James Hamblin, at The Atlantic, because there is no choice without consequences…:
This week another large study added to the body of known cardio- vascular benefits of eating almonds. Every ounce eaten daily was associated with a 3.5 percent decreased risk of heart disease ten years later. Almonds are already known to help with weight loss and satiety, help prevent diabetes, and potentially ameliorate arthritis, inhibit cancer-cell growth, and decrease Alzheimer’s risk. A strong case could be made that almonds are, nutritionally, the best single food a person could eat…
The only state that produces almonds commercially is California, where cool winter and mild springs let almond trees bloom. Eighty- two percent of the world’s almonds come from California. The U.S. is the leading consumer of almonds by far. California so controls the almond market that the Almond Board of California’s website is almonds.com. Its twitter handle is @almonds. (Almost everything it tweets is about almonds.)
California’s almonds constitute a lucrative multibillion dollar industry in a fiscally tenuous state that is also, as you know, in the middle of the worst drought in recent history. The drought is so dire that experts are considering adding a fifth level to the four-tiered drought scale. That’s right: D5. But each almond requires 1.1 gallons of water to produce, as Alex Park and Julia Lurie at Mother Jones reported earlier this year, and 44 percent more land in California is being used to farm almonds than was 10 years ago…
Of course, given the speed of climate change, we can probably start farming almonds right here in western Massachusetts once it becomes economically infeasible to do so in California. (I know they used to grow tobacco in the Pleasant Pioneer Valley region…)
the Conster
Happy Valley, not Pleasant Valley. I went to UMass in the 70s, and it was indeed the Happy Valley. I think – I don’t remember much.
Dog On Porch
Artichokes in the Bay Area used to be plentiful and cheap, too, but those days are over. Not because of drought, but because the rest of the world finally figured out how to eat them.
The people of California deserve better. The state’s democratic party rank and file deserve better. Dianne Feinstein has got to go.
Anne Laurie
@the Conster: Thanks! Pioneer Valley around Amherst, actually — the “Pleasant Valley” part is in Connecticut, in the same watershed. That’s where I remember reading about tobacco farms in the 1800s, although I’m too lazy to look it up right now…
On a totally unrelated topic, in case you didn’t see earlier threads, we’ll be having a meetup in honor of SiubhanDuinne on Saturday the 13th, probably in Waltham. Will you be able to join us? Is Solea still a good place for a convivial drink & dine?
dedc79
@Dog On Porch: I’m no fan of Feinstein, but how did you make the leap from this almond crisis to calling for Feinstein to go?
the Conster
@Anne Laurie:
Yes, Pioneer Valley and the Happy Valley are synonymous, with the 5 college towns putting the happy in Happy.
Not sure whether Saturday will work for me – I’m moving that next week so I might be up to my ass in packing boxes, but I do highly recommend Solea. The food is great. Small plate dining tends to be a little pricey, but since the dishes are shared it helps with the cost, and their pitchers of Sangria are delicious, and the dining room is comfortable.
Jay C
Where is “right here in Western Massachusetts”?? I’m up here at our summer
palazzoplace in South Berkshire County: and as “mild” as the occasional winter can be (and in fact, except for 2013-14, they have been fairly mild by NE standards) – you’re going to need a pretty hardy strain of almond to deal with the climate here. At least til Global Warming really takes effect: then they’ll be planting date-palms here…There’s a lot of locavore agriculture going on in this area: but it’s still pretty seasonal (i.e. 3 out of 4 seasons)
Richard Bottoms
At my signal, unleash Hell. Time to bring the one thing that will stop police and vigilantes from gunning down unarmed black men and women: sue them into oblivion. Stop begging, stop marching, stop praying just take their money through settlements or through lawyering up.
The only thing anyone ever truly responds to is having their cash reduced enough that it hurts.
Wal-Mart wants to sell toy guns that get black men killed, make them pay $20 million for the privilege. Municipalities want trigger happy cops, bankrupt the motherfuckers.
You want to be a trigger happy outlaw we take your home, your car and every nickle you have in the bank. I’m betting certain people will grow tired of donating to members of this fail parade.
Want to make anything stop. Take the money of the people who do it and of anyone who enables it.
http://www.notkrell.com/no-more/
trollhattan
Will note in passing that a LOT of that almond orchard acreage was once row crops. When thus-farmed the farmer MUST irrigate or lose his rather substantial investment, including the years it takes the trees to bear fruit…uh…nuts This may be the single greatest reason the farmers are screaming for water in a year when the water isn’t there, why they’re drilling the holy shit out of the remaining aquifers and why Sean Hannity stands out in Westlands fields yelling at hippies about their false Gaia’s stupid, stupid “bait” fish.
Had they not jumped on the almond bandwagon they’d be able to fallow those fields, collect their federal crop insurance and go to Cabo. And I know damn well the business plan they bought into before planting orchards said just that: “On years you cannot get water, fvcked you shall be.”
Also, too, every rentable beehive in the States trucks to California for the spring almond blossoming. A great opportunity for them to spread diseases and parasites amongst themselves.
Am guessing the price of firewood for my stoves is going to drop considerably the next two years.
Ronnie P
Yes, almonds require a lot of water. So does a lot of things. wine is something like 30 gallons a glass. Beef isn’t a Cali thing to be sure, but at something like 20,000 gallons a pound it’s nothing to sniff at.
trollhattan
@efgoldman:
She has, in my view, crawled into bed with big ag on trying to get them more water at the cost of other players this year.
RSA
@the Conster:
I went to grad school at UMass in the ’90s; still the Happy Valley then.
Fred Wertham Jr.
@dedc79:
“I’m no fan of Feinstein, but how did you make the leap from this almond crisis to calling for Feinstein to go? ”
The argument is weak but the conclusion is sound.
raven
Ronnie Pudding
Not sure why you’re singling out almonds. Wine takes something like 30 gallons of water for a glass. Beer is similar.
Beef (not a Cali thing, OK) has been estimated at 20,000 gallons a pound.
From a personal level, there’s one thing you can do to to significantly preserve future water supplies: eat less (or no) meat.
Yatsuno
Anything that can be grown in the San Joaquin valley usually does well in eastern Washington as well. My parents have an almond tree that is blossoming & productive year after year. I think it’s the up front costs of starting a new orchard that is stopping that. Oh and we got lots of water thanks to shifting climate patterns.
Mike J
Last I checked California wasn’t a “fiscally tenuous state”. Doing much better than the shitholes of the confederacy.
Dog On Porch
@dedc79: I dunno. Because she has the heart of an artichoke?
srv
Isn’t there a way to drip irrigate larger trees yet?
srv
@Yatsuno: We need a straw to their water.
Mike J
@Jay C:
Everyone was a locavore for hundreds of thousands of years. the trick in places where you can’t grown year round is preservation, and things people have used to preserve food are often used to make it tasty. Pickles, cured meats, all sorts of things.
Dog On Porch
@efgoldman: I’ll grant Feinstein didn’t cause the draught. But she heartedly endorsed the Bush-Cheney War, and yet was making noise earlier today criticizing Obama. I find her behavior obnoxious in the extreme, and I want her replaced in the Senate.
Litlebritdifrnt
I wonder how many Almonds it takes to feed the “Almond Milk” craze currently sweeping the country? I suspect that like the Greek Yoghurt thing it will pass too (if the “reduced for quick sale” cartons of Almond Milk stacked up in my local grocery store are anything to go by it is close to happening, store managers are going to get tired of losing money on a product really quickly). Don’t get me wrong, I love Almonds, although I have to admit I much prefer the rain forest certified Brazil nuts, and used to grow wild in the woods in England Hazelnuts.
