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Hello everyone.

Greetings from Dallas, where we are under a watery sun. Huge thunderstorms and hellacious rain over the past two days. Thunder rolling, lightning flashing, kind of weird in the winter.

Things are back to normal with the Arrow as compared to two weeks ago. Last week’s version had the poll in the low 80s, which is typical. And only 13 unsubscribes, which is also typical. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what happened two weeks ago. I guess it will just have to stay one of those great unsolved mysteries.

Update on the shittification of Amazon. As you might recall, I ordered a book a couple of weeks ago that was supposed to be delivered overnight. I ended up getting it yesterday via the US Mail. It was a used book, but fairly often used books are sold with Prime delivery, as this one was. Most used books on Amazon have a $3.99 delivery charge added to the price. But there are usually one or two books listed that basically have the $3.99 added to their price and they are offered with Prime delivery, which was the case with the one I ordered.

I hate to just order and pay the $3.99, because most of the bookstore selling these books through Amazon send them via Media Mail (MM). MM is an inexpensive way to send books and other informational materials. And since the shipping is so cheap, the USPS puts these items at the bottom of the list. It takes anywhere from two to three weeks to get a book sent via Media Mail, and that’s if it isn’t lost.

I once ordered a book through Amazon and received an email from the bookseller. It told me my book was on the way and asked me if I would rate the seller as ratings really mattered when dealing with Amazon. I wrote back and said I would give a great rating as long as the book wasn’t sent via Media Mail.

I got back a scathing but informative email. The lady sending the book told me she had sent the book First Class Mail, but had ended up losing five bucks doing so. She told me that Amazon takes a chunk out of both the $3.99 shipping fee and out of the price of the book. She said the only way she could possibly make a buck was to ship via Media Mail. Which she did not do in my case. I was chastened. I got the book and gave her a great review.

Since then, now understanding the economics for booksellers on Amazon, I always go for the Prime, simply so I won’t get it sent via Media Mail. Which I did on this latest book, but got it via Media Mail anyway.

When I got it, I noticed it came from somewhere in Kansas. When I got the book out of its wrapping and opened it, there was an invoice from a bookstore in Carrolton, Texas, which is about ten miles from where I’m sitting right now. Did the book go from there to Kansas to be mailed? Who knows?

Just more shittification of everything.

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Bushes and Bears

A week or so ago I got one of Rob Henderson’s Substack posts that reminded me of something I’ve always wanted to ask a crowd of people. I keep meaning to do it when I give one of my talks, but unless the talk is about Paleopathology it wouldn’t make sense.

Rob’s post was titled The Smoke Detector Principle: The Evolutionary Advantage of Overreaction. It starts off with the paragraph below, which I’m sure applies to the readership of The Arrow in spades.

He goes on to discuss how people with higher levels of education experience much higher levels of anxiety than do those with lesser levels of academic study. In keeping with educational achievement, those who work in white collar jobs have higher anxiety levels than blue collar workers.

Anxiety is kind of a first world problem. And those who live in the US, in particular, experience it in overdrive. According to some sources, half of American adults under 30 years old experience anxiety almost all the time.

Anxiety keeps us alert to escape problems we’ll probably never have to deal with, but at the same time generates other issues that can be more problematic than the ones we’re worried about.

Rob goes on behind the paywall to discuss notes he has taken from a lecture series by a psychologist. The one that jumped out at me was the note on fire alarms.

This discussion made me think of a couple of things.

First, the one I always wanted to ask a group of people about.

God only knows how many miles I’ve driven in multiple cross country trips. I’ve driven from California to both Arkansas and Michigan numerous times. I’ve driven from Arkansas to Florida countless times. From Texas to all over the place. All over the South, all over the West, all over the Midwest, and all over the South East. The only place I haven’t driven a lot is in New England, but I have driven there some. And I’ve driven all over Italy, France, Spain, and Ireland.

Whenever I’m out driving, I’ve noticed a phenomenon. MD has noticed it, too. If I’m driving through, say, Colorado, and I see what is a big bush up ahead on the side of the road, I think it is a bear. It looks for all the world like a bear to me. As I get closer and closer, it still looks like a bear. When I finally get close enough, I realize it is a big bush.

