Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2024

The Current Transcript for November 20, 2024

Host: Matt Galloway

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

TRACEY GOMEZ: I actually had to take a leave of absence from work because I was literally on a Zoom call with a client and I had the worst hot flash to the point that I look like I'd run a marathon. I was just completely soaked.

MATT GALLOWAY: Before Tracey Gomez went through perimenopause, she knew little and thought even less about the changes her body would be experiencing. Those symptoms, she says, turned her life upside down and eventually cost her her job. And she's not alone. Studies suggest unmanaged symptoms of menopause cost the Canadian economy $3.5 billion in lost productivity every year. In 30 minutes, whether those economic impacts will spur workplaces and health care professionals to change how they treat menopause and why, in the absence of information, snake oil salespeople await. Also this morning. Butter. It is expensive. Thieves are stealing it. Bakers can't do without it. We talked about butter in all its buttery glory last week, and we got mail, some of it even poetic. Your letters. Coming up. And later.

SOUNDCLIP

MOUSUMI (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): I don't know where she is, or if she's even alive. It is so incredibly painful.

MATT GALLOWAY: India's West Bengal region has seen some of the most dramatic effects of climate change. As the CBC's South Asia correspondent, Salimah Shivji witnessed, that has led to enormous changes in people's livelihoods and safety and a huge rise in human trafficking in the region. Salimah brings us the story in an hour. But we begin with ultra-processed food and an epidemic of obesity. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN: So, Marie mentioned urban planning is, I think exercise activity are extremely good. In fact, we've got pretty good data that 90 per cent of pandemic obesity particularly, and obesity isn't the only diet-related disease is due to the food that people are essentially forced to eat. And what you and the previous caller have done very skilfully in this call is make it very clear that the problem is structural. So, people are forced through their own economic circumstances to eat food that is engineered to drive weight gain. So, there's not a lot of consensus in nutrition. But the thing that everyone agrees on is that the population obesity we're talking about is driven by the marketing and availability of industrially processed foods that are high in energy, saturated fat, salt and sugar. And that's what causes diet-related disease. Whether we call them ultra-processed or other things, it is industrially processed food that is the problem. No one thinks that we are cooking more unhealthy food at home. So, it is, it is the marketing and the production of substances that is very hard to stop eating that, that is the, the proximate cause of the problem.

MG: Are they all, are all ultra-processed foods the same? I mean, again, I said at the beginning, maybe the cereal that you had, the bagel that you had, the yoghurt that you had, the protein bar that you had, those are all ultra-processed foods. But are they equal?

CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN: They all sound healthy. Well, this is, so this is the focus of a lot of my research in London at the moment. The food industry likes to say, look, the, the term ultra-processed food is too broad and encompasses all these healthy foods like breakfast cereals and yoghurts. Well, we can use established guidelines, Canadian dietary guidelines, World Health Organization, UK guidelines for fat, salt, sugar and calories to show that 99 per cent of ultra-processed food is excessive for calories, fat, salt and/or sugar. So the idea of healthy, ultra-processed food is a myth. There is a problem that ultra-processed food emits quite a lot of unhealthy food. So in Canada and the global north particularly, we have fancy ultra-processed food that may not use additives. So it may not quite technically be ultra-processed, but it will function in the same way. [MG: What do you mean?] It'll still be behind. Well, so, so if you think of some of the fancy ready meal lasagnas you might buy at a, at a high end store, they might just be made using kitchen ingredients. They wouldn't quite count as ultra-processed, but they would still function in your body. You would eat them to excess. They're still high in fat, salt and sugar. So, ultra-processed food, the what, the evidence. It's a brilliant research tool that tells us where the problem is, is with industry. And it tells us about the, the kind of products we need to regulate. But whilst it is not all equally harmful, there is almost no ultra-processed product you can name that will not have a harmful nutritional profile. It will be excessive for salt, fat or sugar.

MG: Can I go back to something that you've said and something that you said over time, which is that, I mean, it's not your fault. It's the food. You said the people are forced to eat this. You could imagine that there are people who are listening who are saying, come on, people aren't forced to eat anything. You have free will to put in your mouth what you put in your mouth. How are people forced to eat food that is bad for them?

CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN: So many people living at the poverty line or not even the poverty line in Canada and the UK will be people just living with low incomes, simply cannot afford to get healthy food. And when we talk about healthy food, if we talk about the diet, the other consensus in nutrition is that if you eat, you know, fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, nuts and pulses, that stuff is good. Everyone agrees on that. That stuff costs money, not just when you buy it, but it goes off quickly. You have to have skills and time to prepare it, and you need equipment. In the UK, we have many families, more than a million families who don't have freezer storage space, who only cook with a microwave. And so then, preparing fresh food is a problem. And in the moment, the gig job economy that both our nations face means that people work two shifts. We've seen rising inequality. So people say, it's a choice. You can go and buy a bag of lentils from the shop and it won't cost you that much money. But when you build in the, all the other costs and skills associated with that, it becomes an incredibly expensive food to cook. You know, eating lentils on their own is not enormously interesting. So, there is we have masses of data on this. People living with low incomes are have are unable to eat healthy diets. And that is that's not really up for debate. You know, we've got data from many, many countries showing that so that they're forced.

MG: What do we do about that? Part of that is about ensuring that people have an income such that they can afford, as you said, freezer space. But a lot of what you also focus on in your excellent book and in the work that you do is around figuring out ways to regulate the food industry such that it has less sway over our diets more broadly.

CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN: So, Marie also used the word regulation. We and, a lot of her research previously I was thinking about is on tobacco control. Now the thing to whom, it feels odious to compare food and tobacco for some people feels like food. Food isn't all bad. In fact, the food industry and the tobacco industry were the same industry for a long time in the mid-1980s, the biggest cigarettes and food companies were the same companies, so they used the same molecules, the same marketing techniques to, and the same distribution network to sell harmful food has been used for cigarettes. So we need to look to regulatory policies, they're the same. Now, the most important thing for me is the goal is not to stop people eating bad food. The goal is to increase justice, affordability and availability and equality in the food system.

MG: Chris, is there any jurisdiction that successfully tackled obesity through regulation?

CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN: So, south, no one's got on top of it because it takes a while to fix it in. The food industry's influence is very pervasive, but what you need is tobacco-style regulation. Marketing restrictions get the cartoon characters off the box of sugary cereal, don't have ads for kids, don't have computer games funded by the big food companies. And then you have progressive taxation and you need to ringfence the tax. If you're going to tax a candy bar or a soft drink, you need to take that money and drive down the price of good food and promote that good food. And then, you have lots of other policies, warning labels on the food. And so, this is being done in South and Central America and early results from Chile, Mexico, Argentina are good. It works, but the food industry is extremely good at undermining it.

