The Placebo Effect Is As Good As Drugs, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: Why placebos are nothing to scoff at, Honeycrisp apples are ruining East Coast orchards and the Grinch does sex.
Placebos Make Something Out Of Nothing
Just over two years ago, I was having difficulty sleeping. I tried most of the things you would expect. I stopped looking at screens and eating 90 minutes before bed. I stopped exercising at night. My last cup of coffee at the day was at 1:00 pm. None of it really worked.
Then a friend gave me two Trader Joe's melatonin tablets to try out. I reluctantly accepted them. At the time, I was, at best, deeply suspicious of the entire idea of dietary supplements. I took half of one and within 15 minutes fell into one of the deepest, most restful slumbers I've ever had. I still regularly take melatonin gummies almost every single night. Sleeping 8 hours a night is now just as easy as eating a kale salad or drinking plenty of water.
Am I convinced that the melatonin inside them is what changed my life? Absolutely not. At this point, I take them knowing full-well that some combination of Pavlovian or placebo effect is the thing that's reliably knocking me out. I'm convinced that they work for me, and that's all that really matters.
This is the core of what Gary Greenberg gets at in his exhaustive feature on the research behind the placebo effect. For decades science has acknowledged the placebo effect insofar as it is constantly trying to fight against it — that humans have this pesky thing about healing themselves sometimes better than the actual drugs can. This has led to an entire interdisciplinary field trying to fold the placebo effect back into medicine, something that is worked into treatment, and not controlled out of drug trials.
East Coast Orchards Hate The Honeycrisp Apple
The Honeycrisp is a near-perfect apple. It's large, sweet, tart, juicy and, yes, crisp. Naturally, this makes it a major pain in the ass to grow for orchards on the East Coast, reports Bloomberg. Deena Shanker and Lydia Mulvany spoke to multiple orchards and found that the Honeycrisp, despite being one of the most popular apples out there, is hard to grow, store and transport. And despite it being three times as expensive as other kinds of apples, people are more than willing to pay a premium to get that Honeycrisp.
Which means that for most orchards, they really don't have a choice in what they can grow. And so, for the time being, they must opt for the apple whose trees grow too tall too fast, don't absorb enough calcium, and produce fruit that is both too big for it's own good and has thin skin that attracts birds and other critters. Shanker and Mulvaney report that orchards are lucky to see a 60% yield from their Honeycrisp trees.
That's not to say that you should stop eating the Honeycrisp, but maybe it's worth exploring other options. The beauty of apples is that there are so many varieties. Apples for eating, apples for baking, apples that pair better with cheese or other that are best in an afternoon yogurt.
I know this sounds corny, but life is best enjoyed with its imperfections. Demanding that our produce be the most perfect version of that thing is just… so boring? The beauty of food and cooking is that you can combine ingredients, using the flaws of one to compensate for the flaws in another.
The Grinch Fucks
Earlier this week, DNA sequencing company 23andMe unveiled a brilliant new advertising promotion with the upcoming Benedict Cumberbatch-led Grinch movie. In it, 23andMe announced that they had analyzed the Grinch's DNA, and found the markers that explain why he is able to shimmy up and down chimneys, explain his fond love of salt and prove his affinity for coffee is indeed genetic.
Like most movie promotions, you can hardly roll your eyes hard enough at a clumsy amalgamation of Brand Objectives. But, I think, here is a rare moment in which the advertising campaign for a film actually deepen and furthers the lore of the property at hand.
You see, conducting a DNA test on the Grinch is a tacit admission that not only does DNA exists in the Grinch universe, but that the Grinch presumably has human DNA that 23andMe can analyze. Now, here's the crucial part: Just how is DNA passed on? Just how does the genetic memory of uncountable generations of humans get passed onto future generations of humans? That's right buddy. Sex.
This is what 23andMe and the executives over at Illumination signed off on. They, seemingly, want you to know that the Grinch is the product of a Mommy Grinch and a Daddy Grinch who love each other very, very much. And that, one day, maybe this Grinch, will too.
[Digg]
