Unprocessed 10th Anniversary Edition – by Abbie Jay
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The main premise of this book is cooking…
- With nutritious whole foods
- Without salt, oil, sugar (“SOS”)
It additionally does it without animal products and without gluten, and (per “nutritious whole foods”), and, as the title suggests, avoiding anything that’s more than very minimally processed. Remember, for example, that if something is fermented, then that fermentation is a process, so the food has been processed—just, minimally.
This is a revised edition, and it’s been adjusted to, for example, strip some of the previous “no salt” low-sodium options (such as tamari with 233mg/tsp sodium, compared to salt’s 2,300mg/tsp sodium).
You may be wondering: what’s left? Tasty, well-seasoned, plant-based food, that leans towards the “comfort food” culinary niche.
Enough to sate the author, after her own battles with anorexia and obesity (in that order) and finally, after various hospital trips, getting her diet where it needed to be for the healthy lifestyle that she lives now, while still getting to eat such dishes as “Chef AJ’s Disappearing Lasagna” and peanut butter fudge truffles and 151 more.
Bottom line: if you want whole-food plant-based comfort-food cooking that’s healthy in general and especially heart-healthy, this book has plenty of that.
Click here to check out Unprocessed: 10th Anniversary Edition, and… Enjoy!
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The United States CDC has abandoned science in its new advice about vaccines and autism
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The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revised its long-standing guidance about vaccines and autism.
The guidance once stated clearly and correctly that the evidence shows no link between vaccines and the development of autism.
Now it claims “studies supporting a link [between vaccines and autism] have been ignored by health authorities”. It also says:
The claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr directed the CDC to make these changes, despite promising at his confirmation not to alter the CDC’s vaccine advice.
With this change in wording on the website the CDC has been dragged to a new low. The CDC once stood as a global benchmark of scientific integrity. Sadly, it now risks becoming a megaphone for misinformation and a tool for those whose goal is to undermine science.
Let’s look at the updated CDC statement about vaccines and autism, and how this is at odds with how science works.
Science can’t prove universal negatives
Saying “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism” is in direct conflict with how science works.
Using science, we can demonstrate that two things are linked by showing consistent, reproducible associations that stand up across multiple study designs. We can also test a hypothesis repeatedly and from many angles.
Therefore, for example, when high-quality studies using different methods, populations and measurements, all fail to find a link between vaccines and autism, the rational conclusion is there is no causal connection.
But we cannot prove the universal absence of a link.
If we were to accept this notion, someone could always claim they aren’t convinced by the current evidence because maybe the next study will find something. Using this same logic, it’s impossible to rule out the Earth is flat or that fairies exist.
It’s wrong to reverse the burden of proof
Another dangerous premise in the CDC’s new framing on vaccines and autism is it reverses the burden of proof.
In science, the person making a claim, especially one that argues against the available consensus, must provide the evidence for it.
The rhetorical manoeuvre on the CDC website suggesting proof is required to show the absence of a link, however, flips this principle on its head. It suggests it’s reasonable to expect scientists to defend against an infinite list of hypothetical possibilities.
But as US astronomer Carl Sagan famously put it, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. In science, if you want to assert something that contradicts the scientific consensus, the burden is on you to produce evidence strong enough to justify overturning what we already know.
The more implausible a claim is, the higher the bar in providing high quality, reproducible and methodologically sound research to support it.
By asking the CDC to alter its website guidance, RFK Jr wants you to accept the opposite: that he or anyone can make any claim and it’s the responsibility of everyone else to disprove these claims.
It’s also unclear what evidence would change RFK Jr’s mind on vaccines and autism. This leaves the door open for him to claim any amount of evidence that doesn’t support his preferred narrative is insufficient.
But what about the study that claimed to be proof?
Speculation about a link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism began with a fraudulent and now-retracted 1998 Lancet paper by the discredited doctor Andrew Wakefield.
Even if you accepted everything in Wakefield’s paper as true (it wasn’t) and assumed he was an honest researcher (he wasn’t), you would still be left with nothing more than a case series of 12 children. This study design is incapable of establishing a causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Subsequent investigations also uncovered a long list of damning findings about Wakefield, including:
1) He hid major financial conflicts of interest
Wakefield was paid large sums by lawyers preparing a lawsuit against MMR manufacturers, money he failed to disclose. He was contracted to find evidence supporting a link between MMR and autism.
