For decades, government ______ only to find out later that it was really bad.
The social engineering has got to stop. A free people should not be subject to the latest schemes of self-appointed masterminds. The most evident and dangerous venue for such engineering is the public schools, in which the government subjects our children to every sort of social experiment, and what have we to show for it?
The US is somewhat unique in that there is a lot less tradition. Many "Old world" countries have millenia of established culture. How to live and eat healthy. Instead the US falls back to experimental science and corporations to define good health.
I view the "established culture" you mention as science too..based on certain observations. It's not that all traditional methods are inferior or superior. We constantly re-evaluate as we evolve.
I've just become a father and my kid has very slight jaundice, not enough to have to do anything about it. But it did get me thinking, "how was jaundice dealt with before"? Considering 10% (??) of kids have bad jaundice that's a huge evolutionary pressure to either eliminate it (by favoring kids with larger livers) or somehow deal with it.
Well my wife's (who's from a third-world and (formerly) most isolated country in the world) grandma (eldest of 13) explained it to me: She's always taken newborn's and placed them by the window for an hour. That'll do it!
Then I read the history of neonatal jaundice care and I was shocked to learn that light therapy for jaundice wasn't discovered until the 50s (when a doctor noticed that newborns under the care of a nurse with particular habits fared better) and widely practiced until the 70s!
Well, I guess government follows the scientific conclusions and recommendations. Some might turn out to be wrong and we unlearn them. Science does make mistakes, but that's the best we've got. We can't leave it to intuitions of the masses.
Well, take vaccinations for example. Would you better leave it to the people to decide? I'm sure half won't take them.
EDIT: I do understand the corporate influence, but we could find a way to build unbiased scientific institutions if with collective global will.
Letting people choose to not vaccinate their children will self correct. We'll lose herd immunity, a lot of people will die, and then everyone will know how awesome vaccines are, just like they did in the 60s. Then the cycle will begin anew.
I lean toward valuing individual rights over all else, but this scenario does present a serious challenge to that worldview.
Another contributor to the problem is that people trust science a lot less today than 2 generations ago. They've seen the negative results of a lot of fraud that has been perpetuated under the banner of "science". (E.g. "scientific socialism", the food pyramid, most of psychology, etc...)
What do you mean 'so much trouble'? We're constantly getting healthier, living longer lives, hurting each other lessand doing better by just about all metrics. The only thing that seems to be going downhill is our mental health, and I would argue that's simply because we have more diagnosis recorded, rather than those things simply not existing in the past.
Could we be getting better at a faster rate, as a species? Most likely, but it's not like we've halted progress or something.
> We're constantly getting healthier, living longer lives, hurting each other lessand doing better by just about all metrics.
Totally agree. But are those improvements due to the decisions of central planners?
> What do you mean 'so much trouble'?
Things that come to mind: abysmal outcomes for many in the public school system; skyrocketing prices in healthcare; urban families almost completely destroyed by paternalistic welfare programs; massive suffering and death caused by the warfare state; shredding of the Bill of Rights by the TSA; economic calamity caused by Fed-fueled booms and busts; etc.
Look at the places with the worst outcomes and you will find the most government involvement.
> Look at the places with the worst outcomes and you will find the most government involvement.
Of course. That doesn't mean they are the problem. It's entirely plausible they are involved because there's a problem. In a system with honey, bees and bears, just because you often see bears involved with honey doesn't mean they are responsible for its creation.
> We're constantly getting healthier, living longer lives
LOL, really ? There are more and more obese people in the US, does that count as getting healthier ? What are your metrics exactly ?
As for living longer lives, that's already clearly proven most of the life expectancy gains happened since we reduced infant mortality to minimum levels, raising therefore lifetime for all individuals on average.
In the US, the Federal Gov't mostly follows the money. And actually we can leave people's lives up to them to lead. Whether you think their decisions are right or wrong, based on intuition, religion, science, etc., the populace aren't children and the gov't aren't parents. Freedom is the right to be wrong.