It doesn’t have to be a bear that I imagine. Depending upon what the tree or bush looks like, it could be an elk (especially in Colorado—they’re all over the place) or a deer or a fox or even a bison. When I finally get close enough whatever I thought it was dissolves into what it really is. A tree, bush, or whatever.

I’ve decided it’s all a part of the smoke detector principle. The ancient part of my brain paints it as a bear when I see a bear-sized and -shaped bush on the road ahead. As I get nearer, my brain paints in all the bear pixels, so it looks even more like a bear the closer I get. Ultimately, I get close enough that despite all of my brain’s efforts, I realize it’s just a bush.

I suspect the ancient brain has that coded into it from thousands of years ago. If you saw something bear-like, which really wasn’t a bear, you wouldn’t put yourself in harm’s way if you thought it was a bear. Whereas if you thought it was just a bush, and it ended up being a bear you blundered into, you might end up on its menu.

I have seen a few bears while driving, and a few mountain lions, and elk (by the scads in Colorado) and deer. But I have never seen what I thought was a bush, and when I got up close realized it was a bear or some other wild animal.

Now, my question is, has everyone else had this experience? Is this a universal phenomenon, or simply something weird about me (and MD)? Let me know in the polls and/or comments.

One other point on this.

As the psychologist mentioned above "evolution shaped defensive systems on the principles of error management. When met with ambiguous risks, the body is calibrated to respond as if the danger is bigger than it really is, rather than under-respond.”

This defense system applies to physical workouts. My friend Tim Noakes, a South African physician, high level athletic competitor, and conditioning expert discovered that it isn’t the lactic acid build up or the apprehensive feeling that you’re going to hurt yourself by over exerting during a run or a workout that stops you. It is your brain. You still have physical capacity left; your brain just won’t let you use it. You can almost always gut up and pump out a few more reps or whatever.

The feeling of exhaustion is your body’s smoke alarm telling you to not overdo and hurt yourself. But you’re not all that close to hurting yourself. There is still a fair amount left in the tank.

It’s weird to think if you are doing, say, chest presses, and you feel you just can’t do another one that it is your brain telling you that, not your muscles.

Plastics and Endocrine Disruptors

Back sometime in the 1990s, I had a conversation with my mother (RIP), who was a heavy smoker until she was 60 or so. I asked her why she did it. Why did she, a registered nurse, smoke when everywhere you looked there were health warnings about the habit.

She said back when she started smoking in the early 1940s everyone smoked. She said people would think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t smoke. Everyone would think you were weird, she said. And, she pointed out, no one knew it was harmful back then. Even doctors recommended cigarettes.

She informed me that when she was pregnant with me—her first—she asked her doctor if she should quit smoking. She said he told her, “God no, you would be a nervous wreck.”

Our conversation—especially the part about no one knowing smoking was harmful early on—got me thinking about my own time. What, I asked myself, are we all doing now that is harmful, yet we don’t give it a thought? What will people ask me about when I’m my mother’s age like I did her about her smoking? What are we all doing so innocently now that people will look at in 40 years or so and say, What idiots? How did they not know how harmful that [fill in the blank] is.

The only thing I could come up with was plastic water bottles. At just about that same time, the 90s, people were starting to avoid tap water and had begun to schlep plastic bottles of water with them everywhere. The old folks—my father, for example—was flabbergasted. How much did you pay for that water? he would ask. You know, you can get it free out of your kitchen faucet.

I’ve thought about that conversation and my idea that the ubiquitous plastic water bottles might possibly carry a health threat. As it turns out, they probably do. But they are still not demonized in the same way smoking is. And no one seems to give a flip about them.

It’s not just plastic water bottles. We have plastic all over the place. Everything just about is wrapped in plastic anymore, and there are a lot of chemicals in plastics that can be transmitted to whatever is being wrapped or sealed. There are plastics that are tested to ensure no leaching of harmful substances takes place, but those are vastly more expensive than the plastics we encounter everywhere.

Recently a friend sent me the link to a website showing how many endocrine disrupting chemicals are found in various foods. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can mimic hormones or even block our normal hormones. They can interfere with hormone production, transport, or elimination. They can alter hormone levels in the blood and change the body’s sensitivity to hormones.

As you might imagine, endocrine disruptors can cause a plethora of disorders ranging from altered sperm quality and fertility to obesity and diabetes. In short, they are, and should be avoided whenever possible.

