Staleek
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Before anyone gets too excited here, we should think about a few things. First, this is only one year. There are a host of reasons why they may have produced record crops this year. Second, it's India. It's not unreasonable to assume that crop yields may have been...inflated. It wouldn't be the first time. Third, we have absolutely no way to know why any of this worked or if it would work anywhere else.
So, I hope people will manage their excitement. We simply don't know enough to know what really happened.
I feel like researchers often skip right over how much gender roles are inherited via culture rather than genetics. For example, are the differences between male and female tweets biologically driven or culturally driven? Do men and women behave as they do because they have no choice or because they've been trained to do so by the weight of generations of forced cultural brain washing?I would really appreciate it if researchers conducting gender studies made themselves look credible by trying to filter out biological cause from cultural cause before they started making attributions they clearly cannot support. That tweet study only tells us what happens. It says absolutely nothing about why and any attempt to shoehorn the data into some sort of causative theory should be immediately derided.
The thing about Dr. Oz and other media sources is that somebody, somewhere is going to lie, embellish, or fabricate information. The better the lie, the better the sales. So, people sacrifice integrity in order to make money. Sometimes, it's someone like Dr. Oz who is probably trying to do what he feels is the best thing. Other times, it's Jillian Michaels selling a kettlebell DVD teaching exercise form proven to cause injury.It is entirely possible to distill hard, boring scientific studies into something useful, informative, and entertaining in an ethical manner that preserves integrity. Reddit's /r/fitness sub is a prime example. But, because of the Dr. Oz's and Gillian Michaels, consumers will ignore scientific fact in favor of a pleasing lie. They recognize that someone is lying, but they're more willing to side with the person who's telling them what they want to hear as opposed to the cold, hard truth.
Marketing is, and always has been, about human psychology. That's why Dr. Oz gets more attention than WebMD.
There isn't a method that'll give a value that's applicable to the entire population. Humans aren't nearly as homogeneous as science seems to imply. The best we can ever manage is a reasonable average. So, what I've never understood is why anyone ever believed it was anywhere near accurate. And, now that we now that they weren't even a reasonable average, why are we pretending that we could ever get any more than a reasonable average? And, if the scientific community is willing to admit that they are only seeking a reasonable average, why aren't they actually saying that? Because right now, people actually believe that everyone gets the same amount of calories from food and that's completely factually incorrect. When you factor in things like gluten sensitivity, Crohn's disease, and diabetes, it's pretty obvious that you can find a reason for at least 50% of the population to get substantially less calories from food than people with no health issues.Calories in vs. calories out still seems like a pretty solid theory. However, it's pretty hard to prove when I'm actually getting 1400 calories and you're actually getting 1600 calories from what science tells us has 1500 calories.
@DevanMPC Despite the fact that you're about half wrong, you're making a meaningless point. I don't care why animals are pumped full of antibiotics. If it's harmful to people, then farmers need to be forced by law to stop. Every single study and every bit of science says cattle should be raised in an open field and fed grass in order to be the healthiest and gain the fastest without cheating (antibiotics). And yet, most cattle will spend at least some portion of their life before slaughter packed into a feed lot and fed corn-based feed. While in this feed lot, they'll become depressed, be covered in fecal matter, and get sick from the corn-based feed they aren't biologically adapted to eat.
I'm a farmer. I don't raise cattle because we don't have the land and resources required to ethically raise cattle. But, as a farmer, I know that many farmers don't care about the ethics of raising animals. And that's why these animals get pumped full of antibiotics, potentially endangering the entire US population. And they fight against regulatory change meant to protect Americans because it hurts their bottom line.
So, if you want sympathy, stop pumping your animals full of antibiotics, raise them in an open field, and feed them grasses. Otherwise, profit is your only motive and you really aren't much different than the bankers getting bailed out by the government every other week.
Gloves are a bad idea for getting grip. They tend to bunch up at the base of the fingers and cause blisters. A kettlebell moves a lot more in your hand than a dumbbell or barbell would. Chalk is good, but building up your grip strength is best.
There's two parts missing to this equation. First, buying local is awesome but pretty hard. Why? Because the number of farmers is decreasing every year. Us farmers already account for less than 1% of the US population. Second, going organic isn't cheap and is almost more likely to break a small farmer before they can ever actually get organic certification on land that's been conventionally farmed.
