Why we eat ourselves crazy

May 23, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

by Kerry Cue

A big, juicy burger to anyone who knows what healthy eating is any more.

Owen Jones, The Guardian, 22 May 2014

Once all scientific research was filtered through the peer review process. Initial studies were tested by others and if the results could be replicated, they were eventually published in mainstream papers.

These days, to get funding, researchers release their results directly to newspapers. Later studies may show that the initial research was flawed but the damage is already done.

Here are 6 ways the healthy food message messes with our minds:

1.Oops! Crazy Professor (Superfood Claim Superbollocks)

2. Too many statisticians spoil the broth (Eat Meat and Die. Oops! Got the maths wrong.)

3. Seemed like a good idea at the time (Stop Oxidants? Stop Breathing! The Antioxidant Hoax)

4. Just made that one up (Drinking 8 glasses of water a day for Dummies),

5. Getting carried away with numbers again ( Winning the Salt Wars or Never Trust a statistician)

6. How marketing controls your mind (Would you eat a button? Millions do!)

Photo source: Undisclosed

HOME

Superfood Claim Super Bollocks

May 23, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

by Kerry Cue

……..There is no “superfruit”.

Alexandra Siferlin, The Truth about Antioxidants, Time, 6 AUG 2013.

The superfood industry spruiks many dubious claims. The first super food, according to Brainpickings website, was spinach.

Back in 1870, Erich Von Wolf , a German chemist, examined the amount of iron within spinach, among many other green vegetables. In recording his findings, he accidentally misplaced a decimal point when transcribing data from his notebook, changing the iron content in spinach from 3.5 milligrams of iron in a 100-gram serving of spinach, to 35 milligrams. It was corrected in 1937, but too late the myth was well established.

This study inspired the Popeye Cartoon character who gets colossal strength eating cans of spinach.

Unfortunately, it was just a maths blooper. According to Iron Facts, University Health Center:

1 cup of raw spinach contains 1mg iron.

The University Health Center claims a woman, 15 to 50 years of age, needs to consume up to 33 cups of raw spinach a day. According to the USA National Institutes of Health a woman 50+ only needs 8 cups or 8mg of iron a day.

Even the much praised blueberry is not very nutritious with only 3 major nutrients Vit C, Vit K and manganese.

Meanwhile, according to an article in New Scientist biochemist Barry Halliwell from the National University of Singapore the best approach to superfoods, antioxidants and diet is to: Stick to flavonoid-rich foods, red wine in moderation, tea, fruits and vegetables.

But the idea of there being superfoods is superbollocks!

Photo source: Halloween Costumes vintage Everyday blog

HOME

Eat Meat and Die. Oops! Got the maths wrong.

May 23, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

By Kerry Cue

Be a vegetarian. Give peas a chance.

Coffee Mug

Every time a study finds this or that food is good or bad for you they usually make one huge error. It’s called a SAMPLING BIAS. ( See Ben Goldacre @ TED Talks.)

Red wines good for you. Red wines bad for you. Red wine causes cancer. Ditto coffee etc. What’s going on?

One newspaper article screamed ‘Cancer a risk for lovers of red meat’. So Real Men Eat Meat and Die. There are many good arguments for being a vegetarian, this does not include health statistics.

This claim was made but the article did not explain the maths. Big meat eaters tend also to be big drinkers and smokers, who are obese, unfit and the rest. This study has tried to separate out meat eating from other unhealthy lifestyle choices using the Cox Regression. Mathematical wizardry has produced these numbers but they don’t mean much.

If the study used a control group of unfit, drinking, smoking, obese vegans then comparing mortality rates over 10 years would be interesting. But where do you find half a million of them????????

Photos: Vintage Circus Photo Blog

HOME

Stop Oxidants? Stop Breathing! The Antioxidant Hoax

May 23, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

by Kerry Cue

Evidence gathered over the past few years shows that, at best, antioxidant supplements do little or nothing to benefit our health.

Lisa Melton,The antioxidant myth: a medical fairy tale, New Scientist, 05 August 2006.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Eat. Pray. Breathe Oxidants.

We breathe oxygen. The oxygen is carried around our body by red blood cells. And, guess what? Oxygen is an oxidant. It ‘burns’ or ‘oxidises’ fuel in our cells. We get energy. The red blood cells then carry the carbon dioxide produced by oxidation back to our lungs and we breath it out. Sometimes, these oxidising reactions are incomplete producing free radicals or, as scientists like to call them, Reactive Oxygen Species, ROS.

