Quotulatiousness

August 25, 2010

“How can I buy the kind of food I want without supporting dangerous delusions?”

Filed under: Economics, Food, Health, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Eric S. Raymond has qualms over what some of his food preferences are actually going to support:

My mouth watered. “Oh Goddess,” I muttered in her direction, “it’s packaged crack for me . . .”

Ah, but then came the deadly disclaimers. “VEGAN GLUTEN-FREE NO GMOs NO TRANS FAT.” and “We support local and fair-trade sources growing certified organic, transitional, and pesticide-free products.” Aaaarrrgggh! Suddenly my lovely potential snack was covered with an evil-smelling miasma of diet-faddery, sanctimony, political correctness, and just plain nonsense. This, I find, is a chronic problem with buying “organic”.

So, what specific parts of those fluffy pro-foodie marketing terms bother ESR?

Take “no GMOs” for starters. That’s nonsense; it’s barely even possible. Humans have been genetically modifying since the invention of stockbreeding and agriculture; it’s what we do, and hatred of the accelerated version done in a genomics lab is pure Luddism. It’s vicious nonsense, too; poor third-worlders have already starved because their governments refused food aid that might contain GMOs.

[. . .]

Vegan? I’ve long since had it up to here with the tissue of ignorance and sanctimony that is evangelical veganism. Comparing our dentition and digestive tracts with those of cows, chimps, gorillas, and bears tells the story: humans are designed to be unspecialized omnivores, and the whole notion that vegetarianism is “natural” is so much piffle. It’s not even possible except at the near end of 4000 years of GMOing staple crops for higher calorie density, and even now you can’t be a vegan in a really cold climate (like, say, Tibet) because it’ll kill you.

[. . .]

Who could be against “fair trade”? Well, me . . . because the “fair trade” crowd pressures individual growers to join collectives with “managed” pricing. If you’re betting that this means lazy but politically adept growers with poor resource management and productivity at the expense of more efficient and harder-working ones, you’ve broken the code.

I share a lot of ESR’s concerns — and tastes. I don’t go out of my way to buy organic produce, but we do tend to buy local produce (in season) and our local butcher shop has been a great source of slightly-more-expensive but definitely-better-tasting meat and chicken. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, we have to pay more attention to food labels than most folks, but we’re looking for specific ingredients, not for the marketing bumph.

August 24, 2010

Gluten-free food not the dietary silver bullet

Filed under: Food, Health, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:54

With a celiac in the family, we’ve been very aware of all the ways the food industry uses gluten as a cheap filler (because we have to read ingredient lists very carefully). The recent boom in gluten-free products has been wonderful: we still read all the labels, but there are more products we can safely buy and use with confidence. But some folks buy the products thinking that gluten-free means guilt-free:

The notion that a gluten-free diet can help people lose weight or avoid carbohydrates is a myth. “Many packaged gluten-free products are even higher in carbs, sugar, fat and calories than their regular counterparts, and they tend to be lower in fiber, vitamins and iron,” says Shelley Case, a registered dietician on the medical advisory board of the Celiac Disease Foundation. “Gluten-free does not mean nutritious,” she notes.

Gluten, a protein in wheat, barley and rye, is not only a key ingredient in baked goods. It’s also used as a thickening agent in ketchup and ice cream. It helps ferment vinegar and alcoholic beverages. It’s even in lip gloss and envelope adhesives.

For people with celiac disease, ingesting even tiny amounts of gluten can set off an autoimmune reaction that flattens the finger-like villi lining the small intestine. The most common symptoms are bloating, gas, diarrhea and constipation, as well as early osteoporosis. The autoimmune reaction can also cause skin rashes, chronic fatigue, bone and joint pain, neurological problems, liver problems, diabetes, infertility in both men and women and cancers, including lymphoma. An estimated three million Americans have celiac disease — and the vast majority don’t know it because it can have no symptoms or mimic other diseases.

Separately, a smaller group of people have a specific allergy to wheat; exposure can lead to rashes, asthma and even anaphylactic shock.

A third category of people — as many as 20 million Americans — appear to be sensitive to gluten without having full-blown celiac disease. For them, symptoms may be less typical, involving depression, mental fogginess, mood swings and behavior changes. Much less is known about this group.

August 10, 2010

Hey kids, are your parents uptight about you having sex?

