Did you make a New Year’s resolution to get healthier, eat better, exercise more, perhaps lose some weight? Read this article from Dick Talens at Lifehacker that looks at meta-analyses of research on whether it’s better to focus on calories or exercise when it comes to weight loss. Spoiler: diet is the key factor for weight loss, while exercise is the key factor for health.
Tag: critical thinking
-
Anti Anti-Bacterial
I have a confession to make: sometimes I defrost chicken on the counter. I also eat pizza or leftovers that have sat out overnight. I frequently give a perfunctory sniff to milk that is still in my fridge past the date on the carton, and if it doesn’t smell wrong I drink it. I don’t always wash fresh fruit and vegetables before eating them. If my cheese is moldy, I trim it off then eat the remaining cheese. I’ve ingested potato salad that has baked in the sun. I don’t use a thermometer to make sure my meat has reached an internal temperature of 165 degrees before I remove it from the grill or the oven, I drink water straight from the tap, and I never, ever, use antibacterial wipes to sanitize the handle of my grocery store shopping cart.
I believe we are doing ourselves a grave disservice with our obsession over cleanliness in this country. By now, most people have heard of the problems that have arisen from the misuse of antibiotics. We have bred superbugs by overprescribing antibiotics and overusing antibacterial products. This is natural selection, pure and simple: when you take antibiotics inappropriately, either by asking for them for illnesses that are not caused by bacteria (e.g. colds, flus, and other viruses) or by not taking the full course of medication for genuine bacterial infections, only the weak bugs get killed, and the strongest ones survive to pass on their DNA to the next generation. And, bacteria have very, very, very short generation times – as short as a few minutes in many cases (compare that to the human generation time of approximately 20 years). This scourge has been helped along by the proliferation of antibacterial household products – dish soap, laundry soap, cleaners, etc. – as well as a paranoid overabundance of hand sanitizers, antibacterial hand soap, and antibacterial wipes. I was stunned when handy popup dispensers of these wipes started appearing at the front of grocery cart stalls with friendly signs inviting shoppers to wipe down the cart handle. I was frustrated when I was unable to find non-antibacterial dish or hand soap at the store. And lately I have found myself furious at commercials that cluck disapprovingly at the fictional mom who uses *GASP* a dishrag to wipe her toddler’s high chair tray instead of a disposable, antibacterial towelette, or who fails to install a popup dispenser of disposable hand towels in her bathroom.
What the hell has happened to us? Well, other than breeding superbugs, we are also breeding a generation of weaker, sicklier children. New research is showing the vital importance of the bacterial colonies that live on and in our bodies, colonies that we change – sometimes irreversibly – through our misuse of antibacterial products. When we take antibiotics, we kill the healthy flora in our gut along with the illness-causing bacteria. When we constantly douse children with antibacterial gel, we don’t allow them the healthy exposure to bugs that they need to build a natural immunity. Ever wonder why seemingly mild illnesses can kill when they are brought into contact with populations that have never experienced them? It’s because they didn’t get that exposure as children. In fact, in parts of the Amazon it’s actually illegal for outsiders to try to contact indigenous tribes because they have no immunity to modern diseases. Vaccines operate on this basic, simple principle: limited exposure to a pathogen (viruses, in the case of vaccines) trains the body to recognize it the next time, and the body is already primed with the appropriate immune response. The same is true of early childhood exposure to bacteria and other pathogens and allergens. Increases in asthma and allergies in kids appears to be directly correlated with being too clean.
As far as I know, I have had food poisoning three times in my life. I’m sure there have been other instances but there’s only three that I can identify with absolute certainty. As far as I can tell, I have never gotten food poisoning from room-temperature defrosted or undercooked meat, unwashed produce, or countertop leftovers. I happily gnawed on the grocery-cart handle as a kid, and my mom never doused me with antibacterials. I haven’t always washed my hands before eating or even after using the bathroom. I have no allergies, no asthma, and a healthy, normally functioning immune system. I catch an occasional cold – maybe once a year – and haven’t had the flu since last century. Now, my experience is of course anecdotal, not scientific. But the research to show what our dependence on some mythical standard of cleanliness is doing to us is out there, and I think society as a whole would be wise to heed it. Yes, wash your hands, sneeze into your elbow, be aware of seasonal illnesses like the flu, and minimize your exposure to pathogens when possible, but be rational about it, and don’t be sucked in by the antibacterial panic.
-
Sheep and Goats
When I am teaching, my goal is to pass on the basic principles and tenets of anthropology to my students. After all, they are taking an anthropology class with me, and I am obligated to teach them the fundamentals of the subject as summarized in the course description, whether it is Cultural Anthropology or Human Origins. But what I am really doing is using anthropology to teach them something much more useful and important: how to think. I don’t flatter myself that I am the best person in the world to teach them this, or that I am the first or only person who will expose them to the strategies of critical thinking. It is, however, a charge that I take extremely seriously, because I am deeply concerned about what seems to be a basic lack of critical thinking skills in the world at large. Because I am teaching college students I can at least reasonably expect that these young thinkers are only at the beginning of a process of becoming skilled at interpreting the world around them. I am also not arrogantly assuming that college educated people are the only ones who are good critical thinkers; nor do I subscribe to a corollary thought that being formally educated automatically means a person is a good thinker. I have encountered many a person with a college education who is nonetheless not skilled at thoughtful analysis; and I have met many people whose life experiences have honed their thinking skills far more sharply than a formal education has. I guess my point is that you find a broad spectrum of thinking ability in society at large, and it doesn’t necessarily correlate with education.