MG: Chris, we'll leave it there. Good to talk to you. Chris Van Tulleken is a [CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN: Thanks, Matt] physician and author of "Ultra-Processed People.".

MG: One of the areas that has moved into that area of regulation is Newfoundland and Labrador. It has one of the highest rates of obesity in this country. Two years ago, that province introduced a sugar tax on sweetened beverages like pop. Scott Harding is an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Memorial University in St. John's, been researching the effectiveness of the province's sugar tax. Scott, hello to you.

SCOTT HARDING: Good morning, Matt. Thanks for having me.

MG: How does this tax work in Newfoundland and Labrador?

SCOTT HARDING: So the, the tax that the Government of Newfoundland Labrador introduced was designed to target some sugar-sweetened beverages. So it's not a sugar tax per se, where taxes like candy bars and other types of ultra-processed foods like your previous guest was speaking about. But what it does target is any of the sugar-sweetened, ready-to-drink beverages that you'd purchase at a grocery store or in a restaurant. So, this would be sodas and fruit juices and these sorts of things. But it excludes a number of beverages that organisations like the World Health Organization would consider sugar-sweetened. So would we exclude things like 100% juice or like from fruits or vegetables, or even sweetened milks. Like, chocolate milk is excluded from the tax here.

MG: Given what Chris was saying, what was the goal of, of this tax as it was imposed in Newfoundland and Labrador?

SCOTT HARDING: We feel it was, that was the goal. It was to target the obesity issue that we have. I think you alluded to it, but like in the eastern provinces like Newfoundland and New Brunswick, the rate of obesity is actually in the 40s. It's, you know, closer to 45 per cent now. So it's staggering here. It's almost 1 in 2 people would be considered obese, not just overweight. So the target was basically that to improve the health of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians through, I guess, the reduction in the consumption of these, these foods that are known to cause obesity and have no other nutritional value other than to provide calories.

MG: Do we know whether it's working? I mean, I know the data is still being collected, but thus far.

SCOTT HARDING: Yeah, we're still analysing the first year of post-implementation. And I don't have that data available to speak about today. But we did have analysed what the situation looked like before the tax was implemented, and we did it for a couple of reasons. One being with your previous caller, your guest alluded to was the equity of when these taxes are applied because everybody would agree with any tax that gets applied on any society, it's going to affect those in the marginal income area worse than those in the higher incomes. But we were also interested for this particular tax because of issues around what's the choice if you switch from the sugar sweetened beverages, what are you going to switch to? Are you switching to another unhealthy drink that's not taxed, or are you going to switch to what the Canada's Food Guide recommends in that being water? And that's particularly important in Canada and even in Newfoundland when you, when it comes to whether or not people trust their tap water, do they drink tap water? And if they don't, well, what's the next affordable drink that they consume? And usually, it's not bottled water or purchased water. It's going to be some other version of a commercially-produced beverage like a diet soda or some of these fruit juices.

MG: What sort of pushback has there been to this? I mean, Chris van Tulleken in his book, and in his research, talks a lot about the muscle of the industry to fight against. And it's extraordinarily powerful and successful in its lobbying and to fight against similar kind of taxes around the world. What sort of pushback has there been in Newfoundland and Labrador?

SCOTT HARDING: At the start, when the tax was implemented, there was a lot, there was a lot in the media from the side of the manufacturer kind of pushing it as though it could reduce, you know, could end up with job losses and these sorts of things. I don't know. They seem to me to be red herrings. There's no, it doesn't, I don't think the soda industries are in any kind of danger of going bankrupt. But the, the pushback from the, from the province was in terms of the population was pretty high. And we collected some of this opinion data and in our surveys and the tax is not popular because it is another tax. Some people see it as just another way for the government to take some, some tax money from the population. But everybody seemed to agree in the, in the data that we collected that if it is being collected that they wanted it spent on health promotion or some kind of government program that actually helps with the health of the people in the province. So while unpopular, you know, it seems to be understood as to why it's been, why it was implemented.

MG: I have to let you go. But do you know, do you have a sense as to when you'll know whether it's working?

SCOTT HARDING: Soon. We have some data. We're very close, and I wish this was a month later.

MG: We have your number, so maybe we'll call you back. But...

SCOTT HARDING: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That'd be great. Yeah.

MG: The part of this is really about changing behaviour, as you've said.

SCOTT HARDING: Yeah, it's a, it's a behavioural change and that's what we, we're, we're looking at is whether or not, that's what we're looking at in the first year and it takes more than one year. That's the thing we need multiple years to understand if the behaviour changes because really we're trying to target those, you know, the youth and the young adults to change their behaviours because these diseases take 20 years to develop: The cancers and the heart disease and diabetes.

MG: I have a feeling we will ring you back. In the meantime, Scott, thanks for this. [SCOTT HARDING: Thank you, Matt.] Scott Harding is an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Memorial University in St John's, Newfoundland. Your thoughts on this welcome. You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Your CBC News is up next. And then...

SOUNDCLIP

DR. JEN GUNTER: If you're a physician and you're selling a line of menopause supplements, you're taking advantage of people. If these products worked [Music: Theme fading in], they'd be in all the guidelines. And the fact that they're not is testimony that there's no data to support them.

MG: Hot flashes in a hot market. Menopause is having a moment. OBGYN Dr. Jen Gunter has a warning about the deluge of misinformation and unproven products. We'll hear from her coming up in six minutes. My name's Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

Menopause costing women their careers

Guests: Dr. Lori Brotto, Tracy Gomez, Dr. Jen Gunter

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. It's like hitting a brick wall and not coming out the same person on the other side. I can't get anyone to take me seriously. I lost my career because of the symptoms. Nobody prepares you for it quite the way it happens. Those are some of the experiences women captured in a new study that examines the economic and health impacts of menopause and perimenopause. Researchers in British Columbia surveyed more than 1500 women in that province, and the goal was to better understand how going through menopause affects women's health and their work, as well as the barriers they face in accessing treatment for their symptoms. Dr. Lori Brotto is executive director of the Women's Health Research Institute of BC. She's a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at UBC and the study's lead scientist. Dr. Brotto, good morning.

DR. LORI BROTTO: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. Why did you want to do this? Look at the health impacts of menopause, but also the economic impacts?

DR. LORI BROTTO: So, despite the fact that all persons assigned female at birth will undergo the menopause transition in their lifetime, we do know that there is a lot of myths and disinformation surrounding menopause, a lot of lack of awareness and a real shortage of research. So, this was an opportunity for us in partnership with Pacific Blue Cross and the B.C. Women's Health Foundation to really generate some scientific data to provide education to the public and provide new research so that women could live better.

MG: One of those quotations I read in the introduction was 'Nobody prepares you for it quite the way it happens.' I mean, how common was that, that sentiment that that people felt unprepared?

