Thank you. Like all the other anti-public health screeds, it plays into this deep fatalism: nothing we can do, so don't bother trying to mitigate against disease or death. It's deeply nihilistic & anti-human. And tends to come from people who were lucky enough to not have to risk their own health

All cats are of course good cats but Dickens just seems *especially* good!

Interesting -- thank you for the breakdown of this! It's making me wish I had taken more science classes. (And I'm hoping this is good news for sunflower lecithin which seems to be in so many of the chocolate chips I've stocked up on for baking!)

From Naimi, S., Viennois, E., Gewirtz, A.T. et al. Direct impact of commonly used dietary emulsifiers on human gut microbiota. Microbiome 9, 66 (2021)

"While one might presume that any compound with detergent-like chemical properties, i.e., all emulsifiers, would significantly impact a complex microbial community, in fact, we observed that some of the emulsifiers we tested [soy lecithin & mono- and diglycerides] did not drive microbiota dysbiosis"

Yep similarly the reason I started looking into this was linking some of my symptoms to an almond milk w/ the usual emulsifier/ gum ingredients. And yes! One of the things I'm most confused by, as I've been poking around in this research, is how similar ingredients seem to have different effects

Speaking of, the WSJ quotes some research in this area, & this is one that made me especially question the use of xantham gum (which is in a surprising array of products...our favorite salad dressing, stir fry sauces, etc., all marketed as natural and/or organic). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37940266/

Agree, it's like he's just continually throwing half-baked -- or more accurately, entirely raw -- "ideas" at the wall and seeing what lands with his audience

The Wall Street Journal recently covered this topic -- www.wsj.com/health/welln...