Category Archives: science

Butter? Fat? Sugar? Or Is Capitalism the Real Health Risk?

[DISPLAY_ULTIMATE_SOCIAL_ICONS]

Laurie and Debbie say:

Until recently, in the world of food science and public perceptions of food health, FAT was the villain, sneaking around trying to get into your arteries and clog you to death, while SUGAR was an ineffectual sidekick, who might make you gain weight but was otherwise harmless. Recently, those characters are being reversed: SUGAR is being shown up as more of a killer, while doubt is being cast on FAT’s crimes.

In June, PLOS ONE published a very large meta-analysis on the health effects of butter, one of the scariest of the FATS. The analysis included 9 studies

reporting on 636,151 unique participants with 6.5 million person-years of follow-up and including 28,271 total deaths, 9,783 cases of incident cardiovascular disease, and 23,954 cases of incident diabetes

In brief, the results were that butter consumption did have a “weak” association with overall mortality, even though it showed no correlation with heart disease and stroke, and a negative correlation with Type 2 diabetes (people who ate more butter had 4% less Type 2 diabetes).

Although this study got a lot of press, including from celebrity cookbook author Mark Bittman, there can be no doubt that most people still think of butter as a substantial health risk.

This month, a lot of news outlets reported on a Journal of the American Medical Association article  about how the sugar industry lied and cheated to make fat seem like a much more serious culprit in cardiovascular health, and sugar an effectively unimportant player.  Vox says:

New research, published today in JAMA Internal Medicine, shows that Big Sugar  may have done more than just advocate for favorable policies. Going back more than 50 years, the industry has been distorting scientific research by dictating what questions get asked about sugar, particularly questions around sugar’s role in promoting heart disease. …

Through an examination of archival documents, the JAMA paper shows how a sugar trade association helped boost the hypothesis that eating too much saturated fat was the major cause of the nation’s heart problems, while creating doubt about the evidence showing that sugar could be a culprit too. Sugar increases triglycerides in the blood, which may also help harden the arteries and thicken artery walls — driving up the risk of stroke, heart attack, and heart disease.

The JAMA paper and the popular articles about it that we’ve seen don’t reference the butter study. So the two topics are kept separate and reports on both of them go out of their way to offer a million versions of “but FAT is still bad for you.” That’s the “faith sentence” of the food science world.

What’s really going on, of course, is that not only are butter, fat, and sugar commodities, so is a great deal of 20th and 21st century science. As both the JAMA paper and the PLOS ONE paper note, knowing who funded a study or a group of studies is at least as important as the results. Often, you can successfully surmise who funded a study by what its results are. Funders such as the sugar industry (or the oil industry or the pharmaceutical industry) commission studies and let the scientists know what results they want and — surprise! — the scientists want to get more grants and more funding, so they all too often find the results they were asked for.

The skewed papers are published, and the media immediately picks them up: media that is funded in substantial part by the same powers-that-be that funded the studies. Then the media simplifies the story and shapes to fit the popular misinformed narrative, making it even more in line with the original funders’ intent.

Under capitalism, the big money interests own both the majority of the facts we can get our hands on, and the majority of the sources we can get our facts from. minor accomplice (like FAT) are singled out because they don’t have a big trade association protecting them. Protected villains (like SUGAR) get a free pass.

Does this sound at all like anything else you hear about in the news? Yeah, we thought so too. Privilege is everywhere.

 

 

3D Printers Are for Something Better than Porn

Debbie says:

france-3d-printed-clitoris-mFv

Paris-based researcher Odile Fillod is single-handedly educating the youth of France about the realities of sex and female anatomy with her new creation: the world’s first 3D-printed, anatomically correct clitoris.

The friend who sent me this article by Matt Nedostup at SomeCards found it on Facebook, and thought it might be a joke, but it is apparently a real thing in the world–and from my perspective a good one.

Laurie and I wrote about “clitoral studies” about a year and a half ago.  Although women’s sexuality has been getting some detailed attention for decades, and perhaps more in the past few years, real information is still quite obscure. Stephanie Theobald, writing about Fillod’s clitoral model in The Guardian (as linked from Nedostup’s article), says:

Clitoris activism is hot in France right now. The feminist group Osez Le Féminisme has been vocal in combatting the silence around it since 2011. While in Nice, a group of sex-positive feminists, Les Infemmes, has created a “sensual counter culture” fanzine called L’Antisèche du Clito or The Idiot’s Guide to the Clit. There are funny drawings of “Punk Clit,” “Dracula Clit” and “Freud Clit”, as well as facts about the organ.

When it comes to getting real information to children, especially pre-adolescent children, most people in the United States find the idea almost impossible to wrap our brains around — and even many sex-positive U.S. residents find the idea disturbing as well. My own position is that correct, detailed knowledge is always better than myths and old men’s tales, and I’m excited by what’s happening in France:

A recent report from Haut Conseil à l’Egalité, a government body responsible for gender equality, found that sex ed in public schools still teaches that boys are “focused on genital sexuality”, but girls “attach more importance to love.” Of course, scientists have known for years that boys and girls are both super into genital sexuality.

Fillod feels that her creation will help French girls understand their own bodies and overcome the stigmas against female sexuality that they’re taught by society/school/advertising/men/women/everyone.

We can only hope. Obviously a woman of radical ideas, Fillod took this one one step further by making the files for her printed clitoris open-source, i.e., available to anyone for free.

 Because of that generous decision, French elementary and middle schools will start using the model as a teaching aid starting in September.

Neither article says whether this is in some French schools or all French schools, or how the French public is reacting. I know that in the U.S., we are so confused and retrograde about teaching sex and sexuality that it’s almost impossible to imagine elementary school kids of any gender playing with a lifelike clitoris (or penis or vulva) for any purpose, let alone to understand “the realities of sex.” I will be watching this story to see if there’s backlash in France, and how it plays out.

In all probability, it will not lead to The Onion‘s satirical fantasy:

The Robert Mapplethorpe Children’s Museum officially opened its doors to the public Tuesday, drawing over 1,000 visitors with its interactive exhibits and youth-oriented activities aimed at making the photographer’s signature nude, explicit art more fun and accessible for younger generations. …

“Robert always wanted his work to affect the broadest possible audience, and by introducing children to the wonders of the human form and hardcore homoeroticism at a young age, we hope to instill a lifelong appreciation for his art,” said head curator Eileen Greco, dressed in the standard leather bondage harness worn by all Mapplethorpe Children’s Museum guides. “This museum is a celebration of everything Robert loved—from muscular male thighs to nylon cords wrapped tightly around one’s own scrotum—and our interactive exhibits make it fun for even the youngest child to explore and enjoy these themes.”

But it is kind of fun to imagine …