Filed under: Britain, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:10

That’s to be expected. They’re even more uptight about their parents having sex:

Over the last few months there have been numerous headlines about the sex lives of the over-50s — almost all negative. The HIV infection rate in this group has doubled, we are told. The numbers of over-50s suffering from chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhoea, herpes and genital warts is growing. One doctor even wrote about his shock at treating the sexual diseases of what he called “cheerfully promiscuous” baby boomers.

It is true there are probably some people at middle age who mistakenly think their sexual partners are above suspicion, and others who did not enter their dating lives using condoms. Safer sex practices may not come so easily for them, yet the prominence and style of these articles underscores the sexual ageism that pervades our society. Where are the positive messages about the sex lives of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond? Do we ever hear the truth about how sexually vibrant they can be — without an attached warning about physical dangers and moral pitfalls? Sex among elders is surely one of the greatest sexual taboos in western society.

August 5, 2010

Examining DNA testing from the client’s point of view

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Health, Media, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:19

Mary Carmichael is writing a multi-part series about DNA testing:

On July 22, Congress held a hearing on direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests, services that analyze your DNA and interpret the results in exchange for a few hundred bucks — no doctor necessary. The hearing could have been a thoughtful national conversation about science, business, and ethics. Alas, it devolved instead into a series of gotcha moments, starring a General Accounting Office sting operation that came off like a cross between the ACORN videos and the world’s worst ad for snake oil.

Time and again, on tape, an undercover agent called up an unidentified testing company and asked an ill-informed question. (“Is it OK if I stop taking my cholesterol meds and instead take the nutritional supplements you sell? If I can manage to get hold of my fiancé’s saliva without him knowing, will you run it through your machines so I can surprise him with the ‘gift’ of his own data?”) And time and again, the phone rep sank to the occasion and made the company look awful. (Sure, lay off the pills and take our supplements! Of course we’ll analyze your fiancé’s spit without his permission even though that’s illegal, unethical, and weird!)

I listened to the tape several times the day it was released, despairing at the way people were taking advantage of gullible, albeit fictional consumers, which was clearly how the congressmen who held the hearing wanted me to react. Then I started to worry about something else. How much time did I even have left to decide whether I was going to take a test myself? Even before the hearing, the FDA had announced its plans to regulate all DTC genetic tests, possibly so heavily as to keep them off the market; the hearing was just the sort of thing that could push it to move faster. What if, by the time I finally decided if I wanted one of these tests, I couldn’t buy one anymore? My credit card was sitting next to my laptop. I did something that in retrospect seems a bit rash. There’s a DNA-collection kit on my desk now, taunting me — because although I bought the thing, I still can’t decide whether I actually want to use it.

The sheer volume of misinformation on DNA testing — combined with public belief in the amazing accuracy of DNA testing (probably induced by watching too many crime investigation TV shows) — leaves the legitimate companies in an awkward situation. The actual DNA self-tests don’t tell you what you might expect, and can tell you things you don’t want to know. Politicians jumping in now (at the prompting of bureaucrats who want more power to regulate) will only make the situation more confused.

H/T to BoingBoing for the link.

August 4, 2010

Canada’s (lack of) abortion rules

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

Apparently lots of Canadians think that the country’s laws are far more restrictive of abortion than they really are:

Two-thirds of Canadians do not know that Canada has no abortion law, according to a new poll that indicates Canadians are woefully misinformed about a landmark ruling in the country’s history.

The poll, which asked 1,022 Canadian adults about their understanding of the country’s abortion regulations, found that just 22% of Canadians correctly identified a woman’s right to an abortion with no governmental restrictions. Canada has not had legislated abortion rules since 1988, making the country an “absolute outlier” on the issue, according to a medical ethicist.

“There’s really only a very small number of Canadians that correctly identify the current situation in Canada,” says pollster Jaideep Mukerji, who worked on the Angus-Reid poll, which was released on Tuesday. “That could be problematic.”

This was highlighted over the last couple of months, with the government and opposition wrangling over Stephen Harper’s initiative to increase funding for maternal health in the developing world. Because opinions widely differ over what the law covers in Canada, it was easy for the opposition to portray Harper’s plan as being ideological rather than humanitarian due to the exclusion of abortion.

Canadians don’t want to re-open the debate, although most appear to want more restrictions in place.

