WIL Weekly 5-Point Review #3
Cancerous Sweeteners, Pricey Obesity, Lying Documentaries and more
This is my free weekly newsletter covering 5 interesting points from the week. Subscribe if you’d like to get it in your inbox each week!
1. Artificial Sweetener (aspartame) causes cancer?
Reuters just released an article yesterday (June 29th) titled WHO's cancer research agency to say aspartame sweetener a possible carcinogen
One of the world's most common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body…
Even though I’m inclinded to be against “unnatural” sweeteners, I would want to scrutinize their evidence for this declaration. If you’re interested in artificial sweeteners in general, Layne Norton has made at least 9 different videos on the topic.
I never got into this topic too much myself because sucralose and aspartame always gave me a slight stomachache so I just decided to avoid them and call it a day. However, I think it’s a pretty important topic as being able to consume something with a little bit of flavor while keeping calories down or while fasting can be really helpful for some people.
2. Economic Burden of Obesity
The Milken Institute published a report in 2020 titled America's Obesity Crisis: The Health and Economic Costs of Excess Weight which looks at “prevalence and economic effects of diseases related to obesity and overweight in the United States.”
Dave Danna did a nice job putting this in perspective:
・US Obesity costs $1.72 Trillion dollars a year.
・If obesity was a fortune 500 company, it would be the biggest.
・If obesity was a military, it would be the biggest military by cost.
・If obesity was a government, it would be the 3rd largest (after US & China).
3. Video in the works - Debunking Cowspiracy
I’ve been meaning to make a video that is a complete debunk of Cowspiracy as I think this is the starting point for the public perception for the “meat is bad for the planet” narrative. It kept getting put on the backburner as it’s such a big project so I may have to split it up into multiple videos. Let me share just one example of producer, writer and director Kip Anderson’s corner cutting.
At around 41:07 in the film, he says he wants to do his due diligence and visit a farm that raises beef. He interviews Doniga Markegard and asks her "How do you offset the carbon footprint of livestock?" The film shows her saying "We don't feel like livestock have a carbon footprint," and that’s the end of the scene on the ranch. As Doniga Markegard herself explains in this podcast, she had gone into this long explanation of how her grazing method allows the cattle to improve soil ecology, which means the soil can sequester CO2, which offset the cattle’s carbon footprint. Anderson completely removed that which made Markegard seem in the film like she was just totally naive to the concept that livestock have a carbon footprint.
Check out this nifty graphic from Diana Rodgers (sustainabledish) if you’re not familiar with this concept.
4. Anything goes in politically correct academia
Back in 2017, scholars James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian wrote 20 fake papers using fashionable jargon to argue for ridiculous conclusions, and seven of their articles were accepted for publication by serious peer-reviewed journals. Here is the title of one: Going in Through the Back Door: Challenging Straight Male Homohysteria, Transhysteria, and Transphobia Through Receptive Penetrative Sex Toy Use. The article’s aim is to explore the following question:
Do men who report greater comfort with receptive penetrative anal eroticism also report less transphobia, less obedience to masculine gender norms, greater partner sensitivity, and greater awareness about rape?
The article concludes:
This analysis recognizes potential socially remedial value for encouraging male anal eroticism with sex toys
As in, straight men should anally penetrate themselves with sex toys so they will be more accepting of homosexuals and trans people.
This “study” was then extensively peer reviewed and published. It was only after it was revealed that this was a complete hoax that it was retracted.
Another study titled Human Reaction to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon was answering the question “Do dogs suffer oppression based upon (perceived) gender?”
A third paper was arguing that it is sexual “violence” for a man to masturbate while thinking about a woman without her consent.
5. Quote of the Week
"This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world."
-George Orwell in Looking Back on the Spanish War, 1943
"A new five-year study that will be published in the May 2018 issue of the journal Agricultural Systemssuggests that they can. Conducted by a team of researchers from from Michigan State University (MSU) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the study suggests that if cattle are managed in a certain way during the finishing phase, grassfed beef can be carbon-negative in the short term and carbon-neutral in the long term." https://www.oneearth.org/can-responsible-grazing-make-beef-climate-neutral/