#clotted cream is so boy failure

[st4nbehaviour]

i’m so normal about them. (i think about them every day, every night. for hours on end.)

[brittle-doughie]

I’d like to imagine that y/n is involved in all the adventures going on in kingdom, and considering the previous update, I’d like to see y/n casually dropping that they fought a dragon like it’s normal to their new rockstar friends and them getting instantly worried

bonus if y/n brings snapdragon cookies as proof

[Be you, hanging with Black Lemonade and Bassist Cookie one time, jamming to her tunes when she taps your shoulder.]

Black Lemonade: You know, Y/N Cookie, I’ve heard a lot of talk about you and this Cookie Kingdom you’ve got going on.

Bassist Cookie: Aw yeah! Cookies from many of our gigs have brought you up here and there, quite the big deal.

Y/N Cookie: Well, when you’ve been through and been to places as much as I have, you aren’t really easy to be forgotten about in the eyes of many.

Black Lemonade: What exactly did you do for it to be like this?

Y/N Cookie: Oh boy, it’s a LONG story. Where to begin…

———————————————————————————————————————

Y/N Cookie: Where are you taking me!? You just upped and grabbed my arm out of nowhere!

Strawberry Crepe Cookie: Calm down, I’m just borrowing you for a second! I can tell you’re different from those other cookies? I just need a further analysis on you!

Chili Pepper Cookie: Get back here with Y/N Cookie, you little!

Gingerbrave: You let go of Y/N Cookie right now!

Strawberry Crepe Cookie: Ugh, so annoying. I’ll give them back when I’m done, promise!

Y/N Cookie: I could just slip away right now…

(Strawberry Crepe Cookie suddenly grabbed you with their large crepe arms!)

Strawberry Crepe Cookie: Not happening, I didn’t even get to have some time with you because of these…basics!

Healer Cookie: Hang on tight, Y/N Cookie! We will do our best to rescue you!

Y/N Cookie: Strawberry Crepe, we can talk about this. Just put me down and we can-

Strawberry Crepe Cookie: I needed to run field tests on these arms anyway, I’d rather they stop functioning all together before I hand you over.

Y/N Cookie: WHAT-

———————————————————————————————————————

Clotted Cream Cookie: Are you ready, Y/N Cookie?

Y/N Cookie: I made sure to pack everything I needed, I am missing some clothes, but I can manage without them.

Clotted Cream Cookie: Good, it won’t be a long stay, so there’s no need for worry.

Financier Cookie: The airship is ready to take flight, Consul.

Clotted Cream Cookie: Shall we, Y/N Cookie?

Y/N Cookie: There’s actually one tiny problem left.

Clotted Cream Cookie: Oh! What would that be?

(Y/N Cookie points to their legs, showing that Pure Vanilla, Hollyberry, and Dark Cacao are holding onto them tight.)

Clotted Cream Cookie: I think I see the problem here…

———————————————————————————————————————

Moonlight Cookie: Ah, no more! Your words hurt like the terror of nightmares. Y/N Cookie, stay close to me.

Y/N Cookie: Moonlight Cookie is right, Stardust Cookie! The Wizards meant no malicious intent, you’re not a failure!

Stardust Cookie: You look particularly fond of this cookie, Moonlight Cookie…what is it about them that you cherish? What is it about them that washes away your sorrow…?

(Moonlight moves more in front of you to block Stardust’s line of sight, Stardust’s attention on you has made her on edge.)

Stardust Cookie: Move aside, Moonlight Cookie. I wish to see them, to see what makes you hold them dear.

Moonlight Cookie: N-no, please. It would bring me pain to see them hurt.

Stardust Cookie: I will not bring them harm, I just want to get a look at them closely. Y/N Cookie, was it? Step forth.

Moonlight Cookie: They do not wish to, please understand-

Stardust Cookie: Allow them to make their own decision, you cannot speak for them.

Y/N Cookie: Leave her be, I’ll do it.

(Moonlight clutched you close in her arms)

Moonlight Cookie: Y/N Cookie..no….

———————————————————————————————————————

Hollyberry Cookie: There they are!

