Equal Time in the Salmon Aisle

I received an email regarding my post about farmed salmon. Since the sender was kind enough to consolidate his thoughts and pass it on, and since, lets face it, you can never have enough info, I'm passing it on to you.
Male Sockeye salmon attracting females with his outstanding hooked jaw and deep rosy blush.
Photo thanks to California Academy of Sciences.
~~~~~~
A friend sent me your recent comments regarding farmed salmon. I have a few comments:

Salmon farmers in the United States use small amounts of antibiotics, about two level teaspoons per ton of product. The same amount of antibiotic per ton of production is used by trout farmers. Since feeding antibiotics reduces growth rate in cold-blooded animals such as salmon and trout, antibiotics are used only when necessary, about twice a year, for ten days per treatment. Conversely, since the same antibiotics promote growth in chickens, they are added to the feed daily.

Farmed Atlantic salmon grown in Puget Sound salmon farms have about 25 ppb PCBs. By contrast, wild Puget Sound chinook salmon have 53 ppb PCBs. The iconic Copper River sockeye salmon have about 70 ppb PCB. Wild salmon in Puget Sound also have higher levels of flame retardant than farmed salmon.

The Salmofan can only be used to grade flesh color after a fish has been harvested. The Salmofan contains no instructions on how to achieve a desired color prior to harvest.

The Salmofan was originally developed to grade color in wild salmon, as was its precursor, the Color Card. Thereafter, salmon farmers have used the Salmofan for the same purpose as salmon fishermen. The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute provides similar color patches to fishermen and processors to grade wild Pacific salmon after harvest.

Without added carotenoid pigment, farmed salmon would not be gray. It would be the same color as farmed trout or “white king salmon”.

The carotenoid pigment canthaxanthin is also added to chicken feed to color chicken flesh and egg yolks.

In North America, the carotenoid pigment canthaxanthin is approved for use as a colorant to many food products, including, soft drinks, salad dressings, fruit juices, jams and jellies, cheese products, imitation crab, soups, candies, tomato products, relishes, and packaged and/or smoked fish and meat to name just a few.

Please contact me if you have questions.

Regards,

F. William Waknitz
Research Fisheries Biologist
NOAA Fisheries
P. O. Box 130
Manchester, WA 98353
1-206-871-8322
~~~~~~
NOAA is the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (www.noaa.gov), a branch of the US Department of Commerce (www.commerce.gov).

Apparently there are two sides to the salmon story. And the deeper I dig, the larger I find the battlefield. The salmon industry seems to be big business, BIG business. But for crying out loud, I just want to be able to go to my local grocery store and pick up a fillet or two for dinner, with confidence I won't be raising everyone's risk for cancer.

Here are my concerns:

PCBs
I had said that farmed salmon were measured to have 16 times the PCBs of its wild counterpart. I wasn't just picking numbers out of the air. It was reported on the Environmental Working Group's, site (www.ewg.org). They're a non-profit, non-partisan organization who have posted their detailed and convincing report on PCBs in farmed salmon here.

Even the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in their Proceedings of the 2004 National Forum on Contaminants in Fish report worrisome statistics:

"We collected samples of over 700 salmon (about 2 metric tons) obtained from salmon farms in eight regions of the world, supermarket samples from 16 cities in North America and Europe, and wild Pacific salmon of the five major species, and we analyzed them for concentrations of 14 persistent organochlorine contaminants (polychlorinated biphenyls [PCBs], dioxins, and persistent pesticides) and 9 metals. On average the farmed and supermarket salmon had about 10 times the concentration of the organic contaminants that were found in the wild salmon, whereas the metals were not very different."

I don't know about Mr. Waknitz, but when I buy salmon at the local grocery store it says "salmon", sometimes it will say the type of salmon, King or Sockeye, etc. It doesn't tell me specifically from what waters the salmon were harvested, other than Atlantic or Pacific. Only recently will it label it as farmed or wild, and that sporadically. Even if I was told exactly where my salmon was raised, I wouldn't know offhand how that knowledge impacts PCB levels. I envy Mr. Waknitz for knowing that the salmon he may eat is a contaminant-reduced "Farmed Atlantic salmon grown in Puget Sound". (By the way, why is an Atlantic salmon being grown in Pacific waters?)

