1918 - November Report

A busy month moving about for the 580th.

I couldn't even include all the towns the 580th visited in my Google Map search/mapping.
I assume they drove given they have all those ambulances.

Happy Thanksgiving 2015

Let's put out a prayer for all people fleeing violence that they may find peace, happiness & prosperity. I am so thankful at how easy and peaceful my life is and I wish that for everyone.

War and Pizza

This is a podcast episode worth listening to, from Radiotopia's 99% Invisible. I had long time ago heard that the reason we have some much processed food was because the military needed foods that could be shipped overseas during World War II and rather than have those companies go out of business, they shifted to marketing toward the American house wife. The tack the advertisers took was to make life easier for housewives, but we know how that all turned out.

This is even more interesting... that there had to be a commercial component to the food they developed so that if we should go to war again the commercial companies had the technology already and could ramp up easily.

Honestly, this is disgusting. I hope it gives me the incentive to eschew the processed foods even more. But, my goodness, that seems to mean so much time in the kitchen... we should all be shopping the perimeter of the super market; never go through the interior aisles.

Another thought... if processed food can last for up to 3 years, why are we throwing away food if it is past it's freshness date printed on the package? Sounds like another reason to waste and buy more, doesn't it? I never listened to those dates any way, actually, and haven;t (yet) suffered.

And, WTF - no studies on the long term effects of this frankenfood? WTF!!?! It makes me sick. Literally, I am sure.

Where is that affordable chef/cook when you need her/him?

Households tend to take pantry food for granted, but canned beans, powdered cheese, and bags of moist cookies were not designed for everyday convenience. These standard products were made to meet the needs of the military.

Food and combat have been intertwined ever since the earliest military rations. Ancient Sumerians rode into battle with barley cakes and beer. In the 11th and 12th Centuries, Mongols preserved their meat by storing it under saddles, using salt from the horses and the weight of riders as a mobile preservation technique.

Drying, salting, smoking and pickling were the go-to methods until 1795, when the French government held a contest to find a new preservation technique. A chef Nicolas Appert came forward with canning, which revolutionized food preservation.

During World War II, however, the United States realized there remained a need for preserved food production to ramp up more quickly in times of crisis, and started investing heavily in food technologies.

In the 1950s, the Combat Feeding Directorate was established at the Natick Soldier System Center on a US Army Base in Massachusetts. Today it remains the epicenter of the modern military diet.

The primary purpose of the Natick Center is to overcome the challenges inherent in food: it spoils, grows mold, or it loses flavor. And their food scientists have come up with inventions like the MRE (Meal Ready-to-Eat).

MREs come packaged with chemical heaters to warm food, oxygen scavengers to prevent spoilage and carefully-concocted meals made to be edible for years after their creation date.

MREs may also contain condiments and side dishes, all the various packets tucked into a lightweight pouch and designed to survive in any climate.

One of the Natick Center’s current goals is to finally grant a longtime wish from servicemen: pizza on the battlefield. They hope to have a shelf-stable pizza, which would last for years without refrigeration, available to the military by 2017. And, soon after that, in your grocery store.

As a means of cost reduction, and as way to readily tap the private sector during wartime, the government has forged a series of public/private partnerships with commercial food producers. The military’s technology and influence can be seen in effectively every grocery aisle.

Many military innovations make their way, in some form or another, into American kitchens. TV dinners, freeze-dried coffee, semi-moist cookies, and condiment packets, were all developed to feed soldiers, sailors, and pilots stationed remotely.

While all these processed and packaged foods have become familiar fare for the American household, most of these products are made to last far longer than the average civilian would need.

There haven’t been many studies about the long-term health impacts of the specific food technologies pioneered by the military, but whether its good for us or not, in the years to come, pizza is moving out of the freezer section and onto room-temperature shelves.

Reporter Tina Antolini, host of the podcast Gravy, spoke with Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, author of Combat-Ready Kitchen; Stephen Moody, the Director of Combat Feeding at the Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center and Louisiana-native Ben Armstrong, who spent five years in the United States Marine Corps.

'Healthy' foods differ by individual

Holy crap - and here some scientists are finally pulling it all together. How fascinating. And how can I get involved?

Discussions of personalized diet plans based on research of the individual and their microbiome. The rest of us are doing all these protocols of eliminating and reintroducing foods and recording how we feel, but this uses blood and fecal samples to indicate what is going on. I would love to hear some of the stories from the participants.

I took this article from Cell Press. "'Healthy' foods differ by individual." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 November 2015. .

Ever wonder why that diet didn't work? An Israeli study tracking the blood sugar levels of 800 people over a week suggests that even if we all ate the same meal, how it's metabolized would differ from one person to another. The findings, published November 19 in Cell, demonstrate the power of personalized nutrition in helping people identify which foods can help or hinder their health goals.

Blood sugar has a close association with health problems such as diabetes and obesity, and it's easy to measure using a continuous glucose monitor. A standard developed decades ago, called the glycemic index (GI), is used to rank foods based on how they affect blood sugar level and is a factor used by doctors and nutritionists to develop healthy diets. However, this system was based on studies that average how small groups of people responded to various foods.

The new study, led by Eran Segal and Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, found that the GI of any given food is not a set value, but depends on the individual. For all participants, they collected data through health questionnaires, body measurements, blood tests, glucose monitoring, stool samples, and a mobile-app used to report lifestyle and food intake (a total of 46,898 meals were measured). In addition, the volunteers received a few standardized/identical meals for their breakfasts.

As expected, age and body mass index (BMI) were found to be associated with blood glucose levels after meals. However, the data also revealed that different people show vastly different responses to the same food, even though their individual responses did not change from one day to another.

"Most dietary recommendations that one can think of are based on one of these grading systems; however, what people didn't highlight, or maybe they didn't fully appreciate, is that there are profound differences between individuals--in some cases, individuals have opposite response to one another, and this is really a big hole in the literature," says Segal, of Weizmann's Department of Computer Science and Applied Math.

"Measuring such a large cohort without any prejudice really enlightened us on how inaccurate we all were about one of the most basic concepts of our existence, which is what we eat and how we integrate nutrition into our daily life," says Elinav, of Weizmann's Department of Immunology. "In contrast to our current practices, tailoring diets to the individual may allow us to utilize nutrition as means of controlling elevated blood sugar levels and its associated medical conditions."

