While we’re on the subject of MAGA, MAHA and Whole Foods, I want to make a couple points:
Jakash is right in the comments from earlier: The 365 house brand at Whole Foods is really very good, and when I do go there, I tend to stock up on that stuff. It is not a store with no part to play in the marketplace other than to suck money out of your pocket.
Here’s the other thing, and I’m asking this with a pure heart. In the discussion over so-called seed oils, the argument against them — which is the argument against a lot of things MAHA finds fault with — is that they cause, or lead to, or aggravate “inflammation.” But what, exactly, is being inflamed? That part is never precisely explained, and if it is, it’s with sort of a hand-waving oh-you-know, indicating a place where inflammation is hard to quantify. I mean, if you get an infected cut, that’s easy to see. But inflammation affecting “gut health,” a big one in the MAHA canon, is not. I can pretty much eat everything and not suffer for it, which is, I know, enormous good luck. (I sometimes wish my stomach were more sensitive, and would maybe reject salt, grease and sugar, instead of gleefully adding it to my thighs, in case we need it in the coming winter.) Anyway, gut problems, absent inflammation, can mean anything from nausea to gross stuff further down the line.
So what do I need to know about inflammation? How can I tell if anything on the inside is inflamed?
In other news at this hour, I made a small decorating change yesterday, picking up a secondhand table that I used to replace the one on my side of the bed. It’s one of those newfangled ones with an integrated power strip, so I can accommodate chargers and my illuminated clock and lamps and all the stuff we want plugged in at our bedside, which wasn’t the case when the house was wired, 80 years ago.
The one I was replacing was a square, lidded basket from Ikea, and I hadn’t opened it in a while. Apparently I’d been using it to store books, similar to the piles on top. Two I hadn’t read:
FWIW, I didn’t need the Northrup book when I hit the Big M, because it was by and large a seamless transition. Again: Lucky me. Later, Northrup would go insane during Covid. And I’m not sure how Ron Jeremy found his way into the house. I’m sure it was a freebie from somewhere, but I never cracked it. You know what? I’m gonna read it, or at least read in it. If anything can distract me from the current crisis, it’s the Hedgehog.
But I also found some good books that I’d just tucked in there for one reason or another. One of my quirks is, I use ephemera for bookmarks. It feels good to open a novel I’d enjoyed years later and find a receipt from a restaurant where I read it over lunch. I opened an old Martin Cruz Smith hardcover and found? The mixing solution for the hair color I got on my last appointment in Fort Wayne; my stylist told me to give these hieroglyphics to my new stylist and she could figure it out. I looked at it for a moment, and? Reader, I threw it away. This constitutes personal growth, for me.
Finally, check out this weirdness, which I found via Roy. As ghastly as the content is, the comments would seem to indicate dozens of credulous Christians believe it is real. (Wait. It just occurred to me that the comments are fake, too.) I told someone the other day that I understand that perhaps someday, artificial intelligence will spot a tumor on a scan of mine, something that was missed by the exhausted and overworked radiologist, and that we may have to suffer through some misery to get there. Remember when your computer would freeze and you’d lose all your work, and now we have autosave? Yeah, like that. But just consider, at a time when the Trump administration is doubling down on fossil fuels, these AI party tricks consume insane amounts of energy, and data centers are being built all over to suck it up. When a rolling blackout hits your neighborhood in a heat wave, just consider: It was for this.
And with that? HAVE A NICE DAY, SUCKERS. I’m going to my high-school reunion at week’s end, and will likely be too jammed up to write anything more. Happy Independence Day. Maybe we can enjoy independence for a while longer.
Dexter Friend said on July 1, 2025 at 12:50 pm
This book was gifted to me by Bert, my WW1 veteran friend 45 years ago. Had I not met Bert, I surely never would have heard of it.
” ‘The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism’ is a non-fiction book written by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. The book employs socialist and Marxist thought. It was written in 1928 after his sister-in-law, Mary Stewart Cholmondeley, asked him to write a pamphlet explaining socialism. ” ( Wikipedia )
“Eat More, Weigh Less” was a strange title. I finally threw it out after it rested on a shelf for 30 years. “You can eat whenever you’re hungry, eat more food—and still lose weight and keep it off”. Dr. Dean Ornish.
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David C said on July 1, 2025 at 1:44 pm
I think if you look at any three lists of inflammatory foods to avoid you would find there’s not a thing left that you can eat.
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Suzanne said on July 1, 2025 at 1:57 pm
That video of Musk’s kid, yikes! Yikes x 1000 because of the comments from people who believe it’s real.