I guess my point is that this would all be a lot easier if all the hipsters and foodies stopped bit*&^ing about environmental impact and pesticides and left the city and helped us farm. More local crops mean less worries about carbon footprint. More people farming 2,000 acres instead of less people farming 5,000+ means it much easier to switch over to organic.
But nobody cares about that, do they? They don't want to farm. They just want farmers to go broke giving them "ethical food". Is it really "ethical" when less than a million bust their butt working 60-80 hour weeks so they can complain about a 40-hour work week? So they take a moral stand against pesticide use and demand organic crops?
Literally every single thing listed in this article could be massively mitigated by about 2 million American farmers nationwide. That will never happen because people value their 72 free hours a week more than actually helping out.
So, whenever I see an article where some city living, city raised, environmentalist rants about "ethical food", I get angry. Leave your comfy homes and fancy city lives and find out what it feels like to be physically exhausted at the end of a day. To literally work from sunup to sundown. To feel the dirt underneath your feet as you walk through rows full of crops you planted, cultivated, and nurtured only to have some sheltered city elitist tell you it's not good enough because of things they can't possibly have any inkling of clue about.
We farmers would love to go organic. We'd love to ship our crops straight to local markets. We also know that you city folk spent the last 50 years demanding the exact opposite and have built massive systems to support that. You want change? You make it happen. Otherwise, you're literally biting the hand that feeds you.
There's a whole lot of government backed studies in your reasoning. New studies, plus history, are showing that the entire low-fat, low-cholesterol mythos is inaccurate. For example, some studies are saying that the body makes both HDL and HDL from cholesterol. Not to mention the fact that some fatty acids are essential and that a no-fat diet will kill you.
Also, it wasn't clear to me what the study said about diabetics. Do eggs correlate with a higher risk of heart disease than what diabetics already face? Or do eggs correlate with the same higher risk that diabetics have?
Also, was it Type I or Type II? I would think that would make a difference. Type I diabetics simply stop being able to make insulin. Type II diabetics basically, usually, eat themselves into insulin resistance. Ignoring a possible lifetime of horrible eating and the subsequent damage to the body only to pin the blame on eggs in single study seems pretty irresponsible.
I've personally served as an Infantryman and worked side-by-side with women in Iraq in combat situations. I see no reason why women should be excluded. I've worked with some weak-a$$ men and some tough women. People are people. They're either cut out for the job or not. So, good move by Secretary Panetta and the US military. And to the women: welcome to the crazy world of combat arms. Prepare to be insulted, ridiculed, and harassed by some of the most loyal, tough, and dedicated group of servicemembers our nation can produce. I survived it. You can too.
Food fraud should result in more than a simple fine. It should result in crippling fines that scale based on the size of the company with the explicit purpose of destroying fraudsters. Caveat emptor is one thing, but misleading labels can literally be fatal. I.e., putting peanut oil in olive oil. Peanut allergies are very serious business.Do this as a individual and it's criminal negligence or negligent homicide. Do this as a business and it's a fine and a few extra inspections. The government hasn't done nearly enough, IMO.
Where to start, where to start...
BMI is not a measure of health or appropriate weight. I really, really, really wish people would stop using it and start demonizing it. As much as 30% false negatives and it's increasing inaccuracy as body fat % decreases mean it's about as accurate as taking a wild guess.
Telling people with an eating disorder that you won't work with them because of their eating disorder couldn't possibly cause anxiety to intensifies said eating disorder? Could it? Maybe?
"In the U.S., about 0.9 percent of women and 0.3 percent of men have been diagnosed as anorexic, though presumably many others suffer from undiagnosed eating disorders." No kidding? Overeating is a diagnosed eating disorder. The US has an obesity epidemic. Oh right. Telling Americans that overeating is actually the root of the obesity epidemic doesn't sell many diet books or gym memberships.
Thanks medical establishment. You've convinced us a useless ratio is a sign of health and lied to us about why we're fight. No wonder nobody trusts doctors anymore.
Health journalism sucks because it's written by journalists. They don't seem to care how much of an effect politics plays in science. Nor do they seem to care about science. You get more page views claiming by completely misrepresenting a study as being a panacea. On the web, it's called "link baiting". In print, it's called "being a sucky journalist".