The site my friend sent me was put together by a bunch of tech bros in the San Francisco Bay area. One is Nat Friedman, who has plenty of money to play with. He was sitting around with a bunch of friends wondering about what was in all the food they ate from various outlets around their neighborhood.

From the report:

They decided to see what it would take to test a bunch of these products just to see what turned up. Which they did, and $500,000 later, they had a pretty good idea. And it wasn’t pretty.

They discovered a boatload of endocrine disruptors in just about all the tech-bro foods they had been consuming. Some were really surprising. Whole Foods ribeye steaks, for example, were crawling with disruptors.

Here is a meal in the Stanford dining hall:

And one from Starbucks, a wrap that many people assume is healthful.

You can find the entire website with all the findings here. It is not a pleasant read.

Below is a follow up tweet by Nat Friedman. Apparently many food companies are wondering how they can fix the problem, which is good news, indeed.

RFK, Jr. Confirmation Hearings

I’m so riveted by these hearings that’s it’s difficult for me to focus on anything else.

I think RFK Jr. is the most crucial pick Trump has made, because I truly believe he is the last best hope to get some kind of control over Big Pharma and Big Food.

The forces arrayed against him are frightening, which is what worries me the most.

One of his goals is to go back to restrict pharmaceutical ads to medical journals, the way it used to be. Now they are all over television and other mass media. I know most people just snooze through them, but some people do ask their doctors about the specific drugs advertised. I’ve been asked many times about one drug or another that had been advertised. It gave me the opportunity to have a conversation with my patient about the different drugs available. And why I did or didn’t like the one on the ad.

My issue with pharmaceutical advertising in mass media is not that it is damaging to patients, or that it encourages patients to demand certain drugs.

My problem is that it influences the mass media. Big Pharma spends an ungodly amount of money on advertising. Probably more than any other business. And the beneficiaries of this spending are the various television networks and other Big Media.

Since the legacy media is the recipient of this Big Pharma largess, my worry is that those in charge don’t want to do anything to discomfit the drug companies. So they won’t report on failures of any of the drugs their benefactors produce.

There is a reason that all of the legacy media during Covid promoted the vaccines from MSNBC to Fox. Had any one of these outlets done a special—or even a spot—on vaccine injuries, the network would have lost tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue. Big Pharma holds a giant golden club over the heads of those running network TV.

That’s the reason I believe these ads should be made unlawful. It gives Big Pharma way too much power over how the news is reported vis a vis the drug companies.

I read the Wall Street Journal every day. They are a bit right of center politically, but they have become completely unhinged where RFK, Jr. is concerned. And just within the last few days, which I’m sure is timed to make maximal impact on his hearings.

I few days ago, the normally sane Kimberley Strassel wrote a misinformed, foaming at the mouth, editorial practically demanding the Senate refuse to confirm Kennedy to the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Her outrage is based on his history as a trial lawyer who has sued just about anyone who would stand still. I’ve got to admit, that was why I was lukewarm on him at first. He sued all kinds of people—including those who couldn’t afford it—over environmental issues connected to climate change.

But since I’ve read much more about him, I’m persuaded he is the man for the job. And that he truly does want to reduce chronic disease, which is mainly diet related, make sure vaccines are adequately and honestly tested to know they’re safe long-term as well as effective, and throw off the yoke of Big Pharma capture of the FDA.

He has been a bit disingenuous about the vaccine bit. I’ve heard him say multiple times while watching these hearings that he has nothing against vaccines, he just wants them to be safe. All the dolts questioning him have no idea that vaccines have never been tested against a true placebo. All of them have been tested against earlier versions of the same vaccine or faux vaccines that don’t have the antigens in them, but do have the aluminum and other adjuvants that cause many of the problems. If those taking the experimental vaccine have no more problems than those taking an earlier version, then they are pronounced as safe.

If the earlier version causes adverse reactions in 10 percent of those taking it and the experimental version doesn’t cause many more, then it’s approved. But is it safe? I guess it’s as safe as the earlier version, but was the earlier version safe? We don’t know, because it, too, was tested against an earlier version. Turtles all the way down!

The only true way to know it is safe is to test it against placebo. And I think that’s what RFK, Jr. will try to do. And he will be fulfilling his promise to ensure vaccines are safe.