Howard Beale IV
Why you never let a libertarian manage your money.
WereBear
@Ronnie Pudding:
Yatsuno
@Litlebritdifrnt: Hazelnuts will grow just about everywhere. I’m honestly surprised they are expensive as they are because of that.
srv
@raven: For some reason, vets get mad when my Dad tells them Danang’s mayor’s brother was the local NVA commander.
Apparently the shelling schedule and itinerant aircraft parking location was well thought out. IDK why people think Catch-22 was fiction.
SiubhanDuinne
@Dog On Porch:
I was spinning the radio dial in the car, so am not sure whether I heard this on MSNBC, NPR or CNN, but someone today was reporting that Feinstein was aligning herself with the McCain-Graham NYT op-ed. I will not be sorry to see her go. She’s 81 years old. Surely she’s not planning to run for another term in 2016.
Yatsuno
@SiubhanDuinne:
If she does, I will totally get behind a primary challenge from Kamala Harris. If she doesn’t, I would totally get behind a run by Kamala Harris. Either way I win!
Litlebritdifrnt
@Yatsuno: That is what always baffled me about the price of peanuts. When I first came over here I could not believe the ridiculous price of salted peanuts, a 2oz bag was 99 cents, I had just left England where I could buy a 1lb bag of salted peanuts at Asda for 99p (about $1.50). I had just moved to the country where most of the peanuts were grown and yet I was paying six times the price for them, it made no sense.
skerry
@Ronnie Pudding: Actually, California has a major beef industry. They are the 4th largest producer in the US. (Behind Texas, Nebraska and Kansas)
Well, they had an industry before the drought. Lots of farmers are culling.
raven
@srv: Hell yes, happened all the time. “We’re killing the wrong *&&)&+’s here”!
Dog On Porch
@Yatsuno: Or Debra Bowen, fierce defender of free and fair elections. The good news is there is some real talent on the democratic bench in California.
Mike in NC
@Litlebritdifrnt: The phrase “price gouging” comes to mind.
? Martin
@Litlebritdifrnt: California standard graded almonds are 26 almonds per ounce, or 416 per pound. You need about 2 pounds of almonds to make a gallon of milk, or about 832 gallons of water – about 20 bathtubs full.
@Ronnie Pudding:
California is the nations 4th largest beef producer after Texas, Nebraska, and Kansas. We produce about half as much beef annually as Texas. California is also the largest milk producing state in the country – nearly double what Wisconsin puts out.
California’s agriculture economy is larger than the next two states combined (Texas and Iowa). Almost 15% of the nation’s agriculture is in Cali.
Because you can’t source almonds from almost anywhere else. If you want dairy milk, we could offload that production to any number of states getting rain right now, but good luck growing almonds in New York.
Botsplainer
I just started the Dusk to Dawn series.
They took a great story, expanded it and made it dull as shit with a pile of Tarantino-style dialogue that he didn’t write.
The kid doing the Clooney part sounds right but doesn’t have the right physicality.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
@Yatsuno:
If I had 3 nickels to rub together I would run against her. There is around a 1000% chance I’d be better than her as a senator. But of course there are lots of people who could make that claim. Unfortunately for me Harris would probably be at least a 1000% better than I would.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
ObOpenThread:
The Russian Ruble continues to fall in value – 37.4 RUB/$ at the moment.
The 2008 run-up in the graph (beginning of the dramatic fall in value) seemed to start around the August start of the Russia-Georgia war.
The people playing the currency markets don’t seem to be betting that Russia’s economy is going to come unscathed through this conflict over Ukraine – at least in the near-term.
Supposedly more EU sanctions against Russia are coming in the next week. Putin and his buddies can’t be liking the fact that the EU and the West hasn’t caved yet…
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who isn’t silly enough to be a currency speculator.)
Dog On Porch
@? Martin: One of the best TV shows that I watched for years every Saturday morning after working a graveyard shift was called California Agriculture Today (I think). Every week a different crop or livestock industry would be profiled, and it was fascinating. What a state! Yeah, I know–Nixon AND reagan. We’ll never live those two down (at least Reagan was born in Illinois).
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: Apparently the US has the highest sugar prices in the world, or at least close. That’s why industries that use a lot of sugar, like candy makers, have moved their production to other countries where the cost of sugar lowers production costs. Heard something about this on NPR only last week. The sugar lobby keeps prices high.
So you never know what might keep the cost of peanuts high here compared to other countries.
Comrade Luke
Where “Republicans and Democrats” means Democrat War Hawks and John McCain.
This just happens over and over, with no repercussions. It’s sickening, really.
Howard Beale IV
@Dog On Porch: Feinstein is the ultimate Senate hypocrite. When it was discovered the CIA was messing around the Senate Comitte investiagting the torture she went apeshit; yet still went ahead and passed all the re-authorization of the FISA court and the NSA funding.
Jay C
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Well, Bob in Portland will probably be along soon enough to articulate the “facts” for us – probably that the currency fluctuations are the main raison d’etre behind US/EU policy, and that the whole affair has been hoked up by German bankers and Ukrainian fascists (with help from the CIA) to make money off the collapse of the ruble: again, victimizing the poor innocent Russians…..
Dog On Porch
@Howard Beale IV: Yeah, that too.
SoupCatcher
@trollhattan:
This year’s almond bloom was particularly deadly for bees. Estimate of 80,000 colonies damaged or destroyed. The beekeepers are pointing fingers at the almond growers for changing what they put in their pesticide mix as well as when they apply it.
SacBee article
Anecdotally, I don’t remember any agriculture west of the 5 from Lost Hills to Los Banos a few decades ago. But they sure put in a lot of groves there recently. It felt like a classic short-sighted profit-now MBA-type move.
Mike J
@efgoldman: The saucer people control the boy sprouts.
Achrachno
@trollhattan: While probably true, it’s also the case that a lot of almond acreage in the northern San Joaquin Valley used to be in peaches. Peach acreage seems to have declined considerably over the past 30 years. Another source of almond land has been irrigation of formerly dry pasture land on the west side of the valley. Of course, a good bit of that has gone to pistachios too. Irrigation of this “new” land may be the biggest contributor to long-term water supply problems. Of course, if it doesn’t rain farmers have major problems no matter what they’re trying to grow.
Dog On Porch
@SoupCatcher: Southern California has always been a foreign territory to me (sort of like the East Bay), but I did witness Napa Valley transform itself from a fairly diversified agricultural economy to being wall-to-wall vineyards. The county was declared an agricultural preserve circa late ’60’s, and a close call that vote was. The county would otherwise surely have gone the way of Santa Clara County orchards, which were being destroyed and paved over during the same timeframe.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: What am I missing here?
The thread that links this to the JFK assassination.
gian
@efgoldman:
The Bavarian Illuminati, TheDiscordian Society, The UFOs, The Servants of Cthulhu, The Bermuda Triangle, and TheGnomes of Zürich
(Lifted from the Wikipedia entry on the Steve Jackson game)
Achrachno
@SoupCatcher: “Anecdotally, I don’t remember any agriculture west of the 5 from Lost Hills to Los Banos a few decades ago. But they sure put in a lot of groves there recently. It felt like a classic short-sighted profit-now MBA-type move.”
