Category Archives: Technology and Society

Top Nutritionists Attempt To Reach A Consensus

…and end up in a food fight. This would be funnier if it didn’t have such profound implications for health. I don’t know why anyone pays attention to that quack Dean Ornish. It was low-fat recommendations like his that almost surely killed my father thirty-five years ago. I enjoyed this, too:

In the spirit of the conference, he did make a concession: Red meat, a staple of a Paleolithic diet, “is a real problem” due to its carbon footprint, said Eaton, and he proposed a more sustainable Paleo diet that instead derives its protein from plant sources, poultry, and seafood.

Because nothing is more important when it comes to nutrition than carbon footprint. And this:

Those who follow a low-glycemic diet might eat, for instance, pasta but not bagels, parsnips but not potatoes, grapes but not raisins.

Bagels are worse than pasta? Who knew?

From Hunting/Gathering To Farming

Yes, humans evolved in the age of agriculture.

Per the end of the piece, this doesn’t really invalidate the paleo diet theory. It makes sense that we would have adapted to milk; it’s a useful high-protein food source. There would have been less evolutionary pressure to be able to handle grain, because the ill effects don’t occur until later in life, past child-bearing age.

Treating Brain Cancer

with a ketogenic diet:

After quitting my job, I decided to study for a Master’s degree in Nutritional Therapy. As I got deeper into my course work,I was shocked to discover that everything I had learned during my undergraduate studies was either false, misleading, or outdated information.

It’s an anecdote, but a pretty powerful one. The ignorance about nutrition in the health-care field is probably killing thousands.

A Car Of Memories

This is a nice story.

I had MGs when I was young, but my younger brother had a couple Healeys. One of them was wrecked when a woman made a left turn in front of us at an intersection. I was in the jump seat, and got tossed out the back, suffering nothing but a pulled shoulder from breaking my fall. He injured his lip and broke a tooth on the wheel. His friend went into the windshield and had to have reconstructive surgery. As the story notes, no standard seat belts back then (though I installed them in my cars after market).