Flame Retardant
I didn't know that "Wild salmon in Puget Sound also have higher levels of flame retardant than farmed salmon." Again, would it were I could choose to avoid, particularly, wild salmon from Puget Sound. In absence of that knowledge, I'm apt to depend on research such as was published in the August 11, 2004 issue of Environmental Science and Technology. That study reported that levels of flame retardants were "significantly higher in farmed than in wild salmon".

The SalmoFan
I had said that the SalmoFan was used as a color selection tool by salmon farmers. I wasn't just picking fans out of the air. It was reported on Smith and Lowney's site (www.smithandlowney.com). They are a public interest law firm, representers of a nationwide class action lawsuit that claims major retailers deceived customers by "illegally concealing the artificial coloring in their farm-raised salmon." Details of the lawsuit can be found here.

It's interesting to know the history of the SalmoFan - that it was intended for use in grading. But how is it being used today? Is it true, as Mr. Waknitz says, that it "can only be used to grade flesh color after a fish has been harvested"? Why does Smith and Lowney claim otherwise?

Added Pigment
I am not unaware of canthaxanthin's FDA approval status, nor of its use in a number of artificially colored food products, ones I chose not to address in my original post but ones I'm apt to visit now that I'm reminded of them. What concerns me is the pigment's unnatural addition to the farmed fish's diet without labeling to that effect. Consumers already awash in canthaxanthin from artificially colored foods have no way of knowing, without disclosure, that the pretty pink salmon fillet at the fish counter got that way by means of added pigment, and thus fail to be given information to make an informed choice.

Increased levels of canthaxanthin in the food supply could lead to increased levels in the body, at what health expense? Canthaxanthin has already been linked to retinal damage, liver injury, and skin disorders.

That's all for now. I feel honored to have the NOAA reading my blog. Let me put the word out again ... I'm still trawling for good canned salmon recipes!

Chocolate Minicakes

I'm not a chocoholic. I don't think I'm a chocoholic. FRE, am I a chocoholic? I know people who can't go 24 hours without a cocoa bean fix. Me? I just want it for 3 days out of the month. And when I want it, boy do I want it! These moist (thanks to the dates) minicakes pack the necessary chocolate punch, and have fewer calories and fat than one of my oatmeal pancakes. Choc on!

Ingredients

1/3 cup water
1/3 cup pitted dates, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 oz. bittersweet chocolate (chunks or chips) (not unsweetened)
3 tbsp. light brown sugar
1/2 tsp. molasses
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
1/8 tsp. vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
pinch salt
2 tbsp. whole wheat pastry flour (or all-purpose flour)


Special Equipment

• 12-cup, nonstick, mini-muffin pan. If your pan is not nonstick, or has lost much of its non-stick quality, line with paper mini-muffin cups.