As an aside, it’s just incredible to me how many people parrot the idea that vaccines are wonderful without any knowledge whatsoever of the actual way in which they are tested. I, myself, was in that group until the mRNA Covid vaccines came along. That’s when I dug in and really studied vaccines for the first time and discovered how screwed up the whole vaccine development and testing process is.

Yet everyone is an expert on vaccines. Take the woman in the video clip below, who has a voice like a strangled crow. Go to 1:46 and hear what she has to say. Watch through the part where she shows a clip of her interview with Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Commerce. He discusses how sensible RFK, Jr. is in his discussion of vaccines and autism. He says that 70 years ago the autism rate was 1 in 10,000 births. Then he says the number of vaccines jumped from 3 to 72 (his numbers, not mine, but he’s close), and he said the rate of autism jumped to 1 in 36 births. But she cut off the segment before that part was played.

Back to Kimberley, who writes:

Let’s look at the above quote. First, on glyphosate aka Roundup and a bunch of other brand names. There is big, big money in glyphosate. Huge money.

Glyphosate kills plants. And it doesn’t take a lot. Which makes it kind of difficult to use. It’s a weedkiller, but if you’re not extremely careful, you end up killing the plants you’re chemically weeding along with the weeds.

Monsanto, and probably others by now, have developed genetically-modified plants that are not susceptible to glyphosate. They sell the seeds of these plants to farmers, who have to purchase them year after year. In the old days, farmers who grew corn (or any number of crops) would save enough kernels to plant the next year’s crop. No longer. Now the farmer has to buy GMO seeds from Monstanto or others. If he tries to save kernels from his current harvest, Monsanto sues him, because they have a patent on those kernels, and he can’t use them. Without paying for them again, that is.

So there are big bucks to be made on both ends of the glyphosate deal. The people who make glyphosate make money and Monsanto and others make money.

One of the issues with glyphosate is how it is applied. Back before GMO crops, farmers who used it had to be extremely careful or they would kill their own crops along with the weeds. They couldn’t get it anywhere close to the actual crop plants themselves. So there wasn’t as big a worry about contamination of the actual crops.

Now that the crops are all GMO, which don’t get killed by glyphosate, the chemical is sprayed on the crops and on the ground. Often by crop dusters. It gets all over everything and ends up in the food produced.

If glyphosate were to be found to cause health problems and was banned as a consequence, it would be a huge financial blow to a number of companies. Which is why they underwrite the elections of congressmen they know will protect them. Which Kimberley apparently does not have a problem with.

I just looked up glyphosate toxicity on PubMed and there are over 2,000 articles on the topic. You can look up glyphosate and cancer, poisoning, and a handful of others and find a lot of papers. There are a number of books out there on glyphosate and health, all of which say the product is uniformly bad for people.

I am far from being an expert on glyphosate, but when there is as much written about and objected to as there is with glyphosate, it makes me worry a bit.

Since most of the governmental agencies that regulate such chemicals have been captured by industry, it would be nice to have someone running them who didn’t bow to Big Ag. Someone who could determine the validity of the science and make a determination about whether or not such chemicals are actually harmful. A counter-balance.

We did it once before back in the days of DDT. It was banned. And farmers went berserk. But in the end, it was a good thing. Had DDT been developed today, I suspect it would not be banned thanks to all the congressional underwriting by Big Ag.

Kimberley Strassel attacked RFK, Jr. over the fact that he was a trial lawyer. The lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal piled on specifically about his alleged stance on vaccines just a couple of days ago. If anything, this attack is more specious and strident than Strassel’s.

Usually editorials in the Journal (written under the name of the editorial board) are well reasoned and backed by facts. This one was no better than the crow-voiced woman in the video above. They accused Kennedy of being anti-vax when they, themselves, write one falsehood after another.

After writing that Mr. Kennedy is “as slippery as Anthony Fauci,” they go on to write this:

Every statement in bold above is untrue except for the last one. He does not have a long history of anti-vaccine advocacy. As I explained above, he simply wants to ensure they are safe. There are studies showing a link to autism. A few years ago, right here on the Arrow, I analyzed the main one out of Denmark purporting to show there was no link to autism. Under careful scrutiny, it turned out that the vaccinated kids did develop autism at greater rates.