Back to the point of what I do in the classroom. I find that anthropology is an excellent vehicle for helping students discover and practice new ways of thinking about the world. It teaches you to look at situations from multiple perspectives. As I ponder ideas and information, I often visualize the issue at hand as an object sitting in the center of a room, and I imagine myself walking around and around that object, looking at it top, bottom, and middle, prodding it, testing it, moving it to see how it looks in different positions. I imagine other people entering the room and describing the object to me from their perspective. Sometimes those other people see things I didn’t see, and open my eyes to original or alternative points of view. Sometimes, I still can’t see what they see, but I welcome their description of the object nonetheless. In anthropology, being open to other points of view is absolutely critical. We all bring preconceived notions with us to the field, but we are trained to shed those ideas as best we can and let the experience itself tell us what we need to know. The most magical moments can sometimes occur when our experience in the field makes us suddenly recognize things we had taken so deeply for granted that we weren’t even aware of our own perceptions (this can also be frighteningly disconcerting). Those moments can make me almost giddy with excitement. What makes me even giddier is introducing those moments to my students, and seeing the recognition on their faces of new ideas that, once introduced, bring on the “a-ha” moment of understanding.
I have to remind myself that I am a professional in the study of human culture and behavior. It’s easy to forget that I, too, had to be taught how to think this way. I think this is why I often feel such deep frustration at the fact that so many people seem unable or unwilling to look at issues from multiple perspectives. I am more than happy to accept that, once someone has explored an issue from several angles, they can come to a rational, logical conclusion about what they see. I am also happy to accept that I can come to an equally rational, logical conclusion about the same issue that is nonetheless very different from another person’s. What I have a hard time accepting is people refusing to consider any view other than the one they originally brought to the issue, in spite of repeated opportunities to see things from another perspective.
Over and over, I have heard people refer to those who blindly follow along with a single point of view as sheep. A sheep follows the sheep in front of it, and the lead sheep simply follows the shepherd. Those who rail against the sheep usually have a problem with the perceived leadership of the shepherd. What I find confounding is the failure of many to recognize that they are following a leader of their own. Those who label others as sheep may very well be members of a herd of goats, blindly following the leadership of the goatherd. Humans, in many ways, do have a herd mentality. Whether you are a sheep or a goat is immaterial if you are still blindly following the leader. Maybe the sheep and goats should spend some time talking to each other and learning about each others’ herds. Perhaps the sheep should follow the goatherd for a bit, and see what it’s like to walk in a goat’s hooves. The goats should do the same with the shepherd. In fact, all of us would do well to consider each others’ perspectives. Take the anthropological view. Strive to recognize your biases. Reach for those “a-ha” moments. Learn to really talk about what you believe and why you believe it, and learn to really listen to what others believe and why they believe it. Don’t fall for the easy way out by going for the ad hominem (or would it be ad ovinem?) sheep label. That’s too simple, and too dismissive, and not worthy of those who truly wish to have others take their point of view seriously.
-
Don’t Trust Jimmy Johnson
My knee has been bothering me a little bit, so instead of going for a run outside today, I went to the gym to do 45 minutes on the elliptical. This was at about 11 am. I never watch television on Saturdays, especially during the day, so I was intrigued to see that several channels on the overhead monitors were showing the TV equivalent of spam, i.e., infomercials. One starred Heidi Klum. She was hawking a line of face products designed to cover wrinkles, complete with “unretouched” (but not unblurred or unlighted) before and after photos. Another one was making the preposterous claim that YOU can buy YOUR OWN PROPERTY for ONLY PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR!! Yes, that’s right, YOU could own A HOUSE LIKE THIS for only A FEW HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!!! On yet another screen, 2-TIME SUPERBOWL CHAMPION HEAD COACH JIMMY JOHNSON was selling financial kits that will allow YOU to MAKE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN JUST A FEW HOURS doing online stock trades. These “programs” brought many questions to my mind, not the least of which was why the hell I should trust 2-TIME SUPERBOWL CHAMPION HEAD COACH JIMMY JOHNSON to give me financial advice.
Are there that many gullible, ignorant, naive, and/or just plain stupid people out there who fall for this stuff? I guess there must be, because the infomercials persist. It’s a sad indictment of our culture that we are caught between two conflicting mythologies: the cultural value that those who work the hardest will have the most success, and the tantalizing idea that anybody can get rich quick. Both of these propositions are absurd, but there are enough people out there who fit the myths that people believe them. This is a perfect example of confirmation bias – only acknowledging or remembering the evidence that supports your view, and ignoring the evidence that doesn’t. My personal name for this is the “plane crash theory.” You remember the planes that crash, because nobody talks about the ones that land safely. Can you imagine how boring (and not to mention long) the nightly news would be if the safe landings were reported? “We now turn to Bob Bobson for tonight’s safe landing report.” “Thanks Brian. Today, planes landed safely in Topeka, San Jose…” (Three hours later…) “Now back to you, Brian!” Obviously this can work the same way for our cultural beliefs about success and making money. The recent immigrant who works two jobs for minimum wage just to pay for a ghetto apartment that he shares with five other people might not agree that the hardest workers have the most success. But for every ten thousand hard-working, yet low income people, we have a “boot strap” story about somebody who “overcame tough beginnings” and became a millionaire. This is what we remember. And, for all the thousands of people who sign up to sell Amway or Acai berry juice or whatever and fail to get rich, there are one or two people who do succeed, and again, this is what we remember. It is all magical thinking, complicated by those correlated, but not causative, success stories. So, what’s the moral of the story? For me, I guess it’s “don’t go to the gym on Saturday mornings!”