No, that's wrong. In both arenas, it's called "being a successful health journalist".
The article you linked derisively mentioned Gary Taubes. The author neglected to mention that the low-fat craze was backed by exactly 0 scientific studies in it's inception. It also neglected to mention the affect that agriculture lobbies and political spin have played in sustaining an entirely unfounded belief.
You can die from not getting enough fat. You can get seriously ill from not getting enough protein. You can live a happy and healthy life by not eating any carbohydrates. Why is it that nobody has the gonadal fortitude to say that?
Speaking of gonadal fortitude, why isn't anyone dealing with the actual cause of rising US obesity rates? It's pretty simple: overconsumption. Your macros don't matter when you're eating 4,000 calories a day. Unless you're an elite athlete or a Special Operations operator, you're probably just going to gain weight eating that many calories a day.
But, you can't get page views telling the truth, can you? Greatist is one of the best places for avoiding political spin and bad science, but you guys aren't perfect. Keep trying hard and I'll keep reading.
@trajayjay There's really two parts to this. People normally eat foods that are native to their area and they've adapted to that diet. Americans eat foods native to everyone's area. We're a true melting pot. The second part is the amount. Americans eat a lot. A lot a lot. It doesn't matter what foods you eat, if you're eating 3,000-5,000 calories a day without the movement to burn it up you're going to get fat.
I read about this study elsewhere. Didn't they conclude that this was a case of correlation, not causation? If you're sick, you lose weight. If you're sick enough, you die. Especially with the elderly. So, basically, people who are about to die from sickness get skinny. People who aren't about to die from being sick don't get skinny. And far more people die from being sick than from basics like heart attack or organ failure due to old age. Things like cancer and pneumonia. Being slightly overweight isn't what helps people live longer. Being healthy is. Being skinny doesn't kill you. What makes you skinny does.Correlation, not causation. In fact, in this case, causation is the reverse of what everyone seems to think about this study.
This is maddening. The modern Christian view that life begins at conception didn't become widely accepted until it became politically convenient in the wake of Roe v. Wade. Why nobody seems to understand or care that modern Christian views on abortion (in America, at least) were born in Washington instead of the Bible is baffling.
@lschwech Well, that's comforting. This was starting to look like yet another faulty study creating more white noise.
They didn't monitor diet? Then what's the point? How do we know that the aerobic group didn't just eat less than the other groups? How do we know the strength training group didn't just eat more than the others?
I seriously hate it when people waste money on useless studies. They ignored one of the most important variables in this debate and rendered their results meaningless. Thanks, idiots.
There's two things that people always leave out when they talk about the truth of triticum aestivum. First, dwarf wheat is literally the only way we can feed everyone in the world. It was bred to be short for a reason. The introduction of ammonium nitrate changed the agriculture community. Particularly with wheat. The plant produced far more fruit. So much, in fact, that the stalk could no longer support the weight of the head.
This was a problem when it came to harvest. We simply couldn't harvest the amount of wheat necessary to feed to world in any sane amount of time. The broken stalks presented a problem for the new mechanical means of harvesting crops. Wheat was already a problem because it had varying height. Broken stalks introduced an even greater variance in height.
Dwarf wheat fixed all of that. Shorter, thicker stalks could handle the greater fruit production. The uniform height made it a lot easier to use mechanical methods such as a combine. And just like that, we were able to feed the world.
Second, dwarf wheat isn't technically a Genetically Modified Organism. But, it's not exactly a product of evolution either. Lots of unnatural methods were used, as you mentioned in your article. It's also the only modified food crop for which we have both decades of information on it's effects and direct links to deleterious effects.
The path to proper regulation of GMO crops starts with dwarf wheat. Good luck, though. Wheat has a powerful lobby. Together with Monsanto and the corn and beef lobbies have very nearly accomplished regulatory capture of the USDA and the FDA. Not to mention that dwarf wheat is essential for feeding the hungry worldwide.
@rfoshee How are you going to get conclusive data? Go back in time?
There's little doubt that eating meat played a big role in our development into Earth's apex species. I think that all we're left with is determining how big of a role and what kind of role.
Those aren't highlight reel songs, but this girl is fast! If she plays soccer that tough, I expect a World Cup in her future. Remember the name.