Is gluten the culprit?

Sarah Berry in Going against the grain: why bread-denial is bad explains that some people who think they're gluten intolerant may not be - they may just be intolerant of the way modern mass produced bread is made.

Has neoliberal capitalism had its day?

In Developed economies are not suffering from the consequences of a financial crash, but from a structural crisis of neoliberal capitalism, an extract from his book, David M. Kotz writes that the current global economic slowdown in developed economies is due to a structural crisis of the "neoliberal form of capitalism".

What explains the current malaise in developed economies across the world? In my book, The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism, I analyse the roots of the economic crisis that began in 2008 and the free-market, or ‘neoliberal’, form of capitalism from which the crisis emerged. I argue that the stubborn stagnation afflicting many of the developed economies cannot be understood simply as the fallout of a severe financial crash or as an unusually severe ‘Great Recession’, but instead is a structural crisis of the neoliberal form of capitalism. This means that the continuing stagnation cannot be resolved by policy measures alone within the constraints of neoliberal capitalism. Rather, a resolution requires major institutional restructuring.

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I argue that both theoretical considerations and historical precedents indicate that the neoliberal form of capitalism can no longer give rise to sustained economic growth. The stagnation will put increasing pressure on all the affected groups in society to find an alternative route to resuming normal economic growth. I suggest that a return to a statist economy is the likely outcome, although that can take different forms, ranging from a right-wing nationalist version to a new round of social democracy or even a shift away from capitalism toward socialism. While the neoliberal form of capitalism is unlikely to survive, which statist form will replace it cannot be predicted in advance and will depend on the outcome of economic and political battles among various groups and classes in the coming years.

Growing concensus that we now need active government

In A shift in political thinking is giving Labor a sense of purpose Lenore Taylor argues that there's a new wave of thinking in economics and politics stating the old open model is now reducing growth because of rising inequality.

Australian thinkers, and political parties, have been grappling with a growing wave of thought that the economic challenges of the 2010s cannot be solved by the old 1980s political consensus – the consensus that said economic growth is best achieved by market deregulation and lower taxes and lower spending that generate growth, and allow “all boats to rise” by providing the revenue for governments to pay for social programs and do something or other about poverty.

The rethinking has been going on for quite a while internationally, from Thomas Piketty through to the major international economic institutions. And it turns the old consensus on its head – arguing that rising inequality harms growth, that smart social spending is not the kindly thing governments do after they raise the revenue, but rather a first order revenue-boosting exercise in itself, and asserting that governments need to intervene more to get their economies through this economic transition.

The IMF now says income distribution matters for growth. “Specifically, if the income share of the top 20% (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20% (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth. The poor and the middle class matter the most for growth,” an IMF discussion paper said.

Trump and the disconnect between the Republican elites and their base

Martin Wolf makes some interesting observations in Donald Trump embodies how great republics meet their end.

Why has this happened? The answer is that this is how a wealthy donor class, dedicated to the aims of slashing taxes and shrinking the state, obtained the footsoldiers and voters it required. This, then, is “pluto-populism”: the marriage of plutocracy with rightwing populism. Mr Trump embodies this union. But he has done so by partially dumping the free-market, low tax, shrunken government aims of the party establishment, to which his financially dependent rivals remain wedded. That gives him an apparently insuperable advantage. Mr Trump is no conservative, elite conservatives complain. Precisely. That is also true of the party’s base.

Authoritarians and Trump

In The rise of American authoritarianism Amanda Taub describes the almost linear correlation between how much someone supports Trump and their level of authoritarianism. One of the experts she interview was PhD student Matthew MacWilliams.

MacWilliams studies authoritarianism — not actual dictators, but rather a psychological profile of individual voters that is characterized by a desire for order and a fear of outsiders. People who score high in authoritarianism, when they feel threatened, look for strong leaders who promise to take whatever action necessary to protect them from outsiders and prevent the changes they fear.

The Republican rank and file are revolting

In The Great Republican Revolt David Frum writes about the war inside the Republican Party.

The angriest and most pessimistic people in America aren’t the hipster protesters who flitted in and out of Occupy Wall Street. They aren’t the hashtavists of #BlackLivesMatter. They aren’t the remnants of the American labor movement or the savvy young dreamers who confront politicians with their American accents and un-American legal status.

