Wisdom From Wenchypoo's Old Bat Cave

This Just In: Too Much Fructose Sweetener Tied to Heart Risks in Teens

2012-01-27T18:26:00.000-05:00

"Teens who consume large amounts of the food and beverage sweetener fructose show evidence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk in their blood, a new study finds.

Fructose is found in fruits, while a form of fructose -- high-fructose corn syrup -- is widely used in processed foods and beverages. It's believed that adolescents' growing bodies crave the strong sweetener and food and beverage companies' advertising often targets young consumers, according to the Medical College of Georgia researchers.

Their study of 559 teens aged 14 to 18 found that diets high in fructose were associated with higher blood pressure; diabetes-related measures such as higher fasting glucose and insulin resistance; and inflammatory factors that contribute to heart and vascular disease.

Teens who consumed large amounts of fructose also tended to have lower levels of cardiovascular protectors such as HDL ("good") cholesterol and the protein adiponectin.

The connection between consuming lots of fructose and cardiovascular risk factors was even more pronounced in kids with excess belly fat, which is another known risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, said the study in the February issue of the Journal of Nutrition.

"It is so very important to provide a healthy balance of high-quality food to our children and to really pay close attention to the fructose and sucrose they are consuming at their home or anyone else's," study co-first author Dr. Vanessa Bundy, a pediatric resident, said in a college news release.

"The nutrition that caregivers provide their children will either contribute to their overall health and development or potentially contribute to cardiovascular disease at an early age," she added.

The best way for parents and caregivers to encourage healthy nutrition among teens is to be good role models, Bundy said."

I am unable to track down the particular study to link to. It was done by the Medical College of Georgia.

This Just In: Estrogen Levels in Young Women Altered by Daily Caffeine Use

2012-01-27T17:51:00.001-05:00

From Z6Mag. So now it isn't just the sugar they ingest...

"A study published by The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found women between 18-44 had their estrogen levels altered when drinking coffee. Even though Women in child-bearing years had estrogen levels effected when drinking caffeinated beverages, their ovulation or overall health had no impact.

Researchers studied around 250 women between the ages of 18-44 and who consumed around 90 milligrams (one cup of coffee) of caffeine per day. Estrogen levels of the study members were checked one to three times a week over two menstrual cycles. They provided blood samples and also were give a questionnaire about exercise, sleep, smoking, meals and other lifestyle behaviors they may have.

The study found that Asian women who drank 2 cups of coffee (200 mg caffeine) had higher estrogen levels compared to women who consumed less caffeine. White women on the other hand, consumed the same amount of caffeine per day as Asian women, had lower estrogen levels than women who consumed less caffeine. Black women who consumed 200 mg of caffeine also had elevated levels of estrogen, but not elevated enough to be statistically significant for the number of women tested.

Dr. Enrique Schisterman, an author of the study and senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health said, “This is important physiologically because it helps us understand how caffeine is metabolized by different genetic groups. But for women of reproductive age, drinking coffee will not alter their hormonal function in a clinically significant way.”

So the question might be, why does caffeine have a different effect on race? Dr. Schisterman said it was likely that genetics has an influence on caffeine metabolism.

Larger image here.

What’s even more interesting, researchers found that when the source of caffeine was less (100 mg of caffeine) and from a different caffeinated beverage, the estrogen levels were elevated in all three races of women. Researchers believe that various levels of antioxidants and other compounds in the drinks, as well as additives, might play a role as to why, Dr. Schisterman said.

Dr. Schisterman noted, “While healthy, premenopausal women should not worry about caffeine intake in the short term, more research is needed to see if there could be a cumulative impact over many years or decades. We don’t know if there are long-term effects of these small shifts in hormonal levels.”

The Newest After-School Activity--Supper

2012-01-27T17:21:00.001-05:00

From Education Week. Just the latest interpretation of parental abdication...

"At some schools and community centers across the country, baked chicken, steamed broccoli, apple slices, whole-wheat rolls, and milk are on the menu—but not just at lunch.

While breakfast and lunch programs have long been a common part of the school day, all states now have the opportunity to serve students free after-school suppers, too, with the money for the meals coming from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A few states have offered supper for years as part of a pilot program, but the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which passed late that year, expanded the program, allowing all qualifying after-school programs to take part and get paid by the USDA for the suppers they serve. In 2011, tens of thousands more suppers were served at a time when child poverty is on the rise—although getting programs started can be an undertaking that many child-care centers and after-school sites, especially those located apart from schools, aren't equipped to handle.

For many of the students who eat those meals, food outside of school breakfasts and lunches is scarce, said Lois Hazelton of the New York Department of Health, who oversees the program in her state. It was one of the first states eligible to serve supper, starting about 10 years ago.

"We knew that there were kids out there who were going home to potentially no supper, or not enough supper, or not a nutritious supper," Ms. Hazelton said. On average, she added, 140,000 students eat free suppers every day in her state through the USDA program.

'Safety Net' for Families

USDA research found that in 2010, an average of one in six Americans had difficulty finding enough money to buy food.

"We talk about food insecurity," said Anne Sheridan, the Maryland director of the No Kid Hungry Campaign, a project of the Washington-based nonprofit group Share Our Strength, which works to end childhood hunger. The organization has helped raise awareness about the program and get programs off the ground in Maryland and other states.

"In the state of Maryland, there are well over 200,000 children who are food insecure. This [program] is providing a safety net to them," Ms. Sheridan said. "It's also a nice family environment."

That's because unlike traditional school meals, with students toting trays through a line and loading up compartments with grains, veggies, a protein, and milk, at sites across the country, the supper program is often a family-style affair, with students helping themselves from large platters.

The USDA has specific nutrition requirements for the meals served: at least two kinds of vegetables or fruit, whole-grain bread, a meat or another protein (including eggs or cheese), and fat-free or low-fat milk. Meals are generally simpler than school lunches, with hot sandwiches such as grilled cheese making frequent appearances.

Is there a chance some students might end up eating two dinners?

It's a legitimate concern, Ms. Sheridan said, especially because so many children are grappling with childhood obesity at the same time other American children are going hungry.

But, she said, "research shows that having reliable access to a meal is one of the biggest things you can do to prevent obesity. When you don't know where your next meal comes from do you eat every meal that comes to you? I bet you do."
Lessons on the Side

At one Boys & Girls Club location in Seattle, students help set up tables and chairs before meals, some help serve the food, and they all get a side serving of nutrition information, club director Rick Dupree said.

For example, students learn about the calorie and cholesterol count in their chicken sandwiches or their yakisoba—a Japanese noodle dish—compared with fast-food meals.

Younger students, who often eat lunch around 10:30 in the morning, get their suppers about an hour after arriving at Mr. Dupree's center, the Joel E. Smilow Clubhouse and Teen Center at Rainier Vista, then do an hour of homework. Older students do homework first, then eat.

The center serves up to 2,500 meals a month, Mr. Dupree said.

"This program is as important as anything we do," said Mark Smith, a spokesman for the Seattle-area Boys & Girls Clubs.

The site has a kitchen with the capacity to serve all those meals, and it passed the required health inspection. Smaller after-school child-care sites may not be equipped the same way, said Linda Stone, the food-policy director at the Children's Alliance, an advocacy group in that state. She has been working with the state education department to simplify the application process and spread awareness about the program. The program has grown more slowly than she had hoped.

A year into that work, only about 13,000 suppers are served per month across the state, she said.

Getting Meals Delivered

Across Maryland, which began serving USDA-funded suppers in 2009, more than 10,000 meals are served every evening. A majority of those are provided in Baltimore.

The Family League of Baltimore City coordinates the suppers, provided by caterers to about 200 sites throughout the city, including 81 schools, said the group's president and chief executive officer, Kevin Keegan.

Catering cuts out the need for the sites to have kitchens, or for the staff to prepare meals, and the Family League takes over much of the paperwork required for the program. The USDA provides a reimbursement of $2.77 for each supper served, which just covers the agency's costs for providing them, Mr. Keegan said.

At each site, food arrives in bulk hot or cold containers, employees of the after-school programs help serve it, and the containers are rinsed out and set aside for caterers to collect when they drop off meals the next day.

USDA rules say that eligible after-school programs must include education or enrichment activities and be located in an area where at least half of students qualify for free or reduced-price school meals.

"You can't have just sports teams, but it could be any program where kids sign up and have homework help," Mr. Keegan said. "With the poverty rate in Baltimore, and the lack of availability of healthy foods in Baltimore, some of the kids just wouldn't be eating supper without this program."

That's also the scenario in rural coastal Oregon, said Rhonda Hoffine, the food-services director for the North Bend, Coquille, and Reedsport districts, which have about 1,800 students combined.

Of those, about 1,200 eat supper daily, she said. Unemployment is high in the area, where once-active timber mills have closed.

The district relied on a related USDA after-school snack program for years before the supper program began, but it was apparent students weren't getting enough to eat even with those extra nibbles.

"The kids were saying, 'Don't you have something more to eat than this?' " Ms. Hoffine recalled. The USDA reimbursement doesn't quite cover all the labor costs to keep the program going, but the program is valuable enough that the school districts have been willing to pay for that out of their general funds, Ms. Hoffine said.

Before the USDA program expanded, the Spokane, Wash., Boys & Girls Clubs served suppers on their own dime, but they were nothing like the 350 meals a day the agency now serves at three sites, operations director Alisa Mnati said. Food often came from food banks or stores that sell dented, canned foods and past-their-prime bread products. Milk wasn't in the budget.

"Yesterday, we did taco salad. The taco shell was a whole grain taco shell, there was fresh tomato, fresh lettuce, ground beef, and grapes on the side," Ms. Mnati said. "Children have a right to eat healthy."

Okay, so now we have before-school breakfast at school, lunch at school and now dinner at school (or at after-school activities)--when do the PARENTS get a chance to feed their own kids?

When do the taxpayers get a break here? We're picking up the tab for food stamps, WIC, and school breakfasts/lunches already, and now THIS too? What about the food banks and church-run food pantries--aren't they supposed to be filling in the cracks in the food stamp system?

Bill Would Ban Aborted Fetuses in Food (in Oklahoma)

2012-01-27T11:32:00.001-05:00

From Yahoo Health. ~record screech~ Wha?

"An Oklahoma bill that would ban the sale of food containing aborted human fetuses has some people wondering: What food currently contains aborted human fetuses?

The bill, introduced Jan. 18 by State Sen. Ralph Shortey, prohibits the manufacture or sale of "food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients."

Shortey declined to give specific examples but said some food manufacturers used stem cells in the research and development process.

"There is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors," he told KRMG Radio. "I don't know if it is happening in Oklahoma, it may be, it may not be. What I am saying is that if it does happen then we are not going to allow it to manufacture here."

Shortey may be acting on claims that the San Diego-based company Semonyx used proteins derived from human embryonic kidney cells to test artificial sweeteners, NPR reported. The cell line, known as HEK 293, was created from a human embryo in 1970 and has become a staple in biochemistry labs around the world.

Some people are calling the bill a back-door attempt to ban embryonic stem cell research - a ban Shortey said he would support, KRMG reported.

Indeed, embryonic stem cell research is controversial. Critics argue it destroys embryos, which they consider the earliest form of life. But proponents say stem cell research could cure diseases. Last week, for example, embryonic stem cells were found to improve vision in two women who were legally blind.

If passed, the bill would take effect Nov. 1."

Okay--this is a religious nut-job taking evasive action against something that may not even exist, and he won't bother to look into further, for the sake of preventing something that DOES exist (and that would be stem cell use). Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Missouri are a cluster of states known as the buckle of the Bible Belt, and this sort of irrationality coming from "the buckle" doesn't surprise me in the least.

I suppose coat hangers and knitting needles have been outlawed there because they were used to self-induce abortions back in the pre-legal days.

If any of the above bothers you, then don't use artificial sweeteners. You shouldn't be using them anyway--they're not safe. You may want to stop using commercial pet food too, because it's made of dead animal carcasses that may or may not have been pregnant at the time of death. Oh and let's not leave out Premarin, a female hormone replacement made from the urine of pregnant mares, whose fillies and colts are delivered, then destroyed, and the mare re-implanted so she can remain in a perpetually-pregnant state.

But...but...those are ANIMALS, and these were PEOPLE. A fetus is a fetus, right? At least you can't readily discern the difference between the two until a couple months of gestation have happened. A human fetus is more precious because it supposedly has a soul that animals supposedly do not, and humans can be roped into going to church and filling the collection plate, greasing the organized religion machine.

Healthier People With More Disease

2012-01-27T07:56:00.001-05:00

From Philly.com.

"Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that "everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." The current debate about the global epidemic of non-communicable diseases - chronic conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer - has ignored this advice. Policymakers have oversimplified the challenge by focusing on the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases - the sheer number of people with these diseases - which is not really the problem.

True, almost all regions of the world are experiencing an increase in the prevalence of these diseases, partly because as deaths from acute infectious diseases and injuries decline, people live long enough to develop them. But the diseases are increasing for many other demographic and epidemiological reasons as well, and understanding them has implications for health policy and even economic development.

In much of the world, populations are growing and aging simultaneously. Most non-communicable diseases increase in prevalence with age, a consequence of cumulative exposure to risk factors - including unhealthy behaviors such as tobacco use and biological risk factors such as high blood pressure - over a lifetime. All else being equal, larger and older populations mean more people with these conditions.

This "population aging" effect is well understood. Far less understood are the epidemiological forces that drive the dynamics of these diseases. From an epidemiological perspective, their prevalence is determined by the difference between the rate at which previously healthy people become ill - their incidence - and the rate at which ill people either recover or die (from any cause). If inflow exceeds outflow, prevalence rises.

Over the past several decades, standards of living, lifestyles, and biological risk factors have generally improved worldwide. (Obesity is an exception.) So, contrary to popular belief, the incidence of most non-communicable diseases other than diabetes has actually been falling. Nevertheless, their prevalence has increased because improvements in survival have outpaced reductions in incidence. Inflow and outflow have both fallen, but outflow has fallen farther and faster.

Severity effect

Several factors underpin the recent dramatic gains in survival at older ages. People living with a chronic disease may die not only from that disease, but also from other causes - including other such diseases, acute infections, and injuries. In particular, more accessible and higher-quality health care has significantly improved survival rates for people living with these conditions, including diabetes.

Yet health care is not solely responsible for the observed improvement in survival rates. Improvements in lifestyle and related risk factors have contributed as well. A decline in the proportion of people who use tobacco, have unhealthy diets, are physically inactive, or have elevated blood pressure and cholesterol does more than just prevent disease. Not only do fewer cases occur, but those that do tend to be less severe and to progress more slowly than was previously the case.

As a result, the increase in prevalence of many diseases in recent decades reflects an increase in the prevalence only of early stages of the disease. Increasing disease prevalence has hidden a decreasing prevalence of late-stage or complicated disease. I have called this shift toward the milder end of the disease spectrum the "severity effect."

Most health problems linked to non-communicable diseases - such as chronic pain, disordered sleep, depression, disability, and premature death - are associated with late-stage or complicated disease. Whenever the "severity effect" outweighs the "prevalence effect," the increasing overall prevalence of a disease will be accompanied by a decreasing health impact.

A paradox

This is the paradox of these diseases: Objective measures of poor health - severe symptoms, disability, premature death - are declining, even as the prevalence of these diseases is increasing. And while this paradox is no excuse for complacency in our response to what the United Nations has rightly called a global crisis, it does have practical implications for that response.

First, the primary concern should not be with reducing disease prevalence, but rather disease burden - the health impact as measured by disability and premature mortality. That means channeling resources according to burden rather than according to prevalence, particularly as co-morbidity - two or more diseases in the same patient - increases.

Second, we should concentrate less on improving health care and more on strengthening disease prevention, for example by driving down tobacco use, expanding opportunities for physical activity, and increasing the availability and affordability of a healthy diet. A focus on prevention can both reduce the incidence of non-communicable diseases and ensure that cases that do occur will tend to be less severe and will progress more slowly, allowing more inexpensive but effective treatment. Both lower incidence and lesser severity will contribute to a smaller disease footprint, even as disease prevalence continues to rise."

Increasing availability and affordability of a healthy diet? How about those melons and berries currently overflowing in the stores in JANUARY? How about that medicated-feed-laced meat they sell in grocery stores, but not much of anybody's buying?

We need to go back to Square 1 when it comes to defining "healthy" and we need desperately to remove the politics from our food--right now, major food producers are able to dictate what's "healthy" to us even without a shred of scientific evidence to back it up (unless they created it themselves, which is usually the case). Congress is all too willing to follow the money, even if it's waved right under their noses...witness such beauties as "pizza is a vegetable" and "fries are okay" in the school cafeterias. Federally-accredited health professionals will only tout the party line for fear of losing credentials, even though you and your insurance company are paying for solid diet and nutrition advice.

Then, in last place, we have Big Pharma, who gets paid if you get sick and STAY sick, and paid handsomely for as long as you live with a chronic disease or two...yep, more money to follow.

Are any of these people qualified to judge what's actually healthy and what's not? Follow your own money, and find out what's healthy for YOU, then do it---leave all these bozos in the dust, right along with this nit-picking over the terms "incidence" and "severity." Neither word belongs in our vocabulary!

New USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map Available

2012-01-27T07:13:00.001-05:00

From St. Louis Today (MO). Basically, everybody got moved up a notch, reflecting supposed "global warming", or in reality, recent sun activity.

Here is the larger map at the USDA website.

This new info will be used to update the info on the back of plant seeds, so every seed packet you buy will have it. Gardening books will likely be updated too.

"Fat Chef" Michael Mignano Says Food Network Show Helped Cure His Diabetes

2012-01-26T09:07:00.001-05:00

From ABC News. I'm sure it helped Food Network's ratings, too.

"In many respects, pastry chef Michael Mignano's job was killing him.

Constantly surrounded by sugar and carbs, the owner of the Main Street Bakery in Port Washington, N.Y., said years of late nights in restaurant kitchens, followed by fast food dinners on the way home, caused his once 34-inch waistline to balloon. By the time he was 36 years old, he weighed 500 pounds and had been diagnosed with diabetes.

"I allowed the stresses of work and life to just compound and just literally eat me alive," Mignano said. "In 2009, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. And I went in the doctor's office that day. I didn't feel well. He checked my sugar and it was to the roof."

Though he says he doesn't have much of a sweet tooth himself, Mignano's signature recipe is an almost two-inch-thick gooey, cashew, caramel, macadamia nut, and chocolate candy bar concoction that has to be eaten with a knife and fork -- it has even been praised by Oprah.

It's his pastry prowess that earned him an audition for Food Network's competitive baking show "Sweet Genius" last year, but seeing himself on camera became an eye opener for the chef to start seriously addressing his weight problem.

"My concern was not what I'm going to prepare or what is going to be thrown at me in the competition, it's if my jacket is going to fit me. It was kind of ridiculous," Mignano said. "You ask yourself, how can I let myself just get this big?"

It was then that Food Network asked Mignano if he would be interested in a different kind of show, "Fat Chef," which he later signed up for.

The TV network's new show comes on the heels of one of its biggest stars, Southern cooking legend Paula Deen, coming clean about suffering from Type II diabetes and endorsing Victoza -- a diabetic drug that Deen revealed she takes.

Much like Deen, who built a lucrative empire around praising butter and hefty-calorie meals, Mignano made no excuses for selling tantalizing treats loaded sugar and starch, which he thinks are fine when consumed in moderation.

"I love what I do, so for me to get another job and replace my profession is unfathomable," he said.

'Fat Chef,' which premieres on Food Network tonight, features a dozen participants who spend 16 weeks losing weight and learning to change their lifestyle with the help of trainers, nutritionists and therapists -- something that's especially hard for people who make a living being surrounded by savory food temptations.

But after undergoing the diet and exercise program the show tailored for him, Mignano said he has now cured his diabetes and lost 100 pounds over the course of just four months -- shrinking from a size 6X chef jacket to 2X.

"No pills in three months," he said proudly. "Medicine is great, but it gives you this false sense of healing, but it's not really doing what it's supposed to do. Eliminating it, that's what it's supposed to do."

One of his weight loss secrets, he said, was eating lean proteins and fiber every four hours.

"I say this is it's all about self-control," Mignano said. "With doing the show, 'Fat Chef,' I've actually learned to rethink the way I look at food, that, you know, it's not just mindless eating."

When it came to exercise, this one-time track star said he had to take it slow, beginning with long walks.

"My mind wanted to work and wanted to run, but the legs weren't moving," Mignano said. "We did half a lap. Then I went to three-quarters of a lap. Then I went to one lap, to a lap and-a-half. And in December, at the gym, you know, I was -- I did a 5K."

Diet guru Dr. Mike Dow, author of the weight loss plan "Diet Rehab," said, aside from regular exercise, the key to losing weight and breaking food addictions is to eat healthy food that gives the same "feel good" sensation in the brain as junk food does. He praised the 'Fat Chef' concept and said many of his patients are professional chefs.

"When you're working around food, which I talk about in 'Diet Rehab,' it is actually neuro-chemically addictive," Dow said. "You're actually teaching yourself to be rewarded sometimes with food and that affects the brain in a powerful way."

Since he has finished taping the show, Mignano has lost 15 more pounds and said it hasn't just changed his life, but also made life better for his wife and kids.

"My sons get to enjoy their father more," Mignano said. "I'm not the dad that sits on the couch and watches TV. I will get up and we go play soccer and we run around. And, you know, to see their faces like that, it makes me think what I have been denying them through me being selfish about myself and my eating."

His goal is to get down to 250 pounds, literally half the man he once was, he said, and create a new recipe for a healthier life.

"It just makes me a happier chef," Mignano said. "A happier person, which the result, you have happier food."

Lost 100 lbs, in four months? That's 25 lbs./month, or a little over a pound a day...not really heroic amounts of weight loss, or blinding speed of it either. If he went Paleo, he could've doubled his losses easily.

Nevertheless, he got there--and got paid to do it. I'm just glad to see NO MENTION of gastric bypass surgery, or lap-banding. Surgery isn't necessary.

I'm curious to know if changes will be made in his restaurant and/or at his show, so other people can reap the benefits he did. As far as "being surrounded by foods" at work that make you fat, you don't have to put any of it in your mouth!

Optimal Heart Health Starts Early in Life

2012-01-26T08:42:00.001-05:00

From HealthDay News.

"People who reach midlife without developing high blood pressure, diabetes or other risk factors for cardiovascular disease are much less likely to have a heart attack or stroke by age 80 than their less healthy peers, a new study suggests.

"If you make it to middle age with an optimal profile, it's really like the fountain of youth for your heart," said lead researcher Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, chair of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Besides diabetes and hypertension, researchers looked at the effects of two other cardiovascular risk factors -- high cholesterol and smoking -- on long-term heart health. A heart-healthy profile at midlife "essentially abolished your remaining chance of developing any heart disease over your remaining lifespan," Lloyd-Jones added. These lifestyle-related factors mattered more than age, race or sex, the researchers found.

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death for U.S. adults.

The researchers found that a 45-year-old man with optimal levels of those risk factors has a 1.4 percent chance of having a major heart event or stroke during his remaining lifetime, Lloyd-Jones said.

"Contrast that with a 45-year-old man who has two or more major risk factors, his lifetime risk would be 49.5 percent," he said.

Similar numbers emerged for women, blacks and whites, he said.

But it's a lifetime of healthy living that pays off, experts said.

"We need to do a better job of getting our children and young adults off to a healthy start so that more of them can make it into middle age with optimal risk factors," Lloyd-Jones said. "All of these risk factors are preventable, or at least modifiable, by lifestyle."

If you have some of these risk factors, it is critically important to get with a doctor and control them, and that's likely to require medication and lifestyle change, Lloyd-Jones said.

But treatment only goes so far, he said. "It mitigates the risk, but it never really puts the horse back in the barn. It's important to get treated, but it's better to have never developed these risk factors in the first place," he said.

The report was published in the Jan. 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the study, Lloyd-Jones' team reviewed 18 studies that included a total of more than 250,000 people aged 44, 55, 65 and 75. They were looking for patterns that may not have been part of the original findings, but could lead to new conclusions.

Using the four cardiovascular risk factors, the researchers estimated the lifetime risks of cardiovascular disease, heart attack and stroke.

For individuals 55 years old having an optimal risk factor profile -- low blood pressure and cholesterol levels, not smoking and not diabetic -- the chance of having cardiovascular problems through age 80 was 4.7 percent for men and 6.4 percent for women.

Those with two or more risk factors had a much higher risk of cardiovascular disease -- about 30 percent for men and 21 percent for women, the researchers found.

The risk for heart disease or heart attack was 3.6 percent for men and less than 1 percent for women with optimal profiles, compared to 37.5 percent and 18.3 percent, respectively, for those with two or more risk factors, they noted.

For stroke, an optimal risk profile reduced risk to 2.3 percent for men and 5.3 percent for women, compared with 8.3 percent for men and 10.7 percent for women with two risk factors, the researchers calculated.

Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a spokesman for the American Heart Association, said studies consistently demonstrate that blood pressure, cholesterol level, smoking status and diabetes status are key determinants of cardiovascular risk.

This new study also shows the lifetime cardiovascular risk is similar for white and black patients, he said. Moreover, at every age, more risk factors substantially increase the lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease, he added.

"Every adult, no matter how young or old, should be aware of their cardiovascular risk profile and take proactive steps to achieve optimal cardiovascular health," Fonarow said.

A December report from the American Heart Association found that more than two-thirds of U.S. adults and about one-third of children are over the ideal body weight, and those extra layers of fat put a major strain on their hearts."

It sounds as if our over-population problem is largely a self-correcting one.

Metabolic Syndrome Responds to Low-Carb Diet

2012-01-26T08:20:00.002-05:00

From EmpowHer.

"People with metabolic syndrome may benefit considerably by eating a low carbohydrate diet. According to an article on the Los Angeles Times website, these folks will lose weight, and their blood sugar and hormone levels will become more stabilized.

Dr. Stephen Phinney, nutritional biochemist and an emeritus professor of UC Davis led a team of researchers in a study involving 40 men and women who were overweight or obese, having metabolic syndrome.

Half of the participants followed a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. The other half followed a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet.

Even though the low-carbohydrate group ate a high amount of saturated fat, their triglyceride levels dropped by 50 percent after twelve weeks, and their HDL (good) cholesterol levels went up by 15 percent.

The low-fat group on the other hand found that their triglyceride levels only decreased by 20 percent. Their HDL cholesterol levels did not change at all.

An article on the ABC News website reported on research led by Matthew R. Hayes, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, found that a low-carbohydrate diet helps to correct hormonal messaging which contributed to obesity. It also leaves people feeling full longer which helps control food intake.

In the study, 20 men and women who had metabolic syndrome ate a low-carbohydrate diet. They lost about 10 pounds of body fat in the three months duration of the study. Perhaps more importantly when the study ended, about half of the participants showed no signs of metabolic syndrome.

Fasting and post-meal blood levels of hormones such as cholecystokinin (CCK), insulin and leptin were monitored. Insulin and leptin levels were reduced after the first two weeks.

After the three months, both insulin and leptin rose again, but while insulin levels reverted to their original levels, the leptin did not rise that high.

Hayes cautioned that this was a small study, and more research would be necessary.

More research seems to be the order of the day, as more experts and researchers reconsider the decades-old condemnation of fat and embrace of carbohydrates in the face of escalating health problems like metabolic syndrome.

Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, weighed in on the subject of fat versus carbohydrates. He advocated the avoidance of all refined carbohydrates, saying that this would eliminate most metabolic diseases, including diabetes and obesity.

Dr. Edward Saltzman, associate professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University concurred that carbohydrates and not dietary fat are the source of many health problems of the day.

Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, indicated that our fat aversion and consequent overemphasis on carbohydrates may be a major factor in the contemporary problems with heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity."

Well, it seems the medical colleges know, but when is it going to become part of the med school curriculum, then the broad mainstream...and most importantly, standard national dietary guideline? It isn't until we somehow separate the food industry and their lobbyists from the medical community and their lobbyists, then discontinue altogether the practice of federal subsidies for farming to let the market (that means consumers) dictate profit opportunities.

Get rid of the politics, and we get rid of about 90% of the problem with trying to improve health nationally. In 2014, the problem portion rises to 100%.

We need a political collapse in this country.

Gardening in Raised Beds (L-O-N-G)

2012-01-26T08:07:00.001-05:00

From the Press-Democrat (CA).

"A labor-saving tip that I recently came across suggested consolidating crops in raised beds to reduce our gardening workload.

The idea isn’t new and it does have merit, but gardening in raised beds still requires effort. I find it very satisfying despite the annual chores that I’ll be facing once again in the next couple of months.

The first vegetable and strawberry beds suffered from poor soil. When I learned how to amend by mixing in compost and aged manures and scooping up soil between beds, the growing areas became raised almost by themselves, with pathways all around.

Yet these growing areas still required the same attention that any other garden bed needed — replenished organic matter, watering, weeding and fertilizing.

The greatest advantage was not less labor but improved drainage in winter and easier irrigation in other seasons.

I became committed to my simple raised beds until raccoons succeeded in dislodging the rock borders and moles created even more havoc as they probed for worms under the mulch.

It was time for more permanent structures.

Thanks to my husband’s expertise, most of my vegetable garden now consists of three boxes, 12 feet long by 4 feet wide by 2 feet high, built with 2 x 12 pressure-treated boards and 4-inch posts, topped with 2 x 6 redwood trim all around, wide and sturdy enough for sitting and holding containers as I work.

Although the lumber is considered no threat to edibles, I lined the interior sides with heavy-duty black plastic. Quarter-inch hardware cloth covers the bottom.

Despite their good looks, convenient height and sturdy construction that protects crops from critters, these beds are not maintenance-free.

Managing beds

If you’re new to container gardening and raised beds or are unsure of how they function, you may be surprised at the changes that occur each year.

If you’ve made the mistake of filling a container or free-standing raised bed — a pot, a half barrel, or any other structure — with only garden soil, you’ll need to make some serious adjustments.

Either replace the soil with a purchased container mix or create your own with nearly equal amounts of small lava rock, pumice, or perlite; fast-draining native soil or purchased loam or coarse sand; and compost.

Garden soil compacts so readily that it is unsuitable as a single ingredient in containers. In fact, it is completely unnecessary as long as you provide adequate nutrients.

Some gardeners, however, insist on including garden soil when growing vegetables, trees, and shrubs in containers. It is never necessary for growing annuals in pots.

After 2 or 3 years, expect the soil level to drop as much as 20 percent in a raised bed or container as organic matter decomposes. Because stable ingredients remain intact, only the organic matter — such as compost, peat and manure — needs to be replaced.

In large constructed beds such as those in my garden, this is a big job. I actually stand in each bed, turn over at least a spade’s depth of soil and mix it back in with compost and aged manure, sometimes using my lightweight Mantis tiller.

If you don’t relish this amount of digging, simply working in fresh compost into the top few inches and letting worms do any further mixing is another solution. Soil at the bottom will remain more compacted, however.

Weigh the advantages

One of the greatest advantages of raised beds is protection against gophers and moles. To be completely effective, a barrier must be securely in place when you first build the bed.

