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Sunflowers

Time for a Regular Appearance.

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….

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Dramatis Personae

This time of year. Perhaps you were even waiting for them. Another go-around with the main characters of the late summer fields: the sun flowers.

I took the images with one of those obscure settings on my iPhone, called mono stage lighting. It brings out the gorgeous architectural structure and patterns of these plants, but it also seemed fitting given the symbolism of the sunflower for Ukraine – times are dark and not getting any lighter for David defending itself against a Goliath.

I can no longer count the number of text messages and emails I get these days asking for donations towards the Presidential election campaign. The one ask I complied with this week came from a different source and about a different need: Historian Timothy Snyder and actor Mark Hamill are raising funds to provide mine sweeping robots for Ukraines regions that are contaminated with explosive ordinances.

It is not just the danger to life and limb, estimated to last for at least a decade even if the war stopped tomorrow. It is also about food security – if you cannot plant the fields because of the mines, you cannot plant the necessary crops to feed your – and other – people.

Hunger has been a weapon of war or political oppression in that region as much as anywhere else in the world. Stalin’s imposed starvation of Ukrainians in the early 1930s cost the lives of almost 4 million people. And contemporary hunger is not restricted to their own country. Millions of people across the world are dependent on Ukrainian food exports and now lacking. These are often the same people who are experiencing starvation tactics in their own recent or current conflicts in Ethiopia, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and now Gaza.

“In 1998 the International Criminal Court Statute codified starvation methods as a war crime in international armed conflicts. A 2019 amendment expanded this doctrine to cover non-international armed conflicts – conflicts between states and organized armed groups, or between organized armed groups. In addition to food, the legal definition of starvation also includes deprivation of water, shelter and medical care. A few months back, the United Nations’ human rights chief said in an official statement that Israel’s policies regarding aid in Gaza might amount to a war crime.” (Ref.) Russia is believed of doing the same to Ukraine. Investigative reports by international human rights lawyers are right now presented to the International Criminal Court. (Ref.)

Russia is accused of

“… having engaged in an ever-lengthening list of starvation tactics, besieging entrapped populations, attacking grocery stores and agricultural areas and granaries, deploying land mines on agricultural land, blocking wheat-laden ships from leaving Ukrainian harbors and destroying a critical grain export terminal in Mykolaiv. Moreover, although the U.S. and E.U. exempted fertilizers from sanctions (Russia and Belarus are two of the world’s largest producers), Russia has decided to withhold fertilizers from the market.” (Ref.)

And here I thought to escape doom and gloom in the sunflower field…. but there is still hope. I have a cache of color photographs that radiate yellow optimism! Let’s include one.

And here is the Second Piano Rhapsody on Ukrainian themes (1877) by Mykola Lysenko.

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Sunflowers, Umpteenth Edition.

Yes, this time of year again. A few years ago I paired the real flowers with the painted ones (see below). I figured this year we just look at the real thing, the surround where they grow and the words they bring to mind.

Got Sunflowers?

So walk with me, and bring a bucket, since the farm where I went near Hillsboro allows you to pick all things ripe. Grapes were beckoning – the vines laden – or is it loaded? Whatever, lots of grapes. Still dry on Wednesday, the day before the rain came.

But I had come for the sunflowers – equally attracted by the buds,

the blossoms,

This one had a drop of water in the center like a jewel

the stems and the leaves. Intent to paint with the camera:

Emil Nolde would have been proud of me – except I am not proud of him…

Daily wildlife made an unanticipated appearance. It pays, if you are old and walking slowly, so that critters like these are more curious than frightened. S/he put on quite the show.

The makeshift tents to protect against the sun had their own structural beauty, folded and unfolded, plastic, metal rods, netting all claiming attention.

I can never decide if the poem below is full of wisdom or soppy (or both.) But in August, with the annual radiance of sunflowers, it speaks to me. (Although I’d prefer to embrace the present rather than reveling in memory. Move forwards. not backwards.)

You Can’t Have It All

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.

by Barbara Ras

The sky filled with clouds, the rain would appear in force the next day.

Music today played by the talented Sol Gabetta, who was seemingly dressed in a cloud, but her cello sounded more like thunder, appropriately Shostakovian. If that’s a word. They seem to be reticent today!

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