Posts Tagged ‘diet’
“The greatest wealth is health”*…
On the state of healthcare around the world, three charts…
* Virgil
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As we contemplate care, we might send revealing birthday greetings to Leopold Auenbrugger; he was born on this date in 1722. A physician, he devised the diagnostic technique of percussion (the art of striking a surface part of the body with short, sharp taps to diagnose the condition of the parts beneath the sound)– by which he could estimate the amount of fluid in a patient’s chest and the size of his/her heart.
Auenbrugger was simply applying an approach he’d learned as boy, tapping his father’s wine casks to determine how full they were. After seven years of clinical investigation, he published the method in Inventum Novum (1761), though his technique did not gain recognition and acceptance until years after his death. When a translator republished the work in French (1808) the method gained acceptance around the world, and through time (to the present) as a fundamental diagnostic procedure… for which Auenbrugger is considered one of the fathers of modern medicine.
“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are”*…
Back in 2016, Nathan Yau of Flowing Data created a fascinating set of animated infographics illustrating how the American diet had changed over the prior several decades. A few years later, he used an even more comprehensive data set to update the picture…
The United States Department of Agriculture keeps track of food availability for over 200 items, which can be used to estimate food consumption at the national level. They have data for 1970 through 2019, so we can for example, see how much beef Americans consume per year on average and how that has changed over four decades.
So that’s what I did.
How long will chicken reign supreme? Who wins between lemon and lime? Is nonfat ice cream really ice cream? Does grapefruit ever make a comeback? Find out in the charts below.
The rankings are broken into six main food groups: proteins [pictured above], vegetables, fruits, dairy, grains, and added fats…
Illuminating: “Seeing How Much [and of what] We Ate Over the Years,” from @flowingdata (where one will find larger, more legible versions of the chart above and its companions).
* Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
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As we contemplate consumption, we might recall that it was on this date in 1953 that the Cabinet-level Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was created under President Eisenhower. Its first Secretary was Oveta Culp Hobby. (In 1979, the Department of Education Organization Act was signed into law, providing for a separate Department of Education. HEW became the Department of Health and Human Services, officially arriving on May 4, 1980.)
“I’m more American than apple pie. I’m like apple pie, with a hot dog in it.”*…
From Kelsey McKinney and the invaluable Defector.com, investigative reporting at its most trenchant: just how many hot dogs do Americans eat?…
Last summer, my friend Dana brought me a very important question. She and some friends had been debating all weekend whether or not a certain officially reported number could possibly be true. Could I report it out? Could I find out whether there were lies afoot and frauds being perpetrated? As a good friend, I promised that I would try. And here I am, a mere 10 months later, trying.
The issue is this: The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council puts out a figure each year claiming to be the number of hot dogs an American eats annually.
I will give you a second to think about how many hot dogs this might be.
…
have asked this question at every party I have been to in the last 10 months, and most people give an answer somewhere between five and 25. I, a lover of hot dogs, guessed 30 when first faced with this question. It is still nowhere near the number the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council claims.
The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (from here on out referred to as Big Hot Dog) claims that the average American eats … 70 hot dogs a year… To be clear, this number includes only hot dogs. It does not include bratwursts or sausages or those mini dogs that can be rolled up in pigs-in-a-blanket. It does not include veggie dogs. It is only hot dogs that Big Hot Dog claims we are each eating 70 of every single year…
I emailed Eric Mittenthal, president of Big Hot Dog, last May to ask him where this number comes from and he said, “The number is an estimate based on the sales data we have.” OK, yes. I figured that much. I tried to ask follow-up questions, but they were left unanswered. So we are forced to try to confirm this figure using our powers of deduction. It is important that we do because this number is cited left and right. In the past five years, Big Hot Dog’s numbers have been quoted by Newsweek, and USA Today, and Time and a dozen other major publications. But are they … real?
Seventy hot dogs per American x 341,362,543 Americans = nearly 23.9 BILLION hot dogs per year…
How many dogs do Americans down? Read on to find out: “Big Hot Dog Must Tell The Truth,” (gift article) @mckinneykelsey @DefectorMedia.
* Stephen Colbert
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As we pass the mustard, we might note that today is “New Beers Eve,” the day before National Beer Day in the U.S.– a commemoration of the date (in 1933) that the Cullen–Harrison Act came into effect, legalizing the sale of 3.2% alcohol beer in the U.S.– which presaged the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment (on December 5, 1933) via the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, and the end of Prohibition.
