You can’t change one behavior without changing another
👋 It’s Wednesday, and we’re 2% of our way through 2025
Issue #241: salt, Jimmy Carter, and the Golden Globes
On Friday, I saw Heretic with a friend (Hugh Grant is perfectly cast, just likable enough to be an unexpectedly three-dimensional villain) and then we walked a few blocks to a nearby bar. I didn’t think I was going to do Dry January, but earlier that day the U.S. Surgeon General had called for cigarette-box-style cancer warnings on alcoholic beverages. His office had published a report explaining that even if you’re drinking at moderate or low levels (the classic “glass of wine with dinner”), alcohol increases your risk of seven types of cancer significantly.
I’m pretty risk-averse, so I got a mocktail.
The first issue of this newsletter we ever sent focused on Dry January, which originated as a way for the Finnish government to save money during World War II. In that issue, we featured one writer, David Grover, who used this tradition as a way to jumpstart a virtuous cycle in his life. Cutting out beer gave him more energy, which spurred more change, like losing weight and cutting out sugar. Hence the principle of starting small with any big shift you’d like to make.
His experience underlines a core, magical truth: You can’t change one behavior without unintentionally changing others. In one of my favorite Medium posts (ever?) Edith Zimmerman illustrates her first year sober in cross-hatched black-and-white line drawings and describes how her whole universe got brighter when she stopped drinking wine. She started knitting. She started waking up buoyant and happy. She realized wine may have just been a shortcut to relationships and behaviors she could have gotten in other ways that didn’t make her feel bad:
But everyone’s different. Everyone has their own relationship to risk, their body, ethanol, the U.S. Surgeon General, and change. In one of the most-read stories of 2024, cultural anthropologist Karolina Kozmana says something most Dry January enthusiasts don’t have the guts to say: not drinking also changes other people’s behavior, and (in Kozmana’s experience) it can make socializing less pleasant when (a) people think you’re judging them, or (b) you suspect they think you’re judging them (even if you’re not!). The social side effects of abstinence aren’t always “good,” Kozmana argues, even if the health benefits are clear.
In other words, there are unintended side effects to every choice we make. May we all choose our side effects wisely this year.
🧂 Also worth reading
- The FDA recommends the average adult consume less than 1 teaspoon of salt per day, but as Jacob Waalk discovered, research supporting that prescription is inconsistent at best. (Also, it’s a nearly impossible guideline to follow if you’re an adult human who likes your food to taste like something.) What’s more important than sodium intake alone is the ratio of sodium to potassium; you run a risk of hypertension when you eat lots of salt without a proportionate amount of potassium. (Even that’s an oversimplification. Read Waalk’s story for more nuance.)
- Billy Howard photographed the late U.S. President Jimmy Carter for 35 years. He remembers Carter as a man with an easy smile and a quiet gravitas. (Carter is also the only former U.S. President to win a Nobel Peace Prize after leaving office, partially because he helped broker a treaty between Egypt and Israel.)
- Anora, a movie about a stripper who marries a Russian oligarch, was nominated for five Golden Globes and won zero. Jessicah Lahitou thinks she knows why: “Not one moment in this entire film surprised or challenged, other than the insistence on returning to strip scenes and keeping Ani in various states of undress at almost all times.”
🤔 Your daily dose of practical wisdom: on decision-making
The only “bad” decision you can make is one you didn’t think through and can’t explain. (Noa Ganot)
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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