a sugar-free diet, as our dietician defines it. Western Europeans didn’t get sugar till after 1000. It would be hundreds of years more before it entered the regular diet of average people worldwide.
The problem with these restrictive diets is they aren’t sustainable and often cause you to crave whatever you gave up.
This is the biggest cop-out objection to eating well that you’ll ever hear. It’s like telling a smoker not to bother trying to give up the cigarettes, because he’ll just crave them. He won’t be able to not smoke because everyone smokes, and also he’ll want to smoke real bad.
Our intrepid dietician decided to try giving up sugar for thirty days, primarily so she could blog about it for cash.
I honestly thought omitting added sugar for 30 days wouldn’t be all that difficult. First, added sugar refers to sugar that is added to a food, not sugar naturally found in fruits, vegetables, grains, or dairy.
Here we get her definition of sugar-free. It’s slightly concerning. Added sugar is usually glucose or fructose or some combination(is she aware of this?), which are all found in fruit and vegetables, yes. But is she aware that grains have no sugar; or at least not enough to matter? Does she realize that the sugar in dairy is different from table sugar and requires a different digestion process? I’m not confident. More importantly, since she says fruits, vegetables, grains, and dairy all have sugar: how on earth is cutting out added sugar only to be understood as a crazy, restrictive diet that eliminates whole food groups (as she will clearly state later).
Regardless of my lack of desire for sugar, I still add a bit of brown sugar to my oatmeal, enjoy a pre-workout granola bar, and top my spoonful of peanut butter with mini chocolate chips. But that’s the extent of my sugar habit, so I figured I would be fine. Reality hurts.
Ah yes, these are the habits of someone who doesn’t crave sugar.
I’m curious whether she realizes peanut butter has sugar. And in a few minutes (SPOILER ALERT) she’s going to admit to drinking sports drinks and eating Shot Bloks. Possibly she’s underestimating her regular sugar intake? Not counting, of course, fruit and vegetables and grain and dairy.
Day 1
While eating whole-wheat crackers with my super-healthy salad (feeling great about my food choices), I check out the crackers’ ingredients label. WTF? Cane sugar! Day 1=fail.
This woman’s supposed profession is telling people how to eat, and she didn’t know the basic ingredients in whole wheat crackers?
Day 2
My oatmeal definitely tastes a little bland without a scoop of brown sugar, so I head to the store and pick up some naturally sweet foods, such as dates, bananas, red grapes, and papaya. Problem solved.
Or so I thought… until lunchtime, when I add Sriracha to my rainbow grain bowl. Surprise—Sriracha has sugar. I guess I need to read EVERY single food label.
Yes, Natalie darling: you do. Again, do you seriously want us to believe you are a professional dietician, and yet you’ve never advised your clients to be careful of food labels? Clearly, yes, you clearly have no craving for sugar. Couldn’t get through oatmeal without some extra fruit.
May I point out that you are on your second day, and you still haven’t managed to not eat added sugar?
Then the poor thing went to run a marathon. Hopefully she’s in training for running from the zombie horde, because there’s nothing else good to be derived from endless running. We’ve mentioned it before, but the “marathon” derives its name from the Greek city of Marathon, which a man named Pheidippides is said to have run to from Athens–twenty-five miles–in order to announce an important Greek battle victory.
Then he keeled over and croaked.
So naturally, we celebrate his death all over the world with various running events of twenty six miles. Marathoners are seven times more likely to have sudden cardiac death while running than during normal life. They also get scarring on the heart. Most fun of all, when recent Hartford Marathon participants were tested, turned out 82% of them presented with Stage 1 Acute Kidney Injury. And that’s not to mention the joint issues, replacement knees, and even the getting hit by cars!
Fun!
Anyway, our friend Natalie couldn’t eat tons of added sugar to go running, as she usually does, so she had to resort to other sugar. But even then, she gave up and drank an enormous amount of sugar anyway.
In other words, my usual fueling plan is loaded with sugar because sugar (a.k.a. glucose) powers muscles during endurance activity. Luckily, another dietitian (and marathoner) told me to try dates, stuffed with peanut butter and sprinkled with sea salt, for the right mix of sugar and sodium. Although I don’t like to try anything new on race day, I make an exception and opt for the dates instead of the Shot Bloks. They worked pretty well. The only problem was I got an annoying cramp around mile seven that wouldn’t go away, so I gave in and reached for a sports drink.
