Look, I’m British, so I think you know what I’m going to say about tea.

Tea is great. Tea is delicious. I drink tea every day, just like my father and my mother and their fathers and their mothers and so on, back hundreds of years to when tea first started being imported to Britain from India and became our national beverage of choice.

Put a food-grade-plastic tea bag in near-boiling water, and it rapidly starts to disintegrate and you’ve got a cuppa that’s more plastic soup than tea.

Tea made Britain great. It made the British Empire, and it was the cause — or the proximal cause, anyway — of the great falling-out between Britain and its thirteen colonies, so I guess we can say tea made America great too.

Besides being a nice thing to drink, tea has all sorts of health benefits. Here are three that may surprise you.

1. Tea makes you lose weight

Japanese researchers have shown that an extract of tea catechins with caffeine significantly increases energy expenditure by causing changes to brown fat cells.

There are actually two types of fat: white and brown. Brown fat is a more metabolically active type that’s involved in maintaining body temperature. Think of brown fat cells as little furnaces, if you will, that burn energy to keep the body warm. So by cranking up these furnaces, in a manner that’s similar to the effects of consuming chiles or taking a cold dip, the catechins in tea will increase your total energy expenditure. That means you can eat more and not put on weight, or you can lose weight more easily. Cool, huh?

2. Green tea helps you build muscle

There’s quite a lot of research demonstrating the anabolic effects of green tea; these include studies of bodybuilders, trained athletes, and elderly people. A Brazilian study of women who undertook a weight-loss regimen showed that those who combined weight training with green tea increased their strength the most and also increased their muscle mass the most.

How? It’s been suggested that the phenols in green tea inhibit the enzymes that remove testosterone from the blood, meaning more testosterone remains there for longer. But there are probably other mechanisms at work too. Drinking green tea before exercise may boost the concentration of adrenaline in the body, which could help to improve the quality of the workout.

3. Drinking tea helps you live longer

A large-scale population study of 100,000 Chinese adults showed that drinking three cups of tea a week — in this case, green tea again — reduced the risk of death by a whopping 15% over a period of seven years. The researchers estimated that drinking tea could add an average of 1.26 years to the life of a 50-year-old tea drinker. The researchers attribute these effects to the phenols in the tea — again — which may have a protective effect on blood vessels.

You could quite literally spend all day reading studies about the health benefits of drinking tea. If you’d like to do that, here’s a link to one of my favorite websites, which has a whole archive of tea studies.

So the moral of this story is, clearly, drink tea.

Hold the plastic

But not so fast. Before you go and brew a cup or a pot, there are some problems with drinking tea that you need to be aware of. Here’s a really big one: plastics. Or rather, it’s a big problem that takes a very small form: microplastics.

If you drink tea made with tea bags rather than loose-leaf tea, as most people do, you’re almost certainly ingesting large quantities of microplastics, and that’s not something you want to do if you can help it.

Microplastics are a serious emerging health threat, and new research is linking them to pretty much every known chronic disease, from Alzheimer’s and autism to heart disease and irritable bowel syndrome. Microplastics accumulate in all the organs of the body: the liver, the heart, the eyes, the sexual organs, the brain. It’s been suggested that we swallow a credit card’s worth of plastic a week (5g) and inhale the same amount too.

BSIP/UIG via Getty Images

What's in your bag?

The microplastics in tea don’t just come from the water or the kettle (if it’s plastic); they also come from the tea bag itself. A significant proportion of tea bags are now either made of plastic — the tea bag is actually plastic — or contain plastic, usually in the glue that holds it together. A study of six tea brands in the U.K. revealed that four included polypropylene and one was made entirely of nylon.

Food-grade plastics deteriorate significantly at temperatures above 40 degrees centigrade. Put a food-grade-plastic tea bag in near-boiling water, and it rapidly starts to disintegrate and you’ve got a cuppa that’s more plastic soup than tea.

A 2019 study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology found that a cup of tea produced by one plastic tea bag contained 11.6 billion — billion — microplastic pieces and 3.1 billion nanoplastic pieces. Nanoplastics are probably even worse than microplastics, because they’re smaller, which means they can get into places microplastics can’t inside the body.

One way to cut out the plastics is to avoid tea bags altogether, but it’s not particularly convenient — and who wants to deal with strainers and cleaning up the soggy leaves afterward? I certainly don’t.

Kindred spirit

Thankfully, there’s a solution that doesn’t mean abandoning those handy little pouches. It’s Kindred Harvest, a brand I’m proud to have founded myself, because I don’t want a mouthful of plastic either. Our tea products are organic (so no nasty pesticides); they're independently tested for heavy-metal content (many teas are heavily contaminated with lead and other toxic metals); and best of all, they’re packaged in 100% plastic-free tea bags.

Kindred Harvest offers 10 different blends, with everything from black and green tea to vanilla chai, cinnamon apple, and hibiscus flower.

Kindred Harvest

My personal favorite is the Sleep Tea mix, made with chamomile, lemongrass, spearmint, and lavender. If you’ve been paying attention to these articles over the last month or so, you’ll know that sleep is a seriously underappreciated aspect of good health. Men who double their sleep can double their testosterone, for example. When I have a nice hot cup of that chamomile blend, I know that when my head hits my perfect Woolshire organic virgin-wool pillow, I’ll be counting sheep in no time.

The company profiles and product recommendations that Align publishes are meant solely to inform and edify our subscribers. Unless explicitly labeled as such, they are neither paid promotions nor endorsements.

Visit kindredharvest.co.

All-natural tallow: Everything your skin needs — without the hormone disruptors

During the pandemic, there was a large spike in the number of girls entering puberty at a very young age, a recent study from Italy showed.

“Precocious puberty,” as the condition is known, is defined as the development of secondary sexual characteristics — breasts, pubic hair, larger testicles, a deeper voice, etc. — before the age of 8 in girls and 9 in boys.

Tallow balms are easy to make at home — I make one with tallow, olive oil, and rosemary from my garden.

Entering puberty that early can lead to significant complications. As well as being associated with reduced stature and other physical problems, studies have found links with emotional and behavioral issues including substance abuse, social isolation, truancy, and sexual promiscuity.

Growing up too fast

It’s generally reckoned that girls suffer from precocious puberty at a much higher rate than boys: something like 0.2% as opposed to 0.05%, although there may be quite wide national variation. It’s not known why girls suffer at such a higher rate, but there could be a deep survival mechanism at work — perhaps one that allows girls to mature faster and reproduce earlier under particular conditions (war, scarcity, extreme stress).

The researchers behind the study looked at data for 133 diagnosed cases of precocious puberty in Italian girls between January 2016 and June 2021. While they found 72 diagnosed cases in the four years before the beginning of the pandemic, they found 61 cases between March 2020 and June 2021, a rate of four new cases a month. That’s about three times the rate before the pandemic.

The average age of sexual development has been getting lower and lower for decades across the West — maybe by as much as three months per decade for girls since the 1970s — but clearly, the number of cases observed during the pandemic was way outside that general trend.

Fat and unhappy

So what was going on?

The researchers found a clear link between the increase in cases and weight gain, which is a known risk factor for precocious puberty. Fatter children are more likely to enter puberty sooner.

The pandemic was a disaster for children’s health all round. Trapped inside, away from their friends for months at a time, bombarded with terrifying propaganda, left with nothing to do but watch TV or play video games or scroll TikTok while their parents answered Zoom calls in the next room, children got fatter — a lot fatter. Obesity rates went through the roof, and so did rates of mental health problems: anxiety, depression, suicidality.

All that blue light from screens probably didn’t help either. Rat studies have shown that chronic blue-light exposure can bring forward puberty, believe it or not, because of changes to patterns of hormone release.

Sanitizer insanity

Another factor, the researchers think — and you may find this surprising — was the “increased use of hand and surface sanitizers.”

Remember how much people were sanitizing their hands and even home deliveries? In many cases, especially out in public, people were cleaning their hands after every social interaction and every time they walked in and out of a room.

I made a point of never using the hand sanitizers on offer, because I know they contain big doses of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, chemicals that interfere with the body’s natural hormone balance and can have all sorts of unpleasant effects, from reducing testosterone levels to interfering with sexual development in the womb or during puberty.

It’s an unfortunate truth that the young are especially vulnerable to these chemicals, and if they interfere in processes that can only happen once — like sexual differentiation in the womb, “mini-puberty” in early childhood, or “big” puberty in adolescence — the effects can be irreversible. Not good.

A very nasty chemical

One such chemical commonly found in hand sanitizers is triclosan. Triclosan is a very nasty chemical, not least of all because it can dramatically increase the absorption of other endocrine-disrupting chemicals like BPA.

So if you coat your hands with triclosan-laden sanitizer and then touch, say, a plastic toy or a piece of thermal paper, you’ll get a mega dose of harmful chemicals, right into your blood.

It’s not just hand sanitizer, though. Pretty much all modern personal care products contain endocrine disruptors, and for this reason they represent one of our most persistent sources of exposure to harmful chemicals. Research has shown that women are at particular risk, because they use so many personal care products. One study claims college-age women in the U.S. use an average of eight personal care products a day that contain known endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Some women in the study were using as many as 17 a day!

Photo by Rich Sugg/Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service via Getty Image

Cold turkey

The simplest way to reduce your exposure to these harmful chemicals is to stop using products that contain them. Research shows that if women go cold-turkey on their favorite personal care products, levels of harmful phthalates, parabens, and phenols in their urine decrease by as much as 45% in just three days.

Of course, you still need to keep yourself spic and span, but giving up chemical-heavy supermarket soaps and scrubs doesn’t mean you can’t wash, thankfully. A lot of products can be replaced with tallow-based alternatives.

Fat of the land

Tallow is rendered animal fat, usually beef fat. If that sounds disgusting to you, it shouldn’t. That’s how soap used to be made, using natural rather than artificial fats, and as with so many things, the old ways are better.

Being animal fat, tallow has a chemical profile that’s very similar to human fat and contains various natural substances, including vitamins and cholesterol, that are nourishing for the skin. Modern soaps tend to strip the skin of moisture and nutrients and dry it out. They also destroy the colonies of beneficial micro-organisms that live on our skin and protect us, acting as a first line of defense against harmful pathogens entering the body.

A personal favorite

You don’t have to smell like beef, either, unless you want to. Tallow products can be fragranced with natural substances like rosemary oil or lavender.

Tallow balms are easy to make at home — I make one with tallow, olive oil, and rosemary from my garden — but there’s a growing number of companies that make high-quality tallow products as well.

My favorite is North Idaho Tallow Company. The company's tallow sugar scrub — a mixture of tallow and cane sugar, with natural fragrance — is just the ticket after a heavy workout, when you need to wash away the sweat and effort and come up looking sparkling. As well as offering soaps, balms, lip balms, and beard care products, the company also sells tallow-and-beeswax candles, which are so much better than paraffin ones.

Visit idahotallow.com.

Acorn Bluff Farms: Pampered pigs yield 'Kobe beef' of pork

You are what what you eat eats. Try saying that in a hurry.

It’s a simple maxim, but one that guides me in my nutritional choices and in the advice I give to other people about improving their diet. If the meat and animal products you eat come from animals that live unhealthy, unhappy lives — if they’re stuffed full of poor-quality food they shouldn’t even be eating and housed in an unnatural environment — then you’re not going to derive as much benefit from those products as you should.

If you feed animals badly, you get a bad product. It’s that simple.

And why would you want that?

Animal welfare matters

Animal welfare matters not only because it determines the quality of the food you eat, but also because animals are sentient, feeling creatures who deserve moral consideration.

This doesn’t get said enough, actually, and there’s been a rather depressing tendency for so-called conservatives to pay little heed to the suffering of livestock or animals. This is part of a broader Philistine tendency on the right, I think, that reduces everything to economics and lines on a graph.

But of course it’s more economical to immobilize 10,000 chickens in a strip-lit warehouse instead of pasturing them on grass, in rather the same way it might seem economical to import your nation’s birth rates and undercut native labour with cheap foreigners at half the price — and of course they don’t unionize either!

A two-way pact

Domestication, which created cows and chickens and sheep and pigs as we know them, was a two-way pact, and we shouldn’t forget it. We got reliable, high-quality nutrition that didn’t have to be hunted on the plains and in the forests, at great risk to ourselves, and the animals got care and protection — including from other animals like wolves and bears and big cats.

The terms of this pact, and of man’s proper relation to nature more broadly, were given their most solemn expression in the book of Genesis, when God granted man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

By “dominion,” God didn’t mean, “You can do anything you want to these animals.” He meant, “You are the lord of these animals, and like every lord and his subjects, you have obligations to them. They are in your care. They are not to be abused or misused.”

I didn’t really intend this piece to be a bit of Biblical exegesis, but oh well — here we are.

But as I was saying, if you feed animals badly, you get a bad product. It’s that simple.

Farmed salmon 'toxic'

Take farmed salmon, for example. I think we all know we’re supposed to eat more oily fish to get those important omega-3s in our diet, but the truth is, farmed salmon may be one of the most toxic foods on the planet, and it’s all to do with how the fish are raised and in particular what they’re fed.

Blaze Media

Research has linked regular consumption of farmed salmon to diabetes and obesity. Mice fed farmed salmon gain twice as much weight as mice fed other foods. Farmed salmon has been shown to carry an enormous payload of harmful chemicals, which probably explains its obesogenic effects.

A 2004 study showed at least 13 different persistent organic pollutants in the flesh of farmed salmon and that levels of polychlorinated biphenyls — chemicals known to be carcinogenic and to cause hormonal disruption — were eight times higher in farmed salmon than wild. Two other kinds of carcinogenic chemicals — dioxins and polybrominated diphenyl ethers — have also been found in high concentrations in farmed salmon.

One of the main foods given to farmed salmon is eel and other fatty fish, which are chosen because of their high protein and fat content. The problem is that fatty fish readily accumulate harmful substances, many of which are lipophilic (attracted to fat) and get stuck in their fat stores. A lot of the fatty fish that go into fish feed are taken from the Baltic, one of the most heavily polluted seas on the planet, concentrating the waste of nine industrial nations. (In Sweden, fishmongers are legally required to warn customers of the health risks of consuming fish caught in the Baltic. I bet you didn’t know that.)

Pigs under pressure

The same is true of pigs and pork. Apart from chickens, pigs bear the greatest burden of suffering in the modern industrial farming system. If you want any further reason to pray for the Three Gorges Dam to fail, look up China’s multi-story pig farms, which have the capacity to house and slaughter millions of pigs a year.

We in the West aren’t much better, though. For the most part, pigs here are just as unhappy: cramped, stressed, stuffed full of cheap corn and soy to fatten them up for slaughter as quickly and economically — there it is, that word again — as possible.

That means atrocious misery and poor-quality pork and lard to boot. There’s been a lot of talk of putting away seed and vegetable oils and returning to healthy traditional animal fats like butter and tallow and lard, but lard from industrially raised pigs is anything but healthy or traditional. Because pigs don’t have a rumen — those magical multiple stomachs possessed by cows and sheep — if they’re fed trash like soybean oil, they can’t convert the fats in it to saturated fat. As a result, the fat content of the pork comes to resemble soybean oil, and you’ve got seed oil but it’s called lard. So it goes.

Meet Acorn Bluff

Thank God, then, for Acorn Bluff Farms, a family farm in the rolling bluff country of Louisa County, Iowa. The farm has been in continuous use for nearly 200 years, but in the last five years its owners have converted the farm to focus on producing the highest quality pasture-raised pork, using one of the world’s most prestigious heritage breeds: the Hungarian Mangalitsa.

Mangalitsa pigs were originally bred for the Habsburgs, the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. You can recognize them by their absurdly cute curly hair. Since they were bred for European royalty, you can bet Mangalitsa pigs taste good. Some call Mangalitsa the “Kobe beef” of pork, Kobe beef being one of the priciest and most prized kinds of beef in the world. The cows are fed beer and given massages. (Really: Look it up.)

Acorn Bluff Farms

The other red meat

At Acorn Bluff Farms, the pigs and piglets are allowed to roam and forage and wallow in the mud and chase one another through the fields and forest like pigs and piglets should. Follow the farm’s Twitter account (@acornblufffarms) for regular heartwarming videos.

In the middle of the 20th century, pork began to be marketed as “the other white meat,” but this was only really possible because modern farming methods were turning pork into an insipid, watered-down, pale shadow of the meat it really is.

If you buy some pork chops or a side of spare ribs from Acorn Bluff Farms, you’ll see pork in its true form: the other red meat. And what’s more, you can enjoy every single mouthful, without guilt — which is how it should be, because God said so.

The Escort Redline 360c: Why this radar detector is the ultimate driving companion

In today’s high-tech world of driving, cars are getting smarter — and so are traffic enforcement tools.

From red-light cameras to radar and laser traps, motorists are facing a growing array of surveillance on the road. That’s where Escort Redline 360c Radar Detector steps in, not as a gimmick or gadget, but as a serious investment in driver awareness and protection.

'The more you know about what’s happening on the road ahead, the safer and smarter your drive becomes.'

At $799.95, the Redline 360c isn’t cheap — but for those who value precision, reliability, and situational awareness, it just may be the best money you can spend on your vehicle.

I had the opportunity to speak with Joe Sherbondy, director of Escort Radar detection products, to get a closer look at what makes the Redline 360c such a game changer.

“The newest firmware update cuts response time in half,” Sherbondy told me. “This isn’t just a minor tweak — it puts Escort firmly ahead of the competition in terms of speed and reliability.”

Setting a new benchmark in detection speed

What sets the Redline 360c apart is its extreme detection range combined with intelligent filtering. Most radar detectors flood drivers with false alarms from automatic doors, collision avoidance systems, and other non-threatening signals.

The Redline 360c’s updated firmware uses machine learning and signal classification to reduce those false alerts while maintaining rapid and accurate identification of legitimate threats.

Sherbondy explained it simply: “Drivers want to be informed — not overwhelmed. Our detectors learn over time, and the Redline 360c now responds faster than anything else in the market, with fewer distractions.”

An evolving ecosystem

What’s equally impressive is how Escort continues to build out its ecosystem. The Redline 360c is integrated with the North American Defender® Database, which offers real-time notifications of red-light and speed cameras.

With a subscription (available in one-year or three-year packages), users receive automatic updates to ensure they stay protected as enforcement zones evolve.

And for those upgrading from an older device, Escort’s trade-in program allows customers to send in their previous detector for credit. It’s a practical option, especially with older detectors quickly falling behind in today’s rapidly advancing enforcement tech landscape.

Bundled protection and smart integration

Escort is also offering compelling bundles that make upgrading more attractive.

Redline 360c + M2 Dash Cam Bundle: For $949.95 (a $50 savings), you get not only the top-tier detector but also Escort’s smart dash cam, the M2. This adds real-time video recording, voice alerts, GPS tagging, and integration with the Drive Smarter app — perfect for reviewing incidents or protecting yourself against false claims.

Redline 360c + ZR6 Laser Shifter: For those looking for total peace of mind, the $1,999.90 package includes Escort’s most powerful radar and laser defense tools. The ZR6 system is designed to combat modern laser enforcement, making this combination one of the most comprehensive protection solutions available for everyday drivers.

Why it matters

Speeding tickets aren't just costly — they can raise insurance rates and impact your driving record. But more importantly, having a radar detector like the Redline 360c empowers drivers with real-time information, helping them make safer, more informed decisions on the road.

Joe Sherbondy summed it up: “We’re not encouraging speeding — we’re enabling situational awareness. The more you know about what’s happening on the road ahead, the safer and smarter your drive becomes.”

The Redline 360c isn’t a toy — it’s a precision instrument built for serious drivers. Whether you commute daily, travel long distances, or simply want to stay one step ahead of modern enforcement, this device delivers.

Yes, the price point may seem high, but consider the long-term savings: fewer tickets, reduced insurance hikes, and a better understanding of your driving environment. Add to that Escort’s trade-in incentives and bundled discounts, and the investment becomes even more worthwhile.

For those who value performance, reliability, and cutting-edge protection, the Escort Redline 360c is the radar detector to beat.

Skip the seed sludge for farm-fresh olive oil — straight from the Mediterranean

Seed oils.

You’ve probably heard they’re really bad, but I bet you don’t know why. If you do, or think you do, I bet it’s because of the disgusting way they’re produced — you may have seen that stomach-turning video of canola oil being made — and the fact that they’re a totally novel form of fat humans have no real history of consuming.

Yet here we are guzzling huge quantities of them in pretty much every kind of processed food you can think of.

Forefather knows best

Seed oils are everywhere now, in large part because they’re cheap to make, but also because we’ve been told, wrongly, that they’re actually much better for us than the fats our ancestors ate since the dawn of time, especially animal fats.

The logic behind that claim — we’ve been eating the wrong fats for 200,000 years until corporations came along and magically gave us the right kind — doesn’t pass a basic sniff test, but there’s also a growing body of scientific research to back up our sensible prejudice.

Everything about this olive oil is authentic, down to the local village men and women who harvest the olives and press and bottle the liquid.

Last week, I talked about the book I consider to be the best book ever written on diet and nutrition, Weston A. Price’s "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration."

Price makes a simple argument: The transition to modern industrial diets has been a disaster for human health. He was making this argument in 1939, when the very first factory foods like refined-wheat products and canned goods were becoming widespread, many decades before supermarket shelves were filled with the kind of ultra-processed slop we’re familiar with today, like Twinkies and Froot Loops and microwave pizza and Hot Pockets.

A worthless byproduct

Seed oils were one of the first true industrial foodstuffs. Whenever modern humans have eaten seeds, they’ve eaten very small quantities of seed oils, but it required modern machines and chemistry to extract them in large quantities and produce horrible oceans of the stuff: high-pressure mechanical pressing, neutralizing, bleaching, deodorizing, and so on.

One of the first commercial seed oils was crystallized cottonseed oil, which you almost certainly know as Crisco. Oil was extracted at high pressure from cottonseeds and then hydrogenated using a metal catalyst to produce a solid seed-based alternative to animal shortening.

Cotton producers loved this new process, because it made a worthless byproduct of cotton manufacturing into a valuable commodity. What was once fit only to thin paint and lubricate machinery (if not just thrown away) became something people would stick in their mouths and eat.

When I put it like that, it sounds kind of evil, and I suppose it is. We really shouldn’t be eating this stuff.

Soy-faced

I won’t bore you too much with the science of seed oils. You can look it up, if you want to: why polyunsaturated fats — the main constituent of seed oils, and especially so-called omega-6s — are toxic and how the manufacturing process makes these fats even more so; the way seed oils interfere with the metabolism and make us put on weight, as well as their tendency to have estrogenic effects.

Delbert Shoopman/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

I’ll mention one set of findings, though, before I move on. A 2020 study of soybean oil (the most widely consumed seed oil in America) showed that not only did it make mice fat, it also disrupted the same region of the brain — and in a similar fashion — as Alzheimer's disease.

Soybean oil also interfered with the production of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” which governs social interaction and bonding. I recently suggested on X that maybe the reason everyone in America is so tense these days is because they eat a thousand times more soybean oil than they did a century ago. I wasn’t joking.

Crushing it

So what about olive oil? I often get asked this. Is olive oil a seed oil? No, it isn’t. Olive oil is a fruit oil, actually. And while it contains some polyunsaturated fatty acids like seed oils, it mostly contains monounsaturated fatty acids, which are different in important ways, most notably their stability.

The extraction process is simple and non-toxic — literally, you just crush olives. What’s more, olive oil contains a wonderful array of unique plant compounds with some pretty miraculous effects.

Maybe the simplest way to understand what’s so good about olive oil, beyond its delicious taste, is to note that it’s been consumed for thousands of years, and those people who consume lots of it, like the Italians, display remarkable longevity, vim, and lust for life.

When it comes to beneficial health effects, science is showing there’s virtually nothing olive oil can’t do. Here’s one study that shows olive oil helps your body produce more testosterone, by allowing the testes to absorb more cholesterol. Here’s another that shows consuming three tablespoons of olive oil a day slows physical aging. And here’s one that shows how a compound in olive oil called hydroxytyrosol helps you to lose weight. Magic.

The good stuff

One of the main problems with supermarket olive oils is quality. You get what you pay for, and the bargains are often adulterated: cut, like cheap drugs, with inferior substances. That means seed oils. This is a problem you get with other oils too, perhaps most notably the hipster and keto dieter’s favorite, avocado oil. A study from a few years back showed that 82% of avocado oil sold in the US was rancid or adulterated.

Here’s a solution: Accept that you’re going to have to pay if you want a good product, and then go straight to the source.

Selo Olive

I go to Croatia for my olive oil. Not literally, but you know what I mean. My friend Martin Erlic founded Selo Olive on his family plantation in Dalmatia during the pandemic. Everything about this olive oil is authentic, down to the local village men and women who harvest the olives and press and bottle the liquid while they sing their local songs and laugh and joke in that inimitable Mediterranean way. “Selo” means “community” or “village” in Croatian, and it takes a community to make Selo’s olive oil.

When I got my first bottle of Selo, I couldn’t believe the difference from every other olive oil I had ever tried.

The color, the aroma, the consistency — and of course the taste. This is the real deal. I don’t think I could ever glug anything else on a Greek salad or grilled sardines or make a delicious olive-oil bulletproof coffee with an inferior brand that hadn’t been hand-picked by grizzled babushkas.

Once you visit the Selo, you won’t ever want to leave.

Bioscience secrets reveal you need to chew harder — and use better gum

"Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Weston A. Price is, to my mind, the greatest book about nutrition ever written. You’ve probably never heard of it, and even if you have, I’d wager you’ve never read it. Which is a real shame.

It’s a shame you’re not the only one who hasn’t read Price’s book. If it had been more widely read at the time of its publication — 1939 — and its essential insights taken up by the mainstream medical establishment, the entire history of nutritional science might be wildly different. Instead of 80 years of declining health marked by an explosion of every kind of chronic disease imaginable, we might have seen a new golden age of health.

Bad bacteria in the mouth can end up in the brain and influence dementia progression.

There would be no need for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to come along and “Make America Healthy Again,” because Americans would all be jacked and glowing and living their best lives, fortified by wholesome diets that provided them with the nutrients that are essential to proper human flourishing.

Weston Price’s thesis was simple: Modern diets — specifically diets made up of food produced in factories — are causing our bodies to degenerate. If that sounds scary, well, it should.

What makes a good face?

Price became a dentist in Cleveland, Ohio, at the turn of the 20th century. As the years rolled by, he began to notice more and more of his patients, especially the children, displaying profound signs of ill health. It wasn’t just that their mouths were starting to fill with cavities. It was that their jaws weren’t developing and aligning properly, the roofs of their mouths weren’t forming right, and their cheeks and nasal passages were narrowing. The entire structure of the face was basically giving way and collapsing.

And with these unpleasant physical changes, which made his patients less attractive, came mental and behavioral changes too, none of them good. Many of the children, in particular, had trouble concentrating and learning.

Price knew these changes had something to do with changes to the foods his patients were eating. Being a scientific man, Price wanted to be sure. So he decided to find control groups to compare his patients with. Together with his wife, Price traveled the globe, from the arctic circle to Australasia, even stopping in the Highlands of Scotland and the Swiss Alps on the way, to look at small-scale societies whose diets had not yet been affected by modern industrial processes.

What Price discovered was that wherever a society continued to eat as their ancestors ate, so long as that meant eating nutrient-dense animal foods — organ meat, fatty cuts, blood, dairy, rendered fat, shellfish and seafood, eggs — then none of the problems Price had been seeing back home in Ohio were visible. Groups who still cleaved to their ancestral diets displayed what Price called “perfect health,” and it extended well beyond their faces: They grew tall and muscular, they were free from disease, they were vigorous and happy.

Price demonstrated something fundamental that scientific researchers are only just beginning to appreciate: That oral health and the development of the face are a powerful index of general health. Chances are, a person with an unhealthy mouth will have an unhealthy body. (A recent study showed bad bacteria in the mouth can end up in the brain and influence dementia progression.)

Natalie Behring/Getty Images

The only way out is chew

Another essential insight from Price is the role of food texture in facial development. Price noted that modern diets are much softer than ancestral diets (people in traditional societies also used their mouths in day-to-day tasks like leatherworking).

What this means is that the musculature of the whole face and especially the jaw has less chance to develop because it gets less use. Muscle is muscle and responds in the same way to stimulus, whether we’re talking about the biceps or the masseters of the cheek and jaw. Use it or lose it. The facial muscles remain open to development throughout our lives.

One easy way to reverse the modern atrophy of our faces and to develop a jaw that could kill is to chew gum. Chewing gum also has powerful anti-stress effects, which is never a bad thing in our increasingly aggravating world. And, of course, chewing gum also looks cool.

The problem with most gum today is that it’s made of plastic. Yes, most synthetic forms of chewing gum use a base made of polymers derived from petroleum. You might as well break a piece off your iPhone casing and chew that. Another recent study showed that gum can release as many as 3,000 plastic particles and that chewing around 180 small sticks of gum a year could result in the ingestion of 30,000 microplastic pieces.

Then there are the artificial sweeteners, which are linked to a wide variety of health issues, from gut dysbiosis and diabetes to brain cancer, in the case of aspartame.

Mastic over plastic

Here’s my recommendation. Chew mastic gum instead, just like the ancient Greeks did 2,500 years ago.

Mastic is a resin taken from the mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus). Authentic mastic, the very best, only comes from trees on the Greek island of Chios, and there’s no better brand than Greco Gum.

Unlike the bag of mean little shards and dust you’ll get if you buy mastic on eBay, every tin of Greco Gum contains fat, juicy droplets that crunch satisfyingly in your mouth and then become a soft, sucking mass you can really get your teeth into.

Mastic has a very pleasant, fresh taste, a bit like pine, and you can reuse it multiple times.

As well as being entirely natural, mastic gum has potent antibacterial properties. The father of medicine, Hippocrates, recommended mastic to treat digestive problems and colds and to freshen the breath. I chew mastic most days, and my head wouldn’t look out of place buried in the ground on Easter Island. Try it. Build a face fit for stone.

This Idaho family is perfecting the good night's sleep

You spend, for argument’s sake, a full third of your life sleeping. Anything you spend 33% of your life doing is obviously very important, even if you aren’t fully conscious when you’re doing it.

And yet people are still surprised when I tell them they could revolutionize their health if they just took their bedtime habits a little more seriously.

These pillows are as American as apple pie.

Consider testosterone, the master male hormone, which men have to thank for libido, muscle mass, drive, and a willingness to put themselves in harm’s way to save a cute little kitten when no one else will. Most of a man’s testosterone is produced at night, so if a man doesn’t sleep properly, he’ll produce less testosterone.

One study, by a researcher called Plamen Penev, showed that if older men double their sleep from four to eight hours a night, they can double their testosterone levels. Just like that. I don’t think there’s another health intervention a man could make that would have such a drastic effect on his hormonal health.

There are many different things you can do — simple things — to improve the quality of your sleep. You can turn off your electronic devices a few hours before bed and start to darken your home, to simulate the natural diurnal rhythms that have governed sleep since time began. You can take a hot shower or bath before bed to lower your core temperature. Really: Doing that can send you off to the land of Nod up to half an hour earlier.

You can change your bedding, too. Of course you want to be comfortable, and if your bedding is itchy or too thick, you won’t be and you won’t sleep. But an under-appreciated aspect of your choice of bedding is whether or not it contains harmful chemicals.

Lab mice sleep on corn-cob bedding. A study showed that corn contains a substance that mimics the “female” hormone estrogen, and so lab mice get a huge dose of artificial estrogen while they sleep, through their skin. Enough, in fact, that it can interfere with reproduction and even make them sterile.

Mirrorpix/Getty Images

There haven’t been many studies of the effects of bedding on human health, but we have every reason to believe most bedding, which is made of synthetic fibers and laced with nasty chemicals like fire retardants, is having a negative effect on our health. Dermal contact — through the skin — is one major route for harmful substances to enter the body, and if you have your face buried in a pillow that’s soaked in fire retardant, you’re inhaling that stuff all night long. Do you want to inhale fire retardant all night long?

But help is at hand. The Woolshire, a wonderful little family business up in Idaho, is making the most amazing organic virgin-wool pillows — not a single synthetic fiber or harmful chemical in sight — and what’s more, the company is doing so in a way that benefits its local community and the nation.

All Woolshire pillows are handmade, using antique American machinery and local wool that’s milled in one of the longest-running wool mills in the country, in Montana. These pillows are as American as apple pie.

Wool is a superior material, and not just for pillows. It makes you wonder why we ever stopped using it. I’ll let the good people at the Woolshire explain:

“Wool is naturally flame retardant, self-cleaning, and temperature regulating. It retains its loft, is moisture-wicking, and it is very cozy. It has been used by humans for its incredible properties since the Stone Age.”

The Woolshire currently offers two products: its signature Woolshire pillow, with a variety of different fill depths, and a child’s pillow. I’m told the company will be expanding soon to offer other products, including a travel pillow, a prototype of which I’m lucky enough to own.

All my pillows are now Woolshire pillows, and, honestly, I’ve never slept better.

(Oh, and before you go to the website and order the best pillows money can buy, and then have the best night’s sleep of your life, take this promo code with you. Enter REN at checkout and get 10% off your order. Thank me later.)

Is your home trying to kill you?

Filmmaker and mother Jessica Solce was frustrated by the difficulty of finding healthy, all-natural products for herself and her family. To make it easier, she created the Solarium, which curates trusted, third-party-tested foods, clothing, beauty products, and more — all free of seed oils, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, and other harmful additives.

In this occasional column, she shares recommendations and research she's picked up during her ongoing education in health and wellness.

Your refrigerator is filled with unprocessed, natural foods. Your medicine cabinet is free of toxic pharmaceuticals. Your faucets dispense filtered, chemical-free drinking water.

In other words, you've optimized your family's home life for health. But what about the home itself?

Pillows, sheets, and furniture also contain toxic flame retardants, a grimly appropriate name given their tendency to reduce IQ and cause developmental delays.

Sadly and shockingly, virtually all houses harbor seemingly innocuous products and materials that silently poison us, day in and day out.

Take your bed, for example.

You spend a third of your life sleeping, so get a good mattress. This is solid advice. It also happens to be incomplete. A restful night's sleep shouldn't mean eight to 10 hours inhaling microdoses of toxic, flame-retardant forever chemicals.

But that's exactly what you get with much modern bedding.

And the situation in other rooms is generally no better.

To go through all of what may be poisoning us in our homes would require an article of epic proportions; it would also be overwhelmingly depressing for me to write and for you to read.

I encourage you to do more research and to consider the specifics of your own situation. In the meantime, for the sake of both of our sanities, I’ll limit myself to outlining the major offenders — as well as what to replace them with.

My hope is that I can give you a good start in ensuring your home is a haven for healing, not a den of disease.

Getty Images/Camerique/The Solarium

Starting slow

Spend any time on health-oriented social media, and it feels as if every week brings news of some new toxic product ready to kill you, from paint and plastics to petroleum-based perfumes.

So when we first set out to evict the enemy from our abode, we quickly realize the hydra-esque task we've taken on. No sooner have you rooted him out of one hiding place than you discover him popping up in two more.

As someone who's navigated this kind of purge myself (inspiring me to create an online marketplace of healthy products to help you do the same), I strongly advise against a scorched earth, “No Impact Man” approach.

Rather, you should employ a method of gradual change where you make small, conscious swaps for healthier alternatives. Trust me, it’s easier on your wallet and your mental well-being.

No impact, man

That said, the aforementioned 2009 documentary is an eye-opening watch. “No Impact Man” is the story of a New York City family — journalist Colin Beavan, his wife, Michelle, and their toddler, Isabella — undertaking an experiment to live for one year, while making as little impact on the environment as possible.

One scene in particular floored me: when Michelle throws away all of her makeup and bathroom and beauty products.

It wasn't that she voluntarily parted ways with her precious and pricey creams and unguents but the sheer amount of them she'd managed to stockpile in their small Manhattan apartment.

Imagine how much more the bathroom of the average American house in the suburbs holds. Unfathomable amounts of money spent on unfathomable amounts of toxic junk.

As thought-provoking as "No Impact Man" is, I'd advise against going to such extremes, at least at first. Above all, you want to make sure this is something you can sustain.

In my experience, that becomes easier the more you learn how to spot these home-borne toxins — and the more you understand the potential damage they can do once they get into your lungs, bloodstream, and cells and mitochondria. Removing them from your life will not feel like a burden but a no-brainer necessity.

Here are some simple first steps to get you started.

Open your windows

Even without getting rid of anything, this age-old method of improving ventilation and air exchange can have a major impact on the health of your home.

A 2020 review of 37 separate environmental studies found that elevated indoor carbon dioxide levels associated with poor ventilation impaired high-level decision-making and reduced cognitive speed, especially on complex tasks.

Remake your bed

As mentioned, where you rest your head at night is very important. We sleep an average of 2,700 hours a year, or 114 days out of 365. And it's not just your mattress you need to worry about.

Pillows, sheets, and furniture also contain toxic flame retardants, a grimly appropriate name given their tendency to reduce IQ and cause developmental delays.

They can also cause metabolic problems like obesity and insulin resistance, while endocrine disruptors they contain cause thyroid problems, infertility, hormone disregulation, and hormone-related cancers. Nasty stuff.

Because kids tend to put their hands on everything and everything in their mouths, they're even more prone to ingesting these retardants. Especially when they're in the pajamas they wear!

One retardant ingredient is formaldehyde. You know ... embalming fluid. Many of us are sleeping on literal deathbeds.

So what can we do?! For pillows and comforters, find goose down or wool. One excellent option for pillows is the wonderful U.S. company the Woolshire. Avocado is a great source for mattresses. You can find 100% cotton and/or linen at a wide range of prices, from made-in-America luxury brands to Target's in-house bedding line.

Clear the air

Nothing like lighting a scented candle or two to make a home feel clean and inviting. Just make sure you know what you're burning

While marketed as "natural," many soy candles contain synthetic fragrance oils and chemical additives that release harmful pollutants. A pair of recent studies found that scented candles emit formaldehyde, benzene, and other carcinogens, with risks to lung and nasal cancers, respiratory harm, and cognitive decline.

The aforementioned chemicals are known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, not because they are organic in the farmer’s market sense but because of their specific chemical properties.

“Volatile” refers to their ability to turn into gas at room temperature, “organic” refers to their carbon bases, and “compounds” means they’re highly complex — all to mean these things are absolutely not fit for human consumption or contact. If they are in your home, they can “off gas” into your air without being heated or physically disturbed.

In addition, the European Commission’s Scientific Committee confirms that fragrance ingredients are among the leading causes of allergic contact dermatitis (allergies, eczema, rashes) in Europe. Another study confirms that regular indoor scented candle burning “can expose us to dangerous levels of organic pollutants” and ultra-fine particles.

These harmful VOCs are not inherent in the unburned wax but formed as byproducts of incomplete combustion when the candle is burned; the additives, wicks (sometimes made of lead!), and added fragrances and dyes increase the levels of VOCs. Synthetic scents can also trigger asthma, allergic reactions, and breathing problems.

A 100% unadulterated beeswax candle with a cotton or paper wick and no added dyes or fragrance is the way to go.

This is the cleanest candle possible: not 100% free of VOCs but with significantly lower emissions. It's also completely unprocessed — made of wax that comes straight from the beehive.

Along with the lovely natural scent, beeswax candles may also produce negative ions that help settle positively charged particles like dust, pollen, mold spores, and some airborne toxins.

"Why can’t I just get some air fresheners from Walmart?" Don’t bother. They emit a cocktail of carcinogenic VOCs and phthalates (endocrine-disrupting semi-VOCs). If you have these in your home or in the car, this is step one: Get rid of them pronto.

Once you stop using chemical air fresheners, you’ll start noticing how foul and unnatural they actually smell. As luck would have it, we now have a nice, natural option thanks to the small French company &Eden.

The scents you put on your body can be just as harmful, especially considering that you absorb them directly through your skin as well as through your lungs. When you are ready to make the swap, consider these cleaner, nature-based soaps and fragrances.

Let the light in

The convenience of artificial light comes with a major cost: the disruption of our body’s innate circadian signaling and repair processes.

Moreover, our bodies our designed to absorb the entirety of the sunlight spectrum, from infrared to visible to ultraviolet. But our ubiquitous screens isolate and maximize our exposure to certain parts of the spectrum. The computers, phones, and tablets we use indoors continually bathe us in unnatural amounts of blue light.

One way to mitigate this constant onslaught is by wearing yellow-tinted blue-light-blocking glasses while at the computer.

You can also change your lightbulbs to more closely resemble full spectrum sunlight. I did this first in my bedroom, creating a warm, amber glow like candlelight. I highly recommend it.

There are emerging tech solutions as well. The Daylight Computer can be used outside without glare issues and eliminates the blue light problem by harnessing ambient light or using red light for a backlight. Its display resembles conventional E Ink displays but with a faster refresh rate.

If you want to learn a whole lot more about blue light, you can read my three-part series about its effects on your body.

Clean house

Say goodbye to the likes of Mr. Clean, Lysol, and Formula 409. They all come with excess baggage: quaternary ammonium compounds, or "quats" (antimicrobials that can cause skin and respiratory irritation), synthetic fragrances, preservatives, and ethanolamines.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

In addition, common cleaning products often contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that can impair fertility in both sexes. The phthalates found in many synthetic fragrances have been strongly linked to reduced sperm quality, lower testosterone, and altered ovarian function.

Instead, make your own all-purpose cleaner with vinegar, water, essential oils, and a glass spray bottle. You can also experiment with different combinations of baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, isopropyl alcohol, and lemon juice.

Other fertility disruptors that may be lurking in your home include:

Bisphenol A (BPA), a common ingredient in plastic products and thermal receipts, which has been connected to reduced egg quality, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and implantation failure;
PFAS, or "forever chemicals," in stain‑resistant fabrics, non‑stick cookware, and some cosmetics, which are associated with longer time-to-pregnancy and lower fertility rates; and
Household flame retardants present in furniture and electronics, which have been linked to failed embryo implantation and decreased sperm motility.

Pesticides, particularly organophosphates and glyphosate, have been associated with reduced fertility, hormone disruption, and increased miscarriage risk. Which leads us to our next step ...

Weed out pesticides

According to NASA’s famous Clean Air Study, certain houseplants do more than just look good — they can help filter common indoor air pollutants often released by furniture, cleaning products, and household materials.

This is technically true, but ventilation is still more effective; it would take a huge number of plants to make a difference in home air quality.

Then again, I do think that cohabitating with plants benefits us in less quantifiable ways, such as fostering a healthy sense of connection to nature.

Just be aware of the soil you use — inside and outside the home. Conventional soils are filled with synthetic pesticides like herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides as well as synthetic fertilizers that alter soil biology, killing nutrients and introducing heavy metals (arsenic, lead, cadmium) into your gardens and eventually into your body.

Kids play outside, roll in the grass, and jump into leaf piles. They also come into close contact with pets who do the same. This soup of pesticides gets on their skin and is inhaled, raising their risks for blue baby syndrome, colorectal cancer, birth defects and sexual deformities, neurodevelopmental harm in children, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

A 2015 Harvard School of Public Health study determined a 26% increased risk of leukemia in children exposed to herbicide. Indoor insecticide exposure showed a 47% higher risk of leukemia and a 43% higher risk of lymphoma. Even parental exposure before conception can raise cancer risk.

Most of us have heard of Roundup, the notorious herbicide that's cost Monsanto billions in legal settlements with people who claim it gave them cancer.

Despite this, the EPA continues to approve the use of Roundup, which kills weeds while sparing crops genetically engineered to resist it. The problem is that weeds tend to develop their own resistance.

The common solution is to add 2,4-D, a pesticide I'd never heard of before researching this article. Despite mounting evidence that 2,4-D is at least as harmful as Roundup, the EPA approved the use of this combination in 2014.

This is all the more reason to prioritize buying pesticide-free, organic, and regenerative soils for your indoor and outdoor plants. It's also important to stick to meats and vegetables raised on such soil. What our food sources eat and consume, we consume, entering us into a cycle of life and vitality or death and degeneration.

2026 Genesis GV70: Is today's best SUV made in America?

The Audi Q5 and BMW X3 better watch their mirrors — when it comes to compact luxury SUVs, the competition is closer than it appears.

The 2026 Genesis GV70 is a compact luxury SUV that blends style, performance, and value, making it a formidable contender against the BMW X3 and other rivals like the Audi Q5 and Mercedes-Benz GLC.

The test model I drove sported the twin-turbo 3.5L V6, which pumps out 375 hp and 391 lb-ft for a 0-60 sprint of just 4.6 seconds.

After spending time with the GV70, I’m convinced it’s one of the best options in its class. To avoid tariffs, Genesis parent company Hyundai will build the GV70 in the USA.

Watch me put the GV70 through its paces below:

Athletic elegance

The GV70’s exterior embraces the Genesis philosophy of “athletic elegance," featuring redesigned bumpers, a dual-weave mesh grille, and striking full LED quad lamps.

Sport trims add black accents, a rear spoiler, and optional 21-inch alloy wheels for a bold, dynamic look, while new exterior colors like Ceres Blue enhance its curb appeal.

Inside, the cabin is a masterpiece, with Nappa leather in four color options, including the stunning Ultramarine Blue with orange stitching.

A single 27-inch OLED display integrates the digital cluster and infotainment, offering seamless access to Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and a premium Bang & Olufsen 16-speaker audio system. Features like a digital key, wireless charging, and enhanced voice recognition elevate the tech experience.

G-force

Under the hood, the GV70 offers two engines. The standard 2.5L turbo four-cylinder delivers 300 hp and 311 lb-ft of torque, achieving 0-60 mph in 5.6 seconds with 22/28 MPG city/highway.

The test model I drove sported the twin-turbo 3.5L V6, which pumps out 375 hp and 391 lb-ft for a 0-60 sprint of just 4.6 seconds. Paired with an 8-speed automatic and standard all-wheel drive, the V6 adds a Sport Plus mode and adaptive suspension with Road Preview suspension for a responsive, comfortable ride.

There are new drive modes, including terrain mode for snow, mud, or sand, and it can be personalized as well.

Safety and value

Safety is a strong suit, with a standard suite including forward collision-avoidance assist, lane keeping assist, and blind-spot cameras. Upgraded features like hands-on detection and improved remote smart parking assist with diagonal parking capability add confidence.

The GV70 seats five comfortably, with heated and ventilated front seats, a heated steering wheel, and optional massaging seats on top trims. Cargo space is generous at 28.9 cubic feet, expanding to 56.9 with the 60/40 rear seats folded.

Priced from $47,985 to $70,095, the GV70 undercuts competitors while offering class-leading luxury. The 10-year/100,000-mile power train warranty and three years of free maintenance sweeten the deal. Drawbacks? The wiper blade design could improve, and more small-item storage would be nice.

