Fructophobia, by Richard David Feinman

 A great new article on whether singling out Fructose for demonization is justified:

Richard David Feinman: What went wrong in the obesity epidemic?  There is some agreement that by focussing on fat, the nutritional establishment gave people license to over-consume carbohydrates. The new threat is that by focusing now on fructose, the AHA and USDA and other organizations are giving implicit license to over-consume starch — almost guaranteed since these agencies are still down on fat and protein.  The additional threat is that by creating an environment of fructophobia, the only research on fructose that will be funded are studies at high levels of carbohydrate where deleterious of the effects of fructose will be found. The results will be br generalized to all conditions.  There will be no null hypothesis....The extent to which fructose metabolism has a uniquely detrimental effect is strongly dependent on conditions.  Fructose may be worse than glucose under conditions of high carbohydrate intake but its effect will change as total carbohydrate is lowered. And since carbohydrate across the board is what is understood to be the problem — Lustig states that clearly in his YouTube — policy would suggest that that is the first line of attack on health — reduce carbohydrate (emphasizing fructose if you like) but as carbohydrate and calories are reduced, any effect of fructose will be minimized.  In the extreme, if you are on a very low carbohydrate diet, any fructose you do eat is likely to be turned in to glucose.

The Paleo Diet: Caveman Cure-All or Unhealthy Fad?

It is hard to see why the Atlantic, a supposedly reputable magazine, would publish this uninformed article. Apparently the author has little interest in the nutritional content of diets, simply in their labels and images, and is content to regurgitate popular misconceptions.

The Paleo Diet: Caveman Cure-All or Unhealthy Fad? - Alesh Houdek - Life - The Atlantic: "There is no question that we should eat more fresh and unprocessed foods. But if there's a charge to be levied against carbohydrate-heavy foods like bread and pasta, it's that they make it easy for us to eat way too much, not that they're bad in and of themselves. (Sugar, however, may be another story altogether.) So the Paleo diet's dictum to eat as fresh as possible is shared universally with all modern sane eating guidelines. Its rationale for avoiding traditional carb-heavy foods falls apart under scrutiny. And it's success at producing weight loss and health may have more to do with portion control than anything else. But perhaps the deepest cut was a 'US News comparison' of 20 diets (including Atkins, veganism, the Mediterranean diet, and Jenny Craig) that ranked Paleo dead last on criteria like nutrition, ease of following, weight loss, and safety."

Deconstructed Club Sandwich Salad | Serious Eats

This looks edible enough, especially without the bread. That said, a certain discounting of the adjective 'ingenious' is evident. The word implies intellectual achievement or at least amazing cleverness, e.g. Maxwell's unification of electricity and magnetism, sequencing the human genome...

Cook the Book: Deconstructed Club Sandwich Salad | Serious Eats : Recipes: "Patricia Wells, author of Salad as a Meal, is the ingenious innovator of this Deconstructed Club Sandwich Salad, equal parts sandwich and salad. Basically an open-faced club sandwich topped with a chopped salad, it's a meal that incorporates the best of both worlds.
Wells' recipe calls for chicken breasts poached and cooled in an aromatic stock, crisp slices of bacon, crusty sourdough, heirloom tomatoes and romaine, and a creamy-tangy lemon-chive dressing that you'll want to spread on pretty much everything. When it's time to plate, a slice of toasted sourdough is spread with the lemon-chive dressing, layered with chicken and bacon, and topped with a pile of chopped and dressed lettuce and tomatoes."

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Just to make up for being made a second-order, but still undeserving target of scorn, here is the link to the associated recipe book (undoubtedly chock full of breakthrough insights - sorry, sorry).

You need a new excuse

for not concentrating on learning Mandarin asap... (knowing it already is probably the best one).  This seems to be another area where apparent plausibility -- an intuitive 'model' of pliable, fresh young brains -- combined with difficult to control experiments, and perhaps some wishful thinking led apparently to unsubstantiated common knowledge...

Age no excuse for failing to learn a new language - life - 22 July 2011 - New Scientist: "Age no excuse for failing to learn a new language

22 July 2011 by Catherine de Lange
Magazine issue 2822. Subscribe and save
IT'S never too late to learn another language. Surprisingly, under controlled conditions adults turn out to be better than children at acquiring a new language skill.

It is widely believed that children younger than 7 are good at picking up new languages because their brains rewire themselves more easily, and because they use what is called procedural, or implicit, memory to learn - meaning they pick up a new language without giving it conscious thought. Adults are thought to rely on explicit memory, whereby they actively learn the rules of a language."

Sugar from Fat

It is at least theoretically possible for humans to make glucose from fat...

That sugar can be converted into fatty acids in humans is a well-known fact. The question whether the reverse direction, i.e., gluconeogenesis from fatty acids, is also feasible has been a topic of intense debate since the end of the 19th century. With the discovery of the glyoxylate shunt that allows this conversion in some bacteria, plants, fungi and nematodes it has been considered infeasible in humans since the corresponding enzymes could not be detected. However, by this finding only a single route for gluconeogenesis from fatty acids has been ruled out. To address the question whether there might exist alternative routes in humans we searched for gluconeogenic routes from fatty acids in a metabolic network comprising all reactions known to take place in humans. Thus, we were able to identify several pathways showing that this conversion is indeed feasible. Analyzing evidence concerning the detected pathways lends support to their importance during times of starvation, fasting, carbohydrate reduced and ketogenic diets and other situations in which the nutrition is low on carbohydrates. Moreover, the energetic investment required for this pathway can help to explain the particular efficiency of carbohydrate reduced and ketogenic diets such as the Atkins diet.