On the last post, a commenter asked how non-artificial sweeteners like stevia and monk fruit sugars affect the body. After a little research I found that stevia seems to be just fine, because unlike artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, it has no effects on blood sugar levels. Monk fruit, the actual fruit appears to be… Read more Ah, Honey
There is a new documentary in town called Fed Up and it attacks “the conventional wisdom of why we gain weight and how to lose it, Fed Up unearths a dirty secret of the American food industry-far more of us get sick from what we eat than anyone has previously realized.” Moreover, it stars that… Read more How Sweet It’s Not
Tomorrow, is the 6th of January, the Twelfth Day of Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany, and the date celebrated as the day the Magi brought gifts to the infant Jesus in Bethlehem That means tonight is Twelfth Night. Why tonight and not tomorrow night? Days used to start at sunset so when the sun… Read more Wassail!
The Tudor era was a good time for holidays. For one thing, the Puritans hadn’t taken over England and killed all the “frivolous” joy of Christmas yet. That means that the people who lived under Henry, Mary, and Elizabeth Tudor all got their Twelve Days of Christmas, even if the court’s Lord of Misrule was… Read more New Year’s Day, Tudor Style
In my last post I discussed the relationship between the foods we eat at Christmas time and Tudor medical theory. In this post I’ll tell you why Tudor physicians might have been on to something. Humoral ideology was radically different from modern medical beliefs, so much so that in hindsight it appears almost childish or… Read more Good for what ails you?
T’is the Season for yummy yuletide foods! There are tables groaning under the weight of roast turkey or ham, brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, roasted potatoes, stuffing and assorted vegetables. Mugs of hot buttered rum or apple cider are clutched and glasses of cold eggnog are passed around. Not to mention the multitudes of desserts. Mince… Read more Tudor Medicine and Gingerbread Houses
You may have heard that there is a new heir to the English throne. Or maybe not. They have been kind of burying the story in the back pages of the media haven’t they? So, just in case you haven’t seen it or heard it anywhere else, let me share the fact that at 4:24… Read more A Star Is Born!
In the wake of yet another politician (Trent Franks, R-AZ) erroneously declaring that pregnancy is rarely the result of a rape, Slate published an article claiming that the belief that women are unlikely to become pregnant from a sexual assault came from Nazi experimentation. Well, yes and then again no. The article is correct in… Read more Embedded and Embodied Ideologies
The Daily Mail has run an article interviewing Dr. Suzannah Lipscomb and I am torn equally between happiness and tears about it. Dr. Lipscomb is a renown historian and the author of several books, including one I found to be extremely valuable during my research, 1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII. It is an… Read more Please leave Dr. Suzannah Lipscomb’s hair out of it
The one thing that almost all anthropologists are united in is the whole-sale despising of cultural imperialism. Even if you are unfamiliar with the definition I’m sure you’ve run into it. Sometimes it is the blatant mockery of different cultures, but most of the time it is the unspoken subtext in Western opinions about Others.… Read more Mind Not Blown