Health care fails by The Atlantic and Mona Charen

And boy, were both of them two weeks ago big ones.

At the Ett-Lantic, an Elizabeth Cushing talked about the shortage of, and spiking price of, whey, without mentioning several relevant facts.

One is that protein over-supplementation is the latest, and ultimate supplementation craze. It's part of the American gospel of quick fixes that go along with American exceptionalism.

It's been goosed even more by much of the MAHA world.

And, it's dangerous. 

And Ms. Cushing tells you none of this. 

Eating too much protein can be hard on your kidneys, among other things. It causes dehydration from the extra water needed for its digestion. The extra water for digestion plus the extra water needed for the elimination of digestion byproducts stress your kidneys. That, in turn, can cause kidney stones. Especially because it's normally part of a low-fiber diet, whether with too much red meat or supplementation, it can screw with your colon. And, speaking of red meat, a diet with too much meat protein can cause not just kidney stones but end-stage kidney disease. It can also cause that old old disease of conspicuous consumption — gout.

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Meanwhile, on Substack, Charen was poo-poohing the risks of even moderate drinking. The nut graf, semi-conspiratorial angle and all, is at top:

IS A GLASS OF WINE WITH DINNER going to increase your chance of getting cancer or another serious illness? For the past few years, we’ve been deluged with studies and news accounts suggesting that the answer is yes. This week, the USDA reinstated a caution in its dietary guidelines about limiting alcohol. Note: This is the Trump administration. No sane person seeking guidance on a health matter would look to their science-trashing witch doctors.

Really? 

Yes, as next we get strawmanning and whataboutism:

The Trump clown show to one side, even if the federal government were staffed only by science-respecting people, we’d still have a problem when it comes to recommendations like whether or not to have that glass of wine, because our society is not good at evaluating risks. Not at all. For example, most parents drive their kids to school or walk them to the bus stop every day. They don’t permit their 8- or 10-year-olds to go to the corner shop by themselves or take a city bus. Why? Because they believe, wrongly, that if kids are left on their own there is a serious risk of kidnapping. In reality, stranger abduction is incredibly rare (abduction by non-custodial parents is another matter).

I don't know if Charen has alcohol abuse disorder, but these are the types of things otherwise intelligent alcoholics say. 

It gets worse. Ignoring the 1964 Surgeon General's report on tobacco, and follow-up work after that, she essentially claims that all the studies on the health risks of alcohol not only are correlational without being causational, but can never rise to the level of proving causation.

My quote in my quote-restacking? This:

Strawmanning, gaslighting and red herrings, Mona Charen. First, governmental agencies AND non-governmental health organizations have warned about the cancer dangers of moderate drinking even before Trump returned to office. In fact, those observations started before this century, and first became more specific when OBAMA was president. 

Second, per cancer and tobacco, at some point, observational studies, and analysis of them, become strong enough to become causation, not just correlation.

And should say it all.

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Sidebar: Joe Mercola, yes, HIM, has dropped his antivaxxer stance in re Vitamin K shots for infants. Will wonders ever cease.