A journey to enjoying a healthier relationship with food 

By NADIA ANEES — nsanees@ucdavis.edu 

Content warning: this article contains discussions of disordered eating, a topic that may be sensitive to some readers. For more information and resources about disordered eating and eating disorders visit https://shcs.ucdavis.edu/health-topic/eating-disorders. 

Nothing brings me more joy than when my family is together on Thanksgiving, bonding over a beautiful autumnal feast. Since I was a kid, I loved this food-and-family-centric day very much.  

After graduating high school though, I entered a period in my life during which I started to struggle with the thing I held closest to my heart: food. It began with me finding it difficult to accept the new body I had grown into, which led me to tracking my calorie intake each day. I thought this was the right thing to do and would ultimately lead to me slimming down and finding a happier weight. 

During this period of my life, Thanksgiving became difficult. My need to track my calorie intake made it challenging to enjoy my favorite holiday. On Thanksgiving Day, while everyone arrived and put their handmade dishes onto the dinner table, I was mentally preparing to construct my plate in a way that wouldn’t exceed my calorie limit. After dinner, I’d rush to my room to see how I had performed. I didn’t feel satisfied until my app reassured me that I had stayed on track.

For this period of time, my calorie-tracker ruled my life. I steered away from plans that centered around eating out. I felt anxiety in anticipation of family gatherings, knowing that there would be a lot of good food served. Even when friends lovingly surprised me with gifts in the form of food, I felt overwhelmed knowing that I had not accounted for it in my plan. 

My relationship with food became reduced to arbitrary numbers. It ignored the nutritional and emotional value of food, the love that went into the cultural dishes my mom made and the beauty behind the cultivation of food. 

There was a point at which those closest to me and I realized that my need to track my calories had become overly obsessive and harmful. After that realization, I tried to stop monitoring my calorie intake routinely until I felt ready to delete the app entirely. 

I’m grateful that I decided to rid myself of calorie-tracking apps for good. I am proud to have embraced a holistic and intuitive approach to eating. I eat and make myself meals that I think will satisfy and nourish me. I enjoy my cravings and appreciate the foods that used to feel like big no-nos. Having food security is a great privilege, and I’m grateful to be in a place where I have control over my food choices.

This Thanksgiving, I’m excited to sit around the dinner table and focus on filling my plate with what’s really important to me: incredible food, quality family time and gratitude.

Written by: Nadia Anees — nsanees@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.

Eliminating the middleman is a necessary step toward a healthier society

By MAYA KORNYEYEVA — mkornyeyeva@ucdavis.edu

Global pharmaceutical companies are constantly under fire from buyers to lower the prices of their medications. Companies like Pfizer, Roche and AbbVie have been known to charge up to tens of thousands of dollars for their life-saving drugs, leading patients to question the fairness of these prices and demand that large pharmaceutical companies, also known as “Big Pharma,” put a bigger focus on the general affordability of their medicines.

But what seems to be the issue? Wouldn’t making medication more affordable be an easy move to defuse tensions among consumers and better the reputation of Big Pharma brands? To answer this, we must first consider the factors that go into the development of new drugs.

Before being approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), clinical applications go through many unsuccessful trials, averaging about nine failures before they are able to offer a safe drug to the general public. Each iteration of the medication can cost millions of dollars, not to mention the funding necessary to advertise the newly-developed drug and pay for the production process.

By this measure, the profit margin of Big Pharma companies was, on average, 21% last year, compared to other large public industries like banks, which brought in a profit margin of roughly 29.7%. The reality of each medication being a billion-dollar project, consisting of many unsuccessful trials, accounts for the high costs of new drugs and the need for pharmaceutical companies to retain a profit in order to continue to fund the research and development of more medicines. All the same, we must acknowledge that there is a problem with the high prices. 

Yes, they are technically necessary to keep Big Pharma and its mission alive, but they wouldn’t be so steep if the federal government stepped in to negotiate prices for low-income areas and for Americans who can’t afford pharmaceutical drugs. 

Right now, health insurance companies typically have the capacity to negotiate with Big Pharma companies because they cover a majority of client healthcare costs. However, those who can’t afford insurance need the government to step in as an advocate to create deals with these drug companies that ensure profitability and provide a cushion of coverage for low-income people.

