Does Coffee Really Stunt Kids’ Growth?

Nope:

Modern concerns about coffee’[s] health effects in the U.S. can be traced to C.W. Post, an 1800s-era food manufacturer most well known for pioneering the field of breakfast cereal. He also invented a grain-based breakfast beverage called Postum, advertised as a caffeine-free coffee alternative, that was popular through the 1960s (and is still in production). … Even after Post died in 1914, his company’s ads continued their attack on coffee, highlighting its effects on youth in particular and marketing Postum as a kid-friendly hot beverage. Postum’s ads claimed that that coffee should never, under any circumstances, be served to children, for a number of reasons—it made them sluggish, irritable and sleepless, it robbed them of “rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes,” it led to failing grades and … “it hampers proper development and growth.” Over time, it seems, the belief that coffee is unfit for children—and, specifically, that it stops them from growing—slipped into the country’s cultural consciousness and took root, despite a total lack of scientific evidence.

Yet the appeal of Postum has persisted for some:

Postum remained America’s favorite coffee substitute late into the century, making [up] 87 percent of the market as of 1995. The problem was that, by then, the market was “moribund,” as The New York Times put it, totaling just $7.5 million a year. It was, after all, the dawn of the Starbucks era. … Kraft Foods pulled Postum from shelves entirely in 2007, but reintroduced it last year. According to Utah’s Deseret News, the drink is still a breakfast staple in Mormon households, which are forbidden, of course, from drinking coffee.

2013: An Alternative History

Chicago's Gay Community Celebrates Passing Of Same-Sex Marriage Law In Illinois

[Re-posted from last night]

Like many a columnist, I was tasked with an end-of-the-year column, and couldn’t really decide what to say. Here’s what I felt: 2013 was one of the most dreary and depressing I can remember. Politically, it seemed scarred by the Republicans’ ever greater extremism and by the Obama administration’s surprising incompetence. Brutal, dispiriting gridlock and the lame embers of an exhausted culture war set the tone for the rest. It was a year in which most of the forces propelling our culture and politics seemed played out: Obama reached his delivery moment, and he was horribly exposed. The GOP had already seen their electoral crisis the year before, and yet they failed to grasp the nettle of immigration reform and, if anything, took pure nullification to newly manic levels in the states and the Congress. No deal on long-term debt; no immigration reform; no serious infrastructure investment; and a horrible roll-out of healthcare reform.

Still, I had no sooner spelled out these core, depressing facts than I kept thinking of the other, less noticed ones. There were, after all, plenty of reasons for be cheerful in 2013. The number of US troops killed in Afghanistan reached a new low of 161, down from 711 three years’ ago. The war in Iraq remained over. Growth accelerated to 4.1 percent in the third quarter and looks set to continue next year. The Dow is now comfortably over 16,00o – more than double where it was five years ago, at the trough of the recession. The budget deficit shrank 37 percent in 2013, and was falling faster than at any time since the end of the Second World War. Yes, perhaps the austerity was premature and the big fiscal crisis has yet to hit. But an economy that’s growing and a deficit that’s fast shrinking is a pretty good combo for the time being. For good measure, the US is now in the full throes of a domestic energy revolution and is scheduled to be energy independent by 2020, a goal sought for decades. In part because of this, the US position in the Middle East is far less constrained, enabling a potentially world-changing detente with Tehran. Terror attacks – widely aca-sign-upsthought after 9/11 as a new norm – have dwindled to negligible levels in the West. Crime perked up a little, but was still way, way down from its past heights, despite the recession.

And in the US, one huge social shift cemented itself. The last few years have seen a revolution in the way in which gay people are integrated into society. 2013 saw not only the Supreme Court place the federal government firmly behind state-sanctioned gay civil marriages, but democratic legislatures also accelerated the trend across the country. There were many ways in which this titanic year for civil rights could have ended, but civil marriage for gay couples in Utah was pretty damn good. Nine more states now issue marriage licenses for gays than did this time last year – doubling the entire roster in just twelve months. Another, Illinois, will see its first weddings next June. In 2013, England, Wales, Scotland, Brazil, Uruguay, New Zealand, Mexico and France introduced marriage equality. The new Pope, for his part, defused the extremely tense religious and cultural debate by refusing to “judge” a gay person genuinely seeking to follow Christ. By any standards, this was a watershed year for an issue that has vexed humanity for centuries.

