From Energy Times.
"Do you lack energy or have difficulty sleeping and thinking clearly? Excess acid in your diet may be to blame. If you eat an acid-producing diet of meats, grains and packaged foods, the effects can go beyond just feeling lousy and out of whack—you may actually be putting your health at risk.
A diet high in alkaline-forming fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, reduces your risk for bone and muscle loss and may stave off other health woes as well. Not surprisingly, many of the guidelines for an alkaline diet fall in line with a healthy diet for anyone: Eat less red meat and processed foods, and increase your produce intake.
What Is pH?
A brief science review: pH is a measure of particles called free hydrogen ions. Acids in food release these ions, which give acidic foods such as yogurt, citrus fruits and vinegar their distinct tang.
The more hydrogen ions, the more acidic the food and the lower its pH. Foods with a pH below seven are considered acidic, water is neutral with a pH of seven and foods with a pH above seven are basic, or alkaline.
“The body maintains different pH levels within different tissues,” says Shawn M. Talbott, PhD, athletic nutritional consultant and former director of the University of Utah Nutrition Clinic. For example, blood is neutral at about a pH of 7, urine is more acidic at about a pH of 6, stomach acid is very acidic at a pH of 1, while secretions from the pancreas are more alkaline at about pH of 8. Different pH levels allow the body to function properly; for example, digestion suffers if the stomach doesn’t produce enough acid to break down food proteins.
Excess Acidity’s Woes
Foods high in acids are metabolized in the body to carbon dioxide and water, increasing the “acid side” of the metabolic balance equation, explains Talbott. “But when you eat food low in organic acids or high in organic anions [such as broccoli or cauliflower], it is metabolized to bicarbonate as an end product, which increases the ‘alkaline’ side of the equation.”
Some foods may start out classified as acidic just sitting on the counter, but alkalinize as they get digested and pass through the stomach acid. Lemons are one example.
As a result, an alkali diet creates a better acid-base balance, which helps maintain an overall balance between tissue breakdown (catabolism) and tissue rebuilding (anabolism). “This may also lower rates of inflammation and, therefore, reduce heart disease risk, oxidation and cancer risk, glycation associated with diabetes and obesity risk, as well as stress hormones, which reduces depression risk,” says Talbott.
Disease thrives in an acidic environment, says Sally Kravich, MS, a New York holistic nutritionist. “High-sugar foods, coffee, soda and junk food are all high in acidity and create disease,” she says, adding that lifestyle issues such as stress and lack of sleep also produce acidity in the body.
“The strongest support for a balanced pH diet is based on studies of bone resorption [breakdown],” Talbott notes. For example, an October 2000 study in the Journal of Gerontology showed that increasing vegetable intake and decreasing animal foods intake significantly reduced the hip fracture risk in women age 50 and older. Another investigation, conducted by researchers at the Harvard Medical School, found that women who ate red meat five times a week were at least five times more likely to experience a bone fracture than women who ate red meat only once a week.
Your body normally does a pretty good job of regulating pH levels. When conditions become a little too acidic, however, the body has to work that much harder to get back into balance. “Having what we measure as a ‘high acid load’ can lead to accelerated bone breakdown and higher rates of fractures,” says Talbott.
The same holds true for muscle. According to a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (3/08), 384 men and women age 65 and older were followed over a three-year period. Participants who ate diets rich in acid-producing foods experienced a reduction in lean tissue, or muscle, mass. Those who ate a lot of alkaline foods appeared to maintain adequate muscle mass over time. This is especially important because keeping muscle helps prevent falls and the fractures that may result.
Avoiding lean tissue loss also makes it easier to remain mobile and live independently (Deutsches Ärzteblatt International 5/27/11).
Creating Better Balance
“Our diets should be based on fresh foods whenever possible and the greater the variety the better,” says Dian Griesel, PhD, co-author (with her brother, Tom) of TurboCharged: Accelerate Your Fat Burning Metabolism, Get Lean Fast and Leave Diet and Exercise Rules in the Dust (Business School of Happiness). “A well-balanced diet containing enough fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and quality natural protein is what our bodies thrive on. When such a diet is consumed on a regular basis, attempting to micro-manage acid/alkaline balance is unnecessary.” Problem is, most people do not eat nearly enough fruits and vegetables, which tips the scales towards acidity.
“You simply cannot get the benefits of an alkaline diet by taking alkaline drops [designed to increase pH levels] and not changing your diet,” says Kravich, who adds that the easiest way to ensure you’re eating enough alkaline foods is to fill at least one-half to two-thirds of your dinner plate with vegetables. For an instant jolt of alkalinity, she suggests drinking a glass of fresh-squeezed vegetable juice.
Packaged foods are at the top of the acidity scale and should be limited, says Kravich. Other highly acidic foods include meat, coffee, artificial sweeteners, beer and alcohol, pickles, fruit juice and black tea. Moderately acidic foods include mayonnaise, ketchup, miso, mustard, soy sauce, cheese, pineapple, pomegranate, brown rice, sauerkraut, pears, figs, pineapples and tomatoes. Oils, asparagus, green beans and many fruits and nuts rank slightly alkaline. Fresh red beets, alfalfa, celery, cilantro, jicama and sprouts top the most-alkaline list.
What do these foods have in common? They either contain high levels of sugar, or break down into high levels of sugar. Once again, sugar is the culprit.
Grains are a problem because they are loaded with carbohydrates and gluten, says Georgianna Donadio, MSc, PhD, DC, founder and director of the National Institute of Whole Health in Boston. “They should only be consumed if they’re sprouted; then they’re vegetables.”
Paleos--what say you on this "sprouted grains are vegetables" idea? The sprouted versions of grains and beans are much lower carb and have much higher nutritional value than their adult counterparts. Unfortunately for me, the sprouted versions also contain phytates and gluten, which cause me food allergy problems--yes, I've tried sprouting as well as soaking via the WAPF method, and still no go.
Many foods classified as “moderately acidic,” such as citrus fruits, contain vitamins, minerals and other compounds in a low-sugar package and should be part of any well-balanced diet, says Griesel. Ditto for coffee and yogurt, both of which contain health benefits. “Highly acidic foods, however, such as refined and processed foods, and most grains, have a dehydrating and acidic effect on the body and should be eliminated from the diet,” says Griesel.
“Also keep in mind that a ‘raw’ diet doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an alkaline diet, as many acidic foods may be eaten raw,” says Kravich.
And be aware of fine distinctions: lemonade is acidic, but lemon squeezed into a glass of water is not. “The sugar added to lemonade makes it acidic,” Kravich says.
Cut out all carbonated beverages and processed ingredients such as fake creamers, recommends Kravich. Eliminate all chips and cut back on sauces, sugar and ketchup. Use honey or stevia drops instead of artificial sweeteners.
Eat raw nuts with an apple instead of trail mixes, which may be high in sugar and, therefore, acidity. Or eat natural peanut butter, almond or cashew butter with apple slices. Hummus with raw veggies also makes a healthy, low-acid snack.
Delicious options for alkaline-rich meals abound, says Kravich. “Everyone’s specific dietary needs vary,” she adds; for example, athletes require more complex carbohydrates.
Quick, high-alkaline snack or breakfast ideas include:
• A smoothie with coconut water, mango, blueberries and/or avocado and whey protein powder (hemp or rice protein if you cannot tolerate whey)
• A juice of celery, parsley, carrots, beets, apples and ginger
• A veggie omelet containing half eggs and half veggies (the veggies contain digestive enzymes to break down the eggs, says Kravich)
Monitor and Adjust
Blood pH fluctuates throughout the day, so pH test strips are not reliable in monitoring the effectiveness of dietary changes. Instead, Kravich suggests relying on the way you feel to judge whether or not an alkaline diet is working for you. If you feel fatigued during the day, avoid starches and stick with vegetables. “If you can’t get to sleep, eat carbs at night, which may help you fall asleep,” she adds.
Since an acidic diet breaks down bone and muscle, those at risk for osteoporosis and sarcopenia, muscle wasting due to age, stand to benefit the most, says Kravich. People with digestive issues and ulcers may also benefit with more alkalizing foods in cooked form.
People who switch to alkaline foods often feel better within a week, says Kravich. “You may have a headachy period the first week as you go through junk-food withdrawal, but you’ll end up feeling better.”
Increased energy, greater mental clarity and more restful sleep: All these—and better overall health and well-being—will be your rewards for a more alkali way of eating."
One HUGE caveat about meat: what was it fed? Was it fed grains, which are acidic, or was it grass-fed, which is alkaline? Grass-fed meat is much lower in acid than the grain-fed counterpart.
As for the lemons vs. lemonade--lemons and straight lemon juice become alkaline as they digest, while lemonade, which contains sugar, retains the acidity of the sugar.
Suffering from gout? Acidity has more to do with it than you think, and here's a more civilized way of dealing with it than overpriced, unnecessary prescriptions. Gout, osteoporosis, and other diseases are linked by the acid/alkaline balance being out of whack.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Swedish Diet Backed By U.S. Meat Industry Research Funding
From the Local (Sweden). So when can we expect financial infiltration from the Cattlemen's Association and the Dairy Council right here in our own back yard?
"The latest in a slew of diet fads that have gained popularity in Sweden, the low-carb high fat diet (LCHF), is backed by research funded by the US meat industry, according to a new study.
The diets are based on the consumption of higher amounts of meat and fatty dairy products and prescribe restrictions on products such as potatoes and pasta.
The diets - especially the LCHF - have gained wide popularity in Sweden, Sveriges Radio (SR) reported, citing restaurateurs who are commonly asked to replace root vegetables with added meat.
But according to a report compiled by SR's Ekot news programme, the cost to the climate is double that of the balanced diet advised by Sweden’s National Food Administration (Livsmedelsverket).
Furthermore, the report has revealed that many of the research studies supporting the nutrition and dietary benefits of the diets are bankrolled by the US meat industry.
Despite the popularity of the LCHF diet, there remains controversy in research circles over its nutritional benefits.
Larger image here.
Debate over the LCHR diet has been raging in Sweden since 2005 after Dr. Annika Dahlqvist first prescribed the way of eating to help some of her diabetic patients lose weight and opened a blog to spread the word.
Dahlqvist soon became known as "the fat doctor" and her recommendations were brought to the attention of the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) by dieticians who claimed the diet didn’t fit standard weight loss guidelines.
Her employer instructed her to cease her controversial recommendations which were deemed to be in contravention of existing dietary guidelines. Dahlqvist instead elected to resign and focus her energies on lecturing.
Many of the studies to which Dahlqvist, and fellow LCHF advocates such as Andreas Eenfeldt, Ekot has found, are funded by food industry groups despite their insistence to the contrary.
Ekot's report indicates that among the financiers of some of the studies referred to by the pair include the US-based National Cattlemen's Association, dairy firm Swissmilk and other organisations linked to the now deceased Robert Atkins, who gave his name to a similar popular diet.
In a comment on the findings of the report on Tuesday, Annika Dahlqvist argued that her advice in based primarily on personal experience.
"Our LCHF recommendations are mainly based on basic knowledge of dietary influences on our biological functions. Our experience of this shows that we know that it works," she wrote.
Andreas Eenfeldt conceded to Ekot that "of course it affects credibility in terms of who pays", but cited several other studies supporting LCHF which he claimed had independent funding.
"The world is not black and white, and one can of course find economic interests of various scope within whichever movement is under inspection, as well as within all fields of research," Eenfeldt wrote on his "Kostdoktorn" (literally: diet doctor) blog."
Standard weight loss guidelines? There's a set national weight loss guideline in Sweden, meaning ONLY ONE PROSCRIBED WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT?
I bet these LCHF advocates are the Paleo enthusiasts of Sweden I see throughout the web.
"The latest in a slew of diet fads that have gained popularity in Sweden, the low-carb high fat diet (LCHF), is backed by research funded by the US meat industry, according to a new study.
The diets are based on the consumption of higher amounts of meat and fatty dairy products and prescribe restrictions on products such as potatoes and pasta.
The diets - especially the LCHF - have gained wide popularity in Sweden, Sveriges Radio (SR) reported, citing restaurateurs who are commonly asked to replace root vegetables with added meat.
But according to a report compiled by SR's Ekot news programme, the cost to the climate is double that of the balanced diet advised by Sweden’s National Food Administration (Livsmedelsverket).
Furthermore, the report has revealed that many of the research studies supporting the nutrition and dietary benefits of the diets are bankrolled by the US meat industry.
Despite the popularity of the LCHF diet, there remains controversy in research circles over its nutritional benefits.
Debate over the LCHR diet has been raging in Sweden since 2005 after Dr. Annika Dahlqvist first prescribed the way of eating to help some of her diabetic patients lose weight and opened a blog to spread the word.
Dahlqvist soon became known as "the fat doctor" and her recommendations were brought to the attention of the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) by dieticians who claimed the diet didn’t fit standard weight loss guidelines.
Her employer instructed her to cease her controversial recommendations which were deemed to be in contravention of existing dietary guidelines. Dahlqvist instead elected to resign and focus her energies on lecturing.
Many of the studies to which Dahlqvist, and fellow LCHF advocates such as Andreas Eenfeldt, Ekot has found, are funded by food industry groups despite their insistence to the contrary.
Ekot's report indicates that among the financiers of some of the studies referred to by the pair include the US-based National Cattlemen's Association, dairy firm Swissmilk and other organisations linked to the now deceased Robert Atkins, who gave his name to a similar popular diet.
In a comment on the findings of the report on Tuesday, Annika Dahlqvist argued that her advice in based primarily on personal experience.
"Our LCHF recommendations are mainly based on basic knowledge of dietary influences on our biological functions. Our experience of this shows that we know that it works," she wrote.
Andreas Eenfeldt conceded to Ekot that "of course it affects credibility in terms of who pays", but cited several other studies supporting LCHF which he claimed had independent funding.
"The world is not black and white, and one can of course find economic interests of various scope within whichever movement is under inspection, as well as within all fields of research," Eenfeldt wrote on his "Kostdoktorn" (literally: diet doctor) blog."