August 3, 2010

Japan’s centenarians are going missing

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Health, Japan — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:36

After the discovery that the oldest man in Tokyo had actually been dead for years, it should come as no surprise that the oldest woman in Tokyo has apparently been missing for decades:

Fusa Furuya, aged 113, had been registered as living with her daughter.

But the daughter says she has not seen her mother since the 1980s.

According to government data, there are more than 40,000 centenarians in Japan. But the discoveries in Tokyo have cast doubt on the accuracy of the figures.

Despite being reputed to be Tokyo’s oldest woman, it appears no-one had bothered to check that Mrs Furuya was still alive — until now.

Local council officials have been visiting the very elderly after the body of Sogen Kato, thought to be Tokyo’s oldest man, was found last week.

The police believe he had been dead for more than 30 years.

When officials went to Ms Furuya’s home, they discovered that she had been missing for decades.

Unlike the earlier case, where the man’s family had continued to collect his pension, the family of Fusa Furuya don’t appear to have been involved in pension fraud . . . although you do wonder why they hadn’t noticed her being missing all this time.

July 31, 2010

QotD: Take experts’ advice with a pinch of salt

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Food, Health, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:41

More and more, the history of dietary guidelines that our public-health authorities promulgate resembles the Woody Allen comedy Sleeper, in which the main character, awaking from a centuries-long slumber, learns that every food we once thought bad for us is actually good, starting with steak and chocolate. But you wouldn’t know that from government experts’ increasing efforts to nudge us into their approved diets. In 2006, New York City passed the nation’s first ban on the use of trans fats by restaurants, and other cities followed suit, though trans fats constitute just 2 percent of Americans’ caloric intake. Now the Bloomberg administration is trying to push food manufacturers nationwide to reduce their use of salt — and the nutrition panel advising the FDA on the new guidelines similarly recommends reducing salt intake to a maximum of 1,500 milligrams daily (down from 2,300 a day previously). Yet Dr. Michael Alderman, a hypertension specialist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, observed in the New York Times that because sodium is an essential component of our diets, the city’s effort amounts to a giant uncontrolled experiment with the public’s health that could have unintended consequences. And in 2006, Harvard Medical School professor Norman Hollenberg concluded that while some people benefit from reduced salt intake, the evidence “is too inconsistent and generally too small to mandate policy decisions at the community level.”

Steven Malanga, “Egg on Their Faces: Government dietary advice often proves disastrous”, City Journal, 2010-07

July 29, 2010

BC government finds an issue to distract the media

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:44

Adrian MacNair linked to this Vancouver Sun article, saying “”B.C. halts penis-arousal test for youth sex offenders” Say whaaaaaaatttt?”

A moratorium has been placed on tests done on B.C. youth sex offenders measuring their penis arousal in response to sexual stimuli after the province’s top child advocate launched an immediate investigation Wednesday.

The device in question is called a “penile plethysmograph” — or PPG. In a lab setting, it is attached to male genitals so technicians can measure changes in “penile tumescence” — essentially erections that reflect the state of arousal in subjects shown photographs of adults, children and even babies in varying states of undress while at the same time being read a story that describes coercive or forced sexual activity.

So, until it came to light, the government was showing provocative images and reading pornographic stories to teenage boys to find out if they got erections during the process? Would anyone be surprised to find that teenage boys found this whole exercise sexually arousing? Teenage boys are hard-wired to find all sorts of things sexually arousing!

The point of the test is to reportedly predict whether offenders have gained control of their deviant arousal patterns through treatment or if they have not learned how to suppress deviance and will be a strong risk for re-offending.

Again, we’re talking about teenage boys . . . I’d be more suspicious if they found that one of them was managing not to react to such stimulus!

Okay, yes, I’m unfairly stereotyping, at least to some degree. But this sort of “test” or “experiment” would be flagrantly illegal if it were being done by anyone other than a government-funded health organization, wouldn’t it?

Replacing one impossible ideal with another

Filed under: Britain, Health, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

Colby Cosh linked to this Guardian article, saying “I’m afraid she’s right. ‘Thin’ is something every girl can at least strive for. Only God can make Christina Hendricks.”

When it comes to the ideal female body-shape the pipe cleaner is out, the hourglass is in — or at least it will be if the new equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, manages to chisel out her will on the perfect body image.