What I have never understood is why when the rate of autism has gone from 1 in 10,000 live births to 1 in 36 live births over the last 60-70 years, no one seems interested in figuring out why. Some just say we’re now better at diagnosing it. That is total bullshit. If you’ve been around autistic kids as I have, it isn’t difficult to diagnose. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease—nothing has grown as quickly as autism.

Let’s look at obesity just so you’ll see what I mean. In 1962 when accurate obesity stats were first measured, 13.4 percent of people were obese. That’s about 1.3 out of 10. In 2020 the official obesity rate was 41.9 percent, so that’s a bit over 4 out of 10. There has been a lot of ink spilled over the rapid growth of obesity of 1.3 to 4 out of 10 citizens. Compare that to autism rates over the same period of 1 out of 10,000 to 1 out of 36. Yet, as I wrote above, no one seems much motivated to try to figure out what’s going on.

Below for your viewing enjoyment is a short video from long, long ago. You wouldn’t get this same reaction from one of the participants today, one who was concerned years ago. And who made a common sense observation. Hard to believe.

I’ve been meaning to discuss this paper since it came out this month. It isn’t a randomized controlled trial, because the kids weren’t randomized into the vaccine or non-vaccine groups to begin with. The study looked at kids in the Florida Medicaid program. Some came in and got their vaccines on schedule, while others didn’t. The researchers went through the data and looked at outcomes at nine years of age.

After studying 47,155 kids, here is there conclusion:

As to the polio vaccine, obviously the editorial staff of the WSJ doesn’t remember the Cutter incident. Nor do they realize that many people who got the live vaccines ended up getting polio. And I don’t think they are aware of how few people who get polio end up with permanent paralysis. The thinking seems to be if you get polio, you end up in an iron lung. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Polio is passed via the fecal oral route, so just like with so many other infectious diseases, modern sanitation makes infections vastly more difficult. Just like all the infectious diseases—scarlet fever, for example—that killed millions that went away before there were ever vaccines for them, polio is no different.

Here is a chart from a recent pro-vaccine medical paper showing the effects of polio infections.

As you can see, 96 percent of people who contract polio have either no symptoms or mild symptoms. Four percent end up with a transient paralysis that goes away. (This happened to MD’s brother.) Under 1 percent get the paralysis that we all associate with polio.

And remember, these are just the people who get infected. With modern sanitation very few people even get exposed.

I’m not making light of those who do or did get paralyzed, but it’s an infinitesimally small number. And like all medications, the polio vaccine produces adverse reactions in some people. What we don’t know is whether the morbidity and mortality of the disease is less or more than that from the vaccine. No one knows, because it has never been tested against placebo.

The editorial board of the WSJ are totally off-base for slamming Kennedy for opining that “infectious diseases disappeared because of better hygiene, not vaccines.” He is absolutely correct. Deaths from every disease we now vaccinate for dropped to almost nothing before their vaccines were even developed.

The folks at the WSJ are concerned that Kennedy might try to undo the 1986 law that indemnifies vaccine manufacturers from damage caused by their products. I hope to hell he does. That will slow the roll on new vaccines we probably don’t need, and will weed out those that cause huge numbers of adverse effects.

I’ve been jumping back and forth today between working on this Arrow and watching the hearings. I’ve got to share this one small clip. RFK, Jr. vs Bernie Sanders. It’s priceless. And reveals a dark truth.

Many, many if not most members of congress are on the Big Pharma payroll. I’m sure they’re getting stern phone calls right and left telling them to vote against “Bobby.” It will be a tough choice for a lot of them: Whether to do the right thing fo the health of the American people or be able to count on large campaign contributions.

Well, billionaire Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate when he ran for president, has decided to insert herself (and her billions) into the equation to help persuade recalcitrant senators to do the right thing.

If nothing else, it will be fun to watch this all play out. My bet is that he is confirmed. But I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it.

Are Processed Foods Ruining Our Health?

What with all the media space they’re getting, one would think so. But are they? Really?

I think there is no doubt they’re damaging our health, but are they the sole culprits out there ruining it? I’m not so sure.

As I wrote above, the first real obesity statistics were determined in ~1960. At that time, 13.4 percent of people were obese. And those were adults. Thinking back, it seems like there was maybe one chunky kid in each class in elementary school, but nothing like today.