Tarte Tatin Cookie: Y/N Cookie!

(There, sheltering in the cave, was you. You held your stomach as jam was stained on your head as you held it. Your sword laid next to you, claw marks littering the blade. Your breathing was heavy. Hollyberry was FREAKING OUT.)

Hollyberry Cookie: Y/N Cookie please! It’s alright, I’ve got you. Tell me you aren’t hurt badly!

Y/N Cookie: Still breathing and-WHOA! Hey, come on now, Holly! I can’t exactly do that now that you’re squeezing me tightly again!

Hollyberry Cookie: Haha! It’s just that I’m really happy to see you alive! You had no idea how horrified I was when the Red Dragon carried you away! Pitaya Dr-Pitaya Cookie is still fuming from that!

Pitaya Cookie: Your dough! It’s all scratched up! Grrr, that imposter will pay for this….

Tarte Tatin Cookie: You are incredibly lucky to have escape the dragon’s grasp…

Snapdragon: (worried babbling as they went to your side)

Royal Margarine: What do we do know? The Red Dragon will surely come back!

Y/N Cookie: I can still fight, we can still make it to-ARGH!

Hollyberry Cookie: I can’t let that happen, Y/N Cookie. I can carry you the rest of the way, but you’re not drawing your blade again.

Y/N Cookie: Don’t worry about me, the others are hurt too..

Tarte Tatin: Eeugh! I’ll be alright, Y/N Cookie.

Y/N Cookie: Liar…

———————————————————————————————————————

Black Lemonade: ….

Bassist Cookie: Woah….gnarly.

Black Lemonade: Are..are you being serious, Y/N Cookie? A dragon? You fought a dragon?! Are you alright?!

Bassist Cookie: Yeah, are you all good, man? No lasting injuries or…

Y/N Cookie: Outside of burnt dough, several broken ribs, head injuries, and multiple therapy sessions, I’d say I got out of that situation pretty fine.

Black Lemonade: With what you’ve told me, you really are quite a big deal at your place. I’m..actually kind of flattered now since you’re a fan of mine.

Y/N Cookie: Oh yeah, totally. I’m hoping to make Snapdragon Cookie one too.

Black Lemonade/Bassist Cookie: Snapdragon Cookie?

(Cue Snapdragon Cookie suddenly popping out from behind you)

Snapdragon Cookie: Kyaaha!

Black Lemonade/Bassist Cookie: WHAAAAAAAAT?!

Snapdragon Cookie: Buubuu!

[postedbygaslight]

You’ll Be the One to Turn - Part 44: Lux Aeterna

These chapters have taken a lot out of me. I don’t know if there’ll be a proper chapter 45. I’ll probably write three epilogues. But I’m not even going to begin to think about that right now. I’m emotionally blasted, and I’m taking a rest.

He’s dead. He’s supposed to be. And yet, his eyes open. Only, are they really his eyes? Are these eyelids? Is this his face? Is what he’s feeling a feeling at all? Or just the dream of a feeling?

Or the feeling of a dream.

Or nothing.

Everything.

It’s dark, but, yet, not. It’s light so bright it’s blinding. It’s endless gray that never actually begins. And yet it always has been. Where did this start? He’s unable to grasp what he’s meant to do. Or see. If doing or seeing are actual things in this place he’s found himself. If this is a place at all.

Rey.

He can see her.

He can’t remember her face. He can’t forget it.

The future she showed him haunts him. It sustains him. He hasn’t had time to understand it. He’s known it so long, he no longer knows anything else.

Time, it seems, has no power here. One second is a lifetime. One lifetime, a second.

And the warp and weft of Force’s endless loom spools our before him, offering numberless causeways to travel, threads to follow. But he can’t see the one thread he’s looking for.

This shouldn’t be happening, he thinks. And then he falls into a rhetorical trap, debating whether he can think anything at all, and whether anything at all can happen to someone who’s already been torn away from the Living Force.

But has he been torn away? What actually happened?

He bled to death in Rey’s arms on Naboo.

He was killed by Rey in a duel on Starkiller Base.

He was incinerated on the deck of his Star Destroyer when the stormtroopers rebelled.