• Small food processor, about 3 to 4 cup capacity. A larger processor will work but there is so little batter it ends up being thrown to the extremities of the bowl.

~~~~~~
1 Preheat oven to 325°F.

2 Rub 1 tsp. vegetable oil on the insides of a 12-cup, nonstick, mini-muffin pan.

3 Collect all ingredients. Measure listed amounts of dates, cocoa, chocolate, sugar, and flour. Set aside.

Note: The batter will come together pretty fast once the chocolate is melted. You don't want it to cool too much while you're collecting and measuring the other ingredients.

4 Bring water and dates to a simmer in a small saucepan. While still hot, transfer to a small food processor. Add cocoa powder and chocolate and pulse a few times to blend. Let cool a minute or two; you don't want the egg to start cooking. Add sugar, molasses, egg, vanilla, vinegar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Blend until smooth. Sprinkle the flour over the batter and pulse once or twice just to combine.

5 Divide batter evenly among cups. Bake about 20 minutes. Allow to cool for at least 30 minutes before removing from pan.

Note: Even if you're using a non-stick pan the muffins may resist removal. Slide a small butter knife gently around each muffin before slipping it out. The tops of these muffins will be shiny and slightly moist, so try not to pile them and avoid storing upside-down.

Enjoy!

Go Forth

"I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Not Pleasant Consumption

I'm sure this story will make the rounds today:

Diner Finds Finger in Chili

A diner at a Wendy's fast food restaurant in San Jose, California, found a human finger in a bowl of chili prepared by the chain.
"This individual apparently did take a spoonful, did have a finger in their mouth and then, you know, spit it out and recognized it. Then they had some kind of emotional reaction and vomited."
- Ben Gale, Director, Department of Environmental Health for Santa Clara County.

Unfortunate but timely, given my recent topic. I was avoiding getting too ghastly, but I suppose I can suspend niceties long enough to describe the kind of environment in slaughterhouses that make these findings possible (assuming there was ground beef in that chili).

A Cut Every Three Seconds

Eric Schlosser, award-winning journalist and author of the groundbreaking and vomit-inducing Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, 2001, described it this way in his famous pre-publication article that appeared in Rolling Stone, 1998:
The Butcher's Shop by Bartolomeo Passerotti, 1580s, Rome

The injury rate among meatpackers is the highest of any occupation in the United States. Working in a slaughterhouse is three times more dangerous than working in an average American factory. Every year about one-third of all slaughterhouse workers - roughly 50,000 men and women - suffer an injury or an illness that requires first aid on the job. Aside from the automated production lines and a variety of power tools, most of the work in American slaughterhouses is still performed by hand.

A sharp knife is still the most important tool in a slaughterhouse. Lacerations are the most common injury suffered by meatpackers, who often stab themselves or someone working nearby. Tendinitis and Cumulative Trauma Disorders are also quite common. Many slaughterhouse workers make a knife cut every three seconds, which adds up to about 10,000 cuts during an eight-and-a-half-hour shift. If the knife is not sharpened regularly and grows dull, additional pressure is placed on a worker's tendons, joints and nerves. A large number of meatpackers develop shoulder problems, carpal tunnel syndrome and "trigger finger" (a disorder in which fingers become frozen in a curled position). The slippery floors in slaughterhouses, the carcasses rapidly swinging past, and the cutting tools and heavy machinery are responsible for back injuries, falls, broken bones, dismemberments and fatal accidents.

Other Forms of Contamination

From the same article:

The slaughterhouse tasks most likely to contaminate meat are the removal of an animal's hide and the evisceration of its digestive system. The hides are now removed by machine; but if a hide has not been adequately cleaned first, pieces of dirt and manure may fall from it onto the meat. Stomachs and intestines are still pulled out of cattle by hand; if the job is not performed carefully, the contents of the digestive system may spill everywhere. Workers being rushed are bound to make mistakes. The consequences of one error are quickly multiplied. Knives are supposed to be cleaned and disinfected every few minutes, something that workers in a hurry tend to forget. "If a knife gets contaminated," Bjerklie says, "then it's just going to spread that contamination to everything it touches." The literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms: fecal coliform levels, food-borne pathogens, total plate counts, et al. Behind them all lies a simple explanation for why most people get sick:
There is shit on the meat.

I found Schlosser's article here, where you can read it in its entirety. I recommend waiting at least 2 hours after eating though.

Mad Cow, Continued

Hi Lenny. My freebie 500-word limit HaloScan Comment Box left me in the lurch. I started responding to you there but kept getting truncated. Truncation scatters a good thought train, so...

Here was your comment:

Your article begs the questions where do prions come from? Are they common in living creatures and is the danger of prions a numbers thing like bacteria? Would the cessation of feeding cows other cows eliminate the risk of prions? Why are cows feed cows? Is it just cheaper? Inquiring minds, not yet full of holes, want to know.

Here is what I discovered about prions prior to my post:

A prion is a protein. Proteins are made of sequences of amino acids, in this case about 250. Most mammals make a non-infectious protein with these same 250 amino acids. But some mammals introduced a mutation to this protein which made it fold abnormally, giving it its disease-causing ability, and its ability to infect.

Prions from cows most easily infect proteins in other cows, sheep prions most easily infect other sheep, etc. Cross infection (cow to man) was unusual but did happen. We're seeing the likes of cross infection with bird flu in Asia. Halting feeding of cow meat to cows would virtually eliminate infection to cows, and in turn to man. I suspect it would not eliminate prions entirely, since they are thought to originate from a mutation.

A book, Mad Cow USA, the Nightmare Begins by Rampton and Stauber, 1997, apparently made public the gruesome practice of recycling slaughterhouse waste for use as protein/fat supplements to livestock. So, you're right. It's about making money from waste material.

In 1997 the USDA banned use of "most mammal protein" from cattle feed. The ban is not adequately enforced though. Also, it does not ban all mammal protein, which leads to practices such as:

"In North America calves are literally weaned on milk formula containing "raw spray dried cattle blood plasma," even though scientists have known for many years that blood can transmit mad cow type diseases."
- Stauber, 2003

I recall reading that a small amount can infect. It doesn't seem to resemble infection by a bacteria assault where our immune system can tackle a few but get overwhelmed with many.

Here's a good site for keeping up with Mad Cow news:
Organic Consumers Association

I'm glad for inquiring minds such as yours. It lets me do something I love ... elaborate.

The Mad Cow and the Prion

Mad cow disease is thought to be caused by something that isn't a virus, isn't a bacterium, isn't a fungus or yeast, isn't in fact alive - that is, it fails to conform to one of the tenets that many in my generation considered essential for describing a life form. Notably, a prion contains no DNA, it can't reproduce. The word itself is a composite of two words that essentially define it: PROtein INfectious. A prion is a speck of protein that infects by bumping up against another protein, causing it to adopt a shape similar to its own.

Prions - tiny, non-living, infectious particles that they are - are admirable for their ability to avoid inactivation through means normally used on viruses and bacteria. The USDA defends¹ that prions are "extremely resistant to heat, ultraviolet light, ionizing radiation, normal sterilization processes, and common disinfectants". So leaving your burger on the grill another minute or two isn't going to give peace of mind. Nor, for that matter, will spraying your ground beef with Lysol, which, as a last ditch effort, has more to recommend it than you might think.² Were my body to fail me, I might choose that it succumb to the toxicities of prion-inactivation attempts, than to the wicked spongiform encephalopathies these anti-critters are known to induce.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), results in, well, a cow with a brain full of holes. Sheep have a form called scrapie that causes an itch so profound it compels them to scratch (thus scrapie) their wool away. Humans have forms that lead to loss of bodily functions, dementia, and ultimately death, since there is no known cure.

The FDA says that the human form "is believed to be caused by eating contaminated beef products". Cows get it by eating other cows, i.e. by eating feed that contains BSE-contaminated beef products, in other words, by forced cannibalism. Just about all of the beef you have eaten and will eat, unless labeled otherwise (or you raise your own), came from a cow cannibal. Oddly, a cow is an herbivore, and lacks the ability to chew or digest meat.

The US found its first mad cow in December, 2003. Before that the USDA tested about 20,000 cattle/yr for BSE, afterwards they upped it to 200,000/yr. There are about 100,000,000 cattle in the US inventory. Hm, 200,000 divided by 100,000,000 - is that 2% tested? I don't know about you, but that isn't enough to assure me of a mad-cow-free food supply. Japan tests 100% of their cattle, no wonder they've banned ours.

I like beef. I like a nice grilled burger, a sizzling steak, a tender beef bourguignon. Not a lot, just once in a while. Is it too much to ask that the meat I buy for such indulgencies come from a cow that wasn't forced to eat another cow? And if not that, from a cow whose cannibalistic flesh was inspected, and did pass, a prion test? Is that too much to ask?