Moving Toward Personalized Nutrition

Compliance can be the bane of nutrition studies. Their outcomes rely on participants, away from the laboratory, rigidly following a diet and honestly recording their food intake. In the Weizmann study, the participants (representing a cross-section of Israel's population and all unpaid) were asked to disrupt their weekly routine in two ways: They were to eat a standardized breakfast such as bread or glucose each morning and also enter all of their meals into a mobile app food diary. In return, the researchers would provide an analysis of the participants' personalized responses to food, which relied on strict adherence to the protocol. Elinav and Segal say this proved to be a strong motivator, and participant meal reporting closely matched the biometric data obtained from their glucose monitors.

The individualized feedback yielded many surprises. In one case, a middle-aged woman with obesity and pre-diabetes, who had tried and failed to see results with a range of diets over her life, learned that her "healthy" eating habits may have actually been contributing to the problem. Her blood sugar levels spiked after eating tomatoes, which she ate multiple times over the course of the week of the study.

"For this person, an individualized tailored diet would not have included tomatoes but may have included other ingredients that many of us would not consider healthy, but are in fact healthy for her," Elinav says. "Before this study was conducted, there is no way that anyone could have provided her with such personalized recommendations, which may substantially impact the progression of her pre-diabetes."

To understand why such vast differences exist between people, the researchers conducted microbiome analyses on stool samples collected from each study participant. Growing evidence suggests gut bacteria are linked to obesity, glucose intolerance, and diabetes, and the study demonstrates that specific microbes indeed correlate with how much blood sugar rises post-meal. By conducting personalized dietary interventions among 26 additional study participants, the researchers were able to reduce post-meal blood sugar levels and alter gut microbiota. Interestingly, although the diets were personalized and thus greatly different across participants, several of the gut microbiota alterations were consistent across participants.

"After seeing this data, I think about the possibility that maybe we're really conceptually wrong in our thinking about the obesity and diabetes epidemic," says Segal. "The intuition of people is that we know how to treat these conditions, and it's just that people are not listening and are eating out of control--but maybe people are actually compliant but in many cases we were giving them wrong advice."

"It's common knowledge among dieticians and doctors that their patients respond very differently to assigned diets," he adds. "We can see in the data that the same general recommendations are not always helping people, and my biggest hope is that we can move this boat and steer it in a different direction."

The researchers hope to translate what was learned in this basic research project so that it can be applied to a broader audience through further algorithmic developments that would reduce the number of inputs that are needed in order to provide people with personalized nutritional reports.

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Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Cell Press. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

OMG - so much to research now....

I was researching a branch of the tree and I came across this article in the Troy Times Record - The Times Record, 7 Dec 1959, Mon, Pages 18 & 37 - on Newspapers.com.

How unbelievable to get a glimpse in to the history of my family as told by a cousin. Now I just need to find the article which she read which compelled her to write in to the Times Record in 1959.

And I have a lot of leads here which might help me understand. I mean, this might be a female line, but to know when the family arrived in Troy? How wonderful.

Ehlers & Co

I am trying to do some research on another branch of my tree - the Ehlers, from Germany. In doing the research I am learning that perhaps my Father's family had interactions with my mother's family before my mother and family ever met. I always assumed my father's family was poor, but perhaps they had more money than I realized. They certainly seem to have been entrepreneurial... one 2nd great uncle was a jeweler, down the street from the famous Theodore B Starr, and the other was a furniture manufacturer's agent, Robert J. Ehlers Co.

My great uncle, Edwin Maher, worked for his uncle as a salesman. I learned that little tidbit on Edwin Maher's draft card for World War 1. I do not believe that he served in the war.



And here is an advertisement for the furniture exchange:



And here is a funny little question and answer about some hair combs. Perhaps Ehlers & Co was not making as high quality jewelry as TB Starr.

These folks are relative to Herb's wife, Florence.

Clean Up after the end is declared!

What fun to read this letter when the war is over!

Aunt Ada is his mother's sister. I still don't know who Nellie Graham is. Though, with a little research... I see in 1910 she is living within a block of the Lee family on 6th Avenue. But she is much older than Herb. Could she have been a baby sitter? A crush?

Herb is now in Plainevaux, Belgium.

Herb must be referring to Bouillon, Belgium as the town with only a few inhabitants. (And today, here is tripadvisors top 5 things to do in Bouillon!)

November 19, 1918

Dear Mother,
So many things have happened in the past few days. Our division has the honor to be the advance guard in one of the armies of occupation. Since the day before yesterday we have been in Belgian territory. So for there have been only two days of marching, to day [sic] we have been resting.

There has been very little damage done to the country hereabouts. Day before yesterday we stopped overnight in a town of perhaps three or four inhabitants that showed practically no traces of the German occupation. There were even electric streetlights not to mention shops well stocked with all sorts of things. Prices however were very high and were quoted in marks. We stayed overnight in what had been a German hospital, an immense building that had been an insane asylum before the war. It was still furnished with non hospital beds on one of which I had a very comfortable sleep.

Though some sort of mix up in orders a very laughable thing happened. The Section got ahead of the column and arrived in this town right after cavalry outposts. The nearest troops of the main column were two villages behind. We were of course the first Americans any of these Belgians had ever seen.

Yesterday we came up through a very beautiful mountainous country to this village where we are now billeted. The two sergeants and myself (by the way I have been made a corporal) have a very nice room with a fire for which the lady of the house supplies wood. She also gives us very nice apples – the first I have tasted in ages, in fact the only good apples I’ve seen since leaving the States.

It is pretty cold up here. Yesterday we even had a flurry of snow. Of course the moving is pretty difficult even with the cars but it won’t be very long before we arrive at our destination and can settle down comfortable for a while. That will be a relief because we’ve been hustled around from pull on to post for about two months. I expect that we shan’t see the mail man again until we do get settled.

In the last mail that came I had a letter from Karolyn telling me that she had been very sick but was getting better every day. However you’ll know all about that. What with the war being over and Spanish influenza raising havoc with the States conditions are reverse and it’s really more worthwhile for me to worry about you at home keeping well than for you to worry about me. I do hope that you can all escape it.

I forgot to say that I also had a letter from Aunt Ada, or did I tell you that before?

I suppose this is about the right time for me to send you all Christmas greetings so that you’ll have them in time. I’m hoping that the whole world will get a Christmas present in the form of a treaty of peace. Nothing could be nicer.

What has happened to Nelly Graham? You haven’t spoken of her in a long time. Remember me to her.
Your affectionate son,
Herb

First Mover...