Standard weight loss guidelines? There's a set national weight loss guideline in Sweden, meaning ONLY ONE PROSCRIBED WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT?
I bet these LCHF advocates are the Paleo enthusiasts of Sweden I see throughout the web.
Caveman Genes Provide Human Imunity Boost
From Scientific Computing. If you're a follower of Dr. Peter Adamo and the Blood Type Diet, you already know that Type O blood is caveman blood. The "O" stands for oldest, while Type A stands for Agrarian, and so on. The diet is more of a specific blood type = specific carb diet using certain grains and beans, as well as a plethora of "approved" fruits, vegetables, and meat--it basically eliminates allergens and potential allergens with this method, and for me, it led the way straight to Paleo. When the "allowed" grains and beans were no longer cutting it for me, even in conjunction with WAPF-type preparations, I knew it was time to call it a day on these.
"For a few years now, scientists have known that humans and their evolutionary cousins had some casual flings, but now it appears that these liaisons led to a more meaningful relationship. Sex with Neanderthals and another close relative -- the recently discovered Denisovans -- has endowed some human gene pools with beneficial versions of immune system genes, report researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine in an article published online August 25, 2011, in Science Express.
Although modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans share a common ancestor in Africa, the groups split into separate, distinct populations approximately 400,000 years ago. The Neanderthal lineage migrated northwestward into West Asia and Europe, and the Denisovan lineage moved northeastward into East Asia. The ancestors of modern man stayed in Africa until 65,000 years or so ago, when they expanded into Eurasia and then encountered the other human-like groups. In some cases, the rendezvous were amorous in nature.
Last year, a partial genome sequence of Neanderthals, who died out approximately 30,000 years ago, revealed that these trysts left as much as four percent Neanderthal DNA in the genetic blueprint of some present-day humans. Last December, the genome of another human cousin, the extinct Denisovans, made clear that up to six percent of some people's genomes are Denisovan in origin.
Now, a team of researchers led by Peter Parham, Ph.D., professor of structural biology and of microbiology and immunology, has found that these matings had a positive effect on modern human fitness. "The cross breeding wasn’t just a random event that happened, it gave something useful to the gene pool of the modern human," said Parham, who is senior author of the study.
The useful gift was the introduction of new variants of immune system genes called the HLA class-1 genes, which are critical for our body's ability to recognize and destroy pathogens. HLA genes are some of the most variable and adaptable genes in our genome, in part because the rapid evolution of viruses demands flexibility on the part of our immune system.
"The HLA gene system, with its diversity of variants, is like a magnifying glass," said lead author Laurent Abi-Rached, Ph.D., explaining that it provides a lot more detail about the history of populations than typical gene families. Abi-Rached is a research associate in the Parham lab.
Prior to the sequencing of the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes, Parham and his group had suspected that at least one HLA variant came from archaic humans. They determined that the variant known as HLA-B*73 is rare in present-day African populations but occurs with significant frequency in West Asian populations. The ethnic distribution of HLA-B*73 and its similarity across populations suggested that it came from a relatively recent co-mingling of modern human and archaic human DNA, which most likely would have happened outside of Africa. Parham's team wanted to discern which archaic humans were the source of the HLA-B*73 gene type. In the last year, they have found the answer in the genome sequence of a recently discovered human relative, the Denisovans, whose existence first came to light in 2008 with the discovery of an unfamiliar finger bone and tooth in a cave in Siberia.
Larger image here.
By comparing the HLA genes of the archaic humans with modern humans, the researchers were able to show that the HLA-B*73 allele likely came from cross breeding with Denisovans. Little is known about what the Denisovans looked like (the finger bone and the tooth are the only known fossils), but the genome sequence extracted from the finger bone gives insight into where they overlapped with modern humans. Gene flow from the Denisovans into modern humans has left the highest frequency of the HLA-B*73 allele in populations in West Asia, the most likely site for the fortuitous mating to have taken place.
Even in West Asian populations, the HLA-B*73 variant never represents more than five percent of all known variants of that gene. However, other human HLA types that arose from ancient matings are found in much greater frequencies. "Certain traits coming from these archaic humans have become the dominant form," said Parham. For example, another HLA gene type, called HLA-A*11, is absent from African populations, but represents up to 64 percent of variants in East Asia and Oceania, with the greatest frequency in people from Papua New Guinea. "The likely interpretation was that these HLA class variants provided an advantage to modern human and so rose to high frequencies."
A similar scenario is seen in some HLA gene types found in the Neanderthal genome, which was also sequenced from DNA extracted from ancient bones. These gene variants are common in European and Asian populations but rare in African populations. "We are finding frequencies in Asia and Europe that are far greater than whole-genome estimates of archaic DNA in modern human genomes, which is one to six percent," said Parham. Within one class of HLA gene, the researchers estimate that Europeans owe half of their variants to interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans, Asians owe up to 80 percent and Papua New Guineans, up to 95 percent.
"This is not the pattern seen genomewide," said Abi-Rached. "The HLA system is unique in its diversity and the strength of natural selection acting on it, but it's possible that other gene systems, particularly the ones under similar pressure for variation, could show a similar pattern."
Other Stanford-affiliated authors include Matthew Jobin, PhD, lecturer in the Department of Anthropology; postdoctoral scholar Subhash Kulkarni, PhD; research assistant Farbod Babrzadeh; visiting scholar Baback Gharizadeh, PhD; and research associates Lisbeth Guethlein, PhD, and Paul Norman, PhD. The Stanford researchers collaborated with colleagues at the Anthony Nolan Research Institute in the United Kingdom; Ankara University in Turkey; the National Marrow Donor Program in Minneapolis; the University of Manitoba; the University of Nairobi; the National Cancer Institute; Liverpool University; UCLA; Canadian Blood Services; and UC-Santa Cruz.
The study was funded by National Institutes of Health, the Yerkes Center, the National Science Foundation and the National Cancer Institute."
All four of these institutions are in turn funded by the government. Anything with the words "federal" or "national" in the name are pretty safe bets for a government-funded or government-run institution.
"For a few years now, scientists have known that humans and their evolutionary cousins had some casual flings, but now it appears that these liaisons led to a more meaningful relationship. Sex with Neanderthals and another close relative -- the recently discovered Denisovans -- has endowed some human gene pools with beneficial versions of immune system genes, report researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine in an article published online August 25, 2011, in Science Express.
Although modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans share a common ancestor in Africa, the groups split into separate, distinct populations approximately 400,000 years ago. The Neanderthal lineage migrated northwestward into West Asia and Europe, and the Denisovan lineage moved northeastward into East Asia. The ancestors of modern man stayed in Africa until 65,000 years or so ago, when they expanded into Eurasia and then encountered the other human-like groups. In some cases, the rendezvous were amorous in nature.
Last year, a partial genome sequence of Neanderthals, who died out approximately 30,000 years ago, revealed that these trysts left as much as four percent Neanderthal DNA in the genetic blueprint of some present-day humans. Last December, the genome of another human cousin, the extinct Denisovans, made clear that up to six percent of some people's genomes are Denisovan in origin.
Now, a team of researchers led by Peter Parham, Ph.D., professor of structural biology and of microbiology and immunology, has found that these matings had a positive effect on modern human fitness. "The cross breeding wasn’t just a random event that happened, it gave something useful to the gene pool of the modern human," said Parham, who is senior author of the study.
The useful gift was the introduction of new variants of immune system genes called the HLA class-1 genes, which are critical for our body's ability to recognize and destroy pathogens. HLA genes are some of the most variable and adaptable genes in our genome, in part because the rapid evolution of viruses demands flexibility on the part of our immune system.
"The HLA gene system, with its diversity of variants, is like a magnifying glass," said lead author Laurent Abi-Rached, Ph.D., explaining that it provides a lot more detail about the history of populations than typical gene families. Abi-Rached is a research associate in the Parham lab.
Prior to the sequencing of the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes, Parham and his group had suspected that at least one HLA variant came from archaic humans. They determined that the variant known as HLA-B*73 is rare in present-day African populations but occurs with significant frequency in West Asian populations. The ethnic distribution of HLA-B*73 and its similarity across populations suggested that it came from a relatively recent co-mingling of modern human and archaic human DNA, which most likely would have happened outside of Africa. Parham's team wanted to discern which archaic humans were the source of the HLA-B*73 gene type. In the last year, they have found the answer in the genome sequence of a recently discovered human relative, the Denisovans, whose existence first came to light in 2008 with the discovery of an unfamiliar finger bone and tooth in a cave in Siberia.
By comparing the HLA genes of the archaic humans with modern humans, the researchers were able to show that the HLA-B*73 allele likely came from cross breeding with Denisovans. Little is known about what the Denisovans looked like (the finger bone and the tooth are the only known fossils), but the genome sequence extracted from the finger bone gives insight into where they overlapped with modern humans. Gene flow from the Denisovans into modern humans has left the highest frequency of the HLA-B*73 allele in populations in West Asia, the most likely site for the fortuitous mating to have taken place.
Even in West Asian populations, the HLA-B*73 variant never represents more than five percent of all known variants of that gene. However, other human HLA types that arose from ancient matings are found in much greater frequencies. "Certain traits coming from these archaic humans have become the dominant form," said Parham. For example, another HLA gene type, called HLA-A*11, is absent from African populations, but represents up to 64 percent of variants in East Asia and Oceania, with the greatest frequency in people from Papua New Guinea. "The likely interpretation was that these HLA class variants provided an advantage to modern human and so rose to high frequencies."
A similar scenario is seen in some HLA gene types found in the Neanderthal genome, which was also sequenced from DNA extracted from ancient bones. These gene variants are common in European and Asian populations but rare in African populations. "We are finding frequencies in Asia and Europe that are far greater than whole-genome estimates of archaic DNA in modern human genomes, which is one to six percent," said Parham. Within one class of HLA gene, the researchers estimate that Europeans owe half of their variants to interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans, Asians owe up to 80 percent and Papua New Guineans, up to 95 percent.
"This is not the pattern seen genomewide," said Abi-Rached. "The HLA system is unique in its diversity and the strength of natural selection acting on it, but it's possible that other gene systems, particularly the ones under similar pressure for variation, could show a similar pattern."
Other Stanford-affiliated authors include Matthew Jobin, PhD, lecturer in the Department of Anthropology; postdoctoral scholar Subhash Kulkarni, PhD; research assistant Farbod Babrzadeh; visiting scholar Baback Gharizadeh, PhD; and research associates Lisbeth Guethlein, PhD, and Paul Norman, PhD. The Stanford researchers collaborated with colleagues at the Anthony Nolan Research Institute in the United Kingdom; Ankara University in Turkey; the National Marrow Donor Program in Minneapolis; the University of Manitoba; the University of Nairobi; the National Cancer Institute; Liverpool University; UCLA; Canadian Blood Services; and UC-Santa Cruz.
The study was funded by National Institutes of Health, the Yerkes Center, the National Science Foundation and the National Cancer Institute."
All four of these institutions are in turn funded by the government. Anything with the words "federal" or "national" in the name are pretty safe bets for a government-funded or government-run institution.
Study--Lose Dangerous Belly Fat With Diet High in Protein, Dairy
From Yahoo Health. I don't know about the dairy, but the high protein part seems to be working fine for me!
"A new study suggests that a diet high in protein and dairy is an effective way to trim fat -- specifically, belly fat.
The study, funded in part by the Dairy Farmers of Canada and published in the September issue of The Journal of Nutrition, compared three groups of overweight, premenopausal women who were put on different diets: low, medium and high amounts of dairy, coupled with high or low amounts of proteins and carbohydrates.
The women were also put on an exercise regimen that included aerobic exercise five days a week and weightlifting two days a week for four months.
While the groups experienced identical weight loss, researchers at McMaster University in Canada said the group that consumed a high protein, high dairy diet experienced greater "whole body" weight loss, particularly in the hard-to-lose area for women: the abs.
A hundred percent of the weight loss in this group, for instance, was fat. They also gained the most muscle mass of the three groups, adding a pound and a half to their bodies, compared to the low protein, low dairy group, which lost the same weight in muscle mass.
Adding that much muscle is a "major change in body composition," pointed out the study's lead author Andrea Josse -- one that brings with it a host of other benefits.
"The preservation or even gain of muscle is very important for maintaining metabolic rate and preventing weight regain, which can be a major problem for many seeking to lose weight," she said in a statement.
The same group also lost twice as much belly fat than the low protein, low dairy group, the study found -- an area that can foretell the risk for cardiovascular disease later on.
"Fat in the abdomen is thought to be especially bad for cardiovascular and metabolic health, and it seems -- according to what we found in this study -- increasing calcium and protein in the diet may help to further promote loss of fat from the worst storage area in the body," she said.
A 2010 study out of Israel published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition also found that a diet high in dairy coupled with increased vitamin D intake led to greater weight loss compared to participants who consumed a diet low in dairy products. Vitamin D helps bones absorb calcium.
The McMaster study can be found here."
Unfortunately, you have to sign up for viewing--just use a fake name and e-mail address.
"A new study suggests that a diet high in protein and dairy is an effective way to trim fat -- specifically, belly fat.
The study, funded in part by the Dairy Farmers of Canada and published in the September issue of The Journal of Nutrition, compared three groups of overweight, premenopausal women who were put on different diets: low, medium and high amounts of dairy, coupled with high or low amounts of proteins and carbohydrates.
The women were also put on an exercise regimen that included aerobic exercise five days a week and weightlifting two days a week for four months.
While the groups experienced identical weight loss, researchers at McMaster University in Canada said the group that consumed a high protein, high dairy diet experienced greater "whole body" weight loss, particularly in the hard-to-lose area for women: the abs.
A hundred percent of the weight loss in this group, for instance, was fat. They also gained the most muscle mass of the three groups, adding a pound and a half to their bodies, compared to the low protein, low dairy group, which lost the same weight in muscle mass.
Adding that much muscle is a "major change in body composition," pointed out the study's lead author Andrea Josse -- one that brings with it a host of other benefits.
"The preservation or even gain of muscle is very important for maintaining metabolic rate and preventing weight regain, which can be a major problem for many seeking to lose weight," she said in a statement.