~~~~~~
¹ Why are they defensive? Because we, however frivolously, expect big government agencies like the USDA to assure us that our meats have been cleansed of nasty crap.
² I'm not recommending it.

To E or Not To E, Revisited

Another study weighs in on the usefulness, and possible risks, of taking vitamin E supplements. I poo-poo'ed the study last November. This time I'm all ears.

That pill to the right contains vitamin E as alpha-tocopherol, and only alpha-tocopherol. I think it's time for me to kiss it goodbye. (My! It's hard to smooch a pill.)

Here's what the researchers found:
People (at least 55 years old with either vascular disease or diabetes) who took 400 IU vitamin E/day (natural, not synthetic) experienced about the same rate of cancer incidence, cancer death, and major cardiovascular events than did those taking placebo. Those taking vitE experienced a greater incidence of heart failure.

Here's what people may take away from this:
I'm wasting my hard earned cash on these vitE supplements. They aren't going to keep me from getting cancer or heart disease. Fercrissakes, they might cause it!

Here's why I think these researchers are on to something:
Unlike the study (retrospective, meta-analysis) released last November that found an association between early demise and ingestion of 200 IU vitE, this study (prospective, placebo-controlled, randomized) controlled for most of the issues I had with the former study:

1. We have more confidence that participants actually took the 400 IU vitE: random blood tests were administered at 2 years to measure vitE levels.
2. It controlled for the effect of a participant's belief that the pill was "doing something", i.e. the placebo effect.
3. By randomizing, it controlled for the confounding factor: reasons why people take vitE in the first place. (Example: Those with heart disease might be more inclined to take vitE, for its advertised heart benefits, than healthy people. Because of their pre-existing ailment, they might also be more apt to die of heart disease than a healthy person. Did the vitamin have anything to do with it?)
4. It was statistically powerful: 7000+ participants studied for 7 years.