Yes! Massive expansion of irrigated agriculture on the west side in recent decades. I don’t know if there were MBAs involved, but farmers saw that they could make a lot more money on irrigated trees than rain-irrigated grass. The canals that made this switch possible were constructed back in the 60s or early 70s — before that, working cows on dry hills was about the only option. Did they ever even thank the federal government for making the water available, and cheap?
Violet
@efgoldman: You’re missing bitcoin.
drkrick
@gian: 23 IS close to 27.
Anoniminous
@Howard Beale IV:
[Quote corrected for accuracy]
Chris T.
@Violet:
We have huge import tariffs. It’s a result of some twisty politics, similar in some ways to the reason that California farmers get heavily-subsidized water prices (drought or not).
Even the crazy people at Heritage Foundation are against this: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/06/us-trade-policy-gouges-american-sugar-consumers
schrodinger's cat
@Litlebritdifrnt: I find this whole paleo craze and anti-grain jihad crazy. Every few years there is some new wonder food that is promoted to skies, which is supposed to make you immortal. It is silly. These days it is coconut oil and coconut milk, I remember not so long ago when it was the source of all evil because of the high cholesterol in it.
Redshift
@Jay C: I’ve had to stop reading Billmon on Twitter since he started posting about Ukraine again. His stuff is not quite B-in-P/RT level, but it’s close. I don’t want to read only sources that she with my general point of view, but his complete dismissal of any blame on Putin and assigning responsibility to *his* “usual suspects” is pretty disturbing.
Violet
@schrodinger’s cat: The food crazes are not going to end. It’s just how people are. However, the paleo trend has already crested and is on the downward slope. I love coconut stuff though. Especially for Asian dishes. I linked to these in the Friday night food thread. They’re so addictive.
Anoniminous
@schrodinger’s cat:
Grant money for scientific research on Nutrition is fairly close to zero. Which is about the average amount of knowledge an average person has about Nutrition. Thus the field is awash with grifters selling snake oil and nonsense.
Dog On Porch
@Achrachno: My uncle plowed and planted 4 acres of grapes in an empty field adjacent to his house outside Saint Helena in 1964 (i.e. in upper Napa Valley). Grape growers at that time used sprinklers, or dry farmed. The first farmer to introduce drip irrigation in his neighborhood proceeded to be horse-laughed down by everyone, including my uncle. But it was that farmer who had the last laugh, and that within a very few years.
trollhattan
@schrodinger’s cat:
The paleo thing is utter bullshit–ignoring that we’ve spent tens of thousands of years adapting to an agriculture-based diet by developing the gastric enzymes needed to digest those foods, and of course fire (“fire!”) for cooking, which hugely reduces the time and energy required to chew and digest. All this time gained has allowed us to do the civilization stuff.
The domestic dog has distanced itself from the wolf in precisely this way, as it followed us down that dietary and adaptive path. A wolf won’t thrive on dogfood or human food, nor, I suppose, would a thawed Neanderthal.
I just shake my head at the gluten-free supermarket aisles (not a slam at those with Crohn’s, but perhaps at the self-diagnosed who actually don’t).
Viva BrisVegas
@Chris T.:
We signed a “Free Trade” agreement with the US a few years ago.
Accordingly, you get to sell us what you want in any way you want (intellectual property laws) and we get to not sell you dairy or sugar.
Apparently the sugar tariffs are maintained on behalf of a couple of Cuban American families in Florida who happen to be big donors.
Jay C
@efgoldman:
No, ef: You’re not missing anything….
(I’d say more, but this is an *open* blog IYKWIM…)
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: Thanks for the offer, but from what I’ve seen of the schedule, it will be at a time that I’m traveling.
SoupCatcher
@Achrachno: “Did they ever even thank the federal government for making the water available, and cheap?”
Well, since they put up signs blaming Congress for creating a dust bowl and singling out Pelosi, I’m going to go with no.
PhoenixRising
@Howard Beale IV: DiFi would not be where she is today but for the press conference on the steps of City Hall. Some of us cannot forget that Harvey’s blood on her suit allowed her to move up and out.
The White Night riots were the first moment of the activist movement to fight AIDS–they were the touchstone for ACT-UP–and she hid in her office.
Lucky indeed for her that most of those who were there died before 1990.
Anoniminous
There’s a new Archbishop in Valencia (Spain) and my gaydar has hit eleventy.
Litlebritdifrnt
@schrodinger’s cat: And my boss falls for every single one of them, he wants to lose weight but refuses to do what he needs to do, i.e. reduce his calories and increase his exercise. He gloms on to each and every new theory, we spent a boat load on a juicer and a ton of fresh fruits and veggies only to have him give up after a day “it made such a mess” the juicer is growing dust and the fruits and veggies rotted in his fridge. His latest thing is the no carbs thing, which has resulted in him losing zero weight.
Ronnie Pudding
@? Martin:
But this would seem to be an argument for letting California keep growing almonds and move the other stuff elsewhere. You mention California beef. I think those cattle mostly graze. Does California grow any feed for cattle or hogs? If so, that would be a pretty awful use of water.
WereBear
While that’s true (who remembers that Kellogg pushed vegetarianism to kill people’s sex drive? who still practices Fletcherism?) I see a lot of the food upheavals being driven by two major developments: the collapse of the Lipid Hypothesis and and the amazing ability of the Food Industrial Complex to create things that only look like food.
Sibelius
@Viva BrisVegas: Well, and some very large sugar beet farmers in North Dakota etc. They have a VERY EFFECTIVE lobbying org.
Mike J
@Viva BrisVegas:
I was amused back in the 80’s when I learned we were buying lots of bananas from Canada because Reagan didn’t like Nicaragua.
trollhattan
@Ronnie Pudding:
Yes, there are feedlots and big dairies–big enough to require their own sewage treatment systems. And a lot of alfalfa is grown, which is likewise a huge water hog.
Many herds were cut earlier this year, however, once the water allocations were announced. Beef prices are up a couple bucks/pound compared to last year, at least where I shop.
trollhattan
@Mike J:
My apartment got infested by Saskatchewan tarantulas because of that!
Chris T.
@Viva BrisVegas: It’s not just the Cuban-American families, but they are a big part of it. Another big chunk comes from beet growers, such as Simplot’s industry in Idaho.
RSA
@efgoldman:
Same here. A couple of friends visited this past summer; we first met around a beer cooler at a meet-your-fellow-students party in 1996, and here it is almost 20 years later… Amherst and surrounds (my wife and I actually lived in Belchertown) are a nice place.
Davis X. Machina
Connecticut valley tobacco is a thing, and a big-ish thing when I was a lad. The leaves were specifically grown for the outer wrappers of high-end domestic cigars, and they were often grown under acres of cheesecloth, to keep them safe from too much sun. I remember seeing the row covers, acres of them. in the early 60’s
Violet
@trollhattan:
Do you mean celiac disease? The increase in gluten-free items and general increase in awareness of gluten has been a real godsend to people with celiac and especially for parents of and kids with it. My friend whose daughter has celiac remarked on this specifically. It has made their lives–and their daughter’s life–so much easier. She’s not the complete freak she was ten years ago.
As for the self-diagnosed, some of that is people following the bandwagon and some is people who are struggling with health issues that their doctors can’t seem to solve. Or who–and this is especially true for women–are told by their doctor it’s “all in their head”. That happened to me and among my female friends I am not the only one.