Some gardeners have used ½-inch galvanized hardware cloth successfully but only ¼-inch openings will also exclude voles. Openings in chicken and aviary wire are too large and the wire in these materials will break down over time.

Two gardeners I know have built raised beds to escape invasive tree roots but have been disappointed when roots from their own property or a neighbor’s found their way into raised beds nonetheless.

In this situation, there are two choices. Either rebuild and line beds with an impenetrable material that will exclude wandering roots, or support small raised beds on blocks a few inches above ground, so roots cannot reach."

Kids' Snacks CAN Be Healthy and Inexpensive

2012-01-25T11:50:00.001-05:00

From HealthDay News.

"It's well-documented that healthy foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables tend to cost more than "junk" foods such as chips and cookies, a phenomenon that's often cited as a contributing factor to the U.S. obesity epidemic.

But a new study conducted in YMCAs found that healthy snacks aren't always more expensive, and in some cases are even more economical.

From 2006 to 2008, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health evaluated the snacks offered to kids at 32 YMCAs in four cities in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, South, Midwest and East.

The YMCA sites were participants in a program called the YMCA/Harvard Afterschool Food and Fitness Project, designed to improve the diets and boost physical activity among kids aged 5 to 12 attending the Ys' after-school programs. The project set out standards for snacks served at YMCAs, including: serving water instead of sugar-sweetened beverages, offering whole grains and a fruit or vegetable with each snack and avoiding trans fats.

"One of the questions we had was what kind of financial burden are we putting on them to ask them to put these healthier foods into place, because it's known that healthy foods are more expensive," said Rebecca Mozaffarian, project manager for the YMCA/Harvard program.

The average cost per snack was 57 cents, with prices ranging from 47 cents in the Midwest and Northeast to 78 cents in the Pacific Northwest.

As expected, snacks that met the healthy eating standards cost 50 percent more than those that didn't.

However, some YMCAs found ways of mixing and matching combinations that both met the healthy eating standards and kept costs at or even below what it would cost to serve a less healthy alternative.

For example, serving water instead of fruit juice significantly reduced the price of a snack. Instead of the fruit juice, Ys could serve water and a banana or apple slices and water, and the snack had the same calorie count at a lower cost. The whole fruit has the added nutritional benefits of fiber and helping kids feel fuller, longer than juice, Mozaffarian said.

Or, for example, water and cheese is less expensive than serving chocolate milk, and the cheese contains less sugar.

Other areas where Ys could make improvements without adding to cost were substituting whole grains, in foods such as Triscuits, Wheat Thins and Cheerios, for refined grains such as graham crackers and Saltines.

And while snacks that included canned or frozen vegetables were on the pricy side, snacks including fresh vegetables, such as carrots and celery, were not.

The study is in the February issue of the journal Preventing Chronic Disease.

Some YMCAs in low-income areas are reimbursed by the federal government for snacks at a rate of 74 cents per snack per child. Using this as a target number, researchers identified a dozen healthy snack combinations that fall under that price. Those include: carrots, hummus and water; apples, cheese slices, water; whole wheat bread, green peppers, turkey slices, water; Craisins (dried cranberry snacks), string cheese, Wheat Thins, water; and applesauce, popcorn, 1 percent milk, water.

Joy Dubost, a registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, called the study "well-conducted." However, the five criteria used to determine what qualifies as a healthy snack option aren't as comprehensive as she would like.

For example, tortilla chips count as a whole grain and therefore meet the criteria for a healthy snack option, but they're also full of saturated fat, which may contribute to heart disease over the long term.

Applesauce counts as a fruit, but it would be better if the guidelines specified that the after-school programs choose applesauce without added sugar, she said.

In addition to addressing saturated fats and added sugars, the healthiest after-school snack would take into account calories and sodium, which many American children get too much of as well, Dubost said.

"It's a step in the right direction, but they could be doing a little bit more," she said."

Yes, these are CW-based nutrition ideas, still insistent on hanging onto the old dogs of starch and sugar. There are better ideas out there in Paleo-land.

Dispute over Drug in Feed Limiting U. S. Meat Exports

2012-01-25T11:24:00.002-05:00

From MSNBC. Oh, but it's okay for US to consume them?

Larger image here.

"A drug used to keep pigs lean and boost their growth is jeopardizing the nation’s exports of what once was known as “the other white meat.”

The drug, ractopamine hydrochloride, is fed to pigs and other animals right up until slaughter and minute traces have been found in meat. The European Union, China, Taiwan and many others have banned its use, citing concerns about its effect on human health, limiting U.S. meat exports to key markets.

Although few Americans outside of the livestock industry have ever heard of ractopamine, the feed additive is controversial. Fed to an estimated 60 to 80 percent of pigs in the United States, it has sickened or killed more of them than any other livestock drug on the market, an investigation of Food and Drug Administration records shows. Cattle and turkeys have also suffered high numbers of illnesses from the drug.

Growing concern over sick animals in the nation's food supply sparked a California law banning the sale and slaughter of livestock unable to walk, but that law was struck down by the Supreme Court Monday. Meat producers had sued to overturn California’s ban, arguing that the state could not supercede federal rules on meat production. The court agreed.

The FDA, which regulates livestock drugs in the United States, deemed ractopamine safe 13 years ago and approved it, setting a level of acceptable residues in meat. Canada and 24 other countries approved the drug as well.

U.S. trade officials are now pressing more countries to accept meat from animals raised on ractopamine -- a move opposed by China and the EU. Resolving the impasse is a top agricultural trade priority for the Obama administration, which is trying to boost exports and help revive the economy, trade officials say.

U.S. exports of beef and pork are on track to hit $5 billion each for the first time, the U.S. Meat Export Federation estimates. Pork exports to China quadrupled from 2005 to 2010 to $463 million but are still only 2-3 percent of the market.

“China is a potentially huge market for us,” said Dave Warner, spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council.

Part of a class of drugs called beta-agonists, ractopamine mimics stress hormones, making the heart beat faster and relaxing blood vessels. Some beta-agonists are used to treat people with asthma or heart failure, but ractopamine has not been proposed for human use.

In animals, ractopamine revs up production of lean meat, reducing fat. Pigs fed the drug in the last weeks of their life produce an average of 10 percent more meat, compared with animals on the same amount of feed that don't receive the drug. That raises profits by $2 per head, according to the drug's manufacturer, Elanco, a division of Eli Lilly. It sells the drug under the brand name Paylean.

Ractopamine leaves animals' bodies quickly, with pig studies showing about 85 percent excreted within a day. But low levels of residues can still be detected in animals more than a week after they've consumed the drug.

While the Department of Agriculture has found traces of ractopamine in American beef and pork, they have not exceeded levels the FDA has determined are safe.

But because countries like China and Taiwan have no safety threshold, traces of the drug have led to rejection of some U.S. meat shipments. The EU requires U.S. exporters to certify their meat is ractopamine-free, and China requires a similar assurance for pork.

Some U.S. food companies also avoid meat produced with the feed additive, including Chipotle restaurants, meat producer Niman Ranch and Whole Foods Markets.

The FDA ruled that ractopamine was safe and approved it for pigs in 1999, for cattle in 2003 and turkeys in 2008. As with many drugs, the approval process relied on safety studies conducted by the drug-maker -- studies that lie at the heart of the current trade dispute.

Elanco mainly tested animals -- mice, rats, monkeys and dogs -- to judge how much ractopamine could be safely consumed. Only one human study was used in the safety assessment by Elanco, and among the six healthy young men who participated, one was removed because his heart began racing and pounding abnormally, according to a detailed evaluation of the study by European food safety officials.

When Elanco studied the drug in pigs for its effectiveness, it reported that "no adverse effects were observed for any treatments." But within a few years of Paylean's approval, the company received hundreds of reports of sickened pigs from farmers and veterinarians, according to records from the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine.

USDA meat inspectors also reported an increase in the number of "downer pigs" -- lame animals unable to walk -- in slaughter plants. As a result of the high number of adverse reactions, the FDA requested Elanco add a warning label to the drug, and it did so in 2002.

The company also received a warning letter from the FDA that year for failing to disclose all data about the safety and effectiveness of the drug.

Since it was introduced, ractopamine had sickened or killed more than 218,000 pigs as of March 2011, more than any other animal drug on the market, a review of FDA veterinary records shows. Pigs suffered from hyperactivity, trembling, broken limbs, inability to walk and death, according to FDA reports released under a Freedom of Information Act request.

"I've personally seen people overuse the drug in hogs and cattle," said Temple Grandin, a professor at Colorado State University and animal welfare expert. "I was in a plant once where they used too much ractopamine and the pigs were so weak they couldn't walk. They had five or six people just dedicated to handling the lame pigs."

But she noted that producers have since scaled back use in response to the rash of illnesses.

"Our company takes adverse event reporting very seriously and is overly inclusive on the information we submit to ensure we're meeting all requirements," Elanco spokeswoman Colleen Par Dekker said. She said the label change in 2002 resulted from an ongoing process of evaluating adverse effects of the drug, adding that an industry trend towards heavier pigs contributed to rising numbers of lame animals in this period.

By 2003, with ractopamine rolling out across the livestock industry, U.S. trade officials began pressing to open world markets for meat produced with the feed additive. Their effort focused on a relatively obscure corner of the trade world -- the U.N.'s Codex Alimentarius Commission, which sets global food-safety standards.

Setting a Codex standard for ractopamine would strengthen Washington's ability to challenge other countries' meat import bans at the World Trade Organization.

The issue has reached the last step in Codex's approval process, but since 2008 the commission has been deadlocked over one central question: What, if any, level of ractopamine is safe in meat?

The EU and China, which together produce and consume about 70 percent of the world’s pork, have blocked the repeated efforts of U.S. trade officials to get a residue limit. European scientists sharply questioned the science backing the drug's safety, and Chinese officials were concerned about higher residues in organ meats, which are consumed in China.

“The main problem for us is that the safety of the product could not be supported with the data,” said Claudia Roncancio-Peña, a scientist who led the European food safety panel studying the drug.

U.S. trade officials say China wants to limit competition from U.S. companies, and the EU does not want to risk a public outcry by importing meat raised with growth-promoting drugs, which are illegal there.

The issue also has strained the U.S.-Taiwan trade relationship, since Taiwan -– the sixth-largest market for U.S. beef and pork –- began testing for ractopamine last year. It found traces in American beef and pork and pulled meat from store shelves, according to local press reports.

In the U.S., residue tests for ractopamine are limited. In 2010, for example, the U.S. did no tests on 22 billion pounds of pork; 712 samples were taken from 26 billion pounds of beef. Those results have not yet been released."

So pigs overfed this drug have turned up lame and unable to support their own weight--could this be happening to the very people who eat their meat? You have to wonder if farmers who use this stuff aren't looking past the animal to see WHO ELSE they're fattening up for market!

Not only are they fattening us up, they're creating a market for beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, and other BP-lowering meds to counteract the effects of this meat drug on humans--oh look! Another economy-booster, just like statins were.

Is anybody reading this still wondering why American meat sales are down and still falling? It's because we're too afraid to eat our own commercial meats, that's why! Creating sick animals (for profit) creates sick people (for profit), and one day commercial meat producers will figure out they're making the world sick trying to feed it.

Ironically, the number of cancer patients, diabetics needing amputations, and people with existing or potential heart ailments/stroke is also in decline...could the two be related? Could people finally be taking their own health seriously, and choosing to either go vegetarian/vegan, or eat organic meat?

Could this be the sign we've been waiting for? Let's hope.

This is the sign I'm waiting for!

Chemicals Linked to Lower Immune Response in Children

2012-01-25T06:30:00.001-05:00

From Yahoo Health.

"Chemical compounds widely used in fast-food packaging, waterproof clothing and non-stick frying pans were linked in a study out Tuesday to lower immune response by young children to routine tetanus and diphtheria immunization shots.

Larger image here.

The study, in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), is the first to show how perfluorinated compounds can negatively affect the response to vaccines.

PFCs can be transferred to children before birth via the mother, or after birth from exposure in the environment, according to the report.

"The negative impact on childhood vaccinations from PFCs should be viewed as a potential threat to public health," said study lead author Philippe Grandjean with the Harvard School of Public Health.

Grandjean appeared alarmed because routine childhood immunizations "are a mainstay of modern disease prevention."

Researchers "were surprised by the steep negative associations, which suggest that PFCs may be more toxic to the immune system than current dioxin exposures," said Grandjean.

PFCs have thousands of industrial and manufacturing uses, and most Americans have traces of the chemical compounds in their bodies.

Earlier studies have shown that PFC concentrations in mice similar to those found in people suppressed immune response. The negative effects of the compounds on people however have not been well studied.

The experts studied data on infants at the National Hospital in Torshavn, on Denmark's Faroe Islands, during 1999-2001. Of those studied, 587 children participated in follow-up examinations at ages five and seven, when they were tested for immune response to tetanus and diphtheria vaccinations.

The level of PFCs were measured in maternal pregnancy blood serum, and in the blood serum of children at age five, to determine prenatal and postnatal exposure.

The results show a link between exposure to PFCs and a lower antibody response to tetanus and diphtheria vaccines than normal.

A lower level of antibodies increases the risk that the children will not have an adequate immune response for long-term protection against tetanus and diphtheria, according to the study authors.

"A two-fold greater concentration of three major PFCs was associated with a 49 percent lower level of serum antibodies in children at age 7 years," the report read.

The PFC concentrations "are similar to or slightly below those reported in US women," while most serum PFC levels in the children at age five "were lower than those measured in US children aged 3 to 5 years in 2001-2002," the report said.

Bisphenol A (BPA), another chemical compound widely used in cans, beverage bottles and in some dental fillings, is a suspected "endocrine disruptor," which can result in breast and prostate cancer and affect the developing brains of infants and children."

Well, there you go--another way fast food is killing us.

Book Suggestion: Vertical Vegetables and Fruit

2012-01-24T08:10:00.000-05:00

The book.

Exercise in Utility--Cleaning House the Aerobic Way

2012-01-24T06:53:00.001-05:00

From the Wall St.Journal.

"If house cleaning were an Olympic sport, Stevie Markovich would be in the running for a medal. Without resorting to gym fees or spandex, the 57-year-old Mr. Markovich has kept himself fit for the past 16 years by using the "aerobic house cleaning" exercises he devised.

He does squats while washing windows. He performs lunges and hip twists while using the vacuum cleaner, "the most versatile exercise machine" he knows. He burns so many calories that he can forgive himself for occasional indulgences, such as vanilla ice cream slathered with peanut butter.

Turning housework into a heart-pumping, sweat-inducing frenzy could help cure America's plague of obesity, Mr. Markovich believes. He also hopes to make a little money from it someday.

After doing the splits on his beige family-room carpeting, Mr. Markovich exults: "57 years old! Come on now. There's something working!"

But now he has a younger rival. Taking a short break from his exertions, Mr. Markovich opens his iPad and gazes at the website of Carolyn Barnes, 40, who calls herself Clean Momma. Her slogan: "Get lean while you clean." Ms. Barnes, who lives near Los Angeles, discovered her signature exercise, the Rag Drag, while wiping her infant son's vomit off the kitchen floor.

"My brain went, 'Woo! I'm onto something,'" she says of that epiphany. Now she has a $19.95 DVD out and is working on a book.

"Boy," Mr. Markovich says softly, "she's got a good body." Though in excellent shape for his age, Mr. Markovich has a modest paunch. His challenger has another edge: "She's got a much better site, slicker than I have," Mr. Markovich says. "She's going to make some money off hers. She's going to make a mint—and good for her."

Mr. Markovich, who grew up near Chicago, studied kick boxing and other martial arts in his teens and twenties. After the first of his two daughters was born in 1995, he found little time for exercise. One day, while racing around to pick up toys, he had a revelation: "Hey, I'm sweating."

He began developing his routines. With one hand, he hoists his sofa off the floor while vacuuming underneath with the other. He kicks high enough to close a kitchen cabinet with his toes. He puts on steel-toed boots and a backpack loaded with books while mowing the lawn to make it a sweatier chore.

"I look ridiculous," he says.

When he was laid off from an advertising-sales job in 2002, Mr. Markovich produced a video of his routines and tried selling copies from his website for $20. Sales were meager, even after he appeared on a cable-TV show called "Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean." He eventually went back to less-glamorous work, including a stint as an airport baggage handler. "It was a brutal physical job," Mr. Markovich says. He loved it. But he felt that some of his co-workers were cheating themselves by tipping suitcases onto the conveyor belts rather than hoisting them off the floor.

His latest job, a clerical position at a call center, provides little physical stimulus. In his free time at home, though, he still cleans frantically and performs dips with one hand on the kitchen countertop, the other on the island.

He has written a 176-page unpublished book extolling exercise and a healthy diet. It isn't entirely a feel-good tome. Sample chapter title: "There Are No Excuses." Sample photo: A foot with amputated toes as a warning against the risks of diabetes.

Carol Torgan, a physiologist in Bethesda, Md., likes the idea of transforming daily drudgery into exercise. She suggests "doing toe raises to strengthen the calves while vacuuming, washing dishes or brushing your teeth." Still, she warns that the overzealous could hobble themselves with such ailments as knee bursitis—also known as housemaid's knee—or suffer from "increased inhalation of chemical fumes from cleaning agents."

Searching the Internet for fitness regimes, Kathleen Burke of northern Illinois found Mr. Markovich's site a couple of years ago and bought a DVD from him. She liked his ideas but says she has since "dropped the ball" and doesn't use them much. She also fretted she would wear out the legs of her sofa if she used it as a weight machine.

Mr. Markovich's wife, Charlotte, gets her exercise at the gym. She occasionally hires a professional cleaner when she wants to get the house ready for a holiday. Her husband is "good at the big stuff," like scrubbing floors, Mrs. Markovich says, "but, like most men, not as good at putting all the little things away."

Mrs. Markovich, who works 70-hour weeks as the marketing and finance chief for a pizza chain, doesn't want to wait for her husband to finish the entire house, a process that can be interrupted by extraneous kicks and sofa-lifts. He counters that it is insane to hire a cleaner for chores he thinks he can do better.

Another point of contention is whether aerobic house cleaning will ever reap any financial rewards—a question that came up one recent evening at Pee Wee's, a neighborhood bar and grill where Mr. Markovich likes the wings doused in Frank's RedHot sauce.

"I always thought it was cute," Mrs. Markovich says of the aerobic cleaning, "and it kept him in shape. But I was always hesitant about bringing it to the next level," profitability. "We've spent an awful lot of time over an awful lot of years working on that website without getting much out of it," she says.

Mr. Markovich stabs a french fry into a pool of hot sauce. "I still like doing it," he says, "and if I can help people, fine."

He thinks there still might be ways to make money from his program. He might try to endorse cleaning products. Or, he says, he could team up with Ms. Barnes and create a reality television show called "Mr. and Mrs. Clean."

Mrs. Markovich has a one-word reaction to that notion: "Hah." But Ms. Barnes, reached later by telephone, doesn't rule it out. "That's hysterical," she says. After a pause, she adds: "I always say I'm open to anything."

Mr. Markovich's free video and DVD (not free). If you want to do this for yourself, just think MANUAL--do things as manually as possible the way our gramdmas and great-grandmas used to do them...you know...with more elbow grease and less plugging things in and no miracle chemicals. Scrubbing the tub should just about kill you if done properly, and you'll have a new-found appreciation for how far we've come with convenience.

"Why I Eat Squirrel...Really"

2012-01-23T09:06:00.001-05:00

From Fox News. Introducing chef Georgia Pellegrino, girl hunter.

"Some consider squirrel to be the best meat in the woods. On my journey as a chef, I have come to think that it may be the best meat period. The phrase, “You are what you eat,” befits a squirrel as it does a Spanish acorn-fed pig that are prized so highly by those with means.

But when you think about it, squirrels are hoarders, and after having feasted on a grove of pecans or acorns, their meat is nutty and sweet, buttery and tender. And so a fat, nut-fed squirrel is not only better tasting than any meat in the woods, it can be even better tasting, and much more economical than that Spanish pig that sells for one hundred seventy dollars per pound.

If you were to tell that to a group of my stiletto-heeled pals on a warm Manhattan evening—which I have done—you would be met with textbook female gasps and sideways glances. Those squirrels linger around the soot-covered fire escapes of their studio apartments. Aren’t they really tree rats?

But the truth is that squirrel hunting is more American than apple pie, than Babe Ruth, than a twenty-dollar Manhattan. Whole traditions have formed around these squirrels; guns have been crafted in their honor. Few things are more intertwined with American history and tradition.

Squirrel is, in fact, one of the most popular game animals in the eastern United States.

In fact, the most recent report from the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation finds that there are 1.8 million hunters of squirrels in our country.

I didn’t grow up hunting. In fact, it didn’t occur to me that it was an important part of being human until I became a chef and was directed to slaughter turkeys for a well-known restaurant’s dinner service.

It was a terrifying notion at first, but in the end, as I did it, it made a kind of sense I could feel deep within my marrow, the kind that makes me want to be a true omnivore.

In that moment I realized that while it was remarkable to meet the food artisans who brought ingredients into these high-end restaurants I worked at, it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to take part in every part of the process, I wanted to pay the full karmic price of the meal. And so I set out to learn how to hunt.

Even as a city chef turned hunter, the popularity of the squirrel surprises me still, perhaps because I had never understood squirrel, or had never cared to until now. But as I have crossed the bridge from city-chef to hunter-chef I have discovered all of those towns, tucked-away, linked by the spines of narrow roads, where children skip school on the opening day of squirrel season.

I have learned too that more than any other kind of hunting, squirrel hunting says something about a person. It may seem from the outside that there isn’t much to a squirrel. But in pursuit of a squirrel, you learn things, such as how to follow the gentle rhythms of the woods, just as you do in pursuit of deer or on a walk in nature.

America has never been a land of rabbit eaters the way that we have been squirrel eaters—or chicken and beef eaters. We leave that to China, Italy, Spain, and France, and are instead content with our squirrel.

There is something about the squirrel that resonated with us from the beginning, that propelled us to craft special guns and seek keen dogs. We go into detail for squirrel.

A squirrel lives for six to seven years, whereas a cottontail lives for only one. The texture of squirrel meat is denser, the color grayer, and the flavor more complex because of this.

Squirrels are wanderers, sometimes ground dwelling and social, living in well-developed colonies; or sometimes tree dwelling and solitary. Squirrels persevere, hoard, and make dietary sacrifices to survive. Maybe the early pioneers saw a bit of themselves in squirrels. Or maybe these animals just tasted better.

Either way, this meat has somehow never reached our elite dinner tables. It has never gained favor with the palates of kings abroad, the way it has here among certain Americans.

I’m happy to say I have crossed over and become one of those Americans. Eating squirrel that I’ve harvested with my own hands, in fact, makes me feel distinctly more American and undoubtedly more human."

You go, girl! I have three very fat squirrels in my pecan tree, and the neighbors have several visiting flocks of assorted fat birds (including a hawk or two) flying in for meals--you'd have a wildlife feast over here.

How One Former Vegan Learned to Embrace Butchering

2012-01-22T07:43:00.001-05:00

From NPR. He probably got started killing his enemies, and had to figure out how to dispose of the bodies. :)

"The farm-to-table philosophy has been mostly about knowing where food was grown. For meat, that meant knowing if your chickens were caged and if your beef was grass fed.

But with the revival of the butcher shop, some young people are undertaking the largely lost art of butchering as a stronger way to connect with their food.

For 24-year-old Andrew Plotsky of Washington, D.C., that meant leaving his job as a barista in a snobby coffee shop to learn the process of raising an animal, slaughtering it and butchering it for a meal.

"I had a romantic idea of the way I thought animals should and could be processed," he tells The Salt. He says he was attracted to the small scale tradition of a whole community having its hands involved in the raising of animals for food. "I wanted to be a part of that process," he says. "Somehow, that manifested in pig slaughter."

Long gone is the idea that only chefs care about the provenance of the meat they cook. Now, the notion of knowing a piece of meat's history seems to be trickling into the mainstream. Who raised it? Who killed it? How did it die? Who butchered it? It was questions like these that led Plotsky across the country.

The former vegan went to Vashon Island., Wa. to learn the butcher trade from Brandon and Lauren Sheard. His goal was to document the process for about a week and half. He ended up staying for two years.

"I had been preparing myself intellectually for years," he says. "The immediacy of taking life was difficult at first. It's still something I'm figuring out how to rationalize."

Pigs are first shot with a rifle to stun them. Then their throats are cut to let them bleed out. "The moment of silence before the shot is taken was difficult," Plotsky says. "It came out of fear that the pig would suffer."

By killing the animal himself, Plotsky says he strengthens his bond to that animal, as well as the food it provides, the ground it lived on, and the family and friends he shares the meal with.

Though killing the animal weighs heavy on Plotsky's heart, carving the precise cuts from the pig weighs heavy because of its physical size. He has to wrestle the carcass and take awkward positions to make sure he gets exact cuts. "There's a steep learning curve," he says.

As a pork butcher, Plotsky typically uses a bone saw, a cleaver, a boning knife and another sharp knife to "break down" a pig. Each side of the pig will get cut into quarters: the shoulder, the leg, the loin and the belly. Using geographical markers, such as the sternum and vertebrae, butchers locate exactly where to slice first. For the leg quarter, it's one vertebra up from the curve near the bottom of the spine.

Two years later, the butcher and filmmaker is still working at the farm and documenting the process with the Sheards for others to see. He says he finds the work enriching because he's present for the whole process — something he hopes more consumers can connect with through his agrarian videos.

It seems to be working, too. "I see the 'hipification' of butchery in urban areas like Brooklyn and San Francisco," he says. "It's a good thing."

His favorite cut of a pig? The trotter, or the foot. "If you have a trotter on a plate, you should feel blessed and not say 'Ew,'" he says. "They're kind of everything a chicken wing dreams of being."

More Mealtime Confusion: Size, Configuration, and Color DO Matter--Study

2012-01-21T09:23:00.000-05:00

From Georgia Tech. This is a PDF link directly to the study itself. The study looked at caloric intake, serving size, visual bias, and the Delbeoulf Illusion in relation to over-serving and over-eating.

In short, it says that not only do you have to take serving size into account, but also plate size, plate configuration/decoration (does it have an inner rim or ringed circular design on the rim?), and plate color, as well as the color. size, and shape of surrounding dishes and the background tablecloth--a food dish served on a contrasting plate set on another contrasting tablecloth reduces the visual bias and distortion that makes one apt to over-serve and over-eat.

So (exaggeratedly) it would appear that we need to prepare and serve colorful foods on smaller plain white unrimmed plates, set upon a Jimmy Hendricks-style psychedelic tablecloth (or something damned near similar). The tablecloth alone would make people lose their appetite...and maybe this is the TRUE key to overeating! :)

Taken to the Italian restaurant extreme, if they quit serving on village-sized plates and bowls with rims, and quit using those red-and-white checkered tablecloths, as well as bland beige pasta, we might see some progress on the Olive Garden front. But alas--selling food is their business, and selling the cheapest cost-per-pound food in large portions to fill you up (then overcharge the hell out of you), yet bring you back for more because you're being led back to the sugar source, is what they do best.

A pound box of pasta is what...say $2.00 in today's economy? Have you ever COOKED an entire box of pasta? It triples in size when cooked, so a cooked 1-lb. $2.00 package will feed a football team, but you get charged $10 for the privilege of someone else cooking ONE SERVING of it (worth about .25), putting some sort of sauce on it, then bringing it to you--you'd have to eat 8 servings of this to get your money's worth out of just one dish!

Ah, but it's pasta, which is filling, and the chances of you wanting 8 servings is slim to none, unless maybe you haven't eaten all day. A typical soup/salad/bread sticks combo costs about maybe $2.00/person to make and serve, but you get a bill for what...$10 for food, plus the hospital bill years later, plus possible future diabetic costs, and possibly some large weight gain...all because the tablecloth, the rimmed oversize plate, and the food were very similar in color, and the nutritional quality of the food was lacking. Oh, let's not forget the lure of the words "endless" (code for All You Can Eat) and the one seemingly-low price.

Ever notice those "All You Can Eat" restaurants all serve the same cheap crap foods?

Meanwhile on the home front, we can just use smaller plates, eat more colorful and nutritious food, and MEASURE our portions before putting them on the plate. I go one better: I measure portions before I freeze them (meats, veggies, fruits), since I make a lot of my own frozen foods. I also measure portions before I zippy-bag them (for non-perishable stuff, like nuts). All I do is thaw and cook--the only real measuring I do is in baking.

Your Nutrition Blueprint--Food and Biochemical Individuality

2012-01-21T06:56:00.001-05:00

From Journal Live (U.K.).

"YOUR Nutrition Blueprint is a preemptive strike at avoiding the pitfalls whilst making positive changes to your diet and nutrition. Sideline the fad and extreme approaches to dieting and eat food that you were designed to eat for healthy function and performance. We all have a blueprint, and today we will discuss more about the biochemical individuality and which foods and nutrients your body need for optimal energy and metabolism?

What is Biochemical Individuality?

We are all individual in every way. Consequently, it seems logical to suggest that we have individually specific nutritional requirements. If we ignore this premise, do we run the risk of developing ill health and disease? Deficiencies and excessive intake of macro and micro nutrients (proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals) can reek havoc with your systems. And guess what? The food guide pyramid is probably not the answer…………….

Your biochemistry right now is determined by a combination of factors including your genes, nutrition and environment. It is not set in stone and locked in one place. It is dynamic and can change so it is important that you are able to stay in tune with it.

Biochemical Individuality explains why we are different from one another and why people that you know do well on foods that you know that you don’t and vice versa. It also explains why:

:: Low fat diets cause some people to gain weight

:: Some diets cause fatigue in people and energy in others

:: Some of us are better at detoxifying toxins and chemicals than others

:: Cancer genes respond in different ways to nutrition and environment

:: …..and many more factors

If you are aware of this principle you are better equipped to understand why you may feel and function better when eating food containing large amounts of protein, moderate fat content and small amounts of carbohydrate. A diet high in carbohydrates for this person could easily down-regulate their metabolism and reduce the energy delivered to the cells of the body. Any combination of these macronutrients could be the correct ratio, but this is what you need to identify.

What about Vitamins and Minerals?

We know that the whole range of all the vitamins and minerals are extremely important, but it is interesting to note that biochemical individuality states that we all actually require different amounts of these vitamins and minerals. For example, we don’t all need the same amount of calcium or magnesium. The exact amount is related to our metabolism and how we actually utilize these micronutrients.

Food Guide Pyramid = One-Size-Fits-All

When are you ever happy with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach? Whilst such a method may be appropriate for some people, there are always those for who it is ineffective. Eating the wrong food can cause dis-ease in the body and create anything from digestive disorders to blood sugar challenges and even movement and inflammation issues. This is a weakness of any diet out there that does not appreciate that we are biochemically varied beings. I have written The Nutrition Blueprint to avoid exactly that and provide a person-specific foundation for the food we put in our body.

Identifying your Biochemical Individuality

The most powerful step to take is to be prepared for change, real change. It is of no benefit to embark on an extreme or radical diet that will likely be causing under-lying damage and stress to organs and tissues in your body. Start by sidelining your preconceptions of what is considered classically healthy (often dictated by multi-nationals) and begin to raise your body awareness and perception of how you feel during and after you eat. How does the body respond? If you feel lethargic, sluggish, bloated, aggressive, depressed, then that food may not be for you. What sustains your energy and leaves you satiated, able to concentrate increasing your productivity and makes you happy and emotionally stable?