DR. LORI BROTTO: It definitely came up very, very clearly in the study findings. Many women felt like they suffered in silence. They felt stigma that prevented them from either talking to their family doctors if they had a family doctor, and when they had impacts on the workplace, they felt very embarrassed to mention that they were having these symptoms and ask for some accommodations.

MG: Tell me more about what you heard from women that were part of the survey, but the care that they received or didn't receive from their health care provider?

DR. LORI BROTTO: Yeah. So thankfully, about a quarter of the women who were experiencing symptoms were receiving evidence-based care. So, that's the good news. And that's, that tends to be higher than some of the other national and international surveys that we found. But the downside of that is it means that three quarters of them were not receiving evidence-based care. They were paying out of pocket on average of about $900 per year to care for their menopause symptoms. And they were tending to go to individuals like massage therapists, psychologists, naturopathic doctors in order to have some relief from their symptoms. We found that a very small proportion of our participants actually were even talking to their own primary health care providers about it. And as came out in some of the interviews, many of them who were talking to a family doctor about it were not met with, I think the evidence-based care that we would hope women receive and some of them reported even feeling dismissed.

MG: What's going on there? I mean, we have talked extensively on this program about the underfunding of research in women's health broadly. There was a woman in the study who said she'd never had a conversation with her health care provider at all about this. From your perspective, what's happening that would lead to that?

DR. LORI BROTTO: So I think, you know, at its core, there is a real lack of information and education on all levels. We certainly don't have the same amount of education around what to expect during menopause, say, to the equivalent during menstruation of puberty. Many school districts provide you know, what to expect during puberty talk and we simply don't have the same. And so when women are experiencing other, let's say, life stage-related changes in their health and well-being, they're more likely to, you know, attribute their symptoms to those other things that are going on that might be age related as opposed to saying, 'Could this be part of the menopause transition?'

MG: And at the root of it, I mean, part of that is about education, but it can go back to training for health care professionals. I mean, what's, what's at the heart of that, do you think?

DR. LORI BROTTO: I do run a provincial women's health research institute. And this is a question that we grapple with on a daily basis when we look at national funding for women's health research. It is a tiny, tiny proportion. Less than 7% of the national health research funding is dedicated to women's health. So if that's the entire envelope that's dedicated to looking at understanding and finding treatments for these issues, even a smaller proportion is dedicated to menopause. So we're, we're lagging quite behind in, in doing research and therefore making discoveries in women's health research writ large. It's still not prioritised. And that's why it's so important that reports like this get out that we advocate for more research dollars towards women's health and women's health research, and that we also take a look at our training programs. Yes, medical schools and residency programs, but also allied health care, professional training to make sure that they are getting accurate, updated evidence-based training to help manage the patients that they see with menopause-related symptoms.

MG: I'd said in the introduction one of the quotations that I read was 'I lost my career because of the symptoms.' 20 women told you that they believed they had lost a job due to menopause-related symptoms. Tell me more about that and, and how surprised you were to hear that.

DR. LORI BROTTO: Yeah. So, that was definitely a surprising finding. We found that over a quarter of our participants said that untreated menopause-related symptoms were directly impacting their work: Either days' missed work, their performance at work, their ability to concentrate. And it certainly makes sense in the context of when you think about untreated symptoms such as hot flashes and night sweats that might wake a person up in the middle of the night dozens of times, thus impacting their ability to concentrate and perform and be present during work. But again, the vast majority of them kept this information concealed. And so then we also looked at other impacts on workplace. And indeed, 17 of our participants said that they felt that they lost their job over menopause-related symptoms. And that might seem like a small number when you consider, you know, absolute numbers. But when you scale that up across the population of Canada, we're suddenly talking about thousands of women now who believe that either they were promoted for a job, turned down for a promotion, or that they lost their job altogether as a result of untreated symptoms of menopause.

MG: That speaks to information that came out in a study last year from the Menopause Foundation of Canada and Sun Life, saying that unmanaged symptoms of menopause cost the Canadian economy an estimated $3.5 billion with a B, billion dollars per year. You don't sound... [DR. LORI BROTO: That is] I mean, that that that math adds, that the numbers add up to you.

DR. LORI BROTTO: They sure do. And that's why when we when we talk about menopause, yes. Ultimately, we're talking about the individual woman or person and her symptoms and making sure that they are managed, that she has access to care. But there's an economic cost to this as well. And so, you know, to those employers or workplace settings who might personally be disinterested in menopause, hopefully the economic impacts would make most of those bodies interested in in menopause and making sure that women are having access to evidence-based care.

MG: Can I ask you about that more? I mean, just again, focusing on health is one thing. But as I mentioned in the introduction, this is also about the economic impacts. That, as sad as it might be to say, that if those numbers come up and the numbers are staggering as, as they are, $3.5 billion per year, that that's going to get people to pay attention in ways that perhaps just talking about the health impacts on women would not.

DR. LORI BROTTO: Yes, it is. And it's, it's sad that that we have to sort of rely on the economic numbers to make the case that, you know, treating women's health as something vitally important is as important as it is. But sometimes, we do rely and we certainly we look at policymaker decisions, etc. They are based on the economic impact.

MG: Just finally, is there any evidence that you have seen that that employers and policymakers are making those changes?

DR. LORI BROTTO: Well, we presented the findings at the health forum on November 1st, earlier this year, and it was to a room full of employers and employer unions as well as health insurance companies. And there was a lot of interest and a lot of kind of public statements about commitments that those groups were wanting to make as a result of hearing the findings. I think for a lot of them in the room, they were shocked to hear the statistics that we found in the report. And they, they stated that they were very committed to making workplace policy changes to support women who are suffering in silence.

MG: You'll be watching, I would imagine.

DR. LORI BROTTO: Yes, we will be.

MG: Lori, thank you very much for this.

DR. LORI BROTTO: My pleasure. Thank you.

MG: Lori Brotto is executive director of the Women's Health Research Institute of British Columbia and a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at UBC. She's also the lead scientist on the Health and Economics Research Report on Midlife Women in B.C.

MG: Tracy Gomez is now post-menopausal, but when she was perimenopausal, she struggled to get the information and support she needed. She's in Toronto. Tracy, good morning to you.

TRACY GOMEZ: Good morning.

MG: Do those stories that we just ran through with Lori, sound familiar to you?

TRACY GOMEZ: Oh, boy. It was like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

MG: Do you mind? I mean, it's awkward. We're talking about your personal health here. These are personal questions. But do you mind going through the tics? What sounded familiar in particular?

TRACY GOMEZ: I think just the lack of understanding and awareness as it relates to menopause symptoms, knowing where I am right now. You know, had I been, you know, in terms of just informed about what the potential symptoms would be, I would have prepared differently, but it was basically almost too late. It was only recognised as menopause by my doctor, who, by the way, is a female who I've been with for over 30 years. It was only recognised as menopause when I stopped menstruating as frequently. But before that, years before that, I'd had issues with, you know, heavy bleeding, fatigue, anxiety. There a whole bunch of sort of perimenopausal symptoms that didn't really get treated.

