Today, at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, I learned about Golden Star White Jasmine Sparkling Tea, the most new interesting product at the show (out of thousands). I asked the CEO, Edward Carden, how it came to be. He said he was helping his parents move several years ago when he thought: Why isn’t there a sophisticated non-alcoholic beverage? Like wine, but non-alcoholic. Starting with the best ingredients, what could they come up with? They could make stuff that tasted great, but there was an arbitrariness to it. Making a tea allowed them to connect with that heritage. Wine has a heritage, beer has a heritage, cheese has a heritage. They start by infusing tea leaves, then add sugar and microorganisms and ferment for a short time to develop complexity of flavor. The fermentation produces a small alcohol content. Call it a microwine. It was delicious.
Author: Seth Roberts
Assorted Links
Chinese Medicine and Sleep
An American friend told me about one of his experiences with Chinese medicine — what is called in America “Traditional Chinese Medicine.” He had some sort of infection that caused skin near his stomach to be damp. He tried many solutions. None worked. Then he went to a Chinese medicine doctor who prescribed certain herbs to be ingested. In a week he was better.
My take on this is that the herbs increased the sensitivity of his immune system, which then detected and got rid of the infection. Such infections are rare, of course, so rare I don’t know their name. The existence of such an infection was a sign his immune system was working very poorly. I asked my friend about his sleep. His sleep was terrible. Highly irregular. It is telling that the Chinese doctor didn’t tell him to improve his sleep, which would have vastly improved his health and reduced his future visits to the doctor.
It was a new idea to me that Chinese herbs — at least some of them — work by boosting the immune system. It makes sense: detection of some invaders should make you more sensitive to other invaders. One implication of this view is that it hardly matters which herb you take so long as it is new. My friend told another story in which his Chinese doctor changed the herbs every week or so, supporting this idea.
It was a new idea to my friend that bad sleep was causing his immune system to work poorly. My experience with colds, as mentioned last post (when my sleep improved they disappeared), means that the fact that colds are “common” implies we are a nation of poor sleepers. And, indeed, sleep problems are very common. A few years ago, I learned about a course about epidemics taught at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. I knew the professor. I asked him if the course would cover environmental factors that cause the immune system to work better or worse. No, he said. Half the subject, ignored. Just as economists rarely study innovation and statisticians rarely study how data generates ideas.
More Supporting the idea that ingesting strange but harmless substances can improve immune functioning, I found this in the latest issue of the Journal of Nutrition:
Caseins and whey proteins are the 2 major protein fractions of cow milk. Whey proteins are separated from casein curds during the cheese-making process. The major proteins present in bovine whey come from the mammary gland that secretes β-lactoglobulin (β-LG),7 {alpha}-lactalbumin ({alpha}-LA), and glycomacropeptide (GMP), and from serum, like IgG1 and IgG2, IgA, IgE, and IgM and albumin. Besides their use in functional foods, whey protein products, and more specifically whey protein-derived products, have been shown to be efficient in certain pathologies. For instance, whey proteins inhibited gastric ulcerative lesions induced by ethanol or indomethacin, inhibited chemical-induced malignancy in mice, improved bone loss of ovariectomized rats, and reduced hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetic patients (1—5). Moreover, in vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated modulation of immune functions by several whey protein-derived products (6,7). As examples, β-LG, the most abundant protein in whey (55—65% of total whey proteins), stimulates the proliferation of murine spleen cells and lamina propia lymphocytes (8,9). It is also useful to stress that researchers have shown that probiotics expressing β-LG can be used to manage food allergy (10). The 2nd most abundant whey protein, {alpha}-LA (15—25% of total whey proteins), modulates macrophage and B- and T-lymphocyte functions (11). Moreover, the {alpha}-LA—derived peptide f51—53 directly affects neutrophils (12). The 3rd most abundant whey peptidic component, GMP, can affect immunity and attenuate inflammatory colitis in rats (6,13,14). At optimal concentrations, the other bioactive whey-derived proteins like Ig and lactoferrin present in whey protein extract (WPE) can also exert immune modulatory functions (6,7).
I didn’t know this–that ingesting milk products had good effects on immune function. That probiotics can be used to manage food allergies isn’t explained by the idea that foreign substances make the immune system more sensitive.
Better Sleep, Fewer Colds
In my long self-experimentation paper I described how I stopped getting colds when my sleep improved due to more standing and morning light. It was easy to notice: Everyone around me was getting sick and I wasn’t. In Beijing this winter the same thing happened: Lots of people around me got colds — a friend of mine was even hospitalized — but I didn’t. This winter I continued to get lots of morning light — I cared enormously that my apartment was on the sunny side of the building — but in place of standing for 8 hours or more every day I stood on one leg four times (left leg twice, right leg twice) until exhaustion.
