Sugar = Drug?

I want to dissect a provocative little article on one of my favorite punching bags, sugar.

It demonstrates, in my reading, the distance between basic fact and effective massaging of cultural values.

When it comes to sugar, a simple and highly refined carbohydrate, I agree that Americans eat too much of it.

I'd be more than happy to support a tax on sugar in order to reduce consumption.

I'll even agree that it works on the body in the same way as a drug.

Start with this message and get parent's attention.

How we talk about sugar, however, is important as is how we talk should seek to further the goal of decreasing consumption and increasing health.  I doubt beginning the conversation by talking about sugar as a drug will further that goal.

We can talk about it as a health risk.  We can talk about obesity as a threat to national security.  We can talk about lots of things in order to build a degree of taboo to sugar's over use.  Describing sugar as a drug, however, just makes us sound like a bunch of chicken-little fundamentalists screaming about fire and brimstone. 

It doesn't matter if it is true, if you do not deliver your message in believable fashion.  Going full-
fundamentalist on the public hurts your cause because people stop listening to you.  If you act like a nut, people will assume you are a nut.  First impressions are difficult to overcome.

Run with this message and turn people off.

I am just old enough to remember when drunk driving was not considered a serious offense but something to be laughed about.  Public education and the stigma that came to be associated with the practice did more to reduce it prevalence than locking up drunk drivers.  And the stigma was built up slowly with small doses of emotion and the education of children, who then took the message back home to their parents.

I also remember when nurses smoked on the hospital floor.  I'm sure that the increased taxes on tobacco have played a major role in reducing smoking in America but the shaping of values that changed our perception of smoking so that it was seen as dirty and polluting did even more good in the battle against nicotine.  That change of perception began slowly.  It is good to remember how the change began and not assume the current state happened with one quick blitzkrieg.

John Wayne did not need to attack cigerette smoking to get people to think about reducing their consumption of it.

John Wayne did not have to criticize anyone for not getting a regular physical to make it more acceptable to get one. 

The ad does not need to call nicotine a drug to encourage people to smoke less.

We are closer to the beginning of the campaign than the end.  Many parents have not yet heard the harder critiques of sugar and its impact on health.  If your first message to parents is that they are bad parents poisoning their children with sugar, you won't get very far.  If you start, however, by pointing out the effect of "too much" sugar and go from there, you will have a greater likelihood of success.

Food elitism

Fear: first it kills the mind, then others.

As frequently as the two overlap, I have always worried more about class than race.

It is rooted in fear and it is a fear that kills.

It limits opportunity just as efficiently.  It operates under the radar.  Some homo sapiens march around advertising it as their virtue. Class-ism is most evident in our arguments over the food system.

We now have thousands of studies that GMO foods do no harm.

Increased yields lower the cost of food, a basic necessity.

The poor spend a larger amount of their take home pay on food, so the benefit disproportionately from the use of GMOs.

I actually don't mind giving people a choice to eat non-GMO foods.  Maybe this is a case where I am wrong.  Maybe this is a case where big business is at work.  Maybe we are doing harm to the earth.

If you want to waste your money, go ahead.  I wish I could bring myself to be among those who take it from you.

But don't use your virtue to hurt others.  Don't be a fundamentalist.  Don't force your religion down my throat or the throat of the poor.  If you want to change our mind you're going to have to find more evidence of harm than the studies already produced.

If we fed a lab rat nothing but organic strawberries, we would see negative outcomes as well.

I'd like to see the poor raise more of their own food.  If I tried to eat as well as I do while buying the things we produce on the farm, I would quickly be poor.  I'm not into any kind of Maoist forced collectivization, however.

When science and reason come together to say there is no threat, we should give people choice.

Contrast Effect

Two studies caught by eye recently, each studying how one gender rates the attractiveness of the other.

How does one sign up for these kinds of studies anyway?

So it appears as if men's assessment of what they find attractive in women changes depending upon the season and that women are more likely to find beards attractive when they are more rare and less attractive the more popular they become.

Both are examples of the contrast effect.  In short, we are attracted to the novel and the new.  We want what no one else has and we discount the common.

