Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

The Supreme Court is on every one's mind. Last week they were hearing arguments about Prop 8 and DOMA. Justice Ginsberg talked about two kinds of marriage, the full marriage and a sort of skim milk marriage. Defense of Marriage Act grants about 1100 benefits to married couples and that is part of the reason DOMA is up for discussion. So, what's the beef with not wanting everyone to be able to marry? And why do people get married?  Well, simply put, it's procreation. There's no valid reason for people to get married unless they are going to procreate. We can all agree, I'm sure, that anyone that is not going to have children and lots of them has no business getting married.

With nine justices on the Supreme Court, Stephen explained that it is evenly divided four-four. The deciding vote often is cast by Justice Anthony Kennedy.You may remember he said in Citizens United that Corporations are people with Constitutional Rights. Stephen mentioned something about people who might just be declared people with Constitutional Rights. Something to think about. (Is a corporation a man or a woman? That would be something that Stephen could investigate for a future show. I wonder why he didn't bring that up in his discussion.)

To explain it all to Stephen, Emily Bazelon, Senior Editor of Slate, came on the show, and when he let her do some of the talking it was all very informative and confusing. Since no one will know until mid summer, he wanted her to tell what is going to happen. She did say at one point, "It looks like DOMA is going down." After their long discussion, I was more informed but way more confused.

Stephen's guest last Thursday night was Dr. Robert Lustig. The two discussed his book, "Fat Chance - Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease." Stephen wanted to know what his beef with sugar is. Fascinating talk back and forth between the two of them. I imagine part of Robert Lustig's concern is that he sees so many young children with obesity which can be quite a problem. He says we need to reduce our sugar consumption, but it is hard because it is an ingredient in many foods that we would not even suspect, such as taco meat. Stephen argued that corn syrup ( a sweetener) is natural, just like parsley or hemlock. Well, Stephen does have a point. Here's something you may not have known. There are 56 names for sugar which makes it hard to check the ingredient list when you are shopping. Luckily, we found out that food wrappers have more health benefits than the food does.