Russian wives beg Putin to stop sending husbands into ‘meat grinder’

The Telegraph

Russian wives beg Putin to stop sending husbands into ‘meat grinder’

George Styllis – March 12, 2023

More than a dozen Russian women made the brave appeal to the president
More than a dozen Russian women made the brave appeal to the president

A group of Russian women have appealed to Vladimir Putin to stop sending their husbands and children to the front line like ‘meat’ without adequate training.

In a video shared online, the women say the mobilisation of new recruits to the army has been a betrayal after the Russian President said they would not be sent to the front line immediately.

The women say their sons, husbands and brothers have been “thrown like meat” to storm fortified areas in Ukraine. In the video shared by the independent Telegram news channel SOTA, they can be seen standing in a group holding a sign in Russian that reads, “580 Separate Howitzer Artillery Division”, dated March 11, 2023.

“My husband… is located on the line of contact with the enemy,” one woman says.

“Our mobilised [men] are being sent like lambs to the slaughter to storm fortified areas – five at a time, against 100 heavily armed enemy men,” she continued.

Putin ordered the mobilization of more than 300,000 men in September – the first since 1941 – to the shock of many ordinary Russians. Of those who were drafted, many have perished.

Among the reasons for the high casualties have been poor training and a lack of equipment. New recruits have reported being sent to battle with old weapons and unsuitable clothing.

A team of independent Russian journalists called the No Future project says authorities have attempted to cover up the deaths of dozens of mobilised Russians from Volgograd who were sent to fight without any ammunition. The group says new recruits are also deprived of first-aid kits and hot food, while during one training session the men just “played on their phones” for two weeks.

“They are prepared to serve their homeland but according to the specialisation they’ve trained for, not as stormtroopers. We ask that you pull back our guys from the line of contact and provide the artillerymen with artillery and ammunition,” said the woman.

The group’s criticism of the Kremlin comes amid growing anger among Russian wives and mothers over the war.

In a rare acknowledgment of the government’s failings, Putin last year told a group of angry mothers that he felt “their pain” during a choreographed sit-down in which he at times appeared emotional.

He has also said “mistakes” were made in the call-up to reinforcements. Despite that, the Kremlin has hinted at a second mobilisation.

MPs have proposed a law that will give Russia’s National Guard more power to enforce military draft orders and another that will allow property to be confiscated from Russians who flee abroad.

Mortality rate of Russian soldiers from east 30 times higher than in Moscow, St Petersburg

The New Voice of Ukraine

Mortality rate of Russian soldiers from east 30 times higher than in Moscow, St Petersburg

March 12, 2023

Liquidated Russian military
Liquidated Russian military

That’s according to the latest the U.K. Defense Intelligence report, tweeted on March 12.

Read also: UK intelligence estimates Russian losses near Vuhledar

Ethnic minorities often bear the brunt of the Russian military’s meat-grinder fighting tactics, according to the report. In Astrakhan, for example, about 75% of the casualties come from the city’s Kazakh and Tatar minorities.

Meanwhile, the populations of Russia’s richest cities – Moscow and St. Petersburg ­– remain relatively untouched by the carnage in Ukraine. This is especially true for the Kremlin elite.

Read also: Russia loses up to 30,000 invaders while trying to take Bakhmut, says Western intel

UK intelligence analysed the families of Russian top officials visible in the first two rows of the audience during the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s speech on state of the nation. None of their children are known to serve in the army.

Read also: Front line in Bakhmut now marked by local river — UK intelligence

As the Russian Ministry of Defense tries to address the issue of a constant shortage of combat personnel, the isolation of the well-off and more influential part of Russian society from military problems is likely to remain a major consideration, UK intelligence concluded.

Free coffee for BLM demonstrators horrifies neighborhood snowflakes: A Virginia bakery gave BLM activists free coffee. Then came the backlash.

The Washington Post

A Virginia bakery gave BLM activists free coffee. Then came the backlash.

Tim Carman, The Washington Post – March 10, 2023

Brian Noyes and Josephine Gilbert agreed to sit down on March 1 and talk it out. Noyes, founder of the celebrated Red Truck Bakery, and Gilbert, the leader of a loose coalition that demonstrates under the banner of All Lives Matter, wanted to reach an accord before events spun out of control in the usually restful town of Warrenton, Va.

The issue was coffee – and the weekly demonstrations on Courthouse Square in downtown Warrenton, where two groups have been trying to poke and prod the conscience of the city.

Since June 2020, not long after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, a handful of organizations have hosted a Black Lives Matter Vigil For Action on Saturday mornings when, for 45 minutes, dozens of people quietly hold up signs to remind locals about racial injustice and institutional racism. The demonstrations eventually led to counterprotests across the street, aimed at shutting down the vigils that All Lives Matter activists see as destructive to this conservative community in Fauquier County, a traditional Republican stronghold.

Red Truck got dragged into this drama on the last Saturday in February when a relatively new member of the ALM group entered the bakery, camera phone in hand. Jennifer Blevins Ragle asked a young employee why the shop was giving out free coffee to participants at the BLM vigil, but not others on the square. She implied Red Truck was discriminating against ALM.

“I just don’t understand giving free coffee to some people, but not others. I mean, that makes your store very political,” Ragle said to the 17-year-old employee behind the counter. “I’ll make sure it gets to the paper and everything else.”

Ragle’s video was posted on a YouTube channel called Singing Patriot, where it gained little traction. But it was also posted on a TikTok account, named crossstitch1954, where it has racked up more than 21,000 views and generated more than 800 comments, many of them calling for boycotts of Red Truck. Or worse.

“Hope this place burns to the ground,” wrote one commenter. “Close the place down! Let those black lives keep the place open. All the other lives don’t matter,” wrote another. “Someone please put a pallet of bricks in front of that store so we can protest against Red Truck Bakery,” added a third.

Negative reviews started appearing on Red Truck’s Yelp and Google pages, sometimes from people far from the streets of Warrenton. The bakery began receiving harassing phone calls, too. “Threats of damage and injury,” Noyes told The Washington Post.

One caller said, simply, “we are watching you,” Noyes said. “Picture a young girl answering the phone at a small bakery and hearing that.”

On Feb. 27, Noyes issued an apology and an explanation to try to defuse the situation. The owner wrote that he is not in the Warrenton store often – Red Truck’s headquarters are in Marshall, Va. – and that when he first encountered the BLM vigil in 2021, he saw no counterprotesters on the square. He treated the vigil participants to water and cranberry muffins. Noyes then told his staff that BLM members might occasionally wander in for water or coffee, which would be on the house.