Even as a practitioner I have to put preconceptions and theories to one side and learn from the body itself. When reading client’s food diaries I frequently see that the food that is being eaten is not contributing to the positive outcomes above. The simple fact is that food is and can be our medicine. It should give us energy and help us heal and grow."

The rest of the article is a pitch for you to go to their website and see what's available through their program--if you wish to do so, click here. I only posted the relevant parts today.

"Let 'Em Eat Cake!"--Is Bread-Heavy Comfort Food a European Construction?

2012-01-21T06:42:00.001-05:00

From Indian Country Today. Well, Europe WAS our bread-basket for centuries.

“Let them eat cake!” is a phrase famously attributed to Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution (1789-1799) in response to the lack of bread during a great famine, when the peasantry went hungry. Evidently this princess was oblivious to the plight of the working-class starving for lack of bread, and understandably the working class was oblivious to their unnatural addiction to carbohydrates.

Today’s diabetes epidemic undermines society’s bread-based eating lifestyle. Most Americans may not realize that our perception of comfort food is an ideal based on Western European cuisine. Due to colonization, bread has become a staple to the diets of human civilization. French cuisine relies on an abundance of grain in the form of bread, noodles and starchy sauces. But recently, scientists and researchers have begun to unravel the links between food addiction, gluten intolerance, and how common diseases—like arthritis, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and many others once thought to be hereditary—are actually addiction-oriented side-effects to this Neolithic diet.

Today, there is a whole other kind of revolution at hand. On one hand you have the industrial revolution led by corporations and politicians whose hand in ruling is summed best by Henry Kissinger, who said, “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the oil controls the continents; who controls money can control the world.”

On the other hand, you have Revolutionary researchers and scientists who have unlocked the secret path to wellness. What is this secret? Basically, it’s the truth, and the truth is that we are essentially animals living in a state of denial of our addictions to sugar and carbohydrates.

The chemical reactions that occur when we consume a plate of spaghetti, an energy drink, or a bowl of ice cream are not far cry from a dose of morphine. I would argue addiction to sugar is harder to break than that of heroin.

The food industry understands this concept makes for a tremendous marketing scheme. This marketing scheme is based on a monstrous surplus of grains and sugars. Actually, aside from disease, one of the first things Columbus brought with him was the sugar cane. Next would be slavery.

So profiteers have this surplus on hand and know how to use this knowledge of chemical reactions based on addictions and obsessions with immediate yet temporary (and quickly depleting) satisfaction to feed into our longing for comfort foods. This may be why so many of us have our cake and eat it too. Face it—we’re hooked!

Due to the relationship between business, marketing and human nature’s constant “pursuit of happiness” (which is brief and only fuels future cravings), the ruling class is still encouraging us to “eat cake,” while many suffer from diabetes and various other diseases. I attribute this to European cuisine.

One could argue that “our pursuit of happiness” and our addictions to sugar and grains (found to be the culprit that drives anxiety) is in fact the driving force of our consumer-based economy. An economy that is unabashedly based on capitalizing on fear and causing us to consume so-called comfort foods that weaken our immune system, rot out teeth, cause depression, and make us addicted, obsessive-compulsive, self-absorbed beasts of burden—effectively leading us to become the driving force behind the medical industry and capitalism as a whole.

The best things in life are free and shared!

Once upon a time, before man was tricked into toiling in the fields of the bourgeoisie, from the cradle to the grave, man could hunt and gather to provide sustenence for his family and comrades. Scientists like Dr. Loren Cordain and Robb Wolf have found that our ancestors were taller, stronger, and had much better teeth than modern men with less disease. This was due to the diet that suits us best, the one American Indians have evolved on for eons: the tried and true Paleolithic Diet based on meat and vegetables and the occasional bug or two.

So what were the comfort foods of that bygone era? Of course, it must be the roast! Vive la flamme! Vive la Révolution!"

I find it interesting that prior to those times, regular meals (especially in Medieval times) consisted of largely animals done up in new and exotic ways, such as crude re-animation (like reconstructing the animal for table display--standing peacocks in full tail spray were typical), along with whatever other foods were in season and abundant, and bread/grains were NOT a centerpiece or mainstay of the diet. Bread was used as a paper towel rather than a food, as in "bread trenchers" or a plate-liner for sopping up juices and gravies, or round loaves used as bowls for stews and soups rather than eaten alone.

Grains were farmed. yes, but grain was used for tax payment--a currency--and this grain was used to make the non-essential bread napkins and bread bowls, then fed to pigs as scrap.

Grains took on a more center role in meals only when animal meat wasn't readily available, and it took on a form of convenience as the "go-to" food over the centuries. People started eating their (bread) plates and bowls because there was nothing else, or not much else, and to eat this as well as use it to pay taxes? More growing! Faster growing!

Animals were migrating elsewhere, becoming over-hunted and over-fished, becoming too expensive for common consumption, and all this eventually led to today's horror-show factory farms (where nobody migrates, nobody gets hunted, and nobody gets too expensive thanks to subsidies).

Autism Gets a New Definition

2012-01-21T06:02:00.001-05:00

From the NY Times. Ah--another method of cost-cutting just in time for Obamacare...ignore symptoms and discount frailties. This one's obviously a handout to the health insurance companies, Medicaid, and other government-based medical service programs.

"Proposed changes in the definition of autism would sharply reduce the skyrocketing rate at which the disorder is diagnosed and might make it harder for many people who would no longer meet the criteria to get health, educational and social services, a new analysis suggests.

The definition is now being reassessed by an expert panel appointed by the American Psychiatric Association, which is completing work on the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the first major revision in 17 years. The D.S.M., as the manual is known, is the standard reference for mental disorders, driving research, treatment and insurance decisions. Most experts expect that the new manual will narrow the criteria for autism; the question is how sharply.

The results of the new analysis are preliminary, but they offer the most drastic estimate of how tightening the criteria for autism could affect the rate of diagnosis. For years, many experts have privately contended that the vagueness of the current criteria for autism and related disorders like Asperger syndrome was contributing to the increase in the rate of diagnoses — which has ballooned to one child in 100, according to some estimates.

The psychiatrists’ association is wrestling with one of the most agonizing questions in mental health — where to draw the line between unusual and abnormal — and its decisions are sure to be wrenching for some families. At a time when school budgets for special education are stretched, the new diagnosis could herald more pitched battles. Tens of thousands of people receive state-backed services to help offset the disorders’ disabling effects, which include sometimes severe learning and social problems, and the diagnosis is in many ways central to their lives. Close networks of parents have bonded over common experiences with children; and the children, too, may grow to find a sense of their own identity in their struggle with the disorder.

The proposed changes would probably exclude people with a diagnosis who were higher functioning. “I’m very concerned about the change in diagnosis, because I wonder if my daughter would even qualify,” said Mary Meyer of Ramsey, N.J. A diagnosis of Asperger syndrome was crucial to helping her daughter, who is 37, gain access to services that have helped tremendously. “She’s on disability, which is partly based on the Asperger’s; and I’m hoping to get her into supportive housing, which also depends on her diagnosis.”

The new analysis, presented Thursday at a meeting of the Icelandic Medical Association, opens a debate about just how many people the proposed diagnosis would affect.

The changes would narrow the diagnosis so much that it could effectively end the autism surge, said Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, director of the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine and an author of the new analysis of the proposal. “We would nip it in the bud.”

Experts working for the Psychiatric Association on the manual’s new definition — a group from which Dr. Volkmar resigned early on — strongly disagree about the proposed changes’ impact. “I don’t know how they’re getting those numbers,” Catherine Lord, a member of the task force working on the diagnosis, said about Dr. Volkmar’s report.

Previous projections have concluded that far fewer people would be excluded under the change, said Dr. Lord, director of the Institute for Brain Development, a joint project of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Columbia University Medical Center and the New York Center for Autism.

Disagreement about the effect of the new definition will almost certainly increase scrutiny of the finer points of the psychiatric association’s changes to the manual. The revisions are about 90 percent complete and will be final by December, according to Dr. David J. Kupfer, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and chairman of the task force making the revisions.

At least a million children and adults have a diagnosis of autism or a related disorder, like Asperger syndrome or “pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified,” also known as P.D.D.-N.O.S. People with Asperger’s or P.D.D.-N.O.S. endure some of the same social struggles as those with autism but do not meet the definition for the full-blown version. The proposed change would consolidate all three diagnoses under one category, autism spectrum disorder, eliminating Asperger syndrome and P.D.D.-N.O.S. from the manual. Under the current criteria, a person can qualify for the diagnosis by exhibiting 6 or more of 12 behaviors; under the proposed definition, the person would have to exhibit 3 deficits in social interaction and communication and at least 2 repetitive behaviors, a much narrower menu.

Dr. Kupfer said the changes were an attempt to clarify these variations and put them under one name. Some advocates have been concerned about the proposed changes.

“Our fear is that we are going to take a big step backward,” said Lori Shery, president of the Asperger Syndrome Education Network. “If clinicians say, ‘These kids don’t fit the criteria for an autism spectrum diagnosis,’ they are not going to get the supports and services they need, and they’re going to experience failure.”

Mark Roithmayr, president of the advocacy organization Autism Speaks, said that the proposed diagnosis should bring needed clarity but that the effect it would have on services was not yet clear. “We need to carefully monitor the impact of these diagnostic changes on access to services and ensure that no one is being denied the services they need,” Mr. Roithmayr said by e-mail. “Some treatments and services are driven solely by a person’s diagnosis, while other services may depend on other criteria such as age, I.Q. level or medical history.”

In the new analysis, Dr. Volkmar, along with Brian Reichow and James McPartland, both at Yale, used data from a large 1993 study that served as the basis for the current criteria. They focused on 372 children and adults who were among the highest functioning and found that overall, only 45 percent of them would qualify for the proposed autism spectrum diagnosis now under review.

The focus on a high-functioning group may have slightly exaggerated that percentage, the authors acknowledge. The likelihood of being left out under the new definition depended on the original diagnosis: about a quarter of those identified with classic autism in 1993 would not be so identified under the proposed criteria; about three-quarters of those with Asperger syndrome would not qualify; and 85 percent of those with P.D.D.-N.O.S. would not.

Dr. Volkmar presented the preliminary findings on Thursday. The researchers will publish a broader analysis, based on a larger and more representative sample of 1,000 cases, later this year. Dr. Volkmar said that although the proposed diagnosis would be for disorders on a spectrum and implies a broader net, it focuses tightly on “classically autistic” children on the more severe end of the scale. “The major impact here is on the more cognitively able,” he said.

Dr. Lord said that the study numbers are probably exaggerated because the research team relied on old data, collected by doctors who were not aware of what kinds of behaviors the proposed definition requires. “It’s not that the behaviors didn’t exist, but that they weren’t even asking about them — they wouldn’t show up at all in the data,” Dr. Lord said.

Dr. Volkmar acknowledged as much but said that problems transferring the data could not account for the large differences in rates."

More and more kids are getting recovery from this spectrum by parents getting them nutritional diagnostics--discovering and filling in for missing nutrients largely not acquired during pregnancy due to the mother's bad diet. The mother was depleted, and she created an even MORE depleted kid.

Sometimes the kids recover nearly 100%, and sometimes they don't get past 50%, but that 50% can be better than nothing!

Unfortunately, the damage from some depletions is so severe it cannot be reversed with dietary changes alone, if at all. Other depletions take years to replenish, and still others take just a few short months.

The trick seems to be getting the correct diagnosis, and correct diet, as early as possible, but even then, there aren't any promises. This tells adults they should be eating for baby even before there ever is a baby...good ol' epigenetics again.

I'm no doctor, but my head is telling me (perhaps wrongly) that autism is a mild-to-moderate level of retardation (sorry) caused by our processed food and junk food world. Parents start out as kids with their own genetic problems and timebombs, then grow up and become adults, are working more, eating more bad diets, subjected to more and more pollutants (inside and out), putting children off until eggs and sperm are older and degraded, and it all sounds like the perfect witch's cauldron of brew to create this kind of malady from. I may be entirely wrong, but it sure sounds like another step in our de-evolutionary process--both physically and politically.

Book Recommendation--Throw Them All Out

2012-01-20T12:57:00.000-05:00

A political and Wall St. interlude--sorry, but it's the silly season again, and you need to know where the silliness originates from, and what they're doing with it. You also need to know to help you make an informed--TRULY informed--decision about who to vote for, and what they're likely going to do once they get elected.

Throw Them All Out by Peter Schweitzer.

What I feel we ought to do with every ballot we get our hands on:

Now you know why I've been writing in John Stewart and Stephen Colbert (before it became cool) for the past 4 elections or so--this time, I'm going to use Neil DeGrasse Tyson in place of John.

Small Nutritional Changes Can Make a Big Difference

2012-01-20T07:53:00.001-05:00

From FW Daily News (IN). Sound general dieting advice here.

"Small changes in your diet can increase your energy levels, improve your hand-eye coordination, help with weight loss and even improve the vibrancy of your skin. The following are common nutritional mistakes that are easily fixed with a little planning. Learn how a few changes can improve your overall wellbeing.

Skipping breakfast

Avoid skipping meals, especially breakfast. The best way to keep your metabolism high is to eat consistent meals. Your body needs to fuel up before activities.

Remember to eat for the future, not for the past. When the body has consistent meals, it avoids going into starvation mode. Even though most of us have plenty of food available, the body reads inconsistency of meal timing as a means to kick into survival mode.

Instead of using stored body fat, it will hold on to it. The metabolism slows to conserve energy and muscle is often used for fuel. Skipping breakfast not only slows your metabolism making it harder to lose body fat, but it also decreases your hand-eye coordination. To feel your best, start eating breakfast and make better choices throughout the day. Also, stop eating 2-3 hours before bedtime so you are sure to wake up hungry. If eating before bed is a necessity, choose light, easily digestible foods.

Replacing meals with energy bars or drinks

Although energy bars or drinks can be convenient, they are still processed foods that aren’t providing you with proper nutrition.

Even though some bars are better than others, the dried fruits and granolas are really high in sugar. They often contain fortified nutrients, meaning that the items are not naturally containing certain nutrients, but they are added to boast health benefits.

There is just no substitute for nutrients coming from real foods like vegetables, fruits, proteins and complex carbohydrates. Reach for real food when possible and try not to use energy bars or meal replacement shakes as a staple in your diet. Choose food closest to its natural state for the most nutritional value.

Trusting nutrient claims

Be aware of how much you buy because of a nutrient claim on a package that boasts health. Most items claiming something aren’t really that healthy.

Common nutrient claims include: “fat free,” “0 grams trans-fat,” “no high fructose corn syrup,” or “made with whole grains.”

While these claims are things we do need to be aware of, most are still made with ingredients that offer little to no nutritional value. Look at ingredient lists to determine what nutrition the food really has to offer. Just because a brand of cookies claim to only have 100 calories and no trans-fat doesn’t mean it’s healthy. It’s still a cookie that is made with white flour and sugar.

It’s best to avoid as many packaged foods as possible, no matter what they claim. Add more vegetables into your diet and reap the benefits of whole foods nutrition.

Not drinking enough water

Not drinking enough water can lead to dehydration and every system in your body relies on water to function. Water helps flush out toxins in vital organs and helps carry nutrients to cells.

According to the Mayo Clinic, even mild dehydration can drain your energy and make you tired. Although each individual requires a different amount of water according to several factors, the easiest way to start is to drink eight 8 ounce glasses of water daily. This means plain water, not flavored waters. Eliminate pop (diet or not) and sugary energy drinks and limit coffee intake to increase consumption of water. Getting enough water also helps with digestion, weight loss, headaches and much more. Try using a reusable bottle that you can take with you anywhere."

High Protein Diets

2012-01-20T07:47:00.001-05:00

From Food Product Design.

"From the Atkins diet to some forms of the Paleo diet, high-protein diets are common for weight loss. Such diets restrict carbohydrate intake so the body goes into ketosis, a metabolic state where it burns its own fat for fuel. How effective are these and what are the parameters?

Ketosis is achieved by limiting carbohydrate intake, resulting in decreased glucose availability, favoring fatty-acid oxidation. Fat is converted into fatty acids and ketone bodies, leading to increased blood ketones that serve as a fuel source for cells that cannot use fatty acids for energy. As an alternate fuel source, ketones attenuate muscle-tissue breakdown for energy production (Cleveland Clinical Journal of Medicine, 2002; 69:849-962; Nutrition and Traumatic Brain Injury, National Academies Press, 2011).

A ketogenic diet is one that is low in carbohydrate, though there is no universal standard for the carbohydrate, protein or fat content. However, studies have outlined varying amounts of carbohydrate to induce ketosis. One residential study in obese men used an ad libitum diet containing 4% carbohydrate, 66% protein and 30% fat, which induced ketosis after one to three days (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2008; 87:44-55). Other researchers defined a low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet as one containing a maximum of 50 grams of carbohydrate per day regardless of fat and protein content (Current Atherosclerosis Reports, 2003; S:476-483). And, the traditional ketogenic diet, used as a treatment for pediatric epilepsy, is described as one that contains a fat-to-protein ratio of 4:1. Overall, studies and clinical experience suggest there is a maximum dietary carbohydrate threshold of 65 to 180 grams per day to initiate lipolysis and ketosis (American Journal of Physiology, 1992; 262:E631-E636).

Low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets are a viable dietary approach to obesity because ketosis can decrease hunger levels and subsequent calorie intake (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2008; 87:44-55). In addition, a traditional ketogenic diet, marked by its high fat content and reduced carbohydrate and protein content, reduces serum insulin levels, leading to a low insulin/glucagon ratio and lipolysis. Finally, studies show low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets decrease fasting blood glucose levels, blood triglycerides and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol in obese adults (Current Atherosclerosis Reports, 2003; S:476-483; American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2008; 87:44-55).

Nutrition pitfalls

Because ketogenic diets are low in carbohydrate, they may fall short on fiber, vitamins A, C and E, thiamin, folic acid, iron, calcium and magnesium (Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, 2002; 69:849-862; American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2010; 92:304-312; The American Journal of Cardiology, 2001; 88:59-61). However, to date, most studies on low-carbohydrate diets, including low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets, have included a multivitamin. In addition, some have also included sodium and potassium supplements (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2007;8 6:276-284).

And though research suggests that ketogenic diets are safe in the short term, they should be followed only under medical supervision (The New England Journal of Medicine, 2008; 359:221-241)."

This is the processed food industry talking to itself--not really for our information. We already know all of this. Judging by all the footnotes, there IS science enough to send the food industry (and the diet industry in general) in a new direction.

One thing I have to say about all this dry blather is: "Because ketogenic diets are low in carbohydrate, they may fall short on fiber, vitamins A, C and E, thiamin, folic acid, iron, calcium and magnesium (Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, 2002; 69:849-862; American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2010; 92:304-312; The American Journal of Cardiology, 2001; 88:59-61). However, to date, most studies on low-carbohydrate diets, including low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets, have included a multivitamin."

Did anybody check the NDB to see what OTHER foods provide these nutrients and fiber besides the stuck-record noise of grains, beans, potatoes, and dairy?

Everybody says to eat more veggies, but nobody seems to take their nutrition (or their fiber content) into account.

The Indoor Pollution Threat You Never Knew Existed

2012-01-19T08:22:00.001-05:00

From ABC News.

Larger image here.

"Americans spend 90 percent of their time indoors, but have you ever thought about the purity of the air that you are breathing as you sit inside your home, office or even a restaurant?

Indoor air quality is considered to be the fourth greatest pollution threat to Americans by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Even if you can never see, and can’t always smell, the chemicals inside your home, they are there. It comes from cleaning products, dry-cleaning chemicals, plastic products like computer keyboards, furniture, paint, carpeting and more.

With the help of the Greenguard Environmental Institute, part of Underwriters Laboratories, “Good Morning America” set out to investigate exactly what kind of threat indoor air pollution posed to the average person by setting up a child’s nursery with a new crib, changing table, rocker and decorations.

Seven days of testing later, the results were in. The air in our new nursery contained 300 different chemicals — compared to just two right outside the same house. The EPA confirms that indoor air is usually more polluted than outdoor air.

The rocker in the nursery contained seven times California’s recommended level of formaldehyde, a chemical known to cause cancer. The crib mattress gave off more than 100 different chemicals, including industrial solvents and alcohols. Meanwhile, the paint used on the nursery’s walls contained chemical gases at five times the recommended limit.

Yet, none of the products used in the “GMA” testing were in violation of any law. Fortunately for consumers, there are easy, practical steps you can take today to minimize you and your family’s exposure to your home’s chemicals.

Look for certifications. Certifications for low chemical emissions are in their infancy, but the more people who buy and request certified products, the more there will be. Greenguard, part of Underwriters Laboratories, certifies furniture, paint, and other office and household products. Scientific Certification Systems is another certifier. And, for carpet, you can look for the “Green Label Plus” created by the Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI).

Choose unscented products. Many manufacturers make both scented and unscented versions of their products. Always choose the unscented ones.

Avoid pressed wood. Pressed wood and wood composite materials are manufactured using strong glues that often contain volatile organic compounds.

Unwrap. When you buy new furniture, unpackage it outdoors and let it sit outside for at least one week to air out. Similarly, make sure to unwrap your dry-cleaning outdoors before bringing it into your house.

Ventilate. Try to paint in the spring and fall when you can comfortably leave your windows open for ventilation. Same goes for new furniture or cabinetry. Keep your windows open for a couple of weeks, if possible.

Paint first. It’s a good idea to paint your home first, then ventilate for several days before installing new carpeting and other textiles. That’s because these products can absorb chemicals from the paint and re-release them into the air over time.

Buy used. Chemical emissions are at their highest when a product is brand new, so one solution is to buy used furniture that has already off-gassed in somebody else’s house. (Unless that used furniture has just been refinished.) Just be careful, because you want the latest safety features in things like baby cribs. And you should look for furniture built after 1978, when lead paint was banned."

If you care about quality at all (air or otherwise), you're going to buy used, old, and maybe antique--they're actually more quality for the money, and made well before all these chemicals were invented. As far as carpet goes, anything sold as stain-resistant or stain-proof is made from recycled 2-liter plastic soda bottles, and we all know what's in THOSE...uh-huh...the dreaded BPA and all the other things that went into the plastic itself, so take a tip from the greenie-weenies and get natural-fiber carpets, like wool, or dump the carpet altogether and go hardwood or tile.

Thanks to a number of websites, you already know what to do about cleaning chemicals--check Google if unsure. Homemade recipes abound.

Low VOC paint abounds at the home centers and paint stores.

When it comes to nurseries, baby items are real gluttons for punishment because of the fireproof item laws, so when outfitting a nursery (and yes, I mean right down to diapers, Boppy pillows, and toys), look for greenie-weenie-approved stuff to minimize chemicals in baby's room. Tiny lungs need all the help they can get!

...and all aged lungs need continuing help throughout life to perform their job for maximum longevity, so the indoor air-quality concerns don't stop at the nursery, and don't stop when children are small, or even if there ARE children in the house--pets also need this kind of treatment, as well as older folks, and you, too.

Obesity Rates Appear to Be Leveling Off in America

2012-01-18T07:59:00.001-05:00

From the L.A. Times.

"After a 30-year, record-shattering rise, U.S. obesity rates appear to be stabilizing.

New statistics cited in two papers report only a slight uptick since 2005 — leaving public health experts tentatively optimistic that they may be gaining some ground in their efforts to slim down the nation.

Many obesity specialists say the new data, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are a sign that efforts to address the obesity problem — such as placing nutritional information on food packaging and revising school lunch menus — are beginning to have an effect in a country where two-thirds of adults and one-third of children and teens are overweight or obese.

"A good first step is to stop the increase, so I think this is very positive news," said James O. Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. "It may suggest our efforts are starting to make a difference. The bad news is we still have obesity rates that are just astronomical."

Historically, there was little change in Americans' sizes from 1960 through 1980. But obesity rates soared through the end of the century, for reasons that are still debated.

The new studies reflect 2009-10 data, the most recent available, from the government's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which examined 6,000 adults and 4,111 children, measuring their body mass index, among other items. Though a number of organizations measure obesity rates, the survey's data are considered among the most accurate.

The statistics showed that more than 35% of U.S. adults (78 million people) are obese, defined as having a body mass index of 30 or greater. That is similar to the 2005-06 rate. Calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared, the BMI is not a perfect measure of fatness but is still viewed as the gold standard in assessing population-wide trends.

An additional third of adults are overweight, the analysis found, also similar to the rates in 2005-06.

Likewise, data in children and teenagers from birth to age 19 reflect little change from the survey's 2007-08 data, according to the reports, which were published online Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Almost 17% are obese and 32% are overweight or obese.

But though obesity rates may be flattening overall, increases and disparities can still be found in specific racial and ethnic groups.

Rates have risen to 58.5% among non-Hispanic black women and to nearly 45% among Mexican American women since 2004, for example. And among children and teens, about 21% of Hispanics and 24% of blacks are obese compared with 14% of non-Hispanic whites.

The report also found that gender differences appear to be fading, with percentages of overweight males catching up with or even overtaking those of females.

Among males under 19, obesity rose from 14% in 1999-2000 to 18.6% in the latest survey; in adult men, the rate jumped from 27.5% to 35.5%.

In addition, more adult men are now overweight or obese as compared with women — 73.9% to 63.7%. Severe obesity remains more common in women, however.

"We found no indication that the prevalence of obesity is declining in any group," the authors wrote in one of the papers, which looked at obesity rates among adults.

It's not clear why obesity rates are still rising in some groups while stabilizing in others, said Cynthia L. Ogden, a coauthor of the two papers and a researcher at the CDC. But the best bet of some leading obesity experts is that obesity prevention initiatives in some pockets of the country are paying off.

The Let's Move! program founded by First Lady Michelle Obama has raised national awareness through actions such as persuading Wal-Mart to stock more healthful foods and working with professional sports organizations to create public service announcements encouraging children to exercise.

Certain states, including California, have made obesity prevention a major health goal through measures to reduce access to sugary drinks and high-calorie, unhealthful snacks in schools.

A UCLA study released in November showed obesity rates ticking down in some parts of the state between 2005 and 2010, including a decline of 2.5% in Los Angeles County. And research published last month found obesity rates in New York City children fell 5% between the 2006-07 and 2010-11 school years.

"The places that are making serious changes in the schools and communities can take hope that these changes are starting to have an effect," said Dr. James S. Marks, senior vice president and director of the health group for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a private organization aimed at improving health of Americans.

But, he added, a reduction in obesity rates will probably take many more years and more than the smattering of programs and initiatives so far underway.

The best hope for lowering rates, he said, is to stop people from getting fat to begin with: Experience and studies show that it is difficult for obese adults to permanently shed fat and that children who are already overweight or obese are highly likely to be overweight as adults.

Only one prescription anti-obesity medication is currently approved for long-term use, and researchers have stalled in their efforts to find more. Moreover, most obesity is untreated or under-treated.

Since obesity contributes to joint damage as well as diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers, the epidemic truly is a national crisis, said Patrick M. O'Neil, president of the Obesity Society and director of the weight management center at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

"Even if the statistics stay at current prevalence rates, I see little good news in that," O'Neil said.

People should look to their own lives and individual experiences, and strive for progress by eating more healthfully and exercising more, he said.

"On a population basis you are trying to turn an aircraft carrier, and it's going to take a long time for it to change," he said."

Drug Companies Will Have to Start Reporting Payments to Doctors

2012-01-18T07:12:00.001-05:00

From HealthDay News (part of a news roundup).

"The Obama administration plans to require drug companies to disclose payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment.

The new standards, being issued under the new health care reform law, are meant to prevent medical conflicts of interest, reduce medical costs and improve patient care, The New York Times reported.

The disclosures will likely increase the chances that instead of making decisions based on their own financial interests, doctors will make decisions in the best interests of patients, the newspaper said.

Previous research has found that drug company payments to doctors can influence treatment decisions and contribute to higher health care costs by promoting the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices, the Times reported.

Many doctors receive payments from drug and medical device companies each year -- sometimes totaling hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars -- in exchange for giving lectures and providing advice to the companies, the newspaper reported."

What about non-cash payments, like an all-expense-paid invitation to a posh golf resort...you know, the kind of thing politicians are known for accepting in lieu of actual cash?

Why We're Still Using Antibiotics on Livestock

2012-01-17T13:44:00.001-05:00

From the Atlantic. Laziness?

"Over the past several weeks, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been in the news for its stance on antibiotic use in farm animals. Yet instead of making good on its 1977 promise to limit these drugs in livestock, the agency is moving in the opposite direction. The latest developments reveal that the FDA is actively trying to avoid protecting Americans from a known health hazard that the agency itself acknowledges.

In court papers (PDF) filed this week, the FDA:

Acknowledged that scientists have long warned about antibiotic use: "In April 1970, the Commissioner established a scientific task force to review the use of antibiotic drugs in animal feeds. In 1972, that task force published a report acknowledging that the use of antimicrobials in food-producing animals was associated with the development of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria."

Repeatedly confirmed the threat from antibiotics: "A series of additional studies were conducted by other government agencies and nongovernmental organizations during the 1990s, all of which generally supported FDA's concerns regarding the public health threat posed by antimicrobial resistance." And "a series of additional studies were conducted by other government agencies and non-governmental organizations during the 1990s, all of which generally supported FDA's concerns regarding the public health threat posed by antimicrobial resistance."

Said that use of antibiotics in farm animals should be limited: "The use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals should be limited to those uses that are considered necessary for assuring animal health."

Anyone who has ever watched a child recover from strep throat or a parent rebound from pneumonia knows the healing power of antibiotics. Yet over the last few decades, we have been squandering the power of these medicines.

Roughly 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to healthy farm animals to foster rapid growth and make up for unhygienic living conditions. Many bacteria that live on animals adapt and transfer to humans, spreading superbugs that are often resistant to treatment.

For more than 35 years, the FDA has recognized that giving antibiotics to farm animals poses a risk to human health, yet the agency has done almost nothing to stop it. Indeed, it has mastered the art of making inaction look like action. Last May, NRDC and our partners sued the FDA to prompt it to take action. Instead, the agency retrenched.

It started by claiming the livestock industry could police itself. In our lawsuit, we asked the FDA to finally rule on two citizen petitions -- one filed 12 years ago, the other six years ago -- urging the agency to stop the use of antibiotics in healthy animals. In November, the FDA announced that although it shares concerns that the use of antibiotics to make animals grow faster is dangerous for humans, it would deny the petition because it was pursuing an alternative strategy.

This "alternative strategy" turns out to be just another name for the status quo. Instead of banning the use of antibiotics in healthy animals, the FDA is allowing the livestock industry to follow a voluntary approach. But we already know voluntary doesn't work. The FDA has been operating under that model since 1977, yet the practice has expanded exponentially over the years. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.

