As it turns out, there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all — at least not when it comes to diets.
New research, presented at the American Society of Nutrition conference on Monday, has found that even twins can't reliably expect the same results from following similar diet plans, Time magazine reported. The study, which hasn't been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet, analyzed 1,100 people from the U.S. and U.K., including 240 sets of twins, to see how different foods and eating habits affected them.
What they found goes against the conventional wisdom that "eating healthy" means more or less the same thing for everyone — even twins, whose bodies are almost identical, could experience vastly different effects from eating the same foods on the same schedules. And even the same person might react very differently to "the same meals when they were eaten at different times of day," Time explained. That led the researchers to conclude that "nutrition facts alone cannot predict how a certain food will affect health and weight."
Of course, that doesn't mean we can ignore all of the conventional wisdom — "there are some guidelines and recommendations around the world that near-everybody agrees on," said Tim Spector, one of the researchers involved in the study. Eating fruits and vegetables and getting your daily dose of fibers can be agreed upon as healthy for almost everyone. But on the questions that don't have clear-cut answers — Should you eat breakfast every day? Is fasting a good way to lose weight? — those answers may change from person to person.
Unfortunately, we're not yet at a point where we can give concrete advice to everyone on what diet plan will suit them best. Until we better understand what affects each person's nutrition and health, the diet you choose will most likely be trial and error. But if nothing else, this study proves you don't have to follow every trendy new diet to be healthy.
Read more at Time. Shivani Ishwar
At this point, Natalie Shure writes in The New Republic, the "ongoing ubiquity" of outdoor masking has turned into "meaningless political theater," even as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
The Atlantic's Derek Thompson seems to concur, writing that "mandating outdoor masks and closing public areas makes a show of 'taking the virus seriously,' while doing nothing to reduce indoor spread,'" adding that such rules may actually backfire in that they force people to gather inside, which is much riskier. Slate's Shannon Palus joined Shure and Thompson in arguing that outdoor masking makes little sense anymore, given how much more information there is about COVID-19 transmission these days.
Shure, Thompson, and Palus were quick to clarify that they're still very much in favor of wearing masks indoors, but they all pointed to several studies that found the risk of passing on the virus outdoors to be very small. The rare cases that do occur tend to "involve considerable close contact," as opposed to, say, "passing someone maskless on the street or in the park," Shure writes.
The counterargument is that wearing masks outdoors reinforces the idea that people should wear them indoors, but Thompson notes that Julia Marcus, a Harvard Medical School epidemiologist, found through some anecdotal interviews with mask skeptics that people became more open to adhering to indoor mandates when they learned outdoor masking wasn't as important. "The purpose of mask wearing isn't to send a message," Shure writes. "If it were we could just iron whatever slogan we wanted to onto a T-shirt. The point of mask-wearing is to reduce infection, and there's simply no reason to believe that wearing a mask while walking to the grocery store accomplishes this." Read more at The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Slate. Tim O'Donnell
Things are complicated in the world of European soccer at the moment.
The continent's most powerful clubs — Manchester United, Real Madrid, Inter Milan, and several others from England, Italy, and Spain — are attempting to form their own "Super League," much to the chagrin of their domestic leagues and UEFA, the sport's European governing body.
Basically, it comes down to money; the venture would be lucrative for the clubs, and not so lucrative for the UEFA, leaving the two sides in an apparent standoff. The whole thing may wind up being a bluff by the clubs to get more money from UEFA's Champions League, an annual continent-wide competition featuring the best teams from several domestic leagues, but right now it's unclear just how serious either side is.
If no one blinks, the world's most famous competition, the FIFA World Cup, may wind up in the middle of the dispute. On Monday, UEFA's president Aleksander Čeferin confirmed that any players who participate in the Super League "will be banned" from playing in the World Cup or the European Football Championship. "They will not be allowed to play for their national teams," he said, adding that sanctions against the clubs and players would come "as soon as possible," per Italian soccer journalist Fabrizio Romano. FIFA has also previously said the players would be ineligible for international competitions, suggesting players from non-European countries would be affected.
The World Cup would go on as planned, but if the threat is ultimately realized, many of the world's greatest players would be absent, which, it's safe to say, is not a desirable outcome and could potentially greatly diminish the event. That scenario would have consequences for the U.S. men's national team, as well, considering several of its young stars, most notably 22-year-old Cristian Pulisic (who plays for Chelsea, a would-be Super League participant), would be subject to the ban. Read a full explainer of the situation at CBS Sports. Tim O'Donnell
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been taken to a prison hospital after his team warned his health is deteriorating and he could die "in a matter of days."
Navalny, the prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was moved to a hospital in a high security prison by Russian authorities on Monday, The New York Times reports.
"With the patient's consent, he was prescribed vitamin therapy," Russia's federal penitentiary service said, per The Washington Post.
Navalny for three weeks has been on a hunger strike, which he began to protest authorities not allowing him to see his personal doctors, according to The Associated Press. He was hospitalized last year after being poisoned with a nerve agent, which he has blamed on Putin.
Physician Yaroslav Ashikhmin has warned that test results show Navalny may be at risk of cardiac arrest due to increased levels of potassium, per NPR. On Friday, Ashikhmin wrote on Facebook, "Our patient could die at any moment." The U.S. has said that Russia will face "consequences if Mr Navalny dies."
After news of his transfer to a prison hospital was announced, top Navalny strategist Leonid Volkov dismissed this step, per The Associated Press, saying, "Until the lawyers locate him, we won't know where he is and what is up with him." Brendan Morrow
The United States has reached a key milestone in its COVID-19 vaccination efforts, as every adult in the country is now eligible to receive a vaccine.
As of Monday, all adults in each U.S. state, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, were eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, according to The New York Times. The final states to open up eligibility to their entire adult population on Monday were Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont, per Axios.
"It's truly historic that we have already reached this milestone," the University of Washington Medical Center's Dr. Nandita Mani told the Times.
President Biden announced in March he was directing states to make all adults eligible for COVID-19 vaccination by May 1. But as states increasingly moved to open up vaccinations to all adults sooner than that, Biden later moved the deadline up to April 19, and the goal of meeting this earlier date was successfully met on Monday.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, half of American adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, and about 32.5 percent of adults are fully vaccinated. At this rate, according to the Times, the U.S. is on pace to have 70 percent of its population vaccinated by the middle of June. Brendan Morrow