And, of course, I mention the Pope. In a few months, he has almost miraculously reasserted Christianity against all the modern “isms” of our time, utterly eviscerated the supreme papacy as envisaged by his two predecessors, and reminded billions of the core and simple message of Jesus. If he has initiated a rebirth of Christianity – as is my devout hope and wish – then this year was a turning point for the world, a moment when hope showed its endurance. And although the Affordable Care Act has gotten off to the rockiest start it could have, it remains a fact that more than nine million Americans have reliable health insurance for the first time in their lives because of it. The graph above was compiled by Amy Fried Charles Gaba on Christmas Eve. Many more applied for insurance in the following week. But the point is: these policies will be very hard to take away. I may be wrong, but I’d say the odds are solid that 2013 will eventually be seen not as a triumph for any system of medical care, but as the moment when everyone got into the same, insured boat, and we began to figure out how seriously to control costs.

usgs_line.phpIt was also the year in which the post-9/11 security state was put back on its heels. I have deeply mixed feelings about what Edward Snowden did, and deep misgivings about the utopian idea that governments should exist with no secrecy. But it is hard not to observe that, as the president’s own commission has found, the US government was doing far, far more snooping than any of us realized, that much of it is of extremely dubious value in foiling terror plots and can be highly counter-productive in the conduct of foreign policy. It felt to me as if a tide had turned. Without Snowden? Not so much.

I’d also argue that October’s simultaneous humbling of the president and exposure of the GOP leadership was a deeply salutary thing. The president needs to understand that he has to get one domestic policy right in the next three years and that’s the implementation of the ACA. Nothing else compares in importance. If the debacle of October means a leaner, more focused domestic agenda from the White House in 2014, focused on executive branch delivery and not partisan politics, then it will have been worth it. (The speed with which the website was fixed certainly gives some confidence.) As for the GOP, the Ryan deal and Boehner’s new disdain for the Tea Party suggest some mild movement back to sanity. It’s too soon to celebrate. But it is no longer crazy to hope.

So count me a revisionist. Everything on the surface this past year was horrible; but the tectonic shifts from below were anything but. We’ll see what lasts. But it helps not to forget what recedes ever so slightly from our news-cycle horizon.

Know hope. Or perhaps that requires reformulation.

Know pope.

(Hat tip for the ACA graph: Amy Fried)

(Top Photo: gay men in a bar in Chicago celebrate the dawn of marriage equality in Illinois. By Getty Images.)

Medicating The Human Condition

Scott Stossel recounts his efforts to cure his crippling anxiety:

Some drugs have helped a little, for finite periods of time. Thorazine (an antipsychotic that used to be referred to as a “major tranquilizer”) and imipramine (a tricyclic antidepressant) combined to help keep me out of the psychiatric hospital in the early 1980s, when I was in middle school and ravaged by anxiety. Desipramine, another tricyclic, got me through my early 20s. Paxil (a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI) gave me about six months of significantly reduced anxiety in my late 20s before the fear broke through again. A double scotch plus a Xanax and a Dramamine can sometimes, when administered before takeoff, make flying tolerable. And two double scotches, when administered in quick enough succession, can obscure existential dread, making it seem fuzzier and further away. But none of these treatments has fundamentally reduced the underlying anxiety that seems hardwired into my body and woven into my soul and that at times makes my life a misery.

My assortment of neuroses may be idiosyncratic, but my general condition is hardly unique.

Anxiety and its associated disorders represent the most common form of officially classified mental illness in the United States today, more common even than depression and other mood disorders. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, some 40 million American adults, about one in six, are suffering from some kind of anxiety disorder at any given time; based on the most recent data from the Department of Health and Human Services, their treatment accounts for more than a quarter of all spending on mental-health care. Recent epidemiological data suggest that one in four of us can expect to be stricken by debilitating anxiety at some point in our lifetime. And it is debilitating: studies have compared the psychic and physical impairment tied to living with an anxiety disorder with the impairment tied to living with diabetes—both conditions are usually manageable, sometimes fatal, and always a pain to deal with. In 2012, Americans filled nearly 50 million prescriptions for just one antianxiety drug: alprazolam, the generic name for Xanax.

A Poem From The Year

NPG P7(26),Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson),by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)

“The Lobster Quadrille” by Lewis Carroll (1865):

“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail,
“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?
Will you, wo’n’t you, will you, wo’n’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, wo’n’t you, will you, wo’n’t you, wo’n’t you join the dance?

“You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!”
But the snail replied, “Too far, too far!”, and gave a look askance—
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

“What matters it how far we go?” his scaly friend replied.
“There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France.
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
Will you, wo’n’t you, will you, wo’n’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, wo’n’t you, will you, wo’n’t you, wo’n’t you join the dance?”

Please consider supporting the work of The Poetry Society of America here.

