Fanatic Cook

Hagfish

2012-01-28T08:58:00.000-05:00

Hagfish, also called slime eels:

"... can exude copious quantities of a slime or mucus of unusual composition. When captured and held, they secrete the microfibrous slime, which expands into a gelatinous and sticky goo when combined with water."

"They are the only living animals that have a skull but not a vertebral column."

"Hagfish can feed upon and often even enter and eviscerate the bodies of dead and dying/injured sea creatures much larger than themselves. They are known to devour their victims from the inside."

"Hagfish are usually not eaten owing to their repugnant looks, as well as their viscosity and unpleasant habits."

"However, a particular species is valued as food in the Korean Peninsula. The hagfish is kept alive and irritated by rattling its container with a stick, prompting it to produce slime in large quantities. This slime is used in a similar manner as egg whites in various forms of cookery in the region."

Attacking shark gagged by hagfish slime:

________

Dietary Fat And Diabetes

2012-01-27T19:03:00.000-05:00

Here are 3 ways that fat in the diet could contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes:

1. Dietary fat may contribute to insulin resistance. From one review:

"Overall, most animal and cell studies seem to indicate that saturated and trans-unsaturated fatty acids significantly increase insulin resistance."
- Skeletal Muscle Lipid Deposition And Insulin Resistance: Effect Of Dietary Fatty Acids And Exercise, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2007

2. Dietary fat contains some of the highest levels of Persistant Organic Pollutants of the foods we eat.

This study found that people with high levels of POPs were 38 times! more likely to have diabetes than those with low levels:
A Strong Dose-Response Relation Between Serum Concentrations Of Persistent Organic Pollutants [POPs] And Diabetes: Results From The National Health And Examination Survey 1999–2002, Diabetes Care, 2006

3. Dietary fat contributes to inflammation. One way it does so is by increasing absorption of endotoxins, to which we launch an inflammatory response. Chronic inflammation is linked to insulin resistance, diabetes, and other elements of the Metabolic Syndrome. Also, endotoxins by themselves (independent of inflammatory markers) have been linked to diabetes. (Endotoxins are bits of bacterial membrane that are absorbed along with the fat we eat. They're thought to derive, in part, from bacteria that live in the intestines.)

Here's just one recent study on the topic of endotoxins. This is a hot area right now:
High Fat Intake Leads to Acute Postprandial Exposure to Circulating Endotoxin in Type 2 Diabetic Subjects, Diabetes Care, Online December 2011

"Ingestion of a high-fat meal led to a significant rise in endotoxin levels in type 2 diabetic, IGT [impaired glucose tolerance], and obese subjects over the 4-h time period (P < 0.05). These findings also showed that, at 4 h after a meal, type 2 diabetic subjects had higher circulating endotoxin levels (125.4%↑) than NOC [nonobese control] subjects (P < 0.05).

These studies have highlighted that exposure to a high-fat meal elevates circulating endotoxin irrespective of metabolic state, as early as 1 h after a meal. However, this increase is substantial in IGT and type 2 diabetic subjects, suggesting that metabolic endotoxinemia is exacerbated after high-fat intake."

And a study that links dietary fat, specifically saturated fat, to inflammation:
Acute And Chronic Saturated Fatty Acid Treatment As A Key Instigator Of The TLR-mediated Inflammatory Response In Human Adipose Tissue, Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, January 2012

"[Our] data highlights the potential risk of a continued high fat diet on inducing an inflammatory response, as it appears to be more pronounced than the glucose induced response. This would also appear to align with clinical studies that suggest hyperlipidaemia may impact more significantly over time than hyperglycaemia in the pathogenesis of metabolic disease.

This study implicates elevated SFAs [saturated fatty acids] as a key instigator of the inflammatory response."

Saturated fat seems to be the riskiest type.________

Narcissism And Heart Disease

2012-01-26T09:34:00.000-05:00

Toadstool admiring himself from artes at Frog Forum.

I stumbled upon this article yesterday:
Health Risk Higher for Guys Who Think They're 'All That'

And wondered how they measured narcissism. Here's the actual study:
Expensive Egos: Narcissistic Males Have Higher Cortisol, PLoS ONE, January 2012

Narcissism was assessed using the "Narcissistic Personality Inventory." They used a 40-point Narcissism Personality Inventory tool, which appears to be this:
Narcissistic Personality Quiz

I know, I know, not another quiz. But questionnaires have to be validated before they can be used in a study. That is, studies have to be conducted ahead of time to determine that the questionnaire really does indicate presence of the trait they are measuring, in this case narcissism (another phrase the authors used was "extreme self-focus.") So, this quiz isn't something you'd find in the back of Men's Health or Glamor Magazine. Well, maybe not.

Here was one such validation:
A Principal-Components Analysis Of The Narcissistic Personality Inventory And Further Evidence Of Its Construct Validity

Note this validation study accounted for both objective and subjective measures. So, your results on the quiz should presumably correlate well with both how you see yourself and how others see you.
________
The original study up top, by the way, found that men with higher scores in what they called "unhealthy" narcissism¹ had a higher activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which resulted in higher basal levels (basal, so all-the-time levels, as opposed to, say, a reaction to a stressful event) of the stress hormone cortisol. High levels of cortisol increase the risk for heart disease. The cortisol effect was still strong after controlling for related variables such as mood, general stress, social support, and relationship status.

Narcissism was related to the stress hormone cortisol in men, but not in women.

Also:

"Males tend to score higher on narcissism, and males also have larger increases in cortisol concentrations after stressors."

This was interesting:

"Given societal definitions of masculinity that overlap with narcissism (i.e. they include arrogance and dominance), we hypothesize that these difficulties in maintaining an inflated sense of the self are at least in part related to the extent to which males endorse stereotypically male gender roles. Threats to male gender roles and masculinity are constant, and provide a source of stress that make these roles difficult to maintain. Narcissism is also stressful and difficult to maintain. In addition, both high masculinity and narcissism advocate for high independence and agency, and emphasize individualism over an acceptance of social support. Because high narcissists report experiencing a greater number of daily hassles compared to low narcissists, low social support is especially likely to be toxic."

They said there may be pressure upon men in this society from endorsement of "stereotypically male gender roles." So ... men are pressured to act manly?

They concluded:

"[O]ur findings highlight the possibility that for males, narcissism may have an especially negative physiological effect. Considering the rising narcissism among both men and women in American culture, there may be potential long-term public health consequences if these trends continue. Given research finding that chronic HPA activation is associated with cardiovascular problems, and other work finding that an increased use of first-person singular pronouns is also associated with poor cardiovascular health, future work might examine high narcissism in earlier life predicts poor health outcomes in later life. We also recommend that future research attempt to better understand why male narcissists have higher basal cortisol concentrations, and in doing so, help to pinpoint potential windows of intervention."

They say narcissism is rising among Americans.

And this ... "increased use of first-person singular pronouns is also associated with poor cardiovascular health." Future studies will have a lot more adjustments to make for confounders!
________¹ If you take the quiz, you'll find that your score was broken down into 7 categories: Authority, Self-Sufficiency, Superiority, Exhibitionism, Exploitativeness, Vanity, and Entitlement. An "unhealthy" narcissism score was created using the Entitlement and Exploitativeness values. "Healthy" narcissism scores were derived by summing the Leadership/Authority, Self-Sufficiency, Superiority, and Vanity values. While "unhealthy" narcissism was linked to high cortisol, "healthy" narcissism was not.

The Admirable Apple

2012-01-25T10:50:00.000-05:00

Just saw this video on Dr. Gregor's site:

He sited this study:
Daily Apple Consumption Promotes Cardiovascular Health In Postmenopausal Women, FASEB, April 2011

Abstract:

"Animal findings suggest that apple and its components, e.g. apple pectin and polyphenols improve lipid metabolism and lower the production of proinflammatory molecules.

To our knowledge, the present study is the first that evaluated the cardioprotective effects of daily consumption of apple for one year in postmenopausal women.

Qualified women (160) were randomly assigned to one of the two dietary intervention groups: dried apple (75g/day) or comparative control dried fruit.

Fasting blood samples were collected at baseline, 3-, 6-, and 12-month to measure various parameters. Our findings indicate that the additional daily caloric intake of ~240 from dried apple not only do not increase body weight but rather lower it by 1.5 kg without altering habitual dietary intake.

In this study, apple consumption significantly reduced serum levels of TC and LDL by 14% and 23%, respectively. The daily apple consumption also profoundly improved atherogenic risk ratios in addition to lowering serum levels of lipid hydroperoxide (33%) and C-reactive protein (32%).

In conclusion, incorporation of apple into regular diet is encouraged because of its highly favorable effects in reducing the risk factors for cardiovascular disease."

So, eating 2.6 ounces of dried apple rings a day for a year:

Lowered total cholesterol by 14%
Lowered LDL cholesterol by 23%
Lowered C-reactive protein by 32% (CRP is a marker for inflammation)
Reduced weight by ~3.3 pounds

How about that. I wonder what the "control dried fruit" was. And I wonder if the reductions were compared to baseline or to the control group. Regardless, there's something admirable about apples.________

Why Doesn't California Want To Label Genetically Engineered Fish?

2012-01-25T08:57:00.001-05:00

A salmon genetically engineered to grow faster and an unmodified
salmon of the same age. - New York Times, 2010

A little bill in the California State Assembly, called the Consumer Right to Know Act AB88, that would require labeling of genetically engineered fish was voted down last week.

Consumers Union Dismayed by California State Assembly's Failure to Pass Historic Labeling on First Genetically Engineered Fish, Consumers Union, 19 January 2012

Isn't it odd that polls consistently show around 90% of Americans want labels on GE food, but the FDA and state legislatures consistently snuff this kind of regulation?

I guess it comes down to money. In fact, one place that did pass a law requiring mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food, specifically fish, was Alaska. And the vote was unanimous. Republicans, Democrats, everyone. Why?

"This bill helps highlight Alaska seafood as distinct from genetically modified seafood, doing away with any vagueness that may exist to the consumer when purchasing seafood without labeling, and reinforcing the natural message."

Alaska was protecting their seafood industry.

Not that Biotech didn't try to thwart it. In their testimony opposing the Alaska bill, they said:

"State-based labeling requirements that differ from previously established, stringently enforced federal guidelines, provide no value for consumers and only serve to disparage biotechnology foods."

Biotech's defense was, and is, that since FDA doesn't require labels, states shouldn't either. Why doesn't FDA require labels? Because the FDA, in their own words, "is not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way."

According to the sponsors of the Alaska bill (passed in 2005), legislation requiring labeling of genetically engineered fish already exists in the European Union, Japan, New Zealand and Australia.

How can so many rich, developed countries see a difference between GE fish and conventional fish, but the US cannot? I think they do see a difference, a costly difference.
________

"Whatever You Do, Just Don't Smoke" - Yul Brynner

2012-01-23T12:37:00.000-05:00

Throughout his life Brynner was often seen with a cigarette in his hand. In January 1985, nine months before his death, he gave an interview on Good Morning America, expressing his desire to make an anti-smoking commercial. A clip from that interview was made into a public service announcement by the American Cancer Society and released after his death. It includes the warning "Now that I'm gone, I tell you don't smoke. Whatever you do, just don't smoke. If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn't be talking about any cancer. I'm convinced of that."
- Wikipedia: Yul Brynner

Here's the clip. He died 9 months after this was recorded. Lung cancer must be an insidious disease; he doesn't look that unwell here. I didn't think Joe Paterno looked that unwell either, for an 84-year-old. (I don't think Paterno smoked.)

________

Chuck In Winter

2012-01-23T12:03:00.001-05:00

This bird is by no means domesticated. It's very difficult to get a photo of him. Here's one from yesterday morning. I was snapping from my living room through the glass of the door, and he knows it. He took off seconds later, his beak stuffed with almonds.

FDA Warned Diamond Foods About Making Disease Claims

2012-01-22T06:56:00.000-05:00

This is not news. It happened 2 years ago. But it's news to me.

The FDA sent a warning letter to Diamond Foods telling them that the claims they were making for their walnuts place the walnuts into the category of "drug" because FDA defines "drug" as something intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease.

FDA gave examples of Diamond's claims:

"Studies indicate that the omega-3 fatty acids found in walnuts may help lower cholesterol; protect against heart disease, stroke and some cancers; ease arthritis and other inflammatory diseases; and even fight depression and other mental illnesses."

"[O]mega-3 fatty acids inhibit the tumor growth that is promoted by the acids found in other fats ... "

"[I]n treating major depression, for example, omega-3s seem to work by making it easier for brain cell receptors to process mood-related signals from neighboring neurons."

"The omega-3s found in fish oil are thought to be responsible for the significantly lower incidence of breast cancer in Japanese women as compared to women in the United States."

I think Diamond started promoting walnuts as drugs when they made disease claims. I mean, for Diamond to state or even imply that their shelled walnuts can inhibit tumor growth is powerful stuff. Before the existence of the FDA, people sold lung tonics and cough cures and other dubious remedies with similar claims.

I just came from their site, www.diamondnuts.com. It looks like they complied.

The Life Extension Foundation says this action by the FDA "resembles an out-of-control police state where tyranny reins over rationality."

I guess there are two sides to every story.
________This might be an old package in the photo because it still has that "Omega-3" in the right-hand corner. Speaking of omega-3, walnuts have over 4 times more pro-inflammatory omega-6 than omega-3. And the omega-3 in walnuts is not the same type as is found in fish oil. So, that fish oil reference is stretching it. Also, both omega-3 and omega-6 are polyunsaturated fats which oxidize quickly, inside of the body and out, and so are not, in my opinion, a food to consume in copious amounts.

Thank you LB for the link.

Slow-Motion Flight

2012-01-19T18:30:00.000-05:00

From:International Professional Jury Sings Praises Of High-Speed Animal Films Made By Amateurs, Wageningen University, Netherlands

These videos are something else. Flight suddenly appears quite the effort. Of the video below, Judge and Philosopher Bas Haring said:

"My favourite was the seemingly peaceable film showing a group of birds foraging. Thanks to the high-speed camera work, you also see the harsh reality of the ongoing struggle between these so-called sweet birds."

Watch how they use their beaks as weapons.

Filmed by Liset Karman and Cees Keyer.

I also like this one. It's a little dark. Watch how the tit suspends itself in mid-air, as if it's taking a rest and re-orienting before the next flap. All practically invisible at speeds humans live in.

Filmed by Remco Brand and Ansa Fiaz.
________

Paula Deen, After Being Told She Had Diabetes, "I Wasn't About To Change My Life!"

2012-01-17T09:59:00.000-05:00

TV chef Paula Deen admitted on the TODAY show this morning that she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes - 3 years ago!

"Hey ya’all. I’m here to share something with you. A while back I was told that I have Type 2 Diabetes. I wasn’t about to change my life, but I have made simple changes in my life, like cutting back on one of my favorite things -- sweet tea! And for a Southern girl, that’s a big deal. And I’m taking more walks with my husband Michael and I’m running after our grandchildren. And I love it all."
- Diabetes In A New Light, Novo Nordisk and Paula Deen

Here's the TODAY interview:

I was disappointed she didn't explicitly tie her diet to her diabetes. It was the teachable moment I had hoped for. When Roker primed her with, "That kind of food can lead to type 2 diabetes," Deen responded, "Certainly, Al, that is part of the puzzle. But there is many other things that can lead to diabetes. Certainly genetics..."

Roker asked her, "What do you say to people who say, "She delayed this because it would damage her reputation, her whole industry that's she's built basically on this kind of cooking."? Deen responded, "No, people are not going to quit eating. We quit eating, we're all outta here."