One example of this effect at work is the long line of dog breeds destroyed by fashion.

A small niche breed, with a small genetic pool is featured in a movie or television series.  People go crazy over that breed as every family's Darla Sherman then demands to have one.  Opportunistic breeders pump out as many puppies as possible to meet the demand with out concern for the long-term health of the breed.  Reckless breeding amplifies whatever latent problems already existed in the breed and a tsunami of broken dogs overwhelms responsible breeders.

One-hundred and One Dalmatians.

Frazier.

She's not the only one to value a dog for nothing but its coat.

Lassie.

Air Bud (and before that Gerald Ford's "Liberty").

Rin Tin Tin.

The impact of the fad varies depending upon a number of factors: how robust was breed, how organized were the pre-fad enthusiasts, how long did the fad last.

The cleaning up of the genetic mess takes longer than the time it takes to create.  Never a robust breed, the best hope for the dalmatian is good old fashioned out-crossing.  In other words, introducing new genetic material through crossing dalmatians with pointers and then selectively breeding the offspring to get the best out of the old and the new.  Of course inbreeding fundamentalists resist the idea.

Better at resisting the fad as been the Jack Russel Terrier Club of America.  They list on their website all the reasons you do not want to own a Jack Russell Terrier, using preemption in an attempt to reduce the Jack Russell Terrier Rescue business.

Golden Retrievers have fewer health problems are reduced but it'll be work to find one that will hunt.

Eighty percent of the military's working dogs come from Europe and much of the rest from an internal breeding project designed to decrease that dependence.  So much for the working German Shepherd in America.

There is another kind of contrast effect, one that all dog enthusiasts can help promote: the well-trained, well-loved, actualized dog.  The contrast is not just in the look of the animal but how well it works with its owner whether that be navigating about town, hunting in the field, or helping raise the children.

You see them out there and they make me smile, but it requires investments harder to come by and harder quantify than money: time and skill.  The skills are not hard to acquire and the time is not overwhelming, but they are required.

That would be one dog fashion I would be able to get behind.

Don't Drown Your Food

Note the absence of abolitionist thinking.  Moderation in all things.  Just don't drown your food.

If the Universe is not Meeting Your Expectations,

I carry a note card in my wallet.  On it are six sentences, mostly drawn from the ancient stoics, that I seek to remember as I go through my day.  The first reads,

1.  If the universe is not meeting your expectations, it is not the universe's fault.

Let's face it, delusions can be comforting.  The idea struck me most abruptly when I worked with a guy of strong political views who when cornered by contrary facts or logic would respond, "Well, I prefer to believe..."At least he was self-aware enough to understand that he was basing his beliefs on preference rather than rationality.

The charm diminishes for each year out of college.

I would prefer to believe that I can dance, that does not make it so.  I would prefer to believe that I am as handsome as Robert Redford, that does not make it so.  I would prefer to believe that all children are above average and that there are no sexual predators in the world.  Again, belief makes none of these statements true, though there can be emotional comfort in believing a comforting myth but it does not change the underlying reality.

Fifteen years ago I read a story of a paraplegic who purchased a specially modified motorcycle.  He was unfamiliar with how the safety features worked and he failed to strap his legs securely in place.  Within a mile his riding boots had been thrown off and his legs were flapping in the wind, but he had to continue the twenty mile drive to his destination.  "It's not like I could hop off the bike and pick them up" he noted afterwards.  When he arrived at his destination his leg was badly burned from coming up against the exhaust pipe.  "Gee," he quipped, "that looks like it hurts."

While prefering to believe something can numb us to harsh realities, these beliefs are a disadvantage when they prevent us from responding to that which is doing harm. If we misread reality, reality does not go away but our misunderstanding can do us both physical harm but, more to the immediate point, emotional harm, as our expectations prove to be fundamentally misaligned.  Commenting upon the nature of reality we could not do much better than the science fiction author Philip K. Dick who wrote,

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Or to revise the statement, that which exists in the midst of our disbelief is reality.  Our beliefs about a thing shape our expectations of it.  When our beliefs, and following them our expectations, conflict with "that which will not go away," the problem is not outside of us but within.   If the universe is not the way we would choose it to be, the problem is not with the universe.