At the same time, he had filed patents for a single-dose measles vaccine and a diagnostic test that stood to profit if public fear about MMR increased.
2) He committed serious ethical violations
Wakefield falsely claimed the study had ethics approval. It did not. Children with developmental conditions were subjected to invasive procedures, including colonoscopies and lumbar punctures, without valid clinical justification or proper oversight.
3) He misrepresented how the children were recruited
The paper claimed the children were consecutively referred, implying an unbiased clinical sample. In reality, several were recruited through anti-vaccine groups or families involved in the lawsuit funding Wakefield, meaning the sample was deliberately cherry-picked to support his predetermined hypothesis.
4) He altered and falsified data
Comparisons between medical records and the published paper revealed extensive falsification:
- symptoms that began before vaccination were rewritten as occurring after MMR
- gastrointestinal findings were exaggerated or invented
- diagnoses were manipulated to fit his fabricated “autistic enterocolitis” syndrome
- normal clinical results were presented as abnormal.
The tragedy in all this is that a fraudulent study that never should have seen the light of day continues, even now, to erode confidence in life-saving vaccines. This has led to reduced vaccination rates, the resurgence of preventable childhood illnesses, and unnecessary deaths.
It has also inflicted immeasurable harm on autistic people and their families by fuelling stigma and misinformation.
Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? – by Dr. Julie Smith
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Superficially, this can be called a “self-help” book, but that undersells it rather. It’s a professionally-written (as in, by a professional psychologist) handbook full of resources. Its goal? Optimizing your mental health to help you stay resilient no matter what life throws your way.
While the marketing of this book is heavily centered around Dr. Smith’s Internet Celebrity™ status, a lot of her motivation for writing it seems to be precisely so that she can delve deeper into the ideas that her social media “bites” don’t allow room for.
Many authors of this genre pad their chapters with examples; there are no lengthy story-telling asides here, and her style doesn’t need them. She knows her field well, and knows well how to communicate the ideas that may benefit the reader.
The main “meat” of the book? Tips, tricks, guides, resources, systems, flowcharts, mental frameworks, and “if all else fails, do this” guidance. The style of the book is clear and simple, with very readable content that she keeps free from jargon without “dumbing down” or patronizing the reader.
All in all, a fine set of tools for anyone’s “getting through life” toolbox.
Get Your Personal Copy Of “Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?” on Amazon Now!
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Brown Rice vs Wild Rice – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing brown rice to wild rice, we picked the wild.
Why?
It’s close! But there are important distinctions.
First let’s clarify: despite the name and appearance, wild rice is botanically quite different from rice per se; it’s not the same species, it’s not even the same genus, though it is the same umbrella family. In other words, they’re about as closely related as humans and gorillas are to each other.
In terms of macros, wild rice has considerably more protein and a little more fiber, for slightly lower carbs.
Notably, however, wild rice’s carbs are a close-to-even mix of sucrose, fructose, and glucose, while brown rice’s carbs are 99% starch. Given the carb to fiber ratio, it’s worth noting that wild rice also has lower net carbs, and the lower glycemic index.
In the category of vitamins, wild rice leads with more of vitamins A, B2, B9, E, K, and choline. In contrast, brown rice has more of vitamins B1, B3, and B5. So, a moderate win for wild rice.
When it comes to minerals, brown rice finally gets a tally in its favor, even if only slightly: brown rice has more magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and selenium, while wild rice has more copper, potassium, and zinc. They’re equal in calcium and iron, by the way. Still, this category stands as a 4:3 win for brown rice.
Adding up the categories makes a modest win for wild rice, and additionally, if we had to consider one of these things more important than the others, it’d be wild rice being higher in fiber and protein and lower in total carbs and net carbs.
Still, enjoy either or both, per your preference!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Brown Rice Protein: Strengths & Weaknesses
- Rice vs Buckwheat – Which is Healthier? ← it’s worth noting, by the way, that buckwheat is so unrelated from wheat that it’s not even the same family of plants. They are about as closely related as a lion and a lionfish are to each other.