** UPDATE 11/21/2015 ** I drove by the warehouse where I first saw the cyclops dog and it has been painted over!

Dang - my idea has been taken!
Well, maybe by the artist him/herself... I hope so.

While walking along Tchoupotoulas street in New Orleans I saw a wonderful graffiti on what looked like an abandoned warehouse. I took pictures.

And then later I found an even better example on the side of a truck.
>

So, I made myself a needlepoint canvas...

Finally the other day I finished the needlepoint. (The project traveled all through Turkey with me.)

But here is why I am bitching and moaning... Someone has made a sticker of the graffiti! I saw this the other day when I was back in New Orleans.

I saw this on the backside of a traffic sign - again on Tchoupotoulas.

Now I need to figure out what to do with the piece.

Genetic sleuthing helps sort out ancestry of modern Europeans

Oh my gosh - here I am sharing an article in real time...

Interesting stuff - and you can see the orginal here, taken from the Reuter's web site.

A skeleton dating from almost 10,000 years ago which was found in the Kotias Klde rock shelter in Western Georgia is seen in an undated picture courtesy of the University of Cambridge, in Cambridge, United Kingdom. REUTERS/University of Cambridge/Eppie Jones/Handout via Reuters

DNA extracted from a skull and a molar tooth of ancient human remains discovered in the southern Caucasus region of Georgia is helping sort out the multifaceted ancestry of modern Europeans.

Scientists said on Monday they sequenced the genomes of two individuals, one from 13,300 years ago and the other from 9,700 years ago, and found they represented a previously unknown lineage that contributed significantly to the genetics of almost all modern Europeans.

These individuals were members of hunter-gatherer groups that settled in the Caucasus region, where southern Russia meets Georgia, about 45,000 years ago, after our species trekked out of Africa to populate other parts of the world. At the time, Europe was populated by Neanderthals.

The Caucasus hunter-gatherers later became isolated there for millennia during the last Ice Age, the scientists said.

The thaw at the end of the Ice Age brought them into contact with other peoples, leading to the advent of a culture of horse-riding herders who swept into Western Europe around 5,000 years ago, bringing metallurgy and animal-herding skills, they added.

"Modern Europeans are a mix of ancient ancestral strands," Trinity College Dublin geneticist Daniel Bradley said. "The only way to untangle the modern weave is to sequence genomes from thousands of years ago, before the mixing took place."

Until now, only three such ancestral strands had been identified flowing from ancient populations.

The Caucasus inhabitants comprised a previously unidentified "fourth strand," said University of Cambridge geneticist Andrea Manica, noting that they contributed significantly not only to the ancestry of Europe but also to people in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

Bradley called the finding "a major new piece in the human ancestry jigsaw." The Caucasus region is located at a crossroads of the Eurasian landmass, with nearby migration routes heading both west and east.

The Caucasus hunter-gatherers lived in caves and in small groups of probably no more than 20 to 30 people, University College Dublin archaeologist Ron Pinhasi said.

One of the two sets of remains came from the Kotias Klde cave near the village of Sveri in western Georgia and the other remains came from about 25 miles (40 km) away in the Satsurblia cave near the village of Kumistavi, Tengiz Meshveliani of the Georgian National Museum said.

The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)

What happens when you combine an axe-wielding microbiologist and a disease-obsessed historian?

Ha! On a recent 12 hour drive I listened to a podcast from Radiolab - one of my all time favorite radio shows - and Jad and Robert were discussing one of my favorite subjects: microbes. BUT, they were doing a story on the two scientists who discovered that an ancient medicine was the only cure for some of the super bugs that modern humans have 'created'. And, by way of this podcast, I get truly wonderful and never anticipated answers to some of the questions I posed in my previous post. Another example of truth is stranger than fiction; you can't make this shit up. Just wait and listen to the podcast.

Jad and Robert had a different, intriguing, question at the conclusion of their report... Because microbes evolve so quickly, maybe our old medicines will work again because the microbe's resistance to *that* medicine has evolved out because their is a new antibacterial to develop a resistance to.

In any event, the podcast gave the background story to the scientist's collaboration to find this cure made of onion, garlic, ox bile and wine. So fabulous. We discussed this story here. You can listen to the wonderful podcast here.

Fructose triggers cravings

Hmmm. When I did the 40-30-30 diet plan they had us add some fructose to some shakes; I assumed fructose is ok. Now, though, I use regular white sugar to make my probiotic Kombucha tea, but I have learned that the 'mother' changes the sucrose to fructose. So, does that mean I traded one sugary drink, soda, for another just as bad for me? (Well, maybe not just as bad, as it has the probiotic element... but shit.)

We have touched upon sugar and/or artificial sweeteners here, here, here and here.

Taken from the May 22nd print edition of the Week Magazine:

Not all sugars are created equal. Glucose and fructose are simple sugars naturally found in fruit and have the same number of calories, but new research suggests there are important differences in how the body responds to these sweeteners. While glucose is absorbed directly into the bloodstream to produce energy, fructose—which is used to sweeten soft drinks and processed foods—is metabolized in the liver. The body reacts to glucose in the blood by producing insulin, which triggers feelings of fullness. “Fructose doesn’t stimulate insulin secretion, and if there’s no insulin, you don’t get the information that you’re full,” the study’s senior author, Dr. Kathleen Page, tells The New York Times. Consuming fructose also triggers more activity in areas of the brain involved in reward processing, which intensifies cravings for high-calorie foods such as candy, cookies, and pizza. Researchers do not recommend that people forgo fruit, since it provides fiber and nutrients and has relatively small amounts of fructose compared with soft drinks and processed foods. But researchers say it does make sense to limit overall sugar intake.

Infections can lower IQ

So, I was told that in older people, because urinary tract infections do not materialize with itching and burning, they can be over looked, but having the infection can mimic the symptoms of Alzheimer's. How scary is that? So, this finding does not surprise me. Disturbs me, but doesn't surprise me. (And any infection can have this effect on older people, it's the body fighting the infection that causes the problem, but other infections have other symptoms, so doctor's test for it. Doctors apparently do not test for a UTI unless the patient complains about burning and itching, or other types of symptoms.)

And then pile on a course of antibiotics and you are just up shit's creek without a paddle, as discussed here.

