If Our Bodies Could Talk, James Hamblin. 

Many curiosities are explained, such as why people have dimples.

Gluten sensitivity can be tested as antibodies. If someone has celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, their bowel lining becomes more susceptible. Scientists debate whether high fructose corn syrup is worse or better than regular sugar. A chairman of pediatric endocrinology and pediatric obesity specialist, Robert Lustig, at UCSF, believes that fructose is worse than regular cane sugar.

There is extensive discussion of the corn syrup versus cane sugar politics, as well as dairy politics and egg politics in affecting the public opinion of these foods. It was mentioned that the Got Milk campaign was federally funded through lobbyists promoting the Department of Agriculture guidelines for nutrition and allocating federal monies. Frank Hu, from Harvard, was a chairman of an advisory committee and was accused of bias by the Department of Agriculture for suggesting a diet away from cow's milk. The scientist who accused him of bias had a history of funding through the dairy industry.

Our teeth and bowel length, as compared to carnivores like wolves and bears, suggest that we should be more herbivores than carnivores. In other words, plant-based diet.

Eaton and Koner published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that resulted

in the paleo diet. The paleo diet was approached more from an entrepreneurial basis, and the originators of the scientific article speaking about the nutrition of our ancestors have been disputed by the author that started this movement unintentionally. Specifically, the paleo diet suggests eating lots of chicken and cows but does not suggest that in the Paleolithic era, people ate three times as many fruits and vegetables as modern humans, period. The paleo diet does disregard highly processed foods, such as Oreo cereal, and thus may have some benefit in that regard.  Eaton also says that having a meat-centric diet would be impossible based on the land and water required to produce so much meat for the world population.

It was noted that we will need ?70% more food by 2050?. 9 grams of salt per liter of sterile water creates normal saline. For severe dehydration, such as with cholera, it was discovered that glucose must be present with the electrolyte salt to be able to absorb the salt well through the dehydrated gut.

Smart water and electrolyte water are entrepreneurial but misleading. They have fewer electrolytes than city water in Philadelphia. Further, they do not contain salt, the primary electrolyte useful in dehydration when combined with sugar. Gatorade does not contain enough salt to be used for severe dehydration. Smart water is boiled rather than filtered. Thus, it is not environmentally friendly, just like the plastic bottles used.

When it comes to juicing, the removal of fiber is negative from a health perspective. The exception to this would be in times of great poverty or in times when the concentration of nutrients was critical, such as an astronaut.

On the nutritional label, fiber content should be at least 20% of carbohydrate content.  However, processing food generally will take out the fiber to the point where it cannot be considered a high-quality carbohydrate with the 20% rule.  Thus, an easier rule is farm, not factory. Vitamin water made by Coca-Cola has 33 grams of sugar compared to a can of Coke with 39 grams. Thus, supplemented water can be misleading. During a lawsuit with Coca-Cola, the vitamin water attorneys claimed, ?no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage?.  The UK banned vitamin water from using the words healthy or nutritious.  Pepsi's version, SOBE called Life Water is being sued by Vitamin Water as an infringement of the sugar water-type concoction. Coca-Cola also sells something called Fruit Water, which contains no fruit or fruit juice.

Seltzer may be advantageous in that it can migrate people from soda and the carbonic acid is a weak acid of pH 5.7. Soda and juice are more like 1.5 and 2.2. 

If drinking a pop protecting your teeth would involve rinsing your mouth with water rather than brushing your teeth as the enamel is temporarily weakened and brushing can be harmful. 

Life-extending studies discovered the enzyme sirtuin, which seems to increase the activity of mitochondria and extend life.  A natural way to stimulate sirtuins is from fasting or food restriction. Another finding is NAD coenzyme. NAD coenzyme is a compound that also may be anti-aging, but we are unsure if true in humans.