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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| Today, in "things we'd like to believe," from MedicalXpress: Well, sign me up! For some of those things, anyway. Never did get a taste for coffee. In all seriousness, though, we shouldn't be taking any of these nutrition science studies at face value as presented, whether they tell us what we want to hear or not. A diet rich in produce such as grapes, strawberries, açaí, oranges, chocolate, wine and coffee can reduce the risk of metabolic syndrome... Okay, even if this one study is definitive, what about other health issues besides metabolic syndrome? ...according to the findings of a study involving more than 6,000 Brazilians... Can't fault the sample size on this one, though. ...the largest in the world to associate the effects of consuming polyphenols with protection against cardiometabolic problems. "But, but, but, I can't pronounce polyphenols, so I shouldn't be eating them!" Seriously, though, at least they reveal the key chemical up front. Though calling it a chemical will freak some people out. I don't care. Everything you eat or drink contains nothing but chemicals. Polyphenols are bioactive compounds with well-known anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Can't be arsed to look it up because I have limited time due to travel, but I'm pretty sure the polyphenols are what started the "red wine is good for you" craze a couple decades back. Since then, they've waffled back and forth on the subject, depending on what result whoever funded or did the study wanted to push. (This is why I do not trust nutrition science.) "This is good news for people who like fruit, chocolate, coffee and wine, all of which are rich in polyphenols. Although the link between consumption of polyphenols and a reduction in the risk of metabolic syndrome had already been identified in previous studies, it had never before been verified in such a large study sample [6,378 people] and over such a long period [eight years]," said Isabela Benseñor, a co-author of the article and a professor at the University of São Paulo's Medical School (FM-USP) in Brazil. To reiterate, though, what about other health issues? It's unlikely anyone's going to come out with a "fruit is bad for you" study, but fun-haters will definitely do everything they can to debunk the chocolate and wine part. And it's possible for an item to be good for you in some ways and bad in others. Like how aspirin has been shown to protect against heart attacks, but you have to balance that with the side effects of aspirin. As for coffee, it's still the only acceptable thing for Americans to be addicted to, because it aids productivity and allows people to function on less sleep. Gods forbid we actually enjoy something that makes us less functional. Detailed interviews based on questionnaires were conducted to find out about the participants' dietary habits and the frequency with which they ingested 92 polyphenol-rich foods. This is my other caution with nutrition science: methodology is often suspect. In this case, self-reporting was used, which is notoriously flaky. The main conclusion was that consumption of polyphenols from different foods at the highest estimated level (469 mg per day) reduced the risk of developing metabolic syndrome by 23% compared with the lowest polyphenol consumption (177 mg per day). I'd also like to point out that this doesn't do much to show causation rather than correlation. In other words, would the same benefit be seen if someone forces themselves to consume polyphenol-rich foods when they usually don't? How do we know it's not "people less prone to metabolic syndrome prefer to consume more fruits, coffee, etc.?" Also, while 23% is significant, I'm not sure if it's worth eating something you dislike. Like, if someone told me I'd have a 20% lower chance of prostate cancer if I drank coffee every day, well, first I'd have to know what my baseline chance is because 20% off 10% is way less significant than 20% off 80%. And then I'd have to weigh the risk reduction against simply despising the taste of coffee. Additionally, some of those foods listed can be quite expensive, and not everyone can afford them. Anyway, like I said, I'm busy today. There's more at the link. I just wanted to throw this into the mix to show why we shouldn't just automatically believe headlines like the one in the article, whether we want to or not. |
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