Deen teemed with the drug company Novo Nordisk to create a new site, which is essentially an advertisement for Novo Nordisk's diabetes injectable Victoza:
Diabetes In A New Light

Here is one of her first new "diabetes-friendly" recipes, Lady and Sons Lasagna

Ingredients:

1/2 pound extra-lean ground beef
1 (10-ounce) package cremini or white mushrooms, finely chopped
1 medium onion, diced
1 small green bell pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 (15-ounce) can no-salt-added tomato sauce
1 (14 1/2-ounce) can no-salt-added petite diced tomatoes
1 cup water
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 bay leaves (optional)
3/4 teaspoon dried Italian herb seasoning
1/2 teaspoon Paula Deen’s House Seasoning
1/4 teaspoon Paula Deen’s Seasoned Salt
9 whole-wheat or reduced-carbohydrate lasagna noodles
1 1/2 cups no-salt-added low-fat cottage cheese
1 cup fat-free ricotta cheese
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 large egg
1 large egg white
1 cup shredded reduced-fat mozzarella cheese
1 cup shredded Gruyere cheese (preferably Swiss or Comte)
1 cup shredded reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese
3 tablespoons reduced-fat cream cheese (Neufchâtel), cut into small bits

What do you think?

Related post: TV Chef Paula Deen Has Diabetes
________

TV Chef Paula Deen Has Diabetes

2012-01-16T13:22:00.000-05:00

I'm moving this post to the top because I added the video from the Food Network of Paula Deen making her Lady's Brunch Burger.________
TV Chef Famous For Southern-Fried Decadence To Reveal She Has Diabetes, The Daily

The thing about type 2 diabetes is that, from my experience working with clinicians, it exists and is easily detected as prediabetes for many years - at which stage it can be reversed. Once there is a full-blown diagnosis of diabetes, it is harder to turn around. The beta cells, from where insulin is secreted in the pancreas, may have lost considerable function by then.

Related post: Paula Deen, After Being Told She Had Diabetes, "I Wasn't About To Change My Life!"
________Thank you, shaun.

Boxed Wine

2012-01-16T09:15:00.001-05:00

We've been experimenting with boxed wine. Here's our experience so far:

Pros:

Less expensive than bottled wine.
Easier to transport than bottled.
Stays fresh after opening. Bottled wine fares poorly here.
Improved quality and variety in recent years.

Cons:

Can't be aged. (Check the sell-by date!)
Difficult to completely empty the bag, the wine bladder inside the box.
Takes up valuable real estate in the refrigerator.

These are a few we've tried in the last several months:

Brand	Price	Type	Rating
Black Box	$23.99	Merlot	4.5 Stars
Black Box	$23.99	Cabernet Sauvignon	4.5 Stars
Fish Eye	$19.99	Shiraz	4 Stars
Cardinal Zin	$16.99 (Reg. $19.99)	Zinfandel	4 Stars
Bota Box	$19.99	Zinfandel	3 Stars
Pinot Evil	$16.99	Pinot Noir	3 Stars
Monthaven	$18.99	Cabernet Sauvignon	3 Stars
Franzia (5 liter)	$14.99	Chianti	2 Stars

Comments:

Ratings are from 1 to 5 stars and are purely subjective - within the class and type of wine. Boxed wines are great for everyday drinking but they probably can't compete in critical taste comparisons.
All boxes were 3 liters in size except the Franzia. One 3-liter box is equivalent to 4, 750 ml bottles.
They really do stay fresh in the refrigerator after opening, fresher than bottled (at least during the time they lasted in our house: 5 or 6 days).
That Cardinal Zin Zinfandel we've had in the bottle (a.k.a. "Big House Zin"). The boxed variety is the same good drinkable wine, but the bottle costs $9.99 in Pennsylvania wine stores. The 3-liter box saves $23 over the cost for 4 bottles. And it stays fresher!

The top photo is of empty boxes I saved to take the photo. Of the three, the Fish Eye was the best. You can see where the spout would stick out.

The bottom photo is how much is typically left in the bag when it stops dispensing. We snip the corner and pour the rest out, about a glass-full.
________

"There Are, In Fact, No Data Comparing The Food Safety Profiles Of GM Versus Conventional Breeding"

2012-01-14T07:57:00.001-05:00

In reply to the anonymous commenter in this post: Why We Should Be Testing Genetically Engineered Foods On Humans who presumed GMOs had undergone safety testing:

"There are, in fact, no data comparing the food safety profiles of GM versus conventional breeding, and the ubiquitous argument that since there is no evidence that GM products make people sick, they are safe is both illogical and false. There are, again, simply no data or even valid assays to support this contention.

Without proper epidemiological studies, most types of harm will not be detected, and no such studies have been conducted.

The necessity of labeling all GM products and particularly NEPs is therefore critical if there is any hope of monitoring adverse health consequences due to their consumption. For example, it would have been impossible to identify the source of the toxic tryptophan supplement if the product were not traceable through labeling."
- David Schubert, Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in "The Problem with Nutritionally Enhanced Plants", Journal of Medicinal Food, 2008

Whose job is it to safety test GMOs?

"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job."
- Quote by Phil Angell, Monsanto's Director of Corporate Communications, in "Playing God In The Garden," by Michael Pollan, New York Times Magazine, 25 October 1998.

But...

"Ultimately, it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety."
- FDA Federal Register, "Statement of Policy: Foods Derived From New Plant Varieties," 1992, a document, signed by David Kessler, which the FDA continued to reference, as recently as October 2008.

________

Why We Should Be Testing Genetically Engineered Foods On Humans

2012-01-13T07:53:00.000-05:00

How did this article slip into a publication like The Atlantic?

The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Foods, Ari LeVaux, The Atlantic, 9 January 2012

The thrust of the article hinges on a recent study:

Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA, Nature: Cell Research, September 2011

"Here, we report the surprising finding that exogenous plant miRNAs are present in the sera and tissues of various animals and that these exogenous plant miRNAs are primarily acquired orally, through food intake. ... These findings demonstrate that exogenous plant miRNAs in food can regulate the expression of target genes in mammals."

Of this study, LeVaux says:

"Chinese researchers have found small pieces of rice ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the blood and organs of humans who eat rice. The Nanjing University-based team showed that this genetic material will bind to receptors in human liver cells and influence the uptake of cholesterol from the blood."

So, our food contains carbohydrates, fat, protein, vitamins, other nutrients like fiber and water, and now, as I understand this, tiny messengers that can change how our cells operate. Check. That. Out.

What does this have to do with genetically engineered (GE) foods? Well, back to the Atlantic article:

"Monsanto's website states, "There is no need for, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in humans."
...
"So long as the introduced protein is determined to be safe, food from GM crops determined to be substantially equivalent is not expected to pose any health risks," reads Monsanto's website."

So long as the introduced protein is determined to be safe ... But these little bits of RNA we're eating don't make proteins. Yet, they're very powerful. They can regulate how much cholesterol we take in from food, they can cause worms that eat cotton or corn (genetically engineered to contain microRNAs) to die. They "have been implicated as players in several human diseases including cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes."

Biotechnology companies such as Monsanto know this. But testing GE foods for the presence of, and effects of, these new substances is expensive. Surely, if GE foods are found to be harmful it would damage their business.

Mr. LeVaux says Monsanto's stance is arrogant. What say you? I say it's shrewd.

Related post: "There Are, In Fact, No Data Comparing The Food Safety Profiles Of GM Versus Conventional Breeding"
________

2012-01-12T13:23:00.000-05:00

I have been informed that the mini baseball bats in the video in the previous post were actually Indian Clubs:

"Indian clubs belong to a category of exercise (and juggling) equipment that was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe, the British Commonwealth and the United States. They comprise bowling-pin shaped wooden "clubs" of varying sizes and weights, which are swung in certain patterns as part of an exercise program. They can range from a few pounds each, up to special clubs that can weigh as much as 50 pounds. They were used in carefully choreographed routines where the clubs were swung in unison by a group of exercisers, led by an instructor in the front, similar to modern aerobics classes.

Indian clubs derive their name from the much larger and heavier objects of similar shape traditionally used by martial artists and pehlwani wrestlers in India to train for strength. The practice of swinging such clubs to develop physical fitness was first recorded in ancient Egypt and the Middle East. It was introduced to England by British soldiers who were stationed in India during the 19th century.

They were exceptionally popular during the health craze of the late Victorian era, used by military cadets and well-heeled ladies alike, and even appeared as a gymnastic event in the 1904 and 1932 Olympics. Gymnasiums were built just to cater to club exercise groups. The popularity of the Indian Club waned in the 1920s and 1930s as organized sports became more popular."

An Indian pehlwan (wrestler) training with clubs circa 1973

How about that. I tried water bottles but I feared the caps would come loose.________Thank you, BL!

94-Year-Old Gym Buff

2012-01-11T16:31:00.000-05:00

Another in my series of motivational exercise posts. I need all the motivation I can get these days!
That thing he does with the mini baseball bats? I can't wait. What can I substitute?

________

Winter Blackbird Die-Off

2012-01-11T12:17:00.001-05:00

Remember that weird bird die-off around this time last year? Where hundreds of starlings were found dead on the streets in South Dakota?

The USDA, whose job it is to protect and promote agriculture, including livestock farming, has admitted to poisoning the birds intentionally.

"They used a bait laced with the poison DRC-1339. The USDA says the birds ate the bait then flew back to Yankton and died."
- Hundreds Of Yankton, South Dakota Birds Poisoned By USDA

The intentional killing was not incidental. In this case a farmer complained to the USDA that a flock of about 5,000 starlings were defecating in his cattle feed. Anyone can make a similar complaint, with similar outcome, if they can show wild animals causing harm.

The bird-cull program is known, in USDA parlance, as Bye Bye Blackbird:

"The USDA's role in the South Dakota bird deaths puts a focus on a little-known government bird-control program that began in the 1960s under the name of Bye Bye Blackbird, which eventually became part of the USDA and was housed in the late '60s at a NASA facility."
- Bye Bye Blackbird: USDA Acknowledges A Hand In One Mass Bird Death, Christian Science Monitor, 20 January 2011

It isn't just Bye Bye Blackbird, but Bye Bye bats, bears, beavers, skunks, squirrels, pigs, and millions of other birds. Here's a government pdf file that lists the deaths, most of them intentional, of 4,120,291 animals in 2009, 1.3 million starlings alone:

USDA: Animals Taken by Wildlife Services - FY 2009

These aren't even all the deaths:

"While the USDA keeps tabs on the number of birds the program euthanizes, the total death toll isn't known because private contractors operating under the depredation order aren't required to keep count in the case of blackbirds, cowbirds, grackles, and starlings."
- Bye Bye Blackbird: USDA Acknowledges A Hand In One Mass Bird Death, Christian Science Monitor, 20 January 2011

I knew the government killed animals that interfered with dairy businesses, cattle feedlots, chicken farms, and fields of grain. I didn't know it was this extensive.

Greg Butcher at the National Audubon Society says:

"Every winter, there's massive and purposeful kills of these blackbirds. ... These guys are professionals, and they don't want to advertise their work. They like to work fast, efficiently, and out of sight."

________Photo from the Christian Science Monitor, caption: "A worker with US Environmental Services, a private contractor, picks up a dead bird in Beebe, Ark. on Jan. 1, 2010. The USDA said it killed hundreds of starlings in South Dakota this week."
Thanks to Melinda for the story.

Honor Thy Patient

2012-01-10T08:23:00.000-05:00

The New Therapeutics: Ten Commandments (From the British Medical Journal)¹

Thou shalt treat according to level of risk rather than level of risk factor.
Thou shalt exercise caution when adding drugs to existing polypharmacy.
Thou shalt consider benefits of drugs as proven only by hard endpoint studies.
Thou shalt not bow down to surrogate endpoints, for these are but graven images.
Thou shalt not worship Treatment Targets, for these are but the creations of Committees.
Thou shalt apply a pinch of salt to Relative Risk Reductions, regardless of P values, for the population of their provenance may bear little relationship to thy daily clientele.
Thou shalt honour the Numbers Needed to Treat, for therein rest the clues to patient-relevant information and to treatment costs.
Thou shalt not see detailmen, nor covet an Educational Symposium in a luxury setting.
Thou shalt share decisions on treatment options with the patient in the light of estimates of the individual’s likely risks and benefits.
Honour the elderly patient, for although this is where the greatest levels of risk reside, so do the greatest hazards of many treatments.

Many of these address drug therapy. In today's medical climate that seems to be the therapy of choice. Well, and surgery. It's worth bringing up this study that Stephanius posted in comments:

Sociodemographic And Lifestyle Statistics Of Oldest Old People (>80 Years) Living In Ikaria Island: The Ikaria Study, Cardiology Research and Practice, February 2011

"The majority of the oldest old participants reported daily physical activities, healthy eating habits, avoidance of smoking, frequent socializing, mid-day naps and extremely low rates of depression.

Conclusion: Modifiable risk factors, such as physical activity, diet, smoking cessation and mid-day naps, might depict the “secrets” of the long-livers."

Modifying risk factors through lifestyle changes can be as effective, if not more effective, than drug therapy. It may not be as lucrative.

There is so much in this list that I like, not least of which the warning against medicating to a surrogate endpoint instead of a hard endpoint. That is, the warning against medicating to, say, reduce cholesterol or blood glucose (surrogate endpoints) instead of to reduce heart attacks or strokes or premature death (hard endpoints).

I really like that last commandment, although I wouldn't single out the elderly. I would apply it to all patients. Just "Honour thy patient."
________¹ From Gary Schwitzer at Health News Review, via British Medical Journal (BMJ) Blogger Richard Lehman, via Yudkin et al. at BMJ: "The Idolatry Of The Surrogate".

The sketch is by Rembrandt, a self-portrait, from RembrandtPainting.

"We Are Staring At A Massive Public Health Threat In The Rise Of Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs"

2012-01-07T08:29:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, the FDA said that one class of antibiotic, the cephalosporins, should be limited in use in cattle, pigs, chickens, and turkeys:

FDA To Protect Important Class Of Antimicrobial Drugs For Treating Human Illness, FDA Press Release, 4 January 2012

Overuse of cephalosporins in farm animals has caused these drugs to become ineffective for treating infection in humans. Bacteria have become resistant to them.

Bacteria become resistant more easily in places where there are a lot of them packed together, like factory farms. The few bacteria that survive initial exposure to a drug, probably genetically, can transfer that resistance to their neighbors. Then, as Dan Klotz writes:

"Even if the same drug is later given at a proper dose, the bacteria has already acquired a resistance and will survive."
- Do we Really Need To Use Human Medicine On Farm Animals?, National Geographic, 6 January 2012

I read the FDA's press release and thought it was limp. Then I read:

"The F.D.A. initially proposed cephalosporin restrictions in 2008 but withdrew the rule before it could take effect because of opposition from veterinarians, farmers and drug companies. The rule announced Wednesday is less strict than that one, since it still allows veterinarians to use the drugs to treat sick animals in some ways the F.D.A. has not specifically approved."
...
"Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a Democrat from New York and a microbiologist, said the F.D.A. had been too slow and too timid. “We are staring at a massive public health threat in the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs,” she said. “We need to start acting with the swiftness and decisiveness this problem deserves.” "
- Citing Drug Resistance, U.S. Restricts More Antibiotics For Livestock, New York Times, 4 January 2012

Maybe it's not as bad as Ms. Slaughter claims:

"Dr. Gatz Riddell, executive vice president of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners, a veterinarian group, said the dangers of agricultural uses of antibiotics had been greatly exaggerated."

Limiting these drugs will harm factory farmers and drug companies. Seems you'll have to have an alternative at-the-ready before you ban them. But what's that alternative?
________

Omega-3s and Antioxidants Are An Important Combination

2012-01-06T08:29:00.000-05:00

Melinda sent this great article about omega-3 fatty acids:
Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Antioxidants in Edible Wild Plants, Biological Research, 2004

The author, Artemis Simopoulos, is probably the most prolific and knowledgable researcher on the topic of omega-3s.