(Photo: A self-portrait of Carroll in 1856, via Wikimedia Commons)

Belated Justice For Turing

Alan Turing, the great British mathematician who cracked Nazi codes and later killed himself after the government chemically castrated him for being gay, received a posthumous royal pardon last week, 61 years after his conviction (NYT). Peter Tatchell wants the pardon extended to everyone convicted under the “gross indecency” law, which remained on the books until 2003:

Why him alone? Singling out Turing for a royal pardon just because he was a great scientist and very famous is wrong in principle. The law should be applied equally, without fear or favour, regardless of whether a person is a well-known high achiever – or not. Selective redress is a bad way to remedy a historic injustice. At least 50,000 other men were convicted under the same ‘gross indecency’ law from the time it was first legislated in 1885 until its repeal in 2003. They have never been offered a pardon but deserve one, equally as much as Turing. An estimated 15,000 men of these men are still alive. It is not too late for them to receive a measure of justice in the form of a royal pardon.

Ally Fogg is on the same page:

Turing should be forgiven not because he was a modern legend, but because he did absolutely nothing wrong.

The only wrong was the venality of the law. It was wrong when it was used against Oscar Wilde, it was wrong when it was used against Turing and it was wrong when it was used against an estimated 75,000 other men, whether they were famous playwrights and scientists or squaddies, plumbers or office clerks. Each of those men was just as unfairly persecuted, and many suffered similarly awful fates. To single out Turing is to say these men are less deserving of justice because they were somehow less exceptional. That cannot be right.

Back in July, David Allen Green suggested an alternative to pardoning Turing:

A recent statute – the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 – provides a scheme where those who had been convicted of the section 11 offence (and similar offences) can apply for their entire criminal records to be removed if the facts of the case would no longer count as a crime.  It would be as if the offence had not been committed at all.  These are not pardons – they go much further: the 2012 scheme removes the taint of criminality altogether, and with no fussing about not affecting the conviction or the sentence.

But the 2012 scheme is only for those still alive.  However, there is no good reason why it cannot be applied retrospectively.  It would have the merit of consistency.

Cass Sunstein warns us against congratulating ourselves on our current enlightenment:

In much of the world, same-sex relations remain a criminal offense. Just last week, the Ugandan legislature passed a law that would impose life imprisonment for homosexual activities. It wasn’t until 2003 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex acts couldn’t be criminalized. Most states continue to forbid same-sex marriages. In other domains, even democratic nations authorize practices that will be seen a few decades from now as cruel and unjust, prompting future generations to ask: How could they have done that? This week’s long-overdue pardon was a good way to pay tribute to Alan Turing. An even better way would be to scrutinize our own practices with that question in mind.

Face Of The Day

CHINA-CUISINE-OFFBEAT

Pan Yizhong reacts as he eats worms during an eating race in Liuyang in China’s central province of Hunan. Pan Yizhong has eaten 147 dumplings in one sitting and polished off 40 bowls of noodles in 15 minutes – and now China’s most renowned competitive eater is now searching for his most ambitious challenge yet, even though he says his hobby has cost him his marriage. By Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images.

A Place For Placebos

Robert McGinley Myers, a recovering audiophile, talks about his former compulsion to buy expensive headphones and accessories in search of the ideal sound system:

[T]he specter that loomed over everything was the idea that this was all some big placebo effect. I would occasionally spend an evening listening to a song on my new set of headphones and then on my old set, or with my new amplifier and then my old amplifier. I would make my wife listen to see if she heard a difference. Sometimes she did, sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes I didn’t. Every once in a while, I’d read a post on Head-fi about someone who was selling everything he’d bought because he realized he was listening to his equipment rather than music. I finally had the same realization and made the same decision. At the time, I felt like a recovering addict, or a victim of a con artist, reformed but slightly ashamed.

Myers reflects on a recent Felix Salmon piece that suggested “instead of sneering at the placebo effect of fancy wine, its marketing, and its slightly higher prices … we should take advantage of it”:

The more you spend on a wine, the more you like it. It really doesn’t matter what the wine is at all. But when you’re primed to taste a wine which you know a bit about, including the fact that you spent a significant amount of money on, then you’ll find things in that bottle which you love … After all, what you see on the label, including what you see on the price tag, is important information which can tell you a lot about what you’re drinking. And the key to any kind of connoisseurship is informed appreciation of something beautiful.

This idea of “informed appreciation” reminds me of another area of modern life beset by placebo effects:

the world of alternative medicine. In a recent article for the Atlantic, David H. Freedman argues that there’s virtually no scientific evidence that alternative medicine (anything from chiropractic care to acupuncture) has any curative benefit beyond a placebo effect. … However, there is one area where alternative medicine often trumps traditional medicine: stress reduction. And stress reduction can, of course, make a huge impact on people’s health. …

Maybe each of these activities (listening to high end audio gear, drinking high end wine, having needles inserted into your chakras) is really about ritualizing a sensory experience. By putting on headphones you know are high quality, or drinking expensive wine, or entering the chiropractor’s office, you are telling yourself, “I am going to focus on this moment. I am going to savor this.” It’s the act of savoring, rather than the savoring tool, that results in both happiness and a longer life.

