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.
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:
Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.
― Jane Yolen
It’s not actually books I have to recommend to you today, but interesting news in the world of science and nutrition. I’ve been sick, you’ve been sick, we’re all busy. So when you have a few minutes to relax, have a look at these and see what analysis you come up with. I’ve given mine, naturally.
Just because something isn’t a lie does not mean that it isn’t deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.
― Criss Jami
We’ve looked at the good. We’ve looked at some bad. Now…the ugly.
As you probably already guessed from the idiotic statement that the same protein that will kill you if you’re 64 will suddenly protect you from death once you turn 65, this is a load of baloney. This contention alone ought to be enough to put every reasonable person on alert. Continue reading The Good, The Bad and The Ugly III
I’ve always thought that explaining how science goes wrong is the best way to explain how science really works. There is a beauty in the clever ways that trials can be rigged by design, and it speaks to the reasons we do trials in the first place: because we want them to be fair test of which treatment works best.
In the first installment, we looked at a couple good things in the news of health and nutrition. But sadly, there’s even more in the bad and ugly. Today…the bad. Tomorrow…the ugly–a brazen attempt by “researchers” with a vested financial interest in non-animal protein sources to scare you into not eating meat. It’s very ugly, and it’s what I’m most anxious to get to. Several of you Faithful Readers have also asked me about it, and your suspicions are right: it’s horrific science and meaningless to your eating habits.
However I don’t wish to ignore other bad science. That wouldn’t be fair, so I’ll restrain myself and save the protein article for the last post.
There’s a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.
It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I’ve forgotten —
If I ever read it.
–Robert Frost
There’s good, bad and ugly in the news. How about the roundup? We’ll start with the good.
“Poirot,” I said. “I have been thinking.”
“An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”
–Agatha Christie
In the last post we asked the question: WHY? Why so much sugar in a recipe when it wasn’t necessary for taste or texture?
Today I have a new “why.” It comes from this article, a form of which has come out on every major American news agency going. If you don’t care to read it all, I’ll summarize: you should now brush your baby’s teeth with fluoride toothpaste so he won’t get a cavity before he’s five, like most kids do.
WHY? Why should I give fluoride to a small child? Why has the cavity situation grown so dire that kids are developing them that young? I want to give the American Dental Association the benefit of the doubt. I can’t imagine it’s fun for a dentist to treat a five-year-old’s cavity, so I understand the dentists’ perspective here.
Tom Naughton has put his recent speech at Springfield college up on Youtube. This is 45 minutes that are worth your time, as he explains how we went from a nation where people knew pretty much what to eat from experience and common wisdom, to one that is disgustingly fat and sick after The Anointed told us all how to eat; and why we’re going back again.
It’s an easy watch/listen (throw it on while you’re doing the dishes or something if you don’t have time to sit and look at it).
The reason is that you eat too many foods that are high in “calories,” which are little units that measure how good a particular food tastes. Fudge, for example, has a great many calories, whereas celery, which is not really a food at all but a member of the plywood family, provided by Mother Nature so that mankind would have a way to get onion dip into his mouth at parties, has none.
― Dave Barry
How are we all feeling today? In the Christmas spirit?
Well, never fear. A number of helpful news agencies have published some gobblitigook that will pull you out of that mood as fast as you can say Kris Kringle.
Ask Me How It Happened 