Some things worth iterating:

"Human beings evolved on a diet that was balanced in the omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids(PUFA), and was high in antioxidants."

Our diet is no longer balanced. We eat about 20 times more omega-6 than omega-3, owing to our great intake of omega-6-rich soy and corn oil, both from processed foods and grain-fed livestock.

Our diet is not as high in antioxidants (such as vitamins E and C) as it once was, owing to a depletion of these compounds in modern, industrially-produced foods, and to our lower intake of fresh plants.

Omega-3s are polyunsaturated fats. As such, they oxidize quickly. Even if they are fresh, they oxidize once they hit the chemical soup in the stomach. Oxidation is not good, as Simopoulos describes:

"Oxidative damage, as a result of normal metabolism or secondary to environmental pollutants, leads to free radical formation which has been considered to play a central role in cancer and atherosclerosis. Therefore, antioxidants, which can neutralize free radicals, may be important in the prevention of these diseases."

As we've seen, and as she says, green leafy plants are an excellent source of omega-3s:

"In plants, leaf lipids usually contain large proportions of 18:3ω3, which is an important component of chloroplast membrane polar lipids."

"Mammals who feed on these plants [including us] convert 18:3ω3 to EPA and DHA, the long-chain omega-3 fatty acidsfound in fish."

Speaking about livestock:

"Wild animals and birds who feed on wild plants are very lean with a carcass fat content of only 3.9% and contain about five times more polyunsaturated fat per gram than is found in domestic livestock. Most importantly, 4% of the fat of wild animals contains EPA whereas domestic beef contains very small or undetectable amounts, since cattle are fed grains that are rich in omega-6 fatty acids and poor in omega-3 fatty acids, whereas a deer that forages on ferns and mosses contains omega-3 fatty acids in its meat."

Simopoulos argues that getting our omega-3 from plants has an advantage:

"One advantage of the consumption of ALA over omega-3 fatty acids from fish is that the problem of insufficient vitamin E [and other antioxidants] intake does not exist with high intake of ALA from plant sources."

Also, our body can convert more of the plant-based omega-3 (ALA) to the longer chain EPA and DHA when we consume less omega-6.

Popeye knew.

What food has:

5 times more omega-3 than omega-6, providing half a gram omega-3
10 grams of protein, all the essential amino acids
Only 12 grams of carbohydrate
Over 150% of daily value for vitamin C and folate
Over 2000% of daily value for vitamin K
7.5 grams of fiber
More calcium than a cup of milk
Almost 7 times more iron than a 3-ounce beef Filet Mignon

All for 78 calories?
________

The Bread Diet And The Starch Challenge

2012-01-01T08:27:00.000-05:00

Dr. McDougall linked this study in his recent newsletter:

Effects Of A High Fiber Bread Diet On Weight Loss In College-Age Males, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1979

It was a small study: 16 overweight college-age men went on a weight-loss diets for 8 weeks. They were divided into 2 groups:

Group 1: Ate 12 slices of white bread daily, 4 per meal.
Group 2: Ate 12 slices of reduced-calorie, fiber-enriched bread daily, 4 per meal.

Both groups lost weight; the fiber group lost more.

The men were fed all meals in a cafeteria. They ate the same food (type, not quantity) at each meal. "No drastic changes were made in types of food" prior to and during the study. (I guess conducting the study at a University with a cafeteria makes that easy.) Food was weighed before consumption and after, if needed.

Caloric reduction was voluntary. The men were merely encouraged to eat "food low in calories."

Group 1: Reduced calories from 3200 at start of study to 2350.
Group 2: Reduced calories from 3200 at start of study to 1975.

After 8 weeks:

Group 1: Weight loss average of 6.26 kg (13.8 lb)
Group 2: Weight loss average of 8.77 kg (19.3 lb)

Group 1: Cholesterol dropped from 231 to 155 mg/dl
Group 2: Cholesterol dropped from 224 to 172 mg/dl

Group 1: Fasting glucose, no change (87.1 before, 86.6 after)
Group 2: Fasting glucose, no change (85.7 before, 85.3 after)

There was no group that didn't eat the bread, so it's hard to determine what effect the bread had on weight loss. Could a group of men similarly counseled and fed, but without bread, also lose weight? Or did "the feeling of fullness created by eating bread and intensified with bread containing cellulose help the dieter control food intake?"

What you can tell from this study is that swapping regular white bread for a reduced-calorie high-fiber version may lead to more weight loss. You can also say that eating bread does not prevent weight loss.

There are a number of physicians and diet-book authors who claim that eating a lot of carbohydrates, especially grains, and of grains, especially wheat, and of wheat, especially processed wheat (flour), will cause weight gain - ipso facto. Here we have 8 men who lost 20 pounds in 8 weeks - by cutting back on calories and by adding 12 slices of bread a day!

Dr. McDougall, whose belief in the benefits of a starch diet is steadfast, offered this challenge:

Add an extra 600 to 900 calories of starchy foods each day, such as:

3 to 4 cups of steamed rice
3 to 4 cups of boiled corn
3 to 4 mashed potatoes
3 to 4 baked sweet potatoes
2 to 4 cups of cooked beans, peas, or lentils
3 to 4 cups of boiled spaghetti noodles
6 to 12 slices of fresh bread

"Buy a loaf of whole wheat bread (with no added fat, milk, or eggs in the ingredients) every day and eat it all."

"Tired of bread, then buy rice."

"With undeniable proof from a couple of months of additional rice and potatoes, you should eventually make starches 75 to 85 percent of your diet, with the remainder coming from fruits and vegetables—and one day soon, forgo all the meat, dairy, and vegetable oils. Your adjustment will be quicker and easier than you ever imagined, you will enjoy your foods, and you will be thrilled with the
results."

I'll say this ... his diet is a lot like the diets of traditional Okinawans who consumed 85% of their calories from carbohydrates, 70% from sweet potatoes alone, and who are known for their long life and good health into old age.
________Photo: Mine from back when I made bread.

Disease Mongering At Its Best

2011-12-31T08:18:00.002-05:00

What is disease mongering?

"Disease mongering is the selling of sickness that widens the boundaries of illness and grows the markets for those who sell and deliver treatments. It is exemplified most explicitly by many pharmaceutical industry-funded disease-awareness campaigns — more often designed to sell drugs than to illuminate or to inform or educate about the prevention of illness or the maintenance of health."
- The Fight against Disease Mongering: Generating Knowledge for Action, PLoSMedicine, 2006

Drug companies profit from giving names to conditions for which they want to sell drugs, conditions that don't necessarily warrant drugs.

Here's a drug being sold for ES and SWD. I've never heard of ES and SWD, have you?

ES: Excessive Sleepiness
SWD: Shift Work Disorder

Nuvigil's website offers a free prescription. Nice, since a 90-day supply costs $1238.94 (at drugstore.com). Having insurance cover the cost for these drugs raises the price of insurance for everyone.

What acronyms will they think of next?
________

Spiced Apple In 5 Minutes

2011-12-28T09:20:00.000-05:00

Clean 1 apple (or 2 small ones). This a a Gala apple. Quarter it and slice out the seeds:

Grate it. Leave the skin on:

Put it in a small saucepan with a few tablespoons of water, just enough to pool about 1/4 inch at the bottom of the pan. Cover it. Bring it to a simmer using a low heat setting:

It will look like this after about 5 minutes. Stir a few times as it heats. If you use more water or cook longer it will be more like applesauce than grated apple. I stop cooking here because I like the texture.

Let it sit in the pan covered for a couple minutes to even out in temperature. Then add spices. I added about 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon and two shakes of salt. (Salt at the subthreshold level enhances sweet taste without having to add sweetener.)

Side view. I like adding hot spiced apple to a bowl of oatmeal.

________Photos: Bix

Are What We Call "Causes" Just Stories That Help Us Make Sense Of Things?

2011-12-26T08:24:00.000-05:00

I've been saying "I don't know" a lot more. The more I read, the less I feel I know, and the more confused I get. I'll admit. And the more amazed I am at people who know. But Jonah Leher, in his article:

Trials And Errors: Why Science Is Failing Us , Wired, 16 December 2011

... says that I'm probably not alone. That trying to understand all the minutia may end up confusing me:

"We assume that more information will make it easier to find the cause. ... All those extra details end up confusing us; the more we know, the less we seem to understand."

Why? Because:

"The variables cannot be isolated. Such situations require that we understand every [Leher's emphasis] interaction before we can reliably understand any of them."

I visualize this as a fabric. When you pull one thread, you perhaps unintentionally tug or distort hundreds of other threads. The whole is not simply the sum of its parts - a fact that modern science best not lose sight of:

"This assumption - that understanding a system’s constituent parts means we also understand the causes within the system ... defines modern science. In general, we believe that the so-called problem of causation can be cured by more information, by our ceaseless accumulation of facts. Scientists refer to this process as reductionism."

He gives some examples:

The notable costly failure of Pfizer's heart-saving drug torcetrapib. Torcetrapib was supposed to raise HDL and lower LDL. It did, but it also raised blood pressure (the unintended thread tug).
We thought the cause of low back pain was disc abnormalities, which we could view in MRI and which could be rectified with surgery. But was it the surgery or the person's own healing mechanisms that relieved pain, since "about 90% of people with back pain [get] better within six weeks"? A 1994 NEJM study suggested it was probably the person's own healing: "the discovery of a bulge or protrusion on an MRI scan in a patient with low back pain may frequently be coincidental."

So, are what we call "causes" (as opposed to correlations) just stories that help us make sense of things? I bet that's often the case, even though some "causes" are indefatigable, like, say, that a deficiency of vitamin C causes scurvy.
________Thanks to Shaun for the article.
Thanks to xkcd for the comic.

Touched By A Wild Gorilla

2011-12-25T17:02:00.002-05:00

I would have been terrified.

________Via shehab ahmad.

Christmas Lights 2011

2011-12-25T07:27:00.002-05:00

I wish everyone a moment of joy today.

________

The Jungle, Part 4: Sausage And Lard

2011-12-22T07:56:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I commented that I couldn't believe what went on in meatpacking plants 100 years ago. Here's an excerpt from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle:

"There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white--it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption.

There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.

There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one--there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage."

It's hard to believe this really went on. Wikipedia says that "Sinclair spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards."

This next bit is just incomprehensible. Sinclair is describing the different jobs men performed in the plant, and the risks that accompany each job. For the men who worked in the tank rooms:

"... there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting, -- sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!"

A lot of people ate this meat. From the Civil War to the 1920s, more meat was processed at Chicago's Union Stockyards than in any other place in the world.

I should have read this book years ago. I've been, and probably still am, terribly naive. I've come to see that businesses, even today, are not above this.

In 1991, 25 people were killed in a fire at the Hamlet chicken processing plant because the owners, who went to prison, had kept the doors locked and the windows boarded. ("One worker stated that much of the chicken meat was rotten, and that the reason it was processed into chicken nuggets was to disguise the foul taste.")

Just 2 years ago, the Peanut Corporation of America was responsible for 9 deaths and hundreds of illnesses because their plant was filthy, their peanut products contaminated with toxic bacteria and mold.

Many examples of the contamination of leafy greens and related death and illness can be found in Bill Marler's recent post. He describes an increasing and troubling lack of transparency from both the industry as well as the FDA and state food safety teams.

Could these tragedies have been avoided with more inspections? Who requires the inspections? Who conducts them?

The Jungle, Part 1: Breakfast And Dinner
The Jungle, Part 2: Honeycombed With Rottenness
The Jungle, Part 3: Food Was Not As It Seemed
The Jungle, Part 4: Sausage And Lard
________For the photos, I'm very grateful to Kathy who writes The Food Company Cookbooks blog.

"Armour and Company published a booklet, The Business of Being a Housewife - A Manual to Promote Household Efficiency and Economy (1917, 60 pages) that contains several nice illustrations of their ham and bacon products and some of the products from their Veribest line of foods."

High-Fat Diets Cause Insulin Resistance Despite An Increase In Muscle Mitochondria

2011-12-21T08:12:00.001-05:00

Here's Laurie's recent post:
Scientists Know that Fatty Diets Cause Blood Sugar Problems

I have to say, I agree with her. High-fat diets likely contribute to insulin resistance, and in turn, diabetes. I've read a number of studies over the years that support this link - both epidemiological and clinical studies, the latter on animals as well as humans. I don't know why this link isn't discussed much in the media.

I've also wondered whether low-carb (and so, by default, high-fat) diets disguise this problem. As long as you continue to eat very little carbohydrate, insulin resistance that a high-fat diet may be promoting might not be apparent - that is, if you're just looking at blood glucose levels.

(The rats in the study Laurie mentions, the ones that experienced insulin resistance, were eating about 50% of their calories from fat and 30% from carbohydrate. There were 2 high-fat groups: one eating flax seed and olive oil, the other lard and corn oil.)
________

USDA Wants Monsanto To Conduct Their Own Environmental Reviews, Good Or Bad?

2011-12-20T07:15:00.000-05:00

The USDA, which oversees production of genetically engineered (GE) crops, is:

"... training the world's biggest biotech firms, including Monsanto, BASF and Syngenta, to conduct environmental reviews of their own transgenic seed products.

... testing new cost-sharing agreements that allow biotech firms to help pay private contractors to prepare mandatory environmental statements on GE plants.

This would eliminate a critical level of oversight for the production of GE crops.

Activists say biotech firms like Monsanto are concerned only with profit and routinely supply regulators with one-sided information.

Bill Freese, a policy expert with the Center for Food Safety (CFS):
"It's the equivalent of letting BP do their own Environmental Assessment of a new rig."
- From: EXCLUSIVE: Under Industry Pressure, USDA Works To Speed Approval Of Monsanto's Genetically Engineered Crops, Truthout, 12 December 2011

Where the world stands:

The US promotes biotech (both Obama and Bush).
China, Argentina, and Brazil have embraced biotech.
Europe, including France and Spain, have been cautious, in some cases hostile towards biotech. Europe labels its food, US does not.
GE crops are banned in Hungary and Peru [and Ireland].

What do you think? My first reaction: not a good idea. On second thought, maybe it's not that bad. I guess these are the options:

Allow biotech plants to go to market without more in-depth environmental reviews.
Suspend commercial planting of biotech until the government can complete environmental reviews.
Farm out the job of environmental review - let someone pay for it besides the taxpayer.
Increase USDA resources. Raise taxes? Reallocate? Borrow?

The USDA, I imagine, doesn't have the resources, even though they have the mandate, to conduct Environmental Impact Statements on every biotech plant. So options 1, 2, and 4 would result in no in-depth review, not anytime soon. But Biotech, I imagine, spent way too much on research and development not to bring these plants to market, sometime soon. Having Monsanto do their own review is smelly. But some review is better than no review. It may also mean USDA is privy to more industry facts, figures, and finaglings than if they conducted their own independent reviews.
________Photo of Roundup Ready Soybeans from Monsanto's site.

What Is The Single Best Thing We Can Do For Our Health?

2011-12-18T06:14:00.000-05:00

Dr. Mike Evans says ...
Exercise.
30 minutes a day.

I love how this video was produced.
I don't exercise for 30 minutes a day :(
Do you?
I wonder if your job is something that requires exercise, like trash collector, waitress, housekeeper, landscaper, roofer, does it still apply?
________

New Census Figures: 1 in 2 Americans Poor Or Low-Income

2011-12-16T09:34:00.001-05:00

Nearly half of Americans (From the graph: 16.1% + 31.8% = 47.9%) are living at or close to poverty levels. Many of them are children and the elderly, groups with little ability to change their situation:

Reading Between the Poverty Lines New York Times, 19 November, 2011

How do you grow an economy when half the population struggles to put food on the table? And what is that food? How can we advance diets that feature expensive organic non-industrially-farmed vegetable and animal products when they are out-of-reach for so many?

