Eric Barker runs the Barking Up the Wrong Tree blog. I get a free weekly summary of it each week. He often summarizes interesting research and commentary, frequently on a personal subject such as one's happiness or health. His blog gets noticed and he also writes articles for Time and other publications.
I like a weekly contact. If either a summary or the most popular item of the week or simply a weekly post instead of a daily one comes to my inbox, that frequency is often enough to stay aware of ideas and trends but not intrusive or burdensome. Maria Popova does the same with her weekly Brain Pickings.
Barker this week features the two books by the Cornell scientist of food and marketing, Brian Wansink. His books "Mindless Eating" and "Slim by Design" are astounding explorations of the psychology of eating. I have written about this man before. He has got to be one of the most interesting scientists around.
Food is an interesting subject. We need food to stay alive. We don't need it every minute like air but we need it. Since it is more or less a daily need, it is only natural that food is also a social topic as well as a nutritional one. I was surprised that in Dr. Sherwin Nuland's excellent "How We Die", this professor of surgery lists some of the most popular ways to die in the table of contents, devoting a chapter to each. He wrote in 1993:
I have chosen six of the most common disease categories of our time, not only because they include the mortal illnesses that will take the great majority of us but for another reason as well: The six have characteristics that are representative of certain universal processes that we will all experience as we are dying. The stoppage of circulation, the inadequate transport of oxygen to tissues, the flickering out of brain function, the failure of organs, the destruction of vital centers— these are the weapons of every horseman of death. A familiarity with them will explain how we die of illnesses not specifically described in this book. Those I have chosen are not only our most common avenues to death, they are also the ones whose paving stones are trod by everyone, no matter the rarity of the final disease.
Of hundreds of known diseases and their predisposing characteristics, some 85 percent of our aging population will succumb to the complications of one of only seven major entities: atherosclerosis , hypertension, adult-onset diabetes, obesity, mental depressing states such as Alzheimer's and other dementias, cancer, and decreased resistance to infection.
Nuland, Sherwin B. (2014-06-25). How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter (Kindle Locations 1584-1586, 210-215). Chu Hartley LLC. Kindle Edition.
Most of our lives, we are told to try: exercise, eat wholesome foods wisely, etc., etc. Good advice and worth taking. However, despite our best efforts, our bodies run down. Our metabolism slows and all our internal processes are less efficient, less complete and slower. Food matters all the way through and aging is not our fault.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