Take care!
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Smart Sex – by Dr. Emily Morse
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First, what this isn’t: this isn’t a mere book of sex positions and party tricks, nor is it a book of Cosmo-style “drive your man wild by using hot sauce as lube” advice.
What it offers instead, is a refreshingly mature take on sex, free from the “teehee” titillations and blushes that many books of the genre go for.
Dr. Emily Morse outlines five pillars of sex:
- Embodiment
- Health
- Collaboration
- Self-knowledge
- Self-acceptance
…and talks about each of them in detail, and how we can bring them together. And, of course, how we or our partner(s) could accidentally sabotage ourselves or each other, and the conversations we can (and should!) have, to work past that.
She also, critically, and this is a big source of value in the book, looks at “pleasure thieves”: stress, trauma, and shame. The advice for overcoming these is not “don’t worry; be happy” but rather is actual practical steps one can take.
The style throughout is direct and unpatronizing. Since the advice within pertains to everyone who has and/or wants an active sex life, very little is divided by gender etc.
There is some attention given to anatomy and physiology, complete with clear diagrams. Honestly, most people could benefit from these, because most people’s knowledge of the relevant anatomy stopped with a very basic high school text book diagram that missed a lot out.
Bottom line: this book spends more time on what’s between your ears than what’s between your legs, and yet is very comprehensive in all areas. Everyone has something to gain from this one.
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How anti-vaccine figures abuse data to trick you
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The anti-vaccine movement is nearly as old as vaccines themselves. For as long as humans have sought to harness our immune system’s incredible ability to recognize and fight infectious invaders, critics and conspiracy theorists have opposed these efforts.
Anti-vaccine tactics have advanced since the early days of protesting “unnatural” smallpox inoculation, and the rampant abuse of scientific data may be the most effective strategy yet.
Here’s how vaccine opponents misuse data to deceive people, plus how you can avoid being manipulated.
Misappropriating raw and unverified safety data
Perhaps the oldest and most well-established anti-vaccine tactic is the abuse of data from the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration maintain VAERS as a tool for researchers to detect early warning signs of potential vaccine side effects.
Anyone can submit a VAERS report about any symptom experienced at any point after vaccination. That does not mean that these symptoms are vaccine side effects.
VAERS was not designed to determine if a specific vaccine caused a specific adverse event. But for decades, vaccine opponents have misinterpreted, misrepresented, and manipulated VAERS data to convince people that vaccines are dangerous.
Anyone relying on VAERS to draw conclusions about vaccine safety is probably trying to trick you. It isn’t possible to determine from VAERS data alone if a vaccine caused a specific health condition.
VAERS isn’t the only federal data that vaccine opponents abuse. Originally created for COVID-19 vaccines, V-safe is a vaccine safety monitoring system that allows users to report—via text message surveys—how they feel and any health issues they experience up to a year after vaccination. Anti-vaccine groups have misrepresented data in the system, which tracks all health experiences, whether or not they are vaccine-related.
The U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) has also become a target of anti-vaccine misinformation. Vaccine opponents have falsely claimed that DMED data reveals massive spikes in strokes, heart attacks, HIV, cancer, and blood clots among military service members since the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The spike was due to an updated policy that corrected underreporting in the previous years
Misrepresenting legitimate studies
A common tactic vaccine opponents use is misrepresenting data from legitimate sources such as national health databases and peer-reviewed studies. For example, COVID-19 vaccines have repeatedly been blamed for rising cancer and heart attack rates, based on data that predates the pandemic by decades.
A prime example of this strategy is a preliminary FDA study that detected a slight increase in stroke risk in older adults after a high-dose flu vaccine alone or in combination with the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine. The study found no “increased risk of stroke following administration of the COVID-19 bivalent vaccines.”
Yet vaccine opponents used the study to falsely claim that COVID-19 vaccines were uniquely harmful, despite the data indicating that the increased risk was almost certainly driven by the high-dose flu vaccine. The final peer-reviewed study confirmed that there was no elevated stroke risk following COVID-19 vaccination. But the false narrative that COVID-19 vaccines cause strokes persists.
