Links for Tuesday, August 27, 2018: death by peroxide, NJ mushroom poisoning, and King of the Apples

"Food-Grade" hydrogen peroxide is hurting people, and for God's sake, people are amazing at finding new ways to harm each other

Remember the phrase "Suicide Blonde" (as in, she dyed by her own hand)? Well, this is a helluva lot worse than dealing with your roots showing.

New Jersey is dealing with a big jump in mushroom poisoning. You read that right

Number one on the watch list is the 'Death cap' (Amanita phalloides). Which makes it irresistible for me to post one of my favorite book beginnings of all time:

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.” 
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

The King (of apples) is dead. Long live the King

The Red Delicious apple--possibly my least-favorite apple, even though it's beautiful--just fell from its 5-year perch as the #1 apple in the US. The Gala, which strikes me as having a better skin and a better texture, albeit in a smaller package, is the new numero uno.  My favorite the Honeycrisp is rising fast but still comes in at #5 overall.

Links for September 18, 2017: American sperm, movement is life, neighborhoods and vascular disease risk, and Taiwanese fruit ghosts

Canada needs our sperm. America!

Background: It is illegal to pay for sperm donations in America's hat. 

"What Canada should do is legalize compensation for renewable bodily fluids in our own country. It would be the morally right thing to do. It would help make and save more lives, without harming anybody.

Until we realize our mistake, we need you Americans to keep rolling up your sleeves and unzipping your pants not just for the sake of lucre, but also for the sake of the thousands of current and future Canadians whose lives depend on you."

The more you move, the longer you live.

Bottom line up front (BLUF): Over 4.0 years of accelerometer use, total sedentary time was associated with an increased risk of dying. Not only that, but the longer the usual sedentary bout, the higher the risk of dying (roughly double for the highest quartile). This study is encouraging, in a way: you don't have to move that much to really affect your risk, you just have to move often. But this doesn't apply to you, dear reader, since you ride your bike to the grocery store and forsake social media. Don't you?

If you live in a disadvantaged neighborhood, the usual risk factors for heart disease probably underestimate your risk.

BLUF: In a group of patients from the Cleveland Clinic, the Pooled Cohort Equations Risk Model, or PCERM of the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association underpredicted vascular disease risk in patients from disadvantaged communities (those with a high "Neighborhood Disadvantage Index," or NDI). For a patient from a disadvantaged community, the model only achieved a "concordance index," a measure of how well it predicts vascular disease, of 0.70. In Affluent communities, on the other hand, the concordance index was 0.80. That doesn't sound like a huge difference, but the NDI was much more powerful at predicting variation between census tracts than was the PCERM tool itself.

Fruit names do not invite ghosts, says Taiwanese government

"The seventh month of the lunar calendar is called Ghost Month, when the gate of the underworld is said to open and people prepare offerings for the dead.

People have refrained from offering bananas, plums, pears and pineapples, because the fruits’ names sound like they are inviting ghosts in Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), the market’s Fu-te Temple (福德宮) chairman Lin Lai-fa (林來發) said.

In Hoklo pronunciation, banana sounds like “inviting” (tsio), plum like “you” (li), pear like “come” (lai) and pineapple like “prosperity” or “more” (ong), the combination of which sounds like an invitation for ghosts to stay in someone’s home."

Whatever, Taiwanese Agricultural and Food Agency. I've seen a Dragon Fruit. That thing's bound to attract demons.

Links for September 11, 2017: insect burgers, lessons from the PURE Study, death row food, and plastic in the water

I'm not bothered at all by the thought of insect larvae burgers. Are you?

For reasons I can't figure out, Swiss law allows use of only mealworm larvae, house crickets and migratory locusts. But apparently they taste fine:

The burger itself has little white specks of rice inside with traces of carrot, paprika, chili powder and pepper. After a hesitant bite, the main flavors that come out are the spices. The texture is curious, a bit like a meaty falafel with a crunch. An aftertaste lingered — but maybe that was just my subconscious playing tricks.

Sales are apparently brisk in a very limited release so far. 

See also: Chapul cricket bars, which are delicious, and the Impossible Burger.

Marion Nestle points out what we already know about the PURE Study (that's Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology): Fruits, veggies, and legumes are good for us.

And refined carbohydrates and sugar are bad. The study's "high fat" diet didn't even approach the amount of fat that most of us eat (18-30% versus 35% in the US), so it's impossible to really say what the study proved in regards to fat intake. 

See also: David Katz on PURE, James Hamblin on PURE.

On death row, food rivals porn as an obsession for inmates.

Text below, in case you want to avoid reading the grisly details of a murdered family:

The second-most-prevalent obsession is food. Longo says he actually has two photo collections: nude women and gourmet cuisine. His letters to me are filled with food cravings: "a salt bagel with a full plain cream cheese schmeer from Einstein or Brueggers — toasted, of course"; "a cinnabon with a good cup of coffee"; "a pizza"; "honey-dripping baklava." To make the institutional meals more palatable, the men sometimes hold death-row dinner parties. Several inmates will pass their trays down the row to one cell — frequently, to Longo's. He'll combine all the food together, add commissary-bought items like hot sauce, peppers, and shredded cheese, then rebuild the plates "Cadillac style," as it's called, and send the trays back.

How all this plays into the choice of a last meal, I don't know.

94% of US tap water is contaminated by plastic fibers

I cannot find data on bottled water, but considering that most of it is packaged in plastic, I suspect it's no better. Why does this matter? Well, besides the ick factor, plastics have a notorious reputation in the endocrinology world as "endocrine disruptors," meaning that they exert a hormone-like effect on tissues. The most notorious chemical within plastics with this effect is bisphenol A, which among other effects acts as an estrogen mimic.