Category Archives: Health

Business, Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Hospital Food

9 Comments

There’s no doubt it could use a lot of improvement, but I think this is bogus:

Dr. Eisenberg says the jury is no longer out on the benefits of eating a more plant-based diet with less refined foods, sugar and red meat. A study published last year in JAMA estimated that nearly half of the deaths from heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes are caused by poor diet.

They are, but there’s zero evidence that red meant causes any of them. Patricia had to spend a night in the hospital for a procedure a few weeks ago, and her breakfast was terrible, nutritionally.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: Incorrect diagnoses kill 80,000 people per year.

The medical profession gets far too much respect.

Business, Culinary, Education, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

A Sea Change In Dietary Advice

4 Comments

Low-carb should be the first approach in treating diabetes and obesity.

[Update a few minutes later]

Meanwhile, “Big Pasta” Barilla has been meddling in nutrition science.

[Sunday-morning update]

No, despite the headline, there is zero scientific evidence that listing calories on menus is helping people lose weight, and this article provides none. This “study” is nonsense. First, it’s self reporting. Second, it’s premised on the assumption, for which there is zero evidence, that counting calories is helpful, when calorie counting is a scientifically bogus concept, that assumes all calories are equal in their effects on metabolism. The kind of calories matter, and the way they measure calories, by literally burning food, is not how your body metabolizes calories, so it doesn’t even make sense thermodynamically.

Health, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society, Weird

Nerve Stimulation

13 Comments

…may help with female sexual dysfunction.

Isn’t sex itself nerve stimulation?

[Friday-evening update]

This seems sort of related: Custom sex dolls.

This seems to me like the ultimate expression of free-market capitalism. I found the kicker interesting:

“You have to find beauty in imperfection,” Krivicke says as he takes the mannequin head back from me.

I’ve noticed over the years that, when I get to know someone, and I come to like them, they grow increasingly interesting and physically attractive, even if I didn’t find them so initially.

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Deep-Fried Fair Food

A lot of nutrition mythology in this.

No, you won’t get a coronary from eating fried food, or if you do, it’s not because it’s fried, or has saturated fat. Probably the least unhealthy of these is the fried cheesecake, because at least it has additional sat fat in it, along with protein. The others are basically fried sugar and flour. And at least adding the fat mediates to some degree. Also, counting calories is stupid.

Business, Economics, Education, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Gender Is A Social Construct

10 Comments

…except when it’s not:

A foundational tenet of academic feminism holds that alleged differences between males and females are socially constructed. This credo usually maximizes the opportunities for charging sexism, yet it will be discarded in an instant if acknowledging the innate biological and psychological differences between men and women yields an additional trove of feminist complaint. The current issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine shows how the game is played.

For years, medical research neglected “sex and gender differences” in health, according to the magazine. “Historically, the narrative of medicine has been driven by data derived from white men around the age of 40,” the associate dean for curriculum at the Yale Medical School told the magazine’s reporter. Clinical trials only occasionally included females and when they did, the results were rarely analyzed by sex. It’s mysterious why this alleged neglect should matter, if sex differences are “socially constructed.” If males and females are the same psychologically and physically before the patriarchy starts assigning sex roles, then medical research need not distinguish between males and females, either.

It turns out, however, that males and females differentially respond to stress, environmental risk factors, drugs, and disease, as an initiative called Women’s Health Research at Yale devotes itself to documenting. . . .

Such discoveries should be the death knell for social constructivism. Along with many others like them, they buttress the possibility that uneven sex ratios in various fields are in part the result of males and females’ different average dispositions toward competition, risk, and abstract rather than people-centered work (an observation that got computer engineer James Damore fired from Google).

And yet, feminist social-justice warriors are perfectly capable of proceeding on several contradictory fronts simultaneously.

It’s almost as though they select these whacko theories only in order to serve an agenda.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: No, the professional engineering exam is not gender biased.