Lisa Melton attacked the popular belief that anti-oxidants have magical health benefits in the New Scientist. In the article biochemist Barry Halliwell from the National University of Singapore explains that “One per cent of the oxygen we consume turns into ROS.” Other free radical producing factors include X-rays, smoking, air pollutants, bacteria and intensive exercise. When subjects with diets high in fruit and veg were found to suffer lower incidence of heart disease, diabetes, dementia, stroke and some cancers the theory that antioxidants mop up free radicals was born. It has sponsored a $US 23 Billion supplement industry and that is not even including superfoods.

According to Melton ‘Time and again, however, the supplements failed to pass the test. ‘True, they knock the wind out of free radicals in a test tube. But once inside the human body, they seem strangely powerless.’ Evidence suggests that sometimes anti-oxidants can even do harm. One study involving 18,000 subjects had to be stopped when researchers found the cancer rates rose in those given beta carotene supplements.

Even antioxidants should be consumed in moderation.

……………………………………………..

Photo Source: atomictoasters blog

HOME

Drinking 8 glasses of water a day for Dummies

May 23, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him water ski.

ff………….Kerry Cue, Sibylesque (Just made that one up to be annoying)

……………………………………………………………………………………..

Even as I write these lines some self-proclaimed health adviser will be insisting that for optimum health you should drink 8 glasses of water a day.

This assumes two things:

1. You are incapable of deciding if you are or are not thirsty. Answer this question. What day is it? Correct. As you do not appear to have dementia, you will remember to drink fluids.

2. That 8 glasses is the correct fluid intake for you. How do they know?

Meanwhile, the claim that you need eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day has been debunked.

Drs. Dan Negoianu and Stanley Goldfarb at the University of Pennsylvania reviewed published clinical studies on the topic and found no data to suggest people need to stick to the “8 x 8″ rule.

“Indeed, it is unclear where this recommendation came from,” they write in an editorial in the June 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Photo source: Vintage Hairdryers pinterest

HOME

Winning the Salt Wars or never trust a statistician!

May 23, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

by Kerry Cue

“There is little evidence for long-term benefit from reducing salt intake.”

f………….Cochrane Collaboration, 2003

………………………………………………………………………….

Stop the maths and pass the salt!

In 2006, the New York Times article titled ‘The War over salt’, Melanie Warner (13 Sept 2006) reported that the American Medical Association, AMA, had called on the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, to limit the amount of salt in food. This was the first time the AMA had called for the regulation of a food ingredient.

The article stated: ‘In 2004, researchers at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute published a study in The American Journal of Public Health concluding that 150,000 lives could be saved annually if sodium levels in packaged and restaurant foods were cut in half.’

Hold that thought.

In 2011, the Scientific American ran this headline : It’s Time to End the War on Salt. ( Melinda Wenner Moyer, 8 JUL 2011)

Meta-studies by the Cochrane Collaboration, an international, independent, not-for-profit health care research organization concluded as early as 2003 “there is little evidence for long-term benefit from reducing salt intake.” Moreoever, the Cochrane Institute found that reducing salt intake does not reduce blood pressure significantly. The groups hypersensitive to salt include some elderly and some Afro-Americans.

Hillel Cohen, an epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine noted ‘A great number of promises are being made to the public with regard to this enormous benefit and lives saved’, but it is ‘based on wild extrapolations.’ That’s simply bad maths!

In other words, take extreme recommendations about your salt intake with a grain of salt.

Photo source: 1. eBay, 2. spidersden blog

HOME

How marketing controls your mind or, would you eat buttons? Guess what? Millions do.

May 22, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

by Kerry Cue

I’m on a 30 day diet, so far I’ve lost 15 days.

………………………..Coffee Mug

………………………………………………………………………….

Button sandwich anyone?

The chemistry I studied at university long, long ago included the industrial uses of casein. Now casein is the protein in milk. It is used to make buttons.

Traditionally, buttons were made from shells, wood, metal, glass and bone. The advantage of casein is that it can be moulded and coloured. (See Plastics Historial Society for the history of casein buttons.)