Taken from the June 12th print edition of the Week Magazine:

People who are hospitalized with an infection early in life can lose IQ points, new research suggests. Scientists analyzed the hospital records of 190,000 Danish men born between 1974 and 1994. Before taking an IQ test at age 19, about 35 percent of the men had landed in hospitals with serious infections, such as an STD or a urinary tract infection. The average IQ score of those subjects was 1.76 points below average. Those with five or more hospitalizations for infection had an average IQ that was 9.44 points lower than average. The more severe or recent the infection, the lower the score. Researchers theorize that inflammation caused by immune responses may damage the brain. “Infections in the brain affected the cognitive ability the most,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Michael Eriksen Benrós tells Forbes.com. But he said any infection severe enough to require hospitalization had a negative impact on IQ.

A child-size change of heart

Genealogy is what has done it for me - not that I will have children... But thinking about this endless chain of babies which links me to the very first humans. It's pretty magical and wondrous when you think about it.

I remember reading about happiness and what was concluded is that the best prediction of your feelings about a subject are those of other people... Again, the context was happiness, but if other people love/enjoy something, chances are you will too. Unless, I suppose one is an incredible outlier, but who are we kidding, we are all pretty much the same... unique, but not totally unique. (I feel like that graduation speech, everyone is unique, but not special! ha!)



Taken from the July 3rd print edition of the Week Magazine.

For years, I insisted I didn’t want children, said Michelle Goldberg. But life is full of surprises.

Twelve years ago, I penned an essay for a Salon.com series called “To Breed or Not to Breed,” about the decision to have children or not. It began this way: “When I tell people that I’m 27, happily married, and that I don’t think I ever want children, they respond one of two ways. Most of the time they smile patronizingly and say, ‘You’ll change your mind.’ Sometimes they do me the favor of taking me seriously, in which case they warn, ‘You’ll regret it.’” The series inspired an anthology titled Maybe Baby. It was divided into three parts: “No Thanks, Not for Me,” “On the Fence,” and “Taking the Leap.” My essay was the first in the “No” section.

So I felt a little sheepish when, a year and a half ago, the writer Meghan Daum asked me if I’d be interested in contributing to the book that would become Shallow, Selfish and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids. I wrote back to tell her that I couldn’t: My son had just turned 1.

My transformation didn’t begin with an unbidden outbreak of baby lust or a sudden longing for domesticity. It began, weirdly enough, when I learned about corpses becoming fathers. In 2011, I reported a piece for Tablet Magazine about the strange Israeli campaign for posthumous reproduction. Israel is the world capital of reproductive technology, and a legal group called New Family wanted to give parents who had lost adult sons the right to extract their sperm and create grandchildren. I have mixed feelings about making dads out of dead men, but I remember being seized by the realization that if my husband were to die young, I’d want to be able to do it to him.

Children, I suddenly understood, would hedge against the unthinkable fact of my husband’s mortality. Not long ago, I learned the Arabic word Ya’aburnee from a friend’s cheesy Facebook graphic. Literally “You bury me,” it means wanting to die before a loved one so as not to have to face the world without him or her in it. It’s a word that captures exactly my feeling for my husband. Part of the reason I didn’t want kids was because I feared they’d come between us, but if he were gone, I’d be frantic to hold on to a piece of him. Grasping this didn’t make me want a baby, exactly, but it started pushing me from “No” to, well, ambivalent.

My husband, Matt, was ambivalent, too. We were pleased with our two-person family, with our consuming careers, constant travel, and many tipsy nights out, all the things people say you lose when you become a parent. We met very young, the summer after my freshman year of college, and we’d never grown bored with each other. Sometimes we puzzled over what people meant when they said that marriage is hard work. We assumed it had something to do with parenthood.

As happy as I am with my marriage, I’m not by nature a cheerful person. Like a lot of writers, I’m given to tedious bouts of anxiety, depression, and self-loathing. I am introverted, and feel shattered if I don’t have time alone every day. Worse, from a parental perspective, I am impatient, easily undone by quotidian frustrations. As much as I love to visit faraway places, I’m often reduced to tears by the indignities of air travel. When I’m stuck in a taxi in traffic, I unconsciously shred my cuticles until my fingers bleed. I pictured parenthood as a clammy never-ending coach flight.

Also, there was my work. As a little girl, I had never imagined myself with babies, or, for that matter, with a husband. My vision of the future had involved an apartment in New York City, a cat, and a typewriter. I was sure children would get in the way of my ambitions—and, worse, that I’d poison them with my resentment.

I started looking online for stories about people who’d had children and then wished they hadn’t. I read about a famous Ann Landers reader survey from the 1970s, undertaken in response to a letter from a young couple who feared, as I did, that parenthood would ruin their marriage. “Will you please ask your readers the question: If you had it to do over again, would you have children?” they asked. She did, and received 10,000 responses. To her dismay, 70 percent answered no. A 40-year-old mother of twins wrote, “I was an attractive, fulfilled career woman before I had these kids. Now I’m an exhausted, nervous wreck who misses her job and sees very little of her husband. He’s got a ‘friend,’ I’m sure, and I don’t blame him.” This helped shore up my faith in our decision.

Looking back, the fact that my faith needed shoring up was a sign that something was changing. As I got older, the constant travel that once thrilled me became wearying. My work still meant a lot to me, but while I once thought that publishing a book would make me feel that I’d arrived, publishing two taught me that arrival is elusive. Where I’d once seen family and intellectual life in opposition, over time I started worrying that it was an intellectual loss to go through life without experiencing something so fundamental to so many people’s existence. Meanwhile, 35 was creeping up on me.

Matt and I went back and forth, and back and forth some more. We both felt like we were atop a fulcrum and could be pushed either way if only the other knew what to do. At some point, we decided that I’d go off the pill and see what happened.

For a few months, nothing did. I started to wonder if I were infertile, if biology had decided the issue for me. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or relieved by this. Then—in a development that shocked me despite being completely predictable—I got pregnant, and was immediately convinced I’d made an awful mistake.

Within a couple of weeks, the queasiness came on like a portent, though at the same time I longed for the drinks I couldn’t have. We had a trip coming up—my husband had work to do in London, and I was going to accompany him, then go to Israel and Palestine for work of my own. I wasn’t sure how I’d get through it, but I was determined to go, since it might be my last chance to travel for a very long time.

The first few days in London, I cried constantly. Then, one afternoon, I called my doctor in New York for the results of some routine tests. The news wasn’t good. My progesterone was low, which the doctor said could be either a cause or a symptom of a failing pregnancy. When we got off the phone, I was hysterical with worry over this pregnancy that I didn’t want at all.

