Hump Day Hit Piece - WTF Wednesday

Red Meat, Intended Audiences, & Letting the Spice Flow

Author

Colin Dragon
September 06, 2023

Welcome back to the Daily Dumbbell, where every day can be hump day if you do some hip thrusts!

We’re back to daily delivery this week with a slightly different format! We’d love to hear your feedback. So stick around til the end and hit us with your rating on our fancy new poll!

Ok, Let’s dive in!

Research Roundup

Don’t Call it a Comeback

Two new papers question the idea that meat is unhealthy.

The first group ran a meta analysis on 150+ papers to see if red meat really correlated with all cause mortality.

Surprisingly (maybe) they found there was no relationship there. After controlling for lifestyle variables there was no association between red meat intake & dozens of negative health outcomes.

Interestingly, in a study of 200k+ Australians, the positive longevity effects of vegetarians went away as soon as you controlled for alcohol consumption OR smoking, OR exercise activity.

Suggesting most of the benefits of a vegetarian diet appear to come more from the other lifestyle choices they have made.

The second study looked at average red meat intake and the lifespan across 175 different countries.

Even more surprisingly this one found a positive relationship between meat consumption and longevity.

We know what you’re thinking. It was our first question as well.

Did they control for socioeconomic status? Many cultures around the world cannot afford meat and comparing them to wealthy nations who can would be deceiving.

And reader, we were pleasantly surprised to find they controlled for that and quite a few other iterations of that we hadn’t even though of.

They separated countries into different categories based on GDP, Lifestyle, Cultural Beliefs, and a few other variations to cover all possible bases.

Hump Day Hit Piece

You probably saw this video go viral earlier in the week. Mostly because it got picked up by a conservative social media vagrant personality.

@pmdpod

Giving birth to a shakshuka today. #singleinyour30s #livingalonevlog #childlessbychoice #childlessmillennial

This controversy is the perfect example of something we’ve talked about a couple times recently: understanding the intended audience for content. 

A lot of “bad advice” on social media tends to be advice that just isn’t for you. For example: This Tweet about improving your weekly score from a 5/7 to a 7/7.

This one also got a fair amount of hate. But mostly from people who were not the target audience! Let us explain.

There are a ton of (mostly) young men out there who meal prep and hit their macros M-F & workout hard, only to go completely off the rails on the weekend. To the point that they undo their 5 days of hard work with 2 days of poor choices.

They’re frustrated at their lack of progress & this is exactly what they need to hear.

This is not helpful advice for many people (mostly women) who are trying to get to the gym a couple times a week and make small changes to improve. Hearing that a 5/7 is a 71% and a C- can be extremely discouraging.

Back to Julia’s Tik-Tok. Her bragging about sleeping in until 10am and having freedom on the weekend because she doesn’t have kids, triggered many people with kids who hold more traditional values. But was her content created to make fun of people who have kids? To taunt them?

Or is there context we might be missing?

Even if you are alone, going through a breakup, haven’t found the one yet, that’s ok. You can still find joy through all of it.

That’s not so different from our message about health and fitness.

It’s ok if you have weight to lose, if you’re not happy where you are right now, or with how your body looks. You can work to improve yourself while also meeting yourself where you are right now with love and acceptance.

And in fact, you should.

Boxing up your happiness and sending it to a version of your future self, with permission to open once you’ve lost the weight or found a spouse, is not a recipe for a good, happy, joy filled life.

Next time you find yourself annoyed or triggered by something on social media, ask yourself who the target audience is. Is it me? Is this intended to be mean to me? Or could this be exactly what someone else needs to hear?

WTF Wednesday

A compelling case for the rise of spices in cooking.

We imagine there’s multiple factors at play here. i.e.

  • Spices having anti microbial properties

  • Food tasting better with spices making us want to eat more of it and thus having more energy/living longer

  • Spices helping us preserve food for longer

  • etc, etc.

Fascinating to think about!

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Daily Dumbbell! We’ll be back again tomorrow with more heat for your inbox. Let us know below what you thought of this one!