In December, the FDA tried to further justify its inaction by erasing the historic record. Back in 1977, the agency proposed to withdraw approval for the use of several antibiotics in animal feed based on findings published in two notices posted in the Federal Register. The notices containing the findings have been listed in the Federal Register for more than three decades. But just before Christmas a few weeks ago, the FDA pulled the notices. Soon after it buried its 35-year-old proposal, the agency tried to have it both ways. On January 5, it proposed banning off-label uses of a class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins on healthy livestock. That sounds like a step in the right direction, and the agency got some favorable press, but keep in mind that cephalosporins account for less than 0.25 percent of all antibiotics used in agriculture.

This tiny gesture reveals a fundamental problem within the FDA's position: The agency has never disputed the science proving that antibiotic use in healthy animals is a health risk, and yet it still refuses to take bold action -- action we believe it is legally obligated to take.

In its official response to NRDC's lawsuit (PDF) earlier this week, the FDA repeatedly confirmed the threat, as noted in those bullet points above. Like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and other medical experts, the FDA knows that giving healthy pigs, cows, and chickens some of humankind's most potent drugs is a dangerous risk.

It is well past time for the agency to do something with that knowledge. Many countries -- including all 27 members of the EU -- have successfully stopped using antibiotics for growth promotion, while protecting food prices and increasing food production. Now the United States must do the same, and NRDC will continue pushing the FDA to lead the way."

This accomplishes two things for the government:

1. It still enables them to use cattle-doping as a means of population control, and
2. Since farmers, ranchers, and food processors make sizable political contributions, this allows politicians to pay back for those contributions--after all, that's what they're there for.

...and they wonder why meat sales are dwindling! Why don't they take a look over the fence to see what Farmer Green's NOT doing to his livestock, and why we're buying IT instead?

For a Brief Moment, I Thought BJ's Warehouse Store Had an Epiphany

2012-01-17T09:59:00.002-05:00

I did some shopping there, and happened to push my cart (loaded with 40 lb. cat litter boxes) past a freezer section facing out in to the center of the store--it was full of boxes of what I thought would make terrific Paleo convenience foods: bacon-wrapped scallops, bacon-wrapped chicken wings, and bacon-wrapped beef short ribs.

My cart screeched to a halt, and in I went to investigate further. After perusing the ingredients list, I determined the bacon was the largest culprit in the scallops box, and the beef and chicken wing sources, along with the bacon, were culprits in the other offerings.

Releasing the parking brake from my cart, I signaled and moved back out into the traffic flow toward the checkout. So close, and yet so far...had someone done this with ORGANIC, WILD, and/or PASTURED sources of meat, along with ORGANIC, NITRATE-FREE BACON, this would've been an altogether different post.

I suppose the scallops would be alright if you removed THEIR bacon and added your own, but I'm not an expert on scallops.

So maybe you've noticed I do a lot of shopping with loads of cat litter in my cart--why do I do this? Three reasons:

1. Exercise--there's no lawn to mow, and we have no snow this year

2. I have cats

3. My trial membership at BJ's (which sells the cheapest-price-per-pound cat litter) runs out at the end of February, so I'm stockpiling until I get another trial membership chance--this "trial membership" thing has been going on seasonally for about 5 years now. Why buy the cow when you're only interested in the milk and maybe the internal organs (figuratively speaking)?

Diet Books Dumped in U.K. Protest at Parliament

2012-01-17T08:16:00.002-05:00

From the WA Post. No mention of the Paleo Diet or Primal Blueprint books.

“There’s not a single part of my body that I’d want to change, even if I could,” a woman commented to me the other night at dinner.

“Liar,” I wanted to say back.

It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with the tenor of her remark. We were discussing the ongoing breast implant scandal in the United Kingdom, which has the government and private medical clinics here squabbling over who should pay to replace faulty silicone breast implants: the companies that put them in, or the government that certified their safety.

My dinner partner correctly observed that the real culprit in the scandal was body image: the idea sold to all of us that we’re meant to look a certain way. And the horrific lengths to which we go — vomiting, starving ourselves, paying inordinate amounts of money to plastic surgeons to add or subtract a curve — to comply with that ideal.

But I don’t really think there’s a single one of us — certainly not female — who hasn’t fallen prey to the lures of an Atkins Diet, a Slim Fast regime or a Weight Watchers program at some point. I have one friend who couldn’t contain her delight when she discovered that her anti-depressant doubled as a dieting pill. “A twofer!” she exclaimed to me giddily over the phone.

Which is why I was heartened to learn about today’s anti-dieting march in front of the British Parliament. Spearheaded by a campaign called Ditching Dieting, the protest is intended to highlight “the toxic nature of diets to our physical and mental health.” And what better way to do so than by encouraging women to bring along diet plans, slimming magazines, calorie counters, and any other dieting gimmicks they’ve amassed over the years and dump them in a hazardous waste bin outside Parliament?

Love it.

The demonstration is timed to coincide with an ongoing parliamentary inquiry into body image in the United Kingdom, including the problems of anorexia, obesity and self-harm. Over the past few months, parliamentarians have been grilling diet companies, psychologists, advertisers and ministers on how to tackle the problem. At today’s hearing, groups such as Weight Watchers will be presenting their side of the story.

In part, this protest is meant to attack such groups for faulty advertising. Although one in three people in the United Kingdom strives constantly to lose weight, research from the United States shows that only 5 percent of dieters manage to keep the weight off permanently.

If today’s protest were merely about the efficacy of diet plans, I’d be far less sympathetic. But the message behind the protests is much broader and much more global than that. At a recent summit of Endangered Species — the organization that is sponsoring Ditching Dieting — writer Susie Orbach put it this way: “We want every girl to grow up feeling a matter-of-fact right to her body without attack, without self-criticism, without being watchful.”

And not just girls in the West. The commercial exploitation of the body by the beauty, dieting, fashion and pharmaceutical industries, Orbach noted, is one of our most “nefarious exports.” “We can measure modernity,” she said, “through the rise of disordered eating in the developing world.”

The statistics speak for themselves. In the United Kingdom alone, half of girls and a third of boys age 14 have already dieted to change their body shape. My 8-year-old daughter gazes down at her stomach constantly, asking me if I think it has shrunk from the day before.

And, of course, it isn’t just kids. So-called midlife anorexia is on the rise. In the United States, treatment centers have seen a significant uptick in the number of women seeking treatment later in life — from their 30s to their 60s. I just learned that a childhood friend of mine who was hospitalized for anorexia in junior high has had to be re-hospitalized in her mid-40s.

So I salute those women gathered outside Westminster today tossing “Enter the Zone” into the rubbish heap.

I only wish I could burn Jenny Craig in effigy alongside them."

This coming from a country who at one time believed the obesity epidemic was caused by cheese consumption! The fact that they're all mushroomed-kept in the dark and fed shit-doesn't help any.

The nanny state--gotta love it! All those books dumped also represent the marketing susceptibility of the average Brit.

Are 50's Moms Responsible for Today's Obesity Epidemic?

2012-01-16T10:40:00.003-05:00

From Mother Nature Network. No, it's the processed food industry, and it goes further back than the 50's--all the way to the Depression.

"Over the years, I've seen a lot of fingers pointed when it comes to figuring out the root cause of today's skyrocketing obesity rates. Is it the schools? Parents? Television? Fast-food restaurants? The health care system? Some combination of all of the above? Or maybe there is some other source out there that researchers have not yet pinpointed.

That's what Melinda Sothern is banking on. At 55, Sothern is a leading fitness and nutrition expert at Louisiana State University. And according to her theory, today's obesity rate is less about the choices that Americans are making today and more about the choices that young mothers made, or didn't make, in the post-war 1950s. If she's right, it may very well make reproductive-age women the central focus of America's efforts to lose weight.

Sothern doesn't deny that a sedentary lifestyle and fast-food addiction will cause a person to gain weight. But according to her research, America's obesity problem began in the 1980s, after a generation of children were raised by mothers who smoked, turned their noses up at breastfeeding and restricted their weight during many, closely spaced pregnancies.

"It was the evil '50s. A perfect recipe for obesity," she said in a recent interview with the Star Tribune.

If she's right, then Sothern suggests that the key to reducing obesity has less to do with teaching folks about diet and exercise than it does about making sure that pregnant mothers are in optimal health while their babies are growing and developing in the womb and that those mothers choose to breastfeed after their babies are born. One of her suggestions: women who are significantly overweight should be discouraged from having babies until they shed pounds.

It's an interesting theory to say the least, but I worry that it will put even more pressure on moms to be "perfect" while pregnant. What do you think?"

I believe it was the introduction of convenience foods (canned, boxed, whatever) that started during the Depression and ran through the war and rationing, which only helped pervade it into two countries. As soon as Grandma (or great-Grandma) stopped eating farmed foods in favor of canned or frozen ones, that's when the trouble started. When our fat and meat got severely limited during the war, we got shifted to sugar- and starch-laden foods to make up for it. As the convenience ramped up, so did the health issues. As lobbying ramped up, so did the political reliance on faulty health science.

Oh, and as far as food rationing goes, we've been doing it since the Revolutionary War, switching to grain- and starch-based foods so the soldiers could have the meat and fat. Check any wartime cookbook from that era and see for yourself--Google Books has plenty of them on file. The difference is that BEFORE, WE WENT BACK TO EATING MEATS AND FATS AFTER THE WAR WAS OVER, and this time we didn't.

There--did I miss anything? The war's over, so why are we still clinging to our sugar and starches...and bad science? Oh yeah--politics. If we're all stuffed and ill-functioning for generations from too much sugar and starch at the cellular level, we become easily-manipulated and easy-to-control sheeple, which is what the political class wants in this country...as witnessed by vegans and the "global warming" movement. Look at Steve Jobs and what a sugar- and starch-laden diet did for HIM!

Now the author of this article wants to throw in mandated birth control and eugenics on top of it...why not? You just know it's what's coming! "Only the physically and photogenically fit can breed." Sounds like something right out of East Germany, doesn't it?

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was buried somewhere in Obamacare.

The ONLY things I agree with is her request for optimal health in pregnancy, and more breastfeeding. Blame everyone from the government (for succumbing to lobbying without valid scientific proof) to Jane Fonda/Gloria Steinham (for the Women's Lib movement) to ConAgra/Monsanto/Cargill (processed foods) to the death of Jack LaLanne (exercise guru) for the rest of it if you want to. Technology put the icing on an already-bad cake by making life comfy, cozy, and movement-free.

Epigenomics--A Turning Point in Our Understanding of Heredity

2012-01-16T09:46:00.001-05:00

From Scientific American.

"In a study published in late 2011 in Nature, Stanford University geneticist Anne Brunet and colleagues described a series of experiments that caused nematodes raised under the same environmental conditions to experience dramatically different lifespans. Some individuals were exceptionally long-lived, and their descendants, through three generations, also enjoyed long lives. Clearly, the longevity advantage was inherited. And yet, the worms, both short- and long-lived, were genetically identical.

This type of finding—an inherited difference that cannot be explained by variations in genes themselves—has become increasingly common, in part because scientists now know that genes are not the only authors of inheritance. There are ghostwriters, too. At first glance, these scribes seem quite ordinary—methyl, acetyl, and phosphoryl groups, clinging to proteins associated with DNA, or sometimes even to DNA itself, looking like freeloaders at best. Their form is far from the elegant tendrils of DNA that make up genes, and they are fleeting, in a sense, erasable, very unlike genes, which have been passed down through generations for millions of years. But they do lurk, and silently, they exert their power, modifying DNA and controlling genes, influencing the chaos of nucleic and amino acids. And it is for this reason that many scientists consider the discovery of these entities in the late 20th century as a turning point in our understanding of heredity, as possibly one of the greatest revolutions in modern biology—the rise of epigenetics.

Epigenetics and the state of chromatin

In Brunet’s lab, epigenetic inheritance is a big deal. Their Nature paper was the first to describe the phenomenon as it applies to longevity across generations, a breakthrough that emerged out of their quest to better understand the role of chromatin in inheritance.

Chromatin is a compact fiber of proteins and DNA that exists in either a condensed or a relaxed state. It assumes its condensed form during cell division in order to facilitate the splitting of chromosomes for distribution to daughter cells. Segments of the fiber, however, may retain this form when a cell is not dividing, with the result that genes occurring in these segments are fixed in an inactive state. Other stretches of the fiber, on the other hand, relax and open to allow regulatory proteins to access the DNA and activate genes.

Certain epigenetic modifications, such as the binding of methyl groups to histone proteins, the bobbins around which DNA is wound for chromatin packaging, are responsible for holding the fiber in an open state. But modifications are dynamic. During development, for example, chemical moieties attach to and detach from histones or DNA in an orchestrated fashion, their fluid dance aiding the execution of important functions, such as the establishment of patterns of gene expression for different types of tissues and the silencing of parental genes, a phenomenon known as parental, or genomic, imprinting.

Modifications can also accumulate during an organism’s lifetime. Because some of these acquisitions may affect DNA passed through the germline (in eggs and sperm) and may not be beneficial, they are erased at the time of reproduction, and the chromatin is returned to its original state. The process is not faithful, however, so some modifications slip through. In this way, chromatin modifications in parent DNA that are not reprogrammed are transmitted to the next generation.

Epigenetic inheritance of longevity in nematodes

There is increasing evidence that epigenetic modifications are transgenerational (inherited through multiple generations) in a variety of species. Examples include coat color in mammals, eye color in Drosophila, symmetry in flowers, and now longevity in C. elegans. These findings are exciting and raise intriguing questions about the seemingly limitless nature of epigenetics.

But the work of teasing out epigenetic modifications and their effects is arduous. To uncover the involvement of methylation in nematode longevity, Brunet and colleagues began by assessing the lifespans of C. elegans that were deficient in one of three genes, ash-2, wdr-5, or set-2; decreased or absent expression of these genes previously had been found to increase longevity in the species. They then crossed nematodes with genetic deficiencies with nematodes of normal genetic composition, pairings that in typical Mendelian fashion yielded wild-type (genetically normal) individuals, as well as individuals carrying the genetic alterations. Measurements of longevity were recorded for each of these populations and were compared with those of control populations (wild-type nematodes descended from wild-type parents). The findings revealed that the controls lived an average lifespan, whereas wild-type nematodes genetically identical to the control population but descended from mutant parents lived 20 to 30 percent longer.

Thus, the genetic deficiencies, though not inherited, had effected some type of change that endowed the genetically normal offspring of mutants with the same length lifespan that the mutants themselves experienced. The change, the Stanford team deduced, was methylation.

The proteins encoded by ash-2, wdr-5 and set-2 are part of a histone methylation complex known as H3K4me3, which is found across species ranging from yeast to humans. But the mechanisms underlying the inheritance of longevity are not clear. As Brunet explained, “We did not observe a global decrease in H3K4me3 levels in genetically wild-type descendants from mutants that are deficient in H3K4me3. We interpret that as saying there is not a global dearth of H3K4me3 that is inherited epigenetically.” Thus, the team’s current model is that when the proteins are scarce or absent, H3K4me3 methylation is lost at specific locations in the genome, and longevity-associated modifications in chromatin state, or possibly other types of modifications (e.g., non-coding RNAs), are passed to the next generation.

Transgenerational inheritance of acquired characters in humans

Epigenetics has given life to Lamarckism and the previously discarded idea that characteristics acquired during an individual’s life are heritable. In fact, many scientists already have warmed up to this idea. “There seems to be a renewed acceptance for the Lamarckian concept (in limited cases),” Brunet said. “This could change our understanding of inheritance in that it would add another component, probably minor, but present, in addition to Mendelian genetics.”

It also adds another layer of significance to our daily lives. A number of environmental factors, from nutrients to temperature to chemicals, are capable of altering gene expression, and those factors that manage to penetrate germline chromatin and escape reprogramming could, in theory, be passed on to our children and possibly our grandchildren.

But while several studies have suggested that transgenerational epigenetic inheritance can occur in humans, actual evidence for it is scant. Among the more convincing cases thus far involves the synthetic estrogen compound diethylstilbestrol (DES), which was used in the mid-20th century to prevent miscarriages in pregnant women. DES, however, dramatically increases the risk of birth defects. It is also associated with an increased risk for vaginal and breast cancers in daughters and an increased risk of ovarian cancer in maternal granddaughters of women exposed to DES during pregnancy. Studies in mice have suggested that neonatal DES exposure causes abnormalities in the methylation of genes involved in uterine development and uterine cancer; in mice these abnormalities were still present two generations down the line, suggesting a transgenerational effect.

Given the elusive nature of inherited epigenetic modifications, it seems that, despite decades of investigation, scientists remain on the brink of understanding. The possibilities, however, seem endless, even with the constraint that, to be inherited, epigenetic modifications must affect gene expression in the germline, a feat that even genetic mutations rarely accomplish. But with the skyrocketing prevalence of conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and autism, which have no clear genetic etiology in the majority of cases, as Brunet pointed out, “It seems that all complex processes are affected by epigenetics.”

While scientists continue to search for definitive evidence of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in humans, the implications so far suggest that are our lifestyles and what we eat, drink, and breathe may directly affect the genetic health of our progeny."

Updated: Alert Over Dangerous Nutritional Advice (in U.K.)

2012-01-16T09:16:00.003-05:00

From the Yorkshire Post (U.K.). I knew the Brits were trying to kill off their excess population, but DAMN!

"Nutritional therapists are giving “dangerous” advice to patients, including those with cancer, according to a Which? investigation.

The consumer group said therapists are providing “expensive dietary advice that could seriously harm patients’ health”. It sent undercover investigators posing as patients to 15 consultations with nutritional therapists. All the nutritionists charged between £50 and £80 per visit.

The “patients” included a 46-year-old woman and another aged 40 recently diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the most common type of non-invasive breast cancer, a 56-year-old male and a 52-year-old woman complained of suffering serious fatigue for the last three months, and the final patient, a woman, 31, told nutritionists she had been trying to conceive for more than a year.

From the 15 visits, six were rated as “dangerous fails” by a Which? expert panel, which includes a GP. A further eight were rated as “fails” and only one was deemed a “borderline pass”.

One of the breast cancer sufferers was told by the nutritional therapist to delay the radiotherapy treatment recommended by her oncologist, saying they could rid the body of cancer through diet.

The therapist advised her to follow a no-sugar diet for three to six months, saying “cancer feeds off sugar. She claimed: “By cutting out sugar we have a better chance of the cancer going away”.

The expert panel concluded this was “highly irresponsible” and incorrect advice.

In another consultation, the woman trying for a baby was subjected to an examination of her iris and told she had “a bit of bowel toxicity” and a “leathery bowel”.

The expert panel said these are both meaningless terms.

The male patient with serious fatigue was told that if the course of treatment prescribed by the nutritionist made him ill, it showed the “treatment was working” and he should not contact his GP as they “wouldn’t understand”.

Several therapists also used unscientific tests.

Some therapists recommended unnecessary high-dose supplements costing up to £70 a month, which the panel said could have side effects, such as stomach pain and diarrhoea.

Which? executive director, Richard Lloyd, said: “Our research shows that not only were they a waste of money, but some of their recommendations could seriously harm people’s health.”

“This is largely a self-regulated industry where anyone can set up and practice as a nutritional therapist, meaning there is no real protection for consumers.

“While the majority of the therapists Which? visited were registered with the industry body, the British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy (BANT, our findings show that it is failing to police these practitioners effectively.”

Sian Burton, British Dietetic Association (BDA) vice chairman said: “It’s time to start 2012 with a clean slate and make it absolutely clear what the difference is between a dietician and a nutrition therapist.

“In a nutshell, members of the public should be aware that anybody, overnight, can set up shop as a nutrition therapist, with no qualifications and no regulatory body to monitor how they work.

“Registered dieticians working in the UK are educated to degree level and must be registered with the Health Professions Council (HPC) to ensure public safety by adhering to standards of professional training, performance and conduct.”

A Department of Health spokesman warned anyone seeking independent to only use those registered with The Association for Nutrition, who have passed properly accredited courses. The Department warned: “We do not recognise BANT as a regulatory body for nutrition scientists.”

Bant said in a statement it was dedicated to the advancement of nutrition science and that its members were bound by a strict code of ethics designed to protect patient interests."

It sounds perfectly acceptable to me to restrict your sugar intake to limit cancer growth while you await your 6 month-to-1 year appointment to see an actual doctor--what could it hurt? Oh, and you'd be surprised what an eye doctor can pick up about your health just form giving you an eye exam!

At least these people got seen by SOMEONE and not just left to rot in the streets waiting for their "someday" appointment...

UPDATE: Here's what our country's "official" cancer-fighting regimen says--would this too be considered bad advice in the U.K.?

Why is Physical Activity Necessary for Everyone?

2012-01-16T08:58:00.001-05:00

From Colorado Health. Because if you don't use it, you lose it...but you can get it back again.

"To be sure, fitness is not a fad. Fads are short-lived. Trends, on the other hand, have staying power. Fitness is definitely a necessary trend.

Fitness, by definition, is the state or condition of being physically sound and healthy, especially as the result of exercise and proper nutrition. This article will delve in to the benefits of being physically active, examples of how to add physical activity to your daily routine, and the components of a well rounded exercise program. You might ask why some people are skinny and don't have to work out. It's not fair, we say. Well, the truth is, skinny people need to work out too. Some of us think that if we can just get those extra pounds off, we won't have to exercise anymore. Sorry, it doesn't work like that. The good news is being physically active can be fun and add life to your years.

As a health and wellness professional, I've been asked many questions over the years from people who want to be healthy. I'll try to answer a few here.

Why do I have to be physically active?

I'm sure you have all heard in the past five years or so, that physical activity is a necessary part of our lives. In 2004, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ranked obesity as the No. 1 health risk facing America. Weight gain and obesity are caused by consuming more calories than the body needs - most commonly by eating a diet high in fat and calories, living a sedentary lifestyle, or both.

Physical activity that is preformed regularly has many benefits. There is an abundance of scientific evidence that provides strong support for adults, older adults and children for lowered risk of premature death, heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, adverse blood lipid profile, metabolic syndrome, and colon and breast cancer. Not to mention, the prevention of weight gain, weight loss when combined with diet, improved cardio-respiratory and muscular fitness, prevention of falls, reduced depression, better cognitive function in older adults, and reduction in arthritis pain. Wow! That list should encourage anyone to get out and be physically active.

So how much is enough?

Substantial health benefits are gained by doing physical activity according to the minimum federal guidelines. These guidelines are as follows:

• Children and adolescents (ages 6-17) should do one hour (60 minutes) or more of physical activity every day.

• Adults and older adults should do two hours and 30 minutes a week of moderate-intensity, or one hour and 15 minutes (75 minutes) a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity. Aerobic activity should be performed in episodes of at least 10 minutes, preferably spread throughout the week.

Of course, any activity is better than no activity. For more information, go to www.health.gov/paguidelines/factsheetprof.aspx

Remember: Physical activity comes in many shapes and sizes. That's great news! Physical activity does not have to be difficult or painful. Fitness can be fun and can be very individualized, depending upon a person's taste. Some examples of daily physical activity include: walking, or bike riding instead of driving, walking up stairs instead of taking an elevator, cleaning the house, swimming or water aerobics, dancing, gardening, pushing a stroller, or participating in an exercise program at the gym. Any type of activity that gets your heart rate elevated can be considered moderate physical activity. Use your imagination.

Kids need to be physically active too. There are simple ways for them to move. They can walk the dog, swim, play games outdoors, walk to school with a group of friends, play Wii, play badminton or volleyball in the yard. Play with your kids and you will both be more active.

What types of exercises do I need to do to stay healthy?

There are five components of physical fitness, and these components represent how fit and healthy the body is as a whole.

1. Cardiovascular Fitness

Cardiovascular fitness is the ability of the heart, lungs and vascular system to deliver oxygen-rich blood to working muscles during sustained physical activity. When you exercise regularly, you can increase your cardiovascular fitness as your heart becomes more efficient at pumping blood and oxygen to the body, and the body becomes more efficient at using that oxygen. Some examples of cardiovascular fitness activities include, brisk walking, biking, running, swimming, cross country skiing, or anything to raise your heart rate.

2. Muscular Strength

Muscular strength is the amount of force a muscle or muscle group can exert against a heavy resistance. When you use your muscles regularly, they become strong. Strength training is an example of muscular strength exercises.

3. Muscular Endurance

Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle or muscle group to repeat a movement many times or to hold a particular position for an extended period of time. Muscular endurance prevents undue fatigue from work and other daily activities, and allows greater success and enjoyment in athletic and recreational endeavors. Any cardiovascular activity, such as running, biking, brisk walking and playing sports is considered a muscular endurance activity.

4. Flexibility

Flexibility is the ability to move joints and muscles through their full range of motion, which increases blood circulation. Stretching of the muscles is an example of flexibility.

5. Body Composition

Body composition refers to the amount of body fat, versus the amount of lean muscles, bones and organs. A personal trainer can test your body composition.

Anyone can be physically active and have fun doing it. You can hire a certified personal trainer to help you with an individualized exercise program. Otherwise, just do activities that raise your heart rate and you'll soon see and feel the many benefits derived from physical activity."

Minimum federal guidelines--what a JOKE! These were designed and adopted by people who have their own private posh gym, but seem to only use it as a place from which to photograph their genitals and put them on Facebook.

So tell me what's wrong with a good round of sex, or shopping at a warehouse store MY way (which includes parking as far away from the door as possible, then grabbing a cart, loading it up with 4 40-lb. buckets of cat litter, then going up and down every aisle in the store whether you need to or not, dodging people all the while, then doing your actual shopping, and finally returning the cat litter to it's rightful place), or mowing your front and back yards AS WELL AS your next-door neighbor's yards with your cheapo no-drive-gear mower, or carrying 40 lb. cat littler buckets from car into house because your husband uses a cane and cannot do it with one hand, or shoveling snow...is any of THAT in the federal guielines? No--they want you on some sort of boring, unusable machine, furthering the so-called "fitness" industry as you pace in place on a gerbil-like wheel, only flattened.

The word they cleverly leave out of all this is ORGANIZED exercise, which they want you to partake in, because guess who ultimately organizes it?

A Doctor in Your Pocket

2012-01-16T08:27:00.001-05:00

From the Wall St. Journal. Yeah, yeah, yeah--I get it. A smart phone. And what happens if you lose your phone? All your health info goes with it, leaving big holes in your personal security net. Never mind what happens when the power goes out and you can't recharge the damned thing!

"Take a moment to imagine what it would be like to live robustly to the ripe old age of 100 or more. You wouldn't die of any particular illness, and you wouldn't gradually waste away under the spell of some awful, enfeebling disease that began years or decades earlier.

It may sound far-fetched, but it is possible to live a long, disease-free life. Most of the conditions that kill us, including cancer and heart disease, could be prevented or delayed by a new way of looking at and treating health. The end of illness is near.

Today, we mostly wait for the body to break before we treat it. When I picture what it will be like for my two children to stay in good health as independent adults in 10 or 20 years, I see a big shift from our current model.

I see them being able to monitor and adjust their health in real time with the help of smartphones, wearable gadgets—perhaps like small, invisible stickers—to track the inner workings of their cells, and virtual replicas of their bodies that they will play much like video games, allowing them to know exactly what they can do to optimize every aspect of their health. What happens when I take drug x at dosage y? How can I change the expression of my genes to stop cancer? Would eating more salmon and dark chocolate boost my metabolism and burn fat? Can red wine really lower my risk of heart attack?

From a drop of their blood, they will be able to upload information onto a personal biochip that can help to create an individualized plan of action, including both preventive measures and therapies for identified ailments or signs of "unhealthiness." (Other body fluids—like tears and saliva—might be routinely tested, too.) They would be on the lookout for problems like imbalances in blood-sugar control, a risk factor for diabetes, and uncontrolled cell growth, which could signal cancer. Their doctors won't just examine them once a year; they will continually monitor the next generation of patients, offering advice along the way.

What is equally exciting is that this patient data will be added to a universal database that can be aggregated by powerful search engines like Google and constantly fed into new trials and experiments—speeding up our understanding of which drugs work best for which people. The database might show, for example, that people with a particular genetic profile respond to one type of cancer treatment but not another. As more people anonymously add their health data, this database would become more and more effective as a tool for preventive medicine.

Today, most people who are concerned about their health follow sweeping, general guidelines. If you want to lose weight, you are likely to pick a diet that advises eating more fibrous vegetables and cutting back on processed sugar. If you want to reduce your risk for cancer, you avoid tobacco smoke, exercise regularly and take early detection seriously.

The problem with health care today is that we don't know enough about the body to practice preventive medicine actively. With limited knowledge, diagnostic medicine makes sense. If we don't know what we're trying to prevent or how best to do it, we have to wait for an obvious symptom to emerge in order to take action. At that point, we're usually treating a disease that has had ample opportunity to progress.

We can do better. To start, we need to appreciate the body for what it is: a very complex network, much of which we don't yet fully understand. When you look at the body from this systemic point of view, you begin to see that a lot of what we know about health is gravely misunderstood.

In 2009, my colleague Danny Hillis—a former Disney engineer who pioneered the development of so-called parallel supercomputers—and I set up a way to measure 100,000 different types of proteins from a single drop of blood. The goal is to evaluate and make sense of the body's intricate inner workings in a way that's much more dynamic and insightful than what DNA alone can provide. Proteins change in your body every minute, depending on what's going on internally. Our ultimate plan is to develop tests, based on protein levels, for illnesses like cancer. Such tests could take the place of invasive techniques like biopsies.

With each passing year, the technology necessary for this revolution in medicine is growing less expensive. Last week, Life Technologies of Carlsbad, Calif., announced that it will be able to map an individual's entire genetic sequence in one day, for $1,000. Similar tests today cost many thousands of dollars. The ability to follow day-to-day changes in your body's proteins and metabolites is not far behind.

So how do we get to this future?

It has to start with data collection. In 2004, Dell launched a company program called Well at Dell to encourage healthy lifestyles. Employees receive alerts and information customized to their health issues, incorporating their latest test results and treatments and allowing them to make more informed decisions. A newly diagnosed diabetic, for example, might get information about how to monitor blood sugar and watch out for the circulatory problems that often accompany the disease.

Not surprisingly, these corporate health-management tools have come under fire, with most critics worrying about privacy. But we can't expect the health-care industry to continue to innovate and grow if we continue to hoard health information.

The federal agency that administers Medicare pays over half of the medical bills in the U.S., but it doesn't retrieve, organize or mine that data. Imagine how much better the Medicare system could be if all this data were analyzed to improve public health. Or imagine databases from many different sources, private and public, coming together in a centralized network that would look for patterns and try to translate them into new ideas for anticipating and preventing health problems.

Personalized medicine isn't as far away as you might think. Consider what's already happening in genetic profiling for individuals, which is available today for several hundred dollars. I co-founded a genetic screening company and am a big proponent of the technology. It allows us to take a broad look at DNA variations and to assess your risk for certain ailments and what medications, at what dosages, might work best, based on your metabolism. Just because you have one or two markers of genetic risk does not mean that you will definitely develop a particular condition, but the outcome can be affected by changes in lifestyle, or in some cases, by taking medication.

As these and other technologies advance, it will become progressively easier to monitor and maintain our overall health. Then it will be up to us. The promise of personalized medicine depends, finally, not on the tools that become available but on our determination to be informed and willing patients."

But then, you could go the cheap (and more private) route, and simply eliminate foods that cause disease in the first place, making this technology-for-technology's-sake circus that's being proposed largely an unnecessary thing.