The same group also lost twice as much belly fat than the low protein, low dairy group, the study found -- an area that can foretell the risk for cardiovascular disease later on.
"Fat in the abdomen is thought to be especially bad for cardiovascular and metabolic health, and it seems -- according to what we found in this study -- increasing calcium and protein in the diet may help to further promote loss of fat from the worst storage area in the body," she said.
A 2010 study out of Israel published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition also found that a diet high in dairy coupled with increased vitamin D intake led to greater weight loss compared to participants who consumed a diet low in dairy products. Vitamin D helps bones absorb calcium.
The McMaster study can be found here."
Unfortunately, you have to sign up for viewing--just use a fake name and e-mail address.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
The Dangerous Psychology of Factory Farming
From the Atlantic.
"I know a factory farmer named Bill. His Texas ranch raises upwards of 4,000 head of cattle in a way that typifies industrial animal agriculture. Cows are numbered, not named. Animals don't eat food, they convert feed. The ultimate goal couldn't be more straightforward: raise cows as quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible; transform them into well-marbled cuts of beef; and, throughout the process, minimize inputs while maximizing outputs.
What does Bill think about his vocation? He absolutely loves it. Factory farming has afforded him a life in the country, an opportunity to raise his family in a rural environment, and an income healthy enough to send his kids to prestigious colleges. When I recently challenged Bill on the ethics of industrial agriculture, he smiled and shook his head, insisting that the cows he fattened and slaughtered were of no more moral worth than the iron grates that enclosed them.
Bill is an emotionally aware person who gives the impression of a quiet academic. He has a warm smile, and is as likely to be found reading the New Yorker as Horse and Livestock. As he sees it, a factory farm simply makes good business sense, much as an assembly line does for fabricating cars. Consolidation is a logical response to economic incentives.
But I think Bill misses a critical point. True, even without subsidies, there might indeed be economic advantages to raising animals under intensive conditions. But we should never fail to overlook the psychological implications of something as emotionally charged as killing animals for food. And when it comes to this endeavor, scale and density of production accomplishes something essential for all factory farming: it severs the emotional bond between farmers and animals. In the bluntest terms, it allows my friend Bill to kill thousands of animals a year and remain a happy person.
Understanding this phenomenon requires going back to the nineteenth century. Before 1850, when most animal husbandry happened on a relatively small scale, farmers viewed their animals as animals. That is, they saw them as sentient beings with unique needs that, left unaddressed, would result in an inferior product. Agricultural manuals from the time routinely instructed farmers to speak to their animals in pleasant tones of voice, to make sure that their bedding was soft and spacious, and to shower them with affection every day. Farmers never referred to their animals as objects. They knew better.
The reason they knew better was because the system of mixed pastoralism they practiced was defined by close physical proximity. This intimacy ensured that farmers interacted daily with their animals, developing an emotional sense of their individual personalities and quirks. The personal scale of animal husbandry made the slaughter—which farmers also tended to do themselves—a solemn occasion at best. No normal person, even on the hardest settlement frontier, would have been indifferent about killing an animal he spent years nurturing. Nobody could have doubted that he was taking the life of a sentient being with wants and needs.
After 1850, things changed. American agriculture fell into the grip of scientific farming. Agricultural scientists, followed by farmers, began to conceptualize farming as a strictly quantifiable venture. Beginning with plants, and then moving to animals, they became less concerned with individual idiosyncrasies and more concerned with collective evaluations of productivity. The chain of production expanded, and, as it did, farmers came to speak in terms of nutrient input, breeding schedules, confinement space, and disease management. By the 1870s, farmers were regularly referring to their animals not as animals but, literally, as machines being built in factories. "The pig," explained one agricultural manual, "is one of the most valuable machines on the farm."
The psychological salve of this rhetoric offered relief to farmers burdened with the task of mass slaughter. As early 19th-century farmers intuitively understood, farm animals are sentient creatures who have interests, a sense of identity, and the capacity to anticipate and feel pain. It is in the context of these qualities—qualities that constant interaction with animals make impossible to ignore—that the psychological "benefit" of factory farming becomes clear. Its impersonal, highly rationalized structure is designed to protect those involved from the emotional consequences of killing.
Today, many critics of industrial agriculture insist that we need to return to the pre-1850 system of animal agriculture. I'm skeptical of this argument, not so much on economic grounds—yes, it's more profitable to raise animals on a larger scale—but on psychological grounds. I wonder if, in a post-Darwinian age of animal ethology (the study of animal minds), we simply know too much about animal emotions and intelligence to look millions of pigs and cows in the eye—animals raised with sincere affection and concern—and kill them. I wonder, in other words, if we're ready as a culture of meat eaters, to do what Bill's system of industrial production absolves him of having to do: contemplate the moral weight of animal husbandry."
Of COURSE Bill's happy--he's getting paid by the government to factory farm! Bill's expected to feed the world, not just our country--our meat is exported all around the world, and counts toward our GDP. Now that Japan's cows are out of commission thanks to radiation fallout in the grasses, our beef is worth EVEN MORE than the already-inflated beef prices caused by Bernanke and his low interest rate-until-mid-2013 policy so we have to keep on chugging.
It's funny--we're the opposite of China. In China, factory workers earn so little that they cannot begin to afford the very products they're working on, but our factory farmers here are getting rich doing what they're doing. The difference? Government intervention through subsidies, regulation, and market manipulation--there are none of these things in China, yet we have a minimum wage law, a subsidies program, and a Fed chairman who's trying to re-create the Depression.
What does Bill think about his vocation? He absolutely loves it. Factory farming has afforded him a life in the country, an opportunity to raise his family in a rural environment, and an income healthy enough to send his kids to prestigious colleges. When I recently challenged Bill on the ethics of industrial agriculture, he smiled and shook his head, insisting that the cows he fattened and slaughtered were of no more moral worth than the iron grates that enclosed them.
Bill is an emotionally aware person who gives the impression of a quiet academic. He has a warm smile, and is as likely to be found reading the New Yorker as Horse and Livestock. As he sees it, a factory farm simply makes good business sense, much as an assembly line does for fabricating cars. Consolidation is a logical response to economic incentives.
Understanding this phenomenon requires going back to the nineteenth century. Before 1850, when most animal husbandry happened on a relatively small scale, farmers viewed their animals as animals. That is, they saw them as sentient beings with unique needs that, left unaddressed, would result in an inferior product. Agricultural manuals from the time routinely instructed farmers to speak to their animals in pleasant tones of voice, to make sure that their bedding was soft and spacious, and to shower them with affection every day. Farmers never referred to their animals as objects. They knew better.
The reason they knew better was because the system of mixed pastoralism they practiced was defined by close physical proximity. This intimacy ensured that farmers interacted daily with their animals, developing an emotional sense of their individual personalities and quirks. The personal scale of animal husbandry made the slaughter—which farmers also tended to do themselves—a solemn occasion at best. No normal person, even on the hardest settlement frontier, would have been indifferent about killing an animal he spent years nurturing. Nobody could have doubted that he was taking the life of a sentient being with wants and needs.
The psychological salve of this rhetoric offered relief to farmers burdened with the task of mass slaughter. As early 19th-century farmers intuitively understood, farm animals are sentient creatures who have interests, a sense of identity, and the capacity to anticipate and feel pain. It is in the context of these qualities—qualities that constant interaction with animals make impossible to ignore—that the psychological "benefit" of factory farming becomes clear. Its impersonal, highly rationalized structure is designed to protect those involved from the emotional consequences of killing.
Of COURSE Bill's happy--he's getting paid by the government to factory farm! Bill's expected to feed the world, not just our country--our meat is exported all around the world, and counts toward our GDP. Now that Japan's cows are out of commission thanks to radiation fallout in the grasses, our beef is worth EVEN MORE than the already-inflated beef prices caused by Bernanke and his low interest rate-until-mid-2013 policy so we have to keep on chugging.
It's funny--we're the opposite of China. In China, factory workers earn so little that they cannot begin to afford the very products they're working on, but our factory farmers here are getting rich doing what they're doing. The difference? Government intervention through subsidies, regulation, and market manipulation--there are none of these things in China, yet we have a minimum wage law, a subsidies program, and a Fed chairman who's trying to re-create the Depression.
Some Employers to Stop Offering Health Care Benefits in 2014
From HealthDay News (news roundup--see first story). We already knew this, right? I went so far as to postulate (back in 2009) that the government itself would stop offering health insurance in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, VA, active duty military, COBRA, and federal employee benefits, and shove EVERYBODY onto these exchanges. Hell, they're already ending the military retirement pensions!
"A new survey finds that nearly 10 percent of midsized or large employers in the United States may stop offering health coverage to workers when insurance exchanges are launched in 2014.
An additional 20 percent of the companies aren't certain what they'll do, according to the survey completed last month by benefits consultant Towers Watson, the Associated Press reported.
A June survey conducted by another benefits consultant, Mercer, found that 8 percent of large and smaller employers said they were either "likely" or "very likely" to end health coverage for their workers when the federal exchanges start.
The exchanges, part of the health care overhaul, are meant to give people an opportunity to shop for insurance that could be subsidized by the government based on the purchaser's income, the AP reported."
So if they're gonna subsidize based on income, aren't we right back where we started?
"A new survey finds that nearly 10 percent of midsized or large employers in the United States may stop offering health coverage to workers when insurance exchanges are launched in 2014.
An additional 20 percent of the companies aren't certain what they'll do, according to the survey completed last month by benefits consultant Towers Watson, the Associated Press reported.
A June survey conducted by another benefits consultant, Mercer, found that 8 percent of large and smaller employers said they were either "likely" or "very likely" to end health coverage for their workers when the federal exchanges start.
The exchanges, part of the health care overhaul, are meant to give people an opportunity to shop for insurance that could be subsidized by the government based on the purchaser's income, the AP reported."
So if they're gonna subsidize based on income, aren't we right back where we started?
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Food's New Foot Soldiers
From the NY Times. Apparently Jamie Oliver-type food police have been federally deputized. This could be good and bad....bad because the government's getting involved, and you know what usually happens when government gets involved!
"FoodCorps, which started last week, is symbolic of just what we need: a national service program that aims to improve nutrition education for children, develop school gardening projects and change what’s being served on school lunch trays.
I’ve been looking forward to this for months, because it’s such an up: 50 new foot soldiers in the war against ignorance in food. The service members, most of them in their 20s, just went to work at 41 sites in 10 states, from Maine to Oregon and Michigan to Mississippi. (FoodCorps concentrates on communities with high rates of childhood obesity or limited access to healthy food, though these days every state has communities like that.)
I’d be even more elated if there were 50 FoodCorps members in each state. Or 5,000 in each, which approaches the number we’re going to need to educate our kids so they can look forward to a lifetime of good health and good eating. But FoodCorps is a model we can use to build upon.
Curt Ellis, co-creator of the movie, “King Corn,” is running the show with Debra Eschmeyer, formerly of the National Farm to School Network, and Cecily Upton, formerly of Slow Food USA. FoodCorps is part of the AmeriCorps, from which it receives about a third of its budget. Most of the money comes from sources like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and individual donors.
Is FoodCorps necessary? The organizations that are fighting childhood obesity on the front lines seem to think so: 108 groups from 39 states and the District of Columbia applied to host FoodCorps, which chose to work at locations that had already begun to improve school food and needed help in expanding their work.
Potential participants were turned away at a crazy rate: More than 1,230 people applied for 50 positions. (It’s easier to get into Harvard.) Nor is this a program for the college grad who wants to do some soul-searching by playing in a garden for a year. “Many service members,” says Ellis, “have firsthand experience with the communities they’re serving. Some are going back to the towns they grew up in; others were raised on food stamps or overcame obesity. They understand these challenges from the inside.”
They’re also smart, well informed, and articulate; Ellis told me there wasn’t a day last week that he didn’t tear up from something that one of them said. (I’m going to post some of their initial sets of beliefs and, I hope, ongoing reports from the field on my blog.
FoodCorps members will be paid $15,000 for the year. On this they must find places to live and pay for food, though those without other sources of income are being encouraged to apply for help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (usually called SNAP, and formerly known as food stamps), so they’ll live like many of those they’re serving. (Those eligible will also receive a $5,550 federal education award to apply to their student loans when they finish.)
How, I asked Ellis, will we know if FoodCorps is successful? “This year we expect about 60,000 kids to benefit from improved food education,” he says. (This will be sadly easy to achieve: currently, elementary-age kids typically get less than five hours of nutrition education annually.) “Gardens will be begun or fortified to try to get kids more excited about fruits and vegetables; fresh food will be sourced from local farms; and parents and community members will be more invested in school food.”
FoodCorps will cost less than $2 million for the first year. Thus for less than a million bucks of our money we are getting a program that will start to roll back the $147 billion it costs us each year to deal with the health consequences of obesity, while changing the way thousands of young people grow up thinking about food.
Not to burst any bubbles, but let’s note that this in no way levels the playing field. That $2 million invested in FoodCorps — well conceived, raised with the best possible nonprofit intentions, and ultimately well spent (a bargain!) — was starkly contrasted last week with the $30 million that a new group of corporate farmers and ranchers intend to spend to promote the idea that they’re “committed to providing healthy choices.” As anyone who’s followed the news in recent years knows, agribusiness has done pretty much the opposite, relying on direct federal subsidies (also our money) to the tune of at least $5 billion annually to produce precisely the kind of junk food that is largely responsible for the tripling of childhood obesity in the last 30 years.
Here’s the problem: raising $30 million for a corporate public relations campaign to defend the rights of Big Food to continue to produce junk is easy; raising $2 million to promote healthy eating in our children is hard. Ellis says that his dream is to have 1,000 service members a year working in all 50 states by 2020. I say let’s have 10,000 by 2015.
But let’s end on a happy note: FoodCorps is up and running. Hallelujah!"
Did anybody ask the rich for money for this little project? Did anybody ask the PARENTS if they'd be willing to cede authority to these new foot soldiers (who know next to nothing about nutrition, I guarantee it, except the government line) when it comes to feeding their children?