Similarly, the largest COVID-19 vaccine safety study to date confirmed the extreme rarity of a few previously identified risks. For weeks, vaccine opponents overstated these rare risks and falsely claimed that the study proves that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe.
Citing preprint and retracted studies
When a study has been retracted, it is no longer considered a credible source. A study’s retraction doesn’t deter vaccine opponents from promoting it—it may even be an incentive because retracted papers can be held up as examples of the medical establishment censoring so-called “truthtellers.” For example, anti-vaccine groups still herald Andrew Wakefield nearly 15 years after his study falsely linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism was retracted for data fraud.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the lasting impact of retracted studies into sharp focus. The rush to understand a novel disease that was infecting millions brought a wave of scientific publications, some more legitimate than others.
Over time, the weaker studies were reassessed and retracted, but their damage lingers. A 2023 study found that retracted and withdrawn COVID-19 studies were cited significantly more frequently than valid published COVID-19 studies in the same journals.
In one example, a widely cited abstract that found that ivermectin—an antiparasitic drug proven to not treat COVID-19—dramatically reduced mortality in COVID-19 patients exemplifies this phenomenon. The abstract, which was never peer reviewed, was retracted at the request of its authors, who felt the study’s evidence was weak and was being misrepresented.
Despite this, the study—along with the many other retracted ivermectin studies—remains a touchstone for proponents of the drug that has shown no effectiveness against COVID-19.
In a more recent example, a group of COVID-19 vaccine opponents uploaded a paper to The Lancet’s preprint server, a repository for papers that have not yet been peer reviewed or published by the prestigious journal. The paper claimed to have analyzed 325 deaths after COVID-19 vaccination, finding COVID-19 vaccines were linked to 74 percent of the deaths.
The paper was promptly removed because its conclusions were unsupported, leading vaccine opponents to cry censorship.
Applying animal research to humans
Animals are vital to medical research, allowing scientists to better understand diseases that affect humans and develop and screen potential treatments before they are tested in humans. Animal research is a starting point that should never be generalized to humans, but vaccine opponents do just that.
Several animal studies are frequently cited to support the claim that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous during pregnancy. These studies found that pregnant rats had adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines. The results are unsurprising given that they were injected with doses equal to or many times larger than the dose given to humans rather than a dose that is proportional to the animal’s size.
Similarly, a German study on rat heart cells found abnormalities after exposure to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccine opponents falsely insinuated that this study proves COVID-19 vaccines cause heart damage in humans and was so universally misrepresented that the study’s author felt compelled to dispute the claims.
The author noted that the study used vaccine doses significantly higher than those administered to humans and was conducted in cultured rat cells, a dramatically different environment than a functioning human heart.
How to avoid being misled
The internet has empowered vaccine opponents to spread false information with an efficiency and expediency that was previously impossible. Anti-vaccine narratives have advanced rapidly due to the rampant exploitation of valid sources and the promotion of unvetted, non-credible sources.
You can avoid being tricked by using multiple trusted sources to verify claims that you encounter online. Some examples of credible sources are reputable public health entities like the CDC and World Health Organization, personal health care providers, and peer-reviewed research from experts in fields relevant to COVID-19 and the pandemic.
Read more about anti-vaccine tactics:
- How vaccine opponents spread misinformation
- How misinformation tricks our brains
- How vaccine opponents use kids to spread misinformation
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Edamame vs Pinto Beans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing edamame to pinto beans, we picked the edamame.
Why?
Both are great! There are some relevant differences though:
In terms of macros, edamame has slightly more protein while pinto beans have slightly more fiber and more than 4x the carbs. So, which way this one swings will depend on how you feel about those carbs. For simplicity, we’re calling this round a tie.
In the category of vitamins, edamame has more of vitamins B2, B3, B5, B7, B9, C, K, and choline, while pinto beans have more of vitamins B1 and B6, making a clear win for edamame.
When it comes to minerals, edamame has more calcium, copper, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc, while pinto beans have more iron and potassium. Another win for edamame.
Adding up the sections makes for an overall win for edamame, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
Enjoy!
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