Complex Numbers

Scrambled Eggs

Today, kids, it's time for another episode of Adventures in Epistemology.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/eating-toward-immortality/515...

Eating Toward Immortality

Diet culture is just another way of dealing with the fear of death.

Well, you can't spell "diet" without "die."

Knowing a thing means you don’t need to believe in it. Whatever can be known, or proven by logic or evidence, doesn’t need to be taken on faith.

And here's where the epistemology   comes in - right in the lede. Normally, assertions like this set off my bullshit detector and make me Stop Reading There. To be specific, there's a philosophical argument that we can't really "know" anything. I don't really agree with that argument, but as I've pointed out before, there are degrees of knowing. Drop an apple and it will fall - well over 99% certainty. Anthropogenic climate change - maybe 98% certainty. My assertion that the relevance of a logical conclusion is dependent on the validity of the initial premise(s)? Well, I'm an engineer, not a philosopher, so mmmm... 95%.

Point is, few things are ever "proven" in science. And that goes orders of magnitude more for nutritional science.

Which brings me back to the article. Now, it's a long one, and I'm only quoting a few excerpts here; I recommend reading the link before proceeding. Or don't, and skip this entry. Or do whatever you want. Whatever.

Eating is the first magic ritual, an act that transmits life energy from one object to another, according to cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker...

Ah, yes, cultural anthropology. A discipline known for its diligence and scientific rigor. {/sarcasm}

That's not cultural anthropology; that's metaphysics. Philosophy. And that sentence is opinion masquerading as fact. A few opinions, actually, standing on each other's shoulders wearing a lab coat to try to look like legitimate science.

...the desire for more life—not just delaying death today, but clearing the bar of mortality entirely—grew into an obsession with transforming the self into a perfected object that might achieve a sort of immorality.

You know what I love more than just about anything that wasn't fermented? It's when someone misspells something and doesn't bother to edit, only spell-check, and the result is hilariously appropriate. "Immorality," indeed.

If it weren’t for the small chance of death lurking behind every food choice and every dietary ideology, choosing what to eat from a crowded marketplace wouldn’t be considered a dilemma.

Yeah, yeah, we're all gonna die. If not from salmonella-infected romaine, then by getting hit by a meteor or run over by a bus or, at the end of a lifetime of self-denial, slipping in the fucking bathtub. You know, one of these days I'm going to go to Japan. When I do, I want to try fugu. Now there's an actual risky food.

Almost all children go through a phase of pickiness with eating. It seems to be an evolved survival mechanism that prevents us—once we are mobile enough to put things in our mouths, but not experienced enough to know the difference between safe and dangerous foods—from eating something toxic

Now, I'm no expert on child-rearing (actually I'm about the furthest thing from that you can get), but it seems to me that "almost all children" also go through a phase of shoving every goddamned thing they can find that will fit in their pieholes - worms, hamsters, dog shit, Dad's cufflinks, whatever - once they're "mobile enough to put things in our mouths." How is that an evolved survival mechanism, Ms. Evolutionary Psychologist Wannabe? No, Mom has to go "What's in your mouth? Spit it out SPIT IT OUT!!!" That's how we've survived as a species - diligent parents, not by being picky eaters.

Only those with status and resources to spare can afford the most impressive gestures of renunciation. Look at all they have! The steel-and-granite kitchen! The Le Creuset collection! The Vitamix! The otherworldly glow! They could afford to eat cake, should the bread run out, but they quit sugar. They’re only eating twigs and moss now. What more glamorous way to triumph over dirt and animality and death? And you can, too. That is, if you have the time and money to spend juicing all that moss and boiling the twigs until they’re soft enough to eat.

Okay, that bit is legitimately hilarious.

People willingly, happily, hand over their freedom in exchange for the bondage of a diet that forbids their most cherished foods, that forces them to rely on the unfamiliar, unpalatable, or inaccessible, all for the promise of relief from choice and the attendant responsibility.

Okay. Okay. You got me. Yeah, I can admit it. Though one quibble: I didn't do it willingly or happily. I keep asking myself why I'm putting myself through a weight-loss regimen, and one answer I don't come up with, ever, is "fear of death." Though I can't honestly say why I'm doing it - except maybe because I want to see if I can do it.

Look, I'll give you a little analogy. Think for a moment, I mean, really consider (though you don't have to tell anyone): what is the one thing that brings you the most joy in life? Maybe it's your kids. Your dog. Your life partner. The satisfaction of successful completion of a task. Something else, something unique to you. Maybe it's more than one thing; if so, just pick one of them. Now, someone comes up to you with scientific and anecdotal evidence that is extremely compelling, evidence that this thing that gives you the greatest joy will shorten your life, and you'll have a life expectancy of, I dunno, say another five years, if you give it up. No guarantees - there's always the chance of slipping in the bathtub - but the possibility. Really think about this. Never seeing your kids again. Always failing at everything. Never being able to have a dog. Whatever it is.

Could you do it?

That's me with food.

What's the point of maybe living longer if you have to give up the thing that makes life worth living?

Humans are the only animals aware of our mortality...

*fhweeet* Assertion without evidence! Flag on the play!

...and we all want to be the person whose death comes as a surprise rather than a pathetic inevitability. We want to be the one of whom people say, “But she did everything right.”

NO. I want to be the one of whom people say, "He lived life on his own terms." Maybe even "He died doing what he loved," though I don't have enough hands to simultaneously eat, drink, smoke, and play blackjack whilst receiving oral sex. Okay, maybe that's TMI. Actually, I couldn't care less about the oral sex; I just threw that in there to make a funny.

But diet culture is constantly shifting. Today’s token foods of health may seem tainted or passé tomorrow, and within diet culture, there are contradictory ideologies: what is safe and clean to one is filth and decadence to another.

Well, DUH. Possibly the oldest known dietary restrictions we've placed on ourselves can be found in the Old Testament. There might be some in older Babylonian texts, but I'm not a historian, either. Point is, though, even those were designed to set one people apart from another. This has gone on ever since. "Our rivals eat pork for their rituals to the Wrong God, so we must not eat pork."

Nutrition science itself is a self-correcting series of refutations.

Fixed that for you. Very little in nutrition science is set in concrete, except maybe that we shouldn't eat concrete. "But it's rich in calcium!" "Shut up."

To eat without restriction, on the other hand, is to risk being unclean, and to beat your own uncertain path.

I always had restrictions. Notably, I won't eat anything smarter than I am. That leaves out octopus, cat, calamari (most of which is actually made from cuttlefish, not squid, which would be only marginally better), border collie, elephant, dolphin, etc. Also corvids, and yet I find myself eating crow on a regular basis. Well, metaphorically, anyway.

Cows? Chicken? Fair game. Jury's still out on pigs.

Look, I'll accept that this author knows more about nutrition than I do. That's why I bothered to read the article. And she raises some interesting points. But I'm still not convinced that nutrition "science" has many legitimate or useful answers. Why, in my lifetime alone, eggs have swung from good to bad to good to bad to good to bad so many times that they're basically all scrambled at this point.

Still, it's good to read this sort of thing from time to time. And comment on it. Helps me focus my own thoughts, you know, what with fewer calories available to power my immense brain.