Back in New York, I went immediately to the doctor, shaking as I waited to see the result of my 10-week ultrasound. When I saw the beating heart of the ghostly, paisley-shaped creature, I was, for all my qualms, hugely thankful. Over the next two weeks, I started to get a little bit excited about the baby. It helped that the sickness and sleepiness had lifted. When I returned to the doctor at 12 weeks—the end of my first trimester, and the danger zone for pregnancy loss—I was almost relaxed. But this time, the ultrasound showed no heartbeat.

I had never felt as sad about anything as I did about that miscarriage. Actually, sad isn’t the right word, since it suggests a watercolor melancholy, and this was jagged, putrid desolation. The only way to make the anguish disappear, I thought, was to get pregnant again. Before, I’d been baffled by some women’s animal desperation for a baby. Now that desperation took hold of me.

It took five months for me to get pregnant again—not a very long time, though it felt endless, and makes me so sorry for those condemned to spend years in that hideous limbo. I white-knuckled it through much of the pregnancy, terrified of seeing a still heart at each ultrasound.

Perhaps it says something about my pre-baby life that a lot of my metaphors for new motherhood were drug-related. Those endless hours my son and I spent in bed, alternately nursing, dozing, and staring, amazed, at each other, reminded me of the time I’d smoked opium in Thailand. Lugging him around on errands brought to mind the first few times I got stoned as a teenager, when doing normal things like going to school or the drugstore became complicated, strange, and full of misadventure. The oxytocin felt like ecstasy.

Why, I kept thinking, hadn’t anyone told me how great this was? It was a stupid thing to think, because in fact people tell you that all the time. In general, though, the way people describe having a baby is much like the way they describe marriage—as a sacrifice that’s worth it, as a rewarding challenge, as a step toward growing up. Nobody had told me it would be fun.

The fact that it was, of course, was largely a matter of my good fortune and privilege. Getting what a friend of mine calls “the good hormones,” instead of those that cause postpartum debilitation, is largely a matter of dumb luck. I also had a husband who was a full, enthusiastic partner; an established, flexible career; and, crucially, money to afford good child care. My son was (and is) sweet-natured and easy.

Certainly, it sucked sometimes. A purple-clad lactation consultant prescribed a regimen of round-the-clock feeding, pumping, and tea guzzling that, had I followed it, would have broken me in a day; her visit left me feeling crushed, inadequate, and then humiliated for not having stood up to her. I’d worried, throughout my pregnancy, that I would resent my son for taking me away from my work. Instead, I resented my work for taking me away from my son, which created its own sort of identity crisis.

For all that, though, my son’s first year was the best of my life. I learned that while travel with a baby isn’t easy, it’s doable. We took him to Malaysia, where I was speaking at a conference, when he was 6 months old, and then on a reporting trip to Panama a few months later. Both of these were countries we’d been to before; seeing them again with our son made travel feel new. He made staying home feel new too. When I was with him, the habitual churning of my mind eased. Instead of arguing with strangers on Twitter, I spent hours in neighborhood parks I’d barely noticed before. Ultimately, even my work life improved: The crisis motherhood brought on led me to refocus on more satisfying long-form writing. Something Louis C.K. said recently was true for me: “I realized that a lot of the things that my kid was taking away from me, she was freeing me of.”

Matt and I were so delighted by our baby that we started half-seriously mulling a second. I was now in my late 30s and assumed that if and when we resolved to go for it, it would take even longer than before. One night, thinking we needn’t work so hard to prevent a pregnancy that we might soon wish for, we didn’t use birth control. In the morning, we came to our senses, decided we weren’t ready, and vowed not to be so sloppy again. It was too late. Our daughter was born nine months later, almost two years to the day after her brother.

She is a wonder, but having two children in diapers actually is pretty hard, particularly when you live in a fourth-floor walk-up. There are evenings when my husband and I are too harried to say more than a few words to each other as we tag-team two bedtimes and then collapse in front of the television. I’m occasionally incredulous that I’ve ended up with exactly the sort of life I once publicly pledged to avoid.

Unlike Ann Landers’ survey respondents, I swear I don’t regret it, though sometimes I’m mortified when I think about how my 27-year-old self would regard the frazzled, stroller-pushing woman I am now. I try to figure out how to explain myself in a way that would be intelligible to her, but I don’t think I can. The best I can come up with is that before, there was one person in the world for whom I would use the word Ya’aburnee. Now there are three.

Excerpted from an article that originally appeared in NYMag.com.
THE WEEK
July 3, 2015

Herb Gets Another Promotion

Looks like some men were a little out of line. I wonder if Herb had a hard time when he took Louis Springer's rank.



and we find him later, here:



I wonder if they ever saw each other again, after the war.

World War I ends

So funny to think of Herb writing yesterday that 'today is the day' but all he means is that he found the time to write.... he was not referring to the end of the war!

We have the write up from the History Channel included here:

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.

On June 28, 1914, in an event that is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot to death with his wife by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle’s imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted these Austro-Hungarian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the problem of Slavic nationalism once and for all. However, as Russia supported Serbia, an Austro-Hungarian declaration of war was delayed until its leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian intervention.

On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers collapsed. On July 29, Austro-Hungarian forces began to shell the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and Russia, Serbia’s ally, ordered a troop mobilization against Austria-Hungary. France, allied with Russia, began to mobilize on August 1. France and Germany declared war against each other on August 3. After crossing through neutral Luxembourg, the German army invaded Belgium on the night of August 3-4, prompting Great Britain, Belgium’s ally, to declare war against Germany.

For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war with jubilation. Most patriotically assumed that their country would be victorious within months. Of the initial belligerents, Germany was most prepared for the outbreak of hostilities, and its military leaders had formatted a sophisticated military strategy known as the “Schlieffen Plan,” which envisioned the conquest of France through a great arcing offensive through Belgium and into northern France. Russia, slow to mobilize, was to be kept occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces while Germany attacked France.

The Schlieffen Plan was nearly successful, but in early September the French rallied and halted the German advance at the bloody Battle of the Marne near Paris. By the end of 1914, well over a million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, and neither for the Allies nor the Central Powers was a final victory in sight. On the western front—the battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium—the combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of attrition.

