mikaraento
5
3
mikaraento has not written any posts yet.
mikaraento has not written any posts yet.
I read Yvain's report and compared it's reasoning on potassium to the DRI DIETARY REFERENCE INTAKES FOR Water, Potassium, Sodium, Chloride, and Sulfate from Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes of the Food and Nutrition Board (http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI/DRI_Water/water_full_report.pdf). My understanding of potential concerns would be:
Serum potassium (responsible for the sodium-potassium pump etc.) is only very weakly linked to potassium intake, as the kidneys are very good at both excreting extra potassium and keeping potassium in the body if intake is low (though the kidneys are not as good at the latter as the former).
Potassium's effect on lowering blood pressure is through the sodium-potassium balance, so potassium helps you mostly
If you enjoyed Paul Fussell I highly recommed Bourdieu's "Distinction".
It addresses many of the criticisms about class and taste claims expressed in the comments: It is extremely data-driven instead of relying on 'common knowledge'. It describes not only how different classes' tastes differ but how those difference evolve over time, and not only a single hierarchy of classes but the different fields in which classes operate.
Bourdieu doesn't seem to be part of the lesswrong canon, but could well be. He has an undeserved reputation as (only) a theorist, whereas to me his strength is in his use of large bodies of data (but not experiments, alas). The books can be heavy going and to remind of diseased discplines, but the data is great.
If anybody wants to get deeper into how fashion, class and status work I highly recommend Bourdieu's 'Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste'.
Bourdieu collected large amounts of data on the expressed taste of different social classes in visual art, food, music, literature, social gatherings etc., augmented by semi-structured interviews with a smaller sample. It's not too useful to try and summarize it, but some of the major useful concepts include: Fields (not everybody plays the same status game), Distinction (actions and taste are arbitrary, but need to be distinguishing) and Objectification of taste (how society and the educational system measure taste and conflate it with skill).
Bourdieu is somewhat unfairly known for his theory, but I find he's data-driven sociology extremely compelling (he used just the kind of surveys my sociology teachers kept warning me about in the early 90s).