Local woman eats pasta You’re going to want to sit down for this one, because there’s a lot to digest. Gwyneth Paltrow, who has consciously uncoupled from multiple food groups in the past, is bringing pasta back into her life. And she can have a little bread and cheese, too, as a treat. The actor and entrepreneur broke this news on a recent episode of her Goop podcast, where she mused about all the fad diets she’s cycled through. “I went into hardcore macrobiotics for a certain time,” she noted. “That was an interesting chapter where I got kind of obsessed with eating very, very healthily.” More recently, Paltrow and her husband, Brad Falchuk, have been on the paleo diet. This is based on the idea that we should all have the same pre-agricultural food habits as our Paleolithic ancestors – a group of people who didn’t live past the age of 35. While most interpretations of the paleo diet involve cutting out a lot of carbs, the “scientific” underpinning of this diet is bunk. Studies show that early humans had variable diets, influenced by a number of factors, and did, in fact, eat carbohydrates. Indeed, the average caveperson probably ate more carbs than the modern celebrity. Now, however, it seems the Goop founder is a little bored of the paleo diet. “I’m getting back into eating sourdough bread, and some cheese – there, I said it,” she said. “A little pasta after being strict with it for so long.” Why on earth am I writing about this? I’ll tell you why: because this little development in Paltrow’s digestive tract has made international news, getting coverage from the likes of the BBC to the Times of India. A wealthy white woman’s decision to (sparingly) eat spaghetti again seems to be getting more attention than the fact that kids are starving in Gaza and Sudan. This, by the way, is not the first time that Paltrow breaking bread has been deemed breaking news. In 2021, she revealed on a podcast that things had gotten so dark in the early days of the pandemic that she had started eating carbs. “I drank alcohol during quarantine,” she said. “I was drinking seven nights a week and making pasta and eating bread. I went totally off the rails.” Do you know what Paltrow was binge-drinking while nibbling at sourdough, by the way? Honestly, you can’t make this up: quinoa whiskey. While all this may seem very silly, there is a serious side to Paltrow’s ever-changing palate. The Goop entrepreneur’s wellness ideas are highly influential – even if many of them are scientifically dubious. Over the years, she has arguably helped to normalize restrictive eating and glorify orthorexia, an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. I’m not trying to diagnose Paltrow with anything, to be clear, but I think it should be fairly obvious that going on a podcast to share that you now eat pasta, like it’s some sort of dirty little secret, is not a particularly normal thing to do. It should certainly be a sign to her followers that Paltrow isn’t someone you should look to for health and wellness advice. Of course, these bread revelations may be a sign of something else – perhaps they are a subtle recession indicator? With Trump’s tariffs poised to make everything more expensive, I cannoli imagine that we’re going to see a lot of people cutting back on meat and eating more pasta. Should sex education teach teenagers about consent? In a country that wasn’t run by an adjudicated sexual predator, this would be a fairly straightforward question. But it has proved quite the thorny issue in Indiana. Language that would have required teaching students about consent was removed during a meeting this week about Senate Bill 442. After a lot of backlash, the language was put back in, but it sure says a lot about some Republican lawmakers that they find the concept of consent so controversial. Trump administration weighs $5,000 ‘baby bonus’ to boost birth rates According to the New York Times, other pro-natalism proposals the administration is looking at include bestowing a “National Medal of Motherhood” on mothers with six or more children. Trump pardons politician who used money raised for slain police officers on plastic surgery instead Michele Fiore, a former Las Vegas city councilwoman (once known as “Lady Trump”), was convicted of taking money meant for a memorial for a fallen police officer and using it to pay for her rent, plastic surgery and her daughter’s wedding. Not only has she received an unconditional pardon, she intends to become a justice of the peace again. Columbia cancelled Karen Attiah’s course on race and media I’m a big fan of the Washington Post columnist’s work. After having her course cancelled by Columbia, Attiah is now offering a condensed version online, which she describes as “an experiment in redistributing knowledge and capital”. It has had enormous interest already, but do add yourself to the waitlist if interested. What does it mean when we call a woman ‘too muscular’? Bonnie Tsui’s new book On Muscle unpacks the ways in which we are conditioned to associate muscles with power and masculinity–and why that hurts us all. As Tsui notes, however, a shift in gendered attitudes toward muscle seems to be under way: a lot of women are switching from cardio to weightlifting. Personally, I take any opportunity to show off my biceps. People in states with abortion bans are twice as likely to die during pregnancy According to a report released Wednesday, the risk is greatest for Black women, who are 3.3 times more likely to die in states with abortion bans than White women. Dominican Republic deports dozens of Haitian pregnant women and children in hospital swoop The UN and health groups have criticized crackdowns on hospitals, saying that women and children in the Dominican Republic may now fear health authorities. People filmed trans woman drowning and told others ‘don’t help her’ Sara Millerey González, 32, was raped, beaten and brutally murdered earlier this month in Colombia. Violence against LGBTQ+ people has been on the rise in the country, with armed groups in certain parts of Colombia describing a plan of “social cleansing” where “faggots, lesbians and men and women who destroy homes” would be considered legitimate military targets. The entire city of Rafah has been wiped out A fifth of Gaza’s territory, which used to house 200,000 people, has been turned into a buffer zone by Israel. Nothing remains of it, not even tents. And there are still people justifying this. Magic Circle re-admits magician who disguised herself as a man, 30 years later Sophie Lloyd is finally getting her due–and a long overdue apology. The week in pawtriarchy The trend of extravagant gender reveals has gotten so out of hand that even fictional characters are having them now. The iconic Battersea Power Station chimneys in London lit up pink on Friday to reveal that the ridiculously popular cartoon character Peppa Pig is going to have a new baby sister. Talk about going whole hog.