The population is largely children, and nearly 100% of the population were children when they adapted to most of their culture, (specifically the kinds of ideas you are rejecting here.)
You don't think "freedom is the right to be wrong" wasn't something you were taught as a child by adults?
Usually governments make worse decisions than common folks - in about every area (economics, science, medicine, education). I can hardly think of any area where Governments actually did not divert funds resulting in a bad consequence.
I find humans to be pretty funny. Modern day humans no longer trust the instincts they have developed over millions of years and instead put their faith in shitty science and corporate marketing. They no longer trust themselves to know how long to stay in the sun, how many steps to take, or what kind of foods to eat.
Those instincts were evolved to get you to reproduce and live long enough for your offspring to be self-sufficient. The world has changed enormously since the industrial revolution and there's hardly been enough time for new instincts to evolve to account for modern society.
New instincts aren't necessarily needed for there to be a population that has some sort of advantage in the modern world, some certain bundle of existing instincts/habits can possibly provide it.
I don't agree. The human body tells you when things are right or wrong. It is about the effects, not whether it is a new stimulus that caused those effects.
> The human body tells you when things are right or wrong.
The human body won't tell you to avoid lifelong tanning to avoid cancer in your 60s, because living to your 60s isn't all that evolutionarily important (and hell, likely made you a drain on your hunter-gatherer tribe). There's no selection pressure.
Definitely interesting, but they're talking about "elder" being living past 30. I'm not sure that holds in the realm of cancer and knee replacements, though.
I used the sun example because a few years ago scientist had everyone avoiding the sun and now they have realised that sun exposure is important. Scientists literally have no idea what they are doing. Tans look good and the sun feels good. That is what guides me and it is a much more reliable source of knowledge than science.
>a few years ago scientist had everyone avoiding the sun
I'm somewhat doubtful of this claim. If anything scientists would have everyone avoid sunburn since skin cancer and cataracts.
Tans looking good are a recent phenomenon: A couple hundred years ago light skin was a sign of high status since you could afford to stay indoors instead of having to work in the fields, so light skin was deemed to be more beautiful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color#Social_status...
Err no. There were specific campaigns that said tans were unhealthy. You still seem to believe this and think that tanned skin only seems attractive due to cultural factors. Are you also going to say that big boobs are only attractive because of cultural factors?
So your personal, cultural instilled, biased intuitions is what drives you? And you think this is more reliably than science? A methodology designed to control for such things, that has brought us antibiotics, vaccines, pretty much all of modern medicine. You know what else feels good? Cocaine, but that doesn't mean it's good for me. The dangers of tanning isn't something invented by colluding scientists and Hawaiian tropic made up to push more sun tan lotion. It's testable and repeatable scientific fact that the sun emits harmful UV radiation that can cause premature aging, cancer etc etc.
Humans have been proved to be pretty bad at deciding things. We've used voodoo, superstition, trust in authority for thousands of years. I welcome some order in the process, in the form of science.
>Modern day humans no longer trust the instincts they have developed over millions of years ... or what kind of foods to eat.
Really? This is a naturalistic fallacy. It's out precisely our instincts that cause us to overeat. As has been pointed out our instincts haven't adapted to the abundance and availability of food seen today. In an environment where food is scarce it is evolutionary advantageous to ensure your body had enough calories to make it until the next available meal. And this didn't mean picking the most nutritious food sources, we didn't have that luxury, it meant picking the most available. Only as directed by science do we now know what foods provide the most benefit or determent to our health.
Yet humans have eyes and can see they are fat. They have the instinct to know what type of body looks healthy or unhealthy. Also every human knows that eating less food will reduce their weight. Whether we have the ability to change our habits is another question but is unrelated to my proposition.
For years the government has been encouraging _____ only for a news article never to be written because it dramatically helped the outcomes of real people.
Don't forget that the things that make the news have a huge selection bias.
> The most evident and dangerous venue for such engineering is the public schools, in which the government subjects our children to every sort of social experiment, and what have we to show for it?
