A Sociological Eye

  I have been busily grading term papers, and in my Sociology of the Body class, a number of my students have chosen to write their final papers on supplements that make extraordinary health claims. When they do this, I always search the student product choices out online and scroll down to find the ingredients. Usually these are obfuscated by made-up names--"adaptogenic beta-pyridoxine" is just a heavily embroidered way to write "vitamin B6," or are pure nonsense--"non-transdermal X39" makes as much sense as "powdered unicorn horn."   Scientific analysis of herbal supplements hawked online show that many contain little or none of the claimed ingredients in any case. Usually they just contain fillers like microcellulose (basically sawdust), but sometimes they contain ingredients like caffeine (to make the purchaser feel the pills give them a lift), or even ground-up expired prescription drugs (like ED medications added to pills that are supposed ...

  When I was growing up, gathering with the Italian-immigrant quadrant of my family meant that every meal began with the same ritual: everyone present wishing the rest of the family "buon appetit'!" May you have a good appetite! May you feel hungry, find this meal delightful and satisfying, and eat well. This is a very common world practice. The French say "bon app é tit;" in Finnish it is h yvää ruokahalua;  and in Korean  맛있게 드세요 .  Why? People wish one another pleasure in a meal as a social gesture of goodwill, just as you'd wish someone a good trip when they are about to travel. It's a gesture of hospitality. And it is also a wish for health, because we must eat well to survive, and traditional societies have always had a dread, not just of famines, but of the failing individual appetite that signifies that someone they care for is ailing. Will someone please remind contemporary American doctors of this fact? Recently, there's been a lot of repor...