This sounds like a failed plan much like the plan to deploy SWAT-like teams to neighborhoods to do home energy audits and make retrofits as necessary--all at government expense (Obama would keep your energy retrofit tax credit, and use that amount as each home's budget). Most homes would need vastly more than the $3000 allotted to each to make a dent in energy consumption! I know from personal experience that $3000 doesn't buy much--maybe a couple of Obama-grade windows (+ installation), a new front door(+ installation), and some caulk.
What stopped THAT program dead in it's tracks? Money--where's the money for this coming from? Tax credits are not actual tax dollars.
This new "food police" program is going to suffer the same fate. Any organization who asks for both donations AND volunteers is in jeopardy from the get-go. Ask entrepreneurs what happens when you have an idea or a goal, but no business plan and no funding.
If Obama wants to change the eating habits of America, he need only do two things, and neither requires leaving his desk to do them:
1. Change the farm subsidy program to subsidize fresh foods, and the foods HE wants us to eat, and quit subsidizing the stuff that's dissuading us from eating it due to costs. No more cheap Big Mac vs. expensive salad, no swat team food police, no begging for donations, and no more business without a business plan!
2. Change the food stamp program to take off the unhealthy foods like sodas. They can drink water like everybody else.
Michelle's food plate icon has already told him how to divvy up farm subsidies and food stamps.
Eating healthy for many starts at the top. His troopies will find that out for themselves when they go to these obesity zones, and find most (if not all) the residents are already on some sort of government program, and the troopies get to join them (judging by the pay scheme). Congress is to blame, and sending out a bunch of semi-volunteer gardeners, who may end up becoming obese themselves, to fix the problem in the fall (when many gardens are winding down for the year) isn't going to have much of an impact.
Did Obama even take the seasons into account when he designed this folly? God knows the overly-jubilant author of this article didn't--he must think garden food is available year-round just like it is in stores!
Question: why does nearly every program idea out of the White House have to have a "corps" behind it? Not a coalition, not a league, not an acronymed group, but a corps, denoting army, military power (with the president at the helm), and community organizing gone wrong.
If you're going to launch a school garden program on a shoestring, why wouldn't you hit up the nationwide string of Master Gardeners through the network of Extension Office programs (who are already on the USDA payroll and work for the government)? If it were mine to do, I'd try to pair up Master Gardeners with schools. Let's at least get someone in there who knows about gardening, and is interested in it, rather than teens and college kids willing to sort-of-toil for less than minimum wage + food stamps, even if the gardens don't produce.
My plan: get a Master Gardener to pair up with a willing school in need, give him/her the $15k that now goes to the corps member, and he/she can use that annual budget + the school kids' labor to get gardens going on school grounds. The project can even be turned into a summer school program, since that's when most of the growing is going to take place.
Why? Would a snot-nosed kid know how to make a $15k budget stretch to pay for such a project, let alone his/her own living expenses, with or without food stamps? This is why I prefer experienced adults in the game--most Master Gardeners are retired, already have an income, and have no need of food stamps.
As far as bringing nutritional information to the game, why can't a school nurse do that? When the kids eat a more healthful diet, the school nurse would eventually become a useless relic, so why not make HER the nutrition teacher if she's really a registered, certified nurse? She's already on the school payroll, so it wouldn't cost anything extra. She could hold large rally-type assemblies in the gym, and teach most or all the kids in one or two groups, instead of having to go from classroom to classroom. Better still: have rallies or textbook reading sessions IN THE GARDEN AREA.
"FoodCorps, which started last week, is symbolic of just what we need: a national service program that aims to improve nutrition education for children, develop school gardening projects and change what’s being served on school lunch trays.
I’ve been looking forward to this for months, because it’s such an up: 50 new foot soldiers in the war against ignorance in food. The service members, most of them in their 20s, just went to work at 41 sites in 10 states, from Maine to Oregon and Michigan to Mississippi. (FoodCorps concentrates on communities with high rates of childhood obesity or limited access to healthy food, though these days every state has communities like that.)
I’d be even more elated if there were 50 FoodCorps members in each state. Or 5,000 in each, which approaches the number we’re going to need to educate our kids so they can look forward to a lifetime of good health and good eating. But FoodCorps is a model we can use to build upon.
Curt Ellis, co-creator of the movie, “King Corn,” is running the show with Debra Eschmeyer, formerly of the National Farm to School Network, and Cecily Upton, formerly of Slow Food USA. FoodCorps is part of the AmeriCorps, from which it receives about a third of its budget. Most of the money comes from sources like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and individual donors.
Is FoodCorps necessary? The organizations that are fighting childhood obesity on the front lines seem to think so: 108 groups from 39 states and the District of Columbia applied to host FoodCorps, which chose to work at locations that had already begun to improve school food and needed help in expanding their work.
Potential participants were turned away at a crazy rate: More than 1,230 people applied for 50 positions. (It’s easier to get into Harvard.) Nor is this a program for the college grad who wants to do some soul-searching by playing in a garden for a year. “Many service members,” says Ellis, “have firsthand experience with the communities they’re serving. Some are going back to the towns they grew up in; others were raised on food stamps or overcame obesity. They understand these challenges from the inside.”
They’re also smart, well informed, and articulate; Ellis told me there wasn’t a day last week that he didn’t tear up from something that one of them said. (I’m going to post some of their initial sets of beliefs and, I hope, ongoing reports from the field on my blog.
FoodCorps members will be paid $15,000 for the year. On this they must find places to live and pay for food, though those without other sources of income are being encouraged to apply for help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (usually called SNAP, and formerly known as food stamps), so they’ll live like many of those they’re serving. (Those eligible will also receive a $5,550 federal education award to apply to their student loans when they finish.)
How, I asked Ellis, will we know if FoodCorps is successful? “This year we expect about 60,000 kids to benefit from improved food education,” he says. (This will be sadly easy to achieve: currently, elementary-age kids typically get less than five hours of nutrition education annually.) “Gardens will be begun or fortified to try to get kids more excited about fruits and vegetables; fresh food will be sourced from local farms; and parents and community members will be more invested in school food.”
FoodCorps will cost less than $2 million for the first year. Thus for less than a million bucks of our money we are getting a program that will start to roll back the $147 billion it costs us each year to deal with the health consequences of obesity, while changing the way thousands of young people grow up thinking about food.
Not to burst any bubbles, but let’s note that this in no way levels the playing field. That $2 million invested in FoodCorps — well conceived, raised with the best possible nonprofit intentions, and ultimately well spent (a bargain!) — was starkly contrasted last week with the $30 million that a new group of corporate farmers and ranchers intend to spend to promote the idea that they’re “committed to providing healthy choices.” As anyone who’s followed the news in recent years knows, agribusiness has done pretty much the opposite, relying on direct federal subsidies (also our money) to the tune of at least $5 billion annually to produce precisely the kind of junk food that is largely responsible for the tripling of childhood obesity in the last 30 years.
Here’s the problem: raising $30 million for a corporate public relations campaign to defend the rights of Big Food to continue to produce junk is easy; raising $2 million to promote healthy eating in our children is hard. Ellis says that his dream is to have 1,000 service members a year working in all 50 states by 2020. I say let’s have 10,000 by 2015.
But let’s end on a happy note: FoodCorps is up and running. Hallelujah!"
Did anybody ask the rich for money for this little project? Did anybody ask the PARENTS if they'd be willing to cede authority to these new foot soldiers (who know next to nothing about nutrition, I guarantee it, except the government line) when it comes to feeding their children?
This sounds like a failed plan much like the plan to deploy SWAT-like teams to neighborhoods to do home energy audits and make retrofits as necessary--all at government expense (Obama would keep your energy retrofit tax credit, and use that amount as each home's budget). Most homes would need vastly more than the $3000 allotted to each to make a dent in energy consumption! I know from personal experience that $3000 doesn't buy much--maybe a couple of Obama-grade windows (+ installation), a new front door(+ installation), and some caulk.
What stopped THAT program dead in it's tracks? Money--where's the money for this coming from? Tax credits are not actual tax dollars.
This new "food police" program is going to suffer the same fate. Any organization who asks for both donations AND volunteers is in jeopardy from the get-go. Ask entrepreneurs what happens when you have an idea or a goal, but no business plan and no funding.
If Obama wants to change the eating habits of America, he need only do two things, and neither requires leaving his desk to do them:
1. Change the farm subsidy program to subsidize fresh foods, and the foods HE wants us to eat, and quit subsidizing the stuff that's dissuading us from eating it due to costs. No more cheap Big Mac vs. expensive salad, no swat team food police, no begging for donations, and no more business without a business plan!
2. Change the food stamp program to take off the unhealthy foods like sodas. They can drink water like everybody else.
Michelle's food plate icon has already told him how to divvy up farm subsidies and food stamps.
Eating healthy for many starts at the top. His troopies will find that out for themselves when they go to these obesity zones, and find most (if not all) the residents are already on some sort of government program, and the troopies get to join them (judging by the pay scheme). Congress is to blame, and sending out a bunch of semi-volunteer gardeners, who may end up becoming obese themselves, to fix the problem in the fall (when many gardens are winding down for the year) isn't going to have much of an impact.
Did Obama even take the seasons into account when he designed this folly? God knows the overly-jubilant author of this article didn't--he must think garden food is available year-round just like it is in stores!
Question: why does nearly every program idea out of the White House have to have a "corps" behind it? Not a coalition, not a league, not an acronymed group, but a corps, denoting army, military power (with the president at the helm), and community organizing gone wrong.
If you're going to launch a school garden program on a shoestring, why wouldn't you hit up the nationwide string of Master Gardeners through the network of Extension Office programs (who are already on the USDA payroll and work for the government)? If it were mine to do, I'd try to pair up Master Gardeners with schools. Let's at least get someone in there who knows about gardening, and is interested in it, rather than teens and college kids willing to sort-of-toil for less than minimum wage + food stamps, even if the gardens don't produce.
My plan: get a Master Gardener to pair up with a willing school in need, give him/her the $15k that now goes to the corps member, and he/she can use that annual budget + the school kids' labor to get gardens going on school grounds. The project can even be turned into a summer school program, since that's when most of the growing is going to take place.
Why? Would a snot-nosed kid know how to make a $15k budget stretch to pay for such a project, let alone his/her own living expenses, with or without food stamps? This is why I prefer experienced adults in the game--most Master Gardeners are retired, already have an income, and have no need of food stamps.
As far as bringing nutritional information to the game, why can't a school nurse do that? When the kids eat a more healthful diet, the school nurse would eventually become a useless relic, so why not make HER the nutrition teacher if she's really a registered, certified nurse? She's already on the school payroll, so it wouldn't cost anything extra. She could hold large rally-type assemblies in the gym, and teach most or all the kids in one or two groups, instead of having to go from classroom to classroom. Better still: have rallies or textbook reading sessions IN THE GARDEN AREA.
6 Ways to Boost Happiness at 60
From Yahoo Health.
"In a counterintuitive finding, most of us aren't happy when we're young. We're actually much happier when we're old. A recent research study found that people actually get happier as they get older. Most people's happiness quotient grows significantly after age 50 and throughout their 60s. Nobody knows why this happens, but it probably has something to do with lower stress levels, fewer responsibilities, and the acceptance of who we are as people. These six factors may contribute to your late-life happiness.
1. Take your lumps. By the time you're 60, you have lived a long time and weathered a lot of storms. A problem is just a problem, not the end of the world. When you get knocked down by an injury, a problem with your house, or your kids, you nurse your wounds, take a little time to recover, and then bounce back as good as ever. In short, if you make it to 60, you're a survivor. You know not to focus on the negative, but to keep your eyes on the road beyond.
2. Know how to say no. It's hard to say no to your kids when they're little, or to your boss when you're working. But you can say no to your adult children and the bubbly community organizer who wants you to volunteer for a boring or unpleasant job. Of course, you don't want to say no to everything. It's important to reach out and help others. But do the things you want to do, not the things other people want you to do.
3. Let it go. Do you bear a grudge against a neighbor, an old work colleague, or a family member? The object of your resentment probably isn't even aware of your feelings. So your anger is doing you a lot more harm than it's doing them. Anger causes stress levels to skyrocket, so don't let people get to you. If it's an old slight you're worried about, just forgive and forget. If it's something new, let it roll off your shoulders. After decades of experience dealing with people, you should know that some people are just selfish and thoughtless. Don't take their insults or rude behavior personally.
4. Don't worry what others think. By the time you're 60, you should realize that people are not looking at you, they're looking at themselves. So don't worry too much about the clothes you wear, the car you drive, or the house you live in. Other people aren't paying attention. You know now not to take yourself too seriously.
5. Nurture your relationships. By now you have sorted out who's important to you, and who just gets in the way. You're not stuck in a job anymore, where you have to put up with obnoxious co-workers. If you're involved with toxic people, find a new friend or a new activity. Most 60-somethings hold their family and friends close. Also consider renewing old friendships through e-mail or Facebook.
6. Stay physically active. Regular physical activity is strongly associated with better health, which is key to happiness. Light to moderate exercise promotes a healthy heart and helps with weight control. It can reduce inflammation, enhances your immune function, and even reduces your risk of cancer. If you can add a social element to your activity, that's even better. Take a walk with your neighbor, sign up for a dancing class, or play golf. These activities will get your heart pumping, and pump up your happiness quotient."
Why do we have to wait for 60? This sounds like the perfect prescription for happiness AT ANY AGE!
1. Take your lumps. By the time you're 60, you have lived a long time and weathered a lot of storms. A problem is just a problem, not the end of the world. When you get knocked down by an injury, a problem with your house, or your kids, you nurse your wounds, take a little time to recover, and then bounce back as good as ever. In short, if you make it to 60, you're a survivor. You know not to focus on the negative, but to keep your eyes on the road beyond.
3. Let it go. Do you bear a grudge against a neighbor, an old work colleague, or a family member? The object of your resentment probably isn't even aware of your feelings. So your anger is doing you a lot more harm than it's doing them. Anger causes stress levels to skyrocket, so don't let people get to you. If it's an old slight you're worried about, just forgive and forget. If it's something new, let it roll off your shoulders. After decades of experience dealing with people, you should know that some people are just selfish and thoughtless. Don't take their insults or rude behavior personally.