He died, a lightsaber scorching through his heart, at the hands of his uncle, while he slept.

How many futures have already been spent? How many pasts never were?

And all at once, he’s himself again. Whatever that means. He’s standing on the salt flats of Crait as the sun sets. The wind is high, sweeping across the barren landscape. There’s no battle here. No rebel base. No wounded hatred. No desperate need to burn away the weak parts of himself. Just the salt and the sun, and an endless cloud streaked sky.

“Ben,” a voice resonates across the distances, sage and knowing.

Ben turns to see him, much as he looked that day, walking toward him, a being of dim light tinged with an aura of gentle blue.

“Luke.”

Luke, dressed in his simple Jedi robes, comes to a halt a few paces from Ben. His face is tired and careworn, but peaceful.

“You already know what I’m going to say,” Luke says, a deeply mournful tone in his soft voice.

“You said it once already.”

“And I’ll never be able to say it enough.”

Ben can’t see the point of this. His life is over. Whatever place or time they’ve come to, whether Luke is truly sorry, and whether Ben accepts that, the time has come and gone for that to have any meaning.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Luke says, walking a step closer to him. “It matters more now than ever.”

Ben remembers the night in his room at the temple. It’s a memory he’d nurtured and protected, returning to it again and again to fuel his terror, his fury, his abject hatred, and to let the cold of the cruel darkness take root in his heart. He remembers it so vividly that it strikes him now that he doesn’t have a single memory of Luke other than that one that seems to hold any meaning anymore.

“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” Ben says, an angry tremor stirring in his voice, even as he feels nothing of the rage that he once held in his heart toward Luke.

“You don’t have to forgive me, and I’m not asking for forgiveness,” Luke says, sitting on a large rock that Ben hadn’t noticed before.  “I only want you to know that I know I wronged you. I didn’t trust you or myself, and I gave in to fear. I failed you. And I’m sorry.”

They’re words he’s wanted to hear. They’re words that remind him of happiness and a home he’s never sure he’s actually had, even as they stir vicious swirls of hatred deep within him. But there’s something in the way Luke said them, a note of revelation, that draws Ben in. He can suddenly sense the eddies and flows of the Force around them, and appreciates what this is.

This isn’t death. Or the netherworld. Or another plane of existence. He’s still right where he was before, cradled in Rey’s arms as he lies dying on the floor of the focusing chamber on Naboo. And he sees again his furious attempt to break the crystal’s will. His last entreaty to the phantasm of Anakin Skywalker— Darth Vader— to aid him. To bring him enough power through the darkness. And he feels again the totality of his failure, and the silence of the mask on the altar.

“I saw his memories,” Ben says, knowing Luke can sense his thoughts. “Your father’s. I saw him turn to the Dark Side.”

“Then you saw more than I did,” Luke responds, his worn expression filled with old hurt, struck through with loss and longing. “And understand more than I ever will.”

“I understand he was cruel,” Ben says, remembering Anakin’s exhilaration as he killed the Separatists, and his sense of righteousness and dark justice as he forced Padmé to submit. “And he wanted to hurt people.”

“And he loved my mother. And his fear destroyed him.”

Ben wants to refute Luke immediately. He wants to say that Anakin didn’t love Padmé. That he couldn’t have. That he wanted only to possess and control her. But Ben knows it isn’t entirely true. He could feel the warmth of their love, a peculiar feeling when compared to the bond he and Rey built together. And he knows now that the possessive rage, the desperate, urgent desire to protect what he loved— Ben recognizes the same in himself. Recognizes it, and knows how close he’d been to losing Rey to his own murderous impulses.

“Did he really turn back to the Light? At the end.”

“Ben, I’ve talked about it so much in those simple terms, and it took me years to really understand my father’s conflict. When I confronted him, I was younger than you. I was still a boy myself in many ways,” Luke looks off into the limitless gray horizon, the burden of his destiny still hanging on him like a shroud of chains. “The Jedi and the Sith have always talked about turning. It’s not about being on one side or the other. It’s about where you’re headed. Did my father reject the Emperor’s teachings? Yes. For a moment. But it was the right moment.”