First two to spring to mind: A dramatic drop in violent crime since the 1970s because the "self-appointed masterminds" restricted lead. A dramatic drop in road deaths because the "self-appointed masterminds" required seatbelts, airbags, and crash standards.
I think the key argument in favor of the usefulness of these sorts of policies is that if I had to worry about all this stuff myself it would take a ton of time and I'd almost certainly still do a worse job than government regulators.
That regulators make mistakes, even fairly often, doesn't necessarily convince me my life would be better without them.
You'll need to be more specific as to the causes of the drop in violent crime in the '70s.
Your example about automobile safety devices makes the dubious assumption that manufacturers wouldn't include such technologies if not mandated by the state and that consumers wouldn't demand them. You also ignore the ridiculous amount of other required features on modern automobiles that make base models more and more expensive, hurting the lowest income levels.
> A dramatic drop in violent crime since the 1970s because the "self-appointed masterminds" restricted lead
There are many possible factors that went into this reduction in crime, but it's not entirely settled. For example, a substantial portion is attributable to a decrease in unwanted pregnancies [1].
> A dramatic drop in violent crime since the 1970s because the "self-appointed masterminds" restricted lead.
I'm somewhat skeptical about that; while lead may be a contributor, there's fairly strong indication over a long period of time of age demographics being a key driver in crime rates, and the curve of the crime wave is fairly consistent with that, making an additional explanatory factor unnecessary.
It is more than mixing. It is a reduction in the size of the fat molecules which changes the way the fat acts in the mixture.
Shaking the milk before drinking is not the same thing.
Creating an emulsion, which is exactly what homogenization is, does not do anything to the molecules. It reduces the size of the clumps of molecules, which simply allows it to exist in a consistent suspension. It has no effects whatsoever on how those compounds behave in the digestive tract.
Maybe that's taking it too far? Clump size may indeed affect absorption, change the time it takes to travel down the intestine, or even change the speed of chemical reaction with increased surface area.
I have examined enough human intestines, macroscopically, microscopically, and biochemically, to feel fairly confident this is not in fact something to worry about.
Right. Homogenization should not impact fatty acid chain length. Dairy systems are complicated though, and there are protein interactions that help the emulsion by supporting the formation of micelles[1]. It's the same stuff after pasteurization, just distributed differently.
Pasteurization is an entirely different matter though. Heat treatment will convert some fraction of lactose into smaller sugars, including its constituent galactose and glucose[2]. This is why ultra-pasteurized can taste a bit sweeter than untreated milk. Pasteurization also inactivates lipases which would otherwise cleave the fat molecules, reducing the likelihood of rancidity[3].
I learned about lipase when I was a kid and followed my dad around at the farm. According to him it was the lipase in the homogenized whole milk that made the difference in taste that I recognized between milk from the storage tank on the farm and bought milk.
Reading up on it now it seems to be a bit more complicated but still.
From a quick reading it looks like homogenization may make fatty acids more accessible to lipase (greater accessible surface area, maybe also charge interactions?). Of course enzyme activity is also a function of pH and temperature. If it was a chilled storage tank, perhaps the taste was different because lipase had not yet had a chance to work--if homogenization happens before pastuerization, it could cause some breakdown after storage but before heat-moderated lipase inactivation.
I have some formal training in biology, but I'm certainly no expert and may be incorrect. What I do know is that dairy systems are complicated.
It seems a weird sort of naturalism fallacy to assume that mixing milk by hand is optimal. I'd be very skeptical about health benefits, but I'm open to the notion that it tastes different. Have you done a side by side comparison (do some brands offer both?)
this is only anecdotal but in Europe I never had trouble digesting milk. The milk they sell in the US makes me feel bloated. It also tastes differently.
Obviously that's not a scientific study but for me it's good enough to conclude that something is different.
I didn't conclude that. It seems the major difference is pasteurization and homogenization so I guess it's one of them or both.
I should add that my observations are mainly about fresh milk from a farm. But even the ultrapasteurized milk they sell in tetra paks is better digestible for me.