5. Nurture your relationships. By now you have sorted out who's important to you, and who just gets in the way. You're not stuck in a job anymore, where you have to put up with obnoxious co-workers. If you're involved with toxic people, find a new friend or a new activity. Most 60-somethings hold their family and friends close. Also consider renewing old friendships through e-mail or Facebook.
Why do we have to wait for 60? This sounds like the perfect prescription for happiness AT ANY AGE!
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Paleo Treats Go Commercial With "Caveman Cookies"
From the TMR Newswire. Here we go again with someone trying desperately to make a buck off ancestral eaters! Obviously, if they knew anything about the diet, they'd know we shun processed foods, yet here some are!
"Staying in shape is hard work: Counting calories, taking vitamin supplements and mixing protein shakes can be time-consuming, which is why many consumers turn to fitness bars to stay on a healthy track.
While energy bars might promise performance, stamina and weight loss, a look at their nutritional facts reveals high calorie counts, tons of sugar and even more sodium. A single Clif bar, for example, has 240 calories and contains 140mg of sodium and 22g of sugar. A Power Bar has 230 calories, 95mg of sodium and 18 grams of sugar.
These fitness “solutions” also contain so many unpronounceable ingredients that it’s no wonder the caveman inside us all is craving a simpler time when food was recognizable and made from whole ingredients that the body can easily digest.
A new company has created Caveman Cookies, which are rich and satisfying while still embracing the back-to-basics principles of our Paleolithic ancestors. These gluten-free snacks contain nuts, berries, honey and weigh in at just 65–75 calories, 0g of sodium and 10g of sugar. Unlike the highly processed “healthy” snacks we’re familiar with, Caveman Cookies contain no refined sugars, trans fats, salt, high-glycemic carbohydrates or ingredients you can’t pronounce. Just the way a caveman would want it."
Now I realize some of you have jobs, or go for long runs, or travel, and may want a portable snack, but THIS? Just make your own--recipes abound on the web. We've been doing it long enough, so why stop now?
Paleo eating is the hottest trend in dieting right now, and everyone wants in on the game--no matter how they choose to play, and no matter how they think they can profit from it. Chances are good this company took one of our recipes and commercialized it, so I'd be looking for copyright/patent infringement possibilities--hear me, Loren, Mark (both of them), Sarah, and anybody else who put out a Paleo recipe?
"Staying in shape is hard work: Counting calories, taking vitamin supplements and mixing protein shakes can be time-consuming, which is why many consumers turn to fitness bars to stay on a healthy track.
While energy bars might promise performance, stamina and weight loss, a look at their nutritional facts reveals high calorie counts, tons of sugar and even more sodium. A single Clif bar, for example, has 240 calories and contains 140mg of sodium and 22g of sugar. A Power Bar has 230 calories, 95mg of sodium and 18 grams of sugar.
These fitness “solutions” also contain so many unpronounceable ingredients that it’s no wonder the caveman inside us all is craving a simpler time when food was recognizable and made from whole ingredients that the body can easily digest.
Now I realize some of you have jobs, or go for long runs, or travel, and may want a portable snack, but THIS? Just make your own--recipes abound on the web. We've been doing it long enough, so why stop now?
Paleo eating is the hottest trend in dieting right now, and everyone wants in on the game--no matter how they choose to play, and no matter how they think they can profit from it. Chances are good this company took one of our recipes and commercialized it, so I'd be looking for copyright/patent infringement possibilities--hear me, Loren, Mark (both of them), Sarah, and anybody else who put out a Paleo recipe?
Monday, August 22, 2011
Can the Paleo Diet REALLY Triple Your HDL Levels?
From All Voices. It only doubled mine, but if I threw in the exercises that go along with the diet, I bet it would triple them!
"Can a change in diet to eating only 3 ounces of animal protein at each meal (or less) with vegetables and medium chain fatty acid fats with omega 3 fatty acids actually help to raise your HDL (good cholesterol) levels and lower your LDL (bad cholesterol levels)? Today, Sunday August 21, 2011 on the Sacramento KSTE radio show, Carey Nosler's Wide World of Health, the noon guest speaker, Jonathan Carey, a runner in his mid-forties, tripled his good cholesterol HDL levels from the thirties to the nineties. How did he do it? By switching his diet.
In fact, he has a website with articles and research, "Triple Your HDL Cholesterol." You can check out the diet that worked for him under the link on his website marked 'research.' Carey Nosler's Sacramento radio show each Sunday afternoon features the fitness and health author's guests. See, Listen to The Wide World of Health online.
After a day or two the archived radio show is uploaded as a podcast that you can download and listen to as an MP3 file. Programs are listed by date. Check out this program on how a change of diet tripled this runner's HDL levels and lowered his too-high LDL levels when statins didn't work for today's guest, Jonathan Carey.
Interestingly, Jonathan Carey is tested for cholesterol every 3 to 6 months, also having been tested this way between 2008-2011. If you follow a similar type of testing, perhaps it's one way to figure out what works for you, since everybody's response to food may be individual. In his interview, Jonathan Carey did not mention his blood type, but he did report that he has been a runner for years.
What worked for him in his diet was fiber. For example, he ate psyllium, which is a fiber, and that it raised his HDL by7%. So most people realize that often fiber works to raise your HDL levels. The psyllium also reduced his LDL cholesterol by 7% as well. Another food ingredient often put in canned foods such as coconut milk, to thicken it and often put into ice cream and puddings to thicken foods is guar gum. In fact, his website reports that guar gum also reduced his LDL and raised his HDL by 7%. And there might have been a 'probable' small boost in HDL from taking taurine.
Carey also reports on his site that digestive enzymes reduced LDL by 5% and raised HDL by 5%, according to his blood tests that he gets every three months. He also ate lots of nuts, for example, Brazil nuts eaten for their selenium content and macadamia nuts eaten for their omega 3 fatty acids value. He used the nuts for snacking. But the main emphasis in the radio interview that Jonathan Carey reported was his Paleo diet, which as he writes on his website, "doubled HDL levels, slashed TG and VLDL levels."
His website also reports that he is going to be taking 5,000mg of vitamin D3 each day to increase his levels to normal. And his goal is to optimize cortisol, omega 3, and serotonin levels in his blood. He wants to get tested to find out whether he has sub-optimal thyroid anti-bodies, and he wants to find out whether he needs to reverse his T3 levels. All these might inspire you to get tested to see what you may have to change about your body's response to certain foods.
On his website he notes that he'll be reducing his protein to just 3 ounces per meal. This idea is similar to what appears as a suggestion in the nutrition book, Primal Body, Primal Mind because in that book, the author suggests eating only up to 3 ounces of animal protein at each meal and not a lot of meat.
The reason why you don't need a lot of meat at each meal is that animal protein gets converted to sugar. And you don't want to eat like a Neanderthal eating almost only meat, simply because all that animal protein (called xs protein) is going to turn into sugar or at least the body's response to a 'ton' of meat is going to be similar to what happens if you're eating a 'ton' of sweets. So keep the meat less than or up to only 3 ounces per meal, if you eat meat, fish, or eggs at each meal.
Eating berries is okay, since blueberries are supposed to be 'brain' food. But without eliminating fruit, Jonathan Carey reports that he will be reducing his non-berry fruit. Does this sound like a Cro-Magnon cave man Paleo diet? If it does, there's an exception. He's adding coconut oil and ghee to his diet and will get tested to find out whether the medium chain fatty acids in coconut oil also boosts his HDL and what effects the clarified butter, ghee will have on his body. People interested in butter oil also need to know the difference between butter oil from grass-fed animals and clarified butter, ghee.
Weight lifting and anaerobic exercises will be increased by Jonathan Carey in order to build more muscle. At 47, this works fine. But if you're in the age 70 to 80+ age range as our family is, you wonder whether exercise works without human growth hormone, which we don't take, and which is of course not mentioned on his website or in the Sacramento radio interview, so it's assumed Carey doesn't take it either.
You might want to know what did not work for him as far as raising his HDL and lowering his LDL cholesterol levels. He found dark chocolate addictive. It also made him gain weight. He also did not get any benefit from red wine and found that it did the same as the dark chocolate--weight gain and addictive. With all the ads you hear about polycosanol which is supposed to raise HDL levels, it had no affect on his HDL, according to his website. Polycosanol is extracted from raw sugar cane. And also benechol did not work, according to his website.
The point is that you have to find out what works for your body type at the chemical, molecular, and metabolic levels. The best way to do that is to find out what makes you feel well and what your blood tests reveal when you eat to raise your HDL.
Jonathan Carey did have good results when he eliminated grains and legumes from his diet. He added bison meat to his diet and added psyllium, macadamia nuts, and fish oil with good results. You can check out his results such as a good result from adding fish to his diet and by reducing grains. He cut down his bread intake by 70 percent and stopped eating bagels with remarkable results.
Before, when he was on a very low fat vegetarian diet his HDL was in the thirties with a high LDL cholesterol. After eating more of a Paleo diet his HDL tripled and is now in the nineties, which is almost unheard of among men with a family history of low HDL and genetic predispositions to the issues of individuals having a low HDL and high LDL. But he shows that diet can change the numbers on blood tests for the better, if the diet matches the needs of a person's specific body responses. He did increase vegetables.
The point is not to confuse his diet with a diet that focuses on eating mostly meat. That isn't so. Checkout the website to see what worked for him. Check out his blog, "Triple Your HDL," and read about his family health history, diet changes, and why he switched from a low-fat largely vegetarian to a paleo diet to correct his own genetic predisposition to high cholesterol.
After reading “Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease” in 1992, he adjusted my diet to experiment with low fat, mostly vegan meals. But the results weren't good, and he was prescribed a statin which made his health worsen. Instead, he wanted to show his doctors that nutrition changes alone could change his HDL and LDL levels for the better. As a long-time runner, the part exercise played in changing his HDL and LDL levels didn't really change his cholesterol levels that much until he changed his diet.
That's why you see runners with unhealthy LDL and HDL levels for the various runners in spite of what they eat. Apparently, what changed his LDL and HDL levels for the healthier was the diet change. It's important to get tested to see what's working, and he's tested every three months to see whether what he adds to his diet makes a change in the cholesterol levels. Each person is different. His blog is about what works for him and what the test results reveal. He also has research and footnotes links on his website."
I already take fish oil, taurine, vitamin D-3 (5000 units TWICE daily), eat macadamias, use psyllium, drink coconut milk, and everything but the exercise, and mine only doubled. Exercise shouldn't be discounted, because it DOES affect your HDL. So does vitamin B-3 (niacinimide)--if you're going to add this to your regimen, take an aspirin 30 mins. before bedtime, then take the B-3. It'll make you sleepy, so it's best to take it before bed. The aspirin beforehand acts as a vasodilator and prevents flushing (even the "flush-free" supplements still cause flushing). It raises my HDL by at least 10 points--sometimes as much as 15.
As far as guar gum is concerned, guar gum is from the guar bean, and legumes are out on this diet, so I suggest you look elsewhere for your "gum", and not to xantham gum--it's a corn product. Technically, this guy in the article is cheating.
To get the same effect as his precious guar gum, try going to the source: glucomannan supplements, or just sticking with good old chromium--they both do the same thing.
As for the protein converting to sugar, it's true, and the process is called glucogenesis. Protein DOES convert to sugar, but only about half the total amount, at half the rate of carbs, and can offset the sugars from fruits, causing their digestion to be slower. Knowing this, I now have to ask if we're really burning fat for energy, or is it just meat sugar?
From the website Coping with Diabetes:
To answer the question in the title of this article, the Paleo diet can, and is a good start in raising your HDL levels, but can it TRIPLE your HDL, and do the job ALONE? That's an individual answer. Perhaps Bill Clinton ought to look into these methods instead of wasting away his muscle mass on vegan diets!
"Can a change in diet to eating only 3 ounces of animal protein at each meal (or less) with vegetables and medium chain fatty acid fats with omega 3 fatty acids actually help to raise your HDL (good cholesterol) levels and lower your LDL (bad cholesterol levels)? Today, Sunday August 21, 2011 on the Sacramento KSTE radio show, Carey Nosler's Wide World of Health, the noon guest speaker, Jonathan Carey, a runner in his mid-forties, tripled his good cholesterol HDL levels from the thirties to the nineties. How did he do it? By switching his diet.
In fact, he has a website with articles and research, "Triple Your HDL Cholesterol." You can check out the diet that worked for him under the link on his website marked 'research.' Carey Nosler's Sacramento radio show each Sunday afternoon features the fitness and health author's guests. See, Listen to The Wide World of Health online.
After a day or two the archived radio show is uploaded as a podcast that you can download and listen to as an MP3 file. Programs are listed by date. Check out this program on how a change of diet tripled this runner's HDL levels and lowered his too-high LDL levels when statins didn't work for today's guest, Jonathan Carey.
Interestingly, Jonathan Carey is tested for cholesterol every 3 to 6 months, also having been tested this way between 2008-2011. If you follow a similar type of testing, perhaps it's one way to figure out what works for you, since everybody's response to food may be individual. In his interview, Jonathan Carey did not mention his blood type, but he did report that he has been a runner for years.
What worked for him in his diet was fiber. For example, he ate psyllium, which is a fiber, and that it raised his HDL by7%. So most people realize that often fiber works to raise your HDL levels. The psyllium also reduced his LDL cholesterol by 7% as well. Another food ingredient often put in canned foods such as coconut milk, to thicken it and often put into ice cream and puddings to thicken foods is guar gum. In fact, his website reports that guar gum also reduced his LDL and raised his HDL by 7%. And there might have been a 'probable' small boost in HDL from taking taurine.
Carey also reports on his site that digestive enzymes reduced LDL by 5% and raised HDL by 5%, according to his blood tests that he gets every three months. He also ate lots of nuts, for example, Brazil nuts eaten for their selenium content and macadamia nuts eaten for their omega 3 fatty acids value. He used the nuts for snacking. But the main emphasis in the radio interview that Jonathan Carey reported was his Paleo diet, which as he writes on his website, "doubled HDL levels, slashed TG and VLDL levels."