Casein buttons, buckles and knitting needles were first produced in the UK in the 1914 and continued through until the 1980s!!!! Casein buttons are still manufactured in small batches today.

Now cheese consists of three major ingredients.: fat, protein and water. If you remove the fat, then all you have left is the protein, casein, and water. If you place a piece of low fat cheese in the sun to dry our all you have left is the casein (and some fat). It is a little rubbery. Pop it into a solvent (Nail polish remover. That sort of thing.) to remove the residual fat. Bingo! You get a button.

Of course, the marketing folk want us to believe that low fat cheese is healthy. But,would you eat a button?

……………………………………………………………….

Photo Source:1. etsy, 2. grilled cheesery blog.

HOME

Fifty Years Ago Today, The Beatles Came Here to Play

May 16, 2014 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

by Kerry Cue

Those who do not move,

………………do not notice their chains.

………………………..Rosa Luxemburg, Polish Jewish Philosopher, 1871 – 1919.

Fifty Years ago and Far, Far Away!

On 12 JUNE 1964 the Beatles landed in Adelaide to begin their month long Australian tour.

The Australia of the time was rigidly conservative. In his book, The Lucky Country, published in 1964 author Donald Horne wrote ‘Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck.’

Although The Beatles were mobbed on their Aussie tour, more Australians turned out a few years earlier, in 1959, to hear American evangelist, Billy Graham preach the word of the Lord. In fact, 3 million Australians (Aus Pop: 12 million) attended Graham’s sermons.

The Beatles music, including the 1964 tour, was simply the pop music fanfare announcing the massive social and political change sweeping through Australia in the 1960s. Australians were, at last, in Rosa Luxomberg’s view (quote above) beginning to move. The changes included the Sexual Revolution (The pill hit the market here in 1961, ironically, that was the year Marriage rates peaked at 62% of Aussie adults.), Civil Rights (All Indigenous Australian adults got the vote in 1962), anti-war protests (Starting around 1962), feminism (Starting with The Female Mystique, Betty Freidman, 1963), environmental protection (Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962), Gay Rights (Groups formed at the end of the 1960s but laws took much longer to change.) and more.

Some changes were slow. In 1963 pubs still closed at 6pm perpetuating the 6 o’clock swill in Qld, Vic and SA. City centres were dead on Sundays. The shops closed at 12pm Saturday. Then again, there were no credit cards. No credit. You paid cash.(That’s in £sd. $ arrived in 1966) But you could smoke anywhere!

Look at these uni students of ’62. They are conservatively dressed. Some are even wearing ties! In the early ‘60s young people dressed like their parents. Boys wore ties. Girls wore suits. The fans that mobbed The Beatles in 1964 dressed like their parents. Even The Beatles wore ties! The Youth Culture, however, was about to begin. ( See 1964: The year fashion promoted a revolution, not just a brand! )

In 1964, conservative Australia was crumbling, but it took time. In June 1964, I watched The Beatles arrive in Melbourne on a Black and White TV set with my friend Lynette screaming ‘Ringo’ and sobbing into a hankerchief. I was in year 8 at the Sacred Heart Convent Kyneton. The nuns didn’t teach maths to girls just arithmetic and needle work! (See Bimbos 4Eva)

My parents let me leave the convent to attend the local high school where they DID teach maths to girls and I went on to study maths at University. But I was fortunate. Girls’ choices were still limited in 1960s. We were guided into ‘family friendly’ occupations such as hairdressing, nursing, teaching and secretarial work. These were perfectly fine occupations, but often poorly paid. Meanwhile, married women could not work in the Public Service (until 1966). Equal pay was not ratified until 1974. (Many female occupations were exempt until that date.)

Perhaps, we should have listened more closely when in 1968 The Beatles sang Lady Madonna:

Who finds the money when you pay the rent

Did you think that money was heaven sent

Despite being taught arithmetic and needlework, finding the money is something we’ve had to deal with ever since the ‘60s.

……………………………………………………….

Photo source: 1. Britishbeatlemania blog, 2. Wheaton College Archive, 3. Wheaaton College Archive, 4. Sydney Uni Archive. 5. Unsourved

HOME

1964: The year fashion promoted a revolution, not just a brand!

May 16, 2014 by the sibyls 3 Comments

Clothes make the man but often imprison the woman.

………………………….Kerry Cue, Sibylesque (Written for this post).