In creating this close relationship between the government and pharmaceutical companies, you can essentially eliminate the middleman between drug developers and those who pay for the medicine; the fewer people involved, the lower the associated costs and the more direct communication in regard to prices.

An additional benefit of cutting out the middleman would be a quicker reaction time to events like pandemics. With the government and pharmaceutical companies working together, drugs could be developed faster and more efficiently, tightening interactions between these two key players and ensuring a prompt response to public health emergencies.

 In fact, there are already federal government healthcare programs around the world that work precisely in this way. For example, the state-level eradication programs of hepatitis C in Georgia engaged pharmaceutical companies and allowed them to recoup their costs by buying in bulk to cover more people. Thus, lower prices were artificially created through government intervention, while the profitability of the pharmaceutical industry remained relatively unimpacted.

The government playing a larger role in assisting citizens with healthcare can also reduce future costs by making the process of recovery faster and more efficient for individuals and reducing the probability of the progression of a disease or chronic illness. An example of this is curing hepatitis C early on, before the more costly surgery and liver transplant.

Finally, from a macroeconomic perspective, a healthier society overall means a more reliable workforce and therefore a stronger economy. Keeping citizens healthy should be a major priority of the federal government, not only for ethical reasons, but also because of economic implications. 

It is undeniable that Big Pharma is first and foremost a business, yet it is irrational to assume that they are overcharging customers solely on the basis of exploiting them to make a profit. 

The issue of increasingly high prices can be solved by eliminating middlemen. By creating a collaborative relationship between the federal and state governments and drug companies, patients who normally cannot advocate for themselves will have a voice, ensuring that prices are manageable while keeping Big Pharma companies profitable and operational. This is a difficult and strenuous process, I know, but one that is extremely necessary for both pharmaceutical companies and those they serve.

Written by: Maya Kornyeyeva — mkornyeyeva@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.

Meet the amazing telescope that took 30 years to build, and learn about the international collaboration and new discoveries it has made possible

By EMILIE BROWN — emrbrown@ucdavis.edu

It’s been almost a year since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched, and already it has transcended our greatest expectations, inspiring new generations of scientists and bringing us closer to finding answers to some of the universe’s biggest questions.

The JWST gracefully aligns 18 gold-plated mirrors in interconnected hexagonal shapes and four instruments, all suspended on a silver sun shield to bring us the clearest pictures of the universe ever captured. It’s elegant, streamlined and simply beautiful.

Even more impressive than the graceful design of the JWST is what it took to make it a reality. Creating it required around 30 years of planning, testing and building in collaboration with thousands of engineers, physicists, mathematicians and technicians across 29 U.S. states and 14 countries. Multinational collaborations in science are almost always beneficial, but the successful creation of the JWST is nothing short of remarkable. It was designed so perfectly that, following a very successful launch last December, its expected mission life was doubled. 

When you look up into the sky at night, you are looking at light that has already left galaxies and stars thousands, millions or even billions of years ago, so you are essentially looking into the past. The JWST allows us to see farther into spacetime than ever before. Its mirrors and infrared capabilities mean that its best images can capture objects over 100 times dimmer than the next best space telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope. In addition, its instrument’s data is not distorted when looking through dust clouds, meaning we can use it to watch the birth of galaxies. 

The scientific possibilities with an instrument as powerful as this one are endless. Already, scientists have been able to use data from the telescope to investigate some of the most pressing issues in astronomy and physics today. From the JWST’s first image alone, scientists have been able to study gravitational lensing effects and dark matter. 

I believe to appreciate being alive on earth, and the rarity and beauty of existence, we must appreciate our universe and how it came to be. The JWST can help us learn more about the creation of our universe and its growth over time, shedding light on our place in the universe as well. 

Just as the Hubble Space Telescope inspired the last generation of space-loving scientists, the JWST is inspiring a whole new generation to look to the stars. If you haven’t seen the JWST Deep Field or any other JWST images, I highly suggest you look it up. Put simply, they are mesmerizing. Hubble’s images of galaxies thousands of lightyears away instill wonder in schoolchildren and high school students alike. The JWST will create more awe-inspiring images and scientific knowledge, carrying on Hubble’s legacy.