Dear Natalie,
Sugar is not glucose. Sugar is half glucose and half fructose. Glucose can power muscles, but it doesn’t have to. (See: me, twice a week at the gym, pressing 55 kilos or rowing 70. Also see: Me or The Roommate on all-day mountain climbs with friends. Before neither of these activities do we take an ounce of sugar. Nor during. Nor after.)
Are you sure you’re a dietician?
So you failed to keep to the diet today, too?
I feel for Natalie. We’ll return to her story tomorrow. Meanwhile, I have to go keep an eye on the drilling.
Plato says he’s hungry
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We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.
–Harold MacMillan
This morning I opened my news feed, then ran to get my shotgun.
My barrel of fish had arrived.
This headline was purportedly about cancer, not about nutrition, but you’ll see if you read it that nutrition, exercise, and obesity all play an important part in the article. Thus it got my attention. The title of this wondrous piece is “Americans Confused About Cancer Risk” on Philly.com. (And elsewhere.) Continue reading More Fun With Nutritional Insanity
Get your facts, please, and then you can distort ’em as much as you please.
-Mark Twain
I haven’t had time to sit down and do the final installment on salt. In the interim, however, I cannot too highly recommend Zoë Harcombe‘s latest blog post. In which she takes apart a recent British “health” program with such salient gems as these:
What this experiment has done is to make food less digestible so that it doesn’t produce the physiological changes that occur when the body registers that we have eaten food. The ultimate indigestible substance would be the cardboard box from which the pasta came. “But that would be stupid – it has no nutrients“, I hear you cry and you would hit the nail on the head. This experiment seems to completely disregard the reason why we eat. We eat food because we need nutrients to survive: essential fats; complete proteins; vitamins and minerals. This experiment is celebrating indigestibility – the pointlessness of eating something.
You have to love it when someone can boil down the presentation of a major Western news outlet in such a lovely manner.
I keep meaning to write about salt, and then I see insanity like what I’m about to share with you today. I feel constantly compelled to write about it lest someone be fooled. Of course, no one is actually reading my blog and thousands of people are reading these articles, so it’s much like hoping you can stop a tornado with a desk fan.
First in the WAIT JUST A COTTON-PICKIN’ MINUTE category we have this headline: N.J., Del, still getting fatter, says report; Pa already is. (Any of you who work in editing might be advised to calm down. Don’t smack the desk with your head. It’ll only hurt.) Now first, weren’t we just told a few months ago that we’re not getting fatter anymore? That we’d reached Maximum Fatness? More importantly…are these people serious?!?!? Here’s the explanation from the brain trust behind this study:
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are many confusing things in the world today. Just scroll through the headlines.
I know I’m confused. For example, I’m confused about why anyone cares if Alec Baldwin yelled at someone again? And I’m really perplexed about why anyone with the sense God gave a squirrel–celebrity or not–would take a picture of themselves naked and then put it into a “cloud” of digital information that is out of their own control. And why are people confused that nations who have been enemies for all of their existence are shooting at and invading one another? And those are just the first three questions that popped into my head after scanning this morning’s headlines.
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity. ― Dale Carnegie
Every morning I get a slew of articles on health. I read them when I have time, which unfortunately is not often these days. But today there were several that were just too good to pass up. To start us off right, let’s read about this poor woman:
No doubt many of you saw the headlines last week claiming that running five minutes a day could significantly lower a person’s risk of dying prematurely. Like me, I’m sure you were deeply excited by this. The articles have been more fascinating than the actual supposed breakthrough information, frankly. Fascinating as exercises in the illogical. If I still taught logic classes, I would absolutely choose these to help me illustrate how not to think:
For decades, researchers there have been collecting information about the health of tens of thousands of men and women visiting the clinic for a check-up. These adults, after completing extensive medical and fitness examinations, have filled out questionnaires about their exercise habits, including whether, how often and how speedily they ran.
From this database, the researchers chose the records of 55,137 healthy men and women ages 18 to 100 who had visited the clinic at least 15 years before the start of the study. Of this group, 24 percent identified themselves as runners, although their typical mileage and pace varied widely.
