Against the grain: PBS infomercials; flaking or public service?

My contrarian impulse is having a something of a knee-jerk reaction over a plate of pasta and my homemade spaghetti sauce after recently watching some of Dr. Mark Hyman, director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, and Dr. William Davis, a Milwaukee-based American cardiologist, sounding ominous warnings about sugar, including sugar-laded soft drinks, bread, breakfast cereals, pastries, pasta and other carbohydrates in separate alternate medicine infomercial-like fundraisers on Detroit Public TV, WTVS Channel 56, which my cable provider thoughtfully includes in its basic package up here in nearby Thompson, Manitoba. Sugar, of course, is de rigueur the bad boy of food staples these days, and is to the 2010s what eggs were to the 1980s (eggs, thankfully have been rehabilitated reputationally and are no longer a cholesterol cautionary tale for medical practitioners and nutritionists everywhere).

Whatever-happened to the good old days on American Public Television when a typical Saturday evening included what seemed like at least four-hour telethon pledge fundraisers, interspersed with occasional obscure Moody Blues concert footage featuring Nights in White Satin and Tuesday Afternoon for those of us in a certain age demographic? We got five years older, I suppose, is what happened and we spend more time before bedtime these Saturday nights thinking about being circa 60 then the Sixties. Public television programmers at PBS seem to be betting that we’re ready to hear less symphonic rock and a bit more about our glycemic index, belly fat, joint inflammation – inflammation seemingly everywhere actually – soaring blood sugars, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and our long-abused and vastly overworked pancreas and liver.

To his credit, Dr. Hyman now likes butter and eggs. He’s the author of Eat Fat and Get Thin, The Blood Sugar Solution and The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet: Activate Your Body’s Natural Ability to Burn Fat and Lose Weight Fast.

Dr. Davis is the author of Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health and Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox. In fairness to the good doctors, since I only watched about 45 minutes or so of both their shows (and Davis was actually on late-night mid-week, not on a Saturday night), so I didn’t hear their entire arguments. But I seemed to hear a lot more from both in terms of specifics about what was bad for you then what was good for you, which was deal with in generalities. I suppose it’s a bit hard to hawk you latest book if you give the good stuff all away on TV. Still, while I know Dr. Hyman has traded in his bagels for eggs, and gives a thumbs-up to fat (of some kinds, presumably found in specific foods beside eggs and butter, which he also likes) I’m at a loss to what Dr. Davis likes to eat, although if had tuned in longer, I might have found out.

I confess when I got to that area of the program, I was hearing the audio only as I was multi-tasking, putting away my freshly-laundered clothes in another room, listening to the TV in another, but I think I heard him talking about withdrawal symptoms coming off bread and pasta, produced by opioid peptides when some grains are digested, in the same language addictions experts talk about the relative merits of tapering versus cold turkey off narcotics like heroin. It didn’t really entice me much to give up Jeanette’s homemade Red River bread, fresh and warm out of the oven.

Now, CBC’s the fifth estate, just over a year ago, dug into Dr. Davis’ anti-wheat claims, and said some of them were hard to digest, as they were based on shaky science. A Feb. 27, 2015 online version of the investigation, “Wheat Belly arguments are based on shaky science, critics say: Scientists dispute claims in best-selling book, fifth estate finds” can be read here at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/wheat-belly-arguments-are-based-on-shaky-science-critics-say-1.2974214

Its’ fine journalism, as we’ve long come to expect from the fifth estate, with some good old debunking by Canadian scientists, including “Joe Schwarcz, a chemist at McGill University dedicated to demystifying science and debunking big claims” but it perhaps takes itself a bit too seriously.

Methinks this is rather the wrong approach: “The Battle of the Experts,” as it were.

Because to be clear, both Dr. Hyman and Dr. Davis, appear to be well qualified as medical practitioners with substantive knowledge in this area of ever-evolving medicine. They’re not quacks or scientific frauds. But they are charismatic and zealous marketers who are onto a good thing in terms of books sales, but I have no doubt they believe in what they are saying and that belief does have some foundation in promoting public health, not just sales of their books. Mind you, they believed the exact opposite in the 1980s and ate and promoted grain and carbohydrate-based diets. But, hey, didn’t we all think that was what was good for us back then? I still recall being a bit than less than overly excited about oat bran in everything, but whatever works, right?

Let’s face it; if you don’t think we have epidemic-like numbers in terms of caseloads of type 2 diabetes and obesity, just for starters, here in Northern Manitoba and across much of Canada and America, indeed whole swaths of the developed world (but not everywhere) you haven’t been paying attention to reality and the anecdotal evidence of your own eyes since at least the 1980s. While we can argue about the causes or triggers of these public health scourges, and just maybe grains and carbohydrates aren’t joint Public Food Enemy Number 1, but instead medicine’s flavour-of-the-month, you’d still have to have your head in the muskeg of the ever melting permafrost up here to say insulin resistance should be ignored and it’s OK to gratuitously continue to insult our pancreas and liver, without as much as second thought. I’d like to think there is something to be said for a very old cardinal virtue known as temperance and sometimes called moderation also. Not that I by any means practice what I preach in all areas of health or anything else when it comes to it. I’m not claiming personal perfection, simply my turn at the soapbox here.

As for PBS, I remain a big fan of public television, including Detroit PBS.