I see with ever more clarity that what people eat is more a question of economics and politics than of health. I'm understanding why Michelle Obama may be deemphasizing the food aspect of her Obesity Campaign in favor of the move aspect:

Let’s Move Campaign Gives Up On Healthy Diets For Kids?, Marion Nestle's Food Politics blog, 5 December, 2011

How can she be "ensuring that every family has access to healthy, affordable food" while the price and access to that food each day becomes more out-of-reach for millions of Americans?
________Related: Census Shows 1 In 2 People Are Poor Or Low-Income: Nearly half of Americans are low-income as rising expenses, unemployment shrink middle class, Yahoo Finance, 16 December, 2011

Commenting On Google Blogs

2011-12-15T07:24:00.004-05:00

I think I discovered why I can't comment on other people's blogs, and why they can't comment on mine. When I put a check-mark next to "Accept third party cookies" in my browser options, which I had purposely left unchecked before, suddenly I could post to others' blogs. So, Google must have changed their code?

It looks like they did:
Cookie Filtering, And Commenting Ability, The Real Blogger Status, What Blogger Won't Tell You, June 2011

I changed my comment settings to use the full page instead of the pop-up window. I'm hoping this allows people to comment without having to "Accept third party cookies," adjust any other cookie permissions or other browser options.
________

Affable Bears

2011-12-14T07:50:00.004-05:00

Mirror neurons? Or just good friends?

I can't help it...

________

How Much Do Fruits and Vegetables Cost?

2011-12-13T07:24:00.006-05:00

Talking about what to eat on a budget led me to this report by the USDA:

How Much Do Fruits and Vegetables Cost? (pdf), Economic Research Service of the USDA, February 2011

Processed fruits and vegetables weren't always more or less expensive than fresh. I saw that, for example, carrots were cheaper to eat fresh, but peaches were cheaper to eat canned.

Carrots:

Fresh 0.77/lb
Canned 0.69/lb
Frozen 1.19/lb

Fresh 0.25/cup
Canned 0.34/cup
Frozen 0.39/cup

Peaches:

Fresh 1.84/lb
Canned 1.05/lb

Fresh 0.66/cup
Canned 0.58/cup

Some graphs from the report (you can click them for better resolution):

So, the least expensive vegetables were potatoes, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, and carrots. The least expensive fruits were watermelon, bananas, honeydew, oranges, and grapefruit. (Mangoes were cheaper than apples?)
________Cabbage still life by Jonathan Koch. I'd love to see that in-person.

Rats Appear To Help Other Rats In Distress

2011-12-12T13:45:00.003-05:00

Rats Free Trapped Friends, Hint at Universal Empathy, Wired, 8 December 2011

"In a study published Dec. 7 in Science, Mason and University of Chicago psychologists Jean Decety and Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal describe their rat empathy-testing apparatus: An enclosure into which pairs of rats were placed, with one roaming free and the other restrained inside a plastic tube. It could only be opened from the outside, which is exactly what the free rats did — again and again and again, seemingly in response to their trapped companions’ distress."

This looks to me like activity of mirror neurons, which I read about in Ramachandran's book, The Tell-Tale Brain. It makes sense to me that animals would share anatomical structures, like eyes, or in this case, wads of neuronal networks. Not that we all fine-tune them in the same way. I envy birds' ability to fly!
________Thanks to BL.

The Budget Diet

2011-12-12T09:38:00.003-05:00

Here's one dietitian's "grocery list to help you cut food prices while you boost nutrition:"
Cheap and Healthy: 15 Nutritious Foods for About $2

1. Brown Rice
2. Whole-Wheat or Multigrain Pasta
3. 100% Whole-Wheat Bread
4. Nonfat Greek Yogurt
5. Old-Fashioned Oats
6. Frozen Vegetables
7. Russet Potato
8. Fresh Bagged Spinach
9. Canned Refried Beans
10. Canned Tuna
11. Canned or Jarred Marinara Sauce
12. Whole Wheat Pita Bread
13. Store-Brand Egg Substitute
14. Frozen Edamame (Soybeans)
15. Dried Lentils

Anything you would add? Or take away?

I think I may get roasted for this, but, well, it works on a budget. Last night's dinner (red potatoes tossed in oil and spices, roasted at 370ºF for 1 hour):

________Photos: Bix

The Political Class Vs. The Working Poor, And The Elusive Perfect Diet

2011-12-12T08:01:00.002-05:00

From:
Land Of The Free, Home Of The Hungry: Nowhere Is The Chasm Between America's Political Class And Its Working Poor More Vast Than In The Demand To Cut Food Stamps, The Guardian, 9 December 2011

According to Gallup polling, one in five Americans reported not having enough money to buy food in the past 12 months

An analysis by the New York Times revealed a 17% increase in the number of school students receiving free and reduced lunches across the country between 2006/07 and now.

Between 2008 and 2011, the number of those living on food stamps, assistance to those who lack sufficient money to feed themselves and their families, soared by 50%, putting one American in seven in the programme.

"This is a special interest group that not many people talk about because they don't have the wealth to lift a candidate to be president of the United States," explained D Jermaine Husser, the former executive director of South Carolina's Low Country Food Bank.

A new measurement of poverty by the Census Bureau, which takes regional cost of living, medical payments and other expenses that do not intrude on the official poverty count, found a third of Americans are either in poverty or desperately close to it.

The Census Bureau says 100,000,000 Americans are in or near poverty. Is that high for one of the wealthiest countries in the world?

Interesting that Gary Younge chose to describe the two ends of the wealth chasm as the "political class" and the "working poor." The working poor, "not so much the destitute – America is always forgetting about them," vs. the political elite, a group opposed to the tenets of Populism, "political ideas and activities that are intended to represent ordinary people's needs and wishes."

Another notable bit, from the New York Times article that Younge links, adds weight to the notion that food assistance programs are, in effect, grain subsidies:

"Congress passed the National School Lunch Act in 1946 to support commodity prices after World War II by reducing farm surpluses while providing food to schoolchildren."

Does that imply that cutting food assistance programs could affect supply? Perhaps increase it? Lowering the price farmer's get for their grain? I don't know. I marvel at the days farmers were paid to keep their fields fallow.

The Perfect Diet

Back in my engineering classes, we were taught not to chase the elusive perfectly built structure. You could, of course, imagine designing a perfect building, using the best materials, taking all the time you needed, but you wouldn't produce something that was on time and on budget. It would be merely an academic exercise. (Boy, did we get grilled in finals if we were overbudget!) In the real world, there are constraints, mistakes, and sure-as-shootin', politics. So you compromise.

In the same way, I've learned there is no such thing as a perfect diet; you cannot provide all the best materials to all people, not logistically¹, not economically, and not all the time. You design a diet for each person that is within their means and that matches their particular needs. I may want to configure a house with oak and marble; it won't happen on a pine-and-formica budget.

The Budget Diet

In the spirit of cooking on a budget, here's one dietitian's "grocery list to help you cut food prices while you boost nutrition."
________¹ Less Than 1% of American Cropland Is Organic

The photo is from the cover of David Shipler's book, The Working Poor: Invisible in America. Not a book I've read but it's on my list:

"Shipler shows how liberals and conservatives are both partly right – that practically every life story contains failure by both the society and the individual. Braced by hard fact and personal testimony, he unravels the forces that confine people in the quagmire of low wages. And unlike most works on poverty, this book also offers compelling portraits of employers struggling against razor-thin profits and competition from abroad."

Dr. Cinque: "The Sensible, Sane Way To Optimize Your Blood Sugar"

2011-12-08T13:27:00.004-05:00

I enjoy reading Dr. Cinque's blog. I don't always agree with him but about diet we're on the same page.

In his latest post, Carbs And Blood Sugar, he questions Drs. Mercola and Rosedale's* advice to eat little-to-no foods that contain primarily carbohydrates. This would have one eliminate foods such as apples, yams, squash, rice, potatoes, corn, bananas, etc. He does not, however recommend "eating nothing but starches and fruits and vegetables, as per McDougall or Esselstyn. Healthy fats are just as good for you as healthy starches, and I am for moderation with both. To demonize carbs or fats is extreme, and I mean really bizarre."

He's funny! He wraps up:

"Find a good balance of protein, fats, and carbs in your diet; go for quality in all the foods that you eat; keep an eye on your total caloric intake, and cut out every single junk food; and also stay as physically active as possible. Also, try to avoid snacking. Eat your meals and "fast" in-between meals. That's the sensible, sane way to optimize your blood sugar."

Seems sensible to me.
________* I'm not familiar with Mercola and Rosedale; I'm just paraphrasing Cinque.

Bird Of Prey

2011-12-07T13:57:00.003-05:00

A falcon or a hawk?

________Photo by Aidan Finn

Fallout from Japan's Disasters

2011-12-07T08:45:00.016-05:00

I received an email this morning from a gentleman concerned about the fallout from Japan's triple earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant disasters. He sent this article:

The Death Of The Pacific Ocean, Fukushima Debris Soon To Hit American Shores

That pile of debris, made up of cars, trucks, boats, refrigerators, television sets, furniture, all laced with toxic chemicals is due to begin hitting Hawaii this winter (according to NOAA) and the US West Coast several months after that:

Japan Tsunami Debris Floating Toward Hawaii, Huffington Post, October 25, 2011

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, under the Department of Commerce, an agency that Texas Governor and Republican Presidential aspirant Rick Perry would eliminate) offered this map of movement of debris from the tsunami. (Year 1 = red; Year 2 = orange; Year 3 = yellow; Year 4 = light blue; Year 5 = violet.) Looks like it's moving a little faster than this.

________
The following are recent events related to Fukushima's radiation leakage:

400,000 cans of baby formula recalled:
Japanese Tests Find Radiation In Infant Food, New York Times, December 6, 2011

"Traces of radioactive cesium thought to be from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were detected in Japanese baby formula on Tuesday as concerns about food safety continue almost nine months after the accident.
...
Since the Fukushima Daiichi plant was heavily damaged by the tsunami that followed the March 11 earthquake, radioactive particles have made their way into vegetables, beef, fish and the nation’s staple, rice."

New leakage of radioactive gas, indicating that nuclear fission has resumed - on its own - in a reactor close to shutdown:
Japan Nuclear Crisis: Xenon Detected At Fukushima Plant, BBC, November 2, 2011

Revised estimates of radiation release:
Fukushima Nuclear Plant Released Far More Radiation Than Government Said, Scientific American, October 25, 2011

Banned beef shipments:
Japan Bans Fukushima Beef Shipments, BBC, July 19, 2011

"The initial discovery of contaminated beef was traced back to farms near the Fukushima power plant, but more recent discoveries are from farms as far as 100km (70 miles) away."

Maybe the world is better off with fewer regulations? Presidential aspirant Rick Perry is also advocating for the abolishment of the Department of Energy, which houses the National Nuclear Security Administration.
________The photo, from the US Navy, shows the debris off Japan's coast shortly after the tsunami.

Men And Sheds

2011-12-05T13:39:00.003-05:00

Professor Alan White, whose analysis on men, health, and sheds appeared in the British Medical Journal last week, says that for men, working in a shed can relieve stress, lower blood pressure, and boost self-esteem ... adding years to their lives.

"Men find doing things relaxing, and that in itself is good for their health."

Europe’s Men Need Their own Health Strategy, BMJ, 29 November 2011

What are men doing in sheds?

The Telegraph says they're banging nails, welding metal, shaping wood, and disassembling/reassembling cars.
The Daily Mail says they're doing crossword puzzles.

Maybe women have already found their sheds?

"At any given age, men are still more likely than women to die from most of the leading causes, and in the European Union men have more than twice as many deaths a year as women throughout the working ages (15-64 years)."

________

Corrupted Research (Repost)

2011-12-04T07:44:00.001-05:00

This is a repost from May 2009.
________
When a former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, says:

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."

It's worth paying attention.

That quotation is by former NEJM editor Dr. Marcia Angell from her review of three recent books which (including one she authored herself) shine a light on the influence businesses, in this case drug companies, have on research that appears in even the most respected, peer-reviewed science and medical journals ... and how businesses influence the behavior of medical professionals, in all fields - healthcare, research, academia, and government.

Here's her review:
Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption, New York Review of Books, January 2009.

I'll list the books she was reviewing because I think their titles help tell the story:

"Side Effects: A Prosecutor, A Whistleblower, And A Bestselling Antidepressant On Trial"
by Alison Bass

This is the story of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, who "buried evidence that its top-selling antidepressant, Paxil, was ineffective and possibly harmful." GSK agreed to settle charges of consumer fraud for $2.5 million - their cost for doing business, since Paxil continued to bring in about $3 billion a year.
"Our Daily Meds: How The Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines And Hooked The Nation On Prescription Drugs"
by Melody Petersen

The story of how drug companies engage in "disease-mongering," convincing prospective patients and their doctors "that they have medical conditions that require long-term medical treatment." Here, Pfizer pled guilty for illegally marketing Neurontin, laying out $430 million to resolve the charges. Again, this was just the cost of doing business, since Neurontin, which was initially approved to treat epilepsy, continued to bring in billions annually - for precisely the off-market uses Pfizer illegally advanced, "bipolar disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia, restless legs syndrome, hot flashes, migraines, tension headaches, and more."
"Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became A Sickness"
by Christopher Lane

This is another story of disease-mongering: Drug makers creating diagnoses for which drug intervention is not indicated (e.g. the diagnosis of "social anxiety disorder" for shyness), let alone adequately researched, yet proceeding to aggressively market their drugs anyway.

________
Selling Pills On Inference Instead Of Science

The field of psychiatry is particularly vulnerable to disease-mongering since diagnoses are largely subjective. However, Senator Charles Grassley, who exposed damaging conflicts-of-interest in the psychiatry field, has shifted his attention to the cardiology field - where cocktails of powerful drugs are being peddled without the backing of convincing published scientific evidence. (The polypill for heart disease comes to mind. It's an untested pill containing a statin, ACE inhibitor, diuretic, aspirin, and others.)

Ways Industries Corrupt Research

There are many ways that industries influence research. One is by suppressing unfavorable results of industry-sponsored studies. Here's an example using antidepressants:

"Among 74 FDA-registered studies, 31%, accounting for 3449 study participants, were not published. Whether and how the studies were published were associated with the study outcome. A total of 37 studies viewed by the FDA as having positive results were published; 1 study viewed as positive was not published. Studies viewed by the FDA as having negative or questionable results were, with 3 exceptions, either not published (22 studies) or published in a way that, in our opinion, conveyed a positive outcome (11 studies). According to the published literature, it appeared that 94% of the trials conducted were positive. By contrast, the FDA analysis showed that 51% were positive."
- Selective Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy, NEJM, 2008

Other ways include:

Setting up trials that are all but certain to show market worth, e.g. by comparing your drug to a placebo instead of to another similarly-classed drug.
Writing a paper that shifts focus away from a drug's poorly substantiated primary effect to a peripheral effect that appears more favorable.
Reanalyzing data from published studies, that is, performing a "meta-analysis," where included studies can be cherry-picked, or statistical analyses performed to deemphasize negative findings (i.e. broadening confidence intervals).

Dr. Angell says that "many reforms would be necessary to restore integrity to clinical research and medical practice. ... Many would involve changes in the FDA." I hope the new FDA Commissioner makes these reforms part of her agenda.
________

The Laptop With The Mostest

2011-12-02T15:08:00.001-05:00

We bought a new laptop. It came bundled with a lot of bloatware. These two bits of free software were enormously helpful:

PC Decrapifier, which helped me to remove a lot of pre-loaded and unwanted programs that were souring my fresh-out-the-box new-computer experience.

Malwarebytes, which found a trojan on a new computer I hadn't even used yet. In the blink of an eye it was gone.