His website also reports that he is going to be taking 5,000mg of vitamin D3 each day to increase his levels to normal. And his goal is to optimize cortisol, omega 3, and serotonin levels in his blood. He wants to get tested to find out whether he has sub-optimal thyroid anti-bodies, and he wants to find out whether he needs to reverse his T3 levels. All these might inspire you to get tested to see what you may have to change about your body's response to certain foods.
On his website he notes that he'll be reducing his protein to just 3 ounces per meal. This idea is similar to what appears as a suggestion in the nutrition book, Primal Body, Primal Mind because in that book, the author suggests eating only up to 3 ounces of animal protein at each meal and not a lot of meat.
The reason why you don't need a lot of meat at each meal is that animal protein gets converted to sugar. And you don't want to eat like a Neanderthal eating almost only meat, simply because all that animal protein (called xs protein) is going to turn into sugar or at least the body's response to a 'ton' of meat is going to be similar to what happens if you're eating a 'ton' of sweets. So keep the meat less than or up to only 3 ounces per meal, if you eat meat, fish, or eggs at each meal.
Eating berries is okay, since blueberries are supposed to be 'brain' food. But without eliminating fruit, Jonathan Carey reports that he will be reducing his non-berry fruit. Does this sound like a Cro-Magnon cave man Paleo diet? If it does, there's an exception. He's adding coconut oil and ghee to his diet and will get tested to find out whether the medium chain fatty acids in coconut oil also boosts his HDL and what effects the clarified butter, ghee will have on his body. People interested in butter oil also need to know the difference between butter oil from grass-fed animals and clarified butter, ghee.
Weight lifting and anaerobic exercises will be increased by Jonathan Carey in order to build more muscle. At 47, this works fine. But if you're in the age 70 to 80+ age range as our family is, you wonder whether exercise works without human growth hormone, which we don't take, and which is of course not mentioned on his website or in the Sacramento radio interview, so it's assumed Carey doesn't take it either.
You might want to know what did not work for him as far as raising his HDL and lowering his LDL cholesterol levels. He found dark chocolate addictive. It also made him gain weight. He also did not get any benefit from red wine and found that it did the same as the dark chocolate--weight gain and addictive. With all the ads you hear about polycosanol which is supposed to raise HDL levels, it had no affect on his HDL, according to his website. Polycosanol is extracted from raw sugar cane. And also benechol did not work, according to his website.
The point is that you have to find out what works for your body type at the chemical, molecular, and metabolic levels. The best way to do that is to find out what makes you feel well and what your blood tests reveal when you eat to raise your HDL.
Jonathan Carey did have good results when he eliminated grains and legumes from his diet. He added bison meat to his diet and added psyllium, macadamia nuts, and fish oil with good results. You can check out his results such as a good result from adding fish to his diet and by reducing grains. He cut down his bread intake by 70 percent and stopped eating bagels with remarkable results.
Before, when he was on a very low fat vegetarian diet his HDL was in the thirties with a high LDL cholesterol. After eating more of a Paleo diet his HDL tripled and is now in the nineties, which is almost unheard of among men with a family history of low HDL and genetic predispositions to the issues of individuals having a low HDL and high LDL. But he shows that diet can change the numbers on blood tests for the better, if the diet matches the needs of a person's specific body responses. He did increase vegetables.
The point is not to confuse his diet with a diet that focuses on eating mostly meat. That isn't so. Checkout the website to see what worked for him. Check out his blog, "Triple Your HDL," and read about his family health history, diet changes, and why he switched from a low-fat largely vegetarian to a paleo diet to correct his own genetic predisposition to high cholesterol.
After reading “Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease” in 1992, he adjusted my diet to experiment with low fat, mostly vegan meals. But the results weren't good, and he was prescribed a statin which made his health worsen. Instead, he wanted to show his doctors that nutrition changes alone could change his HDL and LDL levels for the better. As a long-time runner, the part exercise played in changing his HDL and LDL levels didn't really change his cholesterol levels that much until he changed his diet.
That's why you see runners with unhealthy LDL and HDL levels for the various runners in spite of what they eat. Apparently, what changed his LDL and HDL levels for the healthier was the diet change. It's important to get tested to see what's working, and he's tested every three months to see whether what he adds to his diet makes a change in the cholesterol levels. Each person is different. His blog is about what works for him and what the test results reveal. He also has research and footnotes links on his website."
I already take fish oil, taurine, vitamin D-3 (5000 units TWICE daily), eat macadamias, use psyllium, drink coconut milk, and everything but the exercise, and mine only doubled. Exercise shouldn't be discounted, because it DOES affect your HDL. So does vitamin B-3 (niacinimide)--if you're going to add this to your regimen, take an aspirin 30 mins. before bedtime, then take the B-3. It'll make you sleepy, so it's best to take it before bed. The aspirin beforehand acts as a vasodilator and prevents flushing (even the "flush-free" supplements still cause flushing). It raises my HDL by at least 10 points--sometimes as much as 15.
As far as guar gum is concerned, guar gum is from the guar bean, and legumes are out on this diet, so I suggest you look elsewhere for your "gum", and not to xantham gum--it's a corn product. Technically, this guy in the article is cheating.
To get the same effect as his precious guar gum, try going to the source: glucomannan supplements, or just sticking with good old chromium--they both do the same thing.
As for the protein converting to sugar, it's true, and the process is called glucogenesis. Protein DOES convert to sugar, but only about half the total amount, at half the rate of carbs, and can offset the sugars from fruits, causing their digestion to be slower. Knowing this, I now have to ask if we're really burning fat for energy, or is it just meat sugar?
From the website Coping with Diabetes:
"According to the same old studies, diabetic individuals convert protein to glucose very rapidly which can lead to a very negative effect on blood glucose level. In healthy, normal individuals, the intake of protein can stimulate insulin release as much as carbohydrates can. This has led experts to believe that eating protein does not help avoid hypoglycemia.
However, new studies have shown that while and estimated 50% to 60% of protein consumed is converted to glucose, it does not enter the bloodstream and thus does not raise the rate of glucose discharge by the liver. Nobody has yet to discover where the glucose goes. One theory speculates that it is probably stored in the liver or muscles as glycogen. But experts agree that it is least likely to affect blood glucose levels.
Now it is recommended that people at with or at risk of acquiring diabetes includes more protein in their diets. The suggested amount of protein is 15 to 20 percent of the daily calorie intake. The protein however should be distributed throughout all the meals. In eating animal protein, one should make sure to choose only the lean parts and combine them with non-animal protein like those found in vegetables.
The amount of protein intake must not exceed 20 percent of calories though as this may lead to the development of kidney disease. People with kidney problems should reduce the amount of protein intake to slow down or halt the progression of the disease.
One way to include more protein in your diet to prevent diabetes is to have protein servings first during mealtime then have carbohydrate rich foods served second.
An advantage of having protein serving first during mealtime is that it can reduce the amount of carbohydrate intake of your body. The logic here is that you would already fill full after the serving of protein so you would have less inclination to consume carbohydrates."
To answer the question in the title of this article, the Paleo diet can, and is a good start in raising your HDL levels, but can it TRIPLE your HDL, and do the job ALONE? That's an individual answer. Perhaps Bill Clinton ought to look into these methods instead of wasting away his muscle mass on vegan diets!
Kids of Disadvantaged Moms Tend to be More Sickly
From HealthDay News. Can you say MALNUTRITION? Yet another woman has given birth to and kept around a kid she cannot afford to feed (unless Uncle Sam steps in). Even then, she cannot afford to feed it DECENTLY.
"The children of disadvantaged, unhealthy mothers in the United States have many more health problems than children of disadvantaged mothers who are relatively healthy, says a new study.
Specifically, children of disadvantaged, unhealthy mothers are more than five times as likely to have fair or poor overall health. They are also more likely to score lower on surveys of well-being, have a significantly greater risk of developing asthma and/or a learning disability and are more likely to make emergency department visits.
Genetics are not the only cause of these differences, said the researchers, who analyzed data from the 2007 and 2008 National Health Interview Surveys and were slated to present their findings Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in Las Vegas.
"Mothers who experience frequent or serious health problems may have a harder time monitoring their children or performing day-to-day caretaking tasks, including taking their children to regular medical checkups," co-author Jessica Halliday Hardie, of Pennsylvania State University's Population Research Institute, said in an ASA news release.
"Maternal health problems can also place emotional and material burdens on children and heighten their stress and anxiety," she added. "Finally, to care for herself, an unhealthy mother may have to use financial resources that could otherwise benefit her children."
For this study, being disadvantaged was determined by a combination of family income, race/ethnicity, mother's level of education and family structure.
"Skeptics may jump to the conclusion that genetics alone are responsible for the health disparities among these groups," Hardie said. "But, we assess indicators of well-being that are at least partly environmentally conditioned, which suggests that group differences are not completely due to genetics."
Since this study was presented at a medical meeting, its findings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal."
This is the ultimate price of all those Happy Meals--you may be happy you got one, but you pay for it later (and so do we every time you run to the E.R.). This skeptic (me) jumps directly to nutrition as the cause and not genetics--why is it when you improve the diet of just about ANYONE, the sickness stops?
About the first photo--I tried to find Google shots of sick white kids in the waiting room, but there weren't any. It seems white kids get tended to by moms with OTC drugs, according to the pictures, but there weren't very many of those shots.
"The children of disadvantaged, unhealthy mothers in the United States have many more health problems than children of disadvantaged mothers who are relatively healthy, says a new study.
Specifically, children of disadvantaged, unhealthy mothers are more than five times as likely to have fair or poor overall health. They are also more likely to score lower on surveys of well-being, have a significantly greater risk of developing asthma and/or a learning disability and are more likely to make emergency department visits.
Genetics are not the only cause of these differences, said the researchers, who analyzed data from the 2007 and 2008 National Health Interview Surveys and were slated to present their findings Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in Las Vegas.
"Mothers who experience frequent or serious health problems may have a harder time monitoring their children or performing day-to-day caretaking tasks, including taking their children to regular medical checkups," co-author Jessica Halliday Hardie, of Pennsylvania State University's Population Research Institute, said in an ASA news release.
"Maternal health problems can also place emotional and material burdens on children and heighten their stress and anxiety," she added. "Finally, to care for herself, an unhealthy mother may have to use financial resources that could otherwise benefit her children."
For this study, being disadvantaged was determined by a combination of family income, race/ethnicity, mother's level of education and family structure.
"Skeptics may jump to the conclusion that genetics alone are responsible for the health disparities among these groups," Hardie said. "But, we assess indicators of well-being that are at least partly environmentally conditioned, which suggests that group differences are not completely due to genetics."
Since this study was presented at a medical meeting, its findings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal."
This is the ultimate price of all those Happy Meals--you may be happy you got one, but you pay for it later (and so do we every time you run to the E.R.). This skeptic (me) jumps directly to nutrition as the cause and not genetics--why is it when you improve the diet of just about ANYONE, the sickness stops?
About the first photo--I tried to find Google shots of sick white kids in the waiting room, but there weren't any. It seems white kids get tended to by moms with OTC drugs, according to the pictures, but there weren't very many of those shots.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Live Healthier--Eat Like a Caveman
From the Sun-Sentinel (FL). I know I'm preaching to the choir, but this is mainly for any new readers.
"Forget low fat, no fat, cutting carbs or even counting calories.
If you really want a healthy diet that lasts, and works, Dr. Atkins isn't your guide. The caveman is, according to a natural-foods diet increasingly catching on in kitchens across America.
Its adherents say the men and women who ran around in animal pelts eating nuts, grains, fruits, vegetables, lean meat and other foods in their purest forms could teach us all a thing or two about the benefits of whole foods in boosting the body's energy and wellness and warding off disease.
Emphasis on RUNNING around when you include grains, which have now become quite problematic over the millenia.
The idea is to bring our bodies back to the basics, to a time when it was so easy, a caveman could do it.
For thousands of years, the people of the Stone Age lived free from heart disease, diabetes or other chronic killers that plague much of today's society — and had the energy to run from stampeding herds of wooly mammoth to boot. You'd hardly call that a fad diet.
Only in the past few generations, in fact, did we begin to muck up our foodstuffs with additives, preservatives, corn fillers and other artificial products designed for prepackaged convenience and price competitiveness. And in the process, diseases spiked. If we returned to the nutritional habits of our cave-dwelling ancestors, and cut back on the additives polluting the average American diet, we'd live longer, higher-quality lives, the whole-foods gospel goes.
"We have more hospitals, more medicine, more resources than ever before, but the number of chronic diseases has increased exponentially," said Plantation chiropractor Dr. Jeff Berard, who delivers the whole-foods message in free bi-monthly seminars across South Florida. "In the Paleolithic era, they ate what Mother Nature gave them in the form she gave it to them. And research on their bodies, when their bones have been excavated, show that they did not have diabetes, they didn't have heart disease."
They also didn't have rotten, crowded, or missing teeth.
"Nutritionists, dietitians, and cancer and other disease sufferers have been promoting the benefits of back-to-the-basics nutritional purity for decades. But for the mainstream public, a diet rich in natural or whole foods burst onto the wellness scene about five years ago and has recently spiked in popularity.
In April, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association called "a back-to-the-basics approach — getting away from highly processed foods and back to whole foods" the "biggest trend" for 2011.
Of course, like any growing movement, the whole-foods diet, especially the version that seeks to mimic the caveman's diet, has its detractors. A 2011 survey of experts by U.S. News & World Report ranked the so-called Paleo diet the worst of 20 studied, saying there was little evidence to support its effectiveness, and critics suggest the caveman's disease-free existence was rooted in other factors as well.
But Jason Monty, for one, is a believer. A former nightclub bouncer and lifelong athlete, Monty started studying for a new career in massage therapy and learned about the effect that nutrients and additives have on the body. He cut all fillers, additives and preservatives from his diet — and ate mainly rice, eggs, beans and produce. In less than a month, his cholesterol dropped from 230 to 190, and in the eight months since, he's lost 115 pounds.