True, there was a time not so long ago, of course, when alternative medicine or medical views – anything pretty much that derivated from mainstream allopathic, often ultra-pharmacologically friendly medicine, were considered heretical views and had a very tough time getting airtime or ink if you were more homeopathic or naturopathic in what you were proposing. I am not naïve enough to think Big Pharma has packed their doctor’s bag and stopped making house calls. Of course they haven’t. But Detroit PBS, seemed by inference with Dr. Hyman and Dr. Davis, to be implying they were a free speech platform of last resort, providing a noble public service.

Sorry, public television broadcasting folks. This was closer along the continuum , at least in my view, to flaking for an infomercial.

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[BJ1]

 

Catholicism is a big tent with an eclectic communion of saints: Will there be room for G.K. Chesterton some day?

Catholicism is a big tent with an eclectic communion of saints, which probably explains why we’d have Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, a Capuchin stigmatist and bilocator, St. Joseph of Cupertino, the levitator, who is the patron saint of air crews, students, aviators and test takers, St. Denis of Paris, the head-carrying cephalophore, and St. Nicholas Owen, all in the same room happily together. G. K. Chesterton, who may some day join them, would probably heartily approve.

March 22 was the Feast Day of St.Nicholas Owen, who was martyred in 1606. He was canonized by Blessed Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales. I learned this, as I have much in a similar vein over the years, from Franciscan Media, formerly St. Anthony Messenger Press, in Cincinnati, and their “Saint of the Day,”  which offers a brief biography of a well-known, or a little-known saint. “Catholic saints are holy and human people who lived extraordinary lives,” says Franciscan Media. “Each saint the Church honors responded to God’s invitation to use his or her unique gifts.” Franciscan Media Productions, which produces Saint of the Day (yes, there is a smartphone app) is a ministry of Franciscan Media, sponsored by the Franciscan Friars of the Province of St. John the Baptist in  Cincinnati.

Established by the Franciscan Friars in the 1890s, “with the foundational belief that everyone deserves to experience a deep, heart-felt relationship with God, Franciscan Media supports spiritual development by providing inspiring, practical, and helpful multimedia resources in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi,” they got their start with St. Anthony Messenger magazine in 1893. Franciscan Media conducts its publishing ministry with the official ecclesiastical approval of Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr, ninth archbishop of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, who succeeded to the office in December 2009.

St. Nicholas Owen, familiarly known as “Little John,” was “small in stature but big in the esteem of his fellow Jesuits,” reports Saint of the Day.

“Born at Oxford, this humble artisan saved the lives of many priests and laypersons in England during the penal times, when a series of statutes punished Catholics for the practice of their faith. Over a period of about 20 years he used his skills to build secret hiding places for priests throughout the country. His work, which he did completely by himself as both architect and builder, was so good that time and time again priests in hiding were undetected by raiding parties. He was a genius at finding, and creating, places of safety: subterranean passages, small spaces between walls, impenetrable recesses. At one point he was even able to mastermind the escape of two Jesuits from the Tower of London.”

After many years “at his unusual task, he entered the Society of Jesus and served as a lay brother, although – for very good reasons – his connection with the Jesuits was kept secret.”

He was arrested and tortured in 1594 and again in 1606, when he was martyred.

As I said, Chesterton would no doubt approve of this diverse panoply of saints gathered together in one communion and no doubt join them at table. This is the convert to Catholicism after all who wrote: “[W]e should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them.” Privately, he joked, “One pint is enough, two pints is one too many, three pints isn’t half enough.”

Chesterton lived from 1874 to 1936. Under the influence of his wife Frances, he became an  Anglican and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922.

Pope Francis, it turns out, had been a member of the Chesterton Society in Argentina and had approved a prayer for his beatification. Pope Francis was also a member of an honorary committee of a conference for the Argentine Chesterton Society and celebrated a mass for the conference. He owns several books written by Chesterton.

In September 2013, Bishop Peter Doyle, bishop of the Diocese of Northampton, appointed Canon John Udris, a priest of the diocese and currently spiritual director at St Mary’s College, Oscott, to undertake a fact-finding exercise on his behalf into whether a cause for Chesterton’s canonization should be opened. Udris in due course will submit a dossier to the bishop on whether to open the cause for Chesterton’s canonization.

As Udris told the Catholic Herald in an interview a year ago in March 2014, Chesterton, one of the most important Catholic writers and apologists for the faith of the 20th century, is “potentially a huge model” for the Church who “breaks the mould of conventional holiness.”

Udris noted Chesterton, a married layman, was not conventionally devout and could show Catholics “you don’t have to say your rosary every five minutes to be holy.” The first stages of a canonization cause include collecting evidence of heroic virtue.

Instead, Udris suggested, “Chesterton’s holiness could be found in his humour, his charity and his humility.” His defence of the faith in particular, Udris said, “was a model for Catholics.”

Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chesterton Society, and a former Baptist who converted to Catholicism, said in 2013 the idea that someone like Chesterton could be a saint attracted him to the Catholic Church: “The fact that a 300-pound, cigar-smoking journalist might be a saint of the Catholic Church made me understand what the communion of saints is all about. They’re not just one particular type of person.”

Exactly so. Did Chesterton lead a perfect life? Hardly.  His excessive enjoyment of food and drink exhibited a distinct lack of temperance, the cardinal moral virtue “that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods,” as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it. As well, some of his utterances, contemporaneous with his times, clearly sound anti-Semitic to the modern ear. There should be no whitewashing of Chesterton’s life.

Saints, we are reminded time and again, lead holy, but not always conventionally holy, and never perfect lives. They were human beings before they were saints.

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