“In the autumn the minister will convene the first of a series of roundtable discussions with members of the fashion industry, including magazine editors, models and advertisers, to discuss how to boost body confidence among the young,” the Sunday Times reported yesterday.

One might think that one of the first steps to boost such confidence might be to abolish school weigh-ins and make puppy fat a normal rite of passage rather than the subject of a health warning via the National Child Measurement Programme. (Can any woman think of anything more likely to have produced a fear of being on the chunky side than turning up to school one morning and being plonked on a set of scales?)

While I’m happy to have any excuse to post a photo of the delightful “YoSaffBridge”, this is another example of Nanny State thinking: (some) women have body image issues, therefore we must spring into action and fix it.

Rather than replacing the old impossible images with new impossible images (as the creative director of Harper’s Bazaar pointed out, the fashion industry exists to create the fantasy you’ll never live up to) an equalities minister should throw out all notions of obsessing about feminine beauty and concentrate on helping young girls think about the size of their achievements rather than the flatness of their navels, and the scale of their ambitions rather than — in Joanie’s case — the rather spectacular power of their bosoms.

June 16, 2010

Air pollution: unseen (and statistically unlikely) killer

Filed under: Cancon, Environment, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

Air pollution is bad, and the computer models used to determine how bad it is show that more than 100% of all deaths were due to pollution!

Air pollution cuts a deadly but invisible swath through Canada. We know this because the Canadian Medical Association says there were 21,000 deaths from exposure to air-borne pollutants in 2008. Of these, 2,682 Canadians were instantly struck down by the acute effects of pollution. By 2031, 710,000 people will have been slain by this unseen killer.

The evidence on this epic death toll is chillingly precise. According to the Ontario Medical Association, exactly 348 people died from air pollution in Waterloo Region in 2008. In Hamilton, 445 lives were cut short. And Manitoulin Island tragically lost 14 residents due to pollutants that year.

In Toronto, the Big Smoke of Canada, the figures are appropriately larger. Calculations by Toronto Public Health claim air pollution kills 1,700 people annually and sends 6,000 to the hospital. Ten percent of all non-trauma deaths in Toronto are directly attributed to air pollution.

Did you know that? I certainly didn’t. Oh, and wait . . . neither of us knew it because it’s junk scientific bullshit:

Consider what happens when you take Toronto’s computer model and use it to determine the death toll in previous eras, when the air was far more polluted than today. For example, average sulfur dioxide levels in downtown Toronto were more than 100 parts per billion in the mid-1960s. It’s now less than 10 ppb. No surprise then, that the death toll was much greater in the bad old days. Across the 1960s, half of all non-trauma deaths were the direct result of air pollution, according to Toronto’s model. And in February 1965, more than 100% of all deaths were due to pollution!

In other words, air pollution killed more people inside the computer model than actually died of all causes in the real world. How’s that for deadly?

I can confidently assure any modern day pollution-panicked worrier that things were much, much worse in the 1960s and 70s: the air was much more difficult to breathe in downtown Toronto, the water was disgustingly polluted, and (we were assured) things could only get worse in our little slice of environmental hell. The air is far less polluted now than at any time in my life, the lakes are largely recovered from the worst environmental damage we inflicted on them.

June 15, 2010

Why “Ideas having sex” is a good idea

Filed under: Books, Economics, Environment, Health, Liberty — Tags: — Nicholas @ 16:31

June 7, 2010

The worst drink in America is “Masochistic, but cheerful!”

Filed under: Cancon, Food, Health — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 16:18

Remember when I posted a short item about the worst beverage in America saying “Thank goodness this chain isn’t in operation anywhere near here”? According to Drew Halfnight, I’m not keeping up with the times — it’s apparently available in Canada.

But how does it feel to drink one? A spokesman for Tim Horton’s, which sells Cold Stone products in 40 locations across Canada, told me: “It’s apparently delicious.” But I know a thing or two about ice cream — I inherited a mean sweet tooth — I wanted to experience it for myself.

So, I zipped down to the nearest Cold Stone Creamery location — #2533 at Yonge and Eglinton in Toronto — and handed over $5.19 plus tax for a taste of death. The “Gotta Have It” size — 24.5 ounces — is not available in Canada, so I ordered the next best thing, a 20-ouncer.