Both programs are free for the basic version, easy to install, and don't, that I know, deposit any dregs on your hard drive. I've used Malwarebytes in addition to McAfee Antivirus and Webroot's Spy Sweeper for about 5 years and it always finds things these two don't.
________

The Statin Wars: Lipitor Vs. Crestor

2011-11-27T06:27:00.010-05:00

A tie. But I'd probably agonize over the decision to take either one of them.

I was reading Dr. Cinque's blog this morning. He gave it over to the comments of a Dr. Uffe Ravnskov on the results of the recent SATURN trial:

Effect of Two Intensive Statin Regimens On Progression Of Coronary Disease (SATURN), New England Journal of Medicine, November 15, 2011

This trial pitted Lipitor against Crestor, both statins, both very high doses. It had no placebo arm. It gauged the effectiveness of these drugs by measuring changes in the cross-sectional area of an artery wall (a surrogate measure of atherosclerosis).

In the end, there was no difference between the two. The doses of Lipitor (80 mg) and Crestor (40 mg) used were found to be equally effective at "regressing atherosclerosis."

Dr. Ravnskov (who I know only from reading his Amazon entry) had some criticisms. Take statins? Not if you value your kidneys and liver, and not if you're loathe to slap down $ on a drug that has "an uncertain effect on a surrogate end-point, which may or may not mean anything." He has a point, many points in fact.

Kidney Damage

"A more detailed review of adverse events reveals that “new proteinuria”, defined as an excretion of more than twice the amount of protein in the urine during the follow-up, in 1.7 [Lipitor] and 3.8% [Crestor], respectively in the two groups. An increase in proteinuria is a measure of progressive damage to the kidneys. This trial only lasted two years, so we don´t know what would have happened in the longer term."

Protein in the urine indicates kidney damage. What was happening to the kidneys of patients who were experiencing protein in urine twice that of normal? How many were? That wasn't even recorded! Healthy kidneys are adept at preventing protein from leaking into urine at all.

Liver Damage

"Equally it was stated that less than two per cent had laboratory signs of liver damage. However, liver damage was only recorded if the laboratory signs were at least three times higher than the upper limit of the normal range."

Table 4 shows the number of patients who experienced elevated liver enzymes at 3 times normal. Again you have to ask, what was happening to the livers of patients whose enzymes were up to 3 times normal? How many were there? No data.

Muscle Damage

"And whilst less than two per cent had muscular damage, this was only reported if the laboratory signs were at least five times higher than the upper limit of the normal value."

5 times! What was happening to the muscles of patients whose lab values were up to 5 times normal (and even 10 times! as Table 4 shows)? You could assume there were a significant number of patients with abnormal values. It's entirely possible that 100% of patients experienced muscle abnormalities; you don't know. Choosing this high cut-off precluded the authors from having to address statins' effect on muscles.

Imagine if you had a placebo group and could compare kidney, liver, and muscle function of those not on statins to those on Lipitor and Crestor.

Regression Of Coronary Atherosclerosis?

The goal of this study was to measure regression of atherosclerosis, via a marker: the change in PAV (Percent Atheroma Volume), which I understood as the change in cross-sectional area of an artery wall. One coronary artery in each patient was measured twice, once at the start of the study and once after 104 weeks of treatment. There was a statistically significant reduction in PAV of less than 1% for Lipitor and 1.2% for Crestor. They had a secondary endpoint, TAV, which also showed a statistically significant reduction from baseline. (I originally said that these reductions were statistically insignificant. But in the Results section it does say that "P<0.001 for the change from baseline in each group." I was incorrectly looking at the between group P values in Table 3.)

Not only were these changes tiny, but whether they indicate regression of coronary atherosclerosis is debatable. Dr. Ravnskov says they may well have been explained by non-drug effects, such as "mental stress, anxiety, exposure to cold, and even a sustained handgrip." Bear in mind there were only two measurements two years apart, making it difficult to account for these non-drug effects.

"In short, the degree of arterial dilation is a massive and uncontrolled variable in the SATURN study. This problem could have been solved if the investigators had included a placebo group."

The study also had a high drop-out rate (29%!), which Dr. Ravnskov attributed to patients' poor tolerance of the high-dose drugs. High drop-out rates reduce the internal validity of a study.

Can The Ability Of Statins To Stave Off Heart Attack Be Ascertained by Ultrasound?

The primary endpoint of the SATURN trial above, PAV (Percent Atheroma Volume) gained via ultrasound, has limited ability to determine plaque's risk. This editorial addresses that:

Seeking Alternatives to Hard End Points, Is Imaging the Best APPROACH?, Circulation, March 2010

Here's a slide from it, and the caption:

"Measures of total atheroma burden may not accurately estimate cardiovascular risk because they do not take into account coronary plaque morphology."

The percentage of plaque is about the same in Figures A and C. However, the plaque in Figure C has less dead tissue (necrotic core), a thicker cap, less evident inflammation, and is considered more stable that the plaque in figure A. PAV alone does not tell you this.

As Dave noted in Comments, the authors of SATURN say as much:

"Yet intravascular ultrasonography remains a surrogate end point, and a reduction in plaque volume should not be interpreted as equivalent to a clinical benefit in terms of preventing cardiovascular events."

________
I try not to be too cynical but I was taken aback at the extent of these authors' conflicts of interest (AstraZeneca makes Crestor, Pfizer makes Lipitor). How in the world are we going to get at the heart of drug effectiveness when there's so much money to be made?

Dr. Nicholls reports receiving consulting fees from Roche, Esperion, Merck, Omthera, Sanofi-Aventis, and Boehringer Ingelheim, serving as an unpaid consultant for Abbott, Pfizer, LipoScience, Novo Nordisk, AtheroNova, and CSL Behring, receiving grant support from Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Anthera, LipoScience, Roche, and Resverlogix and lecture fees from AstraZeneca and Roche;
Dr. Ballantyne, receiving grant support from Abbott, Astra-Zeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Kowa, Merck, Novartis, Roche, Sanofi-Synthelabo, and Takeda, consulting fees and honoraria from Abbott, Adnexus, Amarin, Amylin, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Esperion, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Idera, Kowa, Merck, Novartis, Omthera, Resverlogix, Roche, Sanofi-Synthelabo, and Takeda and lecture fees from Abbott, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, and Merck;
Dr. Barter, holding an advisory board position for AstraZeneca, Merck, Roche, CSL Behring, and Pfizer, receiving grant support from Merck, consulting fees from CSL Behring, and lecture fees from AstraZeneca, Kowa, Merck, Pfizer, and Roche;
Dr. Chapman, receiving grant support from Merck and Kowa, consulting fees from Merck and Pfizer, and lectures fees from Merck and Kowa;
Dr. Erbel, receiving grant support from the Heinz Nixdorf Foundation and the German Research Foundation and support for travel, accommodations, or meeting expenses from Biotronik, Sanofi, and Novartis;
Dr. Libby, serving as an unpaid consultant for Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Amgen, and Roche, serving in unpaid leadership roles for clinical trials sponsored by AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Pfizer, Pronova, and Sigma Tau, and having previously received royalties from Roche for the patent on CD40L in cardiovascular risk stratification;
Dr. Raichlen, being an employee of and owning stock in AstraZeneca;
Dr. Nissen, receiving consulting fees from Eli Lilly, grant funding from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Novartis, Karo Bio, Novo Nordisk, Takeda, Resverlogix, and Omthera, and support for travel, accommodations, or meeting expenses from Novo Nordisk, Takeda, Karo Bio, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Novartis, and Amgen.

If my physician wanted to put me on a statin to reduce the chance of a heart attack, I may agree (assuming diet, exercise, adequate sleep, stress management, smoking cessation, etc. all failed to reduce my risk, however that risk was measured), but I would request a copy of my lab values and compare them to my values prior to taking the drug. Not saying statins are solely responsible for lab changes, but at least I'd be informed. Damaged kidneys, liver, and muscles may very well be an acceptable cost for lessening heart attack risk, as these authors said, "Both agents had acceptable side-effect profiles."________

Just The Germ, Please

2011-11-25T16:37:00.006-05:00

Here's some dried dent corn I put out to feed the birds, or the squirrels if the birds aren't fast enough.

When I looked closely I saw the fatty germ of the kernel was nibbled away and the starchy endosperm abandoned. I think the cardinals do this, and the squirrels. Not the blue jays; they'll stuff 5 or 6 whole kernels in their mouth and fly away with chipmunk cheeks! The smaller finches and wrens and black-capped chickadees and tufted titmice wait until the kernels are crushed and peck at the crumbs. I think.

Humans use diagrams; birds deduce on the fly.

________

Thank You

2011-11-24T05:23:00.004-05:00

To all the people who read and comment and email, it has been a pleasure. You give so much - your thoughts, your feelings, your time. I appreciate it all. Every speck. Thank you.
________Photo looking down the pipeline clearing one morning.

The Jungle, Part 3: Food Was Not As It Seemed

2011-11-24T05:15:00.000-05:00

Another excerpt from Sinclair's 1906 exposé The Jungle.

"Their children were not as well as they had been at home; but how could they know that there was no sewer to their house, and that the drainage of fifteen years was in a cesspool under it? How could they know that the pale-blue milk that they bought around the corner was watered, and doctored with formaldehyde besides? When the children were not well at home, Teta Elzbieta would gather herbs and cure them; now she was obliged to go to the drugstore and buy extracts--and how was she to know that they were all adulterated? How could they find out that their tea and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with aniline dyes? And even if they had known it, what good would it have done them, since there was no place within miles of them where any other sort was to be had?"

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) came into existance shortly after The Jungle was published. From the FDA's website:

"Although it was not known by its present name until 1930, FDA’s modern regulatory functions began with the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, a law a quarter-century in the making that prohibited interstate commerce in adulterated and misbranded food and drugs. Harvey Washington Wiley, Chief Chemist of the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture, had been the driving force behind this law and headed its enforcement in the early years, providing basic elements of protection that consumers had never known before that time."

I see China experiencing the same problems with food adulteration and industrial pollution today as the US experienced at the beginning of the 20th century. I suppose expedited economic growth has its downside.

The Jungle, Part 1: Breakfast And Dinner
The Jungle, Part 2: Honeycombed With Rottenness
The Jungle, Part 3: Food Was Not As It Seemed
The Jungle, Part 4: Sausage And Lard
________

The Jungle, Part 2: Honeycombed With Rottenness

2011-11-22T06:58:00.009-05:00

Here's another excerpt from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

Jurgis' new friend (Jurgis is the main character, a strong, earnest young man new to the US from Lithuania) describes the goings-on at Durham's, one of Chicago's main meatpacking plants. (To hear Sinclair describe these businesses, they are veritable countries-within-a-country):

"After Jurgis had been there awhile he would know that the plants were simply honeycombed with rottenness of that sort--the bosses grafted off the men, and they grafted off each other; and some day the superintendent would find out about the boss, and then he would graft off the boss.

Here was Durham's, for instance, owned by a man who was trying to make as much money out of it as he could, and did not care in the least how he did it; and underneath him, ranged in ranks and grades like an army, were managers and superintendents and foremen, each one driving the man next below him and trying to squeeze out of him as much work as possible. And all the men of the same rank were pitted against each other; the accounts of each were kept separately, and every man lived in terror of losing his job, if another made a better record than he.

So from top to bottom the place was simply a seething caldron of jealousies and hatreds; there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar."

The Jungle, Part 1: Breakfast And Dinner
The Jungle, Part 2: Honeycombed With Rottenness
The Jungle, Part 3: Food Was Not As It Seemed
The Jungle, Part 4: Sausage And Lard

________Photo of Chicago's Union Stockyards in 1947, from Wikipedia. These stockyards operated until 1971. From the Civil War until the 1920s, more meat was processed here than in any other place in the world. I probably have remnants of meat from these packhouses in the cells of my body, from my mother's, bless her well-meaning heart, tanned pork chops.

The Jungle, Part 1: Breakfast And Dinner

2011-11-21T05:52:00.013-05:00

Here's a passage from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. The book was written in 1906 and was set in Chicago's meatpacking district. The characters are 12 newly-arrived Lithuanian immigrants.

"... at a quarter past five every morning. She would have ready a great pot full of steaming black coffee, and oatmeal and bread and smoked sausages; and then she would fix them their dinner pails with more thick slices of bread with lard between them--they could not afford butter--and some onions and a piece of cheese."

The dinner pails were packed for those in the group who worked in the stockyards during the day.

I'm only about a fifth of the way through. There's a lot here.

The Jungle, Part 1: Breakfast And Dinner
The Jungle, Part 2: Honeycombed With Rottenness
The Jungle, Part 3: Food Was Not As It Seemed
The Jungle, Part 4: Sausage And Lard
________Photo of the inside of one of Chicago's meatpacking plants from Wikipedia's entry on The Jungle.

Robin Gibb And Cachexia

2011-11-20T06:26:00.012-05:00

Cachexia is a wasting condition. No matter how much you eat, you lose weight. It's often accompanied by loss of appetite, so you don't want to eat, which exacerbates the condition.

When I saw this photo of Robin Gibb a few months ago, I thought, uh-oh. Cachexia is often seen in late-stage cancer patients. At the time, I read that he had been treated for "stomach problems" and was on the mend. This morning I read that Robin Gibb has been diagnosed with liver cancer. He's 61.

Robin Gibb is one of my favorite singers from my youth, one of the brothers who formed the hugely successful group The Bee Gees. I enjoyed their pre-disco, tightly-harmonized sound. Here are two songs by Robin that have been real earworms for me over the years:

I Started A Joke:

Massachusetts: (The song was written in 1967, at a time when "young people believed in having a political voice." Robin said of this song, "it is not literally talking about people going back to Massachusetts but represents all the people who want to go back to somewhere or something." )

________

Can Cause Come After Effect?

2011-11-19T06:47:00.004-05:00

It's looking like cause can come after effect. I can't even comprehend what that means.

Update, November 19, 2011: Remember this post below where a bunch of neutrinos were sent from Switzerland, through 454 miles of rock, to a lab in Italy? And it took them 0.0024 seconds, which was 60 billionths of a second faster than light would have taken (assuming light was traveling not through rock but through a vacuum)? Well, scientists conducted the experiment 20 more times and found the same thing:

Neutrino Experiment Repeat At Cern Finds Same Result, BBC

_______
Originally posted September 22, 2011:

(The photo to the right shows tracks of a subatomic particle called a neutrino, which have just been found to be traveling faster than the speed of light.)

I'm not going to pretend that I understand, or even know very much about, Einstein's theory of relativity. But I was exposed to E=mc² in University. In this equation, energy (E) is related to mass (m). That is, they are different forms of the same thing, and are related by c, the speed of light ... which is a constant. Or at least it was thought to be.

Faster Than Light Particles Found, Claim Scientists
Particle physicists detect neutrinos travelling faster than light, a feat forbidden by Einstein's theory of special relativity, The Guardian, September 22, 2011

Subir Sarkar, head of particle theory at Oxford University, said:

"If this is proved to be true it would be a massive, massive event. It is something nobody was expecting.

The constancy of the speed of light essentially underpins our understanding of space and time and causality, which is the fact that cause comes before effect.

Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered."

________

Europe Bans X-Ray Scanners Used at US Airports

2011-11-18T06:20:00.003-05:00

Interesting. ProPublica says that Europe just banned x-ray scanners used in airports because of health and safety concerns:

Europe Bans X-Ray Body Scanners Used At US Airports

But the US is continuing to use them "to detect dangerous or illegal items."

Here's the European Commission's Press Release from November 14:

Aviation Security: Commission Adopts New Rules On The Use Of Security Scanners At European Airports

"In order not to risk jeopardising citizens' health and safety, only security scanners which do not use X-ray technology are added to the list of authorised methods for passenger screening at EU airports."

Are Americans less vulnerable to ionizing radiation?
________

Beer May Reduce Heart Disease Risk?