In any case for me, I’d been aware for some time that when I ate wheat–bread pasta, etc.–I’d have some digestive issues that I didn’t seem to have with other foods. When I gave up wheat I didn’t notice any difference. When I gave up gluten I noticed a big difference. I was also surprised that niggling aches and pains I’d had went away. I figured they were just tied to getting older but they went away when the gluten went away. Not sure what the mechanism is but it was a real thing.
Steeplejack (phone)
I need to brew up some sugar water for the hummingbirds. Recipes/ratios?
Viva BrisVegas
@Chris T.:
Somehow it just doesn’t seem right to get sugar from a beet.
Joel Hanes
@Violet:
The sugar lobby keeps prices high.
Their chosen sockpuppet is the head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, a completely corrupt corporatist. She’s a fitting colleauge for Steve Israel and Steny Hoyer.
Why o why is so much of the Democratic Party leadership in the pocket of one moneyed interest or another ?
[rhetorical question, I know the answer is that the Dems stopped standing for working people when working people stopped standing up for each other, so other sources of funding and political energy had to be found]
AnotherMildred
Used to be tobacco barns in Guilford and Branford, CT, right outside New Haven. They dried the big wrapper leaves for the see-gars, 3-Judges brand among them. Now discourse upon Puritan theopolitics, and agribusiness. Thank you. (and, I’m old as dirt.)
Mike J
@Steeplejack (phone): 4-1, water-sugar. Heat it to get the sugar dissolved.
trollhattan
@Steeplejack (phone):
Really simple, 4:1 water:sugar. I put a cup into a quart mason jar, add boiling water to dissolve the sugar, top it off then stow it in the fridge. Keeps one feeder going for about a week.
@ Mike J: Jinx!
trollhattan
@Joel Hanes:
She flabbergasted me on a show awhile back (TDS? Colbert?) when the subject of normalizing relations with Cuba came up and she was adamantly a-gin’ it, “Not while the Castros keep political prisoners!”
By that measure, who’d normalize with the US?
Violet
@Steeplejack (phone): Four parts water, one part sugar. No food coloring.
luc
@schrodinger’s cat:
There was never any cholesterol in coconut in the first place (plants don’t do cholesterol)!
People were told for more than thirty years to fear any and all saturated fats. Now that it is clear that this fear mongering was based on very poor science (or no science whatsoever – can’t trust MDs in science) coconut oil becomes very attractive, as long as it is not messed with ( e.g. hydrogenated etc.).
Dog On Porch
@PhoenixRising: Dianne conducted herself with genuine dignity at that terrible press conference. She also did the city proud in the immediate aftermath of that terrible month (recall Jonestown had occurred just a few weeks earlier than the assassinations). You dare criticize her for staying buttoned up during a riot? Get real. And this “dead by 1990” remark? When the great Scorer comes to mark her name, it will be recorded that Dianne was instrumental in furthering an intelligent AIDS awareness among the public. Above that, she was instrumental in funding vital research to combat the disease, perhaps above any or all other politician in those years. She is indisputably among the foremost in the ranks of politicians who made a difference for the good. Her leadership in that fight was superb.
That said, I still want her replaced in the Senate, and have ever since March of 2003.
WereBear
I had a similar experience.
Celiac has a diagnostic pattern, but people who test negative for celiac can have non-celiac gluten sensitivity… which has no diagnostic test. It’s as simple as trying gluten-free living for six weeks or so. If you don’t notice any difference, no harm is done.
If you do… it can be life changing.
jl
Almonds, the way they are irrigated now, are water hogs. So are a lot of crops grown in California Central Valley. I still see a lot of orchards being flood irrigated. Increasing land subsidence problem from sucking the water table lower. A lot of interest groups,and deluded people are trying to block implementation and further legislation on California’s new groundwater management program.
A lot of the supposedly independent self-reliant rural small lot owners that have a house and few acres, or small toy farm, are belly aching that their 30 to 50 foot wells have gone dry, and they don’t have money to put in a several hundred foot well that will be required over the next 5 to ten years, and don’t qualify for government assistance for a deep well.. So they are relying on emergency free gummint water that is being delivered, like they have a right to it. You would think that they would get a clue about what will happen if the big bad gommint ground water management system is not effective, or cannot be fully implemented due to new legislation being blocked. Ogallala aquifer, here we come.
I read that California, amazingly as been one of the few states, maybe only state, without a groundwater monitoring and management program. Also, to my home territory’s shame, worse performance on water conservation than several other areas of California. Not sue how easy it will to change attitudes, since many here profit off of very cheap water, but cannot imagine making any sacrifices to keep that water flowing.
I read breakdown of controllable water flow is 10 percent for urban, 45 percent for ag, and 45 percent for environmental protection and fisheries.
schrodinger's cat
@Violet: Coconut has been a staple in western India and other places where coconuts are plentiful for millennia. Grated fresh coconut is a common garnish along with chopped fresh cilantro.
I love coconuts and have been using them long before they were hip.
Two recipes that use coconut:
One is an entree and one a dessert
schrodinger's cat
@Litlebritdifrnt: Wasn’t kale juice a thing not so long ago? wonder I am not surprised that your boss is not losing any weight with all the trend salad he is ingesting.
luc
@luc:
More on the (no longer scary) saturated fat sagas:
http://www.today.com/health/ending-war-butter-are-fatty-foods-really-ok-eat-2D79795749
and a decidedly paleo rant abou it:
” … And, despite the predictable grousing from vegans like Dean Ornish (who, predictably, moves the goalposts away from health issues and blames meat-eaters for environmental destruction), it’s clear that the current crop of public policy heavyweights can see that the anti-fat ship has long since crashed into a massive iceberg of scientific evidence, and are scrambling for the lifeboats—
—the most comical example of such being Walter Willett, who claims “he was sitting on a piece of contrary evidence that none of the leading American science journals would publish.” Dude, you’ve been the chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health since 1991, at which time you already had your name on over 140 published papers. If you were sitting on data that exonerated saturated fat, it’s because you prioritized advancing your own career over public health. … ”
http://www.gnolls.org/3695/we-win-time-magazine-officially-recants-eat-butter-dont-blame-fat-and-quotes-me/
James E. Powell
@efgoldman:
Huh? What am I missing here?
The key question: Who was the man in the jar?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@efgoldman: My guess is that the Canadians bought Nicaraguan bananas and sold them to us. For a slight carrying charge, of course. Sneaky fuckers, those Canucks.
Suzanne
Paleo is built on some crappy science, but I do have one Paleo cookbook that is amazing, called The Paleo Bible or something. Got it at Costco. They had a recipe for a roasted chicken with lemon and rosemary that was the best roast chicken I have ever had. Then you use two cups of the leftovers to make Chicken Zoodle Soup. Both were fabulous. I am looking forward to trying more recipes out of it. I don’t do cows or pigs, but there were all kinds of great meals in there.
Chris T.
@luc: Hah, that (plants don’t “do” cholesterol) plus one other critical piece of information, namely, animals don’t merely contain cholesterol, they—we—are made out of cholesterol, should be enough to make people think twice. Except that so many don’t even think once. :-)
More seriously (and technically), there’s a critical difference between plant and animal cell structure. Plants generally use cellulose (there are some variations) to make their cell walls. Cellulose is pretty rigid, so it does a good job of holding things up. Animals, though, use phospholipid bilayers. These are rather flibbity-floppity (highly technical term) and pretty much require cholesterols to keep them from collapsing.