The things people will do just to get a story . . .

The taste is intense: a saccharine blast of sugary chocolate, sugary peanut butter and just plain sugar, which engenders a third, chalky undertaste. But it only takes a few sips of the stuff before the sugar totally numbs my palate and I can’t really taste anything except richness. I’d liken the overall drinking experience to slurping up melted Ben & Jerry’s ice cream with a little homo milk thrown in. Masochistic, but cheerful!

May 26, 2010

The pandemic juggernaut of doom . . . that failed to materialize

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Health, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:07

Lorne Gunter has a good wrap-up of the bone-headed approach of public health officals in Canada to the Swine H1N1 flu “pandemic”:

Good on ordinary Torontonians. Despite all the H1N1/swine flu hype this past winter, just 28.2% of that city’s residents bothered to get vaccinated against the “pandemic;” that’s less than the 35% who usually get shots each year against the seasonal flu.

Even Toronto health care workers couldn’t be stampeded into getting the shots. Only 60% of them bothered.

[. . .]

Even from the start, the World Health Organization and other experts where told this strain of flu was weak and easily defeated. Infection rates never came remotely close to forecasts and death tolls were thankfully much, much lower than for typical seasonal infections.

The trouble, I think, was that so many public health officials have predicted so many pandemics for so long — SARS, bird flu, swine flu — that they simply got caught up in their own warnings and projections. They wouldn’t listen to contrary evidence.

The relevant public health authorities would have served the public interest (and their own credibility for the future) if they’d been much more forthcoming as the early stages of the pandemic showed H1N1 not to be the second coming of the Black Death. Instead, they doubled-down and raised the propaganda bar even higher.

October 27, 2009: Given that regular seasonal flu causes thousands of deaths annually, you’d think it would be good statistical discipline to count the cases of H1N1 separately, both the gauge the severity of the disease and to chart the effectiveness of the vaccination program. Lumping seasonal flu and “flu-like symptoms” together with H1N1 seems a big step backward from normal public health practice.

This would have been a good opportunity for de-escalating the panic mongering (and perhaps even attempting to rein-in the media, who were equally to blame for the tone of the information getting to the public). They chose, instead, to actively hide the fact that H1N1 cases were running below the level of ordinary seasonal flu cases (total H1N1 deaths: approximately 18,000 — typical annual death toll from seasonal flu: 250,000-500,000).

The biggest problem isn’t that they over-reacted this time, it’s that it has reduced their credibility the next time they start issuing health warnings. And that’s a bad thing. Unless they pull the same stunt next time, too. In which case, we may start hearing talk about setting up competing organizations to do the job the current entities appear to have given up on.

May 22, 2010

The worst beverage in America

Filed under: Food, Health, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 20:10

Thank goodness this chain isn’t in operation anywhere near here:

May 1, 2010

Call out the inspectors

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Health, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:50

A busybody manages to create a lot of new jobs in San Diego County with one little phone call:

On Tuesday, we were surprised inspected by the San Diego County Department of Environmental Health. The two inspectors were sent out to visit our facilities (and other breweries in San Diego) as a patron had lodged a complaint about local tasting rooms. So I’d like to take a moment to thank that one person who felt it was important to lodge a complaint about brewery tasting rooms all over San Diego. Apparently they were concerned that we didn’t have a GIANT BLUE “A” on our cold boxes!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

You see, my fellow brewers and brewery owners are now having our hands forced (in the name of public safety) to go through the plan check and approval phase so that all of us can earn Health Permits for our tasting rooms.

What’s even better and the reason we’re all so thankful for your efforts today is that Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey has been issued a cease and desist for the sampling of beer in our tasting room. Because, as we all know, beer is a public nuisance laced with nasty things that can kill you!

I personally want to extend my gratitude to that consumer who felt this industry needed more regulatory agencies knocking on our doors. (The Health Department has never been interested in us before this call) Muchas Gracias Amigo (or Amiga) wherever you might be. There are breweries all over the City of San Diego who are now going to have to spend thousands of dollars on repairs that at best are “marginally justified.”

What follows is a long list of local businesses that will be seeing more income from San Diego breweries, as they all scramble to get into compliance with regulations they didn’t have to worry about until now. Before you consider this is a good thing, make sure you read up on the broken window fallacy (scroll down to paragraph 1.6).

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