The Critical Commentator

                               Vegans and Social Media Still Life with Fish, Benjamin Blake (1757-1830)  Photo Credit: Royal Institute of Cornwall [CC BY-NC] Nobody was supposed to see Yovana Mendoza eating the fish. The 28-year-old influencer, also known as Rawvana has amassed more than 3 million followers across YouTube and Instagram by extolling the life-changing properties of a raw vegan diet. She has built a lucrative brand around veganism. But a couple of weeks ago Mendoza was recorded eating seafood in a video posted by another vlogger. …Mendoza posted a 33 minute video titled This Is What Is Happening, where she admitted she had stopped being a vegan for health reasons. Her periods had become irregular and she had been having digestive problems, so she had started eating animal products to see if that helped. In a perfect universe Mendoza’s digestion would have been of no interest to anybody except herself. But we live in hell; her video has been watched more than 85

                                             Questioning                               With a little girl’s help Adrian Chiles puts forward the notion that we’ve lost the art of curiosity and we need it back. Socrates (d 399 BC) , D. Brucciani & Co. Photo Credit: Moray Council Museums Service [CC BY-NC] …It’s not what you know; it’s what you want to know. On all media, no one seems to have the curiosity of that little girl. Nobody wants to know stuff; they just want to tell you what they already know, or how wrong you are about what you think you know. When is the last time you heard anyone on a phone-in ask a question along the lines of: “There’s something I don’t quite get; please can you explain…?”                                         A doctor of my acquaintance invariably ends her consultations by asking the patient if they have any questions. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. A specialist in the field of health literacy sat in on one of her clinic

                                           Men and their Bodies Old Joe, The Newcastle Match Seller, unknown artist Photo Credit: Brampton Museum [CC BY-NC] Men your body is a battlefield. Your skin is sagging. Your hair is thinning. Your insides are screaming for holistic renewal. This is ageing – breathe, it’s natural – but it’s war nevertheless, and the common moisturiser has become too basic a defence. Need new strategies? Fear not, reinforcements are here!  Call up your super anti-ageing serum (£265). Enlist your seaweed cleanser (£34). Recruit your biotin vitamin gummies (£12 for 60) “Your future self will thank you,” say copywriters employed by the men’s health and wellness brand Hims, which sells the gummies and has hired, it seems, at least one clairvoyant. It is time to be well! …the male market is exploding. For the most part, it is an explosion that does not involve new items so much as a rebranding of existing products, many long marketed to women. T

                                   Modern Thinking An antidote to most modern self-help books? … Whether Seneca, or Nietzsche, Victor Frankl or Rowe, Watts or Oliver Burkeman (The Antidote), or most recently Jordan B Peterson (12 Rules for Life), these thinkers all say much the same thing. Stop pretending. Get real. It is not easy advice. Reality – now as ever – is unpopular, and for good reason. But the great thing about these self-help books is that, while giving sound advice, they are clear-eyed in acknowledging the truth: that happiness is not a given for anyone, there is no magic way of getting “it” – and that crucially, pursuing it (or even believing in it), is one of the biggest obstacles to actually receiving it. Such writers suggest the radical path to happiness comes from recognising the inevitability of unhappiness that comes as a result of the human birthright, that is randomness, mortality, transitoriness, uncertainty and injustice. In other words, all the thin

                                        Modern Thinking Giles Coren has a house in Gloucestershire which he rents out and everything was fine until the letting agents got in touch with him saying that some recent guests had been “made to feel uncomfortable” by some of the interior décor. “Oh, dear. Was it the stuffed duck? The old British naval flag in the dining room? The John and Yoko album in the stack of old records by the gramophone, where they have no clothes on and are quite shockingly hairy? Nope. It was the golliwogs. Six tiny Robertsons’ marmalade statuettes each playing a musical instrument…Very embarrassing. Not okay. David Lammy will be on Twitter about it for weeks. I said I would apologise personally. Except it wasn’t just the golliwogs. “Even more upsetting,” the agents told me, “was the antisemitic caricature in the study.” 'An Israelite Indeed ' , William Etty (1787-1849) Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND] Eh? “The stere

Exercise Excess and Apps Girls Running, Walberswick Pier, Philip Wilson Steer, (1860-1942)  Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] Sports psychologists say that apps for running can be dangerous and that the NHS must recognise that too much exercise is a bad thing. They say that more people are “over-indulging” in exercise at levels just shy of addiction. In part this is driven by the prevalence of fitness tracking apps and trackers on watches and smartphones. The apps are designed to keep people engaged and provide positive feedback, but Martin Turner and Andrew Wood of Staffordshire University say that this can lead to psychological harm as people’s self-worth becomes tied to the amount of exercise they do. …Although such apps and devices are not designed “to get people addicted”, Dr Wood said that they were “designed explicitly to get people engaged with them and tap into people’s basic social psychological need to feel competent about what they are doing.” (The Times, 2019)

                            Amazon and Books on Autism Skull,Candlestick and Books , Unknown Artist Photo Credit: City of London Corporation [CC BY-NC] Books that promise cures for autism through potentially dangerous therapies have been quietly removed from Amazon over the past week. … Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism by Kerri Rivera, which advocates dosing autistic children with a bleach-like substance, chlorine dioxide, was no longer available yesterday. The Autism Research Institute said the so-called “mineral solution” had “side effects known to be seriously damaging.”  The Miracle Mineral Supplement of the 21 st Century by Jim Humble, the man behind “the miracle mineral solution”, is no longer for sale on Amazon. Another book named in Wired, [magazine] Fight Autism and Win , has been dropped by Amazon. It advocates chelation, which involves using a dose of chemicals to remove heavy metals from the body. It is not an approved treatment for autism and can b

                                                John Lewis: Robert Owen , William Henry Brooke (1772-1860) Photo Credit: National Portrait Gallery, London [CC BY-NC-ND] The John Lewis Partnership has slashed its staff bonus to the lowest level in 66 years after a severe slump in profits at the department store chain…All partners, from the chairman to Saturday shelf-stackers receive the same percentage bonus. Spedan Lewis (1885 – 1963), John’s son, had a specific aim, which still applies today – to run a business “whose ultimate purpose is the happiness of all its members.” The Partnership, he explained, was “an idea for a better way of managing business, so that instead of the many being exploited by the few, there will be a genuine partnership for managers and the managed alike, all pulling together for their common advantage.” Influenced by the Welsh social reformer Robert Owen and the artist and designer William Morris, who founded the Socialist League in 1884, L