Since you can live off plants, but you need cholesterol to keep from dissolving into a puddle of goo, your body makes its own. You can’t get too hysterical about providing the ingredients (by eating animal products) when your body can just make its own anyway. At worst, providing the ingredients might increase the amount made, or alter some of the varieties (this is the thinking behind statins, that modifying the quantities of particular varieties may be helpful long-term).
(Cholesterols come in a bewildering variety. Ultimately the word “cholesterol” just means “a pack of lipids and proteins together with an alcohol handle that makes it all dissolve in the sea-water that is blood plasma”.)
Dog On Porch
@efgoldman: Canadians don’t grow bananas to eat, they grow them to smoke (the peels, I mean).
James E. Powell
@luc:
as long as it is not messed with ( e.g. hydrogenated etc.).
What does hydrogenated mean and why is it considered to be such a bad thing?
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Would either of them work as a floor wax, do you think?
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Fun fact: Fully half the states in the U.S. are, in whole or in part, north of Canada’s southernmost point.
(I’m not claiming anything about banana-growing. Just, as they say, sayin’.)
WereBear
@James E. Powell: It adds a hydrogen atom where one normally is not, and the food has amazing keeping qualities as a result.
Normal fats can go rancid with storage, heat, or light. But Crisco can last 50 years in an unchanged state.
Problem is, our bodies don’t seem to like hydrogenated fats. They are a health hazard.
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear:
I have toyed with the idea of going gluten-free for a few weeks, just to see if there is any difference. I am mostly in remarkably good health — at least, apart from a little arthritis in the knuckles and the occasional lower-back pain, I honestly can’t complain — but it would be interesting to see if I could go from “feeling fine” to “feeling incredibly awesomely terrific” through a simple dietary adjustment.
Interestingly, three separate people with whom I will be staying, or at least partaking of meals, on the upcoming trip, have contacted me today asking what my food preferences are. Do I have allergies? Are there things I hate? Are there things I refuse to eat because of moral/ethical/philosophical concerns?
We never used to ask those questions. I haven’t decided yet whether this is a Good Thing or a sign of the Imminent Decline of Civilization.
Chris T.
@James E. Powell:
Ah! A very good question.
We must start with a bit of organic chemistry. Fats are chains of “fatty acids” (normally bound together with a glycerol backing molecule, with three fatty-acid chains attached to one glycerol: that’s a tri-glycer-ide). Wikipedia has a nice picture of a triglyceride and some fatty acid chains here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat (and then they even mention trans fats).
What wikipedia is missing is a nice diagram of a “trans” fat. Back to O-chem, when you have a carbon/hydrogen chain, it goes something like this:
… C = C = C = C = C …
where each carbon has either a single or double bond to its neighboring carbon (given the limits of text art I just drew double bonds above). Each C needs to have four things bound to it, though, so the outermost “C”s, which only have two bonds (to their single neighbor C) need two more things, and those can be hydrogens, “H”, which each offer one bond.
Now, that’s an “unsaturated” chain: every carbon is double-bound to its neighbors. But we can “saturate” the chain with more hydrogen atoms, adding an H above each C for instance. If I try to draw this here it won’t draw right, but imagine breaking one link so that you have:
… C = C – C = C …
Note that the C’s in the middle now only have three links each. We attach one H above each, or one H below each. That’s a “cis” molecule, they’re both the same sex as it were, H-above or H-below.
But we can also attach one H above the left “C” and one H below the right “C”. That’s a “trans” molecule, it’s had a sex-change to have the H stick out the other side.
Now, the more double-bonds you break and H’s you add, the more saturated your chain gets. Some plants make lots of double bonds and few H’s, some plants make few double bonds and lots of H’s… but all plants discriminate against the trannies and make nothing but cis fats. All the H’s are on the same “side” of the carbon chain.
Saturated fats tend to be more solid at room temperature (butter is saturated, olive oil is unsatured, coconut oil is pretty saturated, etc). They also tend to be more shelf-stable, so Big Ag likes them. But liquid oils are cheaper, so Big Ag likes them too. Their solution to this dilemma was (is) to use an industrial process to saturate the unsaturated liquids: just bubble hydrogen gas through the liquid (while heating it carefully). Some of the carbon double=bonds snap apart into single-bonds, with the fat molecule grabbing hold of a hydrogen atom.
This process produces trans- and cis-fats randomly, unlike the biological processes that always slot the hydrogen on one side and produce only cis-fats.
It turns out that your own body’s cells also discriminate against the trans-fats. Every cell can burn a cis-fat molecule for energy, but only certain specialized liver cells can handle the trans-fats.
In a great surprise (or not), this is true for many bacteria and molds as well: they can’t eat the trans-fats very well so these last longer. Not only are foods made with trans fats more likely to hold up on a store shelf or (for candy bars etc) in a vending machine, they also don’t go bad nearly as fast. What a big win! (For the corporation, anyway).
PsiFighter37
Did anyone tune in to see Chuck Toddler do his first Press the Meat today? Just curious if there was anyone who cared more than me (which is to say, anything more than just a little).
Fair Economist
Almonds are a dry-climate tree and a pretty well-suited crop for California. The fact that a 500-year drought is going to require we chop down some orchards is not really surprising, nor an indication we shouldn’t have them here. If you want to rag on something that really shouldn’t be here, try rice.
@WereBear:
Actually, completely hydrogenated fats are OK. The problem is that partially hydrogenated fats can include a particular conformation of atoms that doesn’t occur in nature and it quite literally jams up the fat-processing enzymes.
edit: I see Chris T. beat me out with an actual (and good) explanation of what’s going on.
different-church-lady
Going back to yesterday’s open thread:
That and the fact that screetching about everything being shit like it’s never been shit before has become the national pastime.
I had the good fortune to be hired to work at a small conference of actual boots-on-the-ground progressives this week. And the experience could not have been more different from what I’m used to from the on-line variety.
It really made me want to (a) go to Daily Kos and write a “You’re all frauds and you’ll never accomplish a damn thing with your endless stunt outrage blogging, goodbye” diary and (b) figure out how I can do more real work for social change.
When it comes to society and politics, the vast majority of Americans are passive loudmouths. I’m sick of them and I’m sick of being one of them.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chris T.:
You seem to know a lot about cholesterol production, so I will ask you a question I’ve wondered about for many years:
Is there any kind of correlation between production levels of high blood cholesterol (aka “plaque”) and production levels of dental plaque (leading to excessive tartar, gingivitis, etc.)? If so, could elevated levels of one be a warning sign about elevated levels in the other? I don’t even know how to start researching the medical literature, and I’m suspicious of the sensationalist headlines in the popular press, so grateful if you have any insights or information.
WereBear
@SiubhanDuinne: Personally, I think people are more sensitive about their food because the US has reached an incredible level of Messing With It.
Have you seen the expanding ingredient lists on ice cream, frozen foods, and commercial baked goods? Half of that stuff in the freezer that used to be actual ice cream is now a Quiescently Frozen Dessert. And these two things have very different ingredients.
I honestly don’t know if people are noticing more food allergies, or it’s simply because so many people are inadvertently eating things they don’t know aren’t food.
Bon voyage on your travels!
max
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: The Russian Ruble continues to fall in value – 37.4 RUB/$ at the moment. The 2008 run-up in the graph (beginning of the dramatic fall in value) seemed to start around the August start of the Russia-Georgia war. The people playing the currency markets don’t seem to be betting that Russia’s economy is going to come unscathed through this conflict over Ukraine – at least in the near-term.