Verdict: The 2026 Genesis GV70 combines high-end features, exhilarating performance, and unbeatable value. Compared to the BMW X3, it offers a more luxurious interior and better pricing, making it a top pick for luxury SUV buyers.

Spinning out at Discount Tire's Treadwell test track

Discount Tire, America’s largest specialist retailer, whisked journalists to a junket in San Antonio, Texas. Details were hazy: A website and a test track. It wasn’t clear what the one had to do with the other.

Starting with a formal evening on the deck of a boutique hotel and affixing the smile of a politician coming into contact with the general public, I interrogated members of Discount Tire’s C-suite about minor glitches on their website.

Hoping to show engagement, I demonstrated only peevishness, while drinking their wine. The same fixed smiles appeared on their faces.

Redolent of the hippos in Disney’s 'Fantasia,' the sheen on the asphalt allowed the BMW to spin and glide in just about any direction except forward.

For the journalists, rule one is this is all very tedious. No such affect from the influencers, emotions displayed on their faces in a way Marcel Marceau would have found a little obvious.

Top gear

But the tire execs loved that the influencers loved it. The PRs beamed like parents at a preteen birthday party when the kids are getting along. No part of the joy escaped capture on iPhone 16 Pros. No one had anything else: not the (embarrassing) 15 nor the (shaming) non-Pro. Sorry, Android, but all these bubbles were blue.

Pre-dawn, we assembled by a series of Sprinters. Gimbals, suction-cupped GoPro cameras, tripods, lighting rigs, and editing software were being compared and Bluetooth microphones affixed. All this would blend with B-roll the PR company was filming with drones. "Apocalypse Now" had lower production values.

I looked intently into my iPad, attempting to suggest my own serious media needs, a frown to convey that my device also needed expert handling. My emasculating iPhone 13 mini stayed hidden.

Still having little idea what to expect, we got to Discount Tire’s Treadwell Research Park in Pearsall, about 50 miles outside San Antonio.

On the skids

Discount Tire bought the 900-acre four-zone facility in 2022, partnering with track testers Smithers. A 1.9-mile oval simulates real-world surfaces from highway on-ramps to potholes and noisy road surfaces, as well as skid pans for measuring wet and dry stopping distances.

Next there is a flooded asphalt field — vehicle dynamics area — with water depth kept between 1.75mm and 2.25mm (less than one-tenth of an inch), capturing hydroplaning. It is complemented by a dry VDA, being used by British sports car maker Lotus on this particular day.

Finally, there is around a mile of off-road track with deep mud, gravel, and fine sand. In addition, sophisticated lathes simulate wear. This testing data powers Discount Tire’s Treadwell recommendations, online and in-store.

Behind the wheel

For demonstrations, we were split into groups in paired BMW 330i vehicles. Brett, our pro, took us onto the wet VDA around a course marked out with cones, first slowly, then like Lewis Hamilton.

Then he handed it to me. I did my best to emulate his driving style. Judging by my companions’ reactions, I was not unsuccessful.

Cathy made short-form videos on Instagram focusing on safety, aimed at young mothers, offering wise words on shredding bank statements. Cathy was shooting video using the better cameras on the back of her (inevitable) iPhone 16 Pro.

Somehow she was able to keep herself in the center of a frame she couldn’t see while the car was pirouetting in the wet, its occupants experiencing fighter pilot G-forces. I didn’t know it was a skill until I saw it.

The other rider was James, aka Pikachu, the Pokémon character, his on-camera persona as excitable as the namesake yellow mouse. He happily farmed out video shooting to anyone with a convenient hand.

Redolent of the hippos in Disney’s "Fantasia," the sheen on the asphalt allowed the BMW to spin and glide in just about any direction except forward. Cones were knocked down like skittles, or crushed. We said supportive things while unsticking our cheeks from the windows.

In the controlled environment, the speed was strangely unconcerning, though with tight-lipped nonchalance Cathy did ask what happened at the edge of the track.

It was a lot of fun. Then we did it again in a BMW fitted with different tires, finding that the first handled with the solemnity of a maiden aunt when compared with the teenage delinquency of the second. It was even more fun.

At the oval we drove another pair of BMWs, identical except for tires, with stopping distances measured in emergency braking from 70mph. On a dry surface in a late-model sedan, the tires could make the difference between a fender-bender and a write-off. In the wet the differences pile up, perhaps literally. Controlled skids with fellow journalists shrieking from the rear seats made me a convert.

From left: Brett, James aka Pikachu, Cathy, and your humble correspondent. Photo courtesy of Discount Tire

Unbiased rankings

Treadwell’s site asks for the vehicle’s details and ZIP code, for likely weather. Specifics can be tailored, but there are default options: “suburb & city” and “highway.”

The third is “tracks and traction,” for “spirited drivers.” Bravo to the wordsmith who came up with that for Donnie in the Dodge Charger flashing his high beams and sitting behind you so close that a colonoscopy would seem less intimate.

Treadwell lists results, compared with the factory specification and sorted by test ratings. The company says suppliers cannot pay for this placement, but this was buried in the FAQ. Another group of C-suite executives too slow to escape questioning explained it to me.

As most sites sell search results and page placement, I would be jumping up and down If I ran it — but perhaps the point of bringing journalists to San Antonio is so we do those gymnastics.

Roads scholar

What’s the alternative? Standardized data is available. Each tire has a tongue-twisting Uniform Tire Quality Grade. But information can be hard to find.

What happens when it’s a zero? Does the big-box retailer show stopping distances: wet, dry, new, worn? If it does (the one with cheap hotdogs does not) who provided it? Or do you just get what the dealership recommends?

I’m not saying the manufacturer would lie to you. Electrify America’s EV charging network was built as part of a settlement by Volkswagen for … lying to regulators. Recall the Ford Pinto, which is more than Ford did when its explosive gas tank became evident. You may even think of Ralph Nader, before he became Ralph Nader. Of course, we need draw no conclusions from clearly isolated incidents that seem to keep happening.

Back from Texas and donning mystery-shopper dark glasses, I drove to America’s Tire (the brand where I am, Discount Tire, also owns Tire Rack). A proprietary laser scan recommended replacing all four tires. Darn it, but better than finding out the hard way.

Online, Treadwell recommended the Michelin Defender 2. In-store, that was also what Andrew pulled up on his system.

Far from steering me to spend more, it was the cheapest branded tire. The car’s manufacturer fits the Michelin Primacy MXM4 AC. Treadwell’s suggestion was cheaper, and the new ones should last six years, versus under three for the originals. The stopping distance is worse — by one foot. But I was given the information to make the choice, knowing it was backed up by independent testing.

Treadwell is Discount Tire’s recommendation engine and its rigorous testing site: they are two sides of the same coin. It really does it, and it does it really well. Rarely has a demonstration proved so eye-opening. It could save you money. It could also save your life.