Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
Amazing food study of the week: saurkraut prevents Covid-19 !
What is one to make of a headline like this?
“CABBAGE DIET HOPE: Eating sauerkraut, coleslaw and raw cabbage ‘could protect against coronavirus.'”
I raced right to the study, fast-tracked in a not-yet-peer-reviewed paper:
The study: The investigators compared consumption of fermented vegetables (and also pickled/marinated vegetables, fermented milk, yoghurt and fermented sour milk) in the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database to COVID-19 mortality.
Result: For each g/day increase in the average national consumption of fermented vegetables (but not the others), the mortality risk for COVID-19 decreased by 35.4%.
Comment: One food—saurkraut—reduces the Covid-19 mortality rate by 35%? This would be an astounding result for any single food. The authors’ hypothesis is that consumption of fermented foods promotes a microbiome that helps resist infection, even, apparently, respiratory infections.
At the moment, I’m judging this study as a delicious example of why correlation does not equal causation.
Eating saurkraut is just fine if you like it.
But for preventing Covid-19? I’m sticking to masks and social distancing while waiting for further research.