“It started as an innocent and spur-of-the-moment neighborly gesture, but no good deed goes unpunished, I guess,” Noyes wrote. “I don’t remember an All Lives Matter group being there back then, but if they had ever asked me about this, I certainly would have given them the same consideration.”

Before Noyes posted the statement on his social channels, he sent it to Gilbert, as a courtesy. She acknowledged that she received it ahead of time and “thought it was fine,” she told The Washington Post. They then agreed to meet for coffee at Red Truck. They had a favor to ask of each other.

After exchanging pleasantries, Gilbert asked Noyes if he would talk to the BLM demonstrators. She hoped Noyes would use his influence in the community – earned by hosting fundraisers and events, garnering national acclaim for his baked goods, even getting a shout-out from President Barack Obama – to convince the BLM group to stop their weekly gatherings.

Gilbert had already petitioned others to stop the vigils. She had addressed the Warrenton Town Council. She had expressed her concerns to the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors. She had even talked to the city’s chief of police and mayor. “I appreciate you figuring out a way to stop this indoctrination,” Gilbert told the town council on Sept. 14, 2021.

Gilbert clarified her “indoctrination” comment for The Post.

“When I say ‘indoctrination,’ what I mean by that is, normalizing this type of protest for kids that come by every Saturday morning with their parents to the farmers market,” she said. “They’re not going to change my mind or any of the people who are standing with me. They are normalizing behavior that is not right. Warrenton is not racist.”

Like the public officials in Warrenton, Noyes rejected Gilbert’s proposal. Noyes told her that he has no control over BLM demonstrators. “That’s their right to be out there, just like it’s your right,” he said to her.

Once rebuffed, Gilbert started to raise her voice. Noyes called her loud and animated. Gilbert said she’s from Sicily. “As I get passionate about this and get excited, my voice automatically goes up,” she told The Post. She said she apologized to Noyes on the spot after raising her voice.

The meeting did the exact opposite of what Noyes had hoped. He left it feeling “discouraged and realizing that there’s no way to work with these people.” His employees were worried, too, after hearing the conversation turn intense.

Noyes decided right then he would shut down Red Truck in Warrenton for the weekend, including the Saturday when demonstrators would gather again on Courthouse Square. He said he would pay the staff for those two days. (The closure would stretch into Monday and not just in Warrenton; he also closed the Marshall shop that day as he worked to hire security to ease his staff’s fears.) Noyes even moved his signature red truck, a 1954 Ford F-100 that he bought from Tommy Hilfiger, out of an abundance of caution.

Noyes thought the closures would calm things down – and demonstrators were calm that weekend – but Gilbert thought the closings were “ridiculous.”

“Why didn’t he just shut down for the two hours that we were going to be there” on the square, Gilbert said. “This is just a game that Mr. Noyes is playing. He’s a smart man, but like I told him when I left, I’m smart too. I’m not stupid. I’m not rolling over.”

Even as the conversation turned noisy, Noyes reminded Gilbert that he still had a request. He wanted her to ask Ragle to take down the video. Not only was it stirring things up, it was putting a minor in the public eye, which was troubling to the girl’s parents and to Red Truck’s staff. Gilbert said she wouldn’t contact Ragle, that Noyes would have to do it. She said she didn’t believe in taking down the video. She wanted people to see it, as further evidence of how BLM demonstrators have divided the town, she said.

What’s more, Gilbert didn’t think Red Truck’s free coffee policy was an honest mistake or a misunderstanding, as Noyes alleges. “He got caught,” she said. “He told me he didn’t want to take sides, but he did take sides and now he got busted. And he doesn’t want the community to know he took sides.” (Noyes, incidentally, has halted the free coffee program.)

Both Red Truck employees and the minor’s mother attempted to track down Ragle, but Noyes wasn’t sure they ever made contact. Ragle’s video remains up on both YouTube and TikTok.

Ragle’s behavior has given Red Truck staff cause for concern, Noyes said. She refused to turn off her video camera, as requested by an employee, and as she exited the bakery, she bumped into a man at the front door. Ragle later contacted police and said the man, apparently a BLM demonstrator, was blocking her exit. “Our investigation revealed that that did not happen,” said Timothy Carter, Warrenton’s police chief. “It was probably just a big misunderstanding.”

Ragle has also posted more videos, including one where she appears to be on the opposite side of the street, yelling at BLM demonstrators. Another video scrolls through a recent article in the Fauquier Times, with added captions that suggest it was Noyes, not Gilbert, who raised his voice during their meeting. (Noyes denied the charge.) “Bryan [sic] Noyes,” the caption continues, “backs BLM period!!!” Cage the Elephant’s song, “Hypocrite,” plays in the background.

According to public records and one newspaper story, Ragle has had criminal charges filed against her. She was charged with violating a restraining order in 2013 and trespassing in 2014. The charges in both cases were dismissed. In 2016, the Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office arrested Ragle for assault and battery, according to the Culpeper Times. The Post could not immediately find out how the case was resolved.

The Post left a pair of voice mails to a number connected with Ragle in public records. A woman who called back did not identify herself and hung up after learning she was talking to a Post reporter. A short time later, Ragle posted another video featuring a screenshot of a 2014 news story about Red Truck. Ragle superimposed a caption over the story: “Prior Washington Post writer, sending out his goons to cover his backing of BLM.” (Noyes is a former art director for The Post.)

Ragle’s TikTok video has changed the dynamic in Warrenton, said Noyes and Carter, the police chief. It has taken an issue that was rooted in the community and spread it beyond the city’s borders. “This video on TikTok is just living a life of its own,” Noyes said. “It’s just bringing in so much… anger from people who don’t even know the store. It’s just reason for them to rally.”

The police chief harbors similar concerns: that someone from outside might “take action kind of in the fog of what’s going on,” Carter said. “I’m not really concerned about either one of our groups, but what I’m concerned about – what we’re always concerned about – is someone coming in and just using it as a platform to do something else.”

This weekend will be the first one, post TikTok video, when Red Truck is open and the demonstrators are back on the square. No one in Warrenton – not Noyes, not Carter, not BLM organizer Scott Christian – is sure what to expect. The dueling demonstrations have been generally peaceful, especially in recent weeks, said Carter and Christian, though the BLM leader has lately seen signs among ALM protesters about freeing the prisoners who were convicted of their actions during the Jan. 6 riots.

Gilbert said ALM has “no intention” of singling out Red Truck this weekend. “Our beef is actually with the town for not stopping what’s going on across the street,” she said.