Of course, these findings can only ever apply to people who already have heart disease or diabetes, since those were their subjects. I don't have heart disease or diabetes (that I know of). Still, is this enough for me to ditch my vitamin E pills? Not yet. Rather, not exactly.

In my previous post, I pointed out that vitamin E is actually a complex, much like vitamin B complex, with 8 components. This study had participants ingest a relatively high amount of only one of those 8 components: alpha-tocopherol. It's been my understanding that vitE pills containing ONLY alpha-tocopherol may be risky since they could displace absorption of the other 7 vitE components, not to mention absorption of other unnamed fat-soluble antioxidants. (The researchers noted this as a possible mechanism for their findings, along with the possibility that the vitamin may have been acting in a pro-oxidant, rather than anti-oxidant, manner.)

Also, intake from foods high in vitamin E seem to perform better in studies than vitamin E supplements, leading one to believe that there are components in say, nuts, other than alpha-tocopherol, that are causing colon cancer cells to self-destruct. (Gamma-tocotrienol, part of the vitE complex not found in the typical supplement, is gaining a pretty good reputation for blasting breast cancer cells.)

So, will I continue to take vitamin E? Yes, but only in a mixed form ("mixed tocopherols and tocotrienols"), and nothing more than 100 IU/day. (100 IU vitE = 67 mg vitE)

By the way, if you want to shun the pill altogether, 50 raw almonds will give you the current Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) of 15 mg (22 IU) for vitE, along with a nice dose of the other 7 vitE components ... for about 380 calories (you can see why I take the pill).

It's (...Ah-Choo!) Spring

Many symptoms of allergies: nasal congestion, runny nose, watery eyes, even hives, are mediated through histamine. A more natural alternative to pharmaceuticals for the reduction of some of these symptoms seems to be adequate intake of vitamin C, which has been shown to decrease levels of histamine in blood. People who are vitamin C deficient have histamine levels through the roof!

It's a little tricky knowing just how much vitamin C will do the trick. Two oft-cited studies used either 1000 or 2000 mg/day. Other smaller studies show benefit at 125 to 250 mg/day. Of course, a small dose could have as noticeable an effect as a large dose - if the large dose was taken in one fell swoop. Like most vitamin supplements, the more we take at one time, the less of it we absorb. And intestinal bacteria just love that unabsorbed vitamin C, a love made palpable though cramping, bloating, and diarrhea.

Since I'm not in the market for that kind of love, and since I'm not a devotee of super-sized supplements, I'll opt for the citrus, berries, and ...
Oh! Look at this, FRE ... One spear of raw broccoli has 134 mg of vitamin C!

More on Intelligent Design

Vitamin C, also known as ascorbate, can be manufactured in vivo - in the body - from a molecule of glucose ... that is, in most mammals save for primates¹. A human is a primate. Dogs are not primates. Yep, dogs can make all their vitamin C from a simple sugar. Maybe this is why the incessant barking of my neighbor's dog Farley is never curtailed by a bout of hay fever. Lucky dog.

~~~~~~
¹ Primates lack one important vitamin C synthesizing enzyme: gulonolactone oxidase.

Chocolate Pudding Cake

Birthday evening. Bring on the chocolate cake! Blow out the 28, 32, er, ah, 39, yeah, that's the ticket, 39 birthday candles!

That's not icing you see on the top of this cake. It's a pudding that forms on the bottom as the cake bakes, and dresses the top of the cake after it's inverted. I adapted it from a recipe by Maida Heatter, "America's First Lady of Desserts", who describes it thusly:

"When it is turned onto a cake plate, it covers itself with a thick layer of dark chocolate topping that resembles nothing I can think of. The topping is as dark and shiny as black patent leather, as tender and semifirm as a pot de crème, and as mocha-chocolate flavored as you might weave dreams about."

It's remarkably easy to make. And for all it's creamy dark chocolate decadence, it (don't tell the FRE) has about half the fat of a comparably sized brownie. Honest-to-god, you have to give this one a go.


Ingredients - Cake

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup non-fat milk
1/4 cup non-fat buttermilk (or plain yogurt)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tbsp. melted butter
1 tbsp. vegetable oil (I used unrefined peanut)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts


Ingredients - Topping

2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp. mild molasses (not blackstrap)
1 tbsp. maple syrup
6 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp. instant coffee (substitute half of this with instant espresso powder if you have it)
1/8 tsp. salt
1 cup water
dash vanilla extract

~~~~~~
1   Preheat the oven to 350°F. Rub a thin layer of vegetable oil on the insides of an 8 inch cake pan.