FWIW milk in Germany is also often (most of the time?) homogenized. And it tastes differently depending on the "manufacturer" (the company, not the cows).
*Also PSA: Europe is many different countries, not a single one like the US. So it doesn't make much sense to say "in Europe", because there are huge differences between countries ;-)
Both Europe and the US are big places with lots of different rules. In the US roughly half the states ban raw milk sales, another 1/4 allow it to be sold on farms, and the final quarter let it be sold either in farmers markets, stores or both. California is on the less restrictive end -- there's a testing requirement and a warning display requirement but it can be sold anywhere.
Drinking the milk from another species designed to grow that species babies is wrong. Would you even drink human milk designed for human babies as a grown adult?
Well, no food in nature was really designed to grow human adults. We've coopted the reproductive cells of thousands of plants, solely because we were hungry and there were calories there. Not because of design.
Nature is not out to help us be healthy, despite all the books written about it. A plant would gladly poison us (many try) if it's seeds would sprout better from our dessicated corpses.
That link doesn't mention the dental hygiene problems of sugar. So, even when your child is over 12 months it's probably a good idea to minimise the amount of honey they eat.
A Pepsi representative commented that people are so confused about healthy food, they'll avoid orange juice because of the high sugar and avoid diet sodas because they don't trust the artificial sweeteners.
Gah, school lunches and nutritional recommendations make me so mad.
Everyone thought eggs and butter were unhealthy too. 6-11 servings of grain though! The "food pyramid" was beaten into my head repeatedly as a child, with some suspicious board of agriculture sponsored exercises too. Turns out it was total bullshit.
We feed our kids the worst garbage, at least we did from 1992-2005. A nation should want its kids to grow up big and strong. But nope, let em eat french fries and pears in heavy syrup.
Times changed. The Pentagon (who owns school lunch program) set their standards because they rejected too many recruits for malnutrition in WWII, usually insufficient calories/stunted growth.
The 50's saw that change with widespread refrigeration and more varied diets. The standards should have changed but once instituted change comes hard.
Now the Pentagon responds to obesity by restricting school lunch calories. Misguided in my opinion; school kids are growing fast and need good calories. Restrict calories at lunch, and the kids eat junk after school to make up for it. I would much rather schools provided unrestricted salad bars etc. instead of trying to put all the kids on a diet.
I love whole milk. Plain and simple. It's delicious. It's got a ton of good fat and protein in it. My entire family drinks it and always has. We're all of healthy weight (my brother and I are actually pretty skinny, although he has a bit of a gut now that he's 32, I'm still 25 and because of handstands and pull ups you can see my abs a bit).
We also eat very healthy in general as a family. Lots of pasta with clam sauce, red sauce, alfredo sauce. Lots of vegetables. Avocados. Clementines.
And we all lead healthy lifestyles in regards to exercise. Lots of musical instruments being played, hiking, canoeing, walking, and biking.
So, I'm not sure what my comment is here really, but the moral of the story seems to be for me: If you eat healthy foods (and don't eat too many processed items), and if you partake in healthy activities, you'll probably end up pretty healthy.
Sometimes genes are a good bit of it. In my family we have ~150lb people who eat endlessly, thousands of calories a day. 6 ft tall, thin as a rail. Many of them. So that's got to be genes.
Or, you know, behavioral things like activity patterns, which can be quite heavily influenced by culture even at the level of a family, without being genetic. Or gut flora, which, though there are good reasons that they can tend to be quite closely similar in families, are environmental rather than genetic.
"X seems particularly common in family" does not imply "X is genetic".
Cool; thanks! Didn't consider all that.
For us, activity isn't the factor. We were all pretty sedentary as kids.
If gut flora is environmental, then that's a no-go since we span 5 states.
So in our case, genes is the winner so far.
> If gut flora is environmental, then that's a no-go since we span 5 states.
Its environmental, but one of the key environments for transferring them is mother-to-child, particularly at birth.