Plenty of other evidence links better sleep with better immune function. The latest comes from the Archives of Internal Medicine. In a survey-like experiment, researchers measured the sleep of subjects with a questionnaire for two weeks and then brought them to an isolation unit, exposed them to a cold virus, and waited to see if they developed a cold. Subjects who slept better were less likely to get a cold. It was a big effect: “Participants with less than 7 hours of sleep [per night] were 2.9 times more likely to develop a cold than those with 8 hours or more of sleep [per night].” I rarely sleep 7 hours but wake up feeling plenty rested, which suggests that my sleep is deeper than average.
Overall, I’m happy for the support of my findings. Better sleep has a three-fold benefit: you feel more rested (short term), you get colds less often (medium term), and your risk of heart disease goes down (long term). The morning sunlight I get corresponds to sitting outside in the shade for about two hours; the standing takes a total of about 40 minutes/day (with your leg bent most of the time). I usually watch a movie or TV at the same time and always look forward to it.
Thanks to David Cramer.
The Power Law of Scientific Dismissiveness
In my experience, scientists are much too dismissive, in the sense that most of them have a hard time fully appreciating other people’s work. This dismissiveness follows a kind of power law: a few of them spend a large amount of time being dismissive (e.g., David Freedman); a large number spend a small amount of time being dismissive. The really common form of dismissiveness goes like this (from a JAMA abstract):
In this second article, we enumerate the major issues in judging the validity of these studies, framed as critical appraisal questions. Was the disease phenotype properly defined and accurately recorded by someone blind to the genetic information? Have any potential differences between disease and non-disease groups, particularly ethnicity, been properly addressed? . . . Was measurement of the genetic variants unbiased and accurate? [bold added]
This is the dismissiveness of dichotomization: division of studies into valid and invalid, proper and improper, unbiased and biased, accurate and inaccurate. As if it were that simple. Such dichotomization throws away a lot of information. It leads to such absurdities as a meta-analysis of 2000 studies that decided that only 16 were worth inclusion. As if the rest contained no information of value. In the case of the term accurate the problem is easy to see. To draw a sharp line between accurate and inaccurate makes little sense and ignores the harder and more valuable question how accurate?
The average scientist is religious in many ways, and this is one of them. It is part of what might be called religious method: the dichotomization of persons into good and bad. An example is saying you are either going to heaven or to hell — nothing between.
How to Learn English
Pearl Alexander teaches English in Japan. She blogged:
The typically unintelligible and extra-syllable-laden speaking tests delivered to me by the students had a lone girl who stood out with nearly perfect pronunciation, however quite imperfect grammar.
I was completely astonished. Was she taking extra classes outside of school? If so, why wasn’t she delivering the typically rhetorical machine-gun speech like most of the juku students?
We got to the last question on her test: “What do you like to do in your free time?” She answered: “I often listen to music. I like Avril.”
At Tsinghua University, I had a similar experience. One of a dozen art students giving presentations had much better English than the rest. Did you live in America? I asked him. No, he just watched a lot of English TV and movies. Tsinghua students watch a lot of Friends, not to mention Prison Break and Heroes.
I found a Chinese movie to watch (Together With You) but in one player there is no sound and in another the English subtitles don’t appear! I listen to a lot of Chinese on my mp3 player but it is pretty boring. I should try to find some Chinese songs I like and get translations.
Vaccine Safety: Is This the Best They Can Do?
In the debate over vaccine safety, I’m not on either side. I am quite unsure whether vaccines with mercury caused autism, for example. I would be happy to read a decent book on the subject, no matter what the author believed.
Instead we have a book by Dr. Paul Offit, who wrote, criticizing another book about vaccines, that it “never discusses the fact that mercury is present on the earth’s surface.”
Sentences like that make me think vaccines are less safe than claimed by Dr. Offit.
Vaccine Safety: A Debate
As I said on Christmas Eve, thanks to Web comments and blogs, you can now hear many voices in a debate in a way you never could before. The New York Times has just added a vote-like recommendation feature to help sift through a large number of comments. (I hope they add a “sort by” feature to make the most popular comments easy to find.) People you could not usually hear from turn out to have enormously interesting and helpful things to say — again and again and again.
A new example is the debate over vaccine safety. A 2007 book called The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision For Your Child by Robert Sears took a middle ground: A way that parents can space out vaccines. This seems to have offended Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine inventor. With Charlotte Moser he wrote a critique (may be gated) of the book, just published in Pediatrics, that is actually an attack on it. Would the critique be full of well-reasoned arguments? New facts? Nope. It reminds me of my surgeon claiming that a certain surgery was beneficial and, when questioned, saying that of course evidence supported her claim but never producing any evidence. However, overstatement from doctors is nothing new. What’s new is the comments section on the critique (may be gated), which contains several fascinating observations.
