Skip to content

Category: Miscellaneous

Published April 17, 2011

Sweet Science

Gary Taubes, whose book Good Calories, Bad Calories has been very influential among the paleo community (perhaps best exemplified by former UC Irvine economist Art De Vany), has an excellent article in this week’s New York Times Magazine:

“Lustig’s argument, however, is not about the consumption of empty calories — and biochemists have made the same case previously, though not so publicly. It is that sugar has unique characteristics, specifically in the way the human body metabolizes the fructose in it, that may make it singularly harmful, at least if consumed in sufficient quantities.

The phrase Lustig uses when he describes this concept is ‘isocaloric but not isometabolic.’ This means we can eat 100 calories of glucose (from a potato or bread or other starch) or 100 calories of sugar (half glucose and half fructose), and they will be metabolized differently and have a different effect on the body. The calories are the same, but the metabolic consequences are quite different.

The fructose component of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup is metabolized primarily by the liver, while the glucose from sugar and starches is metabolized by every cell in the body. Consuming sugar (fructose and glucose) means more work for the liver than if you consumed the same number of calories of starch (glucose). And if you take that sugar in liquid form — soda or fruit juices — the fructose and glucose will hit the liver more quickly than if you consume them, say, in an apple (or several apples, to get what researchers would call the equivalent dose of sugar). The speed with which the liver has to do its work will also affect how it metabolizes the fructose and glucose.”

Definitely W1OY20 material.

Published April 15, 2011

On the African Origins of Language

Today’s New York Times has an interesting article about the origins of language:

“Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, has shattered this time barrier, if his claim is correct, by looking not at words but at phonemes — the consonants, vowels and tones that are the simplest elements of language.  Dr. Atkinson, an expert at applying mathematical methods to linguistics, has found a simple but striking pattern in some 500 languages spoken throughout the world: A language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it.”

The article has a very informative map showing how the number of phonemes decreases the further away a language is from southern Africa.

What I especially liked about the article is how careful Atkinson is in explaining how his findings only suggest that his hypothesis is true, avoiding causal claims. I wish more science reporting would emphasize this.