Eating and not

I have a love-hate relationship with news "health" stories: when it's something I've known for years, I can kind of laugh over it and feel slightly smug. But I also kind of hate how stuff is reported because (a) they make dire things sound more dire than they usually are and (b) everyone is different.

Two stories I've seen over the past weeks, one big and all over the news, the other one, less so.

Story 1: "Eating processed meat will give you colon cancer!!!!!!"

Okay. Nitrates are not good for you in excess. That has actually been known FOR YEARS. I was allowed few hot dogs and little ham as a child because one of my uncles is a doctor, and one of his research projects was looking at statistics for stomach cancer and cured meat, and he (and other researchers) found a link. Not, "You'll get it if you eat one hot dog ever" but "Don't eat hot dogs more than once or twice a month."

So I kind of shrug at this study, especially after finding that apparently the likelihood of contracting colon cancer over one's life apparently goes up one percentage point with heavy consumption of cured meats.

Now, I don't eat 'em much, because they have a lot of sodium - something actual self-done research has shown to affect my blood pressure, and also, my digestion doesn't tolerate a lot of nitrates very well - but if you can handle bacon and you like it? Go for it, says I. Enjoy it for me.

And also: in some parts of the country, well water is contaminated with nitrates from agricultural runoff. There are some health risks related to that as well.

There's also a subtext hint that "red meat is also bad" but again: if you don't eat it every meal of every day, and you don't char your steaks to death (apparently the more highly cooked something is, the more of the harmful compounds - which makes me grin a bit because I'm one of those "just cook it until it stops mooing" people who likes rare steak. And I would TOTALLY eat steak tartare if I knew the cow it came from, but I can't, so I don't.)

Again, it's one of those: if you do it every meal of every day, you're probably gonna have a bad time. But for someone like me, who might eat red meat a few days out of the month, I don't need to worry.

(Honestly, these days, I worry more about geopolitical things or something like a crazy person with an imagined grudge prematurely ending my life, and in either of those cases, how severely I made myself abstain from good things in life is going to have no bearing on my survival)

Story 2: "Everyone is sleep deprived; we need to start the days later!"

Um, okay. Apparently some are calling for the work day to start at 10 am.

Unless they are willing to shorten my work day by 2-3 hours, I will NOT go for a 10 am work start-time. I do not want to still be at work at 7 pm. I do not want to be dragging home some nights at 8 and then have to cook dinner. All a later day-start would do for me would mean I'd have to go to bed later on - and I wouldn't necessarily sleep any more. In fact, I'm usually up by the time the sun is up. So I'd be stuck sitting around at home for 3-4 hours in the morning, anticipating going to work but NOT BEING ABLE TO GO....and I'd object to that.

Again, for some people, the 10 am start time would be ideal - but not for me, because I'd not be able to enjoy those hours, knowing I had to get to work. And I'd wind up with less productive "free time" over all.

(I would be in favor of, I don't know, either shortening DST or eliminating it all together so that it is lighter earlier in the morning. Yes, we're just playing with the clocks so 8 am becomes 7 am or whatever, but....)

(Similarly, even though the idea of the "siesta" was common in some cultures, I would so not be down with an imposed afternoon siesta; I would rather just go back to work if I have work and get it done and be done earlier).

I can't see most work places that don't already start at 10 am going to that - on my campus, I suppose, if we shifted everything back 2 hours - meaning, a lot of people get stuck teaching 5-7 pm labs in my department, which would stink - we could do it. But it wouldn't be fun.

(I suppose the "early to rise" thing is a holdover from farm schedules, when there were morning chores. Well, I come from farm stock on both sides and as much as there's any kind of "genetic memory" or epigenetic effect from previous generations, I'm a morning person - I'd rather start my day of work at 7 am and be able to be done earlier; I get really irritated when I'm at some evening meeting and it drags past 8 pm because DON'T PEOPLE KNOW THAT I LIKE TO GO TO BED BEFORE 10 PM SO I CAN START MY NEXT DAY AT A 'NORMAL' HOUR?!?!")

And yes, I get that it's especially pronounced in teenagers, and it's just another way in which teenager's bodies are screwed up by their hormones (though I will note that even as a teen, I got up early and went to bed fairly early). If that's the case, okay, start high school a little later and keep the students a little later. But for adults who have spent years working on a 7 am to 4 or 5 pm schedule like me - forcing us to change will make us very grumpy.