A lot of things that are environmental rather than genetic are shaped particularly strongly by the early (prenatal, perinatal, or early childhood) environment, which can confound efforts to intuit the degree to which a feature is genetic vs. environmental based on unstructured observations of the degree to which it seems to be associated with families.
Sorry, but it's pretty unlikely this is true. The biggest TDEE difference seen in studies is about a 300 calorie difference for people of the same weight (so not enough to have 150lbs people recklessly eating thousands of calories and not gaining weight). It's very likely you have members of your family who don't eat a lot day to day and eat a ton at family gatherings etc.
If I'm wrong here I have a lot of scientists who would like to examine your family.
Growing up is a pretty metabolically stressful activity. It's not uncommon to be able to eat huge amounts and not get fat while you are growing.
There are certainly fully matured people who can eat more than other fully matured people who are the same size and weight, but the amount they can eat more is like a cookie a day maybe.
Obesity in America is a youth problem today. Can't argue that away with level of activity or environment, not with such dramatically different outcomes. But anyway, beating a dead horse.
It's worth noting that a healthy weight accompanied by healthy exercise doesn't necessarily prevent heart disease. There's this perception that those at risk are overweight, and that isn't necessarily true. If you look at a country like the Philippines (and probably other similar countries) you'll see plenty of people at a healthy weight who live an active lifestyle that are at extremely high risk of heart disease. They appear healthy from the outside, but there's high rates of smoking and probably not the greatest dietary habits.
And, I don't mean to detract away from what you're saying. Eating a healthy balanced diet is the most important way to prevent heart disease.
Eh, I'm not sure I totally agree with what you are saying:
a) As you mentioned, smoking is a huge confounder in your example
b) A lot of congenital heart disease is not preventable via dietary intervention. For people who do require dietary intervention it's going to depend on the disease. For a small portion of people, for instance, eating low cholesterol is important, but the vast majority it makes no difference. For these people eating low cholesterol is the biggest difference, not a generally balanced diet.
c) There is a ton of science showing massive improvements in heart disease outcomes from losing weight.
I'm not saying eating a balanced diet doesn't matter, but for most people actually being a healthy weight is the most important thing, and for many others the dietary intervention is pretty specific, ie: not low cholesterol not "eat a balanced diet."
> We also eat very healthy in general as a family. Lots of pasta with clam sauce, red sauce, alfredo sauce. Lots of vegetables. Avocados. Clementines.
I'd urge you to change your frame of reference from "certain foods are healthy or not" to "certain foods are optimal for certain scenarios." Pasta in clam sauce is a pretty calorically dense food, and while there is nothing toxic about it, it's difficult to argue that many people need another calorically dense food, especially one that is low in protein.
This is not to say carbs and fat are bad, but that for the vast majority of Americans they need to reduce carbs and fat and increase protein to move towards a healthy diet.
Relevant the op, and your point about milk being high protein, milk could be a way for this to happen.
> Americans they need to reduce carbs and fat and increase protein to move towards a healthy diet
The majority of Americans consume more than the recommended daily intake of protein, the source of which is mostly red meat, which is arguably a less healthy diet. I do agree that the average American consume to many carbs, and again, from sub-optimal sources. What need to happen is an increase in fruits and vegetables which most American are sorely deficient in.
I agree that the average American consumes more than the recommended daily intake, but the recommended daily intake is complete bullshit. It's 50g, it should be more than double that. It's a class issue: protein is expensive.
The red meat stuff is controversial. From everything I've read, including the China Study, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of red meat in an otherwise healthy diet is probably fine. Who knows though. There definitely isn't clear science there.
I totally agree that in general vegetable intake needs to increase. Fruits are ok, but not great because of the fructose. I don't really think fruits are a necessary part of a healthy diet, but they certainly can be.
Same here, I find whole milk delicious and healthy; it's been a big part of our family's diet (we're vegetarian).
What I find more ridiculous though is how the food industry sells Whey, Casein and Cheese separately at up-marked prices and people have bought into the idea that it's ok to consume these milk by-products separately while avoiding milk.