There were some obesity stats in the early 1900s, but they were not derived from the population at large. They came from specific groups such as military recruits, or West Point students. Based on various descriptions I’ve read, it appears that the obesity rate at the turn of the 20th century was below 5 percent. So from then until 1960, the obesity rate doubled plus a little.

It remained pretty stable from the 1960s until the early 1980s, when it began to shoot up. By 1994 it was about 23.3 percent, almost a doubling since the 1960 figures. And by 2000 it hit 30.9 percent and continued moving upward until it his 41.3 percent in 2020.

We’ve all seen variations of the graphic below.

As you will find in all such charts, there is an inflection point around 1980 when the curve dramatically shoots up. Something happened that caused people to begin gaining a lot of weight.

If we could figure that out what that was, we could simply undo it, and perhaps everything would quickly return to normal.

Problem is, there were a number of things that changed at that precise point in time that have all been blamed at one time or another on the obesity epidemic. Was the epidemic driven by one of these changes, or all of them? Or just some of them?

According to Gary Taubes’s extensive research, the doctors in Germany had it pretty well figured out before WWII. They thought that the small percentage of obese people represented those who were carbohydrate sensitive. Those people had their obesity pretty easily undone by simply cutting the carbohydrates in their diets.

Prior to WWII, Germany was the center of scientific excellence in the world. Anyone who was any kind of a scientists wanted to go study in Germany, and German scientists were considered the best of the best. WWII more or less ended that. The German scientists who could came to the US or the UK. A number of the German doctors who had figured out what causes obesity came to the US to a not particularly warm welcome. At that time, the researchers in the US were calorie counters and fat watchers. So the German physicians who had put so much work and research into diet and obesity in pre-WWII Germany were basically given short shrift.

Right around 1980 a number of events occurred.

First, 1980 was the year the first nutritional guidelines came out. These promoted the consumption of carbohydrates and the demonization of fat, particularly saturated fat. Cutting saturated fat leaves only mono-and poly unsaturated fats, so consumption of poly-unsaturated fats (PUFA) began to increase. At the same time, the US government decided to significantly bump the level of enrichment of wheat products. Along with all these changes, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) made its appearance.

People, by and large, don’t need a lot of encouragement to eat carbs. So they did. And around this same time, people began the snacking habit that is so common today. Snacks were made of wheat or corn, sugar or HFCS, and PUFA for the most part. And with snacks, because they had to be shelf stable, came all the preservatives, gums, and flavorings that are ubiquitous today.

All those changes took place at circa the same time. So which one is responsible for the obesity epidemic?

We learned from the pre-WWII German researchers that in susceptible people carbs would cause weight gain.

Now we have people telling us it is seed oils that do the trick. Others tell us that it’s HFCS making everyone fat. Others yet tell us it’s the increased niacin intake from the bump in wheat enrichment ~1980. And, of course, now large numbers of people are jumping on the ultra-processed foods bandwagon and promoting those as the driving force behind the obesity epidemic.

So, what is going on here? What is the true cause? Or is it all of the above?

It would take a number of decent studies to sort it out, but no one seems to be really interested in doing that work. There have been a couple of studies showing subjects on UPF gain more weight than those on non-UPF foods, but they are of short duration. A week or two is not long enough. Kevin Hall at the NIH has another study going, but in that one subjects follow one of four diets for a week. That is a waste of money.

I always ask myself, what would happen if we randomized a group of subjects into two groups. One group would go on a high-carb whole food diet without any of the confounding additions. No PUFAs; saturated and mono-unsaturated fat only. No UPFs. No enriched wheat. No HFCS. The other group would follow a diet rich in PUFA, UPF, enriched wheat, and HFCS. The carbs would be the same in both groups. Who do you think would lose (or gain) more weight? I suspect the whole food high-carbohydrate subjects would lose the most, but I don’t know for sure.

How about another study.

Again we’ve got subjects randomized into two groups. One group goes on a low-carb diet with saturated fat as the main added fat and the other group goes on a low-carb diet with PUFA being the main added fat. Who wins that one? I would bet on the one with the added saturated fat, but I don’t know for sure. The study has never been done.

You could go through all the different parameters that have changed since 1980, but no one has done that study. It would be expensive, and who would pay for it?

