Another marvelous weekend begins and as per my tradition I will write about the news that slipped through the cracks because of the Trump trial (yawn) or the carnage in Gaza or Biden doing the stupid two step trying to walk the line between being the president of the US or a pawn for some other shit hole country.
My first tomatoes are in and they are delicious….the rest of the garden has taken a hit in the passing storms this Spring….oh well better luck in the Fall.
Let’s get to it, shall we?
I enjoy a glass of wine from time to time…..not a big fan of California wine but some of it is passable…..there is some bad news for the industry….
The San Francisco Chronicle is out with a bleak story about the future of the once-flourishing wine industry in California. The boom times, it appears, are over. “A lot of brands are dead but they don’t even know it right now,” says Michael Honig of Honig Vineyard & Winery in Napa Valley, echoing a sentiment repeated throughout the story by Esther Mobley. She writes that “no sector is immune—not the luxury tier, not the big conglomerates, not the upstart natural wines.” For example, Sonoma’s Bedrock Wine Co. is down 10% in sales this year—the first time it’s registered a dip of any kind in 17 years. The story makes clear that its plight is not unique within the state’s $55 billion industry, and it’s a safe bet some wineries will go under. California vintners are feeling the same pain as peers around the world, the story notes, with wine consumption down about 9% in 2023.
“The industry’s had the wind at our back for a long time,” says Jeff O’Neill of O’Neill Vintners and Distillers. “And finally the music has stopped.” The story explores the stew of factors at play, including younger people shifting to beverages such as hard seltzers and a pushback in the medical community against the idea that wine is healthy. The pandemic also complicated things: Sales spiked, prompting hopeful wineries in California to increase production. But that spike has since reversed (“pantry loading” is the culprit here), leaving wineries stuck with unsold cases of wine. Except for the brief pandemic blip, this downward trend has been in place for several years, but things are finally coming to a head, writes Mobley. “It’s become clear in 2024 that the nature of the California wine industry has fundamentally changed.”
Read the full story.
The problem is the young have to have flavored drinks like Hard Ice Tea or lemonade…..stupid stuff like that and the wine industry suffers from the fads of the young.
I have never understood the fad of trying to eat something so spicy that you go into shock…..why?
This story is about one of these crazies…..
It was indeed a high level of the chemical found in spicy chili peppers that killed a 14-year-old Massachusetts boy last year, the state’s medical examiner found. Harris Wolobah ate an ultra-spicy chip branded as the “One Chip Challenge,” made by the company Paqui, at school in September and lost consciousness hours later at home after complaining his stomach hurt. He never recovered. The autopsy, which was completed in February but is only just now making headlines, found that the teen’s cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest “in the setting of recent ingestion of a food substance with high capsaicin concentration,” according to a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, the Washington Post reports
The autopsy could not confirm the origin of the capsaicin, but the chips (which were discontinued after Wolobah’s death) were made from some of the world’s hottest chili peppers. The autopsy also found Wolobah had an enlarged heart and a congenital heart defect. His family says they didn’t know about the conditions when Wolobah died, and People, citing the NIH, reports that is not uncommon with enlargement of the heart. Paqui says in a statement that its product was not intended for children or people with underlying health conditions.
Another example of ‘you can’t fix stupid’.
Health experts have been bitching about our addiction to processed food….well here is more bad news….
A diet high in ultraprocessed foods has been linked to cancer, weight gain, and now early death. A new 30-year study of 115,000 people found those who consumed the most ultraprocessed foods (UPFs)—including frozen meals, processed meat like hot dogs, potato chips, sugary breakfast cereals, and artificially sweetened beverages—had a slightly higher risk of early death than those who consumed the least. Researchers found no increased risk of cancer or cardiovascular disease. But participants who consumed an average of seven or more daily servings of UPFs had 4% higher risk of “total deaths” than those who consumed three servings per day on average, and a 9% higher risk of “other deaths,” including an 8% higher risk of death from neurodegenerative diseases, per Global News.
“The association is quite linear. The higher intake of ultraprocessed foods, the higher mortality,” says Harvard researcher Dr. Mingyang Song, lead author of the study published Wednesday in the British Medical Journal. These foods are usually highly manipulated and contain preservatives, emulsifiers, sweeteners, and other additives, but little to no fiber, vitamins, or minerals. They also “account for more than 60% of daily calories in Americans,” Song tells the Washington Post. But some ultraprocessed foods are better than others. Packaged whole-grain bread might be beneficial, according to an editorial accompanying the study. White bread, processed meats, potato chips, ice cream and sweetened beverages, on the other hand, have a strong association with higher mortality.