For all we know, many of our grandparents and great-grandparents lived a long, full life and didn't die of some incidious disease or require near-constant, momentary-accessible monitoring of any sort. Hint: it wasn't the medicine they had access to, it was the FOOD they had access to...plus the fact that if they wanted that food, they'd have to raise/hunt/grow/barter for it themselves, which meant little to no couch or car time, and certainly no 1-800-deliver-me-a-pizza service.

"My Nutmeg Bender"

2012-01-15T07:27:00.001-05:00

From the Atlantic. Who knew nutmeg is a hallucinogen?

"Thanks to its ubiquity in eggnog and other holiday concoctions, nutmeg is one of the spices most commonly associated with drinking. But even now that the last ladleful of the season has been poured, nutmeg refuses to leave the party. In fact, the spice is enjoying something of a revival in the craft-cocktail world, with small nutmeg graters now fairly common in better bars. More and more drinks—especially vintage punches and their offshoots—call for a dusting of nutmeg the way others call for a lemon twist.

This is welcome news, and not only because nutmeg brings a pleasant intricacy to many drinks (in particular, it lends an earthiness to frivolous citrus). The rediscovery of nutmeg also brings a touch of history with it, including one rather unexpected detour.

Peruse accounts of European drinking in the 18th and 19th centuries, and before long you’ll envision barkeeps standing with nutmeg graters at hand, eager to enliven some potion. The tale of how nutmeg got from the East Indies to Europe has been told well and often: the wars for the Spice Islands, the domination of the nutmeg trade by the Dutch, and later, the rise of a competing industry in the West Indies.

But in doing some research recently, I learned something new: nutmeg will fuck you up.

As it turns out, nutmeg contains a psychoactive element called myristicin, whose chemical structure shares similarities with mescaline, amphetamine, and ecstasy. A Dictionary of Hallucinations—let us pause for a moment to give thanks that we live in a world where such a reference exists—notes that nutmeg has been “reported to mediate visual, auditory, tactile, and kinaesthetic hallucinations (notably the sensation of floating).” This is not breaking news: the Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen noted the mind-altering effects of nutmeg all the way back in the 12th century.

Yet recreational use never seems to have taken off. I was naturally intrigued when I came across a punch recipe from 1694 that called for five pounds of grated nutmeg—at least until I saw that it also required the juice of 25,000 lemons. Still, I can’t help but suspect that nutmeg abuse could explain some of the idiosyncrasies of the colonial era. Imagine, for instance, a group of teenage nutmeg fiends staring into a fire late one night when one says, “You know what would be cool? A hat with three corners.”

The intoxicating properties of nutmeg have more recently been documented among musicians (the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker introduced it to his bandmates) and in prisons, where Malcolm X discovered that “a penny matchbox full of nutmeg had the kick of three or four reefers,” as he noted in his autobiography. Online research added confirmation, with one chronicler of the experience comparing it to smoking “three strong spliffs of good skunk,” and another writing that, when walking, he felt as though he was “floating to his destination.” The accounts said that the effects took a while to kick in—typically five or six hours—and that they could last for up to three days.

Users also warned of possible side effects, including loose bowels, vomiting, accelerated heart rate, and nutmeg burps “at 20 minute intervals.”

Both dubious and intrigued, I grated up a whole nutmeg and part of another, producing about one and a half tablespoons of powder. I swallowed it one small spoonful at a time, chasing each gulp down with water. Consumed in that quantity, nutmeg loses its yuletide goodness and tastes like turpentine.

Perhaps my dosage was too low, or my nutmeg too desiccated. I did go through an early giddy phase, when everything seemed immensely amusing—including the shingles on my neighbor’s house—and I felt a slight floating sensation when walking around the neighborhood. But mostly I just felt out of sorts for a couple of days. When I tried to write, my words sometimes became unmoored from my thoughts, though to be fair, this happens even without the influence of nutmeg.

Typing this column three days later, I still feel as though a mild electrical current is passing through my brain. Thoughts seem to come a bit more slowly than usual. Still, I’m able to form this one: in the future, I’ll stick to a light dusting of nutmeg on punch."

Magniesium-Rich Diet Tied to Lower Risk from Escemic Stroke

2012-01-13T15:48:00.003-05:00

From Yahoo Health.

"A fresh look at past research concludes that people who eat lots of greens and other foods rich in magnesium have fewer strokes -- a finding that supports current diet guidelines.

But because the research focused on magnesium in food, the authors stopped short of recommending that people take a daily magnesium supplement. It's possible that another aspect of the food is responsible for the finding.

What the results do suggest is that people eat a healthy diet with "magnesium-rich foods such as green leafy vegetables, nuts, beans and whole grains," said lead author Susanna Larsson, a professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.

Larsson and her colleagues combed through research databases spanning the last 45 years to find studies that tracked how much magnesium people ate and how many of them had a stroke over time.

In seven studies published in the past 14 years, about 250,000 people in the U.S., Europe and Asia were followed for an average of 11.5 years. About 6,500 of them, or three percent, had a stroke in the time they were followed.

For every extra 100 milligrams of magnesium a person ate per day, their risk of an ischemic stroke -- the most common kind, typically caused by a blood clot -- fell by nine percent.

The median magnesium intake for U.S. men and women included in the analysis was 242 milligrams a day (mg/d). The U.S. recommends men and women over age 31 eat 420 and 320 mg/d of magnesium, respectively.

Most of the studies allowed the researchers to rule out other factors, such as family history, from the results, but Larsson told Reuters Health in an email that she cannot say whether other aspects of what the people ate partially or entirely explain the finding.

Because the papers included in the analysis, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, are so-called observational studies, they also cannot prove that the magnesium is what's actually reducing the stroke risk.

Larsson told Reuters Health that more in-depth studies are needed before researchers can say that.

Dr. Larry Goldstein, director of the stroke center at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, told Reuters Health that although the findings from reviews like Larsson's are limited, they are consistent with what doctors typically recommend.

"It's a diet that's rich in fruits, vegetables and grains," said Goldstein. "Those are things that have low sodium, high potassium and high magnesium."

"It's again the diet per se, not any one individual component of the diet," Goldstein said."

Here is a NDB list of foods highest in magnesium, and not all of them are grains--in fact, spices, pumpkin seeds, and cocoa show up more often (with higher rankings) than grains do.

Radiology Docs Cheated on Exams (L-O-N-G)

2012-01-13T15:14:00.003-05:00

From CNN. Geez--no wonder our x-rays get sent to India for interpretation!

"For years, doctors around the country taking an exam to become board certified in radiology have cheated by memorizing test questions, creating sophisticated banks of what are known as "recalls," a CNN investigation has found.

The recall exams are meticulously compiled by radiology residents, who write down the questions after taking the test, in radiology programs around the country, including some of the most prestigious programs in the U.S.

"It's been going on a long time, I know, but I can't give you a date," said Dr. Gary Becker, executive director of the American Board of Radiology (ABR), which oversees the exam that certifies radiologists.

Asked if this were considered cheating, Becker told CNN, "We would call it cheating, and our exam security policy would call it cheating, yes."

Radiology residents must sign a document agreeing not to share test material, but a CNN investigation shows the document is widely ignored. Dozens of radiology residents interviewed by CNN said that they promised before taking the written test to memorize certain questions and write them down immediately after the test along with fellow residents.

"Our real mission is to the public," said Dr. James Borgstede, the ABR's president-elect. "Our real mission is to say that your certified radiologist has demonstrated, acquired and maintained the requisite skills and knowledge to practice with skill and safety on the public."

To become board certified, a virtually essential step to obtain hospital privileges, residents have been required to pass two written exams and an intensive oral test during five years of residency training.

The practice of sharing exam answers is so widespread and considered so serious in the medical community that the ABR has put out a strongly worded video warning residents that the use of recalls must stop.

"Questions and answers have been memorized, sometimes verbatim, and contributed to extensive archives of old ABR test material that become the prize possessions of many residency programs," Becker said in the video, which appears on the board's website.

He said "accumulating and studying from lists of questions on prior examinations constitutes unauthorized access, is inappropriate, unnecessary, intolerable and illegal."

About half of the questions on the radiology test are the same each year.

"The half of the exam that is not new comprises questions from a variety of previous exams, not from the prior year," Becker told CNN.

"As always, the assembly of the exam is governed by the blueprint created by the ABR for that particular examination. All questions are reviewed for currency before being reused."

Outside of the world of radiology, it's rare for residents to speak openly about the recalls. But one doctor at a military program revealed how the recalls worked to CNN. Dr. Matthew Webb, an Army captain, trained at the San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium (SAUSHEC), an Army/Air Force program that includes the renowned Brooke Army Medical Center.

"Cheating is the ultimate betrayal of trust to patients, and it's also the most egregious and flagrant violation in academia," Webb told CNN. "I got to where I was based on my own personal achievements, learning and educating myself. To have to take an exam up against others who have been cheating is ... unfathomable."

The recalls obtained by CNN show at least 15 years' worth of test questions and answers, some prepared as PowerPoint presentations. The tests were available on a radiology residents' website as well as a shared military computer server.

Webb complained about the recalls to the ABR, which conducted an investigation.

"We're outraged by this, and we took this case to our professionalism committee," Becker said. "The results of the deliberations there and the decision of the board was to go directly back to the training director, the dean of the institution, and we've had those discussions."

Webb, 31, said he failed the first radiology written exam, which focuses on physics, in the fall of 2008. He said the program director at the time, Dr. Liem Mansfield, told him to use the recalls in order to pass.

"He told me that if you want to pass the ABR physics exam, you absolutely have to use the recalls," Webb said. "And I told him, 'Sir I believe that is cheating. I don't believe in that. I can do it on my own.' He then went on to tell me, 'you have to use the recalls,' almost as if it was a direct order from a superior officer in the military."

Reached for comment, Mansfield referred CNN to the Brooke Army Medical Center's public affairs office.

In a statement, the military admitted that some faculty members and program directors "were aware of the use of recall examination questions by residents. A smaller number of faculty and a past program leader encouraged the use of recall questions as one of several tools to improve medical knowledge and prepare for the exam. Faculty members did not organize or run the recall question activities."

"All faculty are now aware that SAUSHEC leadership will not tolerate support or use of recalled questions" in light of the American Board of Radiology's crackdown, the statement said.

Dr. Woodson Jones, dean of SAUSHEC, also said in a statement to CNN that "radiology residents' past practice of using recalled examination questions to study reflected the practice within radiology programs across the country and did not represent an unfair advantage."

The program had the recalls removed from its computers and required residents to sign a document that they would not use them.

"Our residents were concerned we were now putting them at a disadvantage compared to the remainder of the country," Jones told CNN in a phone interview. "Our perspective on this is it doesn't matter. We are going to exhibit the highest level of professionalism."

Jones said that "by looking at what has happened, we took very aggressive action to ensure that we lived up to the policy released by the (American Board of Radiology) as far as the new culture they were trying to generate across the country by having all of our residents sign attestation statements they would not use recalled exam questions, and they would destroy any exam questions they were aware of."

Graduates of the SAUCHEC program contacted by CNN would not discuss the recalls.

Webb said he doubted anything would have been done if he had not complained to the ABR and the military about the recalls.

"This is not a gray area. This is absolute, definitive cheating. If we were in middle school, high school, college or anywhere else in academia, they would call it cheating," Webb said.

Jones, in his statement to CNN, said, "No adverse action has been taken against a radiology resident for revealing the use of the recalled questions. However, a resident was terminated from training by SAUSHEC in June 2011 for failure to meet professionalism standards after extensive due process procedures were followed. These termination procedures took place prior to our learning of complaints by a resident regarding the use of recalled examination questions by radiology residents."

The actions the SAUSHEC program has taken "meet the expectations of the ABR," according to a letter sent to Jones from Jennifer Bosma, the ABR's associate executive director for administration. "Furthermore, they are fully aligned with the direction given by the ABR's professionalism committee following review of the whistleblower report. While follow-through at every level of program leadership will naturally be key to successful cultural change at SAUSHEC and every residency training program, the ABR is satisfied that the progress reported to date conforms with the intent of the new Examination Security Policy."

Meanwhile, Webb has had his own problems with the Army. He was reprimanded last year for making "sexual comments" to another doctor and for "other conduct unbecoming an officer." That led to his firing from the radiology program. Webb said the issue was a personality dispute that escalated.

Webb said his superiors called him into a meeting in December to ask what he was telling CNN.

In a statement, the military said that Webb "was asked by the hospital commander if he had recently had any inquiries from and/or dialogue with CNN, and the commander stated that the soldier wasn't prohibited from expressing his personal views and responses, but that he needed to alert command if he had been contacted."

To investigate the use of the recalls, CNN attended the Radiological Society of North America's annual conference in Chicago, which is the country's largest medical convention, drawing about 60,000 participants each November. In interviews over several days, residents and practicing radiologists confirmed that recalls have been widely used in most, if not all, radiology programs for more than a decade.

"From my understanding, I would say nationwide from my friends across the country who are all in the same stages of training throughout the years, everyone gets a group," said Dr. John Yoo, a practicing radiologist. "People decided beforehand what sections I will focus on, in terms of trying to recall those questions and answers. And then immediately after the examination, the residents get together and try to put these down onto paper or word processor to be able to share it with the classes coming behind you."

Asked if he considered it cheating, Yoo said, "I think that is a difficult question to answer, to be honest, because it is a matter of survival, so to speak. For better or worse, if you fail to jump over that barrier, you get, I don't know, like 'The Scarlet Letter,' branded as, 'Hey, this person didn't succeed in passing a certain section.' So it is sort of out of necessity to pass these examinations that you have to rely on the recall."

Yoo said the recalls are used primarily as study guides.

"I can only speak for myself in that I've used these to serve as a guideline," Yoo said. "These are subjects I need to know cold in order to pass this examination. I've used them as a guideline. I think many people have used them as a guideline."

Dr. Joseph Dieber, another radiologist, said he considered the use of the recalls a "gray area."

"If the questions were somehow reproduced with a camera and it was the exact question, and you were trying to memorize A, B and C, you know A for this answer, B for this answer, then yeah, it is cheating. You've got to ask yourself what the goal of the exam is. If the goal of the exam is to have you learn the information in that question and to make sure that you're producing radiologists that are competent to handle the kinds of issues that come up, then yeah, if people are studying recalls, they learned that question. They learned everything about it."

Dieber said the recalls are necessary because of the test itself.

"If they had a test where you could study relevant radiology knowledge and they tested on it, that would be fine," Dieber said. "Part of the problem is the test and the questions that they ask. Because some of the questions are so obscure, that unless you know that they like to ask questions about that topic, you're not going to study it because some of them are completely irrelevant to the modern practice of radiology."

Radiology programs around the country are now warning residents that the recalls cannot be used.

"We have made it clear to the residents in written form that recalls, not only are they not encouraged, but they are not permitted. As far as we're concerned, they are not appropriate," said Dr. Carolyn C. Meltzer, who oversees the radiology and imaging sciences department at Emory University's School of Medicine, which is one of the largest programs in the U.S.

Radiology programs around the country are now warning residents that the recalls cannot be used.

Dr. Anne Silas, chairwoman of the diagnostic radiology department at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where residents told CNN that recalls were widely used, said they are not condoned.

"In general and in the past, recalls have provided a framework for studies, a study guide, but none of it is coming from a program level; it is not something provided for anyone," she said.

Asked if using recalls is considered cheating, Silas said, "I don't believe it would be fair to accuse our trainees of cheating on that basis."

At Massachusetts General Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School, residents also told CNN that they routinely used recalls for years.

Dr. James Thrall, the hospital's chief of radiology, told CNN he was not personally aware of the use of recalls at the hospital, but said if they were used, it was not endorsed by the faculty.

"I have a problem with the recall system if the exam is not changed. But if the exam is substantially changed from one year to the other, then the recalled questions really become in my view more of a learning resource," Thrall said.

Asked about the ABR's efforts to crack down on the recalls, Thrall said, "I think it's going to be very difficult to police it."

Dr. King Li, chairman of the department of radiology at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, said he does not endorse the use of recalls, but acknowledges it is difficult to stop because residents have used them for so long.

"It's not OK when everybody is doing it, but the people who are doing it will use this as an excuse to make it acceptable to themselves," he said.

Asked about someone like Webb, who is speaking out about the recalls, Li said, "If you are someone who doesn't want to use the recalls on your exams, you may be seen as someone who is aloof and too good for his practice, and also potentially a whistle-blower. So that can make this person uncomfortable in the peer group."

Dr. Kevin Weiss, president and CEO of the American Board of Medical Specialties, said he had not heard about anything similar to the radiology testing issue in other medical specialties. The ABMS is the umbrella group for 24 boards and 152 specialties and sub-specialties.

"The concern is sharing questions is ever-present. Our board takes great pains to make sure exam securities are well managed," he said.

The issue of test sharing arose in 2010 when the American Board of Internal Medicine suspended 139 doctors for sharing test questions with an exam review company.

In a statement, Dr. Christine Cassel, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine, said, "Sharing test questions from memory is a serious problem that threatens the integrity of all standardized testing. Test takers need to know that this kind of 'brain dumping' is grossly unethical and the American Board of Internal Medicine will not tolerate unethical behavior from physicians seeking board certification. ABIM will take appropriate action against anyone who seeks to compromise the integrity of our examinations.

Most of the cases against the suspended doctors have been resolved. Drew Wachler, an attorney who handled many of those cases, told CNN, "The cases were really resolved through settlement agreements with ABIM."

"We articulated the impact on these physicians," Wachler said. "We tried to present their body of work throughout their entire careers, looking at the extraordinary references they received, their conduct throughout medical school, residencies. It was resolved in that fashion."

At least one doctor who was suspended said she did nothing wrong. The ABIM suspended and sued Dr. Sarah Von Muller, accusing her of sharing test questions with the test review company. Von Muller denies the charges.

"I don't know what kind of settlements occurred with the other doctors and ABIM," she told CNN.

"But under no circumstance am I willing to sign a paper stating that I cheated or that I copyrighted their material, because I didn't."

She added that "a lot of people would just roll over and do whatever they had to do to get out of this mess, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to fight because this is more -- this is principle, and this is wrong, and if I don't stand up to the playground bully and fight this, no one else will."

The ABIM declined to comment because of the pending litigation.

The ABR's Becker said that despite the use of the recalls, the public is protected because of the overall training and an intensive oral exam that residents must undergo to become certified.

Next year, the board is rolling out a new exam for the first time in more than 10 years. Instead of two written tests and one oral exam, the first exam will be a "core exam" taken after three years of residency training, and the second certifying exam taken 15 months after graduation. The oral exam is being eliminated.

"ABR is replacing its proven and time-tested exam format, which includes an oral exam, with new, highly standardized computer-based exams that will be more objective and better able to assess the abilities of the physician examinees, without measuring extraneous factors not uncommon when candidates take the orals, such as nervousness," Becker said.

As far as the recalls, the only formal complaint to the ABR has been about the military program in San Antonio, Becker said.

"Now I could say we don't have any more information on other programs, we haven't heard similar reports from other residents, but if and when we ever hear of any, we're going to track them down," he said.

Programming note: "Prescription for Cheating" will air on "CNN Presents" this Saturday and Sunday, January 14 and 15, at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET on CNN."

Question: does this issue have anything at all to do with the alarmingly large number of false-positive mammograms women get yearly? It would seem that if these people aren't properly educated, and technicians in India aren't either, then what's the point of getting yearly pix that amount to a waste of time and insurance dollars?

Statins Cost 4X As Much in America As They Do in the U.K.

2012-01-13T14:58:00.001-05:00

From Yahoo Health. Another reason to simply cut offending foods from your diet--it's cheaper!

"Widely used cholesterol-lowering statin drugs cost about 400 percent more in the United States than in the United Kingdom, a new study shows.

Prescription drug costs are a major issue in the ongoing debate about health costs in both the United States and the U.K., noted the researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program.

For this study, they compared 2005 data from 280,000 people aged 55 to 64 in both countries and found that statins were prescribed to nearly 33 percent of those in the United States and more than 25 percent of those in the U.K.

In the United States, the estimated annual cost of statins ranged from a high of $1,428 for simvastatin to a low of $314 for lovastatin.

The annual cost of statins in the U.K. varied from a high of $500 for atorvastatin to a low of $164 for simvastatin.

The total estimated annual cost for U.S. statin users with private insurance was more than $69 million, compared with nearly $16 million for statin users covered by the government in the U.K.

"In addition to differences in overall statin use and per-unit costs, another significant factor contributing to the disparity of costs appears to be the availability and utilization of generics," lead author Dr. Hershel Jick, director emeritus of BUSM's Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program, said in a Boston Medical Center news release.

The study appears online in the January issue of the journal Pharmacotherapy."

Study not available on their website.

Moral: if you're drug-dependent for any reason, you're going to snuggle up to Uncle Sam (and his British brother, the PM), which means chances are good you're in favor of Obamacare...and getting ripped off.

Red Wine Researcher Accused of Scientific Fraud

2012-01-13T06:58:00.001-05:00

From HealthDay News (part of a news roundup). Resveratrol now in question.

"An American researcher whose work reported on health benefits associated with red wine has been accused of scientific fraud involving 26 articles published in 11 journals.

The University of Connecticut's charge against one of its researchers, Dipak K. Das, comes after an investigation that began in January 2009, The New York Times reported.

A special review board was formed after the university received an anonymous allegation about research irregularities in Das's lab. The board produced a 60,000-page report that says Das's published research articles contained 145 instances of fabrication and falsification of data.

The review board's report has been sent to the federal Office of Research Integrity, which investigates fraud by researchers who receive government grants, The Times reported."

Common Dieting Tips That Don't Work

2012-01-13T06:47:00.001-05:00

From CBS Houston (TX).

"Here is a list of common dieting tips that are shared with good intentions but have sinister results. These tips can sabotage your journey to rehabbing your diet.

Can’t Go Wrong with Enhanced Water, Health Drink or a Nutrition Bar

The latest crop of enhanced bottled waters, energy drinks and health bars could be healthy in name only. Many of these products contain corn syrup, caffeine, sugar, and artificial ingredients. With ingredients such as these, the consumer will only receive a huge caloric load and a short burst of energy. The resulting crash, after the caffeine has worn off, can be even worse. Some of these bars and drinks are nothing more than repackaged junk food made to snare the latest health food fad consumers.

Some energy boosting health drinks claim they have as much caffeine as coffee. This could be a good thing if you don’t like sipping on coffee. This could be a horrible nightmare if you find yourself easily consuming too many small shots of high concentrations of caffeine and vitamins. High doses of caffeine can harm your heart and high doses of vitamins can prove to be toxic to your body.

When you need a healthy snack or drink, try reaching for foods and beverages with no processing needed for preparation. Then there is no question about what ingredients you are placing into your stomach.

Continuous Grazing

Eating without paying attention to hunger pains and topping off your already full tummy can cause weight gain. This is over-eating and it will pack the pounds on.

Low Fat Diets Can Help Keep the Weight Off

Eliminating good fat from your diet can cause more health problems and actually cause weight gain. Consuming less fat will cause your body to store more energy in the form of fat.

Body fat is caused by unused calories from any source of food. Vegetables, meat, junk food, fruit, juices, low fat labeled foods and most sodas can all be converted into calories and stored as fat until the body uses it as energy.

Good fat is nutritionally necessary. Your brain, cells and various organs use fat to perform their specific functions and as building blocks. There are fat soluble vitamins that are stored in liver and fatty tissues -according to Colorado State University.

Avoid Saturated Fat

In the 80′s we were told to avoid saturated fat like the plague.

Why you should not avoid it: Saturated fat can be found in some plants and animal meat. It is converted into energy by the heart, helps the body boost immunity, contains omega fatty acids for brain function and protects organs from disease. Saturated fats destroy microorganisms, viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites.

Foods with low or no fat require greater amounts of food to become full. Foods with fat in them take longer to digest, stave off hunger longer and require smaller amounts of food to become satisfied.

Eggs, lard, organ meat, dairy butter, and pig lard are high in saturated fat. Enjoy these ingredients in moderation. To read an exhaustive article about saturated fat Click Here.

Eat Whatever You Want As Long As You Exercise It Off

Fitness experts caution against exercising to work off excessively consumed foods. It requires a lot of exercise just to burn off a few calories. It is possible to cause your body to plateau and then shut down. You could possibly see no weight loss despite vigorous workouts.

Nutritionists and doctors recommend making meaningful long-term changes to what, when and how you eat to lose weight. Fitness trainers recommend improving dietary habits, gradually increasing exercise routines and to find more ways to eliminate sedentary habits from your daily routine.

Juicing is Healthy

For years models and bodybuilders have hosted infomercials that touted the miracles of juicing.

The reality is: “Juice is extracted from the whole fruit; the beneficial fiber is left behind. Regardless of how pure the juice, it contains no inherent properties that will make you healthier or make you lose weight. Peel and eat an orange instead. Juice has more calories and is less filling.” – ediets.com

If you wish to drink your fruits, try smoothies or puree’s instead of juicing."

"Look Ma--No Baking!" Nourishing Snack, or Decadent Finger-Food Dessert--Truffles

2012-01-12T09:40:00.000-05:00

From Daily Bites.

Pumpkin Seed Power Truffles
Makes 12-14 truffles

For the truffle filling:
½ cup raw pumpkin seeds
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon sea salt
½ cup (packed) pitted Medjool dates
1 tablespoon dark maple syrup or organic agave nectar

For the chocolate coating:
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons virgin coconut oil
2 tablespoons dark maple syrup or organic agave nectar

Make the truffle filling: place the pumpkin seeds in a small pan over medium heat. Toast the seeds, shaking the pan occasionally, until lightly browned, fragrant, and beginning to pop, 3-5 minutes. Transfer the toasted seeds to a food processor fitted with the steel blade.

Add the cocoa powder, flaxseed, cinnamon, ginger, and sea salt. Process until finely ground, 20-30 seconds. Add the dates and maple syrup. Process until the mixture holds together when pinched between 2 fingers. Form the filling into 1-inch balls. Freeze for 15 minutes.

While the truffle balls freeze, make the chocolate coating: in a small pan over very low heat, combine the cocoa powder, coconut oil, and maple syrup. Stir constantly until the mixture is smooth and resembles melted chocolate. Transfer to a small bowl.

Roll the frozen truffle balls in the melted cocoa mixture to coat completely. Transfer to a parchment- or waxed paper-lined plate. Freeze for 10-15 minutes until the chocolate is set. Store the truffles in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Optional pumpkin seed garnish: While the chocolate coating on the dipped truffles is still wet and not set up, place a few pumpkin seeds on top of each truffle. If the chocolate has set up before you can place the seeds on top, use your finger to dab a very small amount of the chocolate coating directly on the pumpkin seeds. Press the chocolate side of the seeds onto the truffles to adhere.

Need a Quick Nourishing Snack, or a Quick Dinner Finger-Food? Here's Shredded Vegetable Meatballs

2012-01-12T09:19:00.001-05:00

From Daily Bites.

Shredded Vegetable Meatballs
1 pound ground turkey breast
1 small zucchini, shredded on the large holes of a box grater (about 1/2 cup)
1 medium carrot, peeled and shredded on the large holes of a box grater (about 1/2 cup)
2 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients. Use your hands to work the mixture into a cohesive mass. Form into 12 meatballs of even size. Place on baking sheet. Bake meatballs for 23-25 minutes until cooked through but still juicy.

I believe these would make for a dandy after-school snack for kids. Personally, I'd like to see something like these offered in school cafeterias.

Time-saving tips: You can buy ground turkey in bulk and subdivide it into 1-lb. zippy bags (or whatever your family's size needs dictate--just remember to use 1 c. veggies for every lb. of ground meat), and you can also pre-shred and mix bulk quantities of veggies and bag them for the freezer too (in 1 c. portions). Then it becomes only a matter of grabbing, defrosting, and mixing the appropriate amounts of meat, shredded veggies, adding the spices and oil, and baking. Not as fast as picking up an apple and eating it, but it's quicker than the average dinner preparation.

My question: why not an egg for binder? Do the veggies act as a binder here? I'm going to try it myself and see if this is so.

Small Group of Patients Accounts for Large Chunk of Healthcare Costs--Report

2012-01-12T07:12:00.001-05:00

From HealthDay News (part of a news roundup).

"Only 10 percent of the population accounted for nearly two-thirds of all health care costs in the United States in 2008, a federal government report says.

The average annual cost for each patient in that group totaled nearly $24,000, which included costs covered by insurance and paid out of pocket, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

About 45 percent of those patients remained in that 10 percent of the population in 2009.

Among the 10 percent of patients with the highest health costs in both 2008 and 2009: nearly 60 percent were women; more than 40 percent were 65 or older; only 3 percent were ages 18 to 29; more than 80 percent were white; only 2 percent were Asian."

This may be old news, but I still have to ask: is it really necessary to tear our current healthcare system apart for that 10%? Are their votes THAT important?

Americans Are Eating Less and Less Meat

2012-01-11T12:38:00.002-05:00

From the WA Post. Did anyone check into grass-fed, pastured meat, or did they just do more out-the-window journalism here?

Larger image here.

"Meat eating in the United States is going out of style. According to a Department of Agriculture report, Americans are projected to eat 12.2 percent less meat in 2012 than they did 2007. And it’s not just the weak economy. As Mark Bittman observes, there’s a real long-term trend here: “Beef consumption has been in decline for about 20 years; the drop in chicken is even more dramatic, over the last five years or so; pork also has been steadily slipping for about five years.”

Why is this happening? The Daily Livestock Report blames rising meat prices in the United States. As countries like China and India get richer, they’re eating more meat, which is helping to drive up U.S. exports and making beef, pork, and chicken more expensive here at home. Ethanol also plays a role: Nowadays, American farmers divert bushels and bushels of corn to make fuel, which drives up feed prices and, again, makes meat pricier.

Perhaps just as significantly, though, it does seem that attitudes toward meat are changing. More and more people appear to be cutting back on beef and pork consumption for environmental or ethical reasons. (Although before vegetarians get too excited, one factor that often gets overlooked here is the aging of the population — as the baby boomers get older, they’ve been eating less meat.)

The Daily Livestock Report, for its part, blames government policy for waging a 40-year information campaign to dissuade people from eating meat. Bittman, on the other hand, finds that notion preposterous — he notes, among other things, that government agencies still shy away from recommending to people that they eat less meat. Read his post for a fuller dissection. The drop in meat-eating has come in spite of heavy government policies, which include heavy subsidies, not because of it."

Meanwhile, those of us escaping this economic rat-race have gone from grocery stores to butcher shops, farms, CSAs, hunting (even in our own back yards), ethnic groceries, and other means to get our meat. Is THIS activity easily viewed outside a Manhattan window somewhere, so someone can write about it?

We're not eating less meat--we're eating different meat, Mr. Author. I, for one, just filled my freezer last Saturday, but alas, I don't live anywhere near Manhattan, or Georgetown, or Chicago, or L.A. I also bought a mega-buttload of organ meats for cat food. Where were you? Oh--you couldn't see me out your window. If I had driven my open-trunked, meat-filled car down whatever street your offices are located, would you still have written this piece?