MG: And so, did you, I mean, one of the things that I raised with, with Lori was the quotation that 'Nobody prepares you for it quite the way it happens.' Did you think about or talk about menopause before those symptoms became really pronounced?

TRACY GOMEZ: No. And that's the thing. And even if it was, it was just, it was me asking my doctor. She's like, no, you're not in menopause yet because you're still having your period. And that was basically it. Like, I, she didn't really understand that I was actually going through perimenopause. And so what she was doing was she was treating individual symptoms, but not looking at things holistically. You know, again, based on what I've read from the Menopause Foundation of Canada, there are certain things that doctors can do, whether it's a HRT or some other treatment that they can provide to help women as they're going through their perimenopause and preparing them for the actual menopause phase.

MG: HRT is hormone replacement therapy.

TRACY GOMEZ: Right.

MG: Not knowing is a really, like you're kind of in limbo, right? And it's a really strange place to be. What was that like for you, that living in that uncertainty?

TRACY GOMEZ: It was very frustrating because I was in my 40s, very athletic, so I was running half marathons. I was like cycling long distances and doing all of this stuff and a lot of high-intensity workouts. And for some reason, I started gaining weight and it didn't make any sense. So in my head it was like, 'Okay, well, push yourself a little harder. Eat a little less.' But I didn't realise that because I was losing oestrogen, my cortisol levels, my hormones were out of whack and that was causing part of the weight gain, which was also contributing to the anxiety. So, I was just basically, you know, uninformed. And I was doing things that I thought were the right and healthy things to do. But I was basically exacerbating my, my perimenopause and menopause symptoms.

MG: How did that, all of that roll together impact your ability to, to, you know, live a full life, to function?

TRACY GOMEZ: It got to a head in 2023 where I actually had to take a leave of absence from work because I was literally on a Zoom call with a client and I had the worst hot flash to the point that I look like I'd run a m--, run a marathon. I was just completely soaked and there were other things that were happening. I was forgetting names, I was losing focus. It was just a whole bunch of really terrible symptoms. And I just asked, I said, 'Look. Based on everything that I'm dealing with, I just need to take a break.' So, I was able to take a leave of absence from work, work with a therapist, you know, try to understand what I needed to do with my health. I found, fortunately, the Menopause Foundation of Canada was able to get some information about why, you know, some of the things that I thought were going to be helpful were actually working against me. So, I had to make some lifestyle changes. Once I returned to work in sort of in September of 2023, it was difficult for me to find a role that I could do that didn't sort of exacerbate my menopause symptoms, meaning stress, etc. And also, given that, I think a lot of people knew at my age, like I was 53 going on 54 at the time, it was very difficult for me to find projects. With that being said, in 2024, I basically lost my job because I wasn't able to find anything that. Without naming the employer, I worked for a consulting firm. So, the onus is typically on the consultant to find a role. And I wasn't able to find anything that was, quote unquote 'billable.' So, I ended up losing my job as a result.

MG: How are you now?

TRACY GOMEZ: I'm. Well, it's been a challenge because I'm not married. I'm, I'm supporting myself and I'm really trying to figure out what to do next. So, I am leaning into figuring out what I can do for my health, how I can help other people. Because that's the thing. If I had talked to myself based on what I know now when I was 46, I don't think I would have lost my job. I really think I would have been able to navigate through this journey differently. And I think I probably would have been in a better position as it relates to my health.

MG: I mean, what are the supports that you would want? You talked about, you know, if you're able to, to talk to yourself back then, what are the supports that you would want in place so that other women don't have to go through what you went through?

TRACY GOMEZ: Talking to my doctor about what perimenopause is, what, what menopause is. Talking to my doctor or anyone really about what sort of changes you have to make to your exercise routine because of the fact that you're losing oestrogen. And then because of that, your hormones are going to go out of balance, which could potentially, you know, cause weight gain or contribute to anxiety. There's all of these things that I would have made changes if I was having those conversations. That's what I would love to do, is to get the message out to these women that: Do your research, get this information, talk to your doctor, and point to evidence-based research that the doctor can say, 'Okay, maybe we can do this.'

MG: Your story is really important because a lot of other women will have experienced what you did. As I said, it's hard to talk about personal things, but it's really important. And I really do appreciate you being willing to, to speak about this. Thank you.

TRACY GOMEZ: Thank you.

MG: Take care of yourself.

TRACY GOMEZ: Thank you.

MG: Tracy Gomez is in Toronto.

MG: Dr. Jen Gunter is an obstetrician gynaecologist, bestselling author of the books 'The Menopause Manifesto,' 'Blood' and 'The Vagina Bible.' She regularly debunks misinformation about menopause online and in her Substack, The Vajenda. She has also written about the growth of products targeted at women who are going through menopause, which she calls a menopause gold rush. Dr. Gunter, good morning to you.

DR. JEN GUNTER: Good morning.

MG: Tell me about the use of that phrase gold rush.

DR. JEN GUNTER: Well, I mean, it seems pretty apt. You know, I think that clearly we've heard about how women have been underserved, right? And they're looking for answers. And whenever you have gaps in medicine, there are predators that are willing to come in. And whether it's, you know, fears about vaccines and predators coming in there to push a specific anti-vaccine agenda or you have gaps in care about menopause and people coming in to sell supplements, compounded hormones, hormone palettes, all different kinds of things that at best have no chance of helping, but at worst could be very harmful.

MG: The market is expected to pass something like $24 billion U.S. a year by 2030 when it comes to menopause?

DR. JEN GUNTER: Oh, yeah. I'm not surprised. And you know, these products sell because propaganda works. You know, pushing them works.

MG: And because, as we heard from Lori and from Tracy, women are often unprepared for menopause and unable to speak with doctors about it.

DR. JEN GUNTER: Right. You have that. And then, you also have the fact that evidence-based health care providers are beholden to the truth. So, we don't oversell our products. We don't undersell them. We talk about the realities of what menopause hormone therapy can and can't do. We talk about the realities of non-hormone therapies. We don't, you know, tell you that it's going to solve every single thing in your life, right? So, there's also that aspect of it as well.

MG: What are some of the more popular treatments that are being sold to women to cope with symptoms of perimenopause or menopause? And what are they? What are they claiming to do in the absence of the research that that Lori was speaking about?

DR. JEN GUNTER: Well, I would say the most dangerous ones are hormone pellets. It's a hormone that have been pressed into a pellet about the size of a rice. And there are doctors doing it in Canada. And this produces wild swings in hormone levels and a lot of potential health con--, really serious health concerns. People can develop significant bleeding and ritual cancer. They can get enlargement of their clitoris, they can get balding, acne, all kinds of things. So, you can get standard hormone therapy, menopause, hormone therapy that's been vetted by Health Canada. And these products haven't been. There's also the massive influx of supplements. And we see even physicians in the states with large supplement lines, you know, physicians who have a large menopause, I would say, presence online. And they're now monetising that with supplements. And most of these products will do nothing, but some could definitely be contaminated and some could potentially cause harm. So, there's a lot of money to be wasted and false hopes to raise.