Del. Michael J. Webert (R-Fauquier) released a statement on Thursday that said it was time for the community to put this incident behind them. The coffee, he noted, was given out in good faith. “We are a close-knit community that has no need to be angry or mistrust one another,” Webert said. “Let’s remember that we all have a stake in making our community the best it can be, and act like the neighbors we are.”

For his part, Noyes is debating just how neighborly to be on Saturday. He’s contemplating whether to bring muffins to people on both sides of the square, a kind of Red Truck peace offering. But he also wants to see how things unfold. He doesn’t want to make a wrong move. He’s already paid a price, both emotionally and financially. He figures he has lost between $15,000 to $20,000 because of the bakery closures. He’s paying out another $1,000 a day for security.

“That’s a lot of muffins,” he deadpanned.

Was Sweden right about Covid all along?

The Telegraph

Was Sweden right about Covid all along?

Fraser Nelson – March 10, 2023

This article was originally published on 23 February 2022.

While Britain locked down like the rest of the world, Sweden became the defiant outlier
While Britain locked down like the rest of the world, Sweden became the defiant outlier

To understand Sweden, you need to understand a word that’s hard to explain, let alone translate: lagom. It means, in effect, “perfect-simple”: not too much, not too little. People who are lagom don’t stand out or make a fuss: they blend right in – and this is seen as a virtue.

Essays are written about why lagom sums up a certain Swedish mindset – that it’s bad to stand out, to consider yourself better or be an outlier. That’s why it’s so strange that, during the lockdowns, Sweden became the world’s defiant outlier.

Swedes saw it the other way around. They were keeping calm and carrying on: lockdown was an extreme, draconian, untested experiment. Lock up everyone, keep children out of school, suspend civil liberties, send police after people walking their dogs – and call this “caution”? Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, never spoke about a Swedish “experiment”. He said all along he could not recommend a public health intervention that had never been proven.

Tegnell also made another point: that he didn’t claim to be right. It would take years, he’d argue, to see who had jumped the right way. His calculation was that, on a whole-society basis, the collateral damage of lockdowns would outweigh what good they do. But you’d only know if this was so after a few years. You’d have to look at cancer diagnosis, hospital waiting lists, educational damage and, yes, count the Covid dead.

The problem with lockdowns is that no one looks at whole-society pictures. Professor Neil Ferguson’s team from Imperial College London admitted this, once, as a breezy aside. “We do not consider the wider social and economic costs of suppression,” they wrote in a supposed assessment of lockdown, “which will be high.” But just how high? And were they a price worth paying?

As Sweden abolished all domestic Covid restrictions, it emerged with one of Europe’s lower Covid death tolls: the rate is 1,614 per million people, just over half the amount of Britain (2,335). Given that our death tolls were comparable at first (both among the worst anywhere), it’s hard to argue that there’s some demographic force which meant Covid was never going to spread in Sweden.

Nor is it possible to argue that Sweden was some hedonistic party-nation: its people were incredibly cautious. But unlike Brits, they had a government that trusted them.

There were some Swedish diktats: a “rule of eight” was set up for a while. Bars, restaurants and cafes were all socially distanced and, at one point, had to close by 8.30pm. For a few weeks, Swedes even had vaccine passports. But that was about it: the rest was guidance, and it was followed.

What no statistic can convey is just how careful Swedes were; something that struck me whenever I’d visit. It was perfectly legal to meet up in bars and for a fika in a coffee shop, but most didn’t. A friend of mine had a rule that she’d only ever meet friends outside – even in the Stockholm winter (she did this so much that she got frostbite). In summer last year, studies showed Swedes working from home more than in any other European country.

This kept Covid low, while the lack of rules allowed for people to use their judgement while minimising economic and social damage. Sweden’s GDP fell by 2.9 per cent in 2020, while Britain’s collapsed by 9.4 per cent.

The cost of the various Covid measures is best summed up by the debt mountain: an extra £8,400 per head in Britain, and £3,000 in Sweden.

Swedish schools kept going throughout, with no face masks. Sixth-formers and undergraduates switched to home learning, but the rest of Swedish children went to school as normal. That’s not to say there weren’t absences as the virus spread: it was common to see a third, at times even half of the class absent due to sniffles or suspected Covid. But there were no full-scale closures and, aside from some suspicions about minor grade inflation (the average maths grade sneaked up to 10.1, from 9.3), there is no talk in Sweden about educational devastation.

In Britain, there is calamity and cover-up. By doling out more A grades than ever before – and telling universities to make more space – young people could be shovelled through the system with lost ground never recognised or quite made up.

With coronavirus restrictions lifted, life in Sweden is returning to normal - Nora Lorek/Bloomberg
With coronavirus restrictions lifted, life in Sweden is returning to normal – Nora Lorek/Bloomberg

Grade inflation was staggering: the number of A-level students marked at A or A* jumped to 45 per cent, up from 26 per cent pre-pandemic, but no one doubts that these students learned far less. By some measures, educational inequality has been set back 10 years. But some problems are too big to admit.

Academics suggest the effect of lost education is permanent: less education inevitably means lower salaries and slower career progression. The Institute for Fiscal Studies talks about £40,000 of lost lifetime earnings per pupil in Britain, £350 billion in all. Swedish studies estimate that Covid’s impact (on absenteeism and home-learning) could mean an £800 million overall hit – far smaller than the impact on Britain’s lost school days.

The impact on hospital waiting lists is also very different. Fear of a virus keeps people away – at the peak of the first wave, attendance at Swedish A&E was 31 per cent lower than normal; in Britain, it collapsed by 57 per cent. Routine operations were down by 20 per cent in Sweden and 34 per cent in England, so waiting lists grew in both countries. As they did pretty much world over.

But no country, anywhere, has had a waiting list grow as big as Britain’s: from 4.4 million pre-pandemic, it will peak at about 9.2 million, according to NHS modelling – that’s equivalent to one in five adults.

Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, said from the start that he could not recommend a public health intervention that had never been proven - MAGNUS ANDERSSON/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images
Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, said from the start that he could not recommend a public health intervention that had never been proven – MAGNUS ANDERSSON/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images

A top-down health service is more easily disrupted if it’s ordered to transform into a Covid service (and people are told to “protect the NHS” by not using it). Sweden’s waiting lists, 130,000 pre-pandemic, hit 170,000 in October 2021. Even adjusting for population, it’s nowhere near the size of Britain’s problem.

Sweden will not declare victory. No one was properly prepared for Covid, and The country’s failure to protect care home residents is still seen as a national scandal. Sweden also took a bigger hit than its neighbours: Denmark, which did lock down, has more to shout about when it comes to combining a lower Covid hit with minimal economic disruption.

But, as Tegnell would say, it’s still too early to say – with any finality – who got it right and who didn’t.

