Cabbage and COVID-19.

Dear Sir,

The recent report by Bousquet and colleagues within your pages builds up on the hypothesis that fermented foods including cabbage, cucumber and other vegetables could be associated with a lower COVID‐19 mortality due to their alleged antioxidant effect.

Diseases, just like species, evolve in time and space, and studying their distribution is a fundamental aspect of epidemiology. Given these authors showcase several population approaches by applying geographical epidemiology to COVID‐19 indicators, it would be of interest to repeat their statistics conducted during the first wave of COVID‐19, again with the current estimates during the ongoing second wave, or later ones. Totally different COVID‐19 mortality scenarios are observed, sometimes within weeks. For instance, any of their reported positive associations within regions in Italy compared to France (Figure 1) would in turn show negative associations now, there and elsewhere. Please provide such re‐analysis. Actually, COVID‐19 death and infection rates change in time within a country or region, while dietary habits remain relatively constant. All in all, we consider it is a practical exercise to teach our medical students on an eventual ecological fallacy. ,

FIGURE 1

Trends in COVID‐19 daily deaths in Italy and France up to 8 November 2020 and projected up to 1 March 2021

At any rate, by applying new tools and electronic health at the individual level, perhaps incorporating diet assessments to ongoing portable meters might shed light on their hypothesis. By the way, in their concluding remarks, COVID‐19 might not be the first disease of the Anthropocene. ,

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors have nothing to disclose.