What I do know based on many years of experience and a lot of study is that if you eat a whole-food, low-carb diet, you will eliminate seed oils (usually found in snack food), HFCS (it’s a sugar), enriched wheat (wheat intake is minimal on a low-carb diet), and UPFs (if you don’t have prepared foods, you won’t get UPFs).

Does the low-carb diet work because it cuts carbs, reduces insulin, and all that, or does it work because it gets rid of seed oils, enriched wheat, HFCS, and UPF’s?

The work of the German physicians indicates that just cutting the carbs does the trick.

But I’m sure getting rid of the other stuff—if you’re used to eating it all the time—will help.

I know my assiduous avoidance of UPFs has lost me a bit of weight, but more importantly has made me feel a whole lot better.

In my view, cutting the carbs is the primary engine for weight loss and health improvement. Getting rid of all the other crap people routinely eat just boosts your results.

But now people seem to be claiming that UPFs are single-handedly ruining health. I’m not sure I agree. I do think they’re a part of the problem, but I don’t think they do the job alone unless all you eat are processed foods. Then, of course, you’re getting a lot of carbs, too. UPFs are almost always carb laden.

A new paper has just come out identifying all kinds of processed foods. It uses the NOVA classification, which I think is kind of bogus. It was developed by a researcher in Brazil 10 or so years ago and everyone has seized on it.

In the NOVA classification there are four groups.

Group 1 includes unprocessed or minimally-processed foods.

• Fresh fruits and vegetables

• Whole grains and legumes

• Fresh meat, fish, and eggs

• Plain milk and unsweetened yogurt

• Nuts and seeds (without added salt/sugar)

• Tea, coffee, and water

Group 2 Processed culinary ingredients

• Vegetable oils

• Butter Sugar and molasses

• Salt

• Honey and maple syrup (how honey is processed, I don’t know)

Group 3 Processed foods

• Canned vegetables and legumes

• Canned fish

• Salted or cured meats

• Cheese and fresh bread

• Fruits in syrup

• Fermented alcoholic beverages

Group 4 Ultra-Processed Foods

• Commercial breads and baked goods

• Packaged snacks

• Soft drinks

• Ready-to-heat meals

• Breakfast cereals

• Flavored yogurts

• Frozen pizzas

• And any food that has a lot of additives in it

What’s weird about this whole classification system is what happens when you combine foods from different groups. For instance, if you add butter (Group 2) to a potato (Group 1), you’ve converted it into a Group 3 food. You’ve made it processed. It’s a weird classification to say the least. But this is what everyone is looking at now in the research field.

If you’re interested, you can get a much more comprehensive list here.

I think it’s kind of idiocy.

But now a new method of determining the UPF classification of foods has come along called True Food. Researchers used a machine learning program that trained on the comprehensive NOVA database, then learned on its own from there.

If you go to the site here, you’ll be presented with a plethora of grocery store foods that the software will identify by the degree of ultra-processing. You can use it to compare comparable foods you would find at the store and be able to differentiate the ultra-processed ones from the not so processed ones.

Here is an example. Let’s say you’re looking for cheesecake and you come across these two similar products.

Looking at the ingredients list, I pretty sure any of us would be able to finger the one on the left as the most highly processed one. All you really have to do is pick up both of them and looks at the ingredients label. You don’t need the software for that.

Where it might come in handy is in making your shopping list before you go to the store. You can check the options out at home. But you’ve got to be a bit careful.

Take for example St Dalfour Peach Fruit Spread, i.e., peach jam.

You’ll see that this product is a 92 percent ultra-processed food.

Now let’s look at the ingredients.

It contains peaches, fruit juice (instead of sugar) Pectin, and lemon juice. Those are the ingredients everyone uses to make jams and jellies since jams and jellies were first made. This is the way it was made in the early 1900s when obesity rates were nil.

Granted, it does have a fair amount of sugar in it, but I would not consider it an ultra-processed food by any stretch.

There are a lot of these kinds of items in this database.

Just use your common sense. Purchase the products with the fewest chemicals, additives, emulsifiers, and seed or vegetable oils, and be done with it. And follow a low-carbohydrate diet, and you will eliminate almost all the bad stuff.

Odds and Ends

• Okay, here’s one I had never heard of: Boomerasking. It is a big, self-centered foul in conversation. Especially where I am involved, because I rarely do anything exciting.