MG: You say it's always hard to write about medical BS because the energy it takes to debunk it is infinitely more significant than the lack of effort and research it took to create it.

DR. JEN GUNTER: Yeah, that's true. I mean, when I'm writing about some of these products that I'm, you know, I've pulled 20 or 30 articles and I'm reading through it and I'm thinking 'The person who designed this supplement didn't read any of these things. They read an abstract,' and then just called up a, you know, a company that does white labelling and ordered their product. And you know, now, they're making easily hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, if not more, off of a product that's on study.

MG: Well, and the tone that you have is, is angry because it feels like you seemed to be suggesting that people are being played in some ways because of the lack of information.

DR. JEN GUNTER: Well, I'm not, I mean, I'm not suggesting it, I'm absolutely saying it. Absolutely, people are being played. They are being taken advantage of. If you're a physician and you're selling a line of menopause supplements, you're taking advantage of people. If these products worked, they'd be in the Canadian Menopause Society guidelines, they'd be in the Menopause Society guidelines, they'd be in all the guidelines. And the fact that they're not is testimony that there's no data to support them.

MG: And yet it's interes--. The ecosystem is interesting because there's this movement to get people to talk more openly about menopause. And then there are people who perhaps use that. I'm not saying to their advantage, but, but step into that space. Dr. Mary Claire Haver is one of those people. She's an OB-GYN, menopause influencer, has something like 2.2 million followers on her TikTok. And she dispenses advice like this to her followers. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

DR. MARY CLAIRE HAVER: Ladies, if you're in perimenopause or menopause, here's why You may want to consider adding turmeric to your diet every day. Recent studies are suggesting that turmeric supplementation can decrease the visceral belly fat associated with perimenopause and menopause, improve gut microbiota, diversity and health, decrease inflammation biomarkers like C-reactive protein and when combined with vitamin E, can decrease hot flashes.

MG: So, she sells supplements and diet plans, but also has this hugely popular space where women can talk about menopause and perimenopause. She's called on the medical profession to do better when it comes to treating women in midlife. What do you make of that?

DR. JEN GUNTER: Well, I think that she didn't disclose there that she sells a turmeric supplement. She didn't disclose that turmeric’s associated with liver failure and she didn't disclose that. The studies she's quoting are dismal. So what do I think of that? I think that's predatory.

MG: She's also a big proponent of hormone therapy. And you've hinted at this, but what is it that women need to understand about hormone therapy in terms of what it can and can't do? Because that's one of the things that is I mean, sold in the true sense of the word, sold as, as perhaps a relief to the symptoms that people might be experiencing.

DR. JEN GUNTER: Yeah. So I think we should be very careful about taking what somebody with a line of supplements who profits from those says. So, I think we should look to the Menopause Society, the Canadian Menopause Society and menopause hormone therapy is the gold standard for hot flashes and night sweats. It can be effective for other symptoms as well, although the evidence is not as good for that. And what we're seeing with these menopause influencers online is women being told that hormone therapy can solve every single symptom, and they're not presenting it in what I would call an actual factual way. And in fact, the Menopause Society in the United States recently had to issue a statement about misinformation, about hormone therapy coming, and a large part from providers overselling it as a magic wand for longevity. And we have to be beholden to the science. Here's my baking analogy: you don't correct under-baking by over-baking the next time. What people deserve are facts. And you know, the facts are that hormone therapy, menopause, hormone therapy, we don't want to call it HRT because that's actually not the appropriate term. MHT, menopausal hormone therapy is the gold standard for many symptoms. But there are other treatments as well for people who can't take hormones. And it really takes an individual conversation with a provider who's, you know, educated on the subject to decide which is the best therapy for you.

MG: What do you make of the backlash that you faced for, for speaking out about this, particularly around hormone therapy?

DR. JEN GUNTER: I don't really think anything of the, the backlash that I get because the people who, who send it to me that, the physicians who might have issues with me, I don't respect them at all. So, I don't care what they say.

MG: I just wonder if, part of it is because women are trying to figure out in the sea of information and misinformation what they should do. And they're looking to try to figure out how to navigate that, see if I can keep that metaphor going. [DR. JEN GUNTER: Right.] What advice would you give them?

DR. JEN GUNTER: Right. And so, it doesn't help them when people come in and say things like hormone therapy can fix every single thing in your life. Right? That doesn't help the sea of misinformation. So, what I try to do is I try to provide a port in the storm. I try to provide good quality, evidence-based information. I think I'm really known for that. I will tell people the good and the bad with every therapy and to tell people that they really need to be aware about people who are promising you the moon because there is no therapy. That is the moon. Everything has risks and benefits. And for the majority of women, menopausal hormone therapy will be a very low-risk, effective treatment for, for many of their symptoms. But not everybody needs it. People who don't have any symptoms, for example, don't need to be on it. So, it really just depends on the personal issues that you're having and how you want to approach them.

MG: Just finally, are we broadly as a society getting better at talking about this, do you think?

DR. JEN GUNTER: Yeah, I think we are. I mean, when I first wrote my first book, The Vagina Bible, the fact that I was able to even get on, you know, some shows and say the word vagina was like a big deal. And now, it's like nobody thinks about it at all. And now, we're seeing more and more people willing to talk about menopause, and that's fantastic. But I would also say that people just need to be aware that we are also so vulnerable to propaganda and misinformation. And just because somebody is talking about a subject, it doesn't mean that the information is 100% accurate. And so we all need to learn how to accurately look at the information that we're receiving.

MG: Dr. Gunter, it's great to speak with you. Thank you very much.

DR. JEN GUNTER: Thank you so much.

MG: Dr. Jen Gunter is an Canadian OB-GYN who practices in the United States, and the author of three bestselling books around women's health, including 'The Menopause Manifesto.' Your thoughts on this welcome. You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE (THROUGH SALIMAH SHIVJI): People who experience trafficking are rarely welcomed back. But even after what happened to me, my community now stands by me. I am loved.

MG: [Music: Theme fading in] The CBC's South Asia correspondent, Salimah Shivji, went to West Bengal to find out how climate change was affecting the people who live there and why climate change is linked to a rise in human trafficking in that region. She met a group of women who wanted to tell their stories, and she will share them with us. Coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current. Stick around.

[Music: Theme]

And climate change fuels human trafficking in India

Guests: Salimah Shivji, Karin Marley

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

[Sound of river flowing, and crow chirping]

MG: That's the sound of one of the many rivers coursing through India's Sundarbans. It's a large mangrove forests that India shares with Bangladesh to the east. You can hear fishermen on traditional Bengali wooden boats travelling downstream. This is in the eastern part of the country in West Bengal state. It's one of the most vulnerable spots in the world for climate change, and that is affecting people's homes, livelihoods and safety. There has been a steep increase in human trafficking in this area in recent years. The CBC's South Asia correspondent Salimah Shivji went there and joins us now. Salimah, hi.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Hi.

MG: Describe what this area looks like.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Well, it's a couple of hours east of Kolkata, the capital of the state of West Bengal, and it's famous for its mangrove forests, like you mentioned, a World Heritage site. The word Sundarbans actually means beautiful forest in Bengali. So, you see mangroves everywhere. The tropical plant that hugs the edge of rivers, you know, wherever there's loose, wet soil. It's a plant that's often sitting submerged in high tides and much of the Sundarbans is submerged, Matt. The land lies very low. There's water everywhere you look. And it is a delta with several major rivers coursing through, and villages and islands are perched in between those rivers.

MG: It sounds beautiful. Why did you want to go there? What were you looking to hear?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Well, the Sundarbans Delta is also known for being very susceptible to the effects of climate change because of the landscape. You know, the United Nations and other agencies have warned that this area will produce many of the world's climate refugees over the next few years. So, I went there to find out how that's affecting the people who live in the Sundarbans and how it's linked to that rise in human traffickers congregating there. And I met a group of women who wanted to tell me their story.

[People speaking Bengali]

MG: What are we listening to here?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: So, that's the sound of a meeting in a remote village in the Sundarbans. There are about 10 women tucked into a home that's half exposed to the elements. One wall of the crumbling brick and mud house is completely missing. It's replaced with a hanging tarp. The steps up to the home are also falling apart. And to even get to the house, you have to walk along a really narrow path with soil eroding on each side, you know, slipping into the water that surrounds everything in this area. There are some homes kind of perched along the edge, Matt, looking like they're minutes from falling into the river below.

[People speaking Bengali continues]

SALIMAH SHIVJI: So, the women sit cross-legged and pull out some papers. They're talking about bank loans that they've applied for that some of them haven't yet received. And they're explaining to their social worker who's also there the deep struggle to make enough money to pay their bills. But it's really not just a meeting about financial pain. They're all here, part of this self-help group, because all of them are victims of trafficking, taken and forced into sex work.

MG: What did they tell you about, about what they had gone through?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: So, Matt, you know, it's difficult for women to speak about it openly, particularly in this community. But, but one of them, Miijana, actually told me her story while we sat inside her home, sometimes speaking in really hushed tones. So she you know, she didn't want her neighbours to hear when they were walking outside her home. She was only 17 when the traffickers came for her, and it was actually her neighbour, a woman about a decade older than her with a young child. Miijana trusted her. She used to call her sister. But the woman was actually watching Miijana waiting to strike. And one day, she asked Miijana to go to a nearby train station with her. The premise was that she needed help looking after her young child. Once there, the neighbour drugged Miijana's food and put her on a train to Mumbai, some 2000 kilometres away. And I let Miijana tell the rest.

SOUNDCLIP

MIIJANA (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): When I came to, I was with four or five other girls, all in small, cramped rooms. There was only one window. It was like a prison. One of the girls told me the same thing happened to her. And then I was trapped now, too. And I was taken to another place and was crying so much that three or four men came in and gave me an injection that knocked me out again.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: So there you go. You can hear her saying she broke down, crying, was drugged again. And then it got worse.

SOUNDCLIP

Speaker 3: Though. I mean, again, how are you feeling in her?

MIIJANA (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): The woman I used to call my sister came into the room I was locked in, and told me a man would be coming in. And then, she said dirty, awful things. I started crying again, but it didn't matter. They sent the man in anyway. He forced himself on me. I was raped. It went on for 15 days.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: She says every day, it was a different man. And that she felt so much pain, she thought of taking her own life, if only she could get her hands on a razor blade, she told me.

MG: She was just 17 years old when all of this happened. How, how did she get out of that awful situation and get back home?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: So, there was a police raid at the makeshift brothel. And while officers didn't exactly rescue her, the padlock on her door was broken, so she was able to get out. When it got quiet, she ran as far and for as long as she could until she really couldn't run anymore. An elderly man tried to help her get to a police station, but she didn't really understand him. First off, she didn't know if he was a friend or not. For one, she was just really too terrified. But also, she doesn't speak Hindi, she speaks Bengali. And that's the other thing that these traffickers prey on. There's a language barrier when they take the girls to cities across India. Miijana was eventually taken to a shelter and a local NGO in the Sundarbans called Goranbose Gram Bikash Kendra, they helped her get home.

MG: What happened to her neighbour, the person who trafficked her initially?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Absolutely nothing. She disappeared. No consequences. No, no justice. But this story is actually not unusual in the Sundarbans, as Miijana told me. And she told me that when she was giving me a tour of her family home that she was returned to after her ordeal. So, the home is really small. You enter from the village road and then there's a little extended section with a bedroom where the whole family sleeps, and that section juts out perched above a flowing river. And Matt, when you look down at the floor, it's just bamboo rods pulled together with rope, there are really gaping holes in between where you can see the water, the river flowing right below. I was you know, I was there with my cameraman, Glen, and he was just stepping around the room gingerly worried that he would fall through and ruin this home. And that's just one example of that water I told you about seeping up everywhere in the Sundarbans. And that's what traffickers rely on. And Miijana looked at me and she said, I know why I was the target.

SOUNDCLIP

MIIJANA (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): Trafficking was my neighbour's job. She was a professional. She would go to different villages, rent a place, and target young girls to take them.

MG: How were the traffickers able to do all of this?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Well, to understand that, we have to talk a little bit more about the area. You know, I explained it off the top, but really, you need to understand how climate change has made things far worse for the people who live in the Sundarbans, essentially making it fertile ground for these trafficking gangs. So, the Sundarbans is a unique but a very fragile ecosystem. Like I said, it has the world's largest mangrove forests. It's along a delta that has a cluster of low lying islands, mudflats, there are rivers leading to the Bay of Bengal. But it is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Several islands have already been completely swallowed up by rising sea levels. Others are partially gone, forcing people to migrate elsewhere. An estimate from a few years ago now was that 60,000 people have already had to migrate away from the Sundarbans, becoming climate refugees because there's also no work and there's constant uncertainty. You know, their land, their homes disappear. Sometimes, the villagers move to another island, then have to move again when the new land also erodes.

