Editor's pick: There are more reasons to lose weight
I was interested in your article on fat acceptance and the argument over the effects of being overweight (29 September, p 20). I am 79, female and overweight, and my weight rose from 7.5 stone (48 kilograms) in my 20s to 76 kg today. I have weighed as much as 90 kg but have lost weight gradually and without stress over the past two years.
You mention model Tess Holliday. She is 33 and can cope with problems now that she will find distressing and debilitating in later years as she loses suppleness. These problems include the inability to cut or paint one's own toenails; difficulty in fitting into and getting out of a bath, toilet cubicles, public transport seats, theatre and restaurant seats; lack of choice in clothes and difficulty with housework, gardening and lifting or playing with children or grandchildren.
It is worth the effort to lose weight for many such small, practical reasons, in addition to the health issues you mention. My advice is to take it slowly, weigh in every morning to get a good idea of your progress and never shop for food when you are feeling hungry.
In praise of fibre as a way to help bowel health
You provide an excellent overview of the current scientific evidence on gluten and the complex world of the gut microbiome (15 September, p 32). I was, however, puzzled by Peter Whorwell's amazement at “how many vegetables people are eating these days”.
Dietary guidelines in the UK recommend a daily intake of at least 30 grams of fibre. According to the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, the majority of UK adults fall far short of this target: average daily intake is just 18 grams.
This is a real public health concern. Fibre-rich diets afford significant protection from cardiovascular diseases, coronary events, stroke and type 2 diabetes. Cancer Research UK recently estimated that 28 per cent of bowel cancers in the UK are caused by eating too little fibre.
In my experience as a family doctor, the average patient with symptoms resembling irritable bowel syndrome has dietary intakes in keeping with the low-fibre habits of the nation. Most benefit from advice to gradually increase their intake of fibre while focusing on healthy whole foods, including fruits and vegetables.
First class post 鈥� 13 October 2018
I’d like to have my mind read; maybe they can make sense of the jumbled mess in there
Constance M about the prospect of technology that could read minds (29 September, p 28)
Things we believe about economics and the world (1)
Pascal Boyer assembles a convincing array of observations on how the general population doesn't understand the economy – or, at least, on how it doesn't share the same understanding as the economists he is familiar with (22 September, p 40). But behavioural economics has fairly comprehensively killed the idea that we behave anything like the “rational economic man” who is at the root of the classical theory he draws on.
This hasn't fazed the free-market enthusiasts, whose models depend on classical assumptions. A common form of argument in econometrics is to build a complex model, observe that its predictions don't fit the data, and then suggest that it is the world that needs to change to fit the model.
Things we believe about economics and the world (2)
Your article on folk economics states that the “wealth pie” being finite is a flawed idea. This is far from self-evident. We have one planet, and we don’t account for negative wealth such as forest loss or damage from climate change.
Another of the “flawed ideas” discussed is that sellers can fix prices. But corporations do often impose prices by forming cartels. And government intervention in markets can work. Governments can lower prices, for example by providing council houses if rents are unaffordable. Each of the “flawed ideas” surely deserves its own article.
Things we believe about economics and the world (3)
Boyer allows no room for the sort of redistributive taxation policies that from 1945 to the early 1980s helped to narrow the gap between rich and poor in the UK. Since then, right-wing taxation policies have been reopening the gap, to the detriment of the country as a whole. Yes, that’s a left-wing view, but it is also worthy of discussion.
Things we believe about economics and the world (4)
Adam Smith argued in his that for free markets to work, employers must not be allowed to confer. And “free” markets are in fact highly regulated, to prevent adulteration of food, for example. That does happen without regulation. And consumers cannot choose lower prices if no companies offer them.
Things we believe about economics and the world (5)
Boyer says that it is as if the human mind is designed to misunderstand mass-market economics. But retroactive maladaptation would be hard to explain.
I offer a counter-proposal: it is as if mass-market economics is designed to be misunderstood by human minds. This is easy to explain. Those in charge of such economies have a vested interest in being misunderstood. For instance, Boyer declares it a flawed idea, that “wealth is a fixed-size pie 鈥� the poor get poorer when the rich get richer”.
Yes, over the past 40 years US gross domestic product has quadrupled; but wages for the vast majority have barely budged. So for them the “flawed idea” is a statement of plain fact.
How to pin down an antimatter particle (1)
You say again that a particle can be “in two places at once” (15 September, p 8).
This is a statement made by an organism that has a theory of the microscopic, which it tries to interpret with the cognitive systems that it has evolved to allow it to survive at a macroscopic level.
In Richard Feynman's path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, a particle can take any path between measurements – but this is not to say it is actually everywhere at once.
We might cling to our common sense by saying it is as if the particle has been in two places at once – or indeed an infinite number of places. But this does not help with the conceptual chasm. The fact that quantum mechanics is entirely outside our mental apparatus, which is tuned to the macroscopic world, makes its invention perhaps the most remarkable feat of all science.
How to pin down an antimatter particle (2)
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You say the interference pattern may be interpreted as evidence that particles have been in two places at once. But the pattern is also evidence that they have not been “seen” – in quantum jargon, observed – in either place. That would certainly have extinguished the pattern.
Some ways to green your laundry day (1)
Congratulations to Enid Smith for blowing the whistle on washing machines that accept only cold water (Letters, 8 September). We live off-grid, running on solar power, and our only water supply is what falls on our roof.
When we went to buy a washing machine, the only one with a sufficiently low power consumption had a one-star rating out of six for energy efficiency – because the calculations are based on heating the wash water with electricity.
We found a top-loading machine that has hot and cold water inlets. I gather these are hard to find in the UK.
Some ways to green your laundry day (2)
Smith writes that she was unable to find a washing machine that took warm water from the domestic system. The fact that washing machines need high-pressure water used to mean there was no option but to connect them to the cold water supply. Many houses now have high-pressure hot water systems. If her solar panels deliver high-pressure water, she could supply the washing machine through a thermostatic mixing valve – although these are not cheap.
We need some precision about etching
Clare Wilson reveals some of the earliest known human mark-making, possibly pushing back the beginning of the history of art (15 September, p 7). I am irritated, though, by the use of “etching” instead of “engraving” or “incising” to describe how the marks were made.
The distinction is important to me as an art historian: to etch is to with acids or corrosives. To state that “etching is a simpler technique than drawing with a crayon” reverses the actuality.
Etching was developed in the Middle Ages and it may have been used by the Romans for metal decoration – but not earlier. Art terms deserve the same stringent accuracy as scientific ones.
People are infinitely inventive so I have hope
Alastair Brotchie laments the loss of his theatrical job to digital technology (Letters, 8 September). I sympathise with him and others whose livelihoods are replaced by automation and who are excluded from the benefits it brings; but I am optimistic for the future.
Humankind has continually found ways of making tasks easier to save time and effort and this has invariably displaced human labour. The “leisure” or “post-industrial” society that was supposed to arise has never materialised: by all accounts we are busier than ever.
People are infinitely inventive and resourceful, and if one type of job becomes unnecessary we turn our attention to other things.
For the record 鈥� 13 October 2018
鈥� Thirsty work: the power consumption of Neal Tai-Shung Chung’s desalination plant is 1 kilowatt-hour per cubic metre of water (8 September, p 32).
鈥� Heavy. The quasar called OJ 287 has the mass of 18 billion suns (22 September, p 35).
鈥� The female physicist we pictured at 快猫短视频 Live is Melanie Windridge (29 September, p 24).
鈥� The muscles that control Ian Burkhart’s hand and fingers are stimulated through a sleeve on his forearm (29 September, p 7).