The drop in meat-eating (on the commercial level), in spite of the government throwing money at ranchers, is because those who can afford it have switched from inferior, over-regimented meat production to natural, nutritionally-superior meats. We have also re-discovered organ meats, and all those icky-squishy parts that are usually shuttled off to the dog food plant.

No, we don't eat from the grocery store any more, and some day, livestock producers will figure out why and make the switch to join us (it's been 40 years now, and they're just starting to get concerned--maybe after another 40, they'll have gotten the hint, and dismantled the feedlots). By then, we will have moved onto something else.

Sustainability and Grocery Store Offerings

2012-01-11T10:58:00.000-05:00

I just got done perusing my local grocery store websites to see if anything useful's on sale, and I found a lot of what normally goes for summertime fare here: berries, cherries, melons, peaches, the works.

It's JANUARY! Tell me this is coming from local farms with minimal transport and processing, with nearly no carbon footprint at all, and that no innocent animals/farm workers/children died in bringing it here.

Vegetarians and vegans would tell us over and over again that eating meat isn't sustainable, and that we're ruining the planet. Yet, I don't hear anybody railing against this out-season outrageousness--berries and melons in January...puh-LEESE!

"But they're in the store, and they're on sale, so they must be in season...right?"

Because we eat meat, we're the devil, and this is hell. Never mind that our meat comes from THIS COUNTRY, supporting local farmers, the organic movement, and our so-called carbon footprint is a whole lot less per food-mile than theirs is.

We supposedly lack virtue because we let animal products pass between our lips. We're less-than-human savages. We lack compassion for animals, and the planet, and we're somehow responsible for global warming because animals fart.

MY FOOD isn't coming here from hundreds of thousands of miles away, using tons of fuel to get here, or hoards of gas-chugging machinery, or child labor to pick, or coming from heavily-polluted grounds or waters, or killing innocent animals in the path of machinery, or having to be trucked from one end of this country to the other before it goes bad en route. MY FOOD isn't robbing other regions of much-needed and hard-to-obtain water, land, fertilizer, seed, and chemicals. MY FOOD isn't a by-product of some mega-conglomerate, or some mega-conglomerate's eco-weenie front man in an organic cotton apron, slapped with lots of eco-marketing buzzwords designed to make me feel better about buying it, or even paying extra for it, and MY FOOD wasn't developed in a lab somewhere.

MY FOOD is sustainable--how long have we been raising meat? Vegetation, on the other hand, has been through the wringer as far as greenhouse shenanigans with cross-breeding, so-called yield improvement, gene patenting, more and more powerful insecticides developed and used, and wind-borne GMOs have brought it all to the point that the only way to grow an organic crop of grain is to grow it indoors--requiring electricity to take the place of the sun and wind. To organically improve yields without the use of insecticides or modification, nature must be taken out of the equation altogether. How natural is THAT? How sustainable is THAT?

Meanwhile, all meat had to do is be turned out into a green, unsprayed pasture, given no drugs or hormones, and be able to do what nature intended.

So, meat is nearly a hands-off operation, while vegetation is very, VERY hands-on. With the number of hands eager and willing to get dirty in the name of food production dwindling every day, tell me which one is going to survive the coming fuel wars, the coming power rationing, and the already-happening rampant deportation activities?

There's reasons why crop growing got to where it is now, but the big overall reason is because there's no money in crops unless government puts it there. There's money in ORGANIC crops, sure, but not enough of us are willing to pay the extra price for doing things to make up for the failings.

Meat, on the other hand, has also been infiltrated by government, and look where cows, pigs, and other meat animals spend their very-shortened lives. Pastured, organic meat costs so much more, yes, and for a whole lot less work (or "inputs"), but somebody's got to pay the farmer since he isn't getting the subsidies Farmer Feedlot gets. Farmer Feedlot gets his doped-up cattle to market in what...6 months, if that? Farmer Pasture needs about a year or more to get his cattle up to market weight, and that takes time, land, water, and god knows what else--he's having to make up for the failings of penned-in cattle that are easy to monitor for feed, water, health, etc. while not having to roam the property tracking them down.

Since I live in city limits, and know squat about raising livestock, I'll gladly pay the farmer to do it the old-fashioned way. Sustainable? More so than him having to take money from the government, and produce a crappy product, just to survive. GM fits this bill precisely!

Since I have a back yard, I grow my own veggies. Sustainable? I'm escaping the whole sustainability/marketing question altogether, not needing heavy machinery, killer chemicals, or illegal workers, lack of land and water issues, and the small rodents only have my cats to worry about extinction from. Since crop farmers don't get much subsidies, they've had to resort to chemicals, machinery, illegals, foreign countries, and questionable land/water rights just to survive.

Am I buying and consuming fake meat-substitute products shaped and sold as something they're clearly not, such as tofu dogs, soy cheese, tofurkey, and something called grain roast? No, because it isn't real, and it isn't sustainable because it isn't natural. It's made in some anonymous factory somewhere, and shipped or trucked in, just like all the other processed food is. To make it sustainable is to make it beans again--just plain old boring beans. But to make bean puree out of them, shape it, and hit it with a wand...and pretend a lot...presto! Processed bean curd product. Quick--where is it made? Where do you live in relation to the point of origin? How is it packaged? It's worse when all some people are doing in the name of sustainability and planet preservation is buying fake food in a hybrid car (which took 17 barrels of oil to make, then another dozen or so to ship it here), then hurling insults at local, organic, pasture-raised meat eaters who drive fewer miles weekly than the hybrid-ized do.

MY HALO has fur on it, and I won't be buying any berries or melons until summer. Now who's saving the planet?

Hostess Twinkies Files For Bankruptcy

2012-01-10T16:10:00.001-05:00

From Time. Is that a tear coming out of my eye? Nope--just an eyelash.

"Talk about sweet sorrow: Hostess Brands, manufacturer of lunchbox staples like Twinkies, Hohos and Ding Dongs, is planning to file for bankruptcy this week, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The company, which also makes Wonder Bread and the Drakes line of snack cakes, has more than $860 million in debt. This is Hostess’s second bankruptcy filing in less than a decade. Will it be able to sell enough cupcakes this time to come back from the brink? Although Hostess has sales of $2.5 billion annually, that’s not enough to keep up with the rising costs of ingredients like flour and sugar; the company also employs roughly 19,000 people, according to the Journal.

Hostess went through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in 2004 and had trouble regaining its footing afterwards, in spite of investments and loans from private equity firms and hedge funds. The Journal reports that Hostess has lined up financing that would allow it to continue operating while in bankruptcy, so its ovens won’t be shut off just yet.

But it appears America’s appetite for plastic-sheathed snack cakes might be waning; although we gobbled up 36 million packages of Twinkies last year, that’s actually a 2% decline from the year before. In response to an increasingly health-conscious public, Hostess started making whole-grain bread, but the Journal says it hasn’t been a hit.

The big question is whether or not Hostess will be able to iron out its fairly significant financial issues — which include an underfunded pension plan and numerous labor union contracts that would have to be renegotiated — and avoid liquidation.

If Hostess does become the latest casualty of a challenging economy, what are fans of its iconic snack cakes going to do? Unfortunately for them, the rumor that Twinkies will last indefinitely is just an urban legend, so they’ll have to find an alternative to stockpiling their junk food."

So when will Little Debbie follow suit?

The Advantages of the Middle-Aged Brain

2012-01-10T07:35:00.001-05:00

From Time.

"A study in the British Medical Journal lit up the Internet last week with the conclusion that cognitive decline begins at age 45. While it’s true that some innate skills like memory and speed of reasoning fall off as we age, other aspects of intelligence related to learning and experience actually improve.

These findings are part of a wave of new research on the psychology and neuroscience of middle age. Like Baby Boomers before them, Gen Xers are learning that entering middle age often means getting squeezed between the demands of raising children, holding down a job and taking care of aging parents. But despite the high levels of stress, people in their 40s, 50s and early 60s generally have a happier outlook than their younger counterparts. They feel more competent and in control — that they can personally take steps to influence what happens in their life. They are also less neurotic, more open, reflective and flexible.

Researchers suspect that one reason middle-aged people are more resilient is that their brains have learned to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Using brain imaging to peek inside that 3 lbs. of gray and white matter, researchers at the University of Wisconsin have found that in younger adults, the amygdala, the brain’s emotional nut, was activated when they looked at upsetting as well as uplifting images. Adults in their middle and upper decades, by contrast, seemed to have the ability to screen out or tamp down negative emotions; their amygdalas lit up when they saw positive images but tended to ignore disturbing ones.

In a 2011 study, researchers monitored involuntary facial expressions and eye blinks as a way of assessing responses to emotionally charged pictures. The biggest difference between younger and older participants turned out to be in their reactions to neutral images. The more mature subjects were more likely to put an optimistic spin on ambiguous information — they had what has been called the “positivity offset,” a predisposition for upbeat interpretations. People with a positivity offset, for example, have been found to judge fictional characters described in neutral terms more positively.

Why do they do this? One theory is that the older people get, the more importance they place on maintaining a sense of well-being, even if it means downplaying contrary information. In this case, nature and nurture may be working hand-in-hand. By middle age, people have had their share of life experiences; they have had the opportunity to learn how to cope with a canceled flight, an office feud, a broken ankle, a nagging parent, a traffic ticket or a lost cell phone. These experiences are imprinted on the mass of brain cells, carving new neural pathways and cataloguing responses that can be retrieved as needed. This may be why people in middle age report that they are better able to handle stressful conflicts with their friends and family members and that they feel more capable of riding herd on their own emotional ups and downs. Something that may have floored them when they started out is now taken in stride in their middle decades.

The evidence is tattooed on the brain. Researchers at the University of Toronto recently found that contrary to the popular belief that the brain only lost cells as it ages, white matter — bundles of nerve transmitters that are wrapped and insulated in a fatty molecule called myelin — continues to grow during middle age, providing what scientists call brain reserve. A famous study of London cabbies, who are required to master 320 routes comprising 25,000 streets, found that the more experienced the driver, the larger was their posterior hippocampus, the peapod-shaped area related to memory. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “The years teach much which the days never knew.”

The reason why I never posted the original study mentioned in the top paragraph is because I thought the whole thing was hyperbolic--that is to say much hyperbole was involved. Nowhere in the original study done, or in THIS article, does anyone mention, or take into account, hormone decline and its effects on the brain.

The brain relies on several things to survive, and one of them is our dominant sex hormones. As we age, naturally our sex hormones go into a slow decline until meno- or andropause, which marks the end of the decline and supply of them (unless we go for hormone replacement therapy). Is this ever mentioned above, or taken into account in the original study linked above? No--it's like it never exists.

Knowing this, I discounted the original study as bunk...incomplete. This article is (to me) merely an explanatory backing-out of the first one. Besides, that first one was from Britain, and we already know we can't trust them as a source for anything medical (another reason why I didn't post it).

Paleo Meatless Monday? I Don't Think So!

2012-01-09T18:20:00.001-05:00

From Blisstree. I was intrigued that maybe someone found a way to combine Paleo with vegetarianism (somehow), but no--I saw this sentence, and am enraged enough to call the CaveCrowd out to pounce on it!

"...we merely think that you’d do everyone a favor by taking a day to lay off the meat."

Jump, Cavers, jump!! Use the original link above to comment.

The Truth Behind Low-Protein Dieting

2012-01-09T06:15:00.001-05:00

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA).

"While millions of Americans try to eat less to weigh less, a group of 25 healthy volunteers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., agreed to overeat in the name of science, consuming nearly 1,000 extra calories per day.

Their mission was to help weight-control researchers figure out if weight gain varies from person to person when they eat too much and how much is stored as body fat.

Did they all gain weight? Yes, they each packed on nearly eight pounds of body fat. But the total number of pounds gained, as measured on a scale, was dependent on the percentage of protein in their meals. The group eating less protein gained less weight.

As reported in this month’s Journal of the American Medical Association, eating a low-protein diet (5 percent of calories from protein) causes the body to lose more lean body tissue compared to a normal (15 percent) or a high-protein diet (26 percent).

The low-protein group gained half as much total weight as the other groups but it was because of muscle loss, not less fat stored. In fact, Dr. George Bray, the study leader, reports the low-protein group stored more than 90 percent of the extra calories as body fat. The numbers on the scale aren’t a good guide to tell you where the pounds are going.

More Protein?

Based on these new findings, there’s more reason to pay attention to protein. That doesn’t mean you have to dwell on meats or protein powders. The USDA’s My Plate guidance to eat six to eight ounces of protein foods per day is what’s recommended to protect your muscles.

Unfortunately, research studies such as this one from Bray often get misinterpreted and misunderstood. Some might conclude that eating more protein will help you lose weight; others might think limiting protein aids weight loss. Neither assumption is true. What is true is that overeating, regardless of the food source, leads to fat storage. No protein miracle cures, sorry.

Understanding Studies

“We get information in snippets about a study,” said Robert Davis, PhD, author of Coffee is Good for You: the Truth about Diet and Nutrition Claims. “What is the whole picture? To look at a puzzle we must put all of the pieces together.”

Davis’ new book debunks popular myths and points to what’s proven. He says nutrition scientists are closer to the truth, but people are still misled by unfounded food fads such as “detox” diets.

“Your body does not need to be detoxed,” said Davis, referring to severely restrictive juice cleanses and regimens often including laxatives and herbal supplements. “Repeated and prolonged detox dieting can potentially lead to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, muscle breakdown and blood sugar problems.”

If a detox plan leads to weight loss it’s because you’re cutting back on calories, Davis said. The book includes a valuable explanation of the types of research used to study health from preliminary test tube studies to gold standard randomized clinical trials -- the kind used by Bray in his weight-gain research."

If you're eating/drinking fruits and vegetables on a regular basis, you are detoxing every day, and there's no need for those so-called "specialized" detox programs. Besides, to "detox" means to withdraw offending substances from your body/from your daily living routine, and that simply means AVOIDANCE.

Illinois Allowing Salvage of Meat, Fur From Roadkill

2012-01-08T07:41:00.001-05:00

From the SF Chronicle.

"In six years of trapping, one thing has become apparent to Cody Champ: His pursuit of animal pelts isn't cheap, costing him $100 a week just for gas. So, it's little wonder the Illinois man welcomed a recent state law that allows him to get a few freebies, even if he needs a shovel and good gloves.

Among the hundreds of Illinois laws that took effect last year, the "roadkill bill" got little attention despite being perhaps the quirkiest of all - allowing anyone with an Illinois furbearer license to salvage pelts or even food from the unfortunate fauna that prove no match for steel-belted radials.

Republican Rep. Norine Hammond pushed the measure straight-faced at the behest of a retired state conservation officer who thought it was a waste to allow animals' pelts to rot along the roadsides. Hammond said it was an opportunity for some people to make a little money, and could benefit the state by letting citizens carry out the task once relegated to state highway crews.

Despite snickering from some lawmakers, the bill sailed through the General Assembly - twice, because lawmakers overrode a veto by Gov. Pat Quinn, who worried that motorists might suffer the same fate as the critters. One poke came from Rep. Lou Lang, a Chicago-area Democrat who asked what to do if a critter wasn't quite dead.

"Am I required to perform mouth-to-mouth on that dead skunk?" Lang demanded.

Joking aside, at least 14 states have laws related to roadkill, including those that let motorists keep animals they hit, though some pertain only to deer or bears, according to an informal survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Idaho soon may join the list, after a three-year push by one legislator to allow roadside salvage of game animals.

"You shouldn't let that stuff go to waste," said Rep. Richard Harwood, an Idaho Republican who said he took up the cause after a game warden threatened a neighbor with a $350 fine if he messed with a run-over bobcat near his home for a hide that could net $200. "To be able not to grab it was kind of stupid. Why let it go to waste?"

Since Illinois' law took effect in October, Champ, a 26-year-old who lives in Dix, about 80 miles east of St. Louis, has skinned a mink and three raccoons he found dead while driving for his job with an electrical supply company.

He hasn't sold them yet, but pelts from certain wild animals are fetching the highest prices in years, due to a strong demand in Russia, China and other countries where they are valued more for their warmth than as a fashion statement. A raccoon skin routinely gets about $9, red fox $14 and muskrat $6.50, with top dollar often twice that amount.

The measure broadened the options under a state law that already let people collect deer killed by vehicles. The new law does stipulate that carcasses only may be salvaged if the animal is in season, to prevent people from poaching them the rest of the year and claiming they were roadkill.

The state has offered some safety tips for those taking advantage of the law, including urging salvagers to wear gloves at all times and don protective glasses to avoid fluids splashing into eyes. Immediately washing hands and any fluid-stained clothing wouldn't be a bad idea, either."

Is there a raccoon, skunk, possum, or dog/cat season?

I'd be wary of the carcass carrying any communicable diseases that can jump to humans (such as HIV), or ones that can be unwittingly carried home to infect pets there. Raccoons are known possible carriers of rabies, and just because Rocky got hit by a car doesn't mean the disease is dead.

This is why animal food manufacturers boil the carcasses before processing the meat. Evidently, some members of the Illinois legislature are completely unaware of what happens to roadkill carcasses after they're picked up, and don't know (or care) how processed pet food is made. They're now helping to put the likes of Colgate, Unilever, and Purina out of business--another unintended consequence of politics.

Kids Prefer a Variety of Foods, Colors on Their Plate

2012-01-07T07:39:00.001-05:00

From the L.A. Times.

"Want your kid to eat more fruits and vegetables? Put together a more attractive plate of food, researchers at Cornell University and London Metropolitan University said Thursday.

But here's the thing: The arrangement of food that's most appealing to your child may not be the one that's most appealing to you, they wrote in the journal Acta Paediatrica.

In what they called a "preliminary" study, the researchers showed 23 children age 5 to 12 (and in attendence at a summer camp in Ithaca, N.Y.) 48 different combinations of food on plates, asking them which were their favorites. They repeated the exercise online with 46 adults.

The plates varied by number and mixing of colors; number of components; position of the main component; whether they were crowded or empty; whether they were organized or disorganized; and whether the elements on them were arranged into a picture (such as a heart or a smile.) A variety of foods -- including eggs, bacon, fruits and veggies -- were represented.

Results showed that kids appreciated different qualities in a dinner plate than grownups. Where adults' most common preferences for number of different food colors and different food items was three, children most liked a plate with six different colors (the largest number the researchers included), as well as a plate with seven different components (again, the largest number included). Adults liked their main food component in the center of their plate. Kids liked theirs toward the bottom. Perhaps less surprising, kids liked when their food was arranged into a picture, while adults preferred a "casual" plate design.

The differences they observed, the researchers said, suggest that strategies to encourage healthy eating among kids need to be tuned more specifically to children's visual preferences.

"Our findings support the view that children are not simply 'little adults,'" they wrote. "Most especially we are struck by the finding that young children appear to prefer plates that feature a wide variety of foods and colors."

This, they added, "should open a window of possibility for those concerned with childhood nutrition," who might want to consider presenting kids with colorful, multi-element dinner plates.

Cornell's Food and Brand Lab website has posted a summary of the research."

How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body

2012-01-06T06:45:00.001-05:00

From the NY Times. It makes you bend (or break) in ways you weren't meant to, or at least it does me.

"On a cold Saturday in early 2009, Glenn Black, a yoga teacher of nearly four decades, whose devoted clientele includes a number of celebrities and prominent gurus, was giving a master class at Sankalpah Yoga in Manhattan. Black is, in many ways, a classic yogi: he studied in Pune, India, at the institute founded by the legendary B. K. S. Iyengar, and spent years in solitude and meditation. He now lives in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and often teaches at the nearby Omega Institute, a New Age emporium spread over nearly 200 acres of woods and gardens. He is known for his rigor and his down-to-earth style.

But this was not why I sought him out: Black, I’d been told, was the person to speak with if you wanted to know not about the virtues of yoga but rather about the damage it could do. Many of his regular clients came to him for bodywork or rehabilitation following yoga injuries. This was the situation I found myself in. In my 30s, I had somehow managed to rupture a disk in my lower back and found I could prevent bouts of pain with a selection of yoga postures and abdominal exercises. Then, in 2007, while doing the extended-side-angle pose, a posture hailed as a cure for many diseases, my back gave way. With it went my belief, naïve in retrospect, that yoga was a source only of healing and never harm.

At Sankalpah Yoga, the room was packed; roughly half the students were said to be teachers themselves. Black walked around the room, joking and talking. “Is this yoga?” he asked as we sweated through a pose that seemed to demand superhuman endurance. “It is if you’re paying attention.”

His approach was almost free-form: he made us hold poses for a long time but taught no inversions and few classical postures. Throughout the class, he urged us to pay attention to the thresholds of pain. “I make it as hard as possible,” he told the group. “It’s up to you to make it easy on yourself.” He drove his point home with a cautionary tale. In India, he recalled, a yogi came to study at Iyengar’s school and threw himself into a spinal twist. Black said he watched in disbelief as three of the man’s ribs gave way — pop, pop, pop.

After class, I asked Black about his approach to teaching yoga — the emphasis on holding only a few simple poses, the absence of common inversions like headstands and shoulder stands. He gave me the kind of answer you’d expect from any yoga teacher: that awareness is more important than rushing through a series of postures just to say you’d done them. But then he said something more radical. Black has come to believe that “the vast majority of people” should give up yoga altogether. It’s simply too likely to cause harm.

Not just students but celebrated teachers too, Black said, injure themselves in droves because most have underlying physical weaknesses or problems that make serious injury all but inevitable. Instead of doing yoga, “they need to be doing a specific range of motions for articulation, for organ condition,” he said, to strengthen weak parts of the body. “Yoga is for people in good physical condition. Or it can be used therapeutically. It’s controversial to say, but it really shouldn’t be used for a general class.”

Black seemingly reconciles the dangers of yoga with his own teaching of it by working hard at knowing when a student “shouldn’t do something — the shoulder stand, the headstand or putting any weight on the cervical vertebrae.” Though he studied with Shmuel Tatz, a legendary Manhattan-based physical therapist who devised a method of massage and alignment for actors and dancers, he acknowledges that he has no formal training for determining which poses are good for a student and which may be problematic. What he does have, he says, is “a ton of experience.”

“To come to New York and do a class with people who have many problems and say, ‘O.K., we’re going to do this sequence of poses today’ — it just doesn’t work.”

According to Black, a number of factors have converged to heighten the risk of practicing yoga. The biggest is the demographic shift in those who study it. Indian practitioners of yoga typically squatted and sat cross-legged in daily life, and yoga poses, or asanas, were an outgrowth of these postures. Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems. Many come to yoga as a gentle alternative to vigorous sports or for rehabilitation for injuries. But yoga’s exploding popularity — the number of Americans doing yoga has risen from about 4 million in 2001 to what some estimate to be as many as 20 million in 2011 — means that there is now an abundance of studios where many teachers lack the deeper training necessary to recognize when students are headed toward injury. “Today many schools of yoga are just about pushing people,” Black said. “You can’t believe what’s going on — teachers jumping on people, pushing and pulling and saying, ‘You should be able to do this by now.’ It has to do with their egos.”

When yoga teachers come to him for bodywork after suffering major traumas, Black tells them, “Don’t do yoga.”

The article goes on for 6 more pages--if you wish to read it in entirety, please go to the link above.

Need Dumplings for Your Soup? These Are Mostly Paleo-Friendly

2012-01-05T10:09:00.000-05:00

At the Spunky Coconut. The only thing that needs changing is the choice of fat.

The Senior Care View From China: No Country For Old Men (or Women)

2012-01-05T08:20:00.000-05:00

From Bloomberg News. Think our nursing homes are deplorable?

"Wang Fuchuan lies in bed wearing a quilted black jacket, with two comforters pulled up to his chin to keep out the chilly November air. The heating at Beijing Songtang Caring Hospice is broken and the 90-year-old’s nostrils are stuffed with toilet paper to stop them dripping.

Cockroaches scurry across the floor of his room, which has no running water or toilet. His possessions, a few articles of clothing, are in a plastic bag under his bed next to a pink wash bowl with a sliver of soap. His only entertainment is a transistor radio.

Wang counts himself lucky. While he has no family or savings, he fought against the Japanese and Kuomintang in the 1940s, so the government pays the clinic’s monthly fee of 2,000 yuan ($318). His 200-yuan pension buys food.

“A lot of people my age can’t afford to be here,” Wang says. “The food isn’t too good, but I have nothing else to complain about.”

Wang is in the vanguard of a looming demographic shift for China, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Jan. 9 issue. The latest government census shows 178 million Chinese were over 60 in 2009. That figure could reach 437 million -- one third of the population -- by 2050, the United Nations forecasts. While the elderly were looked after in the past by their children, urbanization and the nation’s one-child policy have eroded the tradition of family care.

“It’s a demographic tsunami,” says Joseph J. Christian, a fellow at the Asia Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former DLA Piper partner in Hong Kong, who specializes in senior housing issues in China. “The whole multigenerational housing model has disappeared.”

Japan’s Shadow

China’s challenge is similar to that faced by Japan in the 1990s, with one essential difference: China will grow old before it gets rich. With tens of millions of parents left to fend for themselves, the government set up a National Committee on Aging to try to devise a comprehensive strategy (CHGE7) to ensure their health and comfort.
The latest five-year plan still gives families primary responsibility for elderly care. Even so, the government is looking to the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and local communities for a more sustainable solution. So far only a handful of companies provide service comparable to the West, and even care like the kind offered by the clinic where Wang Fuchuan lives is relatively rare.

“Elderly health care is in its infancy” in China, says Ninie Wang, founder of Beijing-based Pinetree Senior Care Services, which employs 500 nurses providing in-home support to 20,000 seniors in Beijing.

Too Few Beds

China has about 38,000 institutions serving the elderly with 2.7 million beds, enough for about 1.6 percent of the population over 60, according to the World Bank. That compares with about 8 percent in developed countries, the bank says.

Some homes are fully staffed government clinics for senior officials or private hospitals catering to the new urban elite. Most are boarding houses with few medical facilities, mainly in large cities. In towns and villages, the situation is far worse.

“If we can’t help people in Beijing, you can forget about any opportunities for helping the rural old people,” says Jing Jun, a professor of anthropology at Tsinghua University.

A 2009 survey of 140 nursing homes in the eastern city of Nanjing by a group of Chinese academics found that fewer than a third employed a doctor or a nurse. Most of the staff were unskilled rural migrant workers with minimal training.

“The goal at these homes is subsistence for residents whose children can’t take care of them,” says Zhanlian Feng, a gerontologist at Brown University who wrote a paper based on the survey in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Many clinics refuse people who require full-time nursing. Others may force out residents once they become too needy, he says.

Open to Abuse

There are no industry standards and little government oversight, much like the U.S. decades ago when the system was open to abuse, Feng says. In August, the state-run China Daily newspaper carried a report about a man in Anhui province who discovered that staff at a local nursing home tied his father’s hands to his bed for 11 hours a night.

At the other end of the spectrum, the facilities and care rival many stablishments in the West.

On a recent Friday at Cherish-Yearn, a complex on the outskirts of Shanghai with apartments for 1,600 seniors, silver- haired couples shuffled to the strains of “Never on Sunday” in the dance hall. In activity rooms nearby, others tried calligraphy, computer games, and traditional ink painting. Outside, there’s a miniature putting green.

Medical Facilities

It wasn’t dance classes, golf, or even the on-site financial advice that prompted Luo Zhong Bao, 78, and his wife to sell their apartment and move to Cherish-Yearn three years ago. It was the medical facilities that offered peace of mind to their four children.

“They work and have no time,” Luo says. “The hospital here is good, and they don’t have to worry about anything.”

A handful of foreign companies are jumping into the business. China Senior Care, a venture with U.S. backers, is building a 64-bed assisted-living center in Hangzhou aimed at Chinese who can afford to pay more than 30,000 yuan per month. Right at Home, an Omaha company that introduced home-care franchises to China in June, aims to open dozens of affiliates by 2017. The company charges about 100 yuan per hour of service from caregivers trained in everything from vacuuming to CPR.

No Time

“I don’t want to be a burden,” says Du Li, an 85-year-old former government accountant in Beijing with a daughter and son living in the city. While she’s fit enough to climb four flights of stairs twice a day to her three-bedroom apartment in the leafy Sanlitun district, she’s grateful for the massages and help with chores that her Right at Home caregiver offers.

“I don’t think my children have enough time,” Du says. With her caregiver, “Life is more colorful. I have a companion.”

Few of China’s growing ranks of elderly can afford those services. “International players are looking for high-net-worth clients,” says Mark Spitalnik, founder of China Senior Care. “The true problem for the government is people who don’t have money.”

China’s economic growth has given it the financial muscle to provide for the growing number of elderly and the government has been rapidly introducing pensions and health-care plans for farmers and city-dwellers, said Li Zhihong, research department director at the National Committee on Aging.

Wealth Care

“The aging of the population will be an issue in China that runs through the 21st century,” said Li in an e-mailed response to questions. “The Chinese government has all the financial capabilities and capacity to protect the basic needs of the elderly.”

Not everyone is convinced the government’s efforts will succeed. In a 20 square meter (215 square feet) apartment without heating or an indoor toilet in one of Shanghai’s few remaining old neighborhoods, 81-year-old Luo Jinxiang says his pension barely covers food and medication for his diabetes and the occasional visit to a local clinic.

“Do you really believe that the government cares for us?” he asks with a wry smile. “Don’t think about it too much. That is the way the country runs.”

It seems we're all caught in this vortex of elder care and affordability these days. The only logical way out is to never get caught in it to begin with.

Combine these social pressures with the fact that these people are under constant slow poisoning from polluted water, polluted and adulterated food, inadequate medical care, inadequate hygiene infrastructure (sewers, running water, and for most, no electricity), and a run-amok dictatorship which shows no signs of ending, and you get one version of hell on earth. People would be glad to die because it would be their only escape.

How Food Choices Affect Your Retirement Account

2012-01-05T07:54:00.001-05:00

From U.S. News & World Report.

"Not that many people consider how their evening meal impacts their retirement, but perhaps they should. Our daily consumption dramatically affects our finances, and changing our food choices can alter our chances of a solid retirement. Here are several ways your food selection matters for your golden years.

You spend more while you are hungry. Expensive restaurant food isn't the only way you are induced to spend. Some businesses will fill their stores with scents like vanilla and cinnamon in an attempt to get more sales. When you are hungry, you instinctively eat more and exert less self control. Stay away from the mall when you are hungry. Eating a snack at home before shopping could allow you to put a little more cash in a retirement account.

Overeating costs more. We all know that eating out generally costs more than eating at home. We also tend to eat more when we eat out, which actually makes us feel hungry more easily. This is because the more we eat, the more our body gets used to more food and thus signals us that we need more.

The way to feel less hungry is to actually eat a more balanced diet and stay consistent with the amount of food you eat on a daily basis. If you sometimes eat a ton and sometimes hardly anything, something you are more prone to do when you are always out at restaurants where portions differ, you are not only spending more on the spot, but also setting yourself up to spend more later. A big part of losing weight is simply eating less of the same food you are currently consuming, which will also cut your food bills.

Another way is to eat fewer carbs and more fat, cutting down on the same medical bills, food costs, hunger, and more energy.

