Add years to your life: Eat 600 calories a day.

"The bottom line is that it is the only thing that's ever really been shown to prolong life... Ultimately, ageing is a product of a high metabolic rate, which in turn increases the number of free radicals we consume."

And you thought you wanted to rev up your metabolism! No, keep it slow. Make it slower! If you believe this stuff, that is.

ADDED: New research indicates that exercise does not "rev up" your metabolism (as many people seem to think). It either stays the same or slows down. I'm guessing that response is healthy and protective of the body, not a dysfunction at all (as many people seem to think).

NYT's Mark Bittman comes to Madison to talk about food and greenness... and insults Scott Walker.

Jeez. Why is it that we can't just enjoy our waffles? He comes here for some damned Green Day exposition and...

Bittman won Madison hearts, extolling the virtues of locally produced food and poking fun at corn producers in Iowa and Gov. Scott Walker.

"On a non-personal level, we have to look to the example of pink slime and Scott Walker and [ask]... how do we regain the power that's rightfully ours? What's government's role? Can corporations be made to behave?"

What exactly is "rightfully ours" here? Bittman isn't a Wisconsin voter, and Wisconsin voters elected Scott Walker (and the Republican legislature, which keeps forwarding him signable bills). But there's some governmental role he wants, to make corporations "behave"? What's the misbehavior — selling food that people choose to buy? What discipline does he have in mind?

Bittman's approach to promoting healthy eating is simple: tax junk food and subsidize nutritious, healthy food. But, thanks to the influence of large corporations, our approach to food has been the exact opposite, Bittman said.

Why not just withdraw the subsidies? Why is taxing so dear to the liberal's heart? And who will end up paying a tax on junk food? I don't think that tax is progressive. And it could be portrayed as part of the "war on women." It will hurt single working mothers. Ironically, it would benefit the single-earner family, where one adult is freed to shop for scratch ingredients and to cook nice meals.

To underscore the severity of the situation, Bittman fired off some alarming statistics. More than half of Americans are overweight or obese. On average, only 10% of our calories come from unprocessed fruits and vegetables (the rest come from junk food and industrially produced animal products)....

Fired off? Alarming? What embarrassing skittishness! Half of Americans are overweight. Thanks for coming all the way from NY to deliver that amazing statistic. And 10% of our calories come from unprocessed fruits and vegetables... well, yeah, these are low calorie foods. I've got an alarming statistic that will scare the hell out of you: 0% of our calories come from drinking water!

And could you do better math when reporting alarming statistics: "only 10% of our calories come from unprocessed fruits and vegetables (the rest come from junk food and industrially produced animal products)"? If that were an accurate statement it would mean that none of our calories come from processed fruits and vegetables, that we never eat animal products that are not industrially produced, and ordinary stuff like grains, bread, and pasta must be "junk food."

On the policy side, he suggested that the government actively discourage soda and junk food, and prevent children from purchasing them. Food stamps should not pay for them, and they should be taxed in the same way as cigarettes, Bittman said.

Here's your nutritional bit, man. No oral pleasure for you.

Meade shows you how to harvest garlic...

... and talks Meadhouse philosophy with me:



This video goes to the max of what YouTube lets you upload: 15 minutes. Why is it so long? To indulge anyone out there who would like to luxuriate in the ambiance of the Meadhouse garden. There's some advice about garlic, dieting, politics, pancakes, etc.

"The average person thinks... this body is made of cigarettes and coffees and cakes and pies and doughnuts and french fries."

Jack LaLanne. The Good Lord Above has taken his wonderful body back, after 96 years of trying to talk us into get in shape.

“People thought I was a charlatan and a nut,” he remembered. “The doctors were against me — they said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive.”

Lots more Jack LaLanne video here. Here's one you probably don't need. And here he is with his dog Happy ("Right in the mouth with the foot he's putting"):

I thought we'd finally hit the year when efforts to use "tryptophan" in Thanksgiving jokes had ended.

But hoary old NPR is still purveying them. Christmas is coming up, so I'm steeling myself for jokes about how no one actually likes fruitcake.

"This list isn't about the mindset of the class of 2014. It's about the mindset of the people who write it."

"It's about what makes them feel ancient. It's not about how college students think at 18; it's about how we think at 40 and 50 and 60. It's about how we think about the markers we once drove into the ground to mark what we considered Now, and how alarming it is to note that they are farther away than they used to be."

NPR reacts to the new Beloit College "mindset list."

From the list:

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive....

17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection....

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

(Have they ever used a dial on a phone?)

42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.

Okay. That one distracted me. (I'm distractable, and no, I wasn't the youngest in my class when I was a schoolkid. I was the oldest.) This gets me to something I wanted to talk about. Yesterday, I was reading the "Religion" chapter of Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia," and I came across this:

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

That's the famous quote I was looking for. But read on:

... Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food.