If you find yourself disappointed in the world,  I, for one, am sympathetic to that feeling.  Been there, done thought, bought the t-shirt, as they say.  The path forward is simple in retrospect but difficult in the moment, alter your expectations, so they are more congruent with reality.  Listen to alternative points of view as to understand them, do not merely seek to rebut them or excuse yourself from their grasp. 

If your career is not working out like you planned, change your expectations of that career, and then decide whether to accept your current position or seek a new start.  Is your new car not bringing you as much joy as you anticipated?  Was it the fault of the car manufacturer or was your level of expectation unrealistic?  Relationships a bust?  What are you seeking from the other people?  Is that realistic?

If we would learn from our experiences we must treat our expectations of the universe as so many hypotheses.  The longer we hold onto bad ones, the less time we have to pursue those that more accurately reflect reality.

Treat with utmost respect your power for forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason.  It enables you to learn from experience, to live in harmony with others, and to walk in the way of the gods.

Marcus Aurelius, The Emperor's Handbook 3.9



Part Two: Being Disturbed is a Choice.

Food Fundamentalism: Fats, Salts, and Sugar

Part One

When is science not science?  When it becomes a belief system adhered to and propagated by fundamentalists..

Why were Americans sold a basket of bad science?  For their own good.

Why did they buy it?  They were made afraid.

Facing bad science reporting on the impact of marijuana, even that bastion of left-of-center conventional wisdom National Public Radio seems to be confirm what members of the conservative rabble have suggested for decades, when science becomes news facts suffer.   

Why do dedicated scientists not push back against inaccurate science reporting?  Reporters, or more accurately their editors, are not in the business of publishing scholarly papers but of selling newspapers.  If you've clicked on a sensational link to regret it later, you know exactly what I mean.

Moreover bad science, once it gains a threshold of public support, becomes funded science.  If you are looking to run an experiment, someone has to pay for work to be done and it is easier to get money for  a familiar idea. 

Like the people who fund them, scientists are homo sapiens and as such are social creatures who work for organizations, made up of other social creatures.  Odds are those organizations, their employers whether corporate or public, are just as political as your employer.  Consequently scientists too tow the line, for the most part believing something is true because the preponderance of their peers believe it is true and "who am I" to question the consensus. 

The few who are anti-social enough to serve as gadflies are marginalized as "deniers."  They are betraying the received wisdom and must be punished.  We are a religious species whether that religion was handed down by Moses or Moses or Einstein.  Today we just drive them out of academia, a small improvement from the days when the citizens of Athens sentenced Socrates to drink Hemlock for corrupting the youth.

Max Plank wasn't too far from the truth when he wrote,

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

The renewal that comes by the process of death and rebirth is starting to be shown in the area of nutritional research.  More scientists are starting to openly admit, and newspapers are starting to publish, how little we know about the impact of diet on health. Admitting what we do not know is the first step in learning something new.

First there were the links made between saturated fat and heart disease in the 1950's and the promised salvation that would arise from eating more carbohydrates.  Now we learn of the costs of that advice not only impacted the rise of obesity and diabetes (as critics at the time predicted) but *perhaps* also the increase in cancer, Alzheimer's, and yes in some populations, even heart disease rates that we have seen since that time. 

Sevareid's Law rules supreme.

Later came the advice against consuming salt, even after strenuous exercise.  It is slowly being replaced by the knowledge that after decades of study the most we can say authoritatively is that the evidence is "inconsistent and contradictory."  Consuming the amount of salt recommended by the USDA and CDC may even reduce your life expectancy.  We do not know and it is time to admit we do not know. 

Likewise there is evidence that we should blame sugar, at least in part and for some, of the modern conditions that ail us.  This is just another hypothesis.  I do not mean that it should be treated as anything more than an alternative hypothesis,  It has not, however, resulted in the same policy attention as saturated fat and salt and caution against excess is at least as warrented in this final catagory of food stuff as the other two.    

The rationale and content changes but Puritanism never dies.