I was going to say that, with this quote, we stumble and flail onto our faces over the first problem in the article. But of course that’s not actually the first problem. The article begins by telling us that doctors have basically been making up numbers.
Run for X minutes a day!
Or maybe walk really fast for twice that long!
There has been, according to the author, almost no science to back up these numbers. But mark: having no proof is no reason we shouldn’t push it on people! Oh yes.
Just Do It.
But I’m going to let that go for now and concentrate on this interesting method of “research.” I know that when pharmaceutical companies want, for example, to test the safety of a new drug that will make your fingernails grow in a more pleasingly rounded shape(adversesideeffectsassociatedwiththeuseofPerUngeumincludebutarenotlimitedtonasopharyngitis,urinarytractinfection,naseau,headaches,diarrhea,myocardialinfarctionandinrarecasesdeath), they are always permitted to choose the people they want to test and the tests they want to accept.
The researchers then checked death records for these adults. In the intervening 15 or so years, almost 3,500 had died, many from heart disease.
But the runners were much less susceptible than the nonrunners. The runners’ risk of dying from any cause was 30 percent lower than that for the nonrunners, and their risk of dying from heart disease was 45 percent lower than for nonrunners..Remarkably, these benefits were about the same no matter how much or little people ran. Those who hit the paths for 150 minutes or more a week, or who were particularly speedy, clipping off six-minute miles or better, lived longer than those who didn’t run. But they didn’t live significantly longer those who ran the least, including people running as little as five or 10 minutes a day at a leisurely pace of 10 minutes a mile or slower.
And here we get the heart of the matter. What’s wrong with these statements, you ask me? Let me give you one more and see if you can figure it out:
The study did not directly examine how and why running affected the risk of premature death, he said, or whether running was the only exercise that provided such benefits.
So, actually, this wasn’t a “study.” It was just an observation. Kind of like this one:
In World War II, 3,540 men from Florida were killed. 15,764 men from Texas died. Clearly, therefore, I can extrapolate that during World War II, being from Texas increased your risk of premature death by 345%.
Now you say that’s baloney, but wait a minute! Let me adjust my data! That will fix everything. That will make you feel better. I’ll adjust it to compensate for military enrollment numbers! 248,000 of America’s WWII military were from Florida. 750,000 Texans joined the fight in some way or other. So 1.43% of Floridian and 2.1% of Texan military personnel died, meaning that our neatly adjusted numbers tell us that being Texan caused your risk of premature death to go up by only 47%.
Of course that’s all hogwash. Being Texan had nothing to do with it, although I’m sure any readers from Texas will start sending me hate mail about that famous Texan fighting spirit, which doubtless led Texans to rush to the front of battles and volunteer for harder missions. Then I’ll print a retraction, and then the Floridians will send their hate mail protesting that they are just as brave as any Texan, and we’ll have to settle it all with pistols at ten paces like our beloved president Alexander Hamilton; only he grew up in the Caribbean so let’s not open that can of worms.
The point is, if I can remember it, that we have no idea whether running was cause, effect, or simply a meaningless variable with all this data.
Let me tell you about what happened to me, and we’ll see how that fits with all our data.
While I was eating plain Cheerios with skim milk, whole grain pasta, low-fat everything, Tub ‘O Heart Health Butterish-Like Spread, and gallons of fruit and vegetables, I never wanted to run. I ran only for emergencies. By sheer force of will I engaged in other forms of exercise–more or less running-like in intensity, but less hard on the knees.
Then one day, I threw all that out and started eating butter, steaks, yogurt, lamb, and then some more butter. Five minutes later, give or take a week, I felt like a completely different person. I felt like running all the time. I had to stop myself from running because I was too heavy to run safely. And, coincidentally, my heart–by all the numbers these reporters ever care about–suddenly got into excellent shape. It took about two months, during neither of which did I ever run. Mostly I sat around.
I’m daydreaming right now about how I might go out and run around for a few minutes later on; daydreaming the same way I used to daydream all morning long about exactly when I could have my homemade whole grain bread sandwich with the 1/3 a skinless chicken breast, lettuce, tomato, and mustard. And an apple.