This is why I am utterly depressed right now. I have lived in red state America most of my life, 30+ years of it in rural parts. The media pundits still do not grasp that for these people, none of this is hyperbole. The ICE roundups, the detention aka concentration camps, the slashing social services? They are all in. I have a casual friend whose husband is a county commissioner in NE Indiana, a well respected banker, and they are quite well off. Several days ago, she posted a picture of Pete Hegseth on Facebook with the caption “God is back in control!”
When their local hospital closes and the nursing home where mom is quits operating and one of their loved ones dies for lack of care, will they wake up? No. They won’t. The rot is too deep.
And then there is this tidbit
https://bloomingtonian.com/2025/06/30/indiana-university-bloomington-to-eliminate-or-suspend-over-100-academic-programs-in-sweeping-restructuring/
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alex said on July 1, 2025 at 2:04 pm
As a type 2 diabetic, I have to weigh in on the inflammatory foods. They are anything containing refined sugar and refined flour per my endocrinologists. What gets inflamed are the liver and pancreas. The respiratory system can also be chronically inflamed by allergens, including those in the foods we consume, and I’ve known a few people who went gluten-free and now claim to have clearer lungs and less rasp in their voices.
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Julie Robinson said on July 1, 2025 at 3:11 pm
Anyone with arthritis has inflammation. At one point a doctor told me to get tested for C-Reactive protein, suggesting that inflammation could lead to heart disease. My own doc said it was BS. Who knows? Anecdotally people have told me they feel better when they go off refined flour, etc. I agree with David at #2. I’d like to enjoy my remaining years.
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Jakash said on July 1, 2025 at 3:51 pm
Hmmm… Other than both being mentioned in this post, I don’t believe that Mr. Jeremy and I have much in common.
Anyway, thanks for replying to my comment, NN!
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Peter said on July 1, 2025 at 6:45 pm
Good luck on your upcoming HS reunion! Mine was a month ago, and I can’t believe what a good time I had. I still had the tie from my senior year photo, and I wore it expecting a lot of comments, but I only got a couple. I think it was because several of my classmates wore ties that were newer and more garish than mine. In addition, wearing a tie from 50 years ago turned out to take a back seat to people who wore their high school sweaters, and one guy who wore a flowery vest that he had in high school – AND IT STILL FIT.
For lack of a better word, I was on our HS quiz bowl team, and the other two members also showed up at the reunion, and totally by coincidence, we all wore the same sport coat. And before you say of course, we’re geeks, the 3 of us are in different fields (architect, patent attorney, brain surgeon), live in 3 different states, and hadn’t been together in 50 years -it was all a coincidence.
And because it was a large graduating class (+650), I found 4 classmates who live near me that I had no idea I went to high school with them – one from my son’s little league, one from his scout troop, a father of one of his college roommates, and the father of a high school girl who was my intern.
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Julie Robinson said on July 1, 2025 at 7:41 pm
Suzanne, I just got around to reading your link, and now I’m incensed. It looks like the IU business school is the only thing unscathed. My major, my husband’s major, the majors of all my friends –gone. They’re being eliminated at the other schools in the state, too, and Purdue University at Fort Wayne is taking a huge hit.
I went to the Indiana Daily Student newspaper site and learned they’ve been entirely defunded.
Between this, the DC bill and Alligator Alcatrez, I’m bereft.
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Jeff Borden said on July 1, 2025 at 7:45 pm
For me, frankly, the 4th of July is joyless. I’m going to volunteer at our neighborhood park for a family-oriented day of festivities, part of my effort to do more good things in response to these dark times. No doubt all the cute kids getting face paint and the famous “bicycle puppet show” guy will be there, which is always a hoot. (The fellow has built a tiny little structure towed by his bicycle and he performs with simple hand puppets and taped music, but kids absolutely go bananas over him.) There’s even a performance by the Full Moon Jam, a non-profit group of performers who work with fire.
But how can I celebrate the birth of this nation when the R’s are standing over it with a shovel, ready to dig its grave and return us to a twisted monarchy? I’m so fucking upset by this bill I can barely stand it. I’m among the lucky ones who have resources to cope –up to a point– with this assault on American freedom, health and safety, but damn, I know people who are going to get screwed. No one wins but the .01%. And then there is the glee with which building a concentration camp in the Everglades has filled the QOPers. The Floriduh Republican Party is literally selling “Alligator Alcatraz” shirts. The cancer in the party is down to the bone marrow. This party is at war with America.
These are some sick fucks. And I do not mind admitting I hate them. Yes, hate. They’re bastards who revel in hurting others.