So Dan Quayle gets a boost from Thomas Jefferson. (And so does Tom Coburn, who recently pressed Elena Kagan with the question: "If I wanted to sponsor a bill and it said Americans, you have to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day and I got it through Congress and that’s now the law of the land, got to do it, does that violate the commerce clause?")

ADDED: I found the facsimile of the manuscript on line and determined that Jefferson did write "potatoe." See for yourself.

A dubious Wall Street Journal opinion piece on alternative medicine.

I know some of my readers are doctors and scientists, and I'd like a professional assessment of what I consider to be a very weird column by Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Rustum Roy, and Andrew Weil. (Enough authors?)

I'll just highlight a few things that triggered my suspicions:

In mid-February, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Bravewell Collaborative are convening a "Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public." This is a watershed in the evolution of integrative medicine, a holistic approach to health care that uses the best of conventional and alternative therapies such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture and herbal remedies. Many of these therapies are now scientifically documented to be not only medically effective but also cost effective.

A "summit" is a "watershed in the evolution"? Even setting the inane mixed metaphor aside, that's inane. The convening of a "summit" is not a scientific advance, it's just people talking about something. And either treatments are supported by scientific testing or they are not. I'm not impressed that "many" alternative therapies have been "scientifically documented to be ... medically effective." The proper distinction is between what has passed scientific testing and what has not. I don't care about the categories "conventional and alternative." If it's proven scientifically it becomes conventional, doesn't it? The proven ones don't get to hang out with the bogus ones, propping up their reputation. [CLARIFICATION: I mean Chopra, Ornish, Roy, and Weil can't be permitted to group the proven ones with the bogus ones.]

President-elect Barack Obama and former Sen. Tom Daschle (the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services) understand that if we want to make affordable health care available to the 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance, then we need to address the fundamental causes of health and illness, and provide incentives for healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing only drugs and surgery.

So, the alternative therapy gurus want their cut of the money. Millions of people need medical treatments, and these guys want money to instruct people about meditation and eating right.

Many people ... have a hard time believing that the simple choices that we make in our lifestyle -- what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and social support -- can be as powerful as drugs and surgery.

Oh, bullshit. People believe that — to excess if anything. What they have a hard time with is actually losing weight, exercising, and quitting smoking. Don't waste limited health care funds on these characters who only want to nag us about what we already know. And by the way, this isn't alternative medicine. It's is the routine health advice that any doctor would give you.

Chronic pain is one of the major sources of worker's compensation claims costs, yet studies show that it is often susceptible to acupuncture and Qi Gong. Herbs usually have far fewer side effects than pharmaceuticals.

Usually. Look, if those herbs are drugs, test them as drugs and get them approved by the FDA. Don't spread the generic notion that "herbs" are good. That's harebrained hippie talk. And as for acupuncture and Qi Gong: Point me to the scientific studies.

I'm skipping the paragraph that talks about erections. Integrative medicine wants to help you with your orgasms.

Closing in on the conclusion:

It's time to move past the debate of alternative medicine versus traditional medicine, and to focus on what works, what doesn't, for whom, and under which circumstances.

Yeah, let's call it all science, and let's just do real science, and cut the bullshit.

It will take serious government funding to find out, but these findings may help reduce costs and increase health.

Look, if you have a study you want funded, apply for funding. If you just want public support for a nice chunk of cash to go toward promoting alternative medicine, I say no no no no no no no.

Integrative medicine approaches bring together those in red states and blue states, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, because these are human issues.

Oh, shut up.

I thoroughly hate the current craze for presenting food as medicine.

And I am going to start collecting crap like:

Soothe Yourself with This Pizza Topper

For a little bit of cell-soothing nutrition, add an extra sprinkle of these zingy flakes to your slice: oregano.

That’s right -- oregano doesn’t just add pizzazz to your pizza sauce. It may have the power to prevent tissue-damaging inflammation, too.

What the hell is "cell-soothing"?

Let me pick up 2 earlier posts to begin the food-as-medicine collection.

First:

Speaking of cancer, I was just at Whole Foods, about to buy a package of granola bars, turned the box over to read the ingredients, and the first thing I saw was a paragraph about "bowel cancer." The hell! Don't put the word "bowel" on the box. "Cancer" is bad enough, but "bowel"? What are they thinking? This food as medicine trend is disgusting. I put the box back on the shelf.

Second:

Hated the Full Throttle, which they were passing out free at the Severe Tire Damage Not An Entrance to the parking lot at Venice Beach. The dialogue went something like this:

That stuff tastes evil!

I wouldn't say evil.

Evil! Why do they have to make it taste terrible? To make you think it's medicinal!

Maybe it tastes like that because of all the energy stuff they put in it.

They just want you to think that stuff does something, so they give it an evil taste so you'll think they put something significant in it. They made it taste bad on purpose.