"I think more clearly, I wake up before the alarm, I feel better than I ever have," said the 25-year-old Port St. Lucie man. "I couldn't go back to eating the food I ate before, or my body would immediately tell me it's not supposed to be there. My stomach would start rumbling, I started feeling sluggish, bloated."
Berard, who owns the Spine & Sports Rehab Institute in Plantation, said there's good reason for Monty's rebounded health.
"Once you give your body what it needs, it stops craving what it wants," said the chiropractor, whose latest wellness seminar was at the Florida Blue Center in Sunrise on Tuesday.
Berard's whole-foods mantra is that as human beings, we have a genetic composition that hasn't evolved much from the early days of man. Our bodies still crave clean water and the pure foods and active lifestyles of our ancestors.
But since the end of the Cold War, with the advent of packaged foods and the explosion of the restaurant industry, additives have taken over our food supply, replacing nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids, raising our cholesterol and subjecting us to a wider array of diseases."
It actually started long before that--enter politics, rationing, WWII, and farm subsidies. Actually, whenever there was rationing in the U.S. (all the way back to the Revolutionary war), there was an effort to conserve the decent foods for the troops while the home-front had to make due with the leftovers, which usually meant starches.
Nowadays, we throw WWII-style farm subsidies into the mix, and that's why a Big Mac is cheaper than a salad. It's also why we can ultimately blame Congress and the administration for our obesity epidemic--vote-buying has consequences.
This recent commodity spike has had two blessings: higher market prices mean lower subsidies, and more expensive grain products mean eventually less production and consumption (even in the Third World--they're now eating peanut-and-dairy-based paste). Pretty soon, the only consumers of grains will be the birds--livestock feed is already switching over to algae, flax, grasses, seeds (such as chia), and other fodder.
"I used to think I didn't eat processed food," said Janee Comartin, a mother of seven living in Davie. "What we learned from Dr. Jeff is that any time they add coloring or flavor, it's processed. You want to stay as close to nature as possible."
But rather than going cold-turkey on the processed foods, Berard said the healthiest approach is "transitioning" to a purer diet by adding whole foods — probiotics, omega-3s, water, fresh produce, vitamin D — into your day. Healthy eating, though, isn't just a matter of choosing the right foods. It's being able to afford them. The sad fact behind America's struggle with obesity is that the unhealthiest foods — fast-food restaurant fare, prepackaged products, sodas — are the cheapest and most accessible.
Enter politics again--in an effort to steer us into demanding more subsidized crops, making an artificial market for them, we're tantalized into buying junk food to help support factory farms so Congress doesn't have to carry the entire load. This is our food supply: all junk that wouldn't sell otherwise if it weren't made into breads, pasta, soda, pre-packaged convenience foods...these so-called "foods" are made cheap and accessible FOR A REASON!
"But Judith Cappeluzzo, a Hollywood stay-at-home mom raising six kids in a single-income family, says eating the right food is just a matter of priorities.
In order to splurge on pricey produce, pure orange juice, whole chickens and other unprocessed foods, the family sacrifices some creature comforts the rest of us take for granted: new clothes, a new car, cable TV, dining out.
Along the way, Cappeluzzo said, she is teaching her children to be aware of what is in their food and to appreciate how to make meals from whole, pure ingredients — a "lost art" once passed down through the generations.
"I think this generation has lost the ability to cook," she said. "Now, if you bake a cake out of a box, that's considered scratch."
Cappeluzzo is right. There's something to be said for doing things "the old way," and learning from our ancestors, even if they came 10,000 years before us."
Not only did farm subsidies serve to steer us toward obesity, but they're also steering us toward helping to prop up the Medical Industrial complex--now you see how our economy has REALLY kept itself running the past 30 years or so? It's a vicious circle: birth, become dependent on disease-causing foods, then dependent on disease-fighting drugs, and then newer, stronger disease-fighting drugs to take the place of the old ones coming off patent, eventual death, and another one is born to start the process over again. Multiply that times our country's entire population, and you see just how big the money is!
Now you have to pay money to ride this merry-go-round in the form of health care insurance. I'd rather spend my money on better-quality foods that actually nourish me.
Remember when doctors used to get paid in chickens, eggs, jam, or quilts? That's because we needed them so seldomly, we didn't keep money around just for them.
If you're in doubt about exactly what we're supposed to eat, take a cue from nature: birds eat grains and seeds, squirrels eat nuts, horses, cows, and other ruminants eat grass, pigs and chickens forage, fish eat algae and bug larvae, and we eat all of THEM plus fruits, vegetables, eggs, and drink water. No politics involved, and no health insurance needed.
"Forget low fat, no fat, cutting carbs or even counting calories.
If you really want a healthy diet that lasts, and works, Dr. Atkins isn't your guide. The caveman is, according to a natural-foods diet increasingly catching on in kitchens across America.
Its adherents say the men and women who ran around in animal pelts eating nuts, grains, fruits, vegetables, lean meat and other foods in their purest forms could teach us all a thing or two about the benefits of whole foods in boosting the body's energy and wellness and warding off disease.
Emphasis on RUNNING around when you include grains, which have now become quite problematic over the millenia.
The idea is to bring our bodies back to the basics, to a time when it was so easy, a caveman could do it.
For thousands of years, the people of the Stone Age lived free from heart disease, diabetes or other chronic killers that plague much of today's society — and had the energy to run from stampeding herds of wooly mammoth to boot. You'd hardly call that a fad diet.
Only in the past few generations, in fact, did we begin to muck up our foodstuffs with additives, preservatives, corn fillers and other artificial products designed for prepackaged convenience and price competitiveness. And in the process, diseases spiked. If we returned to the nutritional habits of our cave-dwelling ancestors, and cut back on the additives polluting the average American diet, we'd live longer, higher-quality lives, the whole-foods gospel goes.
"We have more hospitals, more medicine, more resources than ever before, but the number of chronic diseases has increased exponentially," said Plantation chiropractor Dr. Jeff Berard, who delivers the whole-foods message in free bi-monthly seminars across South Florida. "In the Paleolithic era, they ate what Mother Nature gave them in the form she gave it to them. And research on their bodies, when their bones have been excavated, show that they did not have diabetes, they didn't have heart disease."
They also didn't have rotten, crowded, or missing teeth.
"Nutritionists, dietitians, and cancer and other disease sufferers have been promoting the benefits of back-to-the-basics nutritional purity for decades. But for the mainstream public, a diet rich in natural or whole foods burst onto the wellness scene about five years ago and has recently spiked in popularity.
In April, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association called "a back-to-the-basics approach — getting away from highly processed foods and back to whole foods" the "biggest trend" for 2011.
Of course, like any growing movement, the whole-foods diet, especially the version that seeks to mimic the caveman's diet, has its detractors. A 2011 survey of experts by U.S. News & World Report ranked the so-called Paleo diet the worst of 20 studied, saying there was little evidence to support its effectiveness, and critics suggest the caveman's disease-free existence was rooted in other factors as well.
But Jason Monty, for one, is a believer. A former nightclub bouncer and lifelong athlete, Monty started studying for a new career in massage therapy and learned about the effect that nutrients and additives have on the body. He cut all fillers, additives and preservatives from his diet — and ate mainly rice, eggs, beans and produce. In less than a month, his cholesterol dropped from 230 to 190, and in the eight months since, he's lost 115 pounds.
"I think more clearly, I wake up before the alarm, I feel better than I ever have," said the 25-year-old Port St. Lucie man. "I couldn't go back to eating the food I ate before, or my body would immediately tell me it's not supposed to be there. My stomach would start rumbling, I started feeling sluggish, bloated."
Berard, who owns the Spine & Sports Rehab Institute in Plantation, said there's good reason for Monty's rebounded health.
"Once you give your body what it needs, it stops craving what it wants," said the chiropractor, whose latest wellness seminar was at the Florida Blue Center in Sunrise on Tuesday.
Berard's whole-foods mantra is that as human beings, we have a genetic composition that hasn't evolved much from the early days of man. Our bodies still crave clean water and the pure foods and active lifestyles of our ancestors.
But since the end of the Cold War, with the advent of packaged foods and the explosion of the restaurant industry, additives have taken over our food supply, replacing nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids, raising our cholesterol and subjecting us to a wider array of diseases."
It actually started long before that--enter politics, rationing, WWII, and farm subsidies. Actually, whenever there was rationing in the U.S. (all the way back to the Revolutionary war), there was an effort to conserve the decent foods for the troops while the home-front had to make due with the leftovers, which usually meant starches.
Nowadays, we throw WWII-style farm subsidies into the mix, and that's why a Big Mac is cheaper than a salad. It's also why we can ultimately blame Congress and the administration for our obesity epidemic--vote-buying has consequences.
This recent commodity spike has had two blessings: higher market prices mean lower subsidies, and more expensive grain products mean eventually less production and consumption (even in the Third World--they're now eating peanut-and-dairy-based paste). Pretty soon, the only consumers of grains will be the birds--livestock feed is already switching over to algae, flax, grasses, seeds (such as chia), and other fodder.
"I used to think I didn't eat processed food," said Janee Comartin, a mother of seven living in Davie. "What we learned from Dr. Jeff is that any time they add coloring or flavor, it's processed. You want to stay as close to nature as possible."
But rather than going cold-turkey on the processed foods, Berard said the healthiest approach is "transitioning" to a purer diet by adding whole foods — probiotics, omega-3s, water, fresh produce, vitamin D — into your day. Healthy eating, though, isn't just a matter of choosing the right foods. It's being able to afford them. The sad fact behind America's struggle with obesity is that the unhealthiest foods — fast-food restaurant fare, prepackaged products, sodas — are the cheapest and most accessible.
Enter politics again--in an effort to steer us into demanding more subsidized crops, making an artificial market for them, we're tantalized into buying junk food to help support factory farms so Congress doesn't have to carry the entire load. This is our food supply: all junk that wouldn't sell otherwise if it weren't made into breads, pasta, soda, pre-packaged convenience foods...these so-called "foods" are made cheap and accessible FOR A REASON!
"But Judith Cappeluzzo, a Hollywood stay-at-home mom raising six kids in a single-income family, says eating the right food is just a matter of priorities.
In order to splurge on pricey produce, pure orange juice, whole chickens and other unprocessed foods, the family sacrifices some creature comforts the rest of us take for granted: new clothes, a new car, cable TV, dining out.
Along the way, Cappeluzzo said, she is teaching her children to be aware of what is in their food and to appreciate how to make meals from whole, pure ingredients — a "lost art" once passed down through the generations.
"I think this generation has lost the ability to cook," she said. "Now, if you bake a cake out of a box, that's considered scratch."
Cappeluzzo is right. There's something to be said for doing things "the old way," and learning from our ancestors, even if they came 10,000 years before us."
Not only did farm subsidies serve to steer us toward obesity, but they're also steering us toward helping to prop up the Medical Industrial complex--now you see how our economy has REALLY kept itself running the past 30 years or so? It's a vicious circle: birth, become dependent on disease-causing foods, then dependent on disease-fighting drugs, and then newer, stronger disease-fighting drugs to take the place of the old ones coming off patent, eventual death, and another one is born to start the process over again. Multiply that times our country's entire population, and you see just how big the money is!
Now you have to pay money to ride this merry-go-round in the form of health care insurance. I'd rather spend my money on better-quality foods that actually nourish me.
Remember when doctors used to get paid in chickens, eggs, jam, or quilts? That's because we needed them so seldomly, we didn't keep money around just for them.
If you're in doubt about exactly what we're supposed to eat, take a cue from nature: birds eat grains and seeds, squirrels eat nuts, horses, cows, and other ruminants eat grass, pigs and chickens forage, fish eat algae and bug larvae, and we eat all of THEM plus fruits, vegetables, eggs, and drink water. No politics involved, and no health insurance needed.
A New App for the Stone-Age Dieter
From the Independent (S. Africa). This cavewoman hasn't fully evolved, so she'll stick to the books. Besides, what are you gonna do when the power goes out, and your phone no longer works? I'll still have my books.
"A new app for followers of the "caveman" diet has been launched to help bring the paleo-regime into the digital age.
The Paleo Diet Recipes app was launched this week and provides modernized recipe ideas that follow the principles of the Stone Age-inspired eating plan, a diet that preaches the exclusion of gluten, dairy, soy, grains, legumes, salt, refined sugar, processed foods and preservatives. Perhaps its most famous follower is Transformers starlet Megan Fox.
Recipes from the app are heavy on lean meats like fish and poultry, fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts and natural herbs and spices.
For example, a recipe for stuffed peppers calls for bell peppers, onions, ground turkey, canned tomatoes, oregano, lemon pepper, chili or chili powder and olive oil.
Publishing house Dorling Kindersley, perhaps best known for its Eyewitness travel guides, also released a food app this week called DK Quick Cook, an app with 500 illustrated recipes that promises easy fast meals, many of which are ready in under 30 minutes. Take note, however, that doesn't include prep time, which can take up to 45 minutes.
Recipes include chocolate orange profiteroles, pizza with spinach and ricotta cheese and skewered lemon and herb chicken.
Meanwhile, campers who take to the great outdoors - and find themselves in an area with great reception - can also avail themselves of a new app, Camping Recipes Collection which has more than 2,500 campfire recipes that use different cooking methods like foil cooking and Dutch ovens.
Here's a roundup of the latest food apps to hit the market:
Paleo Diet recipes HD: cookbook for a Modern Paleolithic Diet
$4.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paleo-diet-recipes-hd-cookbook/id453730375?mt=8#
DK Quick Cook
$5.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dk-quick-cook/id444080462?mt=8#
Camping Recipes Collection
$1.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/camping-recipes-collection/id453759355?mt=8#
Speakeasy Cocktails
A how-to guide on mixing cocktails with 200 recipes from mixologists around the world.
$9.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speakeasy-cocktails-learn/id453698398?mt=8
Bon Appétit Pasta Perfect
One hundred pasta recipes chosen by the editors of Bon Appétit magazine, including recipes like ragu Bolognese and orzo, green bean and fennel salad with dill pesto.
$3.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bon-appetit-pasta-perfect/id453809428?mt=8"
"A new app for followers of the "caveman" diet has been launched to help bring the paleo-regime into the digital age.