This is the story of a Fashion Revolution

1. How our mothers dressed in 1960.

………………..

2. How we dressed in 1964.

………………………………………

3. We wore the same clothes as our mothers and the same UNDERWEAR too!

……………………………………..

4. Ads were patronising. This was pre-feminism! Women, apparently, didn’t have brains back then.

………………………….

5. Mothers bought girdles for their girls, but they were a fashion statement!

……………………………..

6. Bloomers could be wore over the ‘tarty’ suspender belts!

………………………………….

7. 1964: The revolution begins ….

……………………………………..

8. 1965: Now hemlines go up, Up, UP!

……………………………..

9. 1966: Mother cannot wear this new mini-skirt fashion!

……………………………………

10. 1967: The mini-skirt becomes the hottest fashion.

………………………………….

11. 1968: The mini-skirt goes mainstream

…………………………………

12. 1969: The mini-skirt defines Pop Culture

…………………………..

13. Don’t forget the boots …

……………………………..

14. 1970: Mama don’t rule no more!

Photo Source: 1. Islandcontinent blog, 2. Queensland State Library Archive, 3. barbarafalconernewhall blog, 4. pinterest, 5.eBay, 6. eBay, 7. Flikr Paul Galesko photostream, 8. The Vine, 9. vintageeveryday blog, 10. pinterest, 11. 63highlanders blog, 12. goretro blog, 13 eBay, 14. dellamoda blog

HOME

The Sibyls Salute: Jennette Williams

May 12, 2014 by the sibyls 2 Comments

I think the lushness of the platinum printing and the timelessness of the platinum prints, .

the exotic setting and the nude women with their classical poses work together to fool us into believing

that women of this size and age and shape were always a subject in the arts and not just crones in the background.

ff………….Jennette Williams, The Bathers, Duke university Press, 2009.

Many women do not live comfortably in their own skin. They are highly critical of their shape, wobbly bits, orange peel, fullness, skinniness, generous hips, flat chests and so on and on. Self-criticism, sometimes loathing, becomes over the years an ingrained habit. The thought of being photographed naked would, for many women, send them running screaming out the door. In this context, aging simply ramps up the self-disgust.

Then New York based photographer Jennette Williams began to take photograph nude women and her work made us all rethink our relationship with our own bodies. In her 2009 book, The Bathers, Williams uses the texture and grey tones of platinum prints to illuminate the beauty in all women’s naked bodies regardless of shape, age or imperfections. Each photograph is based on poses found in iconic paintings of nude women by Paul Cézanne, Auguste Renoir, Sibylesque Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres and more.

Photograph from The Bathers by Jennette Williams

Over an 8 year period, Williams photographed women bathers in Budapest and Istanbul to create these sublime images without ‘sentimentality or objectification’.

Here is Williams in her own words:

Williams was the fourth winner of the biennial CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography. More significantly, Williams has shown us how much our vision of beauty is seen through a window defined by the beauty product industry. We should view her images often to remind ourselves that there is a fragile beauty in honesty, which is diminished daily by grotesque images of advertising fakery.

The Sibyls Salute Jennette Williams

Photo source: Duke University Press Website

by Kerry Cue

A big, juicy burger to anyone who knows what healthy eating is any more.

Share this:

Like this:

by Kerry Cue

……..There is no “superfruit”.

Share this:

Like this:

By Kerry Cue

Be a vegetarian. Give peas a chance.

Share this:

Like this:

by Kerry Cue

Evidence gathered over the past few years shows that, at best, antioxidant supplements do little or nothing to benefit our health.

Eat. Pray. Breathe Oxidants.

Share this:

Like this:

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him water ski.

Share this:

Like this:

by Kerry Cue

“There is little evidence for long-term benefit from reducing salt intake.”

Stop the maths and pass the salt!

Share this:

Like this:

by Kerry Cue

………………………………………………………………………….

Button sandwich anyone?

Share this:

Like this:

Those who do not move,

………………do not notice their chains.

Share this:

Like this:

Clothes make the man but often imprison the woman.

Share this:

Like this:

I think the lushness of the platinum printing and the timelessness of the platinum prints, .

the exotic setting and the nude women with their classical poses work together to fool us into believing

that women of this size and age and shape were always a subject in the arts and not just crones in the background.

The Sibyls Salute Jennette Williams

Share this:

Like this: