Hello friends.

I guess I should apologize for last week’s Arrow, which so many poll respondents told me was riddled with typos. All I can offer as an excuse is that I got started late and was desperately trying to get it out before midnight. I knew MD still had to vet it, so I really pushed. And when she got it, she was about to fall asleep and had to do it in a hurry, so she wasn’t up to her normal standard. But it was my fault for getting it to her so late.

I know how aggravating it is to come across a gaggle of typos when you’re trying to read something, so I really do apologize. I’ll commit to doing much better in the future.

As I mentioned last week, MD and I are on a short vacation, so The Arrow will be abbreviated this week, but I’ll be back and on full power next Thursday.

Big Food Under the Gun

Robert Malone, M.D. put up a Substack post yesterday titled “Big Food Fights.” I’ve kind of been out of pocket, so I hadn’t read about these regulations.

He starts with Texas under the headline: “The Texas legislature has voted to put warning labels on junk food.”

Dr. Malone goes on to discuss legislative action in other states requiring labeling changes or laws against including ultra-processed foods as part of the SNAP program (food stamps). He also mentions, as I did recently, that the trial lawyers have found their new tobacco. They’ll be going after manufacturers of UPF hammer and tongs before long. I’m sure they’re gathering plaintiffs right now.

The upshot of all this is that Big Food will have to change its ways—and soon. Even though no long-term RCTs have shown damage from UPF, my gut feeling is that they’re bad. Getting back to food like it was a decade or more ago can’t be anything but good.

When I was a kid, most everyone ate cereal, orange juice, coffee (for the non-kids), and toast for breakfast. Almost everyone had bread with every meal. Mashed potatoes were a staple, as was dessert after dinner. There were a ton of carbs in the American diet, but very few people were obese.

As Gary Taubes has described in his work, pre-WWII German scientists had pretty much figured out that the small rates of obesity were due to carbohydrate intolerance in a small segment of the population—and easily treated with a low-carb diet.

Now we’ve got huge rates of obesity all over the world, with the U.S. leading the way. What happened? Why did carbs not make people—other than the genetically predisposed—fat then, but they do now?

It has to be something in the contents of the food beyond just carbs. People do eat more carbs now than they did then—at least as calculated by the macronutrient content. The constant haranguing we’ve all received over the past three or four decades about the dangers of fat, especially saturated fat, has decreased fat consumption a bit, which in turn has upped carb consumption. But probably not enough—at least in my estimation—to have increased the obesity rate threefold.

As I say, until proven otherwise, I suspect UPF are behind quite a bit of it. Couple that with the fact that most UPF are also loaded with carbs, and you’ve got a double whammy.

I’m glad the states are jumping in—including my old home state of Arkansas. As Dr. Malone mentions in his post, Arkansas has introduced a bill called Make Arkansas Healthy Again, which will inhibit the inclusion of a number of chemicals in food.

Fingers crossed.

How to Buff a Resume

I don’t know how many of you remember the name Alissa Heinerscheid. If you don’t, she is the brain trust graduate of Harvard and The Wharton School who decided it would be a good idea to use the trans activist Dylan Mulvaney in a Bud Light commercial. To say the least, it was not a success. In fact, she destroyed the brand.

I happened to hear something a few days ago about the Bud Light fiasco that made me wonder what had ever happened to Alissa after she was fired from Anheuser-Busch. I looked her up on LinkedIn to see if she might have posted a résumé—and indeed she had.

We all know what happened to Bud Light after her tenure at Anheuser-Busch. Here is how she describes her time there. Here is a link to her LinkedIn account for those of you who have access.

No mention, of course, of her destroying the brand while there. She’s now employed by LIV golf, so maybe the resume worked. Or maybe she’ll destroy LIV golf?

