Seth's Blog

Lassi, you probably know, is an Indian drink made from yogurt. It is rarely sold outside Indian restaurants and supermarkets. However, last week at Whole Foods I saw a product called Pavel’s Pro Sea Salt Lassi Yogurt Drink, so new it is not yet on the company website. I have no idea why Pro is part of the name. I bought a bottle. I was surprised how good it was.

I tried making it myself. I found I could easily make better lassi than Pavel’s by optimizing the amount of salt, adding an optimal amount of sweetener (xylitol – Pavel’s lassi was unsweetened), and flavoring it, for instance with vanilla.

Yogurt companies of the world (except maybe Pavel’s) seem to have failed to notice that lassi is a very unusual food. It provides pleasure in eight ways: (1) satisfies thirst, (2) creamy, (3) frothy (if you shake the bottle before drinking), (4) salty, (5) sour, (6) sweet, (7) complexity (yogurt alone is slightly complex, vanilla increases complexity) and (8) flavor novelty (if you vary the flavor). To a small extent, (9) it satisfies hunger and, if you’re hot, (10) cools you off. It’s also (11) very convenient — easier to take a swig of lassi than a spoonful of yogurt — and (12) very healthy. I can’t think of another food with twelve strengths. My friends’ pizza provided pleasure in ten ways but wasn’t convenient or healthy. There are several similar yogurt drinks in other cultures,  such as doogh, perhaps because lassi has such a high benefit/cost ratio.

To make lassi, mix 3 parts yogurt with about 1 part water, add sweetener and salt and flavoring to taste, mix. I’m going to try adding cardamon and maybe replace the water with tea, to increase complexity.

• Nigerian fermented foods
• I point out that certain results in the BMJ are impossible
• Big increase in ADHD diagnoses
• Preface and Chapter 1 (Abraham Lincoln) of Edward Jay Epstein’s new book, Annals of Unsolved Crime
• How to taste umami (very good)
• No mortality difference between vegetarians and non-vegetarians (2009 study). This is evidence against the new TMAO theory of heart disease (carnitine in meat is converted by bacteria to TMAO, which causes heart disease).

• World Health Organization opposes effective herbal malaria remedy
• Increasing potassium intake reduces blood pressure and risk of stroke (experimental evidence)
• How to clearly distinguish thermometer and proxy temperature records.
• Conversation with Edward Jay Epstein about his new book Annals of Unsolved Crime.
• The flavors of fermentation (WSJ). “Recreating naturally occurring fermented flavors in a lab isn’t easy, experts say. “What I marvel the most about is the complexity, especially with something like kimchi,” says Paul Ricciardi, an IFF flavorist.” I believe we like complex flavors so that we will eat more fermented food.
• Ada by Vladimir Nabokov, annotated
• Patient-powered health (BMJ)

Thanks to Dave Lull and Ashish Mukharji.

• Natto Commuter Pass. Really. A Tokyo restaurant has innovative ways to sell/serve natto.
• How to give an academic talk. I agree with almost all of this but it leaves out two important things: 1. Be as emotional as possible. Convey as much emotion as possible. 2. Tell stories. A good talk is a story.
• Repetition in the history of diets
• Fermentation bubbles back into the mainstream (newspaper article)
• Stinky cheeses in China
• Aaron Swartz lawyers accuse prosecutor Stephen Heymann of misconduct
• Michael Wolff on Renata Adler

Thanks to Rashad Mamood.

• Fermentation forum
• Fruit and vegetable consumption today predicts happiness tomorrow
• multiple sclerosis and mercury exposure
• some bacteria protect against acne — a good reason to not take antibiotics for acne
• A fecal transplant eliminated a serious intestinal infection (in mice)
• The Iris Code (a 2004 article about Iris Chang)
• Zeo (sleep tracking) out of business

Thanks to Paul Nash and Adam Clemens.

A new paper in Nature Genetics describes research into the bacteria in ancient teeth plaque. When modern food came along, the bacteria became less diverse. One of the researchers said:

The composition of oral bacteria changed markedly with the introduction of farming, and again around 150 years ago. With the introduction of processed sugar and flour in the Industrial Revolution, we can see a dramatically decreased diversity in our oral bacteria, allowing domination by caries-causing strains.

Whether the decrease in diversity was due to (a) more sugar and flour or (b) less bacteria-laden foods is hard to say.

