Daily Archives: 16/02/2014

Environment

Weather Revisited

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We finally have a respite from the storms that have battered Britain. The storms have been ongoing since about a fortnight before Christmas. It has been even longer if you count the St Jude Storm. This storm was so-called because it was at its height on October the 28th. That date is the feast of St Jude the Apostle.
I found this video on YouTube. Various climate scientists explain that what we see happening before our eyes is essentially what we can expect to see.

In The Observer, Henry Porter challenges the climate change skeptics. He asks them to coherently explain what is happening. He also questions why we don’t need to do anything about it. Having berated the media, especially the Today programme, for trying to pretend that man-made climate change is still an open question;

For the moment, however, they have a disproportionate influence because they’ve created the illusion that this is a finely balanced discussion where a person can reasonably support either side. They empower a certain amount of stupidity, laziness, selfishness and ignorance in the minds of many, and I hope some of the younger deniers, though few, live to acknowledge responsibility.

He does give a very logical reason about why the sceptics deny the facts when presented to them.

I mentioned that most deniers come from the right and it is true the uninterrupted business of capitalism, which often entails waste of resources and energy, is a priority, but there is something deeper that explains why there are so few deniers from the left and that is to do with conservative mind. In his 1956 essay “On Being Conservative”, the philosopher Michael Oakeshott wrote that the man of conservative temperament is “not in love with what is dangerous and difficult; he is unadventurous; he has no impulse to sail uncharted seas. What others plausibly identify as timidity, he recognises in himself as rational prudence. He eyes the situation in terms of its propensity to disrupt the familiarity of the features of his world”.

We are all slightly conservative. Very few of us want the familiar features of our world disrupted. But unless we start to take action soon, our little world is going to be disrupted. The video shows this will happen whether we like it or not.
Go read the full article here

Food

Superfoods?

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Have you ever wondered what the next food that will change your life will be. It is the one that promises to make you ten years younger. It will rejuvenate your sex life. It could prevent or cure all cancers. It may also make you rich and famous. My money is on either raw tripe. Or, some semi-inedible berry from the Afghan foothills of the Pamir Mountains. Jay Rayner is eagerly scanning is in-box for the news.

I was scrolling through my spam email folder one day dreaming about how life would be if its contents were only true. Oh the Nigerian oil millions I would have; the glorious women who were out there, waiting for me; the private jets I could buy at a knockdown price. Then I flicked back to my normal inbox. Suddenly it struck me: life wouldn’t be too shabby if many of these were true as well.

According to these emailed press releases food wasn’t just stuff you ate for nutritional purposes. It was the elixir of life, the very wellspring from which immortality might flow, a cure for cancer, acne and heart disease. My email inbox had become superfood central. A new superfood snack had been launched. Someone else was flogging a new range of superfood products. There was news of wonder berries, of offers to feed your immune system, of medicinally potent grains.

“I was scrolling through my spam email folder one day dreaming about how life would be if its contents were only true. Oh the Nigerian oil millions I would have; the glorious women who were out there, waiting for me; the private jets I could buy at a knockdown price. Then I flicked back to my normal inbox. Suddenly it struck me: life wouldn’t be too shabby if many of these were true as well.

According to these emailed press releases food wasn’t just stuff you ate for nutritional purposes. It was the elixir of life, the very wellspring from which immortality might flow, a cure for cancer, acne and heart disease. My email inbox had become superfood central. A new superfood snack had been launched. Someone else was flogging a new range of superfood products. There was news of wonder berries, of offers to feed your immune system, of medicinally potent grains.

Or not, as he explains in today’s Observer Food Monthly.

One thing that has always annoyed me is the claim that foods can act as medicines. No they can not. A healthy diet can help you to stay healthy. However, it is not a guarantee. Claiming that, for example, food “x” will cure disease “y” is patent nonsense. Fortunately, such claims are illegal in the EU.

“ No wonder the European Union has banned the use of the term on packaging unless it can be backed up with scientific chapter and verse. Cancer Research UK calls it “just a marketing tool”. Sure, some so-called superfoods contain chemicals that, in the lab, have been shown to affect cancer cells. But that’s very different to what happens in the human body. For example to ingest the same volume of the active ingredient in garlic as used in laboratory tests you’d have to eat 28 cloves a day. Weirdly, no one has tried.

Additionally, applying the active ingredient to a cell in a Petri dish is different. It is not the same as trying to apply the same active ingredient via the digestive system.
Jay Rayner loves food, and as he says treating it as medicine strips all joy out of it. He concludes;

“ I’m not a trained nutritionist but I know trash science when I see it – and the superfood cult is exactly that. Here, then is my advice to anyone wanting to take care of themselves through food: eat a normal balanced diet. It won’t stave off cancer. It won’t make you immortal. But it will keep you generally healthy. Which is about all you can expect from your lunch.

He does make one minor mistake here. He is as qualified as a nutritionist as the people who make the claims about Super-foods. In the UK any one can call themselves a nutritionist. This is why I am trying to get better control over my blood glucose levels. I am diabetic, so I will be going to see a Dietician next week.