The problem, IMHO, is that dietary science makes recommendations based on gross over-simplifications. Creating guidelines based on such overly simplistic grouping of information leads to sub-optimal results because it glosses over important nuances.
The saturated v. unsaturated distinction is one that we are finally realizing is not an important to overall health. However, this has been replaced by another is the trans fat v. cis fat distinction.
The government is pushing for the removal of trans fats from foods without consideration to the fact that vaccenic acid is a trans fat that is extremely good for mammals (it's found in high quantities in breast milk, for instance) while elaidic acid is what has been linked to low HDL and heart disease.
Of course, the population as a whole is no better. They also cherry-pick things they want to be healthy with little consideration of the science behind it. So I'm not sure this is an issue that needs addressing.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 152 ms ] threadThe social engineering has got to stop. A free people should not be subject to the latest schemes of self-appointed masterminds. The most evident and dangerous venue for such engineering is the public schools, in which the government subjects our children to every sort of social experiment, and what have we to show for it?
Well my wife's (who's from a third-world and (formerly) most isolated country in the world) grandma (eldest of 13) explained it to me: She's always taken newborn's and placed them by the window for an hour. That'll do it!
Then I read the history of neonatal jaundice care and I was shocked to learn that light therapy for jaundice wasn't discovered until the 50s (when a doctor noticed that newborns under the care of a nurse with particular habits fared better) and widely practiced until the 70s!
+1 for folksy medicine!
Come on now.
> We can't leave it to intuitions of the masses.
Precisely the mindset of the power elite that gets us into so much trouble.
I lean toward valuing individual rights over all else, but this scenario does present a serious challenge to that worldview.
Another contributor to the problem is that people trust science a lot less today than 2 generations ago. They've seen the negative results of a lot of fraud that has been perpetuated under the banner of "science". (E.g. "scientific socialism", the food pyramid, most of psychology, etc...)
Could we be getting better at a faster rate, as a species? Most likely, but it's not like we've halted progress or something.
Totally agree. But are those improvements due to the decisions of central planners?
> What do you mean 'so much trouble'?
Things that come to mind: abysmal outcomes for many in the public school system; skyrocketing prices in healthcare; urban families almost completely destroyed by paternalistic welfare programs; massive suffering and death caused by the warfare state; shredding of the Bill of Rights by the TSA; economic calamity caused by Fed-fueled booms and busts; etc.
Look at the places with the worst outcomes and you will find the most government involvement.
Of course. That doesn't mean they are the problem. It's entirely plausible they are involved because there's a problem. In a system with honey, bees and bears, just because you often see bears involved with honey doesn't mean they are responsible for its creation.
LOL, really ? There are more and more obese people in the US, does that count as getting healthier ? What are your metrics exactly ?
As for living longer lives, that's already clearly proven most of the life expectancy gains happened since we reduced infant mortality to minimum levels, raising therefore lifetime for all individuals on average.
Exactly, that's why Freedom is to be left alone to individuals so that they can choose for themselves what best fits their lifestyle.
Governments have roles to play, but telling people what to do and not to do at a private level is certainly not one of them.
You don't think "freedom is the right to be wrong" wasn't something you were taught as a child by adults?
Or are you trying to suggest that your genetics have a role in determining what rights you have or who has power over you?
Usually governments make worse decisions than common folks - in about every area (economics, science, medicine, education). I can hardly think of any area where Governments actually did not divert funds resulting in a bad consequence.
The human body won't tell you to avoid lifelong tanning to avoid cancer in your 60s, because living to your 60s isn't all that evolutionarily important (and hell, likely made you a drain on your hunter-gatherer tribe). There's no selection pressure.
Apparently there are some arguments that having elders around was a boon for prehistoric tribes. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/jul/24/prehistoric-m...
I don't know how much this is validated, but thought it was interesting nonetheless because it seems counter intuitive at first.
I'm somewhat doubtful of this claim. If anything scientists would have everyone avoid sunburn since skin cancer and cataracts.