Previous Dish on the pros and cons of the placebo effect here, here, and here.

Turmoil In Turkey, Again, Ctd

Humeyra Pamuk and Orhan Coskun expect Erdogan to weather the corruption scandal:

Investors are nervous and the lira currency has swooned. But the scandal has only brought out the fight in Erdogan, who has consistently said that the entire affair is a foreign-backed plot against him. He has sacked police officers including the Istanbul police chief, exchanged diatribes with a powerful cleric and steadfastly insisted he has done nothing wrong. The document naming his son was just another example of the conspiracy, he said: “If they try to hit TayyipErdogan through this, they will go away empty-handed. Because they know this, they’re attacking the people around me.”

So far, opinion pollsters predict that support for Erdogan’s AK party, which enjoys wide support in Istanbul and the conservative countryside, has probably fallen by a few percentage points but still remains over 40 percent. That is hardly enough of a slide to force it out of power. The last election saw it win more than two thirds of the seats in parliament with 50 percent of the vote, an unprecedented success. Still, one senior official in Erdogan’s AK party predicted the next general election, due in 2015, could be brought forward to early next year “if events take a dramatic turn”, a sign that the party is revising its calculations to contain the fallout.

Dexter Filkins links the crisis to Erdogan’s increasingly paranoid leadership:

There isn’t much doubt that something called “the deep state” actually existed in Turkey, and that it used violence and intimidation to enforce the secular state enshrined by Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal, or Atatürk. But the Ergenekon investigation, along with its sister case, called Sledgehammer, rapidly evolved into something much more pernicious: a campaign to crush Erdoğan’s political opposition.

The Ergenekon and Sledgehammer prosecutions were built on mostly fabricated evidence. In case that didn’t work, Erdoğan embarked on an aggressive campaign to silence anyone who might criticize him, most notably the press. Just last week, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Turkey had forty reporters behind bars, more than any other country in the world. All this worked for a while, in no small part because Erdoğan faced almost no criticism from the West. The Obama Administration, grateful for an ally in an otherwise unfriendly part of the world, largely gave the Prime Minister a pass. Erdoğan, who is planning to run for President in 2014, seemed destined to stay in power for years to come.

But then it all unravelled. It’s not clear why Erdoğan and Gülen [“the leader of a far-flung Islamic order”] are splitting now, but, according to some reports, the roots may lie in disagreements over foreign policy and how to deal with the country’s Kurdish minority. Among other things, the Gülenists oppose Erdoğan’s arming of rebels in Syria and the cooling of the Turkish government’s long-standing friendship with Israel. The Erdoğan-Gülen break also follows Erdoğan’s brutal suppression of anti-government protests that swept the country earlier this year.

Brent E. Sasley further explores Erdogan’s struggle:

It is one part tug-of-war between the two main elements of Turkey’s Islamist-conservative movement, the AKP and the Gülenist movement (also known as Hizmet, or the Service), one part Erdoğan responding to what he sees as illegitimate criticism of his rule. At this point there is no viable substitute to either the AKP or to Erdoğan himself (though President Abdullah Gül is touted as a possible candidate). What is more likely is the undermining of Turkey’s political institutions to the point that the country’s politics becomes as dysfunctional as it was in the pre-AKP era. The institutions that have suffered most directly as a result of Erdoğan’s effort to shut down the investigations are the judiciary and the police, but the civil service and the media have also been victims of Erdoğan’s tenure. So, too, has the entire political system that, in a democracy, depends upon a loyal opposition able to safely critique the government and suggest alternatives.

Alexander Christie-Miller has more on the Gülenist movement and its role in Turkish politics over the past decade:

Drawn from the teachings of the reformist Sufi thinker Said Nursi, who died in 1960, Gulen’s followers espouse engagement with the West, interfaith dialogue, self-advancement, and a dash of Turkish nationalism, and emphasize the importance of education in the sciences. It is believed to have between 3 million and 6 million followers worldwide, and runs a network of schools in more than 130 countries. In the US, it runs one of the largest networks of charter schools – purportedly secular – with links to more than 100 schools. In Turkey, it controls a media and business empire that includes the newspaper Zaman, the country’s highest-selling daily.

Gulen followers, who were often clean-shaven, Western-educated, and English-speaking, defied the stereotypes of Islamists in Turkey during the 1990s and early 2000s, which some analysts believe allowed them to enter the judiciary and police without attracting the attention of the secularist establishment. Leaked video footage of one of Gulen’s sermons from 1999 laid out this strategy explicitly: “You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers,” he said. “You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey.” Gulen-allied prosecutors – in some cases the same individuals who launched the current corruption probe – were widely believed to be the driving force behind two mass trials that effectively broke the power of the military, which historically has seen itself as the protector of Turkey’s secular governing model.