The angriest and most pessimistic people in America are the people we used to call Middle Americans. Middle-class and middle-aged; not rich and not poor; people who are irked when asked to press 1 for English, and who wonder how white male became an accusation rather than a description.

Mini Tim Tam Cheesecakes recipe

Mini Tim Tam Cheesecakes from Buzzfeed.

Ingredients
80g Butter
350g Tim Tams (crushed)
450g Cream cheese
1 TBSP Vanilla extract
2 Eggs
½ Cup of sugar
½ Cup of sour cream

Mushroom burgers recipe

Mushroom burgers with haloumi by Caroline Velik.

Chocolate swirl cheesecake recipe

Jill Dupleix's Chocolate swirl cheesecake.

French crepe style pancakes

Dan Lepard demonstrates How to make pancakes.

Cacao Protein Balls

Shannon Sullivan's Cacao Bliss Protein Balls.

Ingredients from her website:
2 tablespoons raw cacao powder
3/4 cup dates, pitted and soaked in water
2 tablespoons shredded coconut
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup raw pumpkin or sunflower seeds

An independent encyclopedia on supplementation and nutrition

Examine.com is claimed to be an an "independent encyclopedia on supplementation and nutrition".

Raw chocolate brownies recipe

Lola Berry has a recipe for Raw chocolate brownies.

Lying, the essential skill of any conservative politician?

Rick Perlstein has an interesting piece on The Long Con. He's basically arguing that to be accepted in the modern Republican Party you need to be a liar.

And that, at last, may be the explanation for Mitt Romney’s apparently bottomless penchant for lying in public. If the 2012 GOP nominee lied louder than most—and even more astoundingly than he has during his prior campaigns—it’s just because he felt like he had more to prove to his core following. Lying is an initiation into the conservative elite. In this respect, as in so many others, it’s like multilayer marketing: the ones at the top reap the reward—and then they preen, pleased with themselves for mastering the game. Closing the sale, after all, is mainly a question of riding out the lie: showing that you have the skill and the stones to just brazen it out, and the savvy to ratchet up the stakes higher and higher. Sneering at, or ignoring, your earnest high-minded mandarin gatekeepers—“we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” as one Romney aide put it—is another part of closing the deal. For years now, the story in the mainstream political press has been Romney’s difficulty in convincing conservatives, finally, that he is truly one of them. For these elites, his lying—so dismaying to the opinion-makers at the New York Times, who act like this is something new—is how he has pulled it off once and for all. And at the grassroots, his fluidity with their preferred fables helps them forget why they never trusted the guy in the first place.

Is a low fat, very high carbohydrate diet the cause of obesity?

In 'Fat fertilisers': why overeating is not making you fat Sarah Berry reports on work by Dr David Ludwig into obesity and diet.

Overeating isn't making you fat.

Rather, getting fat makes you overeat.

This is the word of Dr David Ludwig, an obesity expert and professor of nutrition at Harvard.

"It may sound radical, but there's literally a century of science to support this point," Ludwig tells New York Times.
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So what, if not overeating, is causing an obesity crisis of epidemic proportions?

There are two things to consider, according to Ludwig, who examines the epidemic and foods that act as "fat fertilisers" in his new book, Always Hungry.

Firstly, what we are eating is a big problem.

"It's the low fat, very high carbohydrate diet that we've been eating for the last 40 years, which raises levels of the hormone insulin and programs fat cells to go into calorie storage overdrive," he explains. "I like to think of insulin as the ultimate fat cell fertiliser."

The calories become so well stored in the fat cells that our bodies cannot access them to burn for energy. This means we always feel hungry, as our bodies cry out for fuel they can use and simply trying to eat less exacerbates the problem without addressing the real issue.

Cauliflower pizza base

Arabella Forge has a Gluten-free cauliflower pizza base.

Spaghetti bolognese recipe

Nicko's Kitchen Spaghetti bolognese video recipe.

Easy chocolate fudge

Nicko's Kitchen chocolate fudge in 90 seconds.

Healthy chocolate mousse

Nicko's Kitchen has a healthy chocolate mousse recipe on YouTube.

No bake chocolate cheesecake

Nicko's Kitchen has a Chocolate Cheesecake recipe on YouTube.