MG: And so, what is climate change doing to the environment in this region?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Well, the Bay of Bengal is warming faster than any other major body of water on the planet. And that means more frequent and more vicious cyclones are battering the area. I spoke to one social worker who said, you know, we were used to getting one cyclone a year. Now we get about four or five, and especially recently, some of them super cyclones, which just cause so much damage and destruction and death. And with all of that seawater from the cyclones flooding into the area, the work is not just erosion, but it's also salinity. More saltwater damages the soil, so villagers can't grow what they used to. Losing a major source of income in a place where already about half of the population lives below the poverty line. So, that desperation grows. I want you to listen to the founder of the local NGO that I mentioned earlier, GGBK. His name is Nihar Ranjan Raptan. Take a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

NIHAR RANJAN RAPTAN (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): Poverty is getting worse, and all of this is because of climate disasters. The situation forces people to leave for work, to migrate to places where there is a language barrier, and that helps the traffickers. They have easy access. They exploit the situation, luring people with promises of good jobs, a better life, or even the promise of a stable marriage. This is how they take victims away.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: He says traffickers look for young girls and sometimes boys from the most vulnerable families. Sometimes, you know, they're taken with promises. But often, like in Miijana's case, they're tricked and then drugged. His NGO is now seeing more than 30 cases a year. And the latest official India crime stats show that more than 40,000 women and about 10,500 girls went missing from the state of West Bengal in 2022. Those are the highest numbers in the country. They weren't all trafficked, of course, but those numbers really are quite striking. And then, when you look at the number of people reported trafficked across India, that's around 6000 people across the country in the most recent year for which stats are available. That's 2022. But that number, 6000 is widely presumed to be far lower than the actual number, since trafficking is under-reported and often miscategorised by police.

MG: What about the police? What are they doing? if the numbers are that high, what are they doing to tackle the rise in trafficking in this area?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Well, they do say that they are fully aware that trafficking is up dramatically in the Sundarbans. It is their main focus for the local police there. They say they're chipping away at a network that is India-wide with many layers and middlemen. So, police often act on tips. They try to conduct raids in big cities like Mumbai and Delhi, where many of the girls are taken and they try to rescue as many of them as they can. But sometimes word gets out that a raid is coming, and the traffickers move the girls to another location where they hide them. One trafficked girl told me they hide them in places so tight that the girls can't breathe and some don't make it out alive. Many of the young women are recovered by police, and with the help of that local NGO I spoke about, they work tirelessly to help these young women and girls. But still, about 25% of those trafficked are never found.

MG: And so, how do family members who are left behind cope as they try to figure out and piece together where their daughter or sister or mother might be?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Well, it is excruciating for so many of them. I spoke to one couple who hasn't seen their daughter in close to two years and the mother, Mousumi. She was in tears the entire interview, so much so that the family dog in another room was, was barking to console her. Mousumi's daughter, Sohani, wasn't underage. She was in her 20s when her parents say that she was lured away by an older man who promised to marry her. That didn't happen, and they feared the worst. Here's her mom.

SOUNDCLIP

MOUSUMI (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): For nearly two years, we have had no contact with her. I don't know where she is, or if she's even alive. It is so incredibly painful.

RANA (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): I believe, the man's family's deeply involved in human trafficking. Not only trafficking, but they make women do terrible, unspeakable things. Every horrific news report on TV makes my heart race with fear. The pain never ends, and only those who have lost a child can truly understand this anguish.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: So you heard her father there, Rana. You can also hear the family dog barking in the back. [MG: Yeah.] Rana has a full file on the man he thinks trafficked his daughter, and he thinks she's been taken across the border to Bangladesh. But he says the police can't or won't help.

MG: And for those who do make it back, how difficult is it for them to reintegrate into village life?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Well, they not only have to deal with the trauma of surviving sexual assault and confinement, but also deep mistrust in the community. And the stigma attached to trafficking in the Sundarbans is so strong, especially if a young woman is forced into sex work. They're often labelled as a girl gone bad. The local NGO has about 1,200 active cases of trafficking victims that their social workers are still following. They're helping them to get the support they need, providing trauma counselling. The founder, Nihar Raptan, who started the organisation in the late 1980s, says the first trafficking case he came across was in 1995 and things were very different back then.

SOUNDCLIP

NIHAR RAPTAN (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): At the time, I wasn't even familiar with the term trafficking. I couldn't help the rescued girl reintegrate. That responsibility fell to villagers and the local police station. Initially, we thought that if we managed to rescue the victims, our job was done. But I have now learned that the actual rescue was just the beginning of the work needed.

MG: You mentioned counselling. What other work is the NGO providing to help these women and girls?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: It extends beyond counselling to financial advice, negotiating with bank officials like we heard at that meeting with the women. The NGO helps if trafficking survivors want to report their abusers to police. And they also organise awareness campaigns in villages across the area to fight that stigma, which is so strong. And they were a huge help to another young woman I spoke with. Kashmira.

[Kashmira serving customers in the corner shop]

MG: What's Kashmira doing now?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: So she's serving customers at the little corner shop that she runs in her small village selling snacks. Selling toys. It's her safe space. Now, Kashmir was also trafficked at 17, just like Miijana. She was also tricked. And in her case, it was her cousin's boyfriend who slipped a drug into the teenager's soda and put her on a train to Delhi, where Kashmira was kept for six months, continually drugged, she says, beaten and forced into sex work. And after her rescue, when she came back, it was almost worse, she says. For three full years, she didn't leave the house.

SOUNDCLIP

KASHMIRA (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): I couldn't bring myself to go out because of all the demeaning questions and accusations from people in my village. It was unbearable, especially when some of those hurtful words came from my own family. Even my own uncles and cousins would bombard me with ugly questions.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: So, she's resilient. After months of counselling, she was finally able to start getting out and interacting with others. The NGO's social workers visited her village, spoke to people one by one, and worked hard to change their minds, explaining that it's not a woman's fault that she's taken. Kashmira's father set her up with that shop that she calls her lifeline. It's made her independent and her neighbours, who used to talk bad about her, now rely on her.

SOUNDCLIP

KASHMIRA (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): People who experience trafficking are rarely welcomed back. But even after what happened to me, my community now stands by me. I am loved.

MG: What about Miijana, who we heard from earlier? How did she fight that stigma that you've been talking about?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: She actually called it horrifying. The stigma was so strong after she was rescued that she couldn't bear to finish up her high school final exams that she was just about to do before she was taken. Her parents decided that the best thing for her was to get married quickly, a child marriage, because she was still just 17 when she got back. Her parents thought it would help her be accepted back by the village, but she says it was awful. Her husband found out what had happened to her. He started demanding money, basically blackmailing the family and harassing her on social media and beating her. She left when she was nine months pregnant with her daughter. And it's for her daughter that she fights. Miijana works closely with the NGO and so do other trafficking survivors. Kashmira does, too. They go from village to village talking to young people.

MG: And so, what do they say? I mean, what are they focusing on when they're speaking with young people?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Yeah. So, they work really hard to warn them about how trafficking gangs operate. They list the signs to look out for and what they should do, what young people should do if there's a suspected trafficker hanging around their village. And you can hear how they get the kids' attention here.