As California gets drenched, officials opening Oroville Dam spillway for first time in 4 years

The Sacramento Bee

As California gets drenched, officials opening Oroville Dam spillway for first time in 4 years

Michael McGough – March 10, 2023

California water officials opened the main spillway at the Oroville Dam on Friday afternoon, doing so for flood control purposes for the first time since 2019.

Ted Craddock, deputy director of the State Water Project, said the water elevation at Lake Oroville has risen by close to 180 feet since Dec. 1 after a parade of storms this winter, now standing at about 840 feet — 60 feet shy of its maximum.

State water officials began to increase releases from Lake Oroville, which is operated by the state Department of Water Resources, on Wednesday for flood control purposes, Craddock said during a virtual news briefing ahead of the successful spillway opening at noon.

The dam was the center of a 2017 crisis. Torrential rainfall that February damaged the Oroville Dam’s main spillway. When rerouted water threatened failure on the dam’s emergency spillway, more than 180,000 residents downstream of the dam in Butte, Sutter and Yuba counties were ordered to evacuate.

Extensive repairs followed, and state water officials let water flow down the newly rebuilt spillway for the first time on April 2, 2019.

“As part of the reconstruction effort, we installed instrumentation throughout the structure,” Craddock said. “So we can monitor the pressure, drainage and also movement of the spillway as well.”

Spillway flow Friday began at 15,000 cubic feet per second, which Craddock called a “relatively small release.” The spillway is capable of releasing up to 270,000 cubic feet per second.

“As we look further into the upcoming storms, it’s possible we will be making adjustments to our releases,” he said. Releases during the rebuilt spillway’s only prior use, in 2019, peaked at 25,000 cubic feet per second.

Craddock said that due to near-record level snowpack in the Sierra this winter, water officials are confident that snowmelt will help to replenish Lake Oroville following flood releases and the end of the rainy season.

Water releases are also underway at the Folsom Dam, which is operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Water flows down the new spillway at Oroville Dam on Tuesday, April 2, 2019 in Oroville.
Water flows down the new spillway at Oroville Dam on Tuesday, April 2, 2019 in Oroville.
What is the Oroville Dam?

The Oroville Dam opened in 1968 and is the tallest dam in the U.S. at 770 feet. Located just northeast of Oroville city limits, water from the dam’s main spillway flows into the Feather River.

The main spillway failed catastrophically in February 2017, when a large and cratering fracture formed amid weeks of heavy rain, leading operators to curtail water flow onto the emergency spillway.

The wreckage of the main spillway at Oroville Dam in February 2017 left tons of concrete and other debris piled up in the Feather River below. The state plans to open the rebuilt spillway Tuesday.
The wreckage of the main spillway at Oroville Dam in February 2017 left tons of concrete and other debris piled up in the Feather River below. The state plans to open the rebuilt spillway Tuesday.

The emergency spillway is a concrete lip along a hillside. When water began to spill over the lip, the hillside began to erode, and dam officials feared the emergency spillway would fail and release a “wall of water” downstream. Emergency authorities on Feb. 13, 2017, ordered some 188,000 residents of the Feather River Basin to evacuate.

Dam operators then ramped up water releases on the main spillway, easing lake levels and pressure on the emergency spillway. The emergency spillway held, and evacuation orders were reduced to warnings the following day.

forensic team in 2018 determined the crisis resulted from “long-term systemic failure” by both state water officials and federal regulators, writing in a nearly 600-page report that design flaws were exacerbated by insufficient repair work over the years.

The crisis cost $1.1 billion, including more than $630 million in spillway repairs.

The Department of Water Resources says repairs and improvements made during 2017 and 2018 have brought the dam up to “state-of-the-art” standards, Craddock said Friday.

To keep the emergency spillway from crumbling, DWR dramatically ramped up water releases on the battered main spillway, bringing lake levels down and effectively ending the crisis. Water continued pounding the main spillway for days afterward, carving a giant crevice in the nearby hillside. This photo was taken Feb. 20.
To keep the emergency spillway from crumbling, DWR dramatically ramped up water releases on the battered main spillway, bringing lake levels down and effectively ending the crisis. Water continued pounding the main spillway for days afterward, carving a giant crevice 

This Is the One Spice You Should Add to Your Diet if You’re Insulin-Resistant

Parade

This Is the One Spice You Should Add to Your Diet if You’re Insulin-Resistant

Emily Laurence – March 10, 2023

It will add a nice kick to your meals too.

If you’re prediabetic or have Type 2 diabetes, you’re likely already familiar with the role insulin plays in the body. It’s not something most people think about—until there’s a problem. Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas and allows glucose to enter the body’s cells and provide energy. When muscles, fat and liver don’t respond as they should to insulin, it’s called insulin resistance. This can elevate blood glucose levels and, over time, lead to prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes.

Here’s the good news: It’s possible to reverse insulin resistance through diet and lifestyle habits. This can help prevent or even reverse Type 2 diabetes. What we eat is that powerful. While it’s important to take into account your entire diet, registered dietitians who work regularly with people who are prediabetic or diabetic say that there’s one spice in particular that can be especially beneficial to add to your diet: turmeric.

Related: This Diet Is the Most Studied for Reducing Insulin Resistance—and Even Diabetes 

How Turmeric Helps With Insulin Resistance

Turmeric has long been used medicinally, with its origins dating back nearly 4,000 years to Southeast Asia, where it was used in religious ceremonies. Turmeric is still an important spice in South Asian culture, used regularly in cuisine.

Several studies have shown that turmeric has several benefits in lowering blood sugar,” says Lori Zanini, RD, a registered dietitian and author of The Diabetes Cookbook and Meal Plan for the Newly Diagnosed. Zanini explains that turmeric help improves insulin resistance by “turning off” several blood sugar-rising pathways.

Lauren Harris-Pincus, MS, RDN, a registered dietitian and author of The Everything Easy Pre-Diabetes Cookbook, explains that turmeric, and its main component curcumin, decrease inflammation and decrease glucose production in the liver, other ways the spice is particularly beneficial for someone who is insulin resistant.

Related: 13 Foods That Help With Diabetes, from Raspberries and Blueberries to Tuna and Brussels Sprouts

Harris-Pincus says that while there hasn’t been a specific amount of turmeric directly linked to improving insulin resistance, she says that studies have included doses from 250 milligrams to a few grams. “Studies have also shown that doses of up to 12 grams per day of curcumin are safe, tolerable and non-toxic,” she says. Zanini adds to this by saying that it’s generally recommended to consume between 500 to 2,000 milligrams of turmeric a day if you are consuming it specifically for its health benefits.

