Taking Stock: Seeing red (meat and wine, that is)
Seeing red—New Food Economy newsletter
'News flash: Red meat isn’t bad for you after all, according to a new set of analyses published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that recommend “adults continue current processed meat consumption.”
'NPR reports that many in the nutrition community are up in arms about the findings, and researchers at Harvard and other institutions even requested that the journal postpone publication until they undergo further review.
'Why the sudden challenge to conventional wisdom? Allison Aubrey writes that the new study uses a different approach to evaluate the available evidence. The new approach, which is borrowed from drug trials, rates observational studies—which comprise most of the available nutrition research—as less reliable than controlled studies.
Different math, different results.
+ [Exasperated] tweet from Washington Post food columnist Tamar Haspel:
'The real conclusion of these mega-studies isn't that meat is fine. It's that evidence sucks. So I'll keep flogging the one supportable dietary guideline:
Eat a wide variety of whole or whole-ish foods,
in amounts consistent with a healthy weight.
OK done.
+ Eat less red meat, scientists said. Now some believe that was bad advice.—Gina Kolata, New York Times
'The evidence is too weak to justify telling individuals to eat less beef and pork, according to new research. The findings “erode public trust,” critics said.
'Public health officials for years have urged Americans to limit consumption of red meat and processed meats because of concerns that these foods are linked to heart disease, cancer and other ills.
'But on Monday, in a remarkable turnabout, an international collaboration of researchers produced a series of analyses concluding that the advice, a bedrock of almost all dietary guidelines, is not backed by good scientific evidence.
'If there are health benefits from eating less beef and pork, they are small, the researchers concluded. Indeed, the advantages are so faint that they can be discerned only when looking at large populations, the scientists said, and are not sufficient to tell individuals to change their meat-eating habits. . . .
'The new analyses are among the largest such evaluations ever attempted and may influence future dietary recommendations. In many ways, they raise uncomfortable questions about dietary advice and nutritional research, and what sort of standards these studies should be held to. . . .'
nytimes.com | @nytimes | @ginakolata
Medieval wine therapy—Kerry Grens
'In 1395, the Hôpital Civil de Strasbourg, at the time an almost-300-year-old hospital, dug a wine cellar specifically to serve its patients—and not just with meals.
From high cholesterol to herpes, doctors of the Middle Ages were prescribing wine for 'pretty much any disease,' says Azélina Jaboulet-Vercherre, a wine historian at Ferrandi Paris, a culinary and hotel management institute.
'For instance, she notes that melancholia, as depression was called back then, was treated with thin white wine—never red. “You smell it first. It has to smell good,” says Jaboulet-Vercherre. “And if your case is not too severe you are allowed a little amount to drink.”
'European physicians of the Middle Ages were by no means the first to use wine medicinally. A millennium earlier, the Greeks and Romans were using wine in concoctions to treat various ailments and as a wound cleaner.
'In the 11th century, the Persian scientist Ibn Sina (called Avicenna in the West) wrote in his influential textbook Canon of Medicine that wine:
'conserveth the body,
expelleth disease from the joints,
purifieth the frame of corrupt humours,
engendereth cheerfulness'. . . .
'Continuing this long tradition, wine was in such regular rotation as a panacea during the Middle Ages in Europe that the Hôpital Civil would accept vineyard plots in lieu of gold for patients’ payments. “To stock all the wine that was produced, they had to build a cellar,” says Thibaut Baldinger, the cellar’s manager, via email.
The 'wine therapy' given to patients for wellness could be up to two liters a day, but Baldinger points out that it was at a much lower alcohol level than what modern drinkers imbibe.
'Jaboulet-Vercherre says a number of hospitals in Europe had their own wine cellars. While physicians often offered wine as a tonic to patients, its principal use was for the treatment of wounds, says Norrie, a family physician and wine historian in Sydney. Clinicians soaked sponges or cloth in wine and applied it to the wound.
'The most important thing in the Middle Ages was infection,' he tells The Scientist.
'You were going to die of some infectious disease, and wine was a good antiseptic.'
'Norrie says it wasn’t the alcohol in the wine that killed off pathogens, but the grapes’ polyphenols, and red wine was preferred over white because it contains more of these compounds. Hospitals would also use wine to clean their surgical instruments, as the water was sometimes contaminated. For the same reason, patients often got wine to drink.
'If you drank the water you were going to die, and if you drank the wine you wouldn’t,' says Norrie.
the-scientist.com | @TheScientistLLC | @kerrygrans
Prehistoric parents used baby bottles made of pottery—James Gorman
With the advent of agriculture,
parents began feeding animal milk to children,
a change in how babies were weaned.
'As long as 7,000 years ago, Stone Age farmers in Central Europe were making and using small pottery bottles or cups with spouts. Ancient baby bottles?
'So it seemed—although they could have been used to nurse the sick. As the Stone Age gave way to the Bronze and Iron ages, the vessels were more widely used, and some took on the shapes of animals. Archaeologists have found the small containers in the graves of children and infants, suggesting they were used in weaning children from breastfeeding. . . .
On Wednesday archaeologists reported in the journal Nature that three such objects, all found in the graves of children in Bavaria dating from about 2,500 to 3,200 years ago, once held dairy products, most likely milk from ruminants, like cows or goats.
'. . . Sian Halcrow, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand who wrote an accompanying commentary, said the study offers “the first direct evidence for animal milk being contained in these bottles for feeding to babies.” Giving babies animal milk, she said, was one of the results of the spread of agriculture, which probably brought earlier weaning of children from breastfeeding and a rise in population. . . .
'There were clear risks to the use of animal milk, including bacterial contamination, incomplete nutrition, digestive problems and diarrhea. Nonetheless, the use of animal milk accompanied a growth in population. . . .'
nytimes.com | @nytimes | @jimgorman
Arresting headlines
Trillions upon trillions of viruses fall from the sky each day—New York Times
Every conference should offer childcare—Quartz
The food system needs whistleblowers, too—Civil Eats
And some good news, at last, regarding that (infamous) 'D.C. swamp'—Dolphins are swimming, mating and even giving birth in the Potomac—Washington Post
Time travel dietician (why eating healthy is hard), Funny or Die (with thanks to David Aronson for forwarding)
And, apropos of absolutely nothing but smug grammaticists (or should that be 'grammaticians'), The real reason we care so deeply about the Oxford comma (I'm for it!)—Quartz
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Seeing red (meat and wine, that is)