When people hear this today they look at me and say–because they aren’t listening people–Oh yeah, when you lose lots of weight you feel lots better, and look how good running is for you! Then they wander off, confirmed in their misconceptions.
I didn’t run to feel better. I ran because I felt better. I didn’t feel better because I lost weight. I lost weight because I felt better. And if that is me, couldn’t that be other people, too?
Isn’t it possible that it’s because the people in this study already felt good and are healthy that they felt like running–even if it was only for five minutes or so? That’s about all I run, actually. It’s more like a sprint. I’m not in it for the distance. I don’t pound along, huffing. Go big or go home, I say, so anytime I run it is flat-out, full-force, like-zombies-are-chasing-me, make-people-around-me-a-little-nervous (“what’s she running from,” they think for a second) type of sprinting. Unless I run with other people, in which case I’m invariably holding back.
That’s because by “other people” I mean little kids.
So why is everyone obsessed with running as the Holy Grail of exercise and health? I think there are three forces at play here. I shall elucidate them for you. Hang on. Or, go get a snack. It’s up to you, really.
1. Confounding cause and effect in all cases. I’m not saying that no one ever felt better because they ran. I’m saying that it’s manifestly not true that everyone feels good and gets healthy because they run. Obviously some people–like me–run because we feel good and are in good health; not to get into good health. Some people, though, are so convinced that A always causes B that they can’t see any possibility that B could be causing A. This would also cover people who really don’t feel like running, but who force themselves to do it because they believe it is good for them.
2. Money. You can’t sell these for $235 unless people think running is the most important thing they can do for their health aside from having a child to care for them in their old age:
These ridiculous things are made of plastic, and in China. For $235, I would expect blind Italian nuns to be hand-stitching each one out of calfskin
3. Pettiness. The world has always had people in it who just need to prove they are superior to others. Just because today’s proud aren’t flagellating themselves up the steps of some basilica doesn’t mean the urge to endure suffering to prove I’m Holier Than Thou Art isn’t alive and well. It can be satisfying to run around and exhaust yourself, then sit in the smoothie cafe and make fun of the fat people. And of course by saying this I don’t mean that everyone who runs is doing such things. Some of my best brothers are runners. But there are people like this. If you doubt me, just google “quotes about running” and you’ll get self-congratulatory gems like these:
When I was little and running on the race track at school, I always stopped and waited for all the other kids so we could run together even though I knew (and everybody else knew) that I could run much faster than all of them! I pretended to read slowly so I could “wait” for everyone else who couldn’t read as fast as I could! When my friends were short I pretended that I was short too and if my friend was sad I pretended to be unhappy. I could go on and on about all the ways I have limited myself, my whole life, by “waiting” for people.
Running isn’t a sport for pretty boys…It’s about the sweat in your hair and the blisters on your feet. Its the frozen spit on your chin and the nausea in your gut. It’s about throbbing calves and cramps at midnight that are strong enough to wake the dead. It’s about getting out the door and running when the rest of the world is only dreaming about having the passion that you need to live each and every day with.
That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they’d never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind’s first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle–behold, the Running Man.
I particularly like that last one. Because all the traditional peoples we can find today–you know, the ones no one’s allowed to take a Coke to lest they become corrupted by the influence of other cultures? None of those people run. They spend most of their lives figuring out how not to run unless they must, because its a big waste of energy.
If you enjoy running, run. If you find personal satisfaction in being able to run long distances, great. If you’re training for some race, by all means go for it. Just don’t delude yourself that running is making you some kind of un-killable super-person. What isn’t all over the news all the time is how 30-65% of runners are injured once a year. And for every study like the one we just looked at, there’s an opposing one showing that runners are more likely than non-runners to develop heart disease, cancer (and here), liver problems and damage their muscles, vascular system, brain, and spine*. That doesn’t prove running will give you cancer. It only goes to show that not running is just as likely to be healthy. Something’s going to kill you–and running will not save you from it.
Unless it’s zombies.
*See also: “Is Exercise-Induced Myocardial Injury Self-Abating?” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 33
“Ultra-Endurance Exercise and Oxidative Damage: Implications for Cardiovascular Health,” Sports Medicine 36
“Exercise and Cardiovascular Disease: A New Perspective.” Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology 18
Plato says he’s hungry
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