The ruble reached a peak in middle 2008 at 23 or so per USD, troughed at 36 in 2009, rebounded and now has reached 37 per dollar – however, previously the ruble had as low as 28. You aren’t supposed to measure peak to trough. At any rate, the ruble has lost 40% of its exchange value versus 2008.
The UKR Hryvnia peaked at 4.5 to a dollar in middle 2008, dropped to 8.5 or so in 2009 and then headed for the floor starting at the beginning of this year. It’s almost 14 per dollar now. That means it’s down by about 70% overall. (This is widely considered to be below the bankruptcy line for the UKR and its debts. Default looms.)
UKR started from a much lower GDP per cap, the currency has lost more value than the ruble and the Russians haven’t dropped the gas hammer yet. The RU is stung by sanctions… the UKR is simply bleeding out.
max
[‘This one has gone the way of Iraq. You lost it before it before you started.’]
Mike J
@different-church-lady:
Thank you. Can you write about what you guys were doing? Can we get somebody to front page this?
WereBear
@Fair Economist: I’m an avid reader of ingredients, and I’ve never seen “completely hydrogenated fats” on a label!
Fair Economist
A comment on gluten-free:
Pretty much all Americans eat too much and pretty much any highly restrictive diet will make you eat less, at least for a while. So, basically any American will benefit from a gluten-free diet. It’s not like it’s an essential or even valuable nutrient.
Dog On Porch
@different-church-lady: If it’s any comfort, we’re all sick of you too.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Almonds really get your gourd, it seems.
Glad to hear you’re in a position to do some work for some real activists.
Bob In Portland
Here’s something to chew on:
How to know if Russia has invaded Ukraine.
tybee
@Viva BrisVegas:
the Fanjuls from palm bitch.
SiubhanDuinne
@PsiFighter37:
I did not watch (and will not), but it is my understanding that Chuckles will make his official debut as host of Press the Meat next Sunday. But apparently for the past few days, Andrea Mitchell has been completely creaming herself giving CT a tongue bath. On her MSNBC show earlier this week, I think also on Chuckie’s MSNBC show a few days ago, and today when she was apparently guest-hosting MTP. As I say, I have not watched any of this, just picked up references here and there.
I think her name was being quite prominently tossed around as a potential replacement for Dancin’ Dave before the NBC honchos decided to go with Tuck Chodd. Any chance she might have been sabotaging him, just a little?
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Or Twinkies.
Baud
@PsiFighter37:
I just hope he remembers not to take the instruction to fellate John McCain literally.
Chris T.
@SiubhanDuinne: Unfortunately, no, there’s no clear, direct correlation. Dental plaque is not related (at least not directly) to arterial plaques. The dental stuff is made from biofilms produced by the bacteria that live in the mouth, and hardened into calcified tartar through calcium substitution (saliva contains calcium, which helps rebuild tooth enamel, which gets worn away mechanically and eaten-up by bacterial acids).
Fun unrelated word thing: the name of the mineral that is tooth enamel is “apatite”.
(Or, technically, hydroxy-apatite, as the crystalline structure contains water molecules too, but then it doesn’t sound as much like “appetite” :-) )
There may be some deeper correlation: it seems as though people who have a lot of immune activity going on in the mouth (lots of battles between immune cells and mouth invaders) may also have a lot of immune system activity going on in their blood vessels. As I understand it, the arterial plaques build up in the middle, muscular layer (blood vessels have three layers, a smooth inner wall, a tough fiber-y middle, and another tough but more rubbery outer wall.
(Wikipedia has a nice illustration here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_vessel#Structure)
Inflammation levels do correlate with cardiovascular event risk, and that appears to be (at least some of) why aspirin and ibuprofen reduce the risk. (They’re also mild clotting inhibitors though.)
different-church-lady
@Mike J:
First, one should not consider me a real part of that group, even as much as they were great about making me feel included. I was a hired hand there to record the meeting for transcription and video.They didn’t even know my politics before they hired me, and I didn’t know what the conference was about until the day before it began. It was mere coincidence that we aligned.
Second, I don’t know how much I’m allowed to reveal about what went on. It was a privately arranged gathering of about two dozen activists and organizers, centered on a new book that David Goodman is about to publish. What got discussed is going to constitute the final chapter of the book.
The discussions mostly centered on brainstorming about how to be more effective as organizers and advocates. There was a pretty wide cross-section of different issues — gender, housing, race, union, etc. — but they didn’t get bogged down in specific issues but instead focused on tools, techniques, and how to do a better job supporting each other.
I was really quite out of my depth, but it wasn’t my job to be deep. But it did make me think that I could do something more, in some small way, than what I’m doing now, which is just killing time being part of the peanut gallery.
And it made me realize that some people don’t see being in the peanut gallery as a time kill — it’s their full-time passion. And that’s much more of a waste than a mere time kill.
different-church-lady
@Dog On Porch: It rather IS a comfort, actually…
MomSense
@the Conster:
I can report that visiting Zoo Mass in the 80s was just as happy!!
Dog On Porch
@different-church-lady: God help us both, because I know what you mean.
schrodinger's cat
@SiubhanDuinne: For that you would need coconut oil.
WereBear
And for those who liked our new kitten, the latest:
Mithrandir is a giant kitten
We apparently got a mutant.
Chris T.
Since this is an open thread: who wrote this adjective piece of noun?: http://www.capitalotc.com/yellowstone-supervolcano-eruption-not-catastrophic-as-computer-predicted/21416/
(there’s no byline here, but this is a terrible article, mixing up all kinds of different things and providing no references…)
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Whatever Jewishness may be in my family (father’s side) was a matter of profound embarrassment, outrage, and denial to the Presbyterian (mother’s side).
At any rate, my grandmother cooked pot roast every Sunday, and it was grey all the way through, and we ate it and gosh darn it, we liked it.
As for Kosher vs. non-Kosher, my first boss at the Canadian Consulate here was a super-observant Orthodox Jew from Montreal. I went to his house once: he had not only the traditional two sets of china and cutlery and cookware*; he had two separate refrigerators and two separate dishwashers. The realtor’s dream.
*(and possibly a third set for High Holidays, can’t remember, but wow, if someone were going to get married in the Ortho or Conservative tradition, the mind boggles as to the extent of the wedding gift registry!)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Chris T.: Re teeth and blood vessels. Here’s a story about a friend of a friend:
– He had an abscess or root issue in a tooth that wasn’t treated until long after it should have been.
– He ended up getting a bad infection.
– The infection spread to a heart valve.
– He ended up needing the valve replaced.
– He “died” on the operating table. They revived him.
– He was put on opiates for pain during his recovery.
– He ended becoming addicted to Percoset and whatever else he was on. To the point of having to buy it on the street…
– He had various complications and died within a year or so of his surgery.
:-(
Things in our bodies are connected in non-obvious ways. Healthy teeth is very important – the NIH has more.
Cheers,
Scott.
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear:
I always enjoy a good Mithy sighting!
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Heh.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@luc:
Frankly, the advice we (medical) people have been giving regarding diet and CVD (cardiovascular disease) is utter bullshit.
monounsaturated fats (derived from grains) are associated with elevated inflammatory biomarker levels
Given that intake of saturated fat is not associated with cardiovascular disease, this practitioner is going to stick with things like butter, and coconut oil.