Statins Plus Ezetimibe

In the section in last week’s Arrow about an email I got from David Diamond chiding researchers for breathing a sigh of relief if their studies showed whatever they were studying lowered—or had no effect on—LDL-cholesterol, he included a paper showing the lack of evidence proving LDL-C causes heart disease. He thinks researchers should not try to hide the fact that whatever they are doing might raise LDL-C, because it doesn’t really matter. In his opinion (with which I concur), breathing a sigh of relief if LDL-C doesn’t go up merely confirms the belief that it does matter.

In the same email chain, Jason Fung replied with a couple of papers on statins and ezetimibe that caught my eye, because I’ve been getting some emails from readers and reports from friends telling me they are on this combination of drugs.

The papers Dr. Fung sent show that the addition of ezetimibe to a statin (Zocor, specifically, in the studies discussed) contributes nothing. In fact, the FDA refused to approve the combination. Moreover, the FDA said there was no evidence ezetimibe reduced the incidence of heart disease. The agency said the drug did reduce cholesterol levels a bit, but it did not prevent heart disease.

Which raises the question: why is this combination being prescribed to so many people?

Okay, that’s it for this week. I’ll see you next Thursday in full form.

Odds and Ends

• 9000-year-old ‘Stonehenge-like’ structure found hidden in Lake Michigan.

• FDA’s new vaccine policy will leave U.S. under-vaccinated. Let’s hope.

• RFK Jr. terrifies Big Pharma with two devastating announcements, the prime one being getting rid of drug ads on TV. Woo Hoo!

• Could this be the world's oldest human fingerprint?

• Incredible! An outbreak of good sense in Germany. I never expected to see this in my lifetime.

• Hawala: The ancient hidden smugglers’ banking system. I had no idea this system even existed and is still in use.

• No birdbrain, this one. A young Cooper’s hawk learned to use a crosswalk signal to launch surprise attacks on other birds.

• The Vesuvius Project has found the title of a scroll for the first time. The charred cylinder turns out to be "On Vices, Book 1" by Philodemus.

• Interesting story on how the Nazis' top interrogator was hired to work on Disney theme parks.

• Cantaloupe-size hail continues bombarding Texas. Thankfully, we’re not there now. It would seem that a cantaloupe-sized hailstone could kill you if it hit you in the head.

• Harvard has trained so many Chinese communist officials, they call it their ‘Party School’

• Long thought to have been brought to the US by European explorers, genetic analysis reveals the bacteria responsible for leprosy existed in the Americas for at least 1,000 years.

• New Infrared contact lenses allow people to see in the dark, even with their eyes closed.

• Afghanistan is a budding vacation destination. After decades of conflict, the nation is trying to attract tourists. I might wait a while longer on this one.

• An extremely lucky Alaska man survives after being trapped face-down in creek by 700 pound boulder.

• Copenhagen just ranked the happiest city in the world. I’ve been there multiple times, it was always overcast; didn’t seem all that happy to me.

• A ranking of the top 25 countries in terms of highest life expectancy. Don’t look for the US on the list. MAHA!

• The tasty history of how snails and oysters became luxury foods. MD and I love them both. Especially oysters for her.

• Incredible story! AI company files for bankruptcy after its neural network was exposed as 700 computer engineers beavering away in India. Microsoft invested $455M.

• England now has a blasphemy law. The way things are going there, it won’t be long before the entire country is under Sharia law.

Newsletter Recommendations

Video of the Week

Today’s VOTW is one of my favorite musicians for mellow, relaxing music. Carla Bruni has such a soothing, beautiful voice that I could listen to it all day. She was born in Italy, but moved to France as a child. Much later in her life, she married French president Nicolas Sarkozy, to whom she is still married. Or at least I think she is.

Here is one of my favorite songs of hers: Quelqu'un m'a dit.

I like this video because you can see her singing, but the guy in the back room kind of creeps me out.

Here is the CD version I’ve listened to a zillion times. And here is the same video as below, but with English translations overlaid. I hate watching music videos with translations running across the bottom as it distracts me from the music

Time for the poll, so you can grade my performance this week. Don’t take points away for it’s being too short. I warned you last week.

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

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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.

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