The Paleo Diet Recipes app was launched this week and provides modernized recipe ideas that follow the principles of the Stone Age-inspired eating plan, a diet that preaches the exclusion of gluten, dairy, soy, grains, legumes, salt, refined sugar, processed foods and preservatives. Perhaps its most famous follower is Transformers starlet Megan Fox.
Recipes from the app are heavy on lean meats like fish and poultry, fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts and natural herbs and spices.
For example, a recipe for stuffed peppers calls for bell peppers, onions, ground turkey, canned tomatoes, oregano, lemon pepper, chili or chili powder and olive oil.
Publishing house Dorling Kindersley, perhaps best known for its Eyewitness travel guides, also released a food app this week called DK Quick Cook, an app with 500 illustrated recipes that promises easy fast meals, many of which are ready in under 30 minutes. Take note, however, that doesn't include prep time, which can take up to 45 minutes.
Recipes include chocolate orange profiteroles, pizza with spinach and ricotta cheese and skewered lemon and herb chicken.
Meanwhile, campers who take to the great outdoors - and find themselves in an area with great reception - can also avail themselves of a new app, Camping Recipes Collection which has more than 2,500 campfire recipes that use different cooking methods like foil cooking and Dutch ovens.
Here's a roundup of the latest food apps to hit the market:
Paleo Diet recipes HD: cookbook for a Modern Paleolithic Diet
$4.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paleo-diet-recipes-hd-cookbook/id453730375?mt=8#
DK Quick Cook
$5.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dk-quick-cook/id444080462?mt=8#
Camping Recipes Collection
$1.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/camping-recipes-collection/id453759355?mt=8#
Speakeasy Cocktails
A how-to guide on mixing cocktails with 200 recipes from mixologists around the world.
$9.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speakeasy-cocktails-learn/id453698398?mt=8
Bon Appétit Pasta Perfect
One hundred pasta recipes chosen by the editors of Bon Appétit magazine, including recipes like ragu Bolognese and orzo, green bean and fennel salad with dill pesto.
$3.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bon-appetit-pasta-perfect/id453809428?mt=8"
Celiac Disease on the Rise in the U.S.
From Yahoo Health. More potential Paleo eaters? It's definitely cheaper to AVOID grains than it is to buy gluten-free, and what do oyu do when you eventually end up with a phytate intolerance DESPITE all the WAPF grain prep methods? Simple--you learn to live without them.
"Complaints of celiac disease are on the rise in the United States, with more and more people growing ill from exposure to products containing gluten.
Nearly five times as many people have celiac disease today than did during the 1950s, according to one recent study. Another report found that the rate of celiac disease has doubled every 15 years since 1974 and is now believed to affect one in every 133 U.S. residents.
"It's quite widespread," said Dr. Alessio Fasano, director of the Center for Celiac Research and the Mucosal Biology Research Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "We thought there were regional differences in the past, but now we know it's everywhere."
That increased incidence rate has left researchers scrambling to figure out why more people are developing the chronic digestive disorder. Doctors still can't explain the trend, but they are making some headway testing a number of hypotheses.
"There are many theories out there, not all independent of each other and not all of them true," Fasano said.
Celiac disease is an inherited autoimmune disorder that causes the body's immune system to attack the small intestine, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center. The attack is prompted by exposure to gluten, a protein found in such grains as wheat, rye and barley.
The disease interferes with proper digestion and, in children, prompts symptoms that include bloating, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation. Adults with celiac disease are less likely to show digestive symptoms but will develop problems such as anemia, fatigue, osteoporosis or arthritis as the disorder robs their bodies of vital nutrients.
Awareness of celiac disease has grown in recent years, evidenced by the growing number of gluten-free foods on the market. However, medical experts don't believe that the increase in celiac disease incidence can be chalked up simply to folks becoming more aware of the chronic digestive disorder or to improvements in diagnostic techniques.
Rather, the most popular potential explanations for the increase in celiac disease rates involve improvements in sanitation and hygiene in civilization overall, said Fasano and Carol McCarthy Shilson, executive director of the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center.
According to the "hygiene hypothesis," Shilson said, people in industrialized countries are more at risk for celiac disease because their bodies have not had to fight off as many diseases.
"We're just too clean a society, so our immune systems aren't as developed as they should be," she said.
Another version of the hypothesis holds that the cleanliness of industrialized society has caused a fundamental change in the composition of the digestive bacteria contained within the gut, Fasano said.
"It's because this increase occurs primarily in industrialized countries, where things are cleaner," Fasano said. "We abuse antibiotics, we wash our hands too often, we are vaccinated more often."
Other potential explanations for the rise in celiac disease rates, according to Fasano, include:
1. An increase in the amount of gluten found in grains. "We eat grains that are much more rich in glutens than they were 70 or 80 years ago," he said.
2. Children being exposed to gluten from an early age. "We know for sure if we introduce grains too early, people at risk for developing celiac disease are more likely to contract it," he said.
3. Too few women breast-feeding their children. "There are theories out there that say breast-feeding will protect you, or prevent celiac disease," Fasano said.
It's possible, experts say, that each of these theories is correct to a degree and that a combination of factors will ultimately be found to contribute to celiac disease. "It may well be in one person, one plays a stronger role than another," Fasano said.
But while experts try to find a cause -- and then, they hope, a cure -- advocates urge people who are at risk for developing celiac disease to undergo screening for the disorder.
Researchers have shown a genetic predisposition for celiac disease, with about 30 percent of the population carrying genes that make them vulnerable, Shilson said.
But because adults with celiac disease often don't suffer the digestive symptoms associated with gluten intolerance, many people are unaware they have it or could pass it on. "About two-thirds of people with the active disease have no symptoms at all," Shilson said.
Studies also have found that the earlier people find out they have celiac disease, the better able they are to head off the disorder's more debilitating effects.
"There's not much you can do to prevent it, but you can be aware of it and catch it," Shilson said. "Early intervention is key."
However, people who suspect they have celiac disease should not go gluten-free before being tested. Doing that can interfere with the accuracy of the screening.
"It's very important that you don't change your diet before you are screened for celiac disease," Shilson said."
Breastfeeding your baby doesn't protect it from anything if the mother has it too--the baby is born with it. Getting tested isn't always necessary, unless you want to hear from a doctor that you have it, and need medical proof--improvement in your symptoms after switching or ceasing grains should be all the proof you need.
If you ARE positive for Celiac, and have medical proof, there are tax deductions you can take for all the special foods you now have to buy, because they can wreck your food budget. Here are some frugal shortcuts I used to use before I finally threw in the towel.
The tax deduction roadblocks make them so arduous to claim that it's easier and cheaper just to avoid grains altogether, unless you have an HSA or FSA plan--then, you can use money from it to buy the special foods as long as you have medical proof you are in need of them, and the insurance company is aware of your diagnosis.
You CAN live without grains, and plenty of people do. Cavemen did. Don't allow yourself to get caught up in the gluten-free racket--Paleo and SCD (specific carbohydrate diet) diet recipes are already gluten-free, made without grains, and can be eaten safely without cross-contamination, wallet, insurance, and tax deduction gymnastics.
Cross-contamination happens all the time at plants which process both gluten-free and regular items, such as Bob's Red Mill flour plant, and flour products bought at foreign markets. Check the product's labeling--ALL OF IT--to make sure there's no further allergens in it (like tree nuts, for example) that bother you, then check the web to see if the facility also produces regular items. Most products have a small-type warning on the side that they also process other things in their facility which aren't gluten-free, and this means the facility doesn't have dedicated gluten-free machinery, or doesn't clean the machinery between batches of gluten-free and regular grindings--leaving YOU to chance exposure through no fault of your own!
Here's a brownie recipe I stumbled upon this morning that doesn't include grains, but does include beans. I also have a few grainless recipes in here somewhere...just search for "Look Ma--No Grains!" For a universe full of grainless recipes, search the web under "grainless baking recipes" and you'll find a lot under Paleo (like grainless pizza), SCD, autism, Celiac, IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), and raw vegan recipe sites (like grainless pie crusts and a few other items), and more are being created by clever homemakers every day. Ever eat a chocolate cake made up of nothing but eggs and cocoa powder? It's delicious.
Some places I visit are in the left margin of the screen under "websites and carnivals".
"Complaints of celiac disease are on the rise in the United States, with more and more people growing ill from exposure to products containing gluten.
Nearly five times as many people have celiac disease today than did during the 1950s, according to one recent study. Another report found that the rate of celiac disease has doubled every 15 years since 1974 and is now believed to affect one in every 133 U.S. residents.
"It's quite widespread," said Dr. Alessio Fasano, director of the Center for Celiac Research and the Mucosal Biology Research Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "We thought there were regional differences in the past, but now we know it's everywhere."
That increased incidence rate has left researchers scrambling to figure out why more people are developing the chronic digestive disorder. Doctors still can't explain the trend, but they are making some headway testing a number of hypotheses.
"There are many theories out there, not all independent of each other and not all of them true," Fasano said.
Celiac disease is an inherited autoimmune disorder that causes the body's immune system to attack the small intestine, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center. The attack is prompted by exposure to gluten, a protein found in such grains as wheat, rye and barley.
The disease interferes with proper digestion and, in children, prompts symptoms that include bloating, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation. Adults with celiac disease are less likely to show digestive symptoms but will develop problems such as anemia, fatigue, osteoporosis or arthritis as the disorder robs their bodies of vital nutrients.
Awareness of celiac disease has grown in recent years, evidenced by the growing number of gluten-free foods on the market. However, medical experts don't believe that the increase in celiac disease incidence can be chalked up simply to folks becoming more aware of the chronic digestive disorder or to improvements in diagnostic techniques.
Rather, the most popular potential explanations for the increase in celiac disease rates involve improvements in sanitation and hygiene in civilization overall, said Fasano and Carol McCarthy Shilson, executive director of the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center.
According to the "hygiene hypothesis," Shilson said, people in industrialized countries are more at risk for celiac disease because their bodies have not had to fight off as many diseases.
"We're just too clean a society, so our immune systems aren't as developed as they should be," she said.
Another version of the hypothesis holds that the cleanliness of industrialized society has caused a fundamental change in the composition of the digestive bacteria contained within the gut, Fasano said.
"It's because this increase occurs primarily in industrialized countries, where things are cleaner," Fasano said. "We abuse antibiotics, we wash our hands too often, we are vaccinated more often."
Other potential explanations for the rise in celiac disease rates, according to Fasano, include:
1. An increase in the amount of gluten found in grains. "We eat grains that are much more rich in glutens than they were 70 or 80 years ago," he said.
2. Children being exposed to gluten from an early age. "We know for sure if we introduce grains too early, people at risk for developing celiac disease are more likely to contract it," he said.
3. Too few women breast-feeding their children. "There are theories out there that say breast-feeding will protect you, or prevent celiac disease," Fasano said.
It's possible, experts say, that each of these theories is correct to a degree and that a combination of factors will ultimately be found to contribute to celiac disease. "It may well be in one person, one plays a stronger role than another," Fasano said.
But while experts try to find a cause -- and then, they hope, a cure -- advocates urge people who are at risk for developing celiac disease to undergo screening for the disorder.
Researchers have shown a genetic predisposition for celiac disease, with about 30 percent of the population carrying genes that make them vulnerable, Shilson said.
But because adults with celiac disease often don't suffer the digestive symptoms associated with gluten intolerance, many people are unaware they have it or could pass it on. "About two-thirds of people with the active disease have no symptoms at all," Shilson said.
Studies also have found that the earlier people find out they have celiac disease, the better able they are to head off the disorder's more debilitating effects.
"There's not much you can do to prevent it, but you can be aware of it and catch it," Shilson said. "Early intervention is key."
However, people who suspect they have celiac disease should not go gluten-free before being tested. Doing that can interfere with the accuracy of the screening.
"It's very important that you don't change your diet before you are screened for celiac disease," Shilson said."
Breastfeeding your baby doesn't protect it from anything if the mother has it too--the baby is born with it. Getting tested isn't always necessary, unless you want to hear from a doctor that you have it, and need medical proof--improvement in your symptoms after switching or ceasing grains should be all the proof you need.
If you ARE positive for Celiac, and have medical proof, there are tax deductions you can take for all the special foods you now have to buy, because they can wreck your food budget. Here are some frugal shortcuts I used to use before I finally threw in the towel.
The tax deduction roadblocks make them so arduous to claim that it's easier and cheaper just to avoid grains altogether, unless you have an HSA or FSA plan--then, you can use money from it to buy the special foods as long as you have medical proof you are in need of them, and the insurance company is aware of your diagnosis.
You CAN live without grains, and plenty of people do. Cavemen did. Don't allow yourself to get caught up in the gluten-free racket--Paleo and SCD (specific carbohydrate diet) diet recipes are already gluten-free, made without grains, and can be eaten safely without cross-contamination, wallet, insurance, and tax deduction gymnastics.
Cross-contamination happens all the time at plants which process both gluten-free and regular items, such as Bob's Red Mill flour plant, and flour products bought at foreign markets. Check the product's labeling--ALL OF IT--to make sure there's no further allergens in it (like tree nuts, for example) that bother you, then check the web to see if the facility also produces regular items. Most products have a small-type warning on the side that they also process other things in their facility which aren't gluten-free, and this means the facility doesn't have dedicated gluten-free machinery, or doesn't clean the machinery between batches of gluten-free and regular grindings--leaving YOU to chance exposure through no fault of your own!
Here's a brownie recipe I stumbled upon this morning that doesn't include grains, but does include beans. I also have a few grainless recipes in here somewhere...just search for "Look Ma--No Grains!" For a universe full of grainless recipes, search the web under "grainless baking recipes" and you'll find a lot under Paleo (like grainless pizza), SCD, autism, Celiac, IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), and raw vegan recipe sites (like grainless pie crusts and a few other items), and more are being created by clever homemakers every day. Ever eat a chocolate cake made up of nothing but eggs and cocoa powder? It's delicious.
Some places I visit are in the left margin of the screen under "websites and carnivals".
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