He can see it as Luke looks up at him. Luke, a young man, his face clean shaven, his sandy hair swept aside. Dressed all in black, as though he mourned for someone he’d never known. Vader, a tower of metal and plastene, a clotted wound in the Force, bleeding decades of anger and hatred. And he senses what Luke sensed. Something so familiar.

The spark. A tiny, flickering light deep within the soul of Anakin Skywalker. Ben sees the child, crouching in the inky blackness. He is nine or ten. Blond hair. White and cream colored clothing— like Rey’s when she lived on Jakku. His face is sad and frightened, and his eyes betray the loss and sadness of a hundred lifetimes. He clings to the ember, racked with shivers, and cannot even bring himself to weep. There are no more tears that can be shed.

I feel the good in you. Let go of your hate.

And the shadow conceals the desert boy from view, as Vader’s black storm cloud cloak folds in around him like a predator protecting its young.

It is... too late for me... son.

Ben shudders away from the cold shroud of Vader’s presence. He looks to Luke, and then around at the stark, endless horizon.

“What happens now?”

“What do you want to happen?” Luke asks, standing.

“I’ve never had anything I’ve wanted,” Ben responds. “Not really.”

Luke slowly closes the distance between them, holding his gaze, his eyes deep with knowledge and understanding.

“She loves you.”

Even though it’s something he knows, something so fundamental and essential to his reckoning of who he is, hearing Luke say it takes him aback. And he realizes that he never truly believed Rey loved him. Not as he is now. Or as he was.

“She loves someone who I might have been,” Ben says, shaking his head, the grief of it too raw and near for him to fully grasp. “Someone who won’t ever be.”

“No,” Luke says, and the emphatic way he pronounces it shakes Ben to his core. “Loving someone for who they could be— for what they have the potential to become— is hope. And hope is the purest form of love.”

Luke’s gaze cuts deep into him, and he thinks of the ember shielded from the dark by young Anakin. Ben thinks of the blast of light that released from his own spirit when he bled the crystal in the cargo hold of the Finalizer. He remembers its power. And he knows now where he’s felt it before. The blinding light at the heart of the bond. Within the bloom of warmth, that blaze of starfire. A light that cannot be doused or diminished.

Hope.

“It’s a rare gift,” Luke continues. “And one not lightly given.”

Ben can see her. She’s holding him in her arms. She won’t let go of his body. He can feel her despair, and her acceptance of the finality of what is to be.

“It’s too late now.”

Luke takes another step toward him. He’s only a pace away now.

“It’s never too late.”

“How did you do it?” Ben asks, reaching for some way to understand. To accept. “How did you save your father?”

“I didn’t save him. He saved himself. I only reminded him that he could.”

Ben sees it through Luke’s eyes. The Emperor standing over him, his cruel yellow eyes thrilling in the pain he’s able to inflict, cords of lighting streaming from his fingertips, lashing Luke with violent blasts. Only now, at the end, do you understand. Gray teeth bared in a twisted, corpse-like scowl. And Vader. Standing there. Watching.

Father! Please!

And Ben feels Anakin Skywalker emerge from behind the mask as he regards the monster at his side. This man. My tormentor. My jailer. My master. He asked for my freedom, and I gave it. He asked for my name and my life as I’d known it, and I gave those, too. He will not have my son.

Ben sees Luke’s memory. Of a dark throne room. Of pain and electric smoke. Of sudden shock as Anakin Skywalker, imprisoned in the shell of Darth Vader, lifts the ghoul at his side into the air, summoning the last strength he has in his powerful frame, heaving the Emperor into the reactor shaft as lethal ropes of lightning snap through his metal body.

Ben steps back, shaken.

“B— but, how— how can I—“

“You already have,” Luke says, reaching up to touch Ben’s face. Ben can’t stop the tears, if there really are tears in this place, from spilling down his cheeks, and he shakes his head.

“After what I’ve done—“

“Reach out with your feelings. What do they tell you?”

Ben looks into his uncle’s sad, hopeful eyes. And he does reach out. And he feels it. His mother. Not the memory of her, but her. Bright and shimmering in the Force. And his father, joined with her there, his strength and love blended in with hers as they exist still, together, beyond the reach of pain or sorrow.