• Can you read cursive? The National Archives needs volunteers with your 'superpower.' Pretty soon it will become such a superpower that they may start paying for it.

• Astronomers have, for the first time, watched the moment a feeding supermassive black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy spat out a jet of material at one-third of the speed of light. Pretty incredible stuff!

• New research suggest Egyptian pyramids were built using an incredibly clever machine, one involving hydraulics. Based on what they’ve uncovered, it could be true.

• Culture’s 2025 annual list of the best award-winning cheeses. Give me the burrata. Please.

• Don’t let the cold weather put you off. Instead follow this ultimate guide to smoking meat in the winter. The chili recipe is the bomb. Just substitute beef tallow for the vegetable oil.

• New technology cuts chemical and energy use of removing salt from seawater. It could save millions of dollars, making desalination far more accessible. I didn’t know about boron till I read this.

• The low levels of gravity (microgravity) in space cause significant changes in astronauts’ eyes and vision after six to 12 months aboard the International Space Station. Their visual status returns after coming back to Earth. But still…

• At long last, CIA now admits Covid-19 is more likely to have originated from a lab leak than from a wet market. I suspect they’ve known it for some time.

• Why do bats hang upside down to sleep?

• Big changes at Starbucks. If I didn’t hate their coffee so much—it always tastes burnt—I would give it a try. Making things better for paying customers always helps.

• From my favorite ex-spy: The alarming national security implications of DeepSeek and China’s A.I. breakthrough. Never trust the CCCP.

• Researcher finds a strong negative correlation between subjects’ use of AI tools and their critical thinking skills. The higher their usage, the lower their skills. Especially if they are younger.

• FAFO. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol was indicted on charges of insurrection for declaring martial law in early December, because the opposition-led National Assembly was blocking his legislative agenda. Could get the death penalty.

• The Mona Lisa is getting her own gallery in the Louvre after a major renovation. Apparently 80% of visitors to the Louvre come there to see that painting. Since I’ve already seen her a few times, I’m hoping they’ll all cram into that one room and reduce crowding in the rest of the museum.

• Largest study ever done shows that cannabis is not benign. Research indicates 63% of heavy lifetime cannabis users exhibited reduced brain activity during a working memory task, while 68% of recent users also demonstrated a similar impact.

• How do astronauts, who sometimes spend months in space, do their laundry?

• UK intelligence service GCHQ puzzle shows if you have dyslexic brain vital for national security. I don’t. Or, I guess, I’m halfway there.

• Baby names that are at risk of going extinct in 2025. Some of them are a real surprise. To me, at least.

• Melting ice reveals remains of 5,900-year-old trees in Wyoming, uncovering a long-lost forest. And telling us it was at least as hot, if not hotter, almost 6,000 years ago as it is today.

Newsletter Recommendations

Alex & Books

One of the newsletters I read every week is Alex & Books. It’s free, and Alex always comes up with a book or two I’ve never heard of. And not only that, he reviews them, so I can get the gist before making a purchase. Sometimes just the gist is enough. Give him a look.

Books & Biceps

In keeping with working out and reading, two tasks I do without fail, take a look at Books & Biceps. You wouldn’t think hardcore meatheads would like to read, but this group does. And again, as with Alex above, I always finds books I didn’t know existed.

Video of the Week

Okay, a short VOTW this week to make up for the long one last Thursday. I got this from Ted Gioia’s The Honest Broker, one of my favorite Substack reads. He doesn’t know—nor does the person who sent it to him—if this is really AI or a human voice. Whichever, it is a great rendition of the famous Beatles tune Get Back performed in the style of a 1940s Jazz singer.

I kind of like this version better than the original. I wasn’t all that taken with the Beatles version.

Enjoy!

Time for the poll, so you can grade my performance this week.

That’s about it for this week. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back next Thursday.

Please help me out by clicking the Like button, assuming, of course, that you like it.

This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Really, thanks. If you got something out of it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber if you aren’t yet. I would really appreciate it.

Finally, don’t forget to take a look at what our kind sponsors have to offer. Dry Farm Wines, HLTH Code, Precision Health Reports, and Jaquish Biomedical.

And don’t forget my newest affiliate sponsor Lumen. Highly recommended to determine whether you’re burning fat or burning carbs.