2011-11-17T13:56:00.009-05:00

If I can get excited about a 20% reduction in risk of colon cancer (from eating fiber), it's only fair that I get excited about a 42% reduction in risk of heart disease (from drinking beer). Yes, Ronald, Happy Thanksgiving:

Wine, Beer Or Spirit Drinking In Relation To Fatal And Non-Fatal Cardiovascular Events: A Meta-Analysis, European Journal of Epidemiology, November 2011

Here's the abstract:

"In previous studies evaluating whether different alcoholic beverages would protect against cardiovascular disease, a J-shaped relationship for increasing wine consumption and vascular risk was found; however a similar association for beer or spirits could not be established. An updated meta-analysis on the relationship between wine, beer or spirit consumption and vascular events was performed. Articles were retrieved through March 2011 by PubMed and EMBASE search and a weighed least-squares regression analysis pooled data derived from studies that gave quantitative estimation of the vascular risk associated with the alcoholic beverages. From 16 studies, evidence confirms a J-shaped relationship between wine intake and vascular risk. A significant maximal protection—average 31% (95% confidence interval (CI): 19–42%) was observed at 21 g/day of alcohol. Similarly, from 13 studies a J-shaped relationship was apparent for beer (maximal protection: 42% (95% CI: 19–58%) at 43 g/day of alcohol). From 12 studies reporting separate data on wine or beer consumption, two closely overlapping dose–response curves were obtained (maximal protection of 33% at 25 g/day of alcohol). This meta-analysis confirms the J-shaped association between wine consumption and vascular risk and provides, for the first time, evidence for a similar relationship between beer and vascular risk. In the meta-analysis of 10 studies on spirit consumption and vascular risk, no J-shaped relationship could be found."

A J-shaped curve means there was benefit for a limited intake of beer (43 grams of pure alcohol, the amount in about 3, 12-ounce beers) or wine (21 grams alcohol, about 7.5 ounces of wine). Amounts above this led to increased risk, so more was not better. In fact it was worse than drinking no beer or wine at all.

The maximum protection for wine was 31%.
The maximum protection for beer was 42%.
No association was seen for spirits.
________

Fiber From Whole Grains May Protect Against Colorectal Cancer

2011-11-17T07:01:00.000-05:00

A new large analysis (~2 million people) investigating the link between dietary fiber and colon cancer:

Dietary Fibre, Whole Grains, And Risk Of Colorectal Cancer: Systematic Review And Dose-Response Meta-Analysis Of Prospective Studies, British Medical Journal, November 2011

Found that:

"A high intake of dietary fibre, in particular cereal fibre and whole grains, was associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer."

Interesting ... Fruits, vegetables, and beans were not as protective as whole grains:

"Our meta-analysis supports an inverse association between intake of dietary fibre, cereal fibre, and whole grains and risk of colorectal cancer, but we found no significant evidence for an association with intake of fibre from fruit, vegetables, or legumes."

How much:

"Our results indicate a 10% reduction in risk of colorectal cancer for each 10 g/day intake of total dietary fibre and cereal fibre and a about a 20% reduction for each three servings (90 g/day) of whole grain daily, and further reductions with higher intake."

What kind:

"Total whole grains included whole grain rye breads, whole grain breads, oatmeal, whole grain cereals, high fibre cereals, brown rice, and porridge."

Dagfinn Aune, lead study author:

"The more of this fibre you eat the better it is. Even moderate amounts have some effect."
- Fibre And Whole Grains 'Reduce Bowel Cancer Risk,' BBC, November 10, 2011

That same BBC article said:

"The lifetime risk of being diagnosed with colorectal cancer in the UK is estimated to be one in 14 (6.9%) for men, and one in 19 for women (5.4%)."

Wow, those are some risks.

Update, November 17:

I'm adding a graph from the study and an excerpt from their "Mechanisms" paragraph. The graph shows a statistically significant and linear inverse association ... as fiber intake went up, cancer risk went down.

Mechanism:

Dietary fiber:

"... may decrease the risk of colorectal cancer by increasing stool bulk, diluting faecal carcinogens, and decreasing transit time, thus reducing the contact between carcinogens and the lining of the colorectum. In addition, bacterial fermentation of fibre results in the production of short chain fatty acids, which may have protective effects against colorectal cancer."

These mechanisms aren't new to this blog, e.g. transit time and dilution. The interaction of fiber with colonic bacteria is notable. I saw this benefit with resistant starch too. (See Resistant Starch May Reduce Risk Of Colon Cancer.) Resistant starch isn't fiber per se; it's a vegetable starch that fails to get digested and ends up in the colon where bacteria feed upon it. I've written about it here.
________

Americans Ate Less Meat, Less Fat, And More Grains 100 Years Ago

2011-11-16T08:08:00.000-05:00

This is a repost from 2008:

The USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) recently updated their three data sets on food availability in the US:
Food Availability (Per Capita) Data System

Food availability doesn't equate directly to food consumption; spoilage and waste aren't accounted for. One of the data sets, Loss-Adjusted Food Availability, "adjusts aggregate food availability data for nonedible food parts and food lost through spoilage, plate waste, and other losses in the home and marketing system." It accounts for some loss but only goes back to 1970, that I can tell.

I can't determine how or if they accounted for food produced by a consumer instead of by a marketing entity. That is, if you're eating eggs from your hens or carrots from your garden, are they accounted for in these data sets?

Still, as a proxy for consumption, they're revealing.

So, did we eat more meat 100 years ago than we do today? (Click graphs for larger.)

Grain:

Fats and oils:

This one shows just oat products. What's that blip between 1988 to about 1995?

A couple beverage graphs ... First, coffee/tea/cocoa. Imagine if Starbucks was around in the 40s? (When I was growing up, everyone drank hot coffee with breakfast. I see a lot more carbonated beverages these days.)

Is America more a wine- or beer-drinking country?

Using data in their Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Set, I generated this graph for calorie consumption. We're eating (or what is available for us to eat) 519 more calories a day (24% more) than we did in 1970.

You can easily generate these charts on their site. The raw data is accessible in Excel worksheets too. It's what I used for the calorie graph. I could play with this all day.
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Photo above is of a kitchen classroom in a housekeeping flat, New York, circa 1910, from Shorpy: The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog. Here's another: "December 1936. Farmer's wife churning butter. Emmet County, Iowa." (Click for larger.)

Light Therapy Edges Out Prozac In Head-To-Head Comparison

2011-11-15T07:22:00.005-05:00

In a head-to-head comparison between the antidepressant Prozac (fluoxetine) and light therapy, the light therapy came out on top. Both therapies were equally effective at alleviating depression, but the light therapy kicked in sooner and had fewer side effects (agitation, sleep disturbance, palpitations):

The Can-Sad Study: A Randomized Controlled Trial Of The Effectiveness Of Light Therapy And Fluoxetine In Patients With Winter Seasonal Affective Disorder, The American Journal of Psychiatry, 2006

The light treatment group received 10,000-lux light and a placebo capsule. The drug group received 100-lux light (placebo light) and fluoxetine, 20 mg/day. Light treatment was applied for 30 minutes/day in the morning with a fluorescent white-light box.
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It's Genetic, There's Nothing I Can Do

2011-11-14T15:33:00.003-05:00

I like this example Ramachandran gave about the nature-nurture question, from his book, The Tell-Tale Brain. I'm applying it to the occurrence of chronic diseases, however valid that may be. Are they determined mainly by one's genes (nature) or by one's environment (nurture)? Ramachandran says, "If the relationships are complex and non-linear, the question should be not, Which contributes more? but rather, How do they interact to create the final product?"

"The late biologist Peter Medawar provides a compelling analogy to illustrate the fallacy. An inherited disorder called phenylketonuria (PKU) is cause by a rarely occurring abnormal gene that results in a failure to metabolize the amino acid phenylalanine in the body. As the amino acid starts accumulating in the child's brain, he becomes profoundly retarded. The cure is simple. If you diagnose it early enough, all you do is withhold phenylalanine-containing foods from the diet and the child grows up with an entirely normal IQ.

Now imagine two boundary conditions.

Assume there is a planet where the gene is uncommon and phenylalanine is everywhere, like oxygen or water, and is indispensable for life. One this planet, retardation caused by PKU, and therefore variance in IQ in the population, would be entirely attributable to the PKU gene. Here you would be justified in saying that retardation was a genetic disorder or that IQ was inherited.

Now consider another planet in which the converse is true: Everyone has the PKU gene but phenylalanine is rare. On this planet you would say that PKU is an environmental disorder caused by a poison called phenylalanine, and most of the variance in IQ is caused by the environment.

This example shows that when the interaction between two variables is labyrinthine it is meaningless to ascribe percentage values to the contribution made by either. And if this is true for just one gene interacting with one environmental variable, the argument must hold with even greater force for something as complex and multifactorial as human intelligence [which was Ramachandran's topic when he summoned this example], since genes interact not only with the environment but with each other.

I understand this as ... A disorder may be rooted in genes, but whether or how it manifests depends on the environment and on the presence and activity of other genes. If a man's father had heart disease and suffered a heart attack in his late 50s, is that necesssarily the son's fate? If a woman's mother was overweight, sedentary, and enjoyed the Standard Post-War American Diet, and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in her early 60s, is that necessarily the daughter's fate?

Related post: Genetic Nihilism
________Photo of identical twins who were raised apart from Boston University's Bostonia.

Hummingbirds Shake Their Heads To Deal With Rain

2011-11-12T09:57:00.002-05:00

Hummingbirds Shake Their Heads To Deal With Rain, BBC, November 8, 2011

"Slow-motion footage has revealed how a hovering hummingbird is able to cope with wet weather.

The cameras show that the delicate bird shakes its head with such acceleration that it can reach a g-force of 34 (Formula 1 racing cars typically reach less than 6 g).

This mid-air manoeuvre takes just 0.1 seconds and removes almost all of the water droplets from its feathers."

Robert Dudley, one of the authors of the study, said:

"It is the extreme mobility - its head is going through 180 degrees in a 10th of a second or less - it is just extraordinary."

This Wired article explains that they are shaking their heads 132 times per second while they are flapping their wings 92 times per second. And they are doing this in mid-air "in precisely counterbalanced synchronization."

High-Speed Video Shows How Hummingbirds Stay Dry, Wired, November 9, 2011

All this flapping and shaking requires calories. This particular hummingbird eats about five calories a day, "which translates, from the dietary perspective of a 160-pound human, to more than 18,000 calories."

Birds are something else.
________

Boy With Flute

2011-11-12T06:52:00.004-05:00

Photo by Vladimir Zotov:

________

Test Children's Cholesterol?

2011-11-12T05:47:00.004-05:00

Experts Urge Cholesterol Tests For 9- To 11-Year-Olds, Boston Globe, November 12, 2011

No benefit studies exist? Then why would we test?

"The guidelines aren’t well thought out and represent an irrational exuberance for testing," said Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. He pointed out that no studies have been performed to show that universal cholesterol screening improves health outcomes in children."

Statins aren't innocuous. They are potent drugs with side effects:

"But some doctors say they worry that a greater number of children will be put on cholesterol-lowering statins at younger ages - and possibly kept on them for years or decades without knowing what benefits or long-term risks they would incur from the drugs. Some people experience muscle pain and liver problems from taking statins. In rare cases, life-threatening muscle damage can occur."

Why not skip the test and encourage lifestyle changes anyway?
________

A Lot Of Deer This Year

2011-11-09T18:21:00.010-05:00

A herd trotting past the deck a few days ago. I was standing at the door. One stopped when she heard the camera.

They come close to the deck. I'm fortunate they haven't availed themselves of my in-a-pot garden. Not too much:

A few does decimating a bush:

Here they are leaving; the matriarch giving me a dirty look. This herd was 8-deer strong. They pass several times a day.

This is why I can't have a garden. The only thing they won't eat is a ground cover called pachysandra. Everything else is on the plate. Trees, bushes, even chicks as I now know. They have an affinity for poison ivy. I watch them pick it out between the lillies. Then they eat the lillies.

We don't live in the woods. The neighbor's house is 30 feet away. But we live on a clearing for a gas pipeline and the deer use it as a trail. I once counted 17 deer in the side yard. You couldn't see the grass for all the brown fur. Mowing is an exercise in aerosolizing deer poop.

The deer around here aren't cute, they're scary. This video is a good example of what happens if you get too close, which I did a few times:

Beware The Rut

A couple days ago, before the sun came up, I heard weird gruffy-howls outside the bedroom window. Our motion-detector lights flicked on and I saw 5 large horned males stalking each other, charging each other, wailing, snorting, steaming. One buck's rack was so heavy I didn't know how he held it up. He stood in the center, slowly swinging his horny head from side to side. No way was I going to take the trash out that day!
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100 Centenarians Surveyed

2011-11-08T13:37:00.009-05:00

For the past 6 years, UnitedHealthcare has conducted a survey of 100 centenarians. Here are the results of this year's survey:
100@100 Survey

It's just anecdotal. And since the survey was conducted over the phone, only "healthy and articulate Americans in this age range" could participate. About half had a high school degree or less and 88% were white.

Here are a few responses. There are more on the link.

I'd love to know what they thought a healthy diet was:

Immortality occurs in one's 20s:

I wonder if this was an open-ended question or if they named names. That 0% answer leads me to think they named names:

What is the one innovation you will you tell UnitedHealthcare when you reach 100 and they interview you? (I have to say the internet.)

________

1895 Eighth-Grade Final Exam From Salina, Kansas

2011-11-07T10:15:00.002-05:00

Examination Graduation Questions of Saline County, Kansas. April 13, 1895

GRAMMAR (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza, and Paragraph.
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of do, lie, lay, and run.
5. Define Case. Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

ARITHMETIC (Time, one hour)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 feet deep, 10 feet long, and 3 feet wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 pounds, what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu., deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at 20 cents per sq. foot?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. HISTORY (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.

ORTHOGRAPHY (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Ball, mercy, sir, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences:
cite, site, sight
fane, fain, feign
vane, vain, vein
raze, raise, rays
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

GEOGRAPHY (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall, and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.

PHYSIOLOGY (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Where are the saliva, gastric juice, and bile secreted? What is the use of each in digestion?
2. How does nutrition reach the circulation?
3. What is the function of the liver? Of the kidneys?
4. How would you stop the flow of blood from an artery in the case of laceration?
5. Give some general directions that you think would be beneficial to preserve the human body in a state of health.

Here are some answers. I don't see the Physiology section listed. Just as well. Besides "eat," number 5 is still being debated, diet-wise.
________
An aside ... This site lists "Rules For Teachers" in 1872:

1. Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys.
2. Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day's session.
3. Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
5. After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.
6. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
7. Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
9. The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

Wow.
________

Paleofantasies

2011-11-06T06:02:00.005-05:00

A few interesting posts about the Paleo Diet from Elizabeth Nolan Brown:

Why Would Anyone Follow The ‘Paleo Diet’?

Yes, There’s Lots of Good In the Paleo Diet; I Still Think It’s Bunk

I don't know this author, but she makes a lot of sense.

I liked this bit from an author she referenced:

"We have what the anthropologist Leslie Aiello called “paleofantasies.” She was referring to stories about human evolution based on limited fossil evidence, but the term applies just as well to nostalgia for the very old days as a touchstone for the way life is supposed to be and why it sometimes feels so out of balance.

The notion that there was a time of perfect adaptation, from which we’ve now deviated, is a caricature of the way evolution works.

How much of the diet during our idyllic hunter-gatherer past was meat, and what kind of plants and animals were used, varied widely in time and space. Inuits had different diets from Australian aboriginals or Neotropical forest dwellers. ... The argument that we are “meant” to eat a certain proportion of meat, say, is highly questionable. Which of our human ancestors are we using as models?

Evolution lurches along. ... There is no one point when one can say, “Voilà! Finished."