Being overweight can increase our medical bills. Employees at large companies generally pay the same insurance premiums, regardless of their weight. But you will need to worry about individual premium costs if you become self employed or start your own business, get fired, or want to retire early and need coverage before Medicare kicks in. Out-of-pocket costs may also increase if you develop a chronic condition related to obesity.

You will feel more energetic in your golden years. Remember your younger days when you could party all night, sleep for a few hours, and feel perfectly fine the next morning? Many people who lose weight regain some of that youthful energy. You won't have unlimited energy, of course, but you will have plenty to enjoy the decades of hard work you put in to build a solid nest egg."

A recent article that shows a McMeal actually costs twice what a sensible grab-n-go meal from a grocery store would cost. Multiply all the fast-food meals eaten in this country by the lost income from being obese to start with, and you get something like this disaster even before you retire.

This is the true cost of convenience.

In Paleo-ese: every dollar you spend on grains, beans/legumes, and dairy NOW will be one less dollar you have in your retirement kitty later...when you might really need it. It's not just the food--every OTHER dollar you save from eating Paleo style can also go into your retirement kitty, boosting it further, with no real excess work or sweat on your part. Live smarter so you can live longer.

What Americans Don't Understand About Weight Loss (L-O-N-G)

2012-01-05T07:16:00.001-05:00

From Salon.com. A personal story about getting back to one's true food roots.

"I decided I had to lose weight on a research trip to Japan for National Geographic. After posing for a picture with a post-tsunami cleanup crew in northeastern Japan, I was immediately given a print of the picture as a keepsake. There I was, smiling broadly, and looking enthusiastic. I was also, to my eyes, enormous.

No one in Japan ever told me I was fat. Instead, relatives — my mother is Japanese — would say things to me like, “Wow. You are starting to look like your father, aren’t you!” Obesity, just so you know, is one of the major factors that contributed to my American father’s death.

My Japanese cousin asked me, “Are you considered large in America?”

“Small to medium,” I said.

“Oh. So I would be minuscule over there.”

“Yes. Very, very small.”

“It’s best to stay in one’s own country, isn’t it?”

My cousin’s comment initially struck me as the kind of naive thing a homebody might say to an inveterate international traveler. But now I take her words at face value. She meant that she ought to stay home to avoid what had happened to me.

The U.S., in case you haven’t heard, is the world’s most obese country, followed by Mexico and the U.K. Japan is last on the list. I worry that we often have a deer in the headlights response to this news. In a recent New York Times piece, Health editor Tara Parker-Pope investigated how our biology can work against us in our battle of the bulge. “Once we become fat,” Parker-Pope writes, “most of us, despite our best efforts, will probably stay fat.” In a later interview, she concedes: “Hope springs eternal, and I really do believe that I will one day be able to lose the weight and keep it off.” She then states that she will try again to exercise more and track her food. This to and fro struck me as an example of how we distract ourselves from salient issues surrounding diet, weight loss and culture. Biology may well be part of the problem for some, but why have we become fatter than we were 30 years ago? Why are the Japanese staying so slim? Do they have a secret we in America have forgotten, or maybe never knew?

Over the years, while visiting Japan, I had started to move around my second homeland with a feeling of acute apology. I was sorry to have mistreated my Japanese genes. When I went to public baths, I’d suck in my stomach and look around to find women whose bodies matched mine. There were older women whose stomachs puffed out. Young mothers — and by last year I, too, was a mother — neither puffed out, nor sucked in. I couldn’t help thinking of the words of Dr. Sears, of the Attachment Baby Parenting book series: “Your body will never be the same again.” He, obviously, has never been in the female section of a public Japanese bath.

Many times over the years I have Googled “How much should I weigh?” and been given a range based on my BMI. I have always been within that range. I even asked my doctor in New York if I needed to lose weight, and he rolled his eyes. In New York City, women either weigh less than they ought to, or far, far more than they should. I wasn’t a problem.

I occasionally mentioned my concerns to girlfriends, who commented on my need to accept myself. Too much of our culture, they insisted, placed a woman’s value on her appearance. I was too smart to worry about my looks. Friends would tell me about their anorexic years, and how they had since learned to love themselves as they were. Worrying too much about weight signaled a fixation on control — or an obsession with image and the media. Was I reading too many gossip magazines? I was too old to develop an eating disorder; this is the bailiwick of the young.

I still thought I might be fat. I thought that maybe with our Western concern about “acceptance” we had overcompensated when it came to facing the truth about weight, and that I was just one of many people who really ought to lose some pounds.

A Western acquaintance who used to be a dancer and who is very thin once remarked to me, “You sure don’t have your mother’s body.” For a while, I comforted myself that this acquaintance was probably anorexic and a little bit bitchy and that being bitchy went hand in hand with not eating enough. The girls who told me there was nothing wrong with my weight were never bitchy and always ate enough. But I noticed: The bitchy girl got a lot of attention from men. I said to her, “You like the thin look, don’t you?” She admitted, “Yes. I think the Audrey Hepburn look is the most beautiful look for women.” Her husband, who liked to go out and eat a burger with me because his wife wouldn’t, wondered aloud one evening what Nicole Kidman — she of the willowy frame — could possibly have done to so upset Tom Cruise. Nicole Kidman! But she was so beautiful!

I wondered about the split in my head: the idea that fun girls are willing to eat and can comfort us with a cozy, permissive warmth and that thin girls are the paragons of a beauty that only a very few can emulate. Who really wants to be so thin if it just makes you bitchy? Or does it? What about other cultures? Are the Japanese, who are almost uniformly thin, also uniformly bitchy, and if not, then how do you account for the fact that Japan is one of the most food-obsessed places I’ve ever seen?

I decided my doctor was wrong. I decided my kind friends who worried that I might develop body dysmorphia were wrong. I decided the bitchy girl who liked thinness was also wrong. I suspected the weight charts on the Internet that told me I was doing just fine were wrong. I decided the Japanese people — my family — were probably right and that their view of a healthy weight was probably closer to the truth.

So late one night, still jet lagged from my research trip to Japan and coughing from the pneumonia I’d picked up on the plane, I surfed the Internet. I was scared. I’d had pneumonia once before and it’d nearly killed me. The doctor said I wasn’t sick enough to go to the hospital and anyway, hospitals bred even worse infections. He’d put me on Avelox, which made me vomit; now I was on two different antibiotics.

Around 3 a.m., I saw an ad for the Dukan diet — a French diet — which promised to tell me my “true weight.” In a haze, I filled out the information box. Finally. Someone would tell me the truth.

You probably are looking for some stats about my weight. Let me pause here and tell you that I’m 5-foot-5. When I danced regularly over a decade ago, I weighed around 123 pounds. In the photo from Japan, I weigh about 143. According to the Dukan Diet, I “should” weigh 127 pounds. I was now at 138 (remember: vomiting). The Dukan Diet promised it could help. Later, my husband would tell me how angry he was that I’d decided to try “that French diet” while I was recovering from pneumonia.

The Dukan team sent me daily emails in English that had clearly been translated from French. This was often amusing. Early on, I was advised that if I were to regain my power of “seduction,” I would need to lose weight. One email read: “Our need to feel desirable, our need for well-being, our fear of illness, our need to belong to a group, and our need to conform to prevailing style trends comes from (instinct).”

Conform? Me? How dare this French diet company accuse me of conformity! But after my ire subsided, I started to wonder if there wasn’t some wisdom here. I began to wonder if we, like Keanu Reeves, weren’t in some Matrix-like environment in which we slumber in some extra pounds and feel it’s OK because, well, everyone is doing it. Is that why my nice friends were telling me not to lose weight? Because they didn’t want me to wake up? And if so, do the Japanese suffer from a reverse pressure?

When I was younger and my mother was out of the country, my dad and I liked to go off and eat burgers together at a small hole-in-the-wall eatery near our local military base. I knew my Dad counted on me for this kind of release. I repeated this behavior with the men I dated. I was your “fun meat-eating and good listener” kind of girlfriend.

My mother is not a closet burger eater and has never been obese. Her frequent and irritating lament over the years has been that she needs to gain weight. She and her friend Hanae-san and I would go out to lunch in Japan and I’d sit there and listen to them both complain about how they couldn’t finish their meals. Once, I was sick of listening to their not-so-subtle anorexic competition and I said, “You know, you might think it’s cute to complain about how you can’t eat, but it’s actually annoying.”

There was silence. Then, Hanae-san said, “We don’t think it’s cute. It’s a problem that happens to women as we get older. We lose our appetites. I see it all the time in my friends.”

A funny thing happened to me on that trip and others that followed. I too began to feel full very quickly. I, too, craved tiny but rich meals composed of fish, vegetables and a little rice. After three weeks, my clothes hung slack.

Once, after one of these trips, I said to my dad on the phone, “You know that feeling when you are full, but not stuffed? It actually feels good.”

He didn’t like that feeling at all. In public, he ate and praised my mother’s healthy meals, but then he’d go eat a second meal in private until he felt stuffed and happy. I know this because for months after his death, we found bags of cookies stashed in his office, his tool shop and car. He had always sworn that his weight gain was a mystery. I now think that behind most weight gain mysteries, there are probably very specific reasons, if we are brave enough to look.

I continued on the Dukan Diet, which stresses lean protein in its initial stages, then adds in vegetables, fruit and whole grains. It is, in other words, one of many “low carb diets.” Scouring the Internet, I started to read about not only the Dukan, but also other diets, trying to understand how and why they worked. Low-carb diets are effective, experts said, because they force us to lower our caloric intake. Though I wasn’t supposed to, I started to track calories, fascinated that simple math can actually result in weight reduction. I’ve since learned that among lifetime dieters, counting calories is seen as a “bad” thing to do: too obsessive and anal.

The reasoning goes something like this: If you feel you are denied food, you will later binge and gain back all the weight. Therefore, you do not want to feel that eating is bad. Over and over again, I would run into the following sentiment: “I don’t want to feel deprived.” Freedom from this yoke of torment can only come from a transcendence that does not involve calorie counting.

The fun girl — the one who goes out to burgers with you and lets you smoke and drink as much as you want — doesn’t care about transcendence and she certainly doesn’t care about rules. In Scotland this fall, as I pondered another piece of pie, my mother-in-law said to me in her low, throaty voice, “Go on. Be tempted.” And then it dawned on me: Are we in some perpetual Garden of Eden? Is every pie an apple? Every dieter an Eve?

Do I really feel this way? Do you feel this way? At a certain point, how can any of us miss the Judeo-Christian thinking in the way we talk about and value food. Sinful desserts. Guilt-free brownies. Binge and purge. Comfort eating. Boring steamed fish. Don’t be tempted by empty calories. Indulge in richness. Reward yourself. Cleanse for the new year. Do I hear this kind of talk in Japan? Never. Do we have a psychological hang-up that they don’t? Or is it something else?

From the minute my son was born two years ago, Japanese friends and relatives gave me advice about what he should eat. “What you feed a child until he is 3 will stay with him for life.” There appears to be truth to this sentiment. Scientists tell us that we develop a taste for sweet and salt very early on in life — even in infancy. Our adult cravings — and the intensity of our cravings — may be determined by what we eat in childhood.

I didn’t want my son to suffer my father’s fate, so I bought a book in Japanese on how to feed babies, and followed it religiously. I translated a spreadsheet into English, and put it into Excel so my husband could see what foods we would be introducing each month. I want to stress that many Western baby-feeding books emphasize the introduction of texture to a baby’s mouth. In Japan, it’s all about food. The emphasis is on rice, fish, vegetables and fruit, and light seasoning. Japanese relatives and friends maintained their pressure on me to stay vigilant. Once my son turned 3, he would go to school and the Western world would intervene, but by then it wouldn’t matter. My son could return to the palate I’d set for him.

Case in point, they said; I had returned to mine.

When I went back to Japan this past November, I was 20 pounds lighter. For the first time in a long time, I moved through the crowded trains, and the narrow aisles of restaurants with confidence. I fit.

Then, I got annoyed. No one noticed that I had lost weight. About a week into the trip, I asked a good family friend, “Can’t you tell I’m thinner?”

“Come to think of it, last time I thought you had ballooned up a bit.”

Just like that, I felt defensive. “Last time I saw you, I had just had a baby, you know.” Your body will never be the same again.

“Oh, yes. That sometimes causes weight gain.” Sometimes?

I wouldn’t let the subject die. “What do you think when you see a fat Westerner in Japan?”

My friend thought for a few minutes. And then she said that “fat” seemed to be a normal condition for Westerners. “But our idea of fat is different from yours,” she continued. “I think you become seven times fatter than we do before it occurs to you that you are fat. Anyway, you should relax,” she said. “You already know what you need to do. You just need to remember: Eat like us.”

By the end of my trip in Japan, I was convinced I had gained back all the weight that I had lost. I hadn’t been able to track my calories and I felt nervous without my dietary tools. I got to the airport lounge and was surrounded by Western businessmen going home. They looked enormous. You become seven times fatter than we do before it occurs to you that you are fat.

And then at home, the next morning, I got on the scale.

I hadn’t gained an ounce."

For Optimum Health, Go Beyond the Basic Nutritional Guidelines

2012-01-05T06:50:00.002-05:00

From the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal (WA State).

"If you’re conscientious about your food choices for a healthy lifestyle, you probably know all about eating whole foods, fresh fruits and veggies and so on. But there’s more to good nutrition for optimum health, and it has nothing to do with counting calories or avoiding fats. Many nutritionists discourage people from following fad diets — which could even mean the low-fat, low-cholesterol kind — in favor of an individualized approach based on nutrient-rich, minimally processed foods that address individual needs.

“I encourage people to experiment with different ways of eating to see what works for them. Some people feel drawn to eating one way that is what one might consider ‘healthy’ but think that they should do something else because of their blood type, etc.,” said Port Orchard nutritionist Deanna Minich, PhD, author of several books including “An A to Z Guide to Food Additives: Never Eat What You Can’t Pronounce.”

Instead of using a diet approach, Minich recommends “an experiential method in which you see how your body interacts with different combinations of nutrients, times of eating and amounts of food.”

“Making one’s connection more experiential with food means that you have to force yourself to be fully aware of how your body, emotions and mind are responding. With everyone being so individual in their genetic expression, I think that being flexible rather than rigidly tied to a diet is the way to ensure long-term, effective change that gets one in touch with their bodies more than a calorie count,” she said, adding that a nutrition expert can help guide a person through that process.

She said one mistake people commonly make is following numbers instead of their own bodies. “Numbers like calorie counting may be good for an initial transition into a new way of eating, but may not be practical for the long term,” she said.

Jennifer Adler, MS, CN, a certified nutritionist and owner of Passionate Nutrition, with offices on Bainbridge Island and in Seattle, agrees that calorie-counting is a common mistake.

“A lot of people get caught up in looking for things that are low-fat but a lot of low-fat foods have little nutrition and are more processed,” she said. “It’s more about food quality versus calories.”

As one example, she said many low-fat yogurts have additives like gums and thickeners that their whole versions don’t contain, which means whole-milk yogurt is more of a natural product as well as being more filling. “If we pay attention to our bodies, eating something that has more fat will make us feel more satisfied so we will not eat as much,” she said.

That doesn’t mean going overboard with fat, of course; it simply means doing some homework to understand what’s best for the body.

In addition to trying to eat foods that are as pure as possible, Adler looks at the “age” of a food. If something has been around for a hundred years or more (like eggs, for example), it’s more likely to be healthy than things created in the past six decades when highly processed foods became mainstream.

“Nutrient density is important. The deeper, darker the color of the food, the more nutrition it has,” she said. That means spinach is better than iceberg lettuce, egg yolk is better than the egg white, and so on.

Kale is another good substitution for lettuce, said Minich, who also recommends things like baking a sweet potato instead of a regular one. She said it’s important to make healthy eating easy and convenient. “Make fresh convenient in any way possible,” she said. “Buy pre-cut vegetables, even if they are not organic… Cut up vegetables or fruit and keep in easily accessible container in refrigerator.”

She also likes to “sneak in” veggies — like pulverizing them in a blender and adding to a healthy protein shake. “Bury vegetables in other dishes: spinach in brownies, if you really want to eat brownies; carrot puree in macaroni and cheese,” she said. Other veggie-packed suggestions include stir-fry dishes and the powdered form from a supplement store or a healthcare provider. Minich recommends the book “Green for Life” by Victoria Boutenko for more ideas.

Leah Werner, a registered dietician and clinical educator for Harrison Medical Center, said eating a rainbow of colors is good advice. And although she agrees that trying to avoid processed foods is key, she said if canned vegetables is your only choice, that’s better than no vegetables at all. “Sometimes frozen vegetables have more nutrients too (than fresh ones) because they are frozen when packed and don’t lose nutrients when being transported,” she said.

One area people can explore beyond the basics is phytochemicals, Werner said. Phytochemicals, also called phytonutrients, are compounds in plants that are separate from vitamins and minerals and help prevent diseases. Some of the most phytonitrient-rich foods are broccoli, berries, soy nuts, pears, turnips, celery, carrots, spinach, olives, tomatoes, lentils and cantaloupes, according to the Stanford Cancer Institute.

“One mistake people make is cutting out every food they enjoy and going out on an extreme,” Werner said. “That could lead to binging and cravings. So do everything in moderation.”

Minich has similar advice. She said people who do too much, too fast can’t sustain that approach in the long term. “Smaller steps for lasting effects is my preferred approach,” she said. “…Focus on the basics rather than making it complicated: Stick with produce of many colors, reduce processed foods and eat moderate portions.”

One very basic change Adler suggests is slowing down during a meal and really the food. “Often times you know this is good to do but have a hard time with it,” she said. “(Slowing down) helps metabolize food and absorb nutrition, and you could also realize you don’t like that food (like fast food) after all.”

She recommends preparing healthy meals in advance or making one-pot meals such as soups and crockpot dishes and taking advantage of the healthy “grab and go” options offered at grocery stores. “One thing I recommend do clients is to set themselves up for success,” she said."

"This Paleo's Never Leaving the Cave Again!"

2012-01-05T06:27:00.001-05:00

From the Philly Burbs (PA). Cave-resident Jen Wielgus is the author.

"All you readers with self-destructive tendencies, holla back!

This misery needs company.

No, actually, I'm not miserable at the moment. I'm extremely glad to be back from my Christmas/New Year's vacation, back in my own bed and my own kitchen, back to my old workout routine and, above all, back to my precious Paleo, or Caveman, diet.

I never, ever want to leave the cave again.

I knew, deep down, that as much as I said I was going to stay Paleo over the 10 days I spent with my folks in Chicago, I really was going to do what I do every time I take a vacation. I was going to overindulge in the non-Paleo decadence that is the hallmark of Wielgus -- and pretty much every other last-name -- family holidays.

That's why I brought up the self-destruction stuff earlier. When I indulge, it's epic. Always has been, and unfortunately, it probably always will be, unless I get a lobotomy. But before I went strict Paleo a few months back, the indulgence never resulted in much but temporary weight gain.

This time, it resulted in a complete and utter mess. My entire system went awry. Yes, I'm talking about digestion, and I promise not to provide further details. I'm also talking about my complexion -- I seriously forgot what it was like to get zits, and now I look like I've been using a pizza for a pillow. And perhaps most significant: I'm talking about my energy level and my attitude.

All these things took a serious turn for the worse, thanks to my insistence on drinking beer and eating cookies and cake and bagels and pretzels and generally consuming too much of everything. Amazing how an extreme dietary change can turn you into a totally different person.

No, my eating habits didn't completely ruin my vacation. My parents, aunts, sisters and their significant others/kids are too much fun and too precious in my life for me NOT to enjoy spending time with them. But I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed the time as much as I could have, if I'd been smarter about what I put in my mouth.

I have learned an important lesson the hardest way possible. Once you begin a clean eating regimen, you're a hard-core fool to ditch it completely and jump back in the deep end of "normal" eating. If you have trouble with moderation and tend toward the extreme, you need to come up with a concrete plan of attack for the times your schedule and routine is interrupted.

Or, you could end up as a bloated, pimply-faced, crabby version of yourself. The Paleo diet is about turning back the clock, in a sense, but no one wants to go through puberty again."

Gardeners: Make Your Own Liquid Fertilizer

2012-01-05T06:21:00.001-05:00

From the News-Sentinel (IN). So easy a caveman can do it!

"Make an all-natural fertilizer.

•When preparing vegetables for meals, we have peelings and inedible stems and parts that we toss in the compost bin, the garbage can, or are ground up and flushed away in our garbage disposals. Instead, keep a bucket handy and toss the peelings and other plant material in a bucket.

•Cover with water. It can be either hot or cold, but ideally should be rainwater or distilled water. Let set for three days, stir occasionally, and drain off this nutritional tea into a watering can or gallon jug to be used on your houseplants. Finally, toss the plant material on the compost pile.

•This is a great way to feed our plants inside and out all year round.

•Outside use could be done with a garbage can or barrel situated so you can gather rainwater.

A word of caution: However you do it, use only healthy plant material to make this tea."

The FDA Moves to Restrict (Somewhat) the Use of Antibiotics in Livestock

2012-01-05T06:15:00.001-05:00

From Time.

"It’s no secret that America has a drug problem—so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that our livestock have one as well. Antibiotics are a major part of the conventional meat industry, and the drugs aren’t just used to treat sick animals—they’re also given regularly in feed to help growth promotion of pigs, chickens and cattle. According to a recent study by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), some 80% of the antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used in farm animals, not in human beings, and 90% of that amount is dispensed through feed or water. All those drugs can help lead to the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and those hard to treat bugs in turn can infect human beings. Some 100,000 Americans die each year from hospital-acquired infections that are resistant to most antibiotics. Antibiotics are a limited resource—the more they’re used, the faster bacteria will evolve to beat them—and by using so many of our drugs on farms rather than the hospital, we may be wasting them.

So public health advocates have been pushing for years to get the government to restrict the use of human antibiotics in farm animals—at least for non-therapeutic purposes. But the meat industry has long opposed any regulations on drug use, claiming that antibiotic-resistant bacteria have far more to do with overuse in human beings than on the farm. Given the political power of the ag lobby, it shouldn’t be surprising that they’ve usually won those battles.

But the tide may be turning. On January 4, the FDA announced that farmers and ranchers had to restrict their use of a class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins—commonly used in humans to treat strep throat and bronchitis—in cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys because those habits may have helped lead to the rise of resistant bacteria.

From the FDA’s announcement:

Antimicrobial drugs are important for treating disease in both humans and animals. This new order takes into consideration the substantial public comment FDA received on a similar order that it issued in 2008, but revoked prior to implementation.

FDA is taking this action to preserve the effectiveness of cephalosporin drugs for treating disease in humans. Prohibiting these uses is intended to reduce the risk of cephalosporin resistance in certain bacterial pathogens.

The new rules don’t prohibit all use of the antibiotics in animals—just the use of the drugs at unapproved dose levels, or for disease prevention, rather than actively treating sick animals. But that’s still enough to make long-time advocates of reducing antibiotics in animals applaud. From Laura Rogers, the project director of the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming:

We applaud FDA’s move. This restriction is a victory for human health, as it will help ensure we can still rely on cephalosporins to treat life-threatening infections today and in the future.

Today’s action is a good first step, and we encourage FDA to issue guidelines expeditiously that restrict the overuse and misuse of other critical antibiotics on industrial farms.

This rule is a long time coming—the FDA initially proposed its cephalosporin restrictions in 2008, only to withdraw the rules because of fierce opposition from farmers and ranchers. The news rules are less restrictive than the ones proposed nearly four years ago, allowing veterinarians to keep using the drugs to treat illnesses in animals as long as they hold follow dosage guidelines. But for those who worry about preserving antibiotics for use in people—not just farm animals—the FDA rules are a good start."

Bring On the Fake Sugar Rush!

2012-01-05T06:03:00.001-05:00

From the Wall St. Journal.

"At the Whole Foods Market in Silver Spring, Md., the self-serve coffee counter offers four types of milk and nearly every imaginable alternative to granulated sugar. There's unrefined sugar, evaporated cane juice, agave nectar—and a no-calorie sugar substitute called Truvia.

The green packets are tucked behind the cash register; if you want it, you have to ask. That's because they have a way of disappearing. "People take a lot more than they need," says Liz Burkhart, a Whole Foods spokeswoman.

Truvia's maker, agricultural giant Cargill Inc., of Minneapolis, is aware that consumers often stock up on Truvia packets at coffee bars and in restaurants. Zanna McFerson, vice president and business director for Cargill Health and Nutrition, says Cargill is developing a dispenser that would limit the number of packets a consumer can take at once.

One reason Truvia is so appealing is its position as a "natural" alternative to aspartame, saccharin and other chemically derived sugar substitutes. Fans say they think Truvia's taste and texture are closer to sugar than those of older entries. It's true that Truvia pours out of the packet in convincing crystal-like granules, not in a powder. And when sprinkled on top of foods such as cereal, Truvia crunches.

Some detractors, though, complain of a Truvia aftertaste, especially when it is used in coffee. And many customers blanch at the price. A 40-count box of Truvia packets retails for $4.29 at the Giant Foods supermarket in Silver Spring, compared with $2.99 for a 50-count box of Splenda.

Few consumer products have been a greater marketing challenge than no-calorie sweeteners. Companies have devoted teams of scientists to trying to develop better-tasting sugar-substitutes. "I don't think anyone's cracked the code," says Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of brand-consulting firm Landor Associates. Consumers resist, whether complaining about taste or worrying about safety.

Taste "used to be the only thing [marketers] had to worry about," Mr. Adamson says. "Does it taste good? Is there an aftertaste?" Now, he says, "the new challenge is to alleviate the lingering concerns . . . . Did they really test it on enough rats over a long enough period of time?"

Cargill makes Truvia from the stevia plant, a member of the chrysanthemum family and native to parts of South America. Leaves are harvested, dried and steeped in water to release the sweeteners found in Truvia's key ingredient, rebiana. Truvia also contains erythritol, a calorie-free sugar alcohol that diffuses the sweet taste across the palate and helps make the crystals.

Cargill, working with Coca-Cola Co., won Food and Drug Administration approval for Truvia in 2008. Since then, sales have overtaken long-established rivals including Sweet'N Low (pink packets with the sweetening agent saccharin) and Equal (light-blue packets with aspartame). Truvia is now the No. 2 branded sugar substitute, behind only Splenda (yellow packets with sucralose), according to retail-sales data for the year that ended Oct. 30, 2011 from SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago market-research firm. (Its numbers don't reflect sales at Wal-Mart, nor at warehouse clubs, food-service companies and other suppliers to restaurants, an important channel for sugar substitutes.)

Truvia's premium price may have something to do with why coffee shops find it hard to keep the product in stock. Mary Finnegan, a Truvia customer in Edina, Minn., says, "I might throw a couple in my purse" whenever it's available.

Cargill's Ms. McFerson says Truvia has a "clean, sweet taste." And it costs more because it's more expensive to produce a plant-derived product. "We'll always be more expensive because rather than making something in one place, you're growing plants and working with farmers all through the supply chain," she says.

Ruby Washington, a government program manager for the District of Columbia, first heard about Truvia at a church potluck and bought it for her husband, Henry, who had learned that he is a near-diabetic. Although he cringed at the taste of other sugar substitutes, Ms. Washington told him this one would be different. She says, "I told him it must be OK because they say it's natural."

"Natural," a largely unregulated word, casts a powerful spell over marketers, too. Since Truvia hit the market in 2008, it has shown up in more than 30 products, from Coca-Cola's Glacéau Vitamin Water Zero to Kraft Foods' Crystal Light Pure. So far, stevia-based sweeteners have proved most compatible with citrus and other light-flavored drinks. PepsiCo's Trop50, a reduced-calorie juice drink brand, is sweetened with PureVia, a stevia-based sweetener from Merisant, the Chicago marketer of Equal.

Merisant prices PureVia below Truvia. Paul Block, Merisant chief executive, says the PureVia customer wants a natural sweetener but doesn't want to pay "crazy" Truvia prices.

"We're not going after Truvia customers," Mr. Block says. "We're going after sugar users who can't afford Truvia." Stevia has helped energize the sugar substitute business. "It's on fire," he adds. "When [consumers] see things that are 'natural' and 'pure,' that is a very fertile area for growth.

Truvia says there are hundreds of new Truvia-sweetened products in the works. Tillamook, a dairy-farm cooperative based in Tillamook, Ore., is launching a Truvia-sweetened "light" yogurt in January. Marketing materials trumpet that it is "naturally sweetened."

"That's huge," says Jay Allison, vice president of sales and marketing at Tillamook. "We know we're not a Yoplait or a Dannon, but we wanted to have a great light yogurt. So we said let's not use anything artificial."

Ever since the FDA banned cyclamates in the 1960s due to links to bladder cancer in laboratory animals, sugar substitutes have faced skepticism. In 1977, foods containing saccharin were required to carry a warning label based on results of laboratory studies involving high doses of the artificial sweetener. In 2000, Congress enacted legislation eliminating the label warning.

The door remained open to rivals, though, and a new one hit the market in 2000, when Johnson & Johnson's McNeil Nutritionals unit came in with Splenda. Splenda's sweetening ingredient is sucralose, a chemical alteration of the sugar molecule. In a bid to keep Splenda's signature yellow packets exciting, last year McNeil launched the Splenda Essentials line, which has added fiber and vitamins. A spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the company plans to introduce a stevia-based sweetener.

To get Truvia approved, Cargill focused its safety research on what it perceived to be stevia's best-testing component—Rebaudioside A. "We did a lot of research so that we could say to consumers, 'You have this worry-free way to consume sweetness,' " Ms. McFerson says.

But some concerns linger. Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest points to studies in which animal and bacterial cells were administered a stevia component closely related to Rebaudioside A and showed genetic damage, which raises the prospect that it may cause cancer, CSPI said. (Other cell studies didn't show the same genetic damage, Mr. Jacobson says.)

He noted his concerns in an Aug. 4, 2008 letter to the FDA citing the studies. Cargill says those studies predated its development of Truvia. "The literature has been fraught with lots of issues with respect to purity of the material," says Amy Boileau, associate director for scientific and regulatory affairs at Cargill.

Mr. Jacobson would like to see further testing. "Natural does not automatically mean safe," he says."

I can't use any of the stevia-containing products--this is a surprise to me, because stevia comes from a leaf, yet it gives me headaches. Is this a stevia allergy? I don't know, but I'm not going to find out. Sucanat, maple syrup, and dates do me just fine.

5 Ways to Save Money While Losing Weight

2012-01-04T08:56:00.001-05:00

From MSNBC. Of course I'll post a sixth and possibly best way that beats all of these ways.

"According to a popular study, America is a nation full of chronically overweight dieters. In 2011, Marketdata, author of the biannual "The U.S. Weight Loss & Diet Control Market" study, found that Americans continue to spend a lot of money on dieting but don't see big results.

Marketdata found that America has 75 million dieters, each starting an average of four diets each year. The publication also found that 80 percent of consumers are do-it-yourselfers when it comes to losing weight, often jumping from fad to fad spending more than $61 billion on diet products each year.

If you're going to start a diet (or four) this year, how can you do it in a way that really works? Here are a few ideas.

Reduce your portions
You don't always need expert advice. You already know that weight loss not only includes doing more exercise but you have to eat less too. If you're going out to eat, ask for a to-go box before you start eating your meal. Put half of your meal in the box before you start eating. This could save you $900 after one year.