2   Combine all the topping ingredients in a small saucepan and heat at the very lowest setting as you prepare the cake.

3   Sift together the first 6 cake ingredients (flour, baking powder/soda, salt, cocoa, sugar). Melt butter (20 seconds in a microwave should do it). In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, buttermilk, vanilla, melted butter, and oil.

4   Combine the wet and dry cake ingredients. Stir until completely blended. Stir in the walnuts. Pour into the oiled cake pan.

5   Turn up the heat on the saucepan and bring the sauce to a rolling boil. Carefully ladle the hot liquid over the unbaked cake batter. (The two will trade places as the cake bakes, leaving the topping on the bottom and the cake on top.)

To the right you see the boiled sauce floating on top of the uncooked cake batter.

6   Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle, no more than 1/4 inch deep, comes out clean.

7   Allow the cake to cool, about an hour. Cover the top of the cake with a flat plate or cutting board, turn over, and tap the bottom of the pan gently (or more vigorously if your cake is stubborn), until the cake dislodges. Some of the topping will stick to the bottom of the pan. Just scoop this up and spread over the cake. Resist licking. Or not.

Enjoy!

Oat Cakes

Birthday morning. Rise and shine. Time for some whole grain, low-fat, oatmeal pancakes!

Ingredients

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup plain, quick-cooking (instant) oatmeal
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt (non-fat used for analysis)
1 large egg
1 tbsp. vegetable oil (I used unrefined peanut oil)
1 tbsp. melted butter