“It’s important to know that turmeric is poorly absorbed and quickly excreted, so more research needs to be done to determine appropriate doses and potential methods of delivery to improve absorption and utilization,” Harris-Pincus says. Want to ensure your body absorbs as much as possible? Scientific studies show that pairing it with black pepper can help.

Related: How You Can Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally, According to Experts

Other Benefits of Regularly Consuming Turmeric and 10 Other Herbs To Try

Both dietitians say that turmeric is a beneficial spice for everyone to consume regularly, not just those who are insulin resistant. In addition to helping lower blood sugar, Harris-Pincus says that scientific research shows that consuming turmeric regularly can help with joint and muscle soreness. So if you are an athlete or have arthritis, it’s worth it to add more turmeric to your diet.

Additionally, scientific research shows that turmeric also supports immune health and brain health. Since the curcumin in turmeric is anti-inflammatory, consuming it regularly truly benefits the whole body and can help play a role in preventing chronic diseases and dementia.

While the vast majority of people can benefit from having more turmeric in their diets, Harris-Pincus says that turmeric supplements may not be safe for people on certain medications like blood thinners or non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs). “They may also contribute to gastrointestinal issues with long-term use, so speak to your doctor before adding turmeric capsules to your regimen if you take prescription medications or have medical conditions, especially gastrointestinal problems,” she says.

What if you aren’t into turmeric? Both dietitians say that there are other herbs that can help with insulin resistance. “Additional spices that have shown anti-diabetic properties include cinnamon, clove, cumin, fenugreek, ginger, licorice, marjoram, nutmeg, oregano and rosemary,” Harris-Pincus says. So if turmeric isn’t for you, integrating any of these herbs into your diet will have a similar effect.

Remember, insulin resistance can be reversed. Talk to your doctor or a registered dietitian about how you can use food to support your health and help keep blood sugar levels from rising. Incorporating more herbs into your diet is just one way to do it. And, bonus, it will make your meals taste even more flavorful too.

Mass Backstabbing Spree Over Putin’s War Sweeps Russia

Daily Beast

Mass Backstabbing Spree Over Putin’s War Sweeps Russia

Noor Ibrahim – March 10, 2023

Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via REUTERS
Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via REUTERS

Russian citizens are ratting each other out to authorities in droves for anti-war comments made in bars, beauty salons, and grocery stores in roughly a dozen cities across the country, according to a new report from the independent Russian news outlet Vrestka.

Legal filings obtained by the outlet from Moscow, Bryansk, Novosibirsk, and other cities indicate that citizens have been turned in for “violations” as minor as cracking a joke about the war, listening to Ukrainian music, or even just talking about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion in a public space.

Many of those jailed after being reported by other citizens were charged under Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, a new law signed by Putin last year criminalizing “public actions aimed at discrediting” Russian Armed Forces.

One Russian man from Bryansk, Mikhail Kolokolnikov, was reportedly fined and jailed for two days after a stranger called authorities on him for saying the phrase “Glory to Ukraine” at a bar on Jan. 15. In an interview with Vrestka, Kolokolnikov said that two officers stormed the bar shortly after he said the phrase to another man, demanding to know, “Who said ‘Glory to Ukraine’ here?”

“The other day, a rocket hit a house in Dnipro,” Kolokolnikov, who was born in Ukraine, told the outlet—explaining why he said the slogan in a public place. “And I used to walk past this house every day to the beach, along the Pobeda embankment. In short, I was still a little angry because of this.”

From Murder Pigeons to ‘Evil’ Forces: How Putin Sold His War

In another case, Chita resident Ivan Sleponogov was jailed after being accused of saying an anti-war slogan during an Easter church service last April, according to a legal complaint. Sleponogov had allegedly claimed that he was actually chanting “Glory to the guys who died in Ukraine!” in reference to Russian soldiers who were killed in combat, and the case was eventually dropped—after Sleponogov had spent 10 days in jail.

Other cases detailed in the Vrestka investigation include complaints made against Russian citizens for playing a Ukrainian song in the car while driving, drunkenly making pro-Ukrainian statements from a balcony, and criticizing the war in private conversations with friends at a coffee shop. The individuals who made the complaints allegedly include eavesdropping neighbors, coworkers, and janitors.

In many of the cases, according to the outlet, little to no evidence was provided by witnesses who reported the alleged violations.

In some court filings, however, the “anti-war” sentiments allegedly expressed by accused citizens are not so subtle. In Serpukhov, a city near Moscow, two Russian army veterans accused Yuri Nemtov of approaching them at a shopping mall last November with some choice words. “Well, invaders! Go there to die like meat!” he allegedly said.

The Ugly Elitism of the American Right

The Atlantic Daily

The Ugly Elitism of the American Right

No one hates ordinary people like the Republicans and their media enablers do.

By Tom Nichols – March 9, 2023

A political display is posted on the outside of the Fox News headquarters in New York in July 2020.
A political display is posted on the outside of the Fox News headquarters in New York in July 2020. (Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty)

Fox News will likely never face any real consequences for the biggest scandal in the history of American media. But will Republican voters finally understand who really looks down on them?


Loathing and Indifference

It’s time to talk about elitism.

Last month, I wrote that the revelations about Fox News in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit showed that Fox personalities, for all their populist bloviation, are actually titanic elitists. This is not the elitism of those who think they are smarter or more capable than others—I’ll get to that in a moment—but a new and gruesome elitism of the American right, a kind of hatred and disgust on the part of right-wing media and political leaders for the people they claim to love and defend. Greed and cynicism and moral poverty can explain only so much of what we’ve learned about Fox; what the Dominion filings show is a staggering, dehumanizing version of elitism among people who have made a living by presenting themselves as the only truth-tellers who can be trusted by ordinary Americans.

I am, to say the least, no stranger to the charge of elitism. When I wrote a book in 2018 titled The Death of Expertise, a study of how people have become so narcissistic and so addled by cable and the internet that they believe themselves to be smarter than doctors and diplomats, I was regularly tagged as an “elitist.” And the truth is: I am an elitist, insofar as I believe that some people are better at things than others.

But even beyond talent and ability, I do in fact firmly believe that some opinions, political views, personal actions, and life choices are better than others. As I wrote in my book at the time:

Americans now believe that having equal rights in a political system also means that each person’s opinion about anything must be accepted as equal to anyone else’s. This is the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense. It is a flat assertion of actual equality that is always illogical, sometimes funny, and often dangerous.

If that makes me an elitist, so be it.

