I lied. It’s time for two regulars: sun flowers, which I perennially photograph during August, and my usual rant against the perversion of scientific findings.

You might or might not have heard about an increasingly hostile debate around the health effects of seed oils. Oils extracted from canola, soybean, corn and, yes, sunflowers, are common cooking staples in American kitchens and the fast food industry. Fitness gurus and other influencers on the internet are claiming that these oils are the source of our deteriorating health and the obesity epidemic, responsible for inflammatory processes in our bodies and even diabetes. The most powerful among them, our very own Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claims we are unknowingly poisoned by these seed oils and demands a return to beef tallow or rendered animal fat in cooking.

Many Americans are already reducing their use of seed oils in their own kitchen, and so are restaurants and fast food chains on a larger scale, with real economic consequences for many farmers invested in seed crops. What does science say about the “bad for your health” allegations?

In short: BS.

The main claim of seed oil opponents states that seed oils’ high omega-6 and low omega-3 composition causes an imbalance that may increase the risk of chronic conditions by boosting inflammation in the body. Scientific studies show no impact of increased intake in omega-6 on inflammatory processes. With regard to obesity, note that seed oil-fried foods are also high in refined grains, added sugar, and sodium. If you eat fast food, it is the combination that leads to adverse health, not an isolated ingredient. and of course almost 75% of the American diet consists of ultra-processed foods…

Further, seed and plant oils reduce “bad” cholesterol, thus lowering the risk of stroke and heart attacks, according to the American Heart Association. It also looks like swapping less than a tablespoon a day of butter for equal calories of plant-based oils could lower premature deaths from cancer and overall mortality by 17 %. Beef tallow, of course, is much higher in saturated fat, it has 109mg of cholesterol per 100g. So adding it to your diet will heavily impact heart disease. But that is not the only problem.

If we look at the large picture (why has that become so difficult???)  beef tallow generates 11.92kg of carbon per kg, on the top end of the list of foods with the highest GHG emissions. “Beef itself is the most heavily polluting food group on the planet, emitting twice as many greenhouse gas emissions as the next on the list (dark chocolate. Hmmm.) Cattle ranching causes the highest amount of destruction of rain forests, with deforestation from cattle ranching releasing 340 tons of CO2 annually, making up 3.4% of global emissions. Pasture-raised cows that feed on grass account for 20% higher GHG emissions than grain-fed cattle. Further, when accounting for soil carbon sequestration and carbon opportunity costs, the total carbon footprint of pasture-raised operations is 42% higher.” (Ref.)

For now, we still have choices. We can avoid fast food, no matter what it is fried in, if we have the time and energy to cook and the money to buy healthy ingredients with the same calorie load, still finding seed oils or olive oil (which really is the healthiest way to cook) in the store. Consider how many people’s lives actually don’t fit those requirements.

***

We do not have choices for other decisions made by this disaster of an administration. In May, they canceled the financial support for the development of bird flu vaccines. This week, it was announced that one of the greatest discovery in all of science was going to be terminated.

Kennedy offered the – FALSE – rationale that “that mRNA vaccines do not protect against respiratory illnesses like Covid and the flu, and that a single mutation in a virus renders the vaccine ineffective.” Here are counter arguments offered by multiple scientists in the NYT yesterday. Please realize that these arguments are supported by a body of science, studies with hundreds of thousands of people (and in case of older vaccines with decades of experience). They are not selectively picked, they are peer-reviewed and replicated.

Millions of people were saved from Covid deaths by the fast development and flexible adjustment of these vaccines, which have far fewer side effects than traditional ones. In addition, that technology offers real promise for cancer patients, colon and pancreatic cancer high on the list, with break throughs on the horizon. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. And lest you think, other nations will pick up the slack, that won’t be easy given the financial limitations and number of researchers familiar with the domain.

Not developing these vaccines will kill people who could otherwise live. Simple as that.

And as Jamelle Bouie put it succinctly, “I think it is hard for some people to really their heads around the reality that Kennedy is staunchly anti-vaccine and thinks that people should suffer through disease and that those who die deserved it and that those who survive are a better order of human being.”

( I’ll add, this is the guy who talks about Miasma theory as a valid explanation of illness (the idea that it is bad air around you that causes disease, not the microbial germs that get you.) And he doesn’t even get that right – claiming “that Miasma theory emphasizes preventing disease by fortifying the immune system through nutrition and reducing exposures to environmental toxins and stresses,” which it never did.

I am also reminded of something that French-Algerian galleries Sabrina Marami said about one of Jorge Tacla’s paintings, commemorating the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti some years back. “Structural vulnerability amplifies disaster. The invisible architecture of inequality determines the scale of loss.“

Jorge Tacla 7.0 (2011)

We all need relevant structures in place before disaster strikes, whether natural or man-made catastrophes, pandemics or diseases. Inequality, however, affects outcomes even worse for disadvantaged populations.

If you have education, you can make healthy choices. If you have money, you can buy healthy food and live further away from pollutants. If you can follow the science, you can make informed decisions about what is recommendable and what not. If you have the funds, you can go abroad and take care of your health care needs there or have the relevant medications shipped to your home. Masses and masses of people lack all of that, for no personal fault, but an education system rigged to keep them either in the dark, or open to propaganda that falsifies claims in pursuit of ideology. One that certainly keeps them poor.

Kennedy, in complete contradiction to his assurances during confirmation hearings, gutted the CDC vaccine committee, replacing the 17 nonpartisan medical experts with eight individuals who Democrats say were handpicked to advance an anti-vaccine agenda. A group of Senators is now launching a partisan probe of Kennedy’s vaccine policies. In a letter to Kennedy, they demanded answers about the process behind Kennedy’s gutting of the CDC’s vaccine committee and other policies.

“As your new ACIP makes recommendations based on pseudoscience, fewer and fewer Americans will have access to fewer and fewer vaccines,” the senators wrote. “And as you give a platform to conspiracy theorists, and even promote their theories yourself, Americans will continue to lose confidence in whatever vaccines are still available.”

With regard to infectious diseases this vaccine denialism is particularly worrisome. Fewer vaccinations means less herd immunity, something which protects all those who cannot be protected through vaccinations: newborn babies and the elderly, people with compromised immune systems, or those undergoing chemotherapy. Herd immunity is achieved when a sufficient number of people is vaccinated against a particular virus – for measles that means 95% of the population, for polio 80%. (Ref.) The mNRA vaccines were promising agents to reach the goal intended by herd immunity: to slow down the spread of infection, protecting people who had no other chance to protect against the disease.

I cant help but think of Goethe’s description of the devil in Faust (I): “I am the spirit that negates….”

(Except Mephistopheles was smart.)

Mephistopheles:
I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
‘Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent—
That is my proper element.

– Kaufmann, Walter (1963). “Introduction”. Goethe’s Faust : part one and sections from part two (Anchor books).

Mephisto:
Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles was entsteht
Ist werth daß es zu Grunde geht;

Drum besser wär’s daß nichts entstünde.
So ist denn alles was ihr Sünde,
Zerstörung, kurz das Böse nennt,
Mein eigentliches Element.Faust. Eine Tragödie von Goethe. (Part 1 about line 1340)

Here is (yes, difficult but interesting) music that offers a lot of Mephisto’s original lines from Faust. I’ll go eat sunflower seeds now, forgoing the dark chocolate….