From John Trainer, a family doctor:
[For Offit and Moser] to castigate [Sears] for offering information to the laity is to fall prey to the same mindset as the early church. By controlling access to the Bible, the leaders of the church exerted control over all.
From Corrinne Zoli, a Syracuse University researcher:
The vaccine debate plays out against a backdrop not only of facts vs. falsehoods, refereed vs. non- mainstream journals and studies, science vs. speculation, a complicated enough arena, but of conflicting cultural ’facts,’ which may be equally important as the science. For instance, parental concerns over the safe cumulative levels of thimerosal (ethyl mercury) in vaccines were unwittingly validated by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the U.S. Public Health Service and others’ recommending their removal (which largely occurred in 2001)—even while these organizations were steadfast in public declarations of no causal link between the preservative and various neurotoxic or neuropathological ill-effects. What did parents learn from this decision? Aside from the fact that the preservative had been long removed in many countries of the world (i.e., the UK and even Russia), or that infants may have received doses exceeding EPA recommendations, they learned that organizations designed to serve the public trust were contradictory in their words and deeds. . . . The larger ’lesson learned’ by parents was to fear the decision making processes of medical and public health institutions and to become critically engaged with them using whatever tools at one’s disposal (i.e., online information, reading scientific studies, discussion groups, etc.).
Fifty years ago, when doctors wouldn’t justify their claims, you couldn’t do much about it. Few had access to medical libraries or the time to visit them. Now there is an enormous amount you can do. Water will simply flow around the rocks, such as Dr. Offit, who get in the way of better decisions.
This sort of open discussion is so helpful it should be standard scientific practice: allow your research to be commented on by anyone for anyone to read.
Beijing Shopping (the Beijing Zoo)
A Beijing friend of mine prefers to shop in Hong Kong, where clothes are cheaper than in Beijing. If you must shop for clothes in Beijing, she said, go to the Beijing Zoo. She meant a cluster of stores near the zoo.
When the movie Titanic came out, and I knew it cost a lot to make, I thought I’d lose money if I didn’t buy a ticket to see it. For the first time since Titanic I had a similar feeling: At the Beijing Zoo prices were so low it felt like losing money if I didn’t buy something.
On seven floors there were hundreds of shops, each crammed with some clothing item: dresses, scarves, shoes, jackets, pants, shirts, and so on. More shoes than anything else. (Few socks.) I wanted to buy shirts but the shirt selection was poor, consistent with the fact that the shirts I already have are from Malaysia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. But because I could buy a $6 shirt that would cost $80 in America, I bought a few anyway. I was happier with the shoes I bought ($10 here, $100 in America).
I love shopping (but alas dislike owning) and especially love Chinese shopping because the sticker price is often just a starting point. It is like adding spices to food. At the first shoe vendor, the quoted price for shoes I liked was $40. I got up to leave. What’s your lowest price? I asked. $30. I started to leave. What’s your price? she asked. What’s your lowest price? I repeated. As I left, the price went down to $20. That’s your lowest price? I asked. Yes, she said, what’s your price? That was helpful. With other vendors, I started at $7 and gradually increased my offers to $10, at which point they were accepted — but only if I was leaving. Sometimes the sticker price was the actual price. For a jacket advertised at about $14 I paid about $14, even though another stall a few feet away had the same thing. I went back and forth between the vendors and $14Â was the best I could do.
I hoped to buy a winter jacket but to my astonishment couldn’t find one I liked. The student store at Tsinghua has about five winter jackets for sale and I would happily buy one of them ($50). Among hundreds and hundreds of men’s winter jackets at Beijing Zoo I didn’t see a single one I liked. Good excuse to return . . .
The Shangri-La Diet Hedonic Shift
On the SLD forums, Bennetta wrote:
I never noticed this before, but I used to eat as a way to thwart boredom. Nothing to do? Make some food! The odd thing here is finding myself doing a ton of other things when I would have otherwise been cooking or eating just to entertain myself. Now, instead of heading to the fridge when there’s nothing to do, I clean, write letters to friends, or do whatever.
This change in behavior shows that the Shangri-La Diet makes food less pleasant. When we don’t feel good (such as are bored), we look around for activities that will make us feel better. Eating is no longer one of those activities. This shift in the hedonic value of food — which happens because our set point becomes lower than our weight — painlessly keeps us from eating. Or if we do eat, we stop sooner.
Michel Cabanac, a professor of physiology at Laval University, Quebec City, has studied how hedonic shifts control behavior in several areas, including thermoregulation and body weight regulation.