He meets Luke’s eyes, and he breaks. Whatever enmity he felt for his uncle strips away, and all he can feel now is a deep and lasting gratitude.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Luke says, stepping back from him and letting his hand drop to his side. “This is the lesson. My last lesson. The same one I tried to show you here. Those you’ve loved, and those who’ve loved you, they’re never really gone. They’ll always be with you. Just as I’ll always be with you. And your father will always be with you. And your mother will always be with you.”

Luke motions to the horizon, stepping back again. Ben can sense this place starting to bleed away into the Force around them.

“The past doesn’t ever die. Just as the future never actually is. What lies between the two is hope. And, hope, Ben, is accepting that you can’t make the future what you want. And recognizing that fear will drive you to destroy what you love even as you try to save it,” Luke says, shimmering with flashes of blue and white as he and the apparition of Crait blink away. “You have to trust. You have to trust enough to let go.”

And he does. He lets go of his hate. And the anger that fueled so much of his misery washes away like streaks from a windowpane. He feels the brilliant light of his mother’s love, and the earnest fierceness of his father’s. He feels Luke’s love, too: yielding, distant, but resolute and unchanging.

He finally understands. And accepts. And knows. The future spreads out before him in limitless causeways and paths, and he finally sees that he can’t make any one of them come to be. He has to walk a path, and let the future come as it will. He sees now, at last, that the only thing that can destroy the future that he wants is his own fear, his own inability to let be what will be, to try to take control and bend destiny to his command. He has to let go of that fear. He has to hope.

And as he is enveloped in the warmth and light of Rey’s love for him, he closes his eyes, and takes the first step forward on a new path, trusting to the Force that it will guide him home.

***

She’s still holding to him, even as his body is limp and lifeless. She clings to him so tightly it’s as though she hopes the ache of emptiness in her will somehow be comforted by press of his skin against hers.

Even as he’s gone. Even as he’ll never return.

The sobs coming from her now are so broken and violent that she doesn’t know how she’ll ever be able to breathe again. And part of her wants to stay here with him, to sink into death, to go to the darkness to find him, because if this is what living will be, she doesn’t know how she can do it.

Perhaps that’s why, when the cold in her starts to blaze with warmth, she thinks for a moment that she has actually died. That she willed herself into the Force. That she could not go on alone.

But it’s not death. And it’s not comfort. It’s the familiar warmth of the bond. And she can see it again, the thread. It’s shining so brilliantly, it overcomes everything else around it. And confusion gives way to disbelief as she feels Ben take in a sharp breath and his hands close around her arms as though he’s been drowning and somehow reached the shore.

She pulls back to see him staring up at her, his eyes filled with wonder and gratitude, and she can’t stop the tears from flowing as her heart overflows, spellbound with a joy so pure and unencumbered that she doesn’t care at all how any of this is possible.

His arms are closing around her as he sits up and their eyes are locked in the shared awe of this new embrace. The warmth and fire shared between them blazes outward and crashes back in, the Force blooming and collapsing in rushes, a crackling blend of ecstatic energies all around them.

She sees it in his eyes, and she knows he sees it, too. The future she showed him returns in a thousand different paths, brilliant and shining with color, a slowly tilting prism of perfect crystal. For the first time since she’s known him, Ben Solo’s face is filled with hope, and as she kisses him, the Force swirls and keens around them in a balance of shadow and light so strong it carries their spirits aloft as though they’d never been parted at all.

They kiss, and kiss again, and hold each other, parting only in brief instances, their names on each other’s breaths as they embrace in the soft white glow of the kyber heart, finally together in the Light.

