Ultra-processed foods are extra tasty concoctions that we eat every day. They are also linked with chronic diseases and a higher risk of early death.

Anahad O’Connor reports (gift link, no paywall) in the Washington Post:

Is your diet ultra-processed?

In many households, ultra-processed foods are mainstays at the kitchen table. They include products that you may not even think of as junk food such as breakfast cereals, muffins, snack bars and sweetened yogurts. Soft drinks and energy drinks count, too.

These foods represent an increasingly large share of the world’s diet. Almost 60 percent of the calories that adults in America eat are from ultra-processed foods. They account for 25 to 50 percent of the calories consumed in many other countries, including England, Canada, France, Lebanon, Japan and Brazil.

Every year, food companies introduce thousands of new ultra-processed foods with an endless variety of flavors and ingredients. These products deliver potent combinations of fat, sugar, sodium and artificial flavors. They are what scientists call hyper-palatable: Irresistible, easy to overeat, and capable of hijacking the brain’s reward system and provoking powerful cravings.

Yet in dozens of large studies, scientists have found that ultra-processed foods are linked to higher rates of obesity, heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and colon cancer. A recent study of more than 22,000 people found that people who ate a lot of ultra-processed foods had a 19 percent higher likelihood of early death and a 32 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease compared with people who ate few ultra-processed foods.

So how do we break our dependence on ultra-processed foods? You can start by learning which foods in your diet count as ultra-processed. You don’t necessarily have to give them up. But once you know how to spot an ultra-processed food, it’s easy to find a less-processed substitute.

This is your body on ultra-processed foods

The growing focus on ultra-processed foods represents a paradigm shift in how the scientific and public health community is thinking about nutrition. Instead of focusing on the nutrients, calories or types of food, the emphasis instead is on what happens to the food after it’s grown or raised and the physical, biological and chemical processes that occur before we eat it.

Continue reading. (gift link, no paywall)

I shop in the produce section (vegetables, fruit, greens) and the bulk bins (grain, dried beans/lentils, nuts & seeds). From the shelves I buy some spices but not much else — hot sauce occasionally, but I also make my own.

Once I got accustomed to it and learned my way around, a whole-food plant-based diet is easy — it’s also tasty, satisfying, and healthy.

Some hospitals rake in high profits while their patients are loaded with medical debt

The Canadian healthcare system is by no means perfect, but IMO it’s much better than the rapacious hypercapitalistic US system where the drive to grow profits penalizes patients. Noam Levey reports for NPR:

PROSPER, Texas [ironic name, eh? – LG] — Almost everything about the opening of the 2019 Prosper High School Eagles’ football season was big.

The game in this Dallas-Fort Worth suburb began with fireworks and a four-airplane flyover. A trained eagle soared over the field. And some 12,000 fans filled the team’s new stadium, a $53 million colossus with the largest video screen of any high school venue in Texas. Atop the stadium was also a big name: Children’s Health.

Business has been good for the billion-dollar pediatric hospital system, which agreed to pay $2.5 million to put its name on the Prosper stadium. Other Dallas-Fort Worth medical systems have also thrived. Though exempt from taxes as nonprofit institutions, several, including Children’s, notched double-digit margins in recent years, outperforming many of the area’s Fortune 500 companies.

But patients aren’t sharing in the good times. Of the nation’s 20 most populous counties, none has a higher concentration of medical debt than Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth. Second is Dallas County, credit bureau data show.

The mismatched fortunes of hospitals and their patients reach well beyond this corner of Texas. Nationwide, many hospitals have grown wealthy, spending lavishly on advertising, team sponsorships, and even spas, while patients are squeezed by skyrocketing medical prices and rising deductibles.

A KHN review of hospital finances in the country’s 306 hospital markets found that several of the most profitable markets also have some of the highest levels of patient debt.