- Marlene Zuk, Evolutionary Biologist, University of California, in The Evolutionary Search For Our Perfect Past, New York Times, 2009

Update, November 7: Yet another scientist, Barbara King, a biological anthropologist at the College of William and Mary, citing the concept of paleo-fantasy:

The Paleo-Diet: Not The Way To A Healthy Future, NPR, October 27, 2011

"In short, there was no single hunter-gatherer foraging strategy, and genes no more "designed" our eating behavior than they designed our language or our ways of relating between the genders."

________

2009 Swine Flu Responsible For Over 10,000 American Deaths

2011-11-05T07:09:00.006-04:00

I was reading Dr. Greger's latest post about the meat industry suing the state of California because California passed a law "meant to keep “downed” animals — those too sick and disabled to walk to slaughter — out of the American food supply."

Anyway, this item stood out:

"Even if one doesn’t eat meat, more than half of downer pigs tested in the Midwest were found to be actively infected with swine flu, both the classic swine flu virus and the triple hybrid mutant that led to the 2009 human pandemic that killed more than ten thousand Americans."

Where have I been? The 2009 swine flu killed 10,000 Americans?

Recalling the 2009 swine flu:

April, 2009 - An outbreak of influenza occurred in Mexico and the US.
June 11, 2009 - WHO declared an H1N1 pandemic.
October 25, 2009 - President Obama officially declared H1N1 a national emergency.

This CDC graph seems to confirm it:

Maybe it would be a good idea to minimize flu outbreaks in factory-farmed livestock herds, since factory farming isn't going away anytime soon.
________

Chuck

2011-11-03T10:34:00.006-04:00

Speaking of pets, this is Chuck, the cardinal:

Let me blow up the important part:

I feel a little bad showing Chuck without his crest. He's bald in this photo, molting I suppose. He was much less demonstative without his head feathers but no less endearing to me.

I starting feeding him last Spring. We went through two litters together. His mate nestled their eggs while he searched for food. (She built her first nest in a white azalea bush right outside our window, weaving big white azalea blooms throughout. What a sight!) I called him Charlie. When he twerped, my husband would say, "Chuck's here." I was at Chuck's beck and call.

A hurricane passed through in August. The day after there wasn't a twerp or peep to be had. Where do birds go during storms? I feared for Chuck. Then in the windy, rainy birdless silence ... "twerp! twerp!" Chuck made it through the storm! I was deep-down joyful. I gave Chuck some organic walnuts (I usually gave him really old millet). I bet he thought he died and went to heaven.

Sticker Shock At The Vet

2011-11-03T08:22:00.004-04:00

It looks like the cost for keeping a pet is following the same trend as the cost for keeping a person. This article:

The Dog Maxed Out My Credit Card, Wall Street Journal, November 2, 2011

Says spending on routine doctor visits has ballooned in the last decade:

Dogs: Up 47%
Cats: Up 73%
People: Up 76.7%

"The average household in the U.S. spent $655 on routine doctor and surgical visits for dogs last year."

That doesn't include costs for grooming, food, drugs, insurance, and other items like training, beds, houses, clothing, toys, and exercise equipment.

"When asked how much they'd spend to save their pet's life, 70% of owners said "any amount," according to a 2006 survey of 5,200 [Veterinary Pet Insurance Co.] policyholders."

"Any amount." That brings me to the question of pet diet. If we discover that, say, there's a lot of arsenic in chicken, should we be rationing the amount of chicken we feed to pets? Maybe opt for the lower-arsenic organic bird?

From what I've seen, pet food in this country is of such poor quality and questionable safety, the garbage restaurants throw out at the end of the day probably has more nutrition, if not better taste. Although I can't speak for pets.

It's an extremely profitable business, pet food. Can you imagine paying pennies for the floor sweepings of factory-farmed poultry houses, mixing it with a few vitamins, sashaying through regulation loopholes, and charging premium prices? Perhaps we should Occupy pet food manufacturers.
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Maple Syrup: Grade B Becomes Grade A

2011-11-02T09:26:00.010-04:00

Today, "Grade A" maple syrup is light in color and slight of flavor; "Grade B" is darker and more robust. That will change officially by 2013 when all pure maple syrup sold in stores will be labeled "Grade A" and come in 4 color classes: Golden, Amber, Dark, and Very Dark.

Some history of maple syrup, From:
Making the Grade: Why the Cheapest Maple Syrup Tastes Best, The Atlantic, November 1, 2011

Colonial America was hooked on white granulated sugar, and wanted its maple trees to produce it:

"They took the concentrated maple sap and poured it into conical molds, refining it into white sugar-loaves like those produced in Britain from cane syrup.

Maple sugar, a distinctively American product, was touted as the equal of the sugar served in the most elegant Old World salons. The clearest syrups and whitest sugars, which betrayed the least hint of their rustic origins, commanded premium prices."

Post Revolution, Benjamin Rush envisioned an "ignoble purpose" for the sap, but it never took off:

"It affords a most agreeable molasses," he wrote, suggesting that it "might compose the basis of a pleasant summer beer." It was at least as well suited for rum, but Rush piously expressed his hope that "this precious juice will never be prostituted by our citizens to this ignoble purpose."

By the end of the nineteenth century, some were glimpsing the value of the real, raw deal:

The USDA "scorned the idea of refining maple sap into white sugar, noting that maple sugar and syrup were "prized for their peculiar flavor, and are luxuries rather than staple articles of the daily diet."

But Americans still preferred lighter varieties, opening the door to adulteration with corn and glucose syrups. By the early 1900s, one scientist estimated:

"The amount of Vermont Maple Syrup sold every year [was] ten times the actual production."

No matter, by the end of WWII, "pancake syrup" was entrenched:

"Brands backed with corporate heft, like Quaker Oats' Aunt Jemima and Unilever's Mrs. Butterworth, and which included only trace amounts of actual maple syrup [were introduced]."

The turnaround came in the 1980s, when technology and romance married, spawning a lucrative market for the most maple-y of maple syrups. But they were suffering under the weight of a "Grade B" label. The answer? Call them all Grade A:

________Photo of maple syrup taps from Schmidling Productions:

"The sap starts to run as soon as above freezing days occur and stops if it stays above freezing for more than a day. It also stops at night when it freezes but then resumes in the morning if it warms up again.

The sap is simply water containing about 3% sugar that was produced by the leaves in Fall and stored in the roots. In Spring this sugar is required by the new buds for development. When the new leaves start photosynthesizing and producing sugar, the flow stops completely."

There are a lot of gems in this Atlantic article, such as the ethical promotion of a product: "Best of all, it would destroy the market for Caribbean sugar cane, produced by slaves laboring in horrifying conditions," and tie-in to the 1906 birth of the FDA. Thanks, shaun!

Monsanto To Sell Genetically Engineered Corn-On-The-Cob Next Year - Unlabeled

2011-11-01T08:56:00.007-04:00

Monsanto has a new corn. It's a genetically engineered sweet corn that was just planted for the first time this fall. It will be available for consumption next year.

What makes this corn different? It's meant to be eaten fresh from the cob. Monsanto's previous GE corn was only used as livestock feed or in processed foods.

We will now be presented with fresh corn-on-the-cob at grocery stores and farmers markets, in frozen and canned packages, that will be genetically engineered. The corn will not be labeled as such. It will be indistinguishable from non-GMO corn.

Trader Joe’s and General Mills have said they will not use Monsanto's GE sweet corn in their products.

Here's the cover letter that was sent to a number of food companies (e.g. Wal-Mart, Kroger, Safeway, Bird’s Eye, Del Monte) asking them to reject the new GE corn.

They don't even have to reject it. Just label it.
________Photo of Monsanto's GE corn with "YieldGuard Plus technology" from their site.

McDonald's McRib: Ingredients

2011-10-29T13:59:00.000-04:00

McDonald's is reasserting its McRib sandwich for the Holidays. For a limited time. Just while the dregs of the pork industry are in good supply.

From:
McDonald's USA Ingredients Listing for Popular Menu Items

McRib Bun:
Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, yeast, high fructose corn syrup.
Contains 2% or less of the following: salt, corn meal, wheat gluten, soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oils, dextrose, sugar, malted barley flour, cultured wheat flour, calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate, soy flour, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, datem, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, mono- and diglycerides, ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, monocalcium phosphate, enzymes, guar gum, calcium peroxide), calcium propionate (preservative), soy lecithin.
CONTAINS: WHEAT AND SOY.

McRib Pork Patty:
Pork, water, salt, dextrose, preservatives (citric acid, BHA, TBHQ).

McRib Sauce:
Water, high fructose corn syrup, tomato paste, distilled vinegar, molasses, natural smoke flavor (plant source), food starch-modified, salt, sugar, spices, soybean oil, xanthan gum, onion powder, garlic powder, chili pepper, sodium benzoate (preservative), caramel color, beet powder.

Nutrition Breakdown:
Calories: 500
   Calories from fat: 240 (almost half)
Protein: 22g
Fat: 26g
   Saturated Fat: 10g
   Cholesterol: 70g
Carbohydrates: 44g
Sodium: 980mg

A little more about the "McRib Pork Patty" from the Chicago Tribune:

"Restructured meat products are commonly manufactured by using lower-valued meat trimmings reduced in size by comminution (flaking, chunking, grinding, chopping or slicing). The comminuted meat mixture is mixed with salt and water to extract salt-soluble proteins. These extracted proteins are critical to produce a “glue” which binds muscle pieces together. These muscle pieces may then be reformed to produce a “meat log” of specific form or shape. The log is then cut into steaks or chops which, when cooked, are similar in appearance and texture to their intact muscle counterparts."
...
"Most people would be extremely unhappy if they were served heart or tongue on a plate," he observed. "But flaked into a restructured product it loses its identity. Such products as tripe, heart, and scalded stomachs are high in protein, completely edible, wholesome, and nutritious, and most are already used in sausage without objection." Pork patties could be shaped into any form and marketed in restaurants or for airlines, solving a secondary problem of irregular portion size of cuts such as pork chops."
...
"In 1981 McDonald's introduced a boneless pork sandwich of chunked and formed meat called the McRib, developed in part through check-off funds [micro-donations from pork producers] from the NPPC [National Pork Producers Council]. It was not as popular as the McNugget, introduced in 1983, would be, even though both products were composed of unmarketable parts of the animal (skin and dark meat in the McNugget). The McNugget, however, benefited from positive consumer associations with chicken, even though it had none of the "healthy" attributes people associated with poultry."

Not only does the McRib start with one of the most sorry animals, the factory-farmed pig, but it uses otherwise unmarketable parts from that animal. Likewise the McNugget, except with a chicken.________

Weight And Blame

2011-10-29T08:39:00.000-04:00

From:
Personal Responsibility And Obesity: A Constructive Approach To A Controversial Issue, Health Affairs, March 2010

"The concept of personal responsibility has been central to social, legal, and political approaches to obesity.

[The concept of personal responsibility] evokes language of blame, weakness, and vice and is a leading basis for inadequate government efforts, given the importance of environmental conditions in
explaining high rates of obesity.

These environmental conditions can override individual physical and psychological regulatory systems that might otherwise stand in the way of weight gain and obesity, hence undermining personal responsibility, narrowing choices, and eroding personal freedoms."

Maybe it's my years of public health training that make me defend this position - that environment plays a larger role in our chronic disease crisis.

If I lived in, say, an Arctic village where there was one store and it sold only fruits and vegetables, that's what I would eat. Maybe a few fish. If it sold double cheeseburgers, sweetened breakfast cereals, oreos, ice cream sandwiches, soda, and chips, that's what I would eat. Maybe a few fish.

By the way, this paper advocates taxing food as a way to reduce obesity. I think reducing the cost of, and increasing the accessibility to fresh foods is a better idea. I don't know how ... maybe tax breaks for farmers who grow market produce or for retailers who stock produce in food deserts.
________Photo of an Arctic village on the eastern shore of Baffin Island, Canada, is from Ultima Thule

Whatever Happened To When College Was Free?

2011-10-27T07:30:00.009-04:00

I'd like to see us abolish tuition for state colleges. I think education is really important for a country, for a people. It's something I'd love to see my taxes support. We could go back to a time when students didn't have to go into debt, or forego college altogether:

Whatever Happened to When College Was Free?, Anya Kamenetz in GOOD, April, 2010

If Finland, Norway, Germany, and Sweden can do it, why can't we?
________From Melinda's Facebook, where she linked this article:
GOP Opposes Obama’s Decision To Lower Student Loan Payments by 5%
which made me long for the days of free tuition.

What People Around The World Eat When They Wake Up

2011-10-25T15:04:00.007-04:00

A look-see how people around the world break their fasts:
50 of the World’s Best Breakfasts

There's so much to say!

First ... humans look to be omnivores.
Eggs are a common breakfast food.
Some type of processed, cured meat shows up a lot.
Hawaiians are going to live, like, forever. (#7)
The Turks don't mind washing dishes. (#50)
When in doubt, fry it.

Germans like their food extruded:

Moroccans have a starch tooth:

Italians like art:

I like these next two. I think it's the spiciness I'm after.
Malaysian:

Indian:

________Thanks to BL.

Grinding The Wheat

2011-10-24T14:32:00.007-04:00

I have been feeling under the weather. What does that mean? Under the weather? If I was feeling this particular weather, the cool fall breezes and fervent colors, wouldn't I be feeling dandy? Yucky is how I feel.

So, here's a photo of the sprouted wheat bread I was making as I was feeling yucky. It has some sprouted barley in it too. Gives it a nice caramelly flavor that roasted malted barley will do. I have just alienated all of Dr. William Davis' followers including the Wheat Belly author himself.

This is two cups of the dreaded whole wheat berry, a quarter cup or so switched out for whole barley (not the pearled kind). It was sprouting for about 48 hours. You can see the little sperm-tails on the wheat if you look close. The work of this Kitchen Aid food grinding attachment makes me wonder if our ancestors waited until this particular device was invented before they bastardized their diet with the likes of wheat. As it grinds it sounds like, I'm so sorry, insect exoskeletons crunching underfoot as you make your way to the latrine in the dark of night.

The final product lacks yeast, flour, oil, eggs, sugar, and sometimes even salt when I forget to add the 1/2 teaspoon at the end. This is the epitome of 100% whole grain goodness, or badness as you would have it. We have it with peanut butter and jelly.
________

A Life Of Crime

2011-10-19T16:07:00.001-04:00

________

The American Dietetic Association's Sell-Out

2011-10-18T15:30:00.005-04:00

This is interesting:

Pesticides Are Good for You, Big Food's Co-optation of Nutrition Professionals, Food Safety News, October 17

Michele Simon, a public health lawyer, reports on her experience at the American Dietetic Association's annual conference.

"The exhibit hall seemed more like a processed food trade show than a nutrition conference."

Education sessions were hosted by, for example, the National Dairy Council and the Corn Refiners Association. Culinary demos were offered by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Hershey, and McNeil (maker of the fake sugar, Splenda). One session she attended, "Snacking and the 2010 Dietary Guidelines," was presented by "the largest snacking expert in the nation, Frito-Lay."

The comments were enlightening.
________

Old Beans

2011-10-17T12:01:00.003-04:00

This is what was going on in my In-A-Pot garden while I was busy reading studies. These beans. If I let just 2 or 3 days go by without attending to them, they get old and seedy.

I had more beans than I knew what to do with this summer, growing out of this old laundry detergent tub. It was the most success I ever had with an edible plant.
________

Is Elevated Cholesterol Beneficial?

2011-10-15T15:59:00.016-04:00

The study:

Is The Use Of Cholesterol In Mortality Risk Algorithms In Clinical Guidelines Valid? Ten Years Prospective Data From The Norwegian HUNT 2 Study Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, September 2011

It found higher mortality in men with low cholesterol (less than ~193 mg/dl) and high cholesterol (greater than ~270 mg/dl) compared to men with levels in between (193 to 270). If you visualize that, it looks like a U-shaped curve.