[sherristockman]

Paying Respect to Dr. Kummerow Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola As they say, patience is a virtue, and that's part of what it took for Dr. Fred A. Kummerow to accomplish what was arguably his most important work: spearheading a federal ban on synthetic trans fats in processed foods. It took nearly 50 years of what The New York Times described as his "contrarian" nature to get the job done, and it wasn't an easy task. Kummerow, a comparative biosciences professor at the University of Illinois, died on June 2, 2017, at the age of 102. He had studied trans fats for decades — long before they were an issue in the minds of food scientists. Despite opposition and even ridicule (such as heckling by industry representatives at scientific conferences, according to his local Champaign, Illinois, newspaper, the News-Gazette1), his tenacity eventually facilitated changes in the American diet that have undoubtedly saved thousands of lives. Perhaps it was his perseverance in working toward his goal that spurred Kummerow on to centenarian status. He started with a petition targeted toward the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2009. The agency's failure to respond led — just a few months before his 99th birthday — to his lawsuit against the agency in 2013. Two years later, the FDA agreed to start the process of banning all synthetic trans fats from food. The ban is set to go into effect in 2018. A few brief snapshots of some of Kummerow's most pivotal moments in the fight hint at the importance of this accomplishment: He was both one of the first to suggest an association between processed foods and heart disease, and the key figure behind the FDA lawsuit, which asked the administration to simply be more responsible for the decisions the agency made that could (and did) make or break the health of consumers. Robert Jones, chancellor at the university, called Kummerow both a "trailblazer" and "maverick."2 Michael Jacobson, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which began working toward the use of safer oils in foods in the 1980s, noted that "for many years, he was a lonely voice in the wilderness."3 What Are Trans Fats and Why Are They so Bad? Trans fats, The New York Times explains, are "derived from the hydrogen-treated oils used to give margarine its easy-to-spread texture and prolong the shelf life of crackers, cookies, icing and hundreds of other staples in the American diet."4 If you want to get technical, trans fats are synthetic fatty acids. Kummerow pointed out that trans fats, which are not found in animal or vegetable fats, prevent the synthesis of prostacyclin,5 which studies show your body needs to prevent blood clots from forming in your arteries. The natural result, all too often, is sudden death. Synthetic trans fats found in partially hydrogenated oil can cause heart disease, as can oxidized cholesterol, which is formed when cholesterol is heated, such as in the case of fried foods. The sad fact is, about 95 percent of the foods Americans eat are processed. The elimination of processed foods (or any foods containing trans fat) may be the single most important change you make in your diet. Here's an encouraging word: Your body can eliminate the built-up trans fats it contains in about a month. Kummerow was the first scientist to identify trans fat as the true culprit behind clogged arteries, which for years were blamed on saturated fats (and still are, in some circles). The opposition was tremendous. Part of the problem, the News-Gazette reported, was that politics were in play, overpowering a desire for the public to be healthier as a result of governmental food policies. He was quoted in an interview: "Professor Kummerow said that in the 1960s and 1970s the processed food industry, enjoying a cozy relationship with scientists, played a large role in keeping trans fats in people's diets."6 Kummerow told The New York Times, rather tongue in cheek, that "other scientists were more interested in what the industry was thinking than what I was thinking." Although Kummerow found a direct correlation between heart disease and trans fat consumption in women, which he called the "tip of the iceberg" after finding another disturbing link between trans fat and type 2 diabetes in women, it took another 20 years for the scientific community to acknowledge there might be something to his research. Early Years: Influences and Opportunities In a short autobiographical sketch,7 Kummerow outlined details of his life that offer insights regarding his early years, which undoubtedly influenced his work ethic as well as his chosen profession. He was born in Berlin in 1914. In 1923, a relative offered his father a job in a concrete block factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which ultimately helped them escape Germany's growing political turmoil. He particularly remembered the gift of a chemistry set when he was 12, which he credited to his immediate and passionate interest in food science. Kummerow's school career followed a fairly straightforward path: Milwaukee's Boys Technical School ("because they had a three-year chemistry course"), the chemistry department at the University of Wisconsin in 1936 and graduate studies in the school's department of biochemistry four years later. He explained: "My Ph.D. research involved identifying the chemistry of a factor in the blood (linoleic acid) that keeps the blood from clotting in the arteries and veins. This is a particularly important factor in today's cardiovascular disease research since that clotting affects the blood flow