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chris said on July 1, 2025 at 8:35 pm
Reading about the changes at IU made my stomach hurt. Herman B Wells is spinning in his grave.
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Colleen said on July 1, 2025 at 9:18 pm
Looks like IU is getting rid of those icky liberal arts majors. Can’t have people with critical thinking skills. Let’s just do job training, so we can train cogs in the wheel of the economy….
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Ann said on July 1, 2025 at 9:30 pm
I guess I’m glad that my uncle, who taught French at IU and brought generations of students to Strasburg for year or a summer abroad, is not around to see this. But I feel for my poor aunt, now 95, who will see it and mourn it. My cousin, however, also a professor at IU, teaches computer science and was all into AI before any of the rest of us had heard of it, so presumably he’ll be fine.
And speaking of AI, our son-in-law, the pathologist, has been training AI on GI tumors for a while. So maybe the benefits will come sooner rather than later.
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Gretchen said on July 2, 2025 at 2:31 am
The MAHA crowd is against baby formula because most of them include seed oils to supply some of the essential fatty acids present in breast milk but not in cow’s milk. They sneer, « people didn’t have formula for thousands of years. What did people do back then? Huh? Huh? » Well, half of all infants died before their fifth birthday. Do you want to go back there?
But they just refuse to believe that. They’re sure that in the past all that healthy fresh food and fresh air assured that all children grew up strong and healthy, unlike today.
They’re also unaware that the reason we have food stamps is that so many WWII recruits were too unhealthy to serve because they grew up with inadequate nutrition.
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alex said on July 2, 2025 at 6:59 am
Some “sweet” serendipity:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/30/well/eat/sugar-health-effects-risks.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TU8.kgsh.mWPq2NyeGq5Q&smid=url-share
Gift article and totally pertinent to the discussion here.
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Suzanne said on July 2, 2025 at 7:43 am
Gretchen, you are correct. Back in the day, for many people, nutrition was terrible. I look at pictures of my dad (born 1933) when he was young and he looked borderline malnourished. He lived on a farm with his parents and 7 siblings and they were all terribly thin.
This book, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression, is very informative about how modern nutritional standards came to be and why:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/a-square-meal-jane-ziegelmanandrew-coe?variant=32122570244130
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Jeff Gill said on July 2, 2025 at 8:39 am
Alex’s point, and NYT link, make the point about refined sugars in quantity and how they can trigger a generalized inflammation in the body which really is a problem: it’s just that the concept of inflammation and immune system response suppression has been extended so widely around so many foods it does start to look like quackery. But sadly (to me) both refined sugar and alcohol too frequently enjoyed can really trigger all sorts of other ailments.
Having said that, the Northrup story really is sad & infuriating all at once.
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Jeff Borden said on July 2, 2025 at 12:03 pm
The average American lifespan in 1900 was 47. It was almost 77 by 2000. It’s like to go backwards for awhile with the attacks on scientific research, vaccines, etc. coupled with the savage cuts to nutrition and health care in the new legislation.
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Scout said on July 2, 2025 at 1:38 pm
I am sick to my stomach over the unnecessary cruelty being passed by Congress. It’s bad enough people who have more money than they’ll ever need are getting even more while the rest of us pay for it with higher taxes, loss of healthcare, loss of food programs. My wife and I might be lucky enough to weather the economic fallout, but what really is terrifying is the money they’re allocating to the American Gestapo aka ICE. Now It is threatening to lock up ‘bad people who were born here’, which we all know means Democrats who are too mouthy. The photos from Alligator Auschwitz are ominous, and I’m once again starting to wonder if we need to stop being so complacent that we can ride this out and make serious plans to bail before it’s too late.
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Deborah said on July 2, 2025 at 4:26 pm
My husband and I woke up this morning disgusted and angry. Mostly right now I’m trying to find out if LB’s neurological condition will still allow her to be on Medicaid, it’s so far impossible to find out. I wrote an email to my congress person, Danny Davis, again, asking him to please, talk, yell, scream at his Republican colleagues to persuade them to vote this bill down. I assume he will vote no on it but I read a lot of places online to ask your Dem rep to try their damndest to do something. Not sure what they can do except maybe try and shame the Republicans as if they are capable of feeling shame.
How discouraging it must be for all of you who went to public universities that are caving. I never expected my college (Lutheran, Missouri Synod) to ever do the right thing so I don’t have that added to my current depression about the complete illegal, unethical, cruelness that’s going on.
Seeing photos of the concentration camp in Florida is the worst, with Trump and his ilk standing around laughing about it is gut wrenching.
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