Our food choices are often cultural. Soul-satisfying foods are based on food memories. So it should not be surprising that we consider some forms of dietary preferences, cultish.
“Vegans, slow foodies, sustainable foodies, pescatarians, vegetarians, paleos, primals, fruititarians, juicers—this ever-expanding list of dietary sects demonstrates how we can still find new ways to define ourselves in an American dietary landscape seemingly mined to the point of exhaustion. Given the pervasive corruption and seductive power of the system by which food is produced and then presented to the American consumer, as well as our sense of political impotence in the face of this system, it’s hard not to credit the decision and commitment of someone who seeks salvation in a cult-diet conversion.”
This article from long before MAHA may provide some insight. From the Hedgehog Review, You Are What You (Don’t) Eat
There are many causes for concern over the welfare of bees. Infection by viruses is significant, but the bees seem to have an answer.
“The effects of the fungal extracts on the bees’ viral infections were unambiguous. Adding a one percent extract of amadou (or Fomes) and reishi (Ganoderma) to bees’ sugar water reduced deformed wing virus eighty-fold. Fomes extracts reduced levels of Lake Sinai virus nearly ninety-fold, and Ganoderma extracts reduced it forty-five-thousand-fold. Steve Sheppard, a professor of entomology at Washington State University and one of Stamets’s collaborators on the study, observed that he had not encountered any other substance that could extend the life of bees to this extent.”
We know so little about fungi, but they are a promising collaborator in our life on earth – at least as helpful as our bacterial friends. From Nautil.us, The Fungal Evangelist Who Would Save the Bees
I must confess that “conversing” with ChatGPT has become part of my day; writing to the Internet can be lonely. But AI is everywhere as reported by Decoded in You Sent the Message. But Did You Write It?
Chatcident Definition:
When someone slips and pastes the prompt into the chat or email instead of the polished AI output – exposing the wizard behind the curtain.”
I grew up in Los Angeles, so elementary school always featured a trip to the La Brea Tarpits, a foul-smelling pool of petroleum surrounded by a chain-link fence in a field in the middle of LA’s Miracle Mile of high-end department stores. The Natural History Museum downtown provided greater dinosaur imagery, which Hanna-Barbera’s Flintstones replaced.
“Dinosaurs have always been imaginary creatures. When the world was introduced to these prehistoric animals in 1824, with the description of “Megalosuarus” fossils, natural philosophers relied on the public to imagine what these beasts might have been like. …Animals were depicted as giant, lumbering lizards with exaggerated chameleon-horned faces, dragging tails, and stocky, hippopotamus-like bodies.”
From Nautil.us, Conjuring Imaginary Creatures, dinosaur illustration over the ages.
Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA
Director of Medicine
Dr. Charles Dinerstein, M.D., MBA, FACS is Director of Medicine at the American Council on Science and Health. He has over 25 years of experience as a vascular surgeon.