“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings”*…
Tim Flannery considers George Monbiot‘s (@GeorgeMonbiot) new book, Regenesis, in which Monbiot argues that neither the industrial farming that become our norm nor the most rapidly spreading alternative farming methods can help save our food system from impending crisis…
What will we be eating in the future? Will it be wholesome, locally grown organic produce or some Soylent Green–like nightmare food? The only certainty, George Monbiot argues in Regenesis, is that we cannot continue to eat what we eat today. Climate disruption will see to that. And even if climate impacts are less severe than some project, industrial agriculture and the so-called global standard diet it creates are environmentally unsustainable and are destroying the planet’s soils so rapidly that we already stand on the brink of a worldwide catastrophe. We have, Monbiot warns, a very brief period in which to reshape our food systems…
[There follows a fascinating (and chilling) diagnosis of the challenge, and a consideration of possible answers…]
Humans have been farmers for only around 10,000 years. Before that we were hunter-gatherers, and the planet could sustain just a few million of us. Then we moved down the food chain by harvesting the seeds of the grasses that fed the great herds. With that innovation, many millions could be nourished. But the agricultural system that produced the grain was damaging to the environment. We now face the prospect of one further leap down the food chain to bacteria. The benefits could be enormous. Yet we have fetishized our food so thoroughly that it’s difficult to think of a yellow powder made of dried bacteria as being healthy, fresh, and good for the planet. Perhaps the first person to hand out baked cakes of crushed grains at a barbecue serving mammoth and bison steaks to Paleolithic big-game hunters faced the same problem…
“It’s Not Easy Being Green,” in @nybooks.
A pair of shorter-term views that raise some of the same issues (and conflicts): “The U.S. diet is deadly. Here are 7 ideas to get Americans eating healthier” and “The next threat to global food supplies.”
* Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
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As we contemplate comestibles, we might note that National Procrastination Day was yesterday.
“Most things are never meant”*…
Protein-packed diets add excess nitrogen to the environment through urine, rivaling pollution from agricultural fertilizers…
In the U.S., people eat more protein than they need to. And though it might not be bad for human health, this excess does pose a problem for the country’s waterways. The nation’s wastewater is laden with the leftovers from protein digestion: nitrogen compounds that can feed toxic algal blooms and pollute the air and drinking water. This source of nitrogen pollution even rivals that from fertilizers washed off of fields growing food crops, new research suggests.
When we overconsume protein—whether it comes from lentils, supplements or steak—our body breaks the excess down into urea, a nitrogen-containing compound that exits the body via urine and ultimately ends up in sewage… the majority of nitrogen pollution present in wastewater—some 67 to 100 percent—is a by-product of what people consume…
Once it enters the environment, the nitrogen in urea can trigger a spectrum of ecological impacts known as the “nitrogen cascade.” Under certain chemical conditions, and in the presence of particular microbes, urea can break down to form gases of oxidized nitrogen. These gases reach the atmosphere, where nitrous oxide (N2O) can contribute to warming via the greenhouse effect and nitrogen oxides (NOx) can cause acid rain. Other times, algae and cyanobacteria, photosynthetic bacteria also called blue-green algae, feed on urea directly. The nitrogen helps them grow much faster than they would normally, clogging vital water supplies with blooms that can produce toxins that are harmful to humans, other animals and plants. And when the algae eventually die, the problem is not over. Microorganisms that feast on dead algae use up oxygen in the water, leading to “dead zones,” where many aquatic species simply cannot survive, in rivers, lakes and oceans. Blooms from Puget Sound to Tampa, Fla., have caused large fish die-offs…
If it’s not one thing, it’s another: “Eating Too Much Protein Makes Pee a Problem Pollutant in the U.S.,” from Sasha Warren (@space_for_sasha) in @sciam.
* Philip Larkin, “Going, Going” (in High Windows)
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As we deliberate on our diets, we might recall that it was on this date in 1888 that Theophilus Van Kannel received a patent for the revolving door, a design that came to characterize the entrances of (then-proliferating) skyscrapers and that earned him induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. But lest we think him “all work,” his other notable invention was the popular (at least in the early 20th century) amusement park ride “Witching Waves.”
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