[Playing a social game with Miijana]

SALIMAH SHIVJI: They're playing a game there where their social worker is there. Miijana is there as well. They choose one kid to be the target and the other kids circle around, join hands trying to ward off a trafficker. The social worker says he's a wicked man and you need to do everything you can to protect our daughter. She's not just one person's child. She's all of ours is what they're saying there. Miijana had a leading role in that game. She was pretending to be the trafficker in that, and she told me she needs to be involved in this kind of work. It's really emotional for her because she doesn't want anyone else to have to endure what she did.

SOUNDCLIP

MIIJANA (SPEAKING THROUGH INTERPRETER): Child marriage and trafficking are like a cancer. It keeps spreading. No matter what we do to try to curb it. Still, I'm not giving up. We are taking various steps to make sure that the trafficking cases here go down.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: And mostly, Matt, she wants her young daughter, who's just five years old, to be proud of her, of her strength.

MG: It's a shocking story. Salimah, thank you very much for bringing it to us.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: You're welcome.

MG: Salimah Shivji is the CBC's South Asia correspondent.

[Music plays]

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. My name is Matt Galloway. You know, from butter to looking like this, you never really know what people will respond to in terms of the things we talk about on this program. We received quite a bit of mail about some of the conversations we've had on the program over the past couple of days. The Current's senior producer, Karin Marley, is here with some of your letters. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. So I'll start with an email about doppelgangers. So, yeah, as you mentioned, we talked about the phenomenon of people who look alike but aren't related. So, Judy Peterson writes from Flin Flon, Manitoba. "In 1972, I was visiting an aunt in San Jose, California. While strolling through the neighbourhood, I passed a girl on the sidewalk who looked exactly like me. Her clothes were nicer and much cooler, but we had the same hair, colour and eyes. We were both short and had the same faces. I felt like I was looking in a mirror. As we walked past each other, we slowed down and really stared. And then we kept walking in opposite directions. It was one of the strangest things I'd ever experienced. Now, in my senior years, I can't believe we didn't have a conversation."

MG: Wendy Campbell writes, "When I worked at Expo '67, the other hostesses started calling me Petula, telling me I looked exactly like Petula Clark. The British singer and actress was well-known in France at that point. This was before Downtown and the other hits, but not to me. So, I was curious. The film Finian's Rainbow was released shortly after Expo, and I rushed to see it and her. And when she came on screen, I was totally shocked. It was like seeing myself, particularly when she spoke. I think it was something about the way her face moved, pronouncing English that cemented the similarity. I was in Montreal about 40 years later and someone approached my daughter and asked if I was Petula Clark. She was mystified not knowing who that was. I was reminded of the whole story and we have had lots of fun with it since."

KARIN MARLEY: So, this is from another listener who writes, "One time on vacation at an all inclusive resort. I had a man bring me a drink while I was sitting by the pool. When I said thank you, he looked startled and said, 'Sorry, I thought you were my wife.' Shortly after, I had a friend ask me where I got the pretty dress that she saw me in earlier. I wasn't wearing a pretty dress earlier. Finally, it became apparent that there was a person at the resort who looked like me. Several people commented on that fact. We met and neither of us could see it. We kept in touch a little bit on social media, and one day while I was scrolling through photos on Facebook, I saw myself wearing an outfit that I didn't remember owning. That startled me, so I took a closer look and realised it was my doppelganger from the resort. That amused me. I wrote to her and told her that I finally do see our resemblance. The trick was to glance, not to look at specific details. I think that when we look at ourselves, we are more aware of those details, and therefore, less likely to recognise the similarity we might have to one another."

MG: Finally, Sandy McMillan wrote, "I was 16 and a guest of a friend's family in Bermuda. We were on an elevator going down to breakfast. A couple got in. The father looked at me and became instantly emotional and angry. He said, 'How dare you go against our wishes and come here?' And he went on. They thought I was their daughter. It was a brief, scary interaction. The doors opened. We got off. I've never forgotten it. I guess I have a doppelganger out there somewhere. I'm now in my late 70s. May you find your own lookalike. Or maybe not." We also did a story about butter. Butter bandits, butter heists, the butter black market. Why people love butter. Why butter is in such high demand these days. The headline that we read was 'Butter has become the main character. It's always been the best part of dinner. Now it is the star.' We got a lot of mail on this, some of it poetic. Karin.

KARIN MARLEY: So, Terence Keller of Quebec Cities sent us a haiku titled Ode to Butter. "Richness Warms My Tongue. Sunshine and wind and pasture. Sweet reverie." He also wrote, "When your guest talked about butter being life changing. I knew what he meant. I was in France when I had some fresh butter and I was transported. Just knowing that it exists is enough to know that everything will be okay." I like that. Terence is also challenging us with a tongue twister that I'll leave to you, Matt.

MG: Yeah. Best of luck. Here we go. Bettie Botter bought some butter, but the butter, it was bitter. If she put it in her batter, it would make her batter bitter. But a bit of better butter, that would make her batter better. Karin.

KARIN MARLEY: So she bought a bit of butter. Better than her bitter butter. Then, she put it in her batter and her batter was not bitter.

MG: Wow. You were way faster than I was expecting. Slow down. So 'twas better, batter butter? I'll leave that to you.

KARIN MARLEY: So, it was better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.

MG: Is it faster? If, is it better if you say it faster? [KARIN MARLEY: Oh, yes] And easier, perhaps, if you say?

KARIN MARLEY: I think so.

MG: This one much easier to read is from Doug McCulloch. The subject line is G-Whiz. "Hey Matt, your show is making me hungry over here." That's our secret intention, by the way, when we talk about food, is to make you hungry. "Your mention of freezing butter when it's on sale reminded me of what I do. I would buy max two or three, then freeze or process right away by just heating it up to the point where the milk solids settle to the bottom, and its water has evaporated. Plus, some of the salt gets booted when you strain out the yellow to brown solid chunks. You can leave it out permanently at room temperature now. I used to believe I was removing all the salt from the cheaper salted stuff, but know I probably need a proper lab for that. The timing on the story is too much. As for weeks, I have been thinking to quit butter again and finally make my vegan option with soy and coconut oil, which I did two nights ago."

KARIN MARLEY: I still think that butter's better.

MG: Karin, thank you very much.

KARIN MARLEY: You're welcome.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer, tongue twister expert here at The Current. If there's anything you hear on the program that you want to comment on, do get in touch. We read all of your mail, even the ones that are hard to read, and some of it ends up on the radio. You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. That is The Current for this Wednesday. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. In the spirit of butter, here's Fiona Apple, Hot Knife. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

[Music: Hot Knife by Fiona Apple]

Wednesday, November 20, 2024 Full Transcript

Social Sharing