Here's one graph from the study. The U-shape in the men's curve is evident. (You can convert mmol/L to mg/dl by dividing by 0.0259, so 5 mmol/L divided by 0.0259 = 193 mg/dl.)

You can see from this graph that women with high cholesterol fared even better than men. At about the 250 mg/dl mark, men's death risk was rising, but women's risk was still falling. (I thought this data had wide confidence intervals, those vertical bars. I think of that as a wide margin of error. The data was rather scattered and a good portion of people ended up with an increased risk, not a decreased risk, as their cholesterol rose.)

The authors say that since, in their study, risk of death did not go up as cholesterol went up, using this number is not a good gauge of early death, it overestimates risk. I imagine pharmaceutical companies would be loathe to hear this since it might reduce the number of candidates for cholesterol-lowering statin drugs.

I compared this cholesterol study with the vitamin study in my previous post:

There are some features which I thought reduced the internal validity of this cholesterol study, at least in comparison to the vitamin study:

It based findings on one cholesterol reading taken when the participant was healthy and projected it across 10 years. A lot can happen to that number in 10 years. A lot can happen to it in a few months. What was their cholesterol in the weeks and months leading up to their death?
It didn't collect data about cholesterol-lowering drugs. Some statins act as anti-inflammatories, which could improve the takers' health profile apart from effect on cholesterol. Given the current guidelines, many statin-takers would fall in the lower-risk (beneficial) valley of this U-shaped curve.
It didn't adjust for several potential confounders, as you can see from the table. An important one was diet. How do you know that those with the supposedly beneficial cholesterol (193-270 mg/dl) weren't eating more fruits and vegetables? Weren't eating less fast food? Weren't drinking less alcohol? No data on food intake was collected.

Poor generalizability is an aspect that reduces the external validity of both studies (I mentioned this in the vitamin study). The population in this cholesterol study was fairly cloistered so it's difficult to generalize the findings to other groups:

"The HUNT 2 population is ethnically homogeneous (dominated by individuals of Nordic origin) and has been considered fairly representative of the total Norwegian population with respect to demography, socio-economic factors, morbidity and mortality."

So, these results do not apply to anyone not of Nordic origin who lived in Norway in the early 2000s. You cannot say that a total cholesterol of 170 mg/dl in an Amazonian native is indicative of early death. You cannot say that a cholesterol of 250 mg/dl is beneficial for a middle-aged Hispanic woman living in San Diego.

Along these lines, those of generalizability, you must also consider that Norwegians are relatively wealthy, healthy, and have good health care:

"Norway is an affluent country, and Norwegians are currently one of the longest lived people in the world. The rate of smoking among men is relatively low, by international comparison. The stable social structure could also play a part, including a well-functioning health care system with good access and coverage for all."

The US has relatively poor life-expectancy among developed countries, ranking 38th in the world. And its poverty rate is over 15%, with some regions even higher. The poverty rate here in Philadelphia is over 25%. Millions of Americans are uninsured or underinsured. So, in Norway, good healthcare or good genes could be buffering negative effects of elevated cholesterol. You don't know.

I don't think either of these studies are junk science, as I've seen the vitamin study described. Just my opinion. I think both of them are valid epidemiological studies, and raise the specter that both taking vitamins, and gauging death risk using total cholesterol*, are not good ideas. But I suppose if your criteria for "junk" is weak associations, limited statistical adjustment, and minimal input, then this cholesterol study, compared to the vitamin study, is junkier than junk.

* Certainly, there are other subparticles that may prove more indicative, perhaps HDL or Lp(a). This study assessed total serum cholesterol only.
________

Taking Vitamins May Lead To Earlier Death In Older Women

2011-10-14T05:39:00.004-04:00

The study:

Dietary Supplements and Mortality Rate in Older Women, Archives of Internal Medicine, October 2011

They looked at intake of 15 supplements:

Multivitamins (Absolute Risk Increase, ARI, 2.4%)
Vitamin A
Beta-carotene
Vitamin B6 (ARI 4.1%)
Folic acid (ARI 5.9%)
B complex
Vitamin C
Vitamin D
Vitamin E
Iron (ARI 3.9%)
Calcium (Absolute Risk Reduction 3.8%)
Copper (ARI 18%)
Magnesium (ARI 3.6%)
Selenium
Zinc (ARI 3.0%)

The 8 with numbers after them were associated with either an increased risk of mortality (all but calcium) or a decreased risk (only calcium). The others ... this study found no significant impact.

I think the risk increases are small. What do you think? Just 2.4% for taking a multivitamin? Copper stands out though, doesn't it.

There were 5 dose options on the questionnaire for selected vitamins. The benefit for calcium was lost at its highest dose. Also for calcium, "no clear dose-response relationship was observed." "For vitamins A, C, D, and E, as well as minerals selenium and zinc, no dose-response association was found." This was surprising to me. It looks like taking the vitamin at all, regardless of dose, was risky.

This was an epidemiological study, an analysis of data from participants in the large Iowa Women's Health Study. It's not appropriate to draw advice from this type of study, especially one with such weak associations. It's not a randomized controlled trial where they can specify doses, combinations, and types. You can however formulate or refine hypotheses. And the hypothesis that supplements fail to prevent chronic disease or even do harm is gaining momentum.

I would like to draw advice from it because, as you know, I'm biased. I think popping vitamins willy nilly is not a good idea. They often contain a pharmaceutical dose of an isolated chemical, along with fillers, binders, and other residuals like plastics and heavy metals that the food which contained the nutrient may not. For people who buy organic and local, who support Country of Origin labeling, why not apply this standard to supplements? I read that nearly all the vitamin C in the world, as well as glycerin used as filler, comes from China. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Assuming there really is an increased risk of death from consuming these vitamins, that risk, it must be said, doesn't apply to anyone but older (mean age: 61.1), white (99.2%) women who were postmenopausal (98.6%) who lived in the state of Iowa. I used to think, "Oh, sure it does." But you just can't say that since iron and folic acid supplements are harmful for a postmenopausal woman, they're equally so for a woman of childbearing age. And while multivitamins might not be good for older, white women in Iowa, they might be good for poor, urban teens who exist on cakes, chips, and soda, or for anyone with deficiency. People have different needs and tolerances.

The study's strengths:

It was big (over 38,000 women).
It collected data on supplement use three times over the time-course, not once at baseline which is what I normally see. As they said, "The use of repeated measures enabled evaluation of the consistency of the findings and decreased the risk that the exposure was misclassified."
It adjusted for a lot of possible confounding factors, including:

Age
Energy intake
Education level
Place of residence
Diabetes
High blood pressure
Body mass index
Waist-to-hip ratio
Hormone replacement therapy
Physical activity
Smoking
Dietary factors: saturated fat, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and alcohol (there was a food questionnaire twice during the time-course)

In fact, the assumptions people make about people who take supplements ... that they're usually more educated and take better care of themselves, were applicable in this case. Supplement users in this study had a lower prevalence of diabetes, high blood pressure, and smoking; had a lower BMI and waist-to-hip ratio; had a higher education level; were more active; ate fewer calories; ate more fruits and vegetables, etc. The analysis prior to adjustment for these factors showed taking supplements resulted in a lower risk of death compared to not taking them. Only after adjustment did the increased risk become apparent.

I think vitamins are helpful sometimes. For the well-fed, they can be a dross on the system.

Related: Comparison of this study's design to the Is Elevated Cholesterol Beneficial? study's design. This one is so much better.
________

Genetic Nihilism

2011-10-12T04:52:00.010-04:00

Dean Ornish:¹

"People say, 'Oh, it's all in my genes, what can I do?' That's what I call genetic nihilism."

I've seen this. People throw up their hands and credit their particular ailment to genes. They say it doesn't matter what they do, that genes rule fate.

Ornish also says:

"Genes may be our predisposition, but they are not our fate."

I agree. Of course genes are at the root of illness; they're at the root of life! But how they get expressed depends on what the environment throws them.

Ornish's quotes above accompanied a study he authored in 2008 which found that:²

"... the activity of more than 500 genes in the normal tissue of 30 men with low-risk prostate cancer changed after the patients began exercising regularly and eating diets heavy in fruit, veggies and whole grain (supplemented with soy, fish oil, the mineral selenium and vitamins C and E) and low in red meat and fats. ... [The men also] walked or worked out at least 30 minutes six days a week; did an hour of daily stress-reducing yoga-type stretching, breathing and meditation; and participated in one-hour weekly group support sessions."

Just this morning another study was published adding weight to Ornish's claim:

The Effect of Chromosome 9p21 Variants on Cardiovascular Disease May Be Modified by Dietary Intake: Evidence from a Case/Control and a Prospective Study, PLoS Medicine, October 2011

"An international team ... sequenced bits of the DNA of 8114 participants in the global multiethnic INTERHEART study. ... In addition, the study participants (Europeans, South Asians, Chinese, Latin Americans, and Arabs) were asked about their dietary habits.
...
The researchers confirmed that certain variants in these 4 SNPs were associated with a substantially increased risk of heart attack. Further analysis revealed that the type of diet study participants consumed was associated with this risk. They found that having a risky genetic variant was strongly associated with heart attack in the group with the lowest “prudent diet” scores—meaning they consumed low amounts of fruits and vegetables; risk of heart attack also was elevated, but to a lesser extent, in those with more moderate consumption of these foods. In contrast, those with risky genetic variants who had the highest “prudent diet” scores (meaning they consumed high amounts of fruits and vegetables) had a protective effect against heart attack.
...
The researchers also analyzed data from the prospective FINRISK study of 19 129 individuals in Finland, and found a similar association between the gene variant and dietary habits."
- Healthy Eating May Help Blunt Effects of Genes That Increase Heart Attack Risk, news@JAMA, October 11, 2011

The study concluded:

"The risk of [heart attack] and [cardiovascular disease] conferred by Chromosome 9p21 SNPs appears to be modified by a prudent diet high in raw vegetables and fruits."

________
¹ Can Lifestyle Changes Bring Out The Best In Genes? New Research Shows Diet And Exercise May Change How Genes Act, Scientific American, June 2008
² Changes In Prostate Gene Expression In Men Undergoing An Intensive Nutrition And Lifestyle Intervention, PNAS, June 2008

Diabetes And Bones

2011-10-10T09:51:00.007-04:00

I recently saw photographs of the actress Halle Berry on crutches. (See right for one.) Warner Bros. said she broke her foot "walking in Majorca on a day off from filming." Another source said she "stumbled over a rock and broke her foot."

It sounds odd to me that someone would break bones by walking, or stumbling over a rock. I know that Halle Berry has diabetes. And I know that people with long-standing diabetes (I believe she was diagnosed in her early 20s and is around 45 today) are at increased risk for fractures - type 1s because the low levels of insulin in early life lessen peak bone mass, type 2s for reasons not quite known ... poor vision, vascular complications, hormone imbalances. I suspect her diabetes contributed to her bone break.

Also, women at 45 are usually going through perimenopause or menopause, a time when estrogen and other hormones wane. These hormones help maintain bone.

An aside ... I thought Ms. Berry had type 1 diabetes until I read an interview where she claimed to have weaned herself from insulin injections by following a specific diet. Since type 1 involves loss of the insulin-producing beta cells, a condition not easily compensated by diet, it made me think she really had type 2, or perhaps MODY (Mature Onset Diabetes of the Young) where some insulin production persists. Although her diabetic coma at an early age does point to type 1.

Type 1's risk for osteoporosis is so high, and given her age, she may have been prescribed bisphosphonates. As I've written, these drugs can in fact increase risk for fractures.
________

No Starchy Vegetables For You!

2011-10-09T07:54:00.005-04:00

We shouldn't be feeding our children potatoes, corn, lima beans, and green peas? Boy, times have changed.

Letter from the Editor: School Lunches, Food Safety News, Oct 9

________

OccupyWallStreet

2011-10-07T08:33:00.010-04:00

If each generation has its call to arms, I like that this one chose to protest inequality. I didn't think this at first. I criticized their lack of specific issues. And I lamented that while they were bemoaning big business, voters were seating big business:

Republican Wins Democratic New York House Seat, Washington Post, Sept 14

"Turner, who ran as a staunch conservative embracing the tea party, will be the first House Republican representing this portion of Queens since the 1920s — a striking departure from its Democratic traditions. This is the district that sent the late Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic Party’s 1984 vice presidential nominee, to Congress, as well as Sen. Charles E. Schumer, one of the party most consistent liberal voices.
...
This is a special election that is purely reflective of who showed up to the polls."

So it was nice to read Krugman's take on the protests it this morning:

Confronting the Malefactors, Paul Krugman, Oct 6

"What can we say about the protests? First things first: The protesters’ indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.
...
A weary cynicism, a belief that justice will never get served, has taken over much of our political debate — and, yes, I myself have sometimes succumbed. In the process, it has been easy to forget just how outrageous the story of our economic woes really is.
...
If the protests goad some politicians into doing what they should have been doing all along, Occupy Wall Street will have been a smashing success."

Note that he gets right back to how these protests influence government.

And Dennis Kucinich's take:

"To the young men and women who are braving the overreaction of local authorities to raise their voices against the corruption and manipulation of our nation that emanates from Wall Street: I say to you that your presence is making a difference. You are exercising the right every American holds most dear, the right of freedom of expression, and with that expression you are finally getting the attention of the nation.

Wall Street banks got billion dollar bailouts but the American people get austerity. Fourteen million Americans are out of work. 50 million people don’t have health insurance and a million people a year lose their homes to foreclosure. Our policies take the wealth of the nation and accelerate it into the hands of the few."

Let me add this bit by Krugman from a few weeks ago:

"According to new estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, one-fourth of those with incomes of more than $1 million a year pay income and payroll tax of 12.6 percent of their income or less, putting their tax burden below that of many in the middle class."

12.6% ... Someone earning $35,000 here pays close to 30%.

Politicians are in the pocket of big business because big business knows that's how they get what they want. They corral the pro-business vote. I trust the protesters realize this - that government is a reflection of how people vote, or don't.
________

Are Retailers Waiving Food Safety To Buy Locally?

2011-10-06T12:08:00.007-04:00

Are retailers waiving food safety standards so they can buy food locally? Produce industry insider Jim Prevor, the Perishable Pundit, says yes, they very well may be:

THE CANTALOUPE CRISIS
The Truth That Dare Not Speak Its Name:
The Priority Can Be Safe or The Priority Can Be Local, But It Cannot Be Both

"Yet, we would say it is not shocking. We also would say that whatever the specific cause of this outbreak, the more general cause is the local food movement. More specifically, the willingness of large buyers to waive food safety standards so they can buy regionally."

He says, "An awful lot of these cantaloupes wound up in Wal-Mart," which was peculiar given Wal-Mart's adoption of more stringent food safety standards in 2008. If Wal-Mart wanted to buy a safe cantaloupe, they wouldn't be buying a washed cantaloupe:

"What the California cantaloupe industry found was that one should not wash a cantaloupe. That moisture itself is the enemy of safety. California packers, who were proud of their wash systems, shut them off."

But:

"Jensen Farms washed all its cantaloupes," even though, "the science says don't get them wet."

And the outbreak does appear to be caused by a small producer who distributed locally:

Source

So why did Wal-Mart buy cantaloupes from a small, local producer? Were they setting aside food safety standards in favor of a marketing angle?

"What we do know, though, is that the food media and food industry has been complicit in deceiving consumers into thinking they can have it all. The Wal-Mart buyer, or any commercial buyer, can make a priority of safe or he can make a priority of local. It is a deception to think he can make both his top priority."

________

World's First "Fat Tax"

2011-10-04T08:34:00.004-04:00

Denmark just imposed a tax on foods that contain more than 2.3% saturated fat.

BBC:

"Butter, milk, cheese, pizza, meat