from the heart."8 In 1945, he was asked by Kansas State University to work on the technology of food storage, especially those containing fat, noting how food containing certain fat goes rancid quickly, an important observation in the throes of World War II. When the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps granted contracts to universities to work on the development of food storage methods in extreme conditions, he gained one of them, as well as a subsequent citation for his work in 1948. Dr. Kummerow: Tenacious, Contrary and, Ultimately, Right The citation itself, awarded at Fort Knox, was a steppingstone to his next project as a biochemist at the University of Illinois in 1950 to continue his lipid research, which he continued for the remainder of his long career. Kummerow wrote: "In 1948, the U.S. Congress created the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and made research funds available on a variety of topics, including diet and health. The NIH was mandated to fund research on cancer and other diseases, but only a few million dollars per year were allocated for heart research until after President Eisenhower's heart attack in 1955. With money available from NIH grants to study heart disease, I began to work in that field. The effect of cholesterol on heart disease was one avenue of study and was the one I followed. Almost everyone now has heard of cholesterol and its possible link to heart disease, with recommendations (I disagree with) to cut back on eating cholesterol containing foods such as eggs and meat, and saturated fats in foods like butter."9 When Kummerow began studying trans fats in foods in 1957 and documenting his concerns about their negative effects, he was able to show how arteries in heart disease patients literally changed in composition and developed blockages unrelated to dietary cholesterol or blood cholesterol, causing an imbalance in nutrients that can also lead to obesity. The New York Times wrote of Kummerow: "He had been one of the first scientists to suggest a link between processed foods and heart disease. In the 1950s, while studying lipids at the university, he analyzed diseased arteries from about two dozen people who had died of heart attacks and discovered that the vessels were filled with trans fats."10 Using pigs that had been fed a diet heavy in trans fats in his next study, he revealed the high levels of plaque his porcine subjects' arteries were clogged with. In 1957, while every other scientific institution was blaming the growing number of atherosclerosis cases on saturated fats from foods like cheese, butter and cream, Kummerow published his findings about the dangers of trans fats in the journal Science. It was ignored. It took Kummerow's tough stance with the FDA to get them to concede that trans fats are not safe, with the caveat that unless a manufacturer could present convincing scientific evidence that a particular use was safe, they would be banned after June 18, 2018. That's 58 years after Kummerow's first findings told the ugly truth about trans fats. Even now, scores of doctors and hospitals erroneously tell their patients that saturated fats are the problem. But today, Dr. Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the T. H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard, is just one scientist who credits Kummerow's research and tireless activism for inspiring his own interest in researching trans fat. It led him to include the topic for further investigation as part of Harvard's highly influential Nurses' Health Study, published in 1993. In fact, Willett believes the push for the trans fat ban will save as many as 90,000 people a year from dying prematurely. Dr. Kummerow: Perseverance and Passion An individual as unique and knowledgeable as Kummerow had, like the rest of us, interesting quirks that may have hinted at some of the larger aspects of how his brain worked. For one, he had many interests, the News-Gazette noted. He wrote letters to five different sitting presidents, members of Congress and others he thought might be able to do something about some of the topics that weighed on his mind, such as energy, nuclear weaponry and the national debt. In his biography, Kummerow recalled being an expert witness for several hearings before the Federal Trade Commission on the topic of cholesterol, reports made to a U.S. Senate hearing on nutrition and the biochemistry of cholesterol, co-authoring more than 460 peer-reviewed scientific papers, editing three books and writing chapters in six other books on the role trans fat plays in heart disease. He called being made a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American College of Nutrition, the American Society of Nutritional Sciences, the International Atherosclerosis Society, the American Heart Association Council on Arteriosclerosis, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, and the Council of Clinical Cardiology, and involvement with the American Heart Association a "recognition of competence." Incidentally, Kummerow noted that his own diet included whole milk, red meat and eggs scrambled in butter. After writing his book, "Cholesterol is Not the Culprit: A Guide to Preventing Heart Disease," published just a few years before his death, he summed up the importance of respecting how the body processes food, writing: "How the body uses food to make what we need to keep going is an incredible, almost magical, process. We — as well as all animals and plants — are not programmed to live forever, but we can certainly increase the number of high quality years of life."11