Good morning Buttercups.
I hope you’re doing better than what seems like half of Team USA over in Italy right now. Some of them are feeling “uncertain” about representing the United States—because this country, which hands you a practical gold medal just by being born here, doesn’t reflect their values at the moment.
“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now,” Team USA skier Hunter Hess said at a press conference in Milan. “It’s a little hard. There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of. If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S. I just want to do it for my friends, my family, and the people who supported me getting here.”
I, for one, am grateful Hunter clarified this common misconception that the U.S. Alpine Ski Team and the Department of Homeland Security are one and the same.
Last Olympics, I held a grudge against the figure skaters, assuming they were personally responsible for President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Every time I saw an American land a triple axel, I thought, How could you?—because I couldn’t partition the athletes from the U.S State Department’s foreign policy.
So this year, I’m grateful they’ve reassured us they don’t represent presidential decisions. Otherwise, I would’ve assumed Hunter was personally drafting and enforcing every policy between training runs.
Coffee lovers, rejoice! 2–3 cups a day may help keep dementia at bay, according to a new review in JAMA. Notably, the cognitive benefits didn’t show up among decaf drinkers. My guess? Common decaffeination methods use chemical solvents that neutralize some of coffee’s beneficial phytonutrients, thereby (maybe?) taking away its protective benefits. That said, caffeine itself is a pretty legit compound, functionally speaking, so my money’s on that being the main driver. Check out my full piece on coffee and caffeine here.
“Within a month, she suffered several bouts of stomach upset that ‘went on for hours,’ she said. ‘I was crying on the bathroom floor.’” The side effects of GLP-1 drugs are becoming harder to ignore.
The American Medical Association now says giving kids irreversible “gender-affirming care” is a bad idea. If only that position had been taken ten years ago, it might have spared a lot of harm. The AMA are cowards.
A new report found that food served on U.S. military bases contains alarming levels of arsenic, lead, and glyphosate. Researchers also detected ractopamine and trenbolone acetate—growth-promoting drugs used in American beef and pork production that are banned in more than 160 countries. If Running On Butter has ever seen a national security threat, this is it.
“I finally made it to shore. I hit the bottom of the beach and just collapsed.” A 13-year-old Australian boy swam nearly two miles to save his family after they were swept out to sea. Aussies are built different. We here at ROB salute you.
Being a bad dad? Time to rethink it. New research suggests that a father’s level of involvement in his children’s upbringing can shape their inflammatory and cardiovascular health well into adulthood. “We expected that family dynamics—mothers and fathers alike—would influence child development,” said Dr. Aytuglu, the study’s lead author. “But in this case, it was only fathers.” When a father’s behavior in three-way family interactions is consistently negative, he explained, that negativity doesn’t stay contained. “It bleeds through the family system,” eventually showing up in measurable declines in a child’s long-term health.
Reading Mark Hyman in The Free Press reminded me of one of the great nutritional absurdities of our time: under past USDA guidelines, tomato sauce qualified as a vegetable—meaning pizza did too. Big Food lobbyists successfully pushed lawmakers to define pizza as spinach’s cousin. Crafty!
Loved the humor, as always.
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