Tans looking good are a recent phenomenon: A couple hundred years ago light skin was a sign of high status since you could afford to stay indoors instead of having to work in the fields, so light skin was deemed to be more beautiful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color#Social_status...
Really? This is a naturalistic fallacy. It's out precisely our instincts that cause us to overeat. As has been pointed out our instincts haven't adapted to the abundance and availability of food seen today. In an environment where food is scarce it is evolutionary advantageous to ensure your body had enough calories to make it until the next available meal. And this didn't mean picking the most nutritious food sources, we didn't have that luxury, it meant picking the most available. Only as directed by science do we now know what foods provide the most benefit or determent to our health.
Don't forget that the things that make the news have a huge selection bias.
First two to spring to mind: A dramatic drop in violent crime since the 1970s because the "self-appointed masterminds" restricted lead. A dramatic drop in road deaths because the "self-appointed masterminds" required seatbelts, airbags, and crash standards.
That regulators make mistakes, even fairly often, doesn't necessarily convince me my life would be better without them.
Your example about automobile safety devices makes the dubious assumption that manufacturers wouldn't include such technologies if not mandated by the state and that consumers wouldn't demand them. You also ignore the ridiculous amount of other required features on modern automobiles that make base models more and more expensive, hurting the lowest income levels.
There are many possible factors that went into this reduction in crime, but it's not entirely settled. For example, a substantial portion is attributable to a decrease in unwanted pregnancies [1].
1. http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUndersta...
I'm somewhat skeptical about that; while lead may be a contributor, there's fairly strong indication over a long period of time of age demographics being a key driver in crime rates, and the curve of the crime wave is fairly consistent with that, making an additional explanatory factor unnecessary.
Pasteurization is an entirely different matter though. Heat treatment will convert some fraction of lactose into smaller sugars, including its constituent galactose and glucose[2]. This is why ultra-pasteurized can taste a bit sweeter than untreated milk. Pasteurization also inactivates lipases which would otherwise cleave the fat molecules, reducing the likelihood of rancidity[3].
1. https://books.google.com/books?id=1OhFPZ7tFz8C&pg=PA864&lpg=...
2. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6Q8mX8DsDe4C&oi=...
3. https://books.google.com/books?id=gJ6jA7LG-bsC&pg=PA276&lpg=...
I learned about lipase when I was a kid and followed my dad around at the farm. According to him it was the lipase in the homogenized whole milk that made the difference in taste that I recognized between milk from the storage tank on the farm and bought milk.
Reading up on it now it seems to be a bit more complicated but still.
I have some formal training in biology, but I'm certainly no expert and may be incorrect. What I do know is that dairy systems are complicated.
Obviously that's not a scientific study but for me it's good enough to conclude that something is different.
I should add that my observations are mainly about fresh milk from a farm. But even the ultrapasteurized milk they sell in tetra paks is better digestible for me.
*Also PSA: Europe is many different countries, not a single one like the US. So it doesn't make much sense to say "in Europe", because there are huge differences between countries ;-)
I am not talking about "H-Milch" in tetra paks :-)
Nature is not out to help us be healthy, despite all the books written about it. A plant would gladly poison us (many try) if it's seeds would sprout better from our dessicated corpses.
Totally not what you were saying, I get that, but I think it's always a good public service type message to spread.
http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/honey-and-infant.html
Well, no, but I wouldn't eat human muscle either... but I'll eat a cow's.
Most schools don't even have 1% milk, but they all have chocolate milk with tons of added sugar. Great healthy choice there.
Everyone thought eggs and butter were unhealthy too. 6-11 servings of grain though! The "food pyramid" was beaten into my head repeatedly as a child, with some suspicious board of agriculture sponsored exercises too. Turns out it was total bullshit.
We feed our kids the worst garbage, at least we did from 1992-2005. A nation should want its kids to grow up big and strong. But nope, let em eat french fries and pears in heavy syrup.
The strong part? I dunno cut out recess and PE?
The 50's saw that change with widespread refrigeration and more varied diets. The standards should have changed but once instituted change comes hard.