A grain staple diet is also macronutrient dense, and micronutrient poor. I’m going to eat colourful veggies instead, and suggest others do the same.
lamh36
Posted about 20 mins ago to Gov Rick Perry’s VERIFIED twiiter account.
accompanied by a meme pic of the Dem DA Perry was trying to get to resigned.
Wow!!! Very Presidential. I suspect an intern will be getting fired soon.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
I love coconut, too. I got a recipe from a pastry chef for coconut orange scones that are out of this world.
steverinoCT
@AnotherMildred: You can see the tobacco barns now north of Hartford, on the feeder road from I-91 to Bradley Int’l Airport.
normal liberal
@Anne Laurie:
There was tobacco in the Pioneer Valley more recently – one would pass drying sheds between Northampton and South Hadley. I went to school in the latter in the late 70s, and remember, well, most of it.
Western Mass will be interesting with palm trees.
schrodinger's cat
@efgoldman: Or if you are Indian. There are people who will eat fish but not meat. Eat chicken but not beef or pork. Then there are vegetarians who won’t touch either onion or garlic.
SiubhanDuinne
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I had all that stuff going on pretty much at the same time, about 12+ years ago! and have always wondered about connections, if any.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@max: Good points all around. Ukraine is in serious economic trouble (and has been for a while). The hope, as I understand it, is to convince Putin (though the economic pain of sanctions) to end his military adventures so that sensible political and economic negotiations can start. (Recall there were competing aid packages from Putin and the EU before Yanukovich ran away.)
Even if the Russians were to withdraw tomorrow and the rebels were to stop fighting, Ukraine’s economy would continue to be in very serious shape for a while given the EU’s mania for austerity… :-(
Things aren’t going to get better for the Ukraine economy until the fighting stops.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
WereBear
@SiubhanDuinne: He’s barely six months old and he’s almost the size of our smallest cat.
He is as cuddly as a Disney creature, too.
Bill D.
@SiubhanDuinne:
Including Utah, Nevada, and California, even if just barely. Check out the 42nd parallel and see for yourself.
Chris T.
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Re abscess => infection => heart valve issue: yes, but this is a much more direct and obvious connection than dental plaque vs arterial plaque. In particular, the body has a lot of defense in depth for the digestive process, from mechanical action (chewing) to acids (sulfuric acid in the stomach) to barriers and rapid shedding of villi in the intestines (this last trick goes awry with celiac, for instance, to connect to other stuff up-thread).
An abscess offers much more direct access to the bloodstream, though, along the same lines as an external open wound. Unlike most external wounds (e.g., on limbs), there is a short path back to the heart. Infections that reach the heart can (obviously) become quite bad.
Arterial plaques, on the other hand, seem to be entirely normal: people (and animals) grow fatty streaks in arteries early on. It’s just that in some cases, they get out of hand. There are, apparently, many contributors, including high blood pressure—this makes sense from a purely mechanical standpoint, since bad blockages tend to accumulate in points where the flow changes direction—and circulating cholesterols. Since lipids move about via these “fat and protein package” molecules normally, and you need them, you can’t just eliminate them. The idea that you can raise the quantities of some, and lower the quantities of others, is attractive, since some seem to help remove fats from places they don’t belong.
The mechanism of statins (interfering with HMG coenzyme A) bothers me though, as all cells use HMG-co-A to do stuff. Shifting the HDL to LDL ratios is all well and good, but what else is it doing by interfering with HMG-co-A?
(Another thing that bothers me, although it’s probably fine in practice, is that standard blood tests don’t actually measure the various kinds of cholesterols in the sample. They have instead a proxy test that measures some values, and from that they guess at the real numbers. There are more expensive tests that produce more-correct/more-precise numbers but they’re too expensive to use for regular screenings. Given the differences between various apoproteins and cholesterols, are we really sure we’re measuring the right things?)
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear:
He is definitely Disney-cute.
SiubhanDuinne
@Bill D.: oh, I know. When I worked for the Canadian Consulate General and used to do classroom “Canada 101” presentations, I always went armed with a good map showing the latitudes.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodinger’s cat:
WHAT?!?!?!? What is wrong with those people??
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@SiubhanDuinne: Zooks! I’m glad you came through it Ok.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill D.
@SiubhanDuinne: Works both ways. So many people think of California as being a southerly, warm dry place. Well, parts of it are. OTOH, the northernmost areas are pretty far north, as in the same latitude as Chicago, albeit with a climate not particularly subject to massive invasions of Canadian winter air. Who says Canada doesn’t invade the U.S. ;-)
Dog On Porch
@Bill D.: That’s nothing but Australia-placed-on-top-of-world maps crazy talk.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Chris T.: Good points all around. (I think you mean HCl rather than H2SO4 in the stomach though. Right?)
I too wonder about statins. My father’s cholesterol has been around 205 mg/dl for decades. He was on statins for a while, but stopped taking them because the muscle pain was too much. (His wife’s cholesterol is less than 100 mg/dl – she’s got weird genes (women in her family not uncommonly live to be over 100).)
The human body is really, really complicated. We’re still just scratching the surface of knowing how it really works.
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@SiubhanDuinne:
And the vast majority of Canada is below the nothernmost point of the US.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Mike J: Aaaaand preservation also allowed food to be transported long distances. Salt cod. Garum. Wine.
Salt. Not food, but just as necessary for life.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Thanks for the correction. I wasn’t sure if there was a dedicated set for Pesach and Rosh Hashana/Yom Kippur, or what. It’s very interesting, to be sure, but there is a line demarking arcaneness beyond which I am reluctant to explore.
If some of my own paternal ancestors were in fact Jewish, I have to believe that they weren’t very observant Jews, even in the early part of the 20th century (else they probably wouldn’t have married into the Protestant and eventually Christian Scientist branch of the family). But there is part of me that yearns to be more (*cough*) “ethnic” (*cough*) than I am and desperately wants it to be true. Separate china or no separate china.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Litlebritdifrnt: That’s why the peanut dude is kitted out like a gilded age Robber Baron.
SiubhanDuinne
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
“Old Abram Brown is dead and gone,
You’ll never see him more.
For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4.”
schrodinger's cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Many Jains don’t eat anything that grows under the ground, because you can’t harvest them without harming the critters that live underground. They practice ahimsa, or non-violence as best as they can.
Orthodox Hindus don’t consider onions and garlic to be sattvic (pure), I guess probably because they are strong smelling. Many give up eating onions and garlic while fasting or performing religious rituals, etc.
chopper
@lamh36:
yeah, that’s gonna help his case. Way to demonstrate that you weren’t trying to blackmail the woman.
Violet
@PsiFighter37: Chuck Todd doesn’t start hosting MTP until next Sunday. He was there, however, for, as Andrea Mitchell intoned, “a revealing look at Chuck Todd from those who know him best.”
I was curious, and a glutton for punishment, so I watched that part. They had a bunch of NBC people (Tom Brokaw, Savannah Guthrie, etc.) say how great he is at politics. And his mom and wife. Then they went to him live in the studio with Andrea Mitchell interviewing him. It was ridiculous but the worst part was that he said the reason people hate politics is that politicians are bad at it. Yes, he said that. He said if politicians were good at politics more people would like politics.
What an ass. Of course this is the guy who said it’s not the media’s job to point out when people are lying. They’re just stenographers. So no surprise he’s an ass.
