I had the opportunity to see the musical Wicked recently. It has catchy music and a good moral about not being unkind to people over having different skin colors. The protagonist, Elphaba, has green skin; she is also kind, smart, and brave, but she ends up being labeled as "wicked" for standing up for the rights of talking animals.
A few visuals and lines stood out to me in the musical. I'm going to share them together with some of my nutrition research/experiments and invite you to draw your own conclusions about what other message Wicked might have been used to convey under its cape:
* [Elphaba:] What? What are you all looking at? Oh—do I have something in my teeth? Alright, fine—we might as well get this over with: No, I’m not seasick; yes, I’ve always been green; no, I didn’t eat grass as a child…
(Act 1, Scene 2; emphasis added)
* [Fiyero:] What?
[Elphaba:] I wish I could be beautiful for you. [She is referring to her green skin, thinking that is makes her unattractive.]
[Fiyero:] Elphaba—
[Elphaba:] Don’t tell me that I am. You don’t have to lie to me.
[Fiyero:] It’s not lying, it’s looking at things another way.
(Act 2, Scene 4)
* (The Scarecrow (Fiyero) walks on stage. He bends down and knocks on a trap door in the floor.)
[Fiyero:] It worked!
(He opens the door and Elphaba climbs out.)
[Elphaba:] Fiyero! I thought you'd never get here.
(She touches his straw face.)
[Fiyero:] Go ahead, touch, I don't mind. Ah, you did the best you could. You saved my life.
[Elphaba:] You're still beautiful.
[Fiyero:] You don't have to lie to me.
[Elphaba:] It's not lying... Its’ looking at things another way.
(Act 2, Scene 9; emphasis added)
* (GLINDA, resplendent and beautiful in her gown and tiara, descends from the sky on a mechanical device that spews soap bubbles as the CELEBRANTS point and cheer.)
(Act 1, Scene 1; emphasis added)
* [Galinda, singing the song "Popular":] DON’T BE OFFENDED BY MY FRANK ANALYSIS
THINK OF IT AS PERSONALITY DIALYSIS
(Act 1, Scene 7; emphasis added)
* [Dillamond (A professor who is a talking goat):] Class! Class! Miss Elphaba has a point. Doubtless you’ve noticed I am the sole Animal on the faculty. The Token Goat as it were. But it wasn’t always this way. My dear students, how I wish you could have known this place as it once was. When one could walk these halls and hear an Antelope explicating a sonnet, a Snow Leopard solving a equation, a Wildebeest waxing philosophic! Can you see, dear students, what is being lost? How our dear Oz is becoming less and less… well, colorful. Now, who can tell me what set this into motion?....Well, perhaps these question that I’ve prepared—
(As he turns his chalkboard around to pose the question, he sees that, across the board, someone has painted: “Animals should be seen and not heard.” DILLAMOND is shocked.)
[Dillamond:] Who is responsible for this? I’m waiting for an answer. Very well, that will be all for today. You heard me, class dismissed!
(Act 1, Scene 4; emphasis added)
What in the world could I have seen in those scenes that made me think of nutrition issues?! Something quite important, actually. In August of 2017, I posted this blog post--https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2017/08/oxidative-stress-pancreas-diabetes.html--about the catalase enzyme, which turns hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen with lots of visible bubbles, and how catalase in fresh produce and dried organ meat looks like it could be very important to helping protect against developing diabetes. Diabetes often leads to kidney issues and eventually dialysis, a problem that affects Native Americans, blacks, and Hispanics disproportionately hard (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7935471/) .
After the blog post in 2017, I did a lot of experiments in my kitchen to see what was necessary to restore catalase enzyme activity after inactivating it with a highly-acidic environment like stomach acid. I found that adding baking soda and barley grass powder (a vivid green powder) were sufficient to restore catalase activity quite effectively. Baking soda (i.e., sodium bicarbonate) is an alkalizing molecule, similar to lye (i.e., sodium hydroxide) but not as strong. Barley grass powder contains many molecules; my current hypothesis is that the heme in the barley leaves is responsible for its part in reactivating catalase, for heme is an essential cofactor of catalase (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20506125/).
The desired combination of greenness and straw together, life-saving, eating green grass, ly-ing, bubbles, dialysis, persecution of minorities, silencing of those who have knowledge and are wild (i.e., untamed) animals...do you see where I'm going here?
This very popular musical that people think is about standing up for minorities could be taunting everyone with an Easter egg about how to protect against diabetes and kidney issues. Could anyone be that sneaky? If so, why? If not, if I'm just overly suspicious, please, prove me wrong about catalase, hydrogen peroxide, and diabetes-caused kidney failure. Because I don't think the word "dialysis," with all the discomfort, vulnerability, and expense it involves, fits in a perky blond's song about helping a new friend become popular.
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