High-heat oil for griddle

~~~~~~
1   Preheat a well-seasoned griddle on low for 15 or 20 minutes as you make the batter.

2   Stir together the first 6 ingredients, making sure to break up any clumps of baking soda/powder.

3   Melt the butter. (I microwave on high for 20 seconds.) Whisk together buttermilk, oil, and melted butter. Whisk the egg separately in a small bowl. Add about 2 tbsp. of the buttermilk mixture to the whisked egg and beat. Slowly pour the beaten egg back into the buttermilk mixture, whisking as you pour.

4   Add dry ingredients to wet. Stir slowly until just combined and no dry pieces remain.

5   Coat griddle with about 1 tsp. high-heat oil, wipe off excess with a paper towel. Leave heat on low. Spoon about 2 to 3 tablespoons batter per pancake. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes or until edges are dry. Turn once and cook for an additional 1 to 2 minutes.

6   Recoat griddle with oil between batches, wiping off excess with a paper towel.

The oats in these pancakes cause them to need a little more time on the griddle to cook than traditional pancakes. So don't use too high a heat or you'll end up with dark exteriors and mushy centers, not unlike old Oreos left to bake on an overheated car dashboard.

Enjoy!

The Knee Bone's Connected to the Thigh Bone

Mary Kate Olsen is a lovely girl. Regardless of the circumstances that brought her to her current physique, though, there's no denying her bones are anything but lovely. Her bones are suffering. Since she has voluntarily placed herself in the public eye, I feel sanctioned to use her in my example.

There are a few terms any nutritionist has emblazoned on her neurons. One is the "citric acid cycle" (ugh!), another is "peak bone mass". Here I go, I'm sorry ... "Peak bone mass is the maximum amount of bone mass achieved by a skeleton in its lifetime, occurs from late adolescence to around 30 years of age." It's an extraordinarily important time in a skeleton's life, since it is all but impossible to regain bone lost during those years.

The thigh bone (femur, rhymes with "see more") - the largest bone in the body, the one that responds so well to activities such as walking, the part of this picture of MK that I couldn't help but gasp when I saw (MK, your thigh bone is crying out for a different kind of attention than those jeans are providing) - is one of the top three contenders for a fracture later in life. That 1 in 2 statistic from my previous post? I'm afraid that's going to be you, MK.

If I could place a bet on who is likely to avoid that statistic, just by a gander at her thighs, it would be another lovely girl, Jennifer Lopez.

Those Bones, Those Bones, Those Dry Bones1

I used to think when I downed a 500 mg. calcium tablet that my body was getting a 500 mg. dose of calcium. I could feel by bones harden instantly.

And then I learned the truth.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. You see, I'm at an age now where the health of my bones concerns me more than the cut of my hair, the sootiness of my lashes, or the rise of my jeans ... all important considerations at various times in my not-so-distant past. Now it's the bones. Really. My mother moved through middle age amassing a characteristic dowager's hump at the top of her spine. We thought it was endearing. It was ominous.

In the US, 1 in 2 women will suffer a fracture in her lifetime, a direct result of bone loss or osteoporosis.
- National Osteoporosis Foundation

My god, that's a lot of women. Not to sound obtuse, but it's half the women I know!
(The statistic for men is 1 in 4, so not to let them off the hook.)

A fracture later in life takes a long time to mend. If it happens in my back or hip, I'm in bed and out of commission for god knows how long. Call in and pay for the home health aides. And since I can't walk, there'll be weight gain, with its associated hypertension, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and heart disease. Call in and pay for the physicians and pharmaceuticals. Call in and pay for a maid, chef, errand runner, grass cutter ...

Oh geez. Calcium, please.

But 1500 mg. a day? What if I don't drink milk? See these pills? I'd have to take 6 of them a day. Look at the size of these things. You can't tell me that prehistoric man, who laid the evolutionary groundwork for our calcium needs², extracted, encapsulated, and swallowed this amount of divalent cation. And who's doing the safety research on this stuff?

Here's the curious part ... we're lucky if we absorb 30% of those 1500 mgs.³ If 1500 mg. represents an amount that a middle aged woman would want to make available to her thinning skeleton, then she would need to eat 5000 mg. or 5 g. of calcium a day, assuming a 30% absorption rate. And with the rule of diminishing returns in force (the more we eat, the less we absorb), is it possible that 15,000 mg. a day of calcium, at a more realistic 10% absorption rate, would supply all the bone mortar she needs?

I kid. Still, recommended calcium amounts are getting out of hand.

• What does it say that 75% of the world's population cannot digest the most concentrated form of calcium, milk?
• What does it say that women who drink lots of milk increase their risk for ovarian cancer?
• What does it say that men who consume high levels of calcium increase their risk for prostate cancer?
• Calcium interferes with the absorption of a litany of other minerals. Am I risking anemia (iron deficiency) or lowered immunity and cancer (zinc deficiency) just so I may continue to haul my withering limbs around on a sturdy skeleton?
• How about kidney stones?
• If none of the above causes pause in a calcium popper, the constipation that results is sure to create a league of clandestine Dietary Reference Intake Avoiders.

Researchers are in agreement that a minimum of calcium, around 550 mg/day, is beneficial. But opinions diverge when amounts above 1000 mg. are suggested. And there's no solid evidence that 2 or 3 servings of milk a day reduces the chances of breaking a bone.

Researchers also agree that a shot of vitamin-D-filled sunshine and daily physical activity (including some weight bearing exercise) are some of the best things you can do to protect your skeleton. So for now, I'm ditching these pills for weights. Move over Manang; make room for another amazing dancing laundry folder.

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¹ Photo of "Skeleton in Forest" compliments of Seth Lew at the Artist Studio.
² If evolution is just a theory that holds little weight to you, you're welcome to substitute "Intelligent Design" here, although the intelligence of this particular design escapes me.
³ In answer to my initial question ... I absorb between 50 and 150 mg. of that 500 mg. calcium tablet. The rest travels to the landfill by way of American Standard's AquaForce Flushing System.

Relax

It will open your heart.

There's a meeting of The American Psychosomatic Society today in Vancouver. One of the abstracts submitted was highlighted as having great potential to change clinical practice. I'm skeptical, since the therapy suggested forsakes the financial coffers of health practitioners, medical institutions, and pharmaceutical companies.

Inexpensive, no side effects, and occasionally blissful.

Researchers at the Medical College of Georgia taught young black men with elevated blood pressure to meditate. Meditation for 15 minutes twice a day caused these men to experience (in addition to a decrease in blood pressure) a 21% (!) increase in the ability of their blood vessels to dilate or open. A control group of matched men who did not meditate experienced a 4% decrease in that ability.

This could revolutionize the treatment for cardiovascular disease. Let's face it, keeping vessels open is the crux of any heart therapy.

If meditation isn't your bent, but you're still a fan of spacious vessels, there's always chocolate.