Again, data suggest we need bacteria to protect us against bacteria. You’d never know this from food safety laws or how freely pediatricians prescribe antibiotics. Again, it is hard to know without more research what caused this or that historical change in health (e.g., more tooth decay when sugar and flour became popular). The obvious answer (e.g., sugar causes tooth decay) might be wrong. If you believe that cavities are caused by too much sugar, the solution is to eat less sugar. What if cavities are caused by not enough bacterial diversity? Then other solutions might work better, such as eating more fermented food.

Thanks to Vic Sarjoo.

• Japan Korea kimchi dispute
• Dirt restaurant in Tokyo. The dirt is treated to kill bacteria, which I think is a mistake.
• Around 2005, a teenager combined DNA analysis with public data to find his biological father (a good example of personal science — using science to help yourself). Recently some professional scientists showed this wasn’t a fluke. The teenager was far ahead of the professionals, in other words. Just as I discovered that my acne was antibiotic-resistant long before professional dermatologists discovered (or at least published) the idea that some acne was antibiotic-resistant.
• Edward Jay Epstein and Vladimir Nabokov. I told this story here.
• If high-school students designed their own school

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.

• An Epidemic of Absence (book about allergies and autism)
• Professor of medicine who studies medical error loses a leg due to medical error. “Despite calls to action by patient advocates and the adoption of safety programs, there is no sign that the numbers of errors, injuries and deaths [due to errors] have improved.” Nothing about consequences for the person who made the error that caused him to lose a leg.
• Doubts about spending a huge amount of research money on a single project (brain mapping). Which has yet to produce even one useful result.
• Cancer diagnosis innovation by somebody without a job (a 15-year-old)
• Someone named Rob Rhinehart has greatly reduced the time and money he spends on food by drinking something he thinks contains all essential nutrients. Someone pointed out to him that he needs bacteria, which he doesn’t have. (No doubt several types of bacteria are best.) He doesn’t realize that Vitamin K has several forms. I suspect he’s getting too little omega-3. This reminds me of a man who greatly reduced how much he slept by sleeping 15 minutes every 3 hours. It didn’t work out well for him (his creativity vanished and he became bored and unhappy). In Rhinehart’s case, I can’t predict what will happen so it’s fascinating. When something goes wrong, however, I’ll be surprised if he can figure out what caused the problem.

Thanks to Amish Mukharji.

Their name in Korean means Yakult women: street peddlers who sell several probiotic drinks, including Yakult. I encountered them in a Seoul suburb (Bundang) on the way to the subway. During one 15-minute walk, I saw three of them. Other street peddlers in Bundang were often men (selling cookware or socks, for example) but the probiotic sellers were always women. I haven’t seen street peddlers selling probiotic drinks anywhere else. In Japan, Yakult and other probiotic drinks are sold door-to-door but apparently not on the street.

I asked a Korean friend how she (and Koreans in general) got the idea that probiotic drinks are good for health (which I am sure is true). She said she knew it before she went to school and believed she picked it up from TV ads. Apparently these ads are more successful in Korea than elsewhere. General Foods recently paid $9 million to settle a legal case based on Yoplait Yo-Plus ads in America  that made similar claims. The lawyers who sued General Foods claimed that healthy people don’t benefit from Yoplait Yo-Plus.

I can think of several reasons that Yakult women exist in Korea but (apparently) nowhere else. Maybe the fact that Koreans eat a lot of kimchi makes them more likely to believe that a probiotic is healthy. Maybe Koreans care more about health than other people. Maybe Koreans are unusually sophisticated about health. Bundang’s density (it is full of tall apartment buildings) is surely one reason, because Yakult women weren’t the only street peddlers. American suburbs, where I almost never see street peddlers, are much less dense. Another certain reason is that Bundang is a wealthy suburb. A third certain reason is that Yakult and similar drinks help you digest lactose. Lactose intolerance is much more common in Asia than elsewhere.

It would be interesting to compare the rate of digestive problems in South Korea versus other countries, especially the United States. I think they are likely to be much less common in South Korea.

• Interview with Royce White, the basketball player. I agree with him that addictions should be considered mental disorders. I think they are usually self-medication for a mood disorder, such as depression. His view that more than half of Americans have a mental disorder is consistent with my view that you need to see faces in the morning to have your mood control system work properly. Hardly anyone sees enough faces in the morning.
• Racial quotas at Harvard by Ron Unz. “Top officials at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton today strenuously deny the existence of Asian-American quotas, but their predecessors had similarly denied the existence of Jewish quotas in the 1920s, now universally acknowledged to have existed.”
• Traditional Filipino fermented foods (scientific paper)
• Omega-6 supplementation (with concurrent decrease in saturated fat) increases heart disease
• How not to globalize Korean food. For one thing, don’t assume all foreigners are alike.

Thanks to dearime.