Nutritional data means what?

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Musings on this article: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-cant-trust-what-you-read-about-nutrition/

Like cabbage? Bet you have an innie.

Data can mean anything

I work for the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University Medical School. I have at various points crunched food diary data (when the article says food diaries generate a lot of data, they aren’t kidding), filled out food diaries of my own, and processed samples of folks who participate in our diet and exercise studies to see what happens to their metabolic processes when they eat (or don’t eat) certain foods. Sometimes we control exactly what they eat; sometimes they report it themselves.

Misrepresentation in reporting food is easy to do, and most people don’t do it on purpose. How do you know exactly what’s in that yummy fancy restaurant food? Is it summer when your favorite foods are in season so you eat them all the time? Do you not want to look bad on paper so you don’t eat that second slice of pie when you normally would (or eat it and not report it)?

Basically this means that you can gather up whole reams of data and then compare it with whatever you want to, and come up with some pretty silly conclusions, like the picture that accompanies this entry: if you eat cabbage, you probably have an innie belly button. What? While it’s possible that cabbage has some effect on the position of your belly button, this is probably not true. So don’t trust what the media says is the next new food thing guaranteed to make you lose weight and avoid cancer forever, because it may be based on faulty interpretation of data. Do your own research.

Six

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Huzzah! Today is my six-year anniversary of starting work at WUMS. One more year and my kids can go to WU for free. My non-existent, not-even-a-twinkle-in-my-eye kids. One day, mom, one day you’ll be a grandmother.
Also: househunting is an exercise in frustration. The hopeful-excited/dejected-disappointed cycle is NOT COOL. Do not want. But I need a place to live and I want that place to be my own, so to the hunt we go.
Thirdly, if you are in want of something to do this weekend, stop by the Kirkwood Festival of Food and Flowers, and see Artists in Bloom, one of which will be my mother. It’s located right across from the Kirkwood City Hall, just a short walk from the Amtrak station, and buddied up with a farmer’s market. Also, Dewey’s Pizza is just up the street. You can’t lose. Hope to see you around!

oddities

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Got an email from Friere Jesus today. mmm, spam.
Also cleaning out a smelly freezer. Joy.
But the over-priced Josh Groban CD that I got from Hallmark last night was worth it. Even if only for one song. Or two.
It makes me sad to realize that I haven’t written a word of T6R since January. Nothing saved to a file, anyway. There are all sorts of notes and things written on my last hard copy. So if I lose my bag, I’m SOL. But there are other things on my mind. Soon, I hope, I’ll have some time to devote to writing.

(Listening to Josh Groban’s With You)

the Great Freezer Debacle

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Subtle reminder: it’s my birthday tomorrow 😉
So yesterday I was at work until 8 pm. Now normally if I stay that late it’s by choice, since the internet here is infinitely faster and more reliable than the dialup at home (which I randomly feel bad about, since my parents are actually paying for it) and I’m working on a layout or other some such time-waster. But not last night. No, it was the Great Freezer Debacle.
So there’s all this construction going on in the department…some new lab is moving into the labs just recently vacated by the Core Lab and they’re demolishing all sorts of things. A fine layer of dust, etc is all over the stuff in my ‘office.’ And every so often there’ll be random clangs and booms as someone drops a large piece of ceiling tile or slams a door. Erg.
Anyway, in the course of this demolishing, it transpired that the room we keep the human samples freezer in was set to be taken apart, therefore the freezer must move. But not before the changed the core of the lock to the room, and almost wouldn’t give us (the lab) the key, since it was the main constructin core lock. But we were like, hello, that’s a freezer we always have to use, and we can’t move the freezer until you put tile back down on the floor of the room it’s going into, so yeah. Key.
Anyway, once they finally got the tile down it was time to move the freezer. It took a good five people…it’s a heavy-ass -80 deg C freezer that we store serum and plasma and -gasp- urine samples in. Lots of fun. Yes, urine can be good but in these quantities…Erg.
So it’s got a key that turns it on and off, so we turned it off to unplug the freezer from the wall…and we left the key in the lock. This is a huge mistake in hindsight but no one was thinking of the key (which was always kept in the lock anyway) when we had to try to squeeze it through the doorway. So, I bet you can guess what happened to the key…

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Highlight of the month

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X-Men 2 comes out today…
Sad when your highlight is a movie premiere.
I still don’t have a job. How pathetic is that? And I’ve really grown to hate it when jobs you apply for never get back to you. Sigh. Pet Peeve #4798.

Voracious

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So I started the tenth book in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series on monday night. I finished it last night at about 1:30 am. So that’s two books since friday. Man, I couldn’t get enough. I was just a little disappointed at the ending of the tenth book, but if I tell you why I’d ruin it for you. But damn, getting there was great. I don’t know when the next book comes out and the website hasn’t been updated for a while. I’ll have to wait till paperback though. Did I tell you how much I detest buying hardcover books?
I bought the entire series so far last night. Now I have all ten smile We’ll see how long it takes me to get through all of them.
See, this is why I started rereading the Lord of the Rings in September; I knew there would be other books occupying my time occasionally. This way I’ll always have something to read smile
It was a good day at work. There were bands in my PCR. This is a good thing, smile and nod. And vote for my site! Come on, I’m in last place *sniff*
Good night, all… ce’arra *in case you’re wondering, I want to write even more now cause Laurell K Hamilton lives in St. Louis. I want to be just like her smile Hope my writing gives people shivers like hers does to me.