In this, elitism is the opposite of populism, whose adherents believe that virtue and competence reside in the common wisdom of a nebulous coalition called “the people.” This pernicious and romantic myth is often a danger to liberal democracies and constitutional orders that are founded, first and foremost, on the inherent rights of individuals rather than whatever raw majorities think is right at any given time.

The American right, however, now uses elitist to mean “people who think they’re better than me because they live and work and play differently than I do.”They rage that people—myself included—look down upon them. And again, truth be told, I do look down on Trump voters, not because I am an elitist but because I am an American citizen and I believe that they, as my fellow citizens, have made political choices that have inflicted the greatest harm on our system of government since the Civil War. I refuse to treat their views as just part of the normal left-right axis of American politics.

(As an aside, note that the insecure whining about being “looked down upon” is wildly asymmetrical: Trump voters have no trouble looking down on their opponents as traitorsperverts, and, as Donald Trump himself once put it, “human scum.” But they react to criticism with a kind of deep hurt, as if others must accommodate their emotional well-being. Many of these same people gleefully adopted “Fuck your feelings” as a rallying cry but never expected that it was a slogan that worked both ways.)

In 2016, I believed that good people were making a mistake. In 2023, I cannot dismiss their choices as mere mistakes. Instead, I accept and respect the human agency that has led Trump supporters to their current choices. Indeed, I insist on recognizing that agency: I have never agreed with the people who dismiss Trump voters as robotic simpletons who were mesmerized by Russian memes. I believe that today’s Trump supporters are people who are making a conscious, knowing, and morally flawed choice to continue supporting a sociopath and a party chock-full of seditionists.

I have argued with some of these people. Sometimes, I have mocked them. Mostly, I have refused to engage them. But whatever my feelings are about the abominable choices of Trump supporters, here is the one thing I have never done that Fox’s hosts did for years: I have never patronized any of the people I disagree with.

Unlike people such as Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham, I have never told anyone—including you, readers of The Atlantic—anything I don’t believe. What we’re seeing at Fox, however, is lying on a grand scale, done with a snide loathing for the audience and a cool indifference to the damage being done to the nation. Fox, and the Republican Party it serves, for years has relentlessly patronized its audience, cooing to viewers about how right they are not to trust anyone else, banging the desk about the corruption of American institutions, and shouting into the camera about how the liars and betrayers must pay.

Fox’s stars did all of this while privately communicating with one another and rolling their eyes with contempt, admitting without a shred of shame that they were lying through their teeth. From Rupert Murdoch on down, top Fox personalities have admitted that they fed the rubes all of this red, rotting meat to keep them out of the way of the Fox limos headed to Long Island and Connecticut.

You can see this same kind of contemptuous elitism in Republicans such as Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Elise Stefanik. They couldn’t care less about the voters—those hoopleheads back home who have to be placated with idiotic speeches against trans people and “critical race theory.” These politicians were bred to be leaders, you see, and having to gouge some votes out of the hayseeds back home requires a bit of performance art now and then, a small price to pay so that the sons and daughters of Harvard and Yale, Princeton and Stanford, can live in the imperial capital and rule as is their due and their right.

Some years ago, I was at a meeting of one of the committees of the National Academy of Sciences. The conferees asked me how scientists—there were Nobel Laureates in the room—could defend the cause of knowledge. Stand your ground, I told them. Never hesitate to tell people they’re wrong. One panel member shook his head: “Tom, people don’t like to be condescended to.” I said, “I agree, but what they hate even more is to be patronized.

I believed it then, but we’re now testing that hypothesis on a national scale. I hope I wasn’t wrong.

Related:

In race to arm Ukraine, U.S. faces cracks in its manufacturing might

The Washington Post

In race to arm Ukraine, U.S. faces cracks in its manufacturing might

Missy Ryan, The Washington Post – March 9, 2023

Correction: A previous version of this article mischaracterized why Scranton, Pa., is known as “Steamtown.” The name is derived from the steam-powered locomotives that helped fuel the city’s industrial rise, not the early pioneering or electric power. The article has been updated.

SCRANTON, Pa. – A sharp hissing sound fills the factory as red-hot artillery shells are plunged into scalding oil.

Richard Hansen, a Navy veteran who oversees this government-owned munitions facility, explains how the 1,500-degree liquid locks in place chemical properties that ensure when the shells are fired – perhaps on a battlefield in Ukraine – they detonate in the deadly manner intended.

“That’s what we do,” Hansen said. “We build things to kill people.”

The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, one of a network of facilities involved in producing the U.S. Army’s 155-mm artillery round, is ground zero for the Biden administration’s scramble to accelerate the supply of weapons that Ukraine needs if its military is to prevail in the war with Russia.

The Pentagon’s plan for scaling up production of the shells over the next two years marks a breakthrough in the effort to quench Ukraine’s thirst for weapons. But the conflict has laid bare deep-seated problems that the United States must surmount to effectively manufacture the arms required not just to aid its allies but also for America’s self-defense should conflict erupt with Russia, China or another major power.

Despite boasting the world’s largest military budget – more than $800 billion a year – and its most sophisticated defense industry, the United States has long struggled to efficiently develop and produce the weapons that have enabled U.S. forces to outpace their peers technologically. Those challenges take on new importance as conventional conflict returns to Europe and Washington contemplates the possibility of its own great-power fight.

Even as public support for the vast sums of aid being given to Ukraine grows softer and more divisive, the conflict has sparked a broader conversation about the need to shatter what military leaders describe as the “brittleness” of the U.S. defense industry and devise new means to quickly scale up output of weapons at moments of crisis. Some observers are worried the Pentagon is not doing enough to replenish the billions of dollars in armaments that have left American stocks.

Research conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows the current output of American factories may be insufficient to prevent the depletion of stockpiles of key items the United States is providing Ukraine. Even at accelerated production rates, it is likely to take at least five years to recover the inventory of Javelin antitank missiles, Stinger surface-to-air missiles and other in-demand items.

Earlier research done by the Washington think tank illustrates a more pervasive problem: The slow pace of U.S. production means it would take as long as 15 years at peacetime production levels, and more than eight years at a wartime tempo, to replace the stocks of major weapons systems such as guided missiles, piloted aircraft and armed drones if they were destroyed in battle or donated to allies.

“It is a wake-up call,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview, referring to the production problems the war has exposed. “We have to have an industrial base that can respond very quickly.”

A year into the Ukraine fight, American military aid has reached a staggering $30 billion, funding everything from night-vision goggles to Abrams tanks. Much of the weaponry was drawn from Pentagon stocks. Other systems must be produced in U.S. factories.