Chris T.
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Oops, right, hydrochloric, not sulfuric, acid. (That’s what happens when I type it in off the top of my head)
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: I love scones and coconut, sounds like a win-win.
SoupCatcher
@Bill D.:
One of my favorite of those counterintuitive geographic factoids is that Reno is further west than Los Angeles.
Bill D.
@SoupCatcher: That’s an excellent one. Another is that New York City is west of Santiago.
Joel
Been enjoying the metabolic biochemistry primers. Describing organic isomerism using ASCII is impressive indeed.
magurakurin
if grains are so fucking evil can someone explain how life continues in Japan, the country with the longest life spans in the world, with people eating rice for breakfast lunch and dinner. Breakfast. Lunch. And. Dinner.
I so don’t eat rice when I come home to visit for two weeks in August.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
With an orange glaze–yum. I’ll find the recipe and post it for you one of these days.
BTW, made a curry with Indian long squash–so good. Kids devoured it which is always nice. I don’t know why it took me so long to discover mustard seeds. They are so, so tasty..
Scott Alloway
@Davis X. Machina: I’m 64 and through the 60s my family would drive up the Connecticut River valley to Mohawk Trail to the state park on Cold River in Massachusetts. I think we took Route 5 most of the way. I remember those cheese-cloth covered fields and the drying barns quite well. We were told they were cigar-wrapper tobacco, too. Good, happy warm memories of those trips, especially since I was in the area last weekend for my only niece’s wonderful wedding.
SuperHrefna
@Chris T.: Thanks so much for all your various explanations in this thread! Very enlightening, I never knew about cis-fats before, but it makes sense.
KS in MA
@normal liberal:
They grow tobacco in the Valley to this day–in Hadley, Hatfield, and thereabouts. There aren’t as many barns as there used to be, but lots of ’em are still there.
Scott Alloway
@SoupCatcher: I remember that from a test in high school in the mid-60s. Been to Reno, but not to LA. Hell, been to Rome but not Atlanta.
Lurking Canadian
@SiubhanDuinne: true. But in none of those southron Canadian places do they (or can they) grow bananas.
And none of them are in Saskatchewan, either.
Interrobang
@SiubhanDuinne: I work with a group based out of Jerusalem, and most of my colleagues over there are Modern Orthodox (I work with one Haredi guy occasionally), of varying stripes. I cringe at the amount of disposeable plates, cups, and cutlery they get through at work meetings but between not knowing who had what at their last meal, and catering to the folks who eat mehadrin kosher (like my boss) as opposed to regular kosher, and so on, it’s about the only way to be sure. But every time I see it, I think Ai, the environment!
FWIW, I live at approximately the latitude of the California-Oregon border, in Canada. :)
Suzanne
@magurakurin: Word. Considering that grains supported human life for thousands of years, I have a hard time with the idea that we should give them up entirely. Eat fewer, yes. Eat whole grains, yes.
Tom Hamill
According to waterfootprint.org, a kilo (2.2 lb) of beef uses 15,400 liters of water to produce. An almond is 1.2 grams, and it uses 1.1 gallons, or ~ 4 liters. So, do the math. That’s be about 833 almonds per kilogram x 3 liters/almond = 3333 liters. So, we’re a bit more than 1/5 the water usage of an equivalent weight of beef.
So, Cliven Bundy and his cattle are a much bigger straw sucking at the Colorado River, generally speaking, than those almond growers.
Anne Laurie
@magurakurin:
But the Japanese are different! I read that in a manga, somewheres…
(/snark, of course)
Gretchen
@Magurakurin: if grains are so fucking evil can someone explain how life continues in Japan, the country with the longest life spans in the world, with people eating rice for breakfast lunch and dinner. Breakfast. Lunch. And. Dinner.
The problem is that people think there is a Single Best Diet For All People. There isn’t. Asians haven’t kept dairy animals for thousands of years, so when they come here and drink milk and eat a lot of meat, they have trouble. Native Americans have been eating corn, beans, and squash for thousands of years, have trouble with diabetes when they start eating differently.
When my daughter had the endoscopy that diagnosed her celiac disease, the doctor came out and asked her ethnic background. I said Irish, and he said Ooooohhhhh…. I said what does Ooooohhhh mean? He said celiac is much more common among people of Irish descent because they didn’t eat wheat – too cold and rainy to grow it well there, and what little they grew was for export. So many don’t have the ability to digest it well. Same as the Asians that try to drink milk – their ancestors never saw it and their bodies don’t know how to handle it. People should stop looking for the Perfect Human Diet that we all should follow, and figure out what their own particular ancestors ate and eat that. I haven’t convinced my own daughters of that yet. They feel so much better since they quit eating wheat, that now they’re eliminating dairy because that makes some (Asian) people feel better, even though dairy animals were so important to their own ancestors that they practically worshiped them .
pseudonymous in nc
@Tom Hamill:
There’s a poster in the MoJo and Atlantic comments called ‘TheMicrofilmPrinciple’ that has crunched the numbers, going back to the original research papers, and comes out with shelled almonds a little higher than beef. That poster also notes that almonds place far higher demands on irrigation water than beef.
But as others have said, you can raise cows in places you can’t grow almonds. Cows can also move in a way that trees can’t. And right now, anyone planting and irrigating almond orchards has a business plan that reads: suck out the aquifers, cash out, fuck off. In particular, turning those almonds into highly-perishable almond milk at a much higher margin seems to me pretty outrageous.
Gretchen
@Suzanne: sure, eat whole grains if you’re descended from people from the grain belt of Russia or the Fertile Crescent. It doesn’t matter if the wheat is whole grained or refined if you’re descended from people who weren’t exposed to wheat. Ireland had pretty strong natural selection during the 19th century: at least 1/8 of the population died of starvation or disease during the Famine Years, and they died at much higher rates in the West where my family is from. They never got any wheat, and they survived when many died, and now their descendants are sickened by wheat. There had to be some survival advantage to the configuration of the survivors. They couldn’t eat something that wasn’t available anyway, and could make best use of what was available, and now that everything is available they still do best on what was available during those terrible times when they survived while vast numbers of their neighbors died. Best to keep that in mind when deciding what to eat now.
Gretchen
People can understand that there isn’t a perfect amount of sun exposure for all humans. Swedes and Nigerians handle sun exposure differently because they evolved under very different sun exposure conditions. Why is it controversial that people who evolved under different food availability conditions have different responses to various foods?
Redwood Rhiadra
@efgoldman:
And the *fifth* set? Well, don’t tell my wife, but every now and then I like a little bit of treyf…
Burnspbesq
@Dog On Porch:
Not by any stretch of the imagination a DiFi fan, but you have utterly failed to make any kind of case for the proposition that getting rid of her will have any effect on the missal location of water resources.
You’re probably not a stupid person, but you say stupid shit on a pretty regular basis.
glocksman
@Ronnie Pudding:
Around here most cattle are corn fed from feedlots and not grass fed.
Of course Indiana grows a lot of corn.
Mnemosyne
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Are you sure you linked us to the right article? Because the conclusion seems to be saying that vegetable oils are better than partially hydrogenated oils and doesn’t say anything about saturated vs. unsaturated fats:
From what I’ve read, it does sound as though natural saturated fats (like butter or coconut oils) are healthier than chemically created oils.
EthylEster
“More than Honey” focuses on the almond tree pollinators. really depressing but excellent close ups of bees.