Go ahead and buy healthy food
How many times have you heard that the reason more people don't eat healthy is because the food is more expensive? That's not true, according to the New York Times. The Times points out that a meal for a family of four at McDonald's will cost about $28, while a roasted chicken with salad, veggies and milk will cost around $14 and will serve four to six people.

Your gym should fit you
What is your favorite kind of exercise? Are you a gym rat or do you go when you have an unusually high amount of energy? Of course you know that losing weight requires upping your calorie burn but do you need a high priced gym to do that? For some people, the $70 per month multi-floor gym with space age technology and fitness classes fits their activity level but if you head to the gym only for a treadmill and to count the minutes until it's done, find a cheap, no frills gym. Some basic gyms are $20 per month or less.

Don't dismiss the trainer
Remember that cheap doesn't necessarily equal value. If you spend $50 per week on a personal trainer, that's $2,600 per year. That's a lot of money, but what if that trainer kept you going to the gym every week for a year and put you on a diet plan that didn't involve high dollar fad diets and specialty foods? If they saved you money in other areas of your dieting, wouldn't the $2,600 be money well spent?

Say no to fads
Nutrisystem, one of the most popular do-it-yourself weight loss programs costs $382 per month for the basic plan, which includes food. That's $95 per week or more than $4,500 per year and a year-long online membership to Weight Watchers will cost you $257. If all you need are recipes and ways to keep track of caloric intake, these are widely available online and on your smartphone for free.

The bottom line
If you are one of the many Americans who is a do-it-yourself dieter and have seen less than impressive results, consider using 2012 as the year to try something new. Consider replacing the high priced gym and the mail order diet plans with a simpler program like a trainer, more cooking and less fads. We don't need any more programs, we need more willpower. Maybe it's time to move away from do-it-yourself dieting in 2012."

And let's not #6, possibly the best and most effective of all: the Paleo diet, which covers all the 5 listed above, plus cuts costs of health/dental care, food costs from NOT buying starches/growing/hunting/fishing your own, cuts wardrobe costs by allowing you to wear smaller clothes (and possibly unisex/sharing of clothes), use less utility energy, buy less food overall, cut gym costs by doing most exercise activities at home/in the yard/in public spaces, and not be susceptible to rip-offs and scams because of your new mental energy.

Need I go on?

For the Pets: Horizon Pet Food Introduces Grain-Free Line for Dogs and Cats

2012-01-04T08:18:00.000-05:00

From the SF Chronicle. This is all fine for dogs, but not for cats--read more at the bottom.

"Horizon Pet Nutrition is proud to introduce a breakthrough in the grain free diet revolution that has been underway for several years, with Pulsar, making a debut in N. America, at specialty pet food stores this month, offering consumers real affordability for superior grain free pet food nutrition.

Grain free nutrition was a new advent to commercially produced pet foods about 7 years ago. When introduced, it embraced the core idea that grains were not historically a prominent component of dogs and cats ancestral diets. By replacing traditional grains with other carbohydrate alternatives such as potato and tapioca, it was believed to have created a new balanced, highly digestible, protein enriched diet. Since then, consumers have truly embraced the concept.

With Horizon Pet Nutrition's launch of Legacy in 2006, they were the first to introduce peas and pea starch as an alternative to potato and tapioca to improve digestibility and reduce the glycemic index in a grain free diet for dogs. Since then, many of Horizon's competitors have followed with the inclusion of peas as a key carbohydrate alternative.

The cornerstone of Horizon Pet Nutrition's new line, Pulsar, introduces the incorporation of peas and lentils as the key carbohydrate and fiber source. The pulses, peas and lentils, provide an unmatched dietary source of low glycemic index carbohydrates, excellent antioxidant qualities and easily absorbed dietary fiber.

"Our philosophy (at Horizon Pet Nutrition) is to seek new combinations of exceptional ingredients to optimize pet nutrition and push the boundaries of dietary evolution," states Jeff English, Co-Founder of Horizon Pet Nutrition. "This is an evolution we expect the pet food industry will follow, as it provides a high-quality, low GI grain-free diet, at an unparalleled price in the market."

The really compelling aspect of Pulsar® is the price for consumers. Horizon Pet Nutrition is offering a high quality, innovative, grain free food at an unprecedented price point in specialty pet retail. The company has worked efficiently to peel away every ancillary cost in getting this food to market without ever compromising quality. Furthermore, Horizon has natural cost advantages given the manufacturing location in Saskatchewan. Since Horizon Pet Nutrition manufactures directly with state of the art equipment and source ingredients locally, they can ultimately produce the highest quality foods at the best possible prices. It's a distinct advantage that will be passed on to consumers.

All animal lovers can now learn more about this new line at Pulsar Pet Food.

About Horizon Pet Nutrition

All Horizon Pet Nutrition food retains and preserves the key elements found in fresh, raw ingredients through lower temperature cooking. Horizon Pet Nutrition products are high in antioxidants, rich in animal protein, low in fat and balanced with superior fiber sources, which equates to a low glycemic attributes. A low glycemic diet has true health benefits for animal companions. For more information on low glycemic index, please visit common sense health.

The Horizon Pet Nutrition team researches, develops, tests and manufactures all of its own products in a new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Saskatchewan - the heart of one of the highest quality Canadian agriculture districts."

To their credit, this food line (for now) is only for dogs, which is good--cats cannot process beta-carotene, and you'd be paying for food that only becomes cat-box filler and a major source of food allergies to boot. I've had this experience with two diabetic cats in the past, and am going through it now with two other cats.

Since I cannot find a decent, grain-free, as well as junk food-free dry cat food, I'm making my own wet food with ingredients I know they can process and use. Things like lentils, peas, tapioca, blueberries, cranberries, sweet potatoes, avocados, beet pulp, and the like are just as unusable to cats as by-products and meals are. They're meant to be a form of fiber, but how much money are you paying for that bag of useless fiber material, and how much actual nutrition are your animals getting for YOUR money?

It works for both animals and humans: the better nutrition you put in, the less you spend at the doctor or vet to correct it, and the less time/energy/litter you spend cleaning up after it.

The only good, quality dry foods available to animals, in my opinion, is prescription formulas, and they require a prescription, are costly, but do the job. The rest are merely bags of compressed floor sweepings--now with bits of pig food thrown in.

Sawdust is good fiber--would you feed it to your cat? If you're buying it from a grocery store, chances are you already are feeding sawdust.

"What about their teeth?" you ask--there are products available to put in the drinking water that will help to keep teeth clean after a visit to the dentist, as well as special treats, but hard, dry food every day for every meal isn't required, and all it does is produce dry food junkies. Yes, there IS such a thing--it's like human fast food and processed food junkies.

As far as these grain-free foods for cats go, not a one of them is worth the cost of the bag they put it in--it may be grain-free, but it isn't free from by-products, inappropriate starches of vegetable origin, inappropriate meals and flour, as well as glutens. It appears that they created one formula of food (for dogs), and are marketing it to practically all animals (possibly without benefit of animal nutritional research, and instead are relying on human nutritional research).

Dogs, like pigs, can eat just about anything. Cats are MUCH different.

If you want more poop in the catbox and less cat running around, go ahead and feed this crap--otherwise, make your own using Paleo principles minus the vegetation. You'll have less catbox mess, and healthier cat to thank you.

So what fiber source do cats get along with? Psyllium.

What do I feed my cats? Here's the original recipe (makes enough food for a week for 1 cat):

2 1/2 lbs. chicken meat (or mix of chicken and turkey--ground is easiest)
3 oz. chicken livers
4 oz. chicken hearts (can substitute 1 1000-mg. taurine capsule, opened)
2 eggs, hard boiled and peeled
2000-mg. equivalent of fish oil (caps, poked and squeezed, or spooned--cod liver oil works too)

1000 mg. equivalent of calcium carbonate (poked/squeezed softgels, crushed Tums, or 2T. NOW brand powdered)

2 T. psyllium
2 T. nutritional yeast
2 T. salt substitute (NuSalt is the least objectionable to my cats)
1 One-A-Day Max pill, peeled of coating and crushed (easier to do with a horiz. potato peeler)

2 cups filtered water or homemade broth w/o spices

Cook all meats in a deep pot--do not drain (I also break and cook the eggs in this pot). Pour all meat w/juice into a food processor, adding remaining ingredients except vitamin, and mixing until you no longer see large chunks of meat or egg white. Add water slowly, then blend into mix, until it's thin and uniform, then add peeled and crushed vitamin. Pour mix into medium bowl and refrigerate until solid. Mixture can then be broken up with a fork and served.

Since I feed my two plus about 6-7 strays, I make this recipe daily. I've used all varieties of meat/organs, and all work equally well. If your cat shows signs of allergies (unresolved scratching, biting, pulling out hair, red skin patches), switch to all lamb meats (organs can be gotten from Indian/Middle Eastern markets).

Besides the dry food horrors, this is why I continue to make my own cat food, even though the diabetic cats who inspired it are now dead--think Mad Cow Disease meets Soylent Green.

Overeating Boosts Fat No Matter How Much Protein You Eat

2012-01-04T06:59:00.001-05:00

From WebMD. I know, I know, but hear them out...

"Here’s a new study we really could have used before the holidays: If you are going to overeat, be sure your diet has enough protein.

Body fat increases in all who overeat, regardless of the level of protein eaten, the researchers found. But those who overate with low protein levels in their diet stored a higher percent of calories as fat. They also lost lean body mass, while those on the higher-protein diets gained lean body mass.

The messages are clear, says researcher George Bray, MD, Boyd professor and professor of medicine at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La.

Calories count, and so does protein. "Very low protein diets are clearly detrimental," Bray says. "You lose lean body mass."

The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Overeating, Protein, & Weight Gain: Study Results

Other experts have suggested that overeating either on a low- or high-protein diet would produce less weight gain than overeating with normal protein intake.

Bray and his team set out to assess how the level of protein affects not only weight gain when you overeat, but also body composition (what percent of you is lean vs. fat) and resting energy expenditure (the amount of calories your body burns at rest).

Bray's team studied 25 healthy men and women, ages 18 to 35, between 2005 and 2007. Their average body mass index or BMI ranged from nearly 20 to nearly 30. A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered normal weight.

Each participant first ate a weight-stabilizing diet for 13 to 25 days. Next, they were assigned to one of three groups: a 5%, 15%, or 25% protein diet. During the next eight weeks, they were fed one of the three protein levels in a diet that had about 1,000 extra calories a day.

The researchers evaluated their scale weight, body composition, and resting energy expenditure before and after the study.

The findings could help experts advise people on how to eat to avoid weight gain and obesity and to maintain lean body mass.

The results: All groups gained scale weight, as expected. The low-protein group gained the least, about 7 pounds. The normal-protein group gained 13.3 pounds. And the high-protein group gained 14.4 pounds.

But "the low-protein group stored a higher percentage of calories as fat than the other groups," Bray tells WebMD.

In addition, the low-protein group lost lean body mass, about 1.5 pounds. The normal-protein group gained 6.3 pounds of lean body mass, and the high-protein group gained 7 pounds of lean body mass. Also, the calories burned while at rest increased in the normal- and high-protein groups, but not in the low-protein group.

While excess body fat is linked with obesity, increased lean muscle mass has a positive effect on metabolism.

Overeating & Protein Intake: Lessons

"The low-protein diet was clearly not good in terms of preserving lean body mass," Bray says.

The researchers did not find much difference in terms of body composition changes between the 15% or the 25% protein diet, Bray says.

"Based on the study, healthy adults should consider getting 12% to 15% protein [from their diet]," Bray says. (That recommendation does not apply to the elderly or athletes, he says, who may need more.)

For a 2,000-calorie diet, that level would mean taking in about 300 calories or 75 grams of protein daily. (A gram of protein has 4 calories.) A 3-ounce skinless chicken breast has about 27 grams of protein. Six ounces of Greek yogurt has about 14 grams.

Bray serves as a consultant for Abbott Laboratories and Takeda Global Research Institute. He is an advisor to Medifast, Herbalife, and Global Direction in Medicine. He has received royalties for the Handbook of Obesity.

Overeating, Protein, & Weight Gain: 'The Danger of Eating Low Protein'

The study results suggest the downsides of eating too little protein, says David Heber, MD, professor of medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and founding director of UCLA's Center for Human Nutrition. He co-authored an editorial to accompany the study.

"The danger of eating low protein is you eat too many refined carbohydrates," he tells WebMD. White bread, for instance, is a refined carbohydrate. "That puts on weight. And that weight tends to be fat."

"Protein is a great thing to control your appetite and to maintain lean body mass," Heber says. "I have been a proponent of increasing protein without increasing fat. Right now, most Americans are at the lower end of protein intake [recommendations]. You have to have protein to maintain lean body mass."

Okay--it looks like maybe the some aspect of the Paleo diet thing has now gotten to the highest level of CW land, so all we need now is a political lobbyist, and large amounts of money to throw around...mainly, someone to show Congress how to cut subsidy spending and payments to farmers by changing national dietary policy to conform to Paleo standards, or at least concede publicly that Paleo is an honest-to-God and for-real weight loss method that literally improves many health markers simultaneously.

It's said that Paleo is not sustainable. It would be if we grew less grains, and raised more organic, pastured meat. Since our whole Industrial Revolution is being yanked out from underneath us via the EPA, you'd think more land would be freed up for doing this, but sadly, no--the land's been polluted past the point of usability. You'd also think that foreclosed homes that are past the point of salability would just be knocked down and the land put up for sale, but no--developers are buying the derelict homes by the block and doing their own knocking down and then rebuilding...everywhere except in the north central states like Ohio and Michigan.

What does all this have to do with fat-to-protein ratios? If we need to eat more protein, it needs to be raised somewhere, right? Maybe we need some sort of "parking garage" structure for raising cows and pigs stacked on top of one another, like we live in apartments and condos today. Maybe it's turning out to be a good thing selling horse meat is now legal.

Turnips--Versatile and Nutritious in Any Season

2012-01-03T07:53:00.002-05:00

From the NY Times.

"Turnips are one vegetable you can count on during the winter months; like carrots, they store well. The root vegetables are members of the cruciferae family, the same family that brings you nutrient-rich vegetables like cabbage, kale and broccoli (genus Brassica). Turnips are rich in sulfuric compounds, particularly glucosinolates, that are believed to have antioxidant properties. They’re also a very good source of potassium. When you can get them with the greens attached, they’re a two-in-one crop, like beets, as their greens bring you a whole new set of nutrients – lots of calcium, vitamin K, vitamin A and beta carotene – and culinary possibilities. Turnip greens are similar in flavor to kale, perhaps a little more bitter, and with a more delicate texture.

The turnips we get now are not sweet and tender like young spring turnips, which are almost a different vegetable altogether. They stand up to longer cooking times, so they’re perfect for soups, stews and gratins. But I found them equally welcome in a frittata and a stir-fry. I’ll be using the young ones next spring in tender vegetable braises, but for now I’m very happy with my robust winter turnips."

The article ends in a recipe for cous-cous, which includes beans and grains, so I won't post it here.
_____________________________________________________________________
Recipes: Turnip Custard, Turnip Casserole (sub for sugar), Turnip Pie and Cookies (subs needed for some items), Turnip Fries, Turnip Pudding (some subs needed for flour), Turnips Au Gratin, Turnip Latkes, Turnip Pancakes (like potato pancakes, not the Aunt Jemima kind), Turnip Muffins (subs needed for flour and sugar), a whole collection of recipes devoted to the turnip, everything but a turnip cake, which is Chinese dim sum, and not an ordinary flour-and-milk cake with frosting on top.

You can pretty much Google anything with any vegetable these days--the vegans or foreign countries got there first.

It also looks like you can pretty much substitute any root veggie for another in recipes--even squashes like pumpkin can be switched with root veggies.

The Good and Bad of the Paleo Diet

2012-01-03T07:00:00.001-05:00

From the NW Herald (IL). Another "so bad I'm not going to post the text" article about the Paleo diet--go there and pile on with your comments.

"Don't Eat Like a Caveman"

2012-01-02T06:53:00.001-05:00

A link to the article--pile on in the comment area. I'm not going to post it here, because it's so full of errors and government-sponsored diatribe that it's a waste of good blogging space.

The Economist's Guide to Diet and Burning Calories (L-O-N-G)

2012-01-01T07:43:00.001-05:00

From the Daily Beast. You can just hear Greenspan's voice as you read this!

"American adults downed an average of 6,000 calories on Christmas day—and are now living to regret their feasts. That means each adult consumed in that one day the calories recommended for a single adult for three days. And given that many Americans watched their food intake carefully, many other Americans consumed on Christmas enough calories for several adults, if not an SUV full of them. Much of the excess calories will, of course, be packed on top of people’s already excessively padded butts and guts.

How to make amends? The easy answer all too many nutritionist and fat experts give is to seek a “negative energy balance,” which is to professional jargon for the obvious, eat less than you expend. Well, duh! I dare say all but brain-dead Americans know that.

Many Americans will return to diets they used before, most of which haven’t worked (judging by Americans’ continuing expanding waistlines). Let me proposed a new approach to dieting that draws on two solid economic propositions:

{enter Greenspan voice}

First, “demand curves slope downward,” which is to say that if the price of food goes up, the quantity consumed will go down.

Second, “incentive matters,” which is to say that successful diets require some real or imagined gain that exceeds any pain associated with weight loss.

What dieting advice plays to these long-tested economic dictums? Let me give you my top ten dieting tips that fall out of my economic analysis of the country’s excess weight problems:

First, settle on the amount of weight you want to lose, say, by Christmas. Then, agree to pay someone, preferably someone you don’t like, $500 (or $1,000) if you have not lost the desired weight by Christmas Eve. The pledged payment will immediately raise the price of calorie-rich combo meals at fast-food restaurants and provide a reward for running an extra mile, literally.

Second, if wine consumption is a contributor to your excess weight, buy more expensive wine, because the higher price will cause you to sip the wine more slowly and cause you to down fewer glasses. Ditto for eating out. Commit to going to more expensive restaurants. You will tend to get smaller and healthier portions and forgo the high-priced deserts.

Third, recognize that out-of-home meals generally are more fattening than in-home meals. Agree on a tight monthly budget for eating out and put the budgeted amount of cash in an envelope. The budgeted cash will raise the cost of meals out, because they will force you to assess the cost of going out today in terms of giving up meals out later in the month.

Fourth, many Americans use credit cards to pay for food for an obvious reason: They make the immediate cost of food “feel” cheaper. Raise the perceived cost of food purchases by committing to using only cash.

Fifth, if you have a candy bowl with leftover Christmas goodies on your office desk, place it as far away as you can in your office. Better yet, put the bowl on someone else’s desk down the hall, which will increase the walking “price” of snacking.

Sixth, researchers have found that people who use large dinner plates eat larger portions than people who use small plates. Throw out your twelve-inch plates and replace them with ten-inch plates. Better yet, use your salad plates for dinners.

Seventh, people who have fat friends tend to be fat themselves, and tend to gain more weight than people with thin friends, mainly because weight has a lower psychic cost when all around are heavy. Make thin friends, exactly because they will make you feel fatter.

Eighth, people eat more when they go to eat with people of the same sex, presumably because they are not trying to attract them as sexual partners and mates. Increase the frequency you eat with people of the opposite sex.

Ninth, we all are inclined to put our trimmest pictures on our Facebook sites. Put your most unflattering and fattening pictures up for all to see. Such postings will increase the incentive you have to lose weight and post new, thinner pictures.

People who have fat friends tend to be fat themselves, and tend to gain more weight than people with thin friends, mainly because weight has a lower psychic cost when all around are heavy.

Tenth, join a gym that has a high upfront investment and low monthly payment, or low payment per visit. The low marginal cost will encourage you to workout more often.

Frankly, there are a multitude of ways to lose those Christmas calories, and then some. The key is to find ways to make food more expensive (in real or perceived ways) and to find a payoff for controlling the calorie intake."

Or, you could forget about all this, and go Paleo--it's cheaper and much faster! Isn't it so typical for an economist to throw money at a problem, via gyms, expensive restaurants, and agreeing to pay upfront for weight not lost? I agree with the improvement of the quality of foods, and money NOT spent on gyms and such is money that could go toward buying improved foods.

Are there any fat, or formerly fat economists? Probably not--otherwise, the logic wouldn't escape them so easily...or somebody's using the CW approach through economics.

Speaking as a lay HOME economist, and having been through the experience firsthand, I can tell you that going Paleo has "released the hounds of riches" as it were--yes, my food costs more per pound, ounce, or any other measure, but it isn't junk and/or empty calories. What I do have that's empty is cupboards, a pantry, and a stomach, since I no longer feel hungry and consume out of emotion. Also, since it takes less food to fill me up, I've been able to unplug my chest freezer, saving on my electric bill. Since I now eat more raw foods, my oven gets barely used, and my gas bill is kept in check (I still use burners, though).

Any baking, cooking, or heating gets done in a toaster oven, which uses less electricity, and when I combine it (and all other electric use) with my utility's time-of-use plan, the electric bill is also kept in check.

As a frugal living "black-belt", I already knew how to buy in bulk, grow my own food, explore new sources of store-bought foods (through ethnic groceries, hole-in-the-wall stores, etc.), and make my own kitchen convenience--now I do it using less foods than before. Now I've added foraging and Amazon subscribe-n-save*.

*Amazon subscribe-n-save may have good deals, but you HAVE TO STAY ON TOP OF THEM, because prices creep up as the product runs out, and a new source is found to fulfill orders, or a new agreement is reached with the old vendor. What you have to look out for is new vendors coming into the arena with better per-unit prices than your current subscription price for the same or a comparable item.

I had this experience with coffee for my husband's work--I found the best (at the time) price per pound for the office's preferred coffee (which Hubby was selling per cup, and collecting money for--he doesn't drink it), and over the course of a couple of months, the price went up, and a new and better offer was now part of the subscribe-n-save program, plus I found a cheaper per-pound price at WallyWorld for the same stuff. I contacted Amazon about price-matching WallyWorld's price, or re-negotiating with the vendor to Wally's price level, and neither could be done. I cancelled my then-current subscription, and switched to a new, cheaper per pound one for the same coffee.

If you don't occasionally go through Amazon to make sure you're still getting the best deal (according to your parameters), you could be slowly losing money--THEY DO RAISE PRICES, causing you to have a money leak. Amazon is slowly becoming the WallyWorld of non-perishable groceries, but even the real WallyWorld eventually lost out to the recession, manufacturer price steadfastness, and eroding market strength. All of this could hit Amazon as well.

I advise you to make a list with the price you first subscribed to, then go back every month or so to see if your subscription is still at the same price. If you ever see an out-of-stock notice, or a higher price than when you first signed up, that's your cue to cancel and go find another subscription...or another source.

Organic Agriculture May Be Outgrowing Its Ideals (L-O-N-G)

2011-12-31T10:29:00.001-05:00

From the NY Times.

"Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation.

Growers here on the Baja Peninsula, the epicenter of Mexico’s thriving new organic export sector, describe their toil amid the cactuses as “planting the beach.”

Del Cabo Cooperative, a supplier here for Trader Joe’s and Fairway, is sending more than seven and a half tons of tomatoes and basil every day to the United States by truck and plane to sate the American demand for organic produce year-round.

But even as more Americans buy foods with the organic label, the products are increasingly removed from the traditional organic ideal: produce that is not only free of chemicals and pesticides but also grown locally on small farms in a way that protects the environment.

The explosive growth in the commercial cultivation of organic tomatoes here, for example, is putting stress on the water table. In some areas, wells have run dry this year, meaning that small subsistence farmers cannot grow crops. And the organic tomatoes end up in an energy-intensive global distribution chain that takes them as far as New York and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, producing significant emissions that contribute to global warming.

From now until spring, farms from Mexico to Chile to Argentina that grow organic food for the United States market are enjoying their busiest season.

“People are now buying from a global commodity market, and they have to be skeptical even when the label says ‘organic’ — that doesn’t tell people all they need to know,” said Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. He said some large farms that have qualified as organic employed environmentally damaging practices, like planting only one crop, which is bad for soil health, or overtaxing local freshwater supplies.

Many growers and even environmental groups in Mexico defend the export-driven organic farming, even as they acknowledge that more than a third of the aquifers in southern Baja are categorized as over-exploited by the Mexican water authority. With sophisticated irrigation systems and shade houses, they say, farmers are becoming more skilled at conserving water. They are focusing new farms in “microclimates” near underexploited aquifers, such as in the shadow of a mountain, said Fernando Frías, a water specialist with the environmental group Pronatura Noroeste.

They also point out that the organic business has transformed what was once a poor area of subsistence farms and where even the low-paying jobs in the tourist hotels and restaurants in nearby Cabo San Lucas have become scarcer during the recession.

To carry the Agriculture Department’s organic label on their produce, farms in the United States and abroad must comply with a long list of standards that prohibit the use of synthetic fertilizers, hormones and pesticides, for example. But the checklist makes few specific demands for what would broadly be called environmental sustainability, even though the 1990 law that created the standards was intended to promote ecological balance and biodiversity as well as soil and water health.

Experts agree that in general organic farms tend to be less damaging to the environment than conventional farms. In the past, however, “organic agriculture used to be sustainable agriculture, but now that is not always the case,” said Michael Bomford, a scientist at Kentucky State University who specializes in sustainable agriculture. He added that intense organic agriculture had also put stress on aquifers in California.

Some organic standard setters are beginning to refine their criteria so that organic products better match their natural ideals. Krav, a major Swedish organic certification program, allows produce grown in greenhouses to carry its “organic” label only if the buildings use at least 80 percent renewable fuel, for example. And last year the Agriculture Department’s National Organic Standards Board revised its rules to require that for an “organic milk” label, cows had to be at least partly fed by grazing in open pastures rather than standing full time in feedlots.

But each decision to narrow the definition of “organic” involves an inevitable tug-of-war among farmers, food producers, supermarkets and environmentalists. While the United States’ regulations for organic certification require that growers use practices that protect water resources, it is hard to define a specific sustainable level of water use for a single farm “because aquifer depletion is the result of many farmers’ over-utilizing the resource,” said Miles McEvoy, head of the National Organic Program at the Agriculture Department.

While the original organic ideal was to eat only local, seasonal produce, shoppers who buy their organics at supermarkets, from Whole Foods to Walmart, expect to find tomatoes in December and are very sensitive to price. Both factors stoke the demand for imports. Few areas in the United States can farm organic produce in the winter without resorting to energy-guzzling hothouses. In addition, American labor costs are high. Day laborers who come to pick tomatoes in this part of Baja make about $10 a day, nearly twice the local minimum wage. Tomato pickers in Florida may earn $80 a day in high season.

Manuel Verdugo, 42, began organic tomato farming on desert land in San José del Cabo five years ago and now owns 30 acres in several locations. Each week he sends two and a half tons of cherry, plum and beefsteak tomatoes to the United States under the brand name Tiky Cabo.

He has invested in irrigation systems that drip water directly onto plants’ roots rather than channeling it through open canals. He is building large shade houses that cover his crops to keep out pests and minimize evaporation. Even so, he cannot farm 10 acres in the nearby hamlet of La Cuenca because the wells there are dry.

At another five-year-old organic farm, Rosario Castillo says he can cultivate only 19 acres of the 100 he has earmarked for organic production, although he dug a well seven months ago to gain better access to the aquifer. The authorities ration pumping and have not granted him permission to clear native cactuses. “We have very little water here, and you have to go through a lot of bureaucracy to get it,” Mr. Castillo said.

Many growers blame tourist development — hotels and golf courses — for the water scarcity, and this has been a major problem in coastal areas. But farming can also be a significant drain. According to one study in an area of northern Baja called Ojos Negros, a boom in the planting of green onions for export a decade ago lowered the water table by about 16 inches a year. “They were pumping a lot of groundwater, and that was making some people rich on both sides of the border at the expense of the environment,” said Victor Miguel Ponce, a professor of hydrology at San Diego State University.

The logistics of getting water and transporting large volumes of perishable produce favors bigger producers. Some of the largest are American-owned, like Sueño Tropical, a vast farm with rows of shade houses lined up in the desert that caters exclusively to the American market.

While traditional organic farmers saw a blemish or odd shape simply as nature’s variations, workers at Sueño Tropical are instructed to cull tomatoes that do not meet the uniform shape, size and cosmetic requirement of clients like Whole Foods. Those “seconds” are sold locally.

Yet the connection to the United States has brought other kinds of benefits. Del Cabo Cooperative, which serves as a broker for hundreds of local farmers, provides seeds for its Mexican growers and hires roving agronomists and entomologists to assist them in tending their crops without chemicals. As the American market expands, said John Graham, a coordinator of operations at Del Cabo, he is always looking to bring new growers into his network — especially those whose farms draw on distant aquifers where water is still abundant."

This kind of goes right along with what I see happening at my favorite health food store--it has an online catalog (for local members only)--people ordering grain- and soy-filled junk foods that are readily available in any store (we're talking frozen pizzas, boxed cereals, and microwave burritos), but these are "special" because they're made with so-called organic ingredients, but no thought is given into what it took to get those organic ingredients here, or in their junk food item, or even if the ingredients are verifiably organic (or is it just the wrapper?)!

Do we really know if the ingredients are organic? Don't even get me started on "fair trade" or "eco-friendly." And how exactly does one go about creating a mass-market organic shampoo, aluminum foil, zippy bag, or body cream/lotion/makeup, etc.?

Their eating out of season really slays me too--yeah, be expected to pay $6.00/pint for blueberries in the dead of winter, or $4.00/bag for apples (from China) in summer. They also feel free to indulge in foods that have to be shipped all the way from Australia and New Zealand, yet shriek about carbon footprints while sipping a soy shake in their hybrid cars!

Are these people eating in the spirit intended for a health food store? In my mind, no--not even close. To me, there is no health involved in buying processed junk foods like this, no matter where the ingredients come from, or how they're grown and used. It's all about the feel-good designation on the container, and the increased price.

A frozen burrito, frozen pizza, boxed cereal, supposedly organic candy, sodas, and the like is STILL JUNK, no matter the designation of the ingredients, simply because it's been processed for maximum profit and not with your health in mind...in other words, it's a MARKETING TACTIC more than anything else.

Did you know health food stores take SNAP benefit cards? Do you know how many people I see using them in my store? I stand behind them in line to pay, and I mentally tally up the excess dollars blown on marketing THAT WE THE TAXPAYERS ARE PAYING FOR! The same junk foods that they used to buy commercially are being bought here, only more's getting spent on them--a taxpayer-funded feel-good trip through life. I'm not saying SNAP people shouldn't be allowed to buy health food store items, but GET SOME FOODS THAT ARE ACTUALLY HEALTHY, like fresh vegetation, fresh fruits, meat cuts, and pastured eggs and butter, not microwaveable crap, cookies, cereal, and sodas--make the most of the benefits while you have them!

The only way to really know if your food is organic and sustainable is to grow it yourself, and make your own burritos, breakfast foods, pizzas, shampoo, lotion, and whatever else you can within reason, and screw the makeup (for both you and the packaging).

...and that recycled toilet paper and aluminum foil? I got news for ya--it's ALL recycled.