U.S. and NATO officials have touted the powerful effect of foreign arms on the battlefield, where they have enabled Ukrainian troops to hold Kremlin forces at bay and, in places like the southern city of Kherson, reverse Russian gains. But the armament effort also has rattled officials in the United States and Europe, depleting the military stockpiles of donor nations and revealing the gaps in their productive power.

As the front lines have hardened during the frigid winter months, the ground war has become a bloody, artillery-heavy fight, with Ukrainian forces firing an average of 7,700 artillery shells a day, according to the Ukrainian military, greatly outpacing the U.S. prewar production rate of 14,000 155-mm rounds a month. In the first eight months after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Ukrainian forces burned through 13 years worth of Stinger antiaircraft missiles and five years of Javelin missiles, according to Raytheon, which produces both weapons.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has predicted the munitions squeeze may require a further boost in Pentagon spending, potentially ending the era in which ammunition functioned as a military “bill payer,” a part of the defense budget from which officials can trim to fund more expensive items like tanks or planes.

“What the Ukraine conflict showed is that, frankly, our defense industrial base was not at the level that we needed it to be to generate munitions,” Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, told lawmakers last week, pointing to the effort to accelerate output of artillery shells, guided rockets and other items. “Those are going to matter a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, because even if the conflict in Ukraine dies down, and nobody can predict whether that will happen, Ukraine is going to need a military that can defend the territory it has clawed back,” he said.

The problem is not limited to ammunition, nor to items being provided to Ukraine. According to Mark Cancian, a retired Marine officer and defense expert with CSIS, the pace of production at U.S. factories means it would take over 10 years to replace the U.S. fleet of UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, and almost 20 years to replace the stock of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles. It would be a minimum of 44 years before the Pentagon could replace its fleet of aircraft carriers.

In Europe, the problems are equally grave. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in February that the wait time for large-caliber weapons has more than tripled, meaning items ordered now will not be delivered for over two years. In Germany, amid plans for a dramatic military expansion, its ammunition supply is believed to be sufficient for two days of fighting. In one war game, British stocks lasted eight days.

To address those problems, European Union leaders are exploring ways to accelerate manufacturing, possibly by using advance-purchase agreements modeled on the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine. In Ukraine, the ammunition crunch is existential. In places like Bakhmut, where Ukrainian troops are locked in a grisly battle with Russian mercenary and military fighters, defending forces say they must ration artillery ammunition because they receive far less than they need.

Fortunately for Kyiv, Russia, with its defense industry under severe sanctions, has a similar problem. According to Kyrylo Budanov, the Ukrainian military intelligence chief, the Kremlin has been forced to reduce the pace of air attacks due to dwindling stocks of key munitions, including the Kalibr and Kh-101 cruise missiles. Producing enough missiles for one major strike, he said recently, now takes up to two months.

The Pentagon’s own analysis of the U.S. defense sector reveals an industry poorly equipped to match the productive prowess of World War II, when U.S. factories churned out planes and weapons that powered the Allied militaries to victory over the Axis powers. Its problems trace in part to the consolidation that occurred after the Cold War, as military spending fell and the number of uniformed personnel shrank by a third.

In a world where no major state-on-state conflict was expected, the federal government welcomed a wave of mergers and acquisitions that dramatically shrank the sector. At one point, 1,000 civilian defense jobs disappeared every day. In the 1990s, the United States had 51 major air and defense contractors. Today, there are five. The number of airplane manufacturers has fallen from eight to three. Meanwhile, 90 percent of missiles now come from three sources.

The Pentagon used to design weapons programs so there would be at least two manufacturing sources, but over time it began to view that excess capacity as wasteful. Officials sought ways to maintain the competition in part by piggybacking off the commercial sector, but it did not always work. “We quit buying more than we needed,” said David Berteau, a former Pentagon acquisition official who heads the Professional Services Council, an industry group. “We quit paying for more than we needed.”

It was easier to overlook production problems during the two decades of counterinsurgent war that followed the 9/11 attacks, when U.S. forces battled lightly armed militants in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. That is quickly changing with the demands posed by the large-scale conventional conflict underway now.

Industry experts say inconsistent, unpredictable military demand and short-term contracts dictated by appropriations cycles have further discouraged corporate investment in extra capacity. And because there is no commercial market for items like surface-to-air missiles or precision bombs, companies with specialized production cannot rely on civilian demand to keep them afloat.

Officials note that production lags also are due to the fact that military equipment today is inherently more complicated to build than it was during World War II, when Ford could produce a plane an hour. Now weaponry often requires microelectronics and parts from dozens or hundreds of facilities. Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter, for one, contains 300,000 parts sourced from 1,700 suppliers.

Doug Bush, the Army’s chief weapons buyer, characterized the government’s decision to keep facilities like the one in Scranton in operation despite a decades-long absence of such sizable demand as a bet that paid off. “It was a public policy choice. An expensive one,” he said. “But they were kept as an insurance policy for this exact circumstance.”

The Army now plans to boost its monthly capacity for producing 155-mm shells from about 14,000 now to 30,000 this spring, and eventually to 90,000. The military also is spending $80 million to bring a second source online for the Javelin missile’s rocket motor, a key component, and plans to double production to around 4,000 a year.

The Army recently signed a $1.2 billion contract for Raytheon to build six more units of national advanced surface-to-air defense systems, which are being used in the war in Ukraine to defend against Russian missile and drone attacks, but they will not be ready for another two years.

Researchers note, however, that of the $45 billion Congress has appropriated for producing new weapons for Ukraine and replacing donated U.S. stocks, the Pentagon as of February had placed contracts for only around $7 billion, raising questions about whether it is moving fast enough.

Industry officials, lawmakers and Pentagon leaders agree that building a greater ability to quickly expand production of needed weapons will require both time and new investment. “You have to bring all of those different streams of increased production together at the right time,” Bush said. “And so that would be one challenge, and that is just, you know, sequencing a large scale industrial ramp up like this.”

While support for defense spending is typically strong on Capitol Hill, backing for arming Ukraine has slipped, especially among Republicans. One recent poll showed that 40 percent of Republicans now believe the United States is giving too much aid to Ukraine, up from 9 percent last spring.

And it is not clear how much more military spending, which already represents more than 3 percent of gross domestic product, Americans will countenance in an era of inflation and economic strain, no matter the rationale.

At a recent hearing, Rep. Lisa C. McClain (R-Mich.), told Pentagon officials that voters in her district were worried about getting mired in a “never-ending war” in Ukraine. “They believe that we are spending money and resources on a fight overseas, rather than getting our own fiscal house in order,” she said.