Overall, about a third of the 100 million adults in the U.S. with health care debt owe money for a hospitalization, according to a poll conducted by KFF for this project. Close to half of those owe at least $5,000. About a quarter owe $10,000 or more.

Many are pursued by collectors when they can’t pay their bills or hospitals sell the debt.

“The fact is, if you walk into a hospital today, chances are you are going to walk out with debt, even if you have insurance,” said Allison Sesso, chief executive of RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that buys debt from hospitals and debt collectors so patients won’t have to pay it.

A community shadowed by debt

Across the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area — the nation’s fourth-largest — the impact has been devastating.

“Medical debt is forcing people here to make incredibly agonizing choices,” said Toby Savitz, programs director at Pathfinders, a Fort Worth nonprofit that assists people with credit problems. Savitz estimated that at least half their clients have medical debt. Many are scrimping on food, neglecting rent, even ending up homeless, she said, “and this is not just low-income people.”

David Zipprich, a Fort Worth businessman and grandfather, was forced out of retirement after hospitalizations left him owing more than $200,000.

Zipprich, 64, had spent a career in financial consulting. He owned a small bungalow in a historical neighborhood near the Fort Worth rail yards. His daughters, both teachers, and his four grandchildren lived nearby. He had health insurance and some savings, and he’d paid off his mortgage.

Then in early 2020, Zipprich landed in the hospital. While driving, his blood sugar dropped precipitously, causing him to black out and crash his car.

Three months later, after he was diagnosed with diabetes, another complication led to another hospitalization. In December 2020, covid-19 put him there yet again. “I look back at that year and feel lucky I even survived,” Zipprich said.

But even with insurance, Zipprich was inundated with debt notices and calls from collectors. His credit score plummeted below 600, and he had to refinance his home. “My stress was off the charts,” he said, sitting in his neatly kept living room with his Shih Tzu, Murphy.

Overall in Tarrant County, 27% of residents with credit reports have medical debt on their records, credit bureau data analyzed by KHN and the nonprofit Urban Institute shows. In Dallas County, it’s 22%.

That’s more than five times the . . .

Continue reading.

Tertius and Lo Storto

Tertius is the only Ariana & Evans soap I have, but it definitely makes me want to buy more of them. “Leather, Tobacco, & Oud, supported by a hint of Rose & Patchouli.” (And it’s on sale at the link, not an affiliate link.) The formulation is their new formulation:

Kaizen 2e Ingredients: Stearic Acid, Beef Tallow, Aqua, Goats Milk, Potassium Hydroxide, Kokum Butter, Shea Butter, Beer, Castor Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Glycerin, Aloe Juice, Avocado Oil, Apricot Kernel Seed Oil, Lanolin, Agave, Sorbitol, Slippery Elm, Sodium Lactate, Xanthan Gum, Emu Oil, Hyaluronic Acid, Silk Amino Acid, Colloidal Oatmeal, Yogurt, Tussah Silk, Marshmallow Root, Fragrance

And that works very well. My Rooney Emilion easily created an extremely rich lather. I did notice that the soap was somewhat thirsty. I shake my brush well before I start loading, so that it is barely damp. For some soaps (like The Dead Sea), that’s enough, but others require adding a little water during the loading, and today I had to add water several times — and the lather was really excellent.

Fatip’s Lo Storto is a wonderful little slant, quite comfortable and extremely efficient. Cutting was remarkably easy (and restricted to the stubble), and the end result was perfect smoothness.

A splash of Irisch Moos with a couple of squirts of Grooming Dept Hydrating Gel and the shave is ended and the day begun — rather a rainy day, by the looks of it.

The tea this morning is Murchie’s Victorian Garden: “Notes of jasmine, lavender, sweet pea and bergamot are combined with strawberry and vanilla in this smooth and well-rounded blend of green and black teas. This tea evokes the beautiful florals that are a quintessential part of Victorian gardens.” I believe the reference is to the era, but it applies equally well to the city.