Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2022 August 6

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August 6[edit]

Karelian Principality[edit]

Hello. Are there any sources on the existence of a local principality (or state) in ancient Karelia before the Swedish and Novgorod invasions? Thank you in advance. Наталья гончарова (talk) 08:31, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if this answers your question exactly, but see The Inhabitation of Karelia in the First Millennium AD. Alansplodge (talk) 19:32, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Alansplodge:.Thank you so much.--Наталья гончарова (talk) 08:56, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Limit intake of juices and milk[edit]

i was looking at this recommendation and wasnt sure whether whoever wrote it meant to say limit all juices and milk or only some like for instance 100 per cent fruit and low fat milk?

Avoid sugary drinks, and limit intake of juices and milk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_diet#Harvard_School_of_Public_Health 220.245.56.123 (talk) 09:31, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That content is not a good representation of what the original Harvard source says. But for an institution with the standing of Harvard, those recommendations are written in a disappointingly tabloid style even in their own article. I would look elsewhere for good nutrition advice. HiLo48 (talk) 09:52, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Everything should be consumed in moderation – too much of a good thing is also not good. Some choices are less healthy than others, especially if consumed in excess, but there are no commercially available foods or drinks that must be avoided completely (unless you have an allergy for a specific ingredient). All these recommendations, from whatever source, should be interpreted as hints, not as prescriptions. Next to moderation, for a balanced diet it is important to not eat always the same things (however healthy by themselves) but to vary.  --Lambiam 10:37, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
there are no commercially available foods or drinks that must be avoided completely (unless you have an allergy for a specific ingredient)
I am taking this quote on and addressing it directly. I define for this purpose 'food' as anything you can buy at a general food store that can be consumed, for whatever reason. And I believe that there are food products that must be avoided completely - for instance, high-alcohol drinks like liquor, things called soft drinks (usually containing way too much sugar and artificial additives), candy bars as well as practically anything you can get at a certain cheap bar or the like. I also noted recently that the more colourful the packaging, usually - the content will be of far lower nutritional value. I will not go into detail as to how or why but there are some things that you just don't need, especially if you want to have a healthy approach to food. --Ouro (blah blah) 04:24, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There is a world of difference between "just don't need" and "must be avoided completely". DuncanHill (talk) 16:30, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Reference 24 in the article links to their rationale for limiting even 100% fruit juice and low fat milk.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:00, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The short version on fruit juice is "too much sugar". People feel more virtuous getting their fructose from squeezed fruit than from HFCS, but it's not clear how your body would tell the difference.
On a similar note, it seems there's a habit of tracking "added" sugar in foods. Manufacturers are happy to play along when they can advertise their product as containing "no added sugar". But non-"added" sugar is still sugar. --Trovatore (talk) 16:41, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The full story of dietary sugar (or fats or anything in depth) and risk of obesity, diabetes, and mortality is largely unknown. To get a glimpse of how complicated these interactions can be, if it's tldr you can just look at the graphs of the reviews by Stanhope 2015 and Malik & Hu 2022 (the articles are good too) (and a different flow chart for beverages from Bray & Popkin 2014). To illustrate just how weird sugar can be, that it's far from as simple as HFCS, artificial, or whatever, I'll cite the non-review (but frequently cited in reviews including one I can't find but which reproduces the key graph) Mozaffarian et. al. 2011. As far as I can tell there isn't much attempt at reproduction of the table "ranking" the sugar sources (so don't take the table as established truth), but plenty of reviews (1000+ citations) go into specific food categories in depth. One unresolved paradox among many is why 100% fruit juice increases mortality while whole fruit reduces it (even if 100% the same fruit, as in an orange). Why would yogurt have better outcomes than cheese and milk and butter? Why in the world are potatoes seemingly about the worst way to ingest sugar? You'll find reviews probing these questions, but few giving definite answers. The evidence for the isolated claim that excess sugars in themselves lead to negative outcomes is mixed-to-moderate (I already closed that tab, sorry). It seems (from my lay reading of the literature) the only thing regarding obesity that is (relatively) certain is that if you burn more calories than you consume, you won't gain weight. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:48, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The notion that if you burn more calories than you consume, you won't gain weight. is true, but fantastically facile answer. The real rub is how does one do that in a way that is healthy and provides things like all of the necessary nutrients. Dietary recommendations go beyond mere calorie counts. Diet is about behavior, and helping people choose diets so they are less likely to crave more food, for example, is a big deal. If person A eats 2000 calories of food that leaves them satiated vs. person B that eats 2000 calories of a different food that leaves them ravenously hungry, person B is more likely to eat even more calories. Furthermore, food has more than energy. There are tons of micronutrients, (vitamins and minerals) that a person absolutely needs to get, and foods that are nutrient dense on a per-calorie basis are more likely to be recommend than those that are nutrient poor. When groups recommend certain diets, these are all considerations, and it's not just about "eat your minimum number of calories and then just stop putting things in your body that day". That sounds easy when you just say it. Most people cannot live like that, and need additional guidance as to how to achieve that goal in a way that doesn't also make them miserable. --Jayron32 18:07, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fruit has lots and lots of dietary fiber, which makes you full, slows down nutrient absorption, and has various other good effects. You just aren't going to consume 100 grams of sugar by eating fruit, while you can easily do that from sugary drinks, which have negligible fiber. Milk products like yogurt and cheese have by themselves little sugar, as the process of making them involves having microbes eat the lactose in the milk. Commercial yogurt frequently has sugar added to it, however. I wonder if studies looking at yogurt make any attempt to control for the fat content, as lots of yogurt is low- or non-fat, while cheese usually contains plenty of fat, and butter is basically all fat. Being an animal product, this is mostly saturated fat, and saturated fat intake has a mountain of evidence for adverse health effects due to its effect on lipid profile. ——47.147.118.55 (talk) 04:06, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well these all have different answers for different reasons now that I look it up: butter is made from the cream skim that is naturally low in lactose, cheese makers separate it from the whey which contains almost all the lactose, but yogurt actually contains almost as much sugars (3.3-3.6 g/100g) as milk (5g/100g), so the yogurt is still paradoxical. The "mountain of evidence" on saturated fats is like most things on diet a bit more up or down or up in the air. Of course what I said about the cheesemakers isn't meant to be taken literally, it refers to any sort of manufacturer of dairy product. And @Jayron, I don't know how you managed to get that interpretation of that quote in the context of my answer. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:35, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Re 47.147.118.55: The question wasn't about fruit, but about fruit juice. An 8 oz glass of orange juice has (per Google) 18 grams of sugar, or almost two thirds of the sugar in the same amount of Coca Cola. It may have a tiny bit of fiber, if you go for the pulpy sort, but not what I'd call "lots and lots" (actually Google says 0 grams; I'm sure it's not really zero, but in any case not a whole lot). --Trovatore (talk) 05:05, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was responding to One unresolved paradox among many is why 100% fruit juice increases mortality while whole fruit reduces it (even if 100% the same fruit, as in an orange). --47.147.118.55 (talk) 04:54, 12 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. Fair enough. Of course I doubt causality is established in the first place. --Trovatore (talk) 06:02, 12 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Biden's wooden box[edit]

What does this kinky wooden box in front of Biden contain and what's it's purpose? Thanks. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 15:14, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

On the news they said it contained a model of the house that al-Qaeda guy (Ayman al-Zawahiri) was living in, before that drone strike evicted him. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:38, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
President Biden meets with his national security team on July 1 to discuss the drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri on July 31. The wooden box in front of the president contains a replica of the house where al-Zawahiri was living in Kabul, Afghanistan (White House caption to the same photograph}. [1] Alansplodge (talk) 19:23, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]