At the Scranton munitions plant, which is operated by General Dynamics, long steel billets undergo a multiday transformation from burning-hot shafts of metal to finished artillery shells ready to be trucked to a plant in Iowa, where they are filled with explosives and dispatched for training or battle. It can be two to three months from when shells leave Scranton until they are ready to be used.

The city surrounding the plant tells the story of broader industrial decline that is another important element in the production scramble today. As its coal and steel industries drew flocks of immigrant workers in the 19th century, Scranton became an important rail hub and was dubbed “Steamtown” for the steam-powered locomotives that helped fuel its rise.

But the city’s population declined along with the coal industry after World War II. Today, the previously booming city center shows the mixed results of economic revitalization efforts: shuttered store fronts, a handful of brewpubs, and an art house movie theater.

President Biden has identified Scranton, his hometown, as a symbol of the erosion of American manufacturing power, vowing to make a reversal of that trend a signature of his administration. “When jobs move overseas, factories at home close down. Once-thriving cities and towns became shadows of what they used to be, and they lost a sense of their self-worth along the way,” he said in late January.

Since its apex in 1979, more than 7 million jobs have disappeared from the American manufacturing sector, over a third of its workforce. The defense sector has also shed a third of its workforce.

While General Dynamics said the historic Scranton plant remains an attractive employer, in part because of its competitive wages, finding the right workers for its facilities is not easy in an economy with low unemployment and a dearth of traditional manufacturing skills like metalworking. “It’s still a challenge,” said Todd Smith, the company’s general manager for northeast Pennsylvania.

Biden has touted new investments in rail and other infrastructure that U.S. officials hope can anchor a new era of American productivity. “Where the hell is it written that . . . America can’t lead the world again in manufacturing?” he demanded.

Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti said she hopes for added jobs at the Scranton plant, which now employs about 300 people, and other defense manufacturers in the area. “It’s union work. It’s stable work. It’s work that you can build a career and support a family on,” she said. “So any of those types of jobs are critical for us.”

It is not clear how much the Scranton facility, which already runs 24/7 during the week along with some weekend hours, can expand its manufacturing output. Plant officials said the pace of production has not accelerated since the Ukraine war began, and they are not aware of plans to ramp up operations.

While the hoped-for production transformation may not happen fast enough for Ukraine, as Kyiv braces for a massive springtime assault by Kremlin forces, the next conventional conflict could be far larger and more deadly.

The Ukraine scramble “has also given us some ideas of what we need to look at when it comes to Taiwan and China, because we have seen the need to surge,” said Kea Matory, director of legislative policy at the National Defense Industrial Association. “So this is a good learning opportunity for us.”

The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima and Dan Lamothe in Washington and Kamila Hrabchuk in Kyiv contributed to this report.

If You Want To Lose Visceral Fat, Dietitians Say You Should Avoid These Foods

She Finds

If You Want To Lose Visceral Fat, Dietitians Say You Should Avoid These Foods

Georgia Dodd – March 9, 2023

Some types of body fat—like the visceral fat that lies deep in your abdomen and surrounds your internal organs—are more harmful to your health than others. Visceral fat increases your risk for certain health conditions, including breast cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. But, luckily, exercising, cutting calories, and limiting certain foods can help minimize it.

To learn more about foods that you should avoid if you want to lose visceral fat, we spoke with Trista Best, a registered dietitian at Balance One Supplements, and Pam Hartnett MPH, a registered dietitian-nutritionist, owner of The Vitality Dietitians and health/nutrition writer. They agree that refined carbohydrates and sugary beverages should be avoided at all costs because they contain high levels of high-fructose sugar and are full of “empty calories.” Read on below to learn more!

READ MORE: 6 Foods No One Should Be Eating Anymore Because They Cause Visceral Fat

Visceral fat

Before we get into which foods to avoid, let’s first define “visceral fat.” Visceral fat, or abdominal fat, can be detrimental to your overall health for a plethora of reasons. “First, it is carried at the front of the body where it creates significant stress on the heart and other vital organs. This puts the individual at risk for heart disease and stroke, among other chronic conditions. Second, if allowed to persist it will form around organs and tissues which makes it difficult to lose, also increasing the risk of chronic disease,” Best explains. “Third, visceral belly fat can be a hidden danger for those who otherwise have a normal body weight. A person with a healthy BMI may be carrying a lot of belly fat while other areas of the body are relatively thin. This can create a false sense of reassurance that they do not need to worry [about] health or weight loss.” When you put on enough visceral fat, you may end up with a hard “pot belly” or a more apple-shaped physique.

Refined Carbohydrates

Refined carbohydrates are grain-based foods. They have the bran and germ extracted during the refining process. Not only does the process of refining a food remove the fiber, but it also removes much of the food’s nutritional value, including B-complex vitamins, healthy oils, and fat-soluble vitamins. Without fiber, refined carbohydrates provide no actual sustenance and only increase visceral fat. Some popular examples of refined carbohydrates include white bread and pasta.

“White bread,” Best says, “is made from refined flour, which is high in simple carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates are quickly digested and absorbed, causing a rapid spike in blood sugar levels. This can lead to insulin resistance, which can increase the accumulation of visceral fat.”

Similarly, refined pasta “is low in fiber, which can further contribute to blood sugar spikes and insulin resistance,” she says. “Fiber helps to slow down the digestion process, which can help to regulate blood sugar levels and reduce the accumulation of visceral fat,” Best continues. Consuming too many refined carbs can lead to stomach inflammation which will only worsen visceral fat.

Sugary Beverages

Sugary beverages like soda, sweet tea, and high-sugar coffee drinks, only increase visceral fat. “Sugary beverages are often sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup is rich in fructose (hence the name), a type of sugar that is converted into fat by the liver.  People who consume excess fructose intake can develop non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is linked to an increase in visceral fat,” Hartnett says. “High sugar intake and rapid spikes in blood sugar can be inflammatory. Chronic inflammation can result in excess fat storage in the abdominal region.”

The high sugar content in soda and coffee (learn how heavily sweetened coffee can stall weight loss goals!) can cause a rapid spike in blood sugar. “Over time, your calls may become less responsive to the hormone insulin, resulting in insulin resistance.  Insulin resistance has been linked to increased visceral fat accumulation,” Hartnett says.

Instead of refined carbohydrates and sugary beverages, Hartnett suggests opting for healthy fats. Consuming avocados, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish (like salmon, which is also good for boosting hair thickness and shine!), can help to reduce inflammation in the body and help prevent visceral fat accumulation. And, these foods can also keep you fuller, longer so you won’t feel the need to over-snack later in the day. But, dieting by itself won’t get rid of significant amounts of visceral fat. It’s best if you also exercise, too. Try some of these exercise methods to tone up your stomach and back fat!