Previous studies have linked UPFs to various health risks, including early death. But some of these were based on small sample sizes tracked over relatively short periods. This study tracked 75,000 female registered nurses from 11 states from 1984 to 2018 and 40,000 male doctors and health professionals from all 50 states from 1986 to 2018, recording data on their health, lifestyle, and eating habits. The observational study doesn’t make conclusions about cause and effect, and researchers note people who consume high amounts of UPFs often have other unhealthy habits. But the takeaway is that certain types of UPFs should be restricted. “If a person consumes a generally healthy diet and has some amount of ultraprocessed food, [that] wouldn’t be too terrible,” Song says, per Global News.
This will fall on deaf ears for it is too easy to eat this sh*t at the game console.
This is a great food story…..examples of idiots wasting time….
On May 7, Governor Kay Ivey signed a law making it illegal to manufacture, sell, or distribute cell-cultivated meat in Alabama. Earlier this month, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a similar one. These moves should still give all of us a reason to be angry.
Cell-cultivated meat is meat that’s grown from a culture of cells, meaning it doesn’t require the raising or slaughter of animals. It’s a sector that’s very hot right now, not just in the U.S., but globally, because it could be the answer to some major problems in our current food systems. The livestock industry is responsible for 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, not to mention the transmission of zoonotic diseases, the massive amount of land it requires, and the inherent animal cruelty involved in making factory farmed slop. Cell-cultivated meat provides a possible solution to all of that, as well as an exciting economic opportunity.
But DeSantis’ take? “We’re not doing that in the state of Florida.” As for Ivey, she hasn’t made a statement yet, perhaps because the internet went bananas over DeSantis’ decision. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, given that politicians have been working on legislation for months. It’s not just Florida and Alabama. Tennessee isn’t far behind, with a bill to ban the cell-cultured meat industry currently floating through the legislature. Arizona and Texas have laid down incredibly tight restrictions on the kind of language and labeling that cell-cultivated meat companies can use in the marketing and sale of their products. Meanwhile, a senator from Nebraska (a major cattle ranching state) has tried pushing for this at the federal level. Republicans, at least those in the southern half of the country, have made it clear they want nothing to do with slaughter-free meat.
I agree that lab grown meat does not sound very tasty but did they need a legislative session to ban it? I told you the South was run by idiots.
I saved the best story for last….since Sue has been fighting cancer for about 4 years now I am always looking for news about treatment and such…..this one is very promising….
Proteomics, meaning the study of proteins, isn’t exactly a household word, but it’s a field of research that could someday save countless lives. Cancer Research UK says a study it funded found that proteins linked to cancer can be found in people’s blood more than seven years before the disease is diagnosed, suggesting cancer could be stopped before it develops. Researchers looked at blood samples from more than 44,000 people in the UK Biobank database, including 4,900 samples from people who were later diagnosed with cancer, the Guardian reports. Cancer Research UK says follow-up research will look at the roles the proteins play in cancer development—and at which drugs can stop them.
Researchers analyzed 1,463 proteins in each blood sample. They found 107 that changed at least seven years before a cancer diagnosis. Another 182 changed at least three years before diagnosis. The proteins were linked to 19 types of cancer, including lung, liver, and colon cancer, as well as blood cancers. “This research brings us closer to being able to prevent cancer with targeted drugs—once thought impossible but now much more attainable,” says researcher Karl Smith-Byrne, a senior molecular epidemiologist at the University of Oxford.
A second study, also funded by Cancer Research UK, looked at data from more than 300,000 cancer cases and identified 40 blood proteins linked to the risk of developing nine types of cancer. Mark Lawler, a leading cancer researcher at Queen’s University Belfast, says that while much research remains to be done, the findings are impressive, the Guardian reports. “Finding evidence of cancer before it has manifested itself clinically provides a critical window of opportunity to treat with a greater chance for success, or even more importantly to achieve the holy grail of preventing cancer before it can even occur,” he says.
Finally something for a little fun…..
What is the longest word in the English language?
Forget antidisestablishmentarianism:
If you can find a way to work pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis into a conversation, congratulations! You’ve just managed to use the longest defined word you’ll find in any dictionary in everyday chatter. But also: We hope you’re feeling OK, as the 45-letter word is a disease that causes an inflammation of the lungs due to the inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust.
At least, that’s what it’s supposed to mean. The word was coined in the 1930s, probably by the president of the National Puzzlers’ League, “in imitation of polysyllabic medical terms,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “but occurring only as an instance of a very long word.” In other words, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis was a word created simply to be long.
That is the dump for this Saturday….I do hope that I informed and/or entertained my readers.
Go outside and enjoy a Spring day and as always….Be well and Be Safe….
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
In Saner Thought 