Now the Pentagon responds to obesity by restricting school lunch calories. Misguided in my opinion; school kids are growing fast and need good calories. Restrict calories at lunch, and the kids eat junk after school to make up for it. I would much rather schools provided unrestricted salad bars etc. instead of trying to put all the kids on a diet.
The real reason? Good calories are expensive.
We also eat very healthy in general as a family. Lots of pasta with clam sauce, red sauce, alfredo sauce. Lots of vegetables. Avocados. Clementines.
And we all lead healthy lifestyles in regards to exercise. Lots of musical instruments being played, hiking, canoeing, walking, and biking.
So, I'm not sure what my comment is here really, but the moral of the story seems to be for me: If you eat healthy foods (and don't eat too many processed items), and if you partake in healthy activities, you'll probably end up pretty healthy.
How much of it is genes? I have no idea.
"X seems particularly common in family" does not imply "X is genetic".
Its environmental, but one of the key environments for transferring them is mother-to-child, particularly at birth.
A lot of things that are environmental rather than genetic are shaped particularly strongly by the early (prenatal, perinatal, or early childhood) environment, which can confound efforts to intuit the degree to which a feature is genetic vs. environmental based on unstructured observations of the degree to which it seems to be associated with families.
If I'm wrong here I have a lot of scientists who would like to examine your family.
There are certainly fully matured people who can eat more than other fully matured people who are the same size and weight, but the amount they can eat more is like a cookie a day maybe.
And, I don't mean to detract away from what you're saying. Eating a healthy balanced diet is the most important way to prevent heart disease.
a) As you mentioned, smoking is a huge confounder in your example
b) A lot of congenital heart disease is not preventable via dietary intervention. For people who do require dietary intervention it's going to depend on the disease. For a small portion of people, for instance, eating low cholesterol is important, but the vast majority it makes no difference. For these people eating low cholesterol is the biggest difference, not a generally balanced diet.
c) There is a ton of science showing massive improvements in heart disease outcomes from losing weight.
I'm not saying eating a balanced diet doesn't matter, but for most people actually being a healthy weight is the most important thing, and for many others the dietary intervention is pretty specific, ie: not low cholesterol not "eat a balanced diet."
I'd urge you to change your frame of reference from "certain foods are healthy or not" to "certain foods are optimal for certain scenarios." Pasta in clam sauce is a pretty calorically dense food, and while there is nothing toxic about it, it's difficult to argue that many people need another calorically dense food, especially one that is low in protein.
This is not to say carbs and fat are bad, but that for the vast majority of Americans they need to reduce carbs and fat and increase protein to move towards a healthy diet.
Relevant the op, and your point about milk being high protein, milk could be a way for this to happen.
The majority of Americans consume more than the recommended daily intake of protein, the source of which is mostly red meat, which is arguably a less healthy diet. I do agree that the average American consume to many carbs, and again, from sub-optimal sources. What need to happen is an increase in fruits and vegetables which most American are sorely deficient in.
The red meat stuff is controversial. From everything I've read, including the China Study, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of red meat in an otherwise healthy diet is probably fine. Who knows though. There definitely isn't clear science there.
I totally agree that in general vegetable intake needs to increase. Fruits are ok, but not great because of the fructose. I don't really think fruits are a necessary part of a healthy diet, but they certainly can be.
What I find more ridiculous though is how the food industry sells Whey, Casein and Cheese separately at up-marked prices and people have bought into the idea that it's ok to consume these milk by-products separately while avoiding milk.
The saturated v. unsaturated distinction is one that we are finally realizing is not an important to overall health. However, this has been replaced by another is the trans fat v. cis fat distinction.
The government is pushing for the removal of trans fats from foods without consideration to the fact that vaccenic acid is a trans fat that is extremely good for mammals (it's found in high quantities in breast milk, for instance) while elaidic acid is what has been linked to low HDL and heart disease.
Of course, the population as a whole is no better. They also cherry-pick things they want to be healthy with little consideration of the science behind it. So I'm not sure this is an issue that needs addressing.