HFO-1234yf, a climate-friendly alternative refrigerant for car air conditioning systems touted by environmental activists, may instead be a greater problem than the products they insisted was causing pollution.
If you are in a hurry, I will save you some time. Do not walk, fly at 20,000 MPH to your nearest theater or Fandango or however you get IMAX tickets and see "Apollo 11."I want to be the first to congratulate Todd Douglas Miller on his 2020 Academy Award, because unless someone pumps out a documentary about a minority transgender person with their heart on the outside who escapes North Korea and wins the Olympics, this is going to win.And for good reason. It looks glorious, it feels glorious, it hearkens back to a time when NASA was bold and not a job works program. As a kid who lived a short distance from Cape Canaveral, I was fortunate to see an Apollo launch in person, and I have to tell you this is better.
I don't drink much milk now, though I did when I was a kid. I think I eat more cheese than I did then, and that makes sense. We were a poor family on a subsistence farm and cheese is expensive. Milk was not. At least if you got it right from the farmer. But most of us don't get it right from the farmer, which is one reason why an increase in milk prices in the U.S. won't help dairy farmers much, any more than it will in Australia or any other country. Most people do not buy dairy products from a local farmer, they buy food in stores. And the products in those stores may not even have been made using milk from this country.
Food is plentiful and affordable, and that has brought an increase in consumption of foods that matched an ancient evolutionary mandate; sweetness.In ancient times, humans knew that sweetness meant more calories and in a world where they often weren't sure where the next meal would come from, getting as many calories when they were available was important. When agriculture came into existence, farmers began genetically modifying foods to be bigger and sweeter. Beginning in the late 1980s, science gave us a true food boom, with more food grown on less land with less environmental strain than thought possible when claims of a "population bomb" by authors such as Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren were popular.
The race is on to be the food craze of 2019 and the leading contenders so far are biltong - beef jerky from South Africa - and angelica keiskei koidzumi (ashitaba) from Japan. If a plant can have a leaf cut off and have it grow back the next day, why not assume eating it will help humans? Because we know more science now than 18th century soldiers did. But once a supplement takes off, more studies showing magical benefits will be soon to follow, and Nature Communications is helping get things going - perhaps because the credit card cleared. It certainly can't have gone through real peer review.
One new craze in the alternatives to medicine community is infusions of plasma from young donors, sold with the claim that it can prevent aging, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and even PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Vampires are just a story people choose to buy, like homeopathy and organic food. Plasma in blood does contain proteins that help blood clot blood but unless you are a trauma patient or have a medically diagnosed clotting condition, you are not benefiting from plasma.
Former Denver Broncos running back Terrell Davis, who trained by running with tractor tires strapped to his waist and all that, has an easy marketing hook for his new cannabis 'athletic recovery' drink; if I am wrong, then why do I have two Super Bowl rings and a spot in the NFL Hall of Fame?(1) It sounds ridiculous when it's so on-the-nose, but that kind of strategy is common because it works. It is why athletes lend their name to products, and why friends of athletes want them involved in companies. As is happening with this Defy beverage, which touts that it contains cannabidiol (CBD) extracted from the marijuana and is being pushed by David, a friend of the CEO.The bad news: there is no way this is an anti-inflammatory
Friends of the Earth, the kooky offshoot of Sierra Club that hates science even more, is dumping its advertising budget into a claim it commissioned from a Maharishi Institute scholar who runs what is apparently an uncredentialed lab claiming they were able to detect a weedkiller in common food. And journalists have repeated it everywhere.Any scientist could have told them that and saved their money.
A recent paper in JAMA Internal Medicine had all of the ingredients mainstream media love in food stories; a cosmic sounding number of participants (44,551), which sounds like it adds statistical power, and a provocative conclusion about the perils of the modern world - in this case that eating "ultra-processed food" is lowering life expectancy.
Love is a complex topic. You love your dog differently than you love chocolate. There are times when you might put your dog, or a loved one, ahead of yourself, but you would never jump in front of a moving car to save chocolate.
United States Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., has been in the private sector and in government, he has been care provider and patient, he has used supplements and watched as a $40 billion supplements industry duped the gullible and often engaged in outright deception, all using an exemption granted by the U.S. government.But a recent statement by him, coupled with a raft of warning letters to supplement companies, signals that might change.
A product like Zicam, which claims it can make colds shorter, shields itself from truth in advertising claims by admitting on the label its product is not actual medicine, it is homeopathy, a pretend drug for people who want to believe.If they were required to show it works, the way pharmaceutical products must, they'd be out of business. If they could pass a double-blind clinical trial, or any homeopathic product could, they'd spend the money in a second, because every supplement that wants to be legitimized yearns for U.S. Food and Drug Administration legitimacy. FDA may have flaws, like all groups do, but it is the gold standard for the world.
Friends of the Earth, social justice warriors, 1960s-era anti-science activists, occasional lobbyists, and current Political Action Committee (PAC) for Democrats (including Green New Deal darling Rep.