It took roughly $10 billion to build the JWST. I wouldn’t be surprised if you doubted the usefulness of the new telescope, or if you think that the resources and brain power spent on the JWST would have been more beneficial on Earth. However, less than a year after launch, the JWST is already providing humanity with the clearest, deepest, widest and most complete images of the universe yet. It has proven what great work can happen when scientists collaborate, it has inspired the future scientists we will someday rely on and it has helped us learn and theorize about how we came to be. 

Not only that, but by letting us look more closely at other planets and star systems, we can use the JWST to make technological advances and learn more about our own planet. It is one of the greatest assets to civilization as we know it, and the future beneficial applications of the JWST are unlimited. 

If you would like to learn more about the JWST, check out webb.nasa.gov.

Written by: Emilie Brown — emrbrown@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.

Traditional chai will always outclass café “tea tea”

By JENA TUFAIL — jjtufail@ucdavis.edu

On one fine early morning before this quarter’s midterms, I walked into a cozy local café (Peet’s) to order a cup of energy (coffee). Gazing at the menu, I wondered to myself, “What lovely drink shall I waste my money on for the third time this week?” And it was only Tuesday. 

Suddenly, while waiting in the rather long line, something caught my eye. I squinted to get a closer look, reading the words “Chai tea” aloud. I was instantly confused. “Doesn’t chai literally mean tea?” I asked myself. 

Since I’m Pakistani, I already knew the answer to that question; “chai” does indeed translate to “tea.” But every time I read the words “tea tea,” I still feel confused. 

Instead of getting a caramel frappe for the millionth time this quarter, I decided that on this fine rainy morning before I sat down to take a long, difficult midterm, I would indeed order a “tea tea” for the first time in my life. 

My stomach turning, (because of my impending midterm?) I got excited just to be disappointed. All my life I’ve drunk “traditional chai,” which I love. I love not only its sweetness, spices and aroma, but also that, depending on the ethnic group, state, towns and families making it, the recipe and taste will never be exactly the same. 

As I waited for my drink, I tried to be open-minded. The taste of chai always varies, so I made sure to remind myself that this one wouldn’t be like anything I’d tasted before. Hearing them call my name, I excitedly walked to grab my drink. It was my first “tea tea,” and I was excited to become more “cultured.”   

I grabbed a straw and sat down to do some studying. Slowly, I brought the drink to my lips. I took a sip and gasped. I’m not kidding when I say that it was the worst thing I have ever drunk in my entire life. All I tasted was cinnamon! This was nothing like the chai I had drunk before. I was astonished. 

I took a few more sips and it still didn’t grow on me, so I let it sit and simply looked at it while I studied instead (it looked pretty at least.) 

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with liking cafe “chai tea.” If I had a good experience with it I probably would have ordered it again. However, I hope that this dramatic story of my experience drinking chai tea for the first time will inspire you to one day try traditional chai.

Recipes differ across South Asia, so there are numerous options, and TikTok is a great way to find easy at-home recipes to try. Although chai is traditionally made with whole milk, oat, almond, soy and water are great alternatives to use as your liquid base for chai. Most traditional chai does consist of black tea and traces of cinnamon, cardamom and vanilla, but to me, it has always been faint. The “butteriness” of the tea is universal, however, and it is a perfect warm treat for winter. 

Below is my family’s own quick and easy way to make chai.

Ingredients: 

• ¾ cup of milk of your choice 
• ¼ cup of water 
• Black tea (we use the Brooke Bond Red Label tea brand) 
• Cardamom (optional) 
• Sugar 

1. Start by bringing the water and milk mixture to a boil (you can use only milk as well) 
2. Add the tea and cardamom to the pot 
3. Use a ladle (or spoon) to mix the tea as it heats (make sure to adjust the heat as you continue stirring so it doesn’t overflow). This step will ensure that your tea will have a smooth taste.  
4. Continue to boil until the color of the tea turns a deep milky-brown color. 
5. Add your desired amount of sugar.
6. Stir and enjoy! 

If you try it, I hope you enjoy it, and remember, it’s “chai”, not “tea tea!” 

Written by: Jena Tufail — jjtufail@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.