In 1915, the Allies attempted to break the stalemate with an amphibious invasion of Turkey, which had joined the Central Powers in October 1914, but after heavy bloodshed the Allies were forced to retreat in early 1916. The year 1916 saw great offensives by Germany and Britain along the western front, but neither side accomplished a decisive victory. In the east, Germany was more successful, and the disorganized Russian army suffered terrible losses, spurring the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. By the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia and immediately set about negotiating peace with Germany. In 1918, the infusion of American troops and resources into the western front finally tipped the scale in the Allies’ favor. Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies on November 11, 1918.

World War I was known as the “war to end all wars” because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused. Unfortunately, the peace treaty that officially ended the conflict—the Treaty of Versailles of 1919—forced punitive terms on Germany that destabilized Europe and laid the groundwork for World War II.

Herb has no idea what today is!

I couldn't identify the letter with the enclosures when I just looked for it. I do recall the tobacco, though; not that I could include that here.

Herb and Section 580 are in Neuville les This. Since his last letter on the 31st he has gone from Avaux to Neuville les This.

November 11 (1918)

Dearest Mother,

I’m writing you this to-day because this is the day, though I don’t expect that I’ll be able to mail it for two or three days. For the past week we’ve advanced so fast that the mail has never caught up with us. Yesterday one of the cars on the trip back picked up some mail that had been left for us so I have Dad’s letter of October 21st as well as the clippings about the German demand for armistice that he sent to me. By a curious coincidence one of the boys brought me those clippings in bed about 7 o’clock. After the paper had already been signed thought I knew nothing of it for a couple of hours. Of course the air has been full of rumors for about a week and one never knew what to believe. Every few minutes someone would come in with some new bit of information.

Of course we’re a long long way past the old German lines. Once the Germans started to retreat a few days ago they lost no time. Several times French regiments went out to attack but couldn’t because the Boche were nowhere to be found. However the French kept in pretty close contact with the Germans and the Section wasn’t far behind though the roads were pretty bad. The towns we passed thorough – several towns and a number of villages contained a good many civilians who had been there all through the German occupation. We were the first American they had ever seen and they seemed quite glad to see us. In one large town we arrived in the early evening as the Germans left in the morning. These towns are all in pretty good shape, that is the houses are standing though there is very little furniture in most of them. The Germans even took some of the bed linens with them.

The roads are pretty bad so the problem of supplying the troops is difficult. Practically every cross roads of any importance has a large mine hole in the center of it. I saw one of them that was close to a hundred feet across and at least forty feet deep. Sometimes it is possible to get a car around them but it is frequently necessary to make long detours. The bridges, too, were all blown up so the engineers have a lot of work to do. Many of the railroads sidings have loaded trains on them, filled with all sorts of supplies that the Germans were unable to move.

The country hereabouts makes me homesick. Outside of the villages I could almost imagine myself in the country near home. There are lots of orchards, but the Germans stripped them all – worse luck.

Since I started this letter this morning some more mail has come I have whole book from Aunt Ada and a letter from Karolyn telling of her unsuccessful trip.
We’ve had a lot of miscellaneous cantonments lately mostly in abandoned houses. Sometimes we’ve had as many as three in one day because we never know where we’re going on how long we’re going to stay. Since yesterday we’ve been staying at a big farm house that was used as quarters for Germans officers up to three days ago. Five of us are sleeping in the parlor. The house and most of the furnishings are intact due to the orders of a German general who was one of the last officers to stay here. About the only thing that was taken was the carpets.

On the whole we’re better off here than the troops back in the interior. We usually manage to get a decent place to sleep and we can always have a fire. Wood up here is quite plentiful while back in the interior any sort of fuel is as scarce as a hen’s teeth.
The weather has been pretty bad – rainy most of the time. Yesterday morning it was very cold and there was a heavy white frost – which is, I believe an unusual thing in France. This part of the country is pretty high up which probably accounts for it.

There is some grippe hereabouts – not nearly so much as back in the States from all accounts. I’m quite all right myself – that touch of grippe I had while on permission never amounted to anything. I hope none of you get it.

This funny looking stuff in the envelope enclosed is some stuff the Germans call tobacco. I could have pinched up lots of it but it isn’t fun to smoke. It seems to be made of dried leaves of some tree – I don’t know what kind. The slip of paper is some of the propaganda that the Germans will never again distribute.
With best love,
Herb

Fit kids do better in math

OMG, I am moving to a deserted island with a chef and his/her portable sustainable garden.... Modern, urban life is killing us and making us stupid.

Taken from the August 28th print edition of the Week Magazine:

An epidemic of childhood obesity in the U.S. has sparked nationwide concern that kids spend too much sedentary time in front of screens and too little time playing outdoors. Now research suggests that children who are aerobically fit aren’t just healthier, they also do better in math, ScienceDaily​.com reports. A University of Illinois study found that cardiorespiratory fitness contributes to gray-matter loss, a crucial part of neurological development in children. “The theory is that the brain is pruning away unnecessary connections and strengthening useful connections,” says study leader Laura Chaddock-Heyman. Her team analyzed 48 children ages 9 and 10 who had completed a treadmill test. Half the kids were either at or above the 70th percentile for aerobic fitness, while the other half were out of shape, falling below the 30th percentile. The researchers then imaged the subjects’ brains with MRIs and gave them an achievement test to gauge their math, reading, and spelling skills. The fitter children showed significantly more thinning in the outermost layer of the cerebrum, a process associated with better mathematics performance—and, in fact, they scored higher on their math tests, but showed no such edge in reading or spelling. “These findings arrive at an important time,” says researcher Charles Hillman, noting that many schools have cut back on physical activity during the school day “in response to mandates for increased academic time.”

The bottom line

Even the Italians are getting in to the low-carb craze... BUT, it occurred to me that perhaps it is only the dried pasta which is declining, perhaps fresh pasta is enjoying just as much popularity as ever.

Via the September 18th print edition of the Week Magazine, The Washington Post reports:

Pasta sales are declining around the world because of the growing popularity of low-carb diets. In the U.S., sales of dried pasta have dropped 6 percent since 2009, while in Italy, they’ve plummeted 25 percent.

It must be true... I read it in the Tabloids

How could I not share this (from the same 9/18 print edition of the Week.)

A wild Australian sheep that could barely walk because of its unshorn fleece yielded a record--breaking 89 pounds of wool—enough to make 30 sweaters. The merino ram, dubbed Chris, spotted by a hiker, spent five years in the wild despite being bred to produce a maximum amount of wool. An animal welfare charity took Chris in and gave him the epic haircut. “He looks like a new man,” charity official Tammy Ven Dange said of the now 97-pound sheep. “For one thing, he’s only half the weight he used to be.”

Poor Baby

Obesity and earlier Alzheimer’s

And how about this... just to stress us out?

Taken from the same place as yesterday's post; clearly I am cleaning off my desk - the September 18th print edition of the Week Magazine.

Medical experts have long suspected that obesity in midlife increases the risk for Alzheimer’s disease, but new research suggests that typical middle-age spread could also hasten the onset of the degenerative illness. A National Institutes of Health study found that people who are overweight at age 50 may be more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease sooner than their healthy-weight peers, CBSNews.com reports. The researchers tracked the body mass index (BMI)—the ratio of weight to height—of 142 people who eventually developed Alzheimer’s. They found symptoms of the disease appeared six and a half months earlier for every step up on the BMI chart. Lead author Madhav Thambisetty says the results could help provide clues about the cause of the brain-wasting disease, which has struck 46 million people worldwide. “Understanding how risk factors in midlife may accelerate the onset of Alzheimer’s,’’ he says, could speed “efforts to develop interventions and treatments.”

Bacteria linked to schizophrenia

Holy Shit.

Suggests we should kep our mouths clean. I read somewhere, probably here in Dr. Blaser book, that as we have cured ulcers, the amount of esophageal cancer has increased... creating the speculation that perhaps the bacteria that caused the ulcers in fact protected us from esophageal disorders and cancers.

Let's enjoy a variety of foods and make sure we eat fermented vegetables!

Copied from the September 18th print edition of the Week Magazine:

The origins of schizophrenia are mysterious, but new research suggests a possible connection between the devastating mental disorder and microorganisms found in the mouth and throat. A team from George Washington University analyzed viruses, bacteria, and fungi in 32 people, half of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia, MedicalDaily.com reports. Those who had the disease displayed levels of lactic acid bacteria, which originate in the gut and travel to the mouth and throat, that were at least 400 times higher than people in the control group. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that the trillions of bacteria that colonize the body may influence the brain and behavior. Larger studies are needed to confirm an association between gut and throat bacteria and schizophrenia, but “the results are quite intriguing,” says co-author Keith Crandall. He said the research could lead to earlier diagnoses and new treatments for the illness, which afflicts 3.5 million Americans.

Cappadocia Cave Hotel & Resort, Cappadocia, Turkey - A Review

Not sure why I didn't post this when I wrote in back in June....

I have to say it, but I was disappointed with the Cappadocia Cave Hotel & Resort. I wanted so much to be really impressed, but I would suggest trying your luck elsewhere. I feel like an ingrate saying it, but that is the case... The view is beautiful, but the same view can be had at other hotels. (Click here to find the review on TripAdvisor... TripAdvisor claims it to be #70 out of 160 hotels in Cappadocia... or #12 of 22 in Uchisar, so right in the middle of the pack... which means others might be better.)

We bought some local sparkling wine at a vineyard just outside of town and for ice and 2 glasses to enjoy the wine, they charged us 10 Euros. And it wasn't an ice bucket for wine, it was a few cubes. I tipped the young lady 7.50 Euros as she seemed to understand the problem, but she never came back with a real ice bucket...

There was no stopper for the sink - which you would not think about normally, but I had a few of my delicates to wash as we have been traveling for 35 days... I asked for a stopper, which didn't quite work. So, rather than a soak, they got a rinse... Also, the first thing we had to have the hotel do was to fix the faucet which I couldn't turn off after washing my hands upon arrival. They came quickly, 'tis true... but I wouldn't say they fixed it... solved the problem, but not a fix.

Also, more small things... like broken hardware... miss-matched furniture.... exposed cut-off wires. It just wasn't there. They claim to be a 7 star - and I don't know what that means - but I'd say it just doesn't quite measure up.

I had to laugh because we were told we had a superior room.... aaaahhhh, superior room is their lowest room. Now, the room is plenty big, no complaint there. But no dresser and no desk - so as I write this I have a very hot laptop singing my thighs.

Service - eh, though they did ask us several times if we were enjoying our stay, just that the follow through wasn't there
Ambiance - very cool concept, but similar at other hotels in and around town....
Cleanliness - no issue
View/Balcony - small balcony, but fabulous view
Room Number - 260

Toiletries - yes, had everything we might need
Coffee & Tea in the room - yes
Robes & slippers - yes
Hairdryer - yes
mini frig - yes
wi fi - free
space - plenty
restaurant - a few options... and `a la carte, which is great
breakfast - was included in the room rate
Pool - yes, though I didn't see it
Fitness Center - not sure
Spa - I think they are well regarded for it, though I haven't seen it; I was here for the landscape

Hallway from the room

Looking towards the balcony and the beds

Very large space - no tub, though

Looking back towards the entrance

Partial View from balcony

Life on early Earth

Aha, as I was saying! Why would we think that one celled creatures are not very important to our own health? They were here first; we are evolved from them. We *need* them. We need to feed and care for those inside and on our bodies. Here is a previous post and excellent source.

Taken from the November 6th print edition of the Week Magazine:

In the first 700 million years after the Earth’s formation, scientists have long believed, our planet was a hellish realm devoid of life—with asteroids raining down on a landscape riddled with volcanoes, molten rock, and poisonous gases. But new research suggests that life may have taken root in the Earth’s turbulent youth—300 million years earlier than previously suspected, reports HuffingtonPost​.com. Our planet formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, and was heavily volcanic for eons as it slowly cooled. The earliest fossil records date to about 3.8 billion years ago, when single-celled creatures began to appear. But by studying tiny crystals that form in magma, called zircons, geochemists at the University of California at Los Angeles found microscopic flecks of pure carbon with a signature indicating it had been left behind by living organisms 4.1 billion years ago. “Life on Earth may have started almost instantaneously,” says study co-author Mark Harrison. “With the right ingredients, life seems to form very quickly.” He said the study suggests that simple life-forms may be quite common throughout the universe.

The striptease artist who seduced a governor

Ok, you can see that I am currently catching up on my Week Magazine reading... The Magazine publishes stuff I react to... but I guess that is just the news in general. This blurb was taken from the July 3rd print edition of the Week Magazine as well.