Hypothesis is often sold as fact.  Reason for caution is amplified to reason for fear.  Who wants to be the scientist who proposed a hypothesis?  Who wants to buy a newspaper that reads like a failing science magazine?  We all want to be the guy or gal who made a break through.  We all respond impulsively to fear.  Just because someone believes in himself, however, does not mean we all should.  Just because the news anchor responds with dramatic fear, this is not reason enough that we should be afraid. 

What do we know about nutrition?  Humans have been eating minimally processed foods since the invention of fire and farmed foods for around 12,000 years.  These diets contained meat and the primary oil was either animal lard or, in certain climates, olives.  The historical record for the impact of mass consumption of vegetable oils is less than one hundred years.  In fact it is the biggest change in our modern diet, and we made the change in the name of a settled science fact that was mere hypothesis. 

The puritanical mind, however, rationalized the change "for our own good." From the Inquisition to Mao, true believers always do what they do for the good of the people.

Moderation in all things is still good advice as is the axiom "the dose makes the poison."  I'm sure there are points where an individual consumes either too much or too little salt, fat, sugar, or anything else.  We can probably even make broad guidelines for the population as a whole, recognizing differences in age, activity level, as well as genetic inheritance.  Guidelines, however, are not the same thing as the puritanical scolding which passes for our current attitude.  There is such a thing as quality of life for which we as individuals should be allowed to make trade offs. 

Informing those individual decisions we should rely on what we really know about the present as opposed to what some policymakers fear or believe.  We elect government officials to lead and hire bureaucrats to implement and inform.  Neither has been charged to be my caretaker or nanny.  Those who would  shortcut debate for the sake of their definition of "the common good" are the worse kind of meddler.  When you give a puritan power, you will find yourself living in a theocracy which is an oppression to all but the most fanatical of believers.

Luckily, this form of fundamentalism is loosing power in policy circles even if it retains a strong hold on the popular imagination.  Unfortunately, there is another form of food fundamentalism seeking to take its place centered on equally unscientific fears of genetic modification and the flame of religious fervor burns bright and young in it. 

No More Popes!

In response to the firing of the CEO of Mozilla because he refused to repent of making a campaign contribution to California's "Proposition 8," which sought to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, fifty supporters of same-sex marriage have made an important stand against gay-rights puritanism. 

Their common-sense proposal called on civil society to recognize the value in the freedom to dissent from popular opinion, in this case to oppose same-sex marriage.  Freedom of speech, what a concept!  Freedom to dissent on religious matters (and marriage is and always has been a religious matter, even if it is a secular religion) without fear. How novel! 

I'm not too interested in having anyone's Pope tell me how to think about marriage, let alone fire me if my ideas do not conform to local orthodoxy.

Opponents of same-sex marriage have, with just a small bit of defensiveness, recognized the gesture.  If we could get such attitudes into the mainstream culture we could have the makings of a revolution.

Saturated Fat and "Settled Science"

They always claim to be on the side of "settled" truth.

Beware anyone who feels the need, in the name of science, to use shame in an attempt to shut down those who disagree.  As more and more studies call into question the link, thirty years after it was considered settled science, between saturated fat and heart disease, what other bits of received scientific wisdom might be up for question.

Of course I am alluding to the catastrophic warmists who fill the void left vacant by the death of that old time Puritan fundamentalism.  They, like Jonathon Edwards, believe that humanity hangs like a spider suspended by a thread in the hand of an angry god.  Once upon a time you might be sentenced to wear a scarlet letter or drowned as a witch for disrespecting the received wisdom of God's prophet.  Today too many direct questions and you are labeled a "denier."

This is not to say that eating bacon double cheese burgers everyday is good for your health or that burning dinosaur bones is without ecological consequence.  It only goes to demonstrate that complex systems, like the human body and global climate, are truly complex and attempts to simplify them lead to false conclusions.

It also demonstrates that those advocates who are the most strident, the most ready to overstate their case, should not be trusted with the power to govern our lives, or even to set the terms of public debate.  It matters little if the fundamentalism they espouse is Calvinist, Nurtitionist, Warmist; or any other human ideological classification, it all comes from the same place in the human heart.  Where there is the absence of humility there lies the seed that we must be dictated to, for our own good of course.