I don't pay very much attention to health related news. Perhaps I should, but I largely do not. There's probably a variety of reasons for that, but one of them is that as I have an undergraduate degree in one of the sciences, I tend to be skeptical about the theory de jure to some degree. I'm not a skeptic of the sciences, but I'm aware that at any one time a previously barely vetted theory is likely to be problematic. Also, as that science was geology, which tends to take the long view of things, I tend to be skeptical of any health related news, particularly dietary news, that doesn't.
Also, I guess, I'm lucky to not have a lot of the food related problems that inspire theories designed to some degree to be unconventional or easy fixes. In my middle age, I'm heavier than I have been at any prior point in my life, but I'm not overweight and was really much too think when I was still in my early 20s. I don't each much for breakfast or dinner as a rule, so a lot of the concerns people have there basically don't apply to me. So I guess I can afford to be skeptical.
But, given the way health news whips around, I'm amazed everyone isn't skeptical.
Take some items that have been in the news recently, that is in recent years. Let's take, for example, coffee.
I like
coffee (and have blogged on the topic
previously) and I drink several cups every morning, typically while waiting to take my daughter to school. At one time I used to drink it at work as well.
World War One YMCA poster showing one of their volunteer women workers who handed out books and, as you can see,
coffee, for which I would have been most grateful.
When I was a kid you use to hear the canard that coffee would stunt your growth. I have no idea where that fable came from, but my folks never believed it and I started drinking coffee in the morning when I was in high school. About that time, in the 1970s, you'd sometimes hear some snarky remarks about coffee containing an addictive drug, caffeine, which of course it does but as an addictive drug its in the category of ones that human beings are probably evolved to handle and its pretty darned harmless for the most part.
In college I was a confirmed coffee drinker. I've been drinking coffee every morning now for decades.
I did cut back at work and no longer drink it there. The reasons were self evident, however. I was just drinking too darned much and it was making me jittery and messing up my sleep. One Lent I gave it up entirely and when Lent was over I never went back to drinking it at work.
Several years ago, all of a sudden, some newstory came out that coffee might ward off Parkinson's Disease. Hurrah if true! Not a reason that I'm going to keep drinking it however. Some time after that, however, some story came out that at a certain level it was bad for your heart. Boo. Still, not going to change my morning habits. This past week I read that it might help stave off Alzheimer's. Hurrah again.
Well, what about coffee's traditional rival, tea?
YMCA poster supposedly showing a volunteer pouring a cup of tea, according to the Library of Congress, but my guess is that's coffee.
Given as its apparently the caffeine in coffee that has alleged benefits, presumably the benefits and risks, if any, of coffee, apply to tea as well. But I'm not going to take it up, as I'm not really keen on tea. My son likes it for some reason, and my daughter likes a custom tea drink called a London Fog. I have no idea what a London Fog actually is.
Anyhow, awhile back there was a rage over Green Tea. As I like Ice Tea, I bought a bottle figuring tea was tea.
Green tea is vile.
Supposedly green tea contains antioxidants, meaning if you drink it, you will not rust.
No, actually antioxidants are supposedly good for your heart. I don't know why, but they are. Well, as good as they may be, I'm not going to drink green tea as it is truly icky.
And my heart is apparently in pretty good shape. I know that as a year ago I had one of those "stress tests." This came about as I was having chest pains, although they were not of the type that a person typically assumes come from a heart problem. Better safe than sorry, they gave me the test.
It was an odd experience, as in a stress test they elevate your heart rate by having you walk an incline plane. A rising treadmill, as it were. They told me that they were going to raise my heart rate to a certain level in order to do that. As it went along, they kept raising and raising it, but my heart wasn't getting there.
"Do you run?'
No.
"Hmmmmm. . . . . ., do you work out a lot?"
No.
"Hmmmmm. . . . we'll raise it a bit more."
By the end, I was walking ain incline plain approximating the difficult face of the Matterhorn. My heart made it to the appropriate rate and they proclaimed "no problem."
The Matterhorn. Apparently my heart is so solid that I could jog up it without ill effect.
Which means that my problem was probably a hiatul hernia or probably true indigestion, for which I am grateful.
This conversation is one that I repeat, on an occasional basis, with my physician, who routinely asks me a series of set questions which are probably designed to encourage folks to exercise, which no doubt is a good idea. I'm sure that I don't get enough exercise. Anyhow, what I'll get is "So are you getting any exercise?" "Um, not really." "Just ranch work and stress eh?" "Yeah."
Stress, and not of the stress test variety, does kill, I'll concede. It's an occupational hazard in my office line of work, which brings me to my next topic, smoking. Before I do I'll note that awhile back I read that being employed in an occupation, like law, that requires a lot of mental activity can stave of dementia, although I've known of a couple of lawyers who suffered from that. I'm not sure, however, that stress has any physical benefits.
Anyhow, I don't smoke and never have. But couple of the lawyers I know at one time smoked cigars during moments of high stress.
Some time ago I read something that claimed that the occasional cigar, like caffeine, might stave off Parkinsons. Obviously this opinion is suspect, as the occasional cigar would have to be extremely occasional as the risk of cancer would obviously override any benefit that tobacco might conceivable have. How an opinion like this even gets generated leads a person to wonder about some of these efforts.
If smoking is the topic of such studies, than surely drinking must be as well, and indeed it has been.
This probably isn't too surprising, as alcohol is a poison (which it actually is) that humans beings are acclimated to, to a degree, such that its evidence that humans started ingesting alcohol, for some legitimate reason, in vast antiquity. Indeed, it's known that beer is not only the single most consumed manufactured beverage on earth but that its one of the oldest. Maybe the oldest. Recipes for beer date back to Mesopotamia, and pretty much every culture on Earth has brewed it.
Speculation is that beer was originally brewed as it was a form of liquid food. Bread, basically, that would keep. At some point it became safer to drink than water out of streams or rivers. The same is true of wine. To some degree, the alcoholic beverages of the ancient world to the Medieval one were based on region rather than purely taste, although qualitative differences in both go back into antiquity. Suffice it to say, both drinks were the normal drinks for many people on a daily basis for much of human history.
Which does not mean, of course, that they were uniformly safe up until modern times. The danger of excessive drinking has always been there. And just as records of drinking as a common practice go back into vast antiquity, the dangers of drinking too much have been noted back that far as well.
Americans, it should be noted, have a weird panicky relationship with their food and always have. Alcoholic beverages are no exception to this. The founding of the nation itself was tied up with alcohol a bit, but a strong anti alcohol streak developed relatively early in the nation's history, leading ultimately to the Prohibition movement after the Civil War. Given as the early 19th Century was truly sodden, perhaps that's not a surprise.
Prohibition is often recalled today as a morals based campaign, but a concern for drinkers' health was a strong aspect of it. Nonetheless, it was World War One, and the resultant concern that U.S. Doughboys, after having been exposed to French wine and French women would return as reprobates pushed it over the top.
Busting beer barrels in Prohibition.
One of the remarkable features of Prohibition in the US is that it not only was brief, 1919 to 1933, but it also immediately spawned efforts to repeal it. No sooner had the country decided to ban alcohol in the name of morals and health, than people were buying it illegally and arguing for Prohibition to be repealed. The health concerns seemingly forgotten.
Women were prominent in the temperance movement, and in the repeal movement as well.
The Great Depression followed by World War Two effectively put an end to temperance in the US for a long time, in spite of some county's remaining dry. By the early 1970s some states had dropped the drinking age down to the teens, such as Wyoming which had a drinking age of 19.
Following that, people became concerned once again about the health and social costs of drinking. The Federal government sponsored an effort to get the states to raise the age up to 21, which all subsequently did, although highway safety was the main concern there. Still, the danger of excess consumption became increasingly known.
Then, starting at some point in the 1980s, the health news started to announce that may some drinking wasn't bad for you, in moderation. Nobody seems to be able to define moderation, but it was noted that it seemed to be the butter consuming French had low heart disease rates. So then it came to be asserted that perhaps a glass of red wine per day wasn't bad for you. Ultimately it came to be asserted that perhaps a drink of about any alcoholic beverage per day wasn't bad.
Following that, however, was the inevitable counter. In the UK the government really started to discourage drinking, in a nation that had a beer culture. And this week, coming out of the UK, is the news that perhaps just two drinks per day, in the middle aged, would accelerate mental decline. That amount, in men, is the same amount which previously had been in the safe category which you could consume per day out of a concern for your heart.
And all of this is, of course, just the major or popular stories of this type. At any one time, in the US, the latest fad diets are circulating around. Eat this, don't eat that, wait, don't eat this, eat that. People leap on these things as the latest fad, whether their scientific based, or just slickly hawked. It doesn't seem to dawn on a lot of people that they're eating a very unnatural diet that may be bad for them, and that countering with an extremely unnatural diet is likely not a very good idea.
Set in other terms, eating three meals a day out of boxes is probably a poor idea. For that matter, three big meals a day may make sense for farmers and ranchers, but probably not for office workers. Nonetheless, that's what a lot of people do. And then, when that has an inevitable impact, they go for some diet that might make sense for an ill rabbit, but not a human being. If you are eating a series of meals that you prepare in a blender, you've lost sight of the fact that your forebearors were hunter gatherers, and biologically, so are you.
In its most extreme form, we have the think blanch, mostly white and urban, folks who have decided to go to war with nature and become vegans, a diet which ironically only a heavily industrialized society can support. In a "self sustaining" natural environment, you'd be dead in about two weeks on that diet, as it requires industrial support to even exist. Be that as it may, in that environment most people would come to their senses and be out slaughtering a buffalo in less than a week. Still, it's interesting that we now have some people who are so afraid of the nature of their food, and of real nature, that they'd rather eat in a wholly fake manner.
At the same time, in the typical American fashion, we now have television channels dedicated to nothing but food. And some that food would blimp you up in a big hurry. Hosts go out to diners and survey the heaviest duty, most caloric, stuff imaginable. And folks watch them do it. Odd.
Truth be known, of course, nobody lives forever. And sitting around in an office all day isn't really very good for you. We no doubt have some dietary concerns, and nobody can realistically maintain that there's any benefit to some things, like smoking. Don't go overboard on anything seems about as solid advice as anyone could really hope for.
Postscript
Something related to this, to
chew the fat on.
Postscript II
Well, the current issue of Time has butter on the cover, with the words "Eat Butter".
I haven't read the article yet, but liking butter, and having never given it up, I'm pleased.