Obviously, no relation, as her name is actually Fannie Belle Fleming... But, because of the Starr the article caught my eye. And she sounds like a pretty interesting person... especially that she sewed her own costumes, became an entrepreneur in Baltimore and also designed jewelry.

With her flame-red hair tumbling down her shoulders, Blaze Starr would writhe on a couch while slowly shedding her clothes. Then, just as the burlesque performer was about to peel off the last stitch, she would hit a hidden button, causing smoke to billow from the cushions, along with ribbons shaped like flames. That brand of playful eroticism earned Starr the title Queen of Burlesque in the 1950s and ’60s, but she was even more renowned as a seductress. Her brazen affair with former Louisiana Gov. Earl Long inspired the 1989 Paul Newman film Blaze. Despite her scarlet reputation, Starr carried herself with dignity. “I always felt that I was an artist,” she said. “If there is such a thing as getting nude with class, then I did it.”
Starr was born Fannie Belle Fleming in Wilsondale, W.Va., one of 11 children of a railroad worker. At 15, she hopped a bus for Washington, D.C., and was working in a doughnut shop there when a promoter “persuaded her to become a stripper,” said The New York Times. After moving to Baltimore in 1950, she settled for a decades-long residency at the rowdy 2 O’Clock Club, which she would later buy. Starr’s act was in demand around the country, said The Washington Post, and she toured with “an elaborate set of costumes she sewed herself.”
After one performance in New Orleans in 1959, Starr met the married, 62-year-old Long. They carried on their relationship openly and were, she said, engaged to be married when Long died in 1960. Starr boasted of other high-profile lovers, but named only one, John F. Kennedy, claiming she met him on the campaign trail in 1960. She went on to become a successful Baltimore businesswoman, said The Baltimore Sun, and “was so unthreatening to local morals” that she appeared in ads for the city’s gas and electric companies. Starr stripped until the 1980s and spent her later years designing jewelry. Asked in 1988 if she would change anything about her life, she gave a categorical no. “I would just do more of it,” she said. “And seduce a lot more men.”

Greenery boosts kids’ brains

This seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it?

But, who was the poor PhD candidate who had to use the satellite images to measure green space around the test subjects' home? I always think what a glamorous job being a scientist must be, but then I think about this kind of thing... analyzing and measuring the same thing day after day. Now, I am only speculating here... I don't have any lab experience... What about the PhD candidate analyzing the fecal samples from the American Gut Project? (I am not sure I have posted on the American Gut Project, but Dr. Martin Blaser is involved in it, and we talked about him here.) How about opening all those test tubes with swabs loaded with shit? I guess you get used to it after a while... like a parent changing a dirty diaper...

I got this from the July 3rd print edition of the Week Magazine.

Exposure to nature is good for kids’ brains, a new study has found. During a 12-month study of 2,593 second- through fourth-graders in Barcelona, researchers used satellite images to assess the amount of “green space” around the children’s homes and schools—grassy fields, trees, and plants. They also measured local levels of traffic-related air pollution. Cognitive tests revealed the kids exposed to more green spaces, particularly at school, experienced a 5 percent increase in working memory and a 1 percent drop in inattentiveness, The Washington Post reports. Why? Scientists theorize that trees and shrubbery help absorb air pollution and cut down on noise; natural environments also improve cognitive development by allowing children to make more discoveries and feel a sense of wonder. “I think it’s also some kind of direct effect,” says study author Mark Nieuwenhuijsen. “You see quite a beneficial effect of green space on mental health.”

Trans fats: A nanny-state ban?

Amen is all I can say - get the man-made chemicals out of our food. Yes, I like all this stuff, too... but how idiotic to exchange bad health and chronic disease for convenience.

I just had a discussion with a major university employeed clinical dietitian and she conceded that not enough research has been done on all fats, as I was arguing that I am going to continue to use saturated fats and not use oils such as canola oil... (And olive oil only in cold applications, like salad dressing.) I don't know, given my huge sample of just me and my husband and both of our lipid panels are at a really good level, I am going to continue with the advice from Marks Daily Apple.

I guess I don't have a hugely strong opinion on the subject of the nanny-state... I mean, I think it's a good thing to get these chemicals out of our food... I liked the idea of banning the size of sodas in NYC, too. I mean, these chemicals are just bad, but too easy to become addicted to them. I understand the companies are huge companies and lots of people work for them, but let's get back to actual food.

I took this article from the Week Magazine, the July 3rd print edition.

Doughnuts. Cake frosting. Microwave popcorn. Besides “being delicious,” these foods have one thing in common, said Lexi Pandell in Wired​.com: They generally contain trans fats, an artificial ingredient used for extending shelf life and improving flavor and texture. But not for much longer. The Food and Drug Administration last week implemented a near-zero-tolerance ban on partially hydrogenated oils, the main source of trans fats, giving food companies three years to remove the ingredient from their products. Trans fats were long considered a healthy alternative to lard, but recent studies have linked them to serious health problems like obesity, memory loss, and heart disease. This may be the “most important change in our food supply” in decades, said Roberto Ferdman in WashingtonPost.com. While the FDA has banned numerous ingredients over the years, including artificial sweeteners such as cyclamate, none has been “so clearly linked to tens of thousands of deaths like trans fat.”

But most Americans already know this stuff is bad for them, said USA Today in an editorial. Trans-fat consumption has dropped by about 80 percent since 2003, when the FDA required manufacturers to list trans-fat content on food labels. Worried that “the truth would hurt sales,” big firms simply removed the ingredient from their products. Washington should have stuck with that successful “give-them-the-facts strategy rather than a nanny-state approach sure to produce a backlash.” If the FDA’s goal is to prevent cardiovascular disease, why stop with trans fat? asked David Harsanyi in TheFederalist.com. What about high-fructose corn syrup, a major contributor to obesity? Or cigarettes, which kill 443,000 every year? The FDA’s ban will have only a negligible effect on public health, but it will “create precedents that allow further intrusions into how and what we eat.”

If anything, the “trans fat saga shows how hard it is to get nutritional science right,” said Sarah Kaplan in WashingtonPost.com. Until relatively recently, experts called trans fats “a great boon to Americans’ arteries” and warned us to avoid the kinds of saturated fats found in butter, eggs, and meat. Now that advice has been reversed. But we can’t be too hard on researchers, because determining exactly what’s healthy is an inexact science. Some nutrients work only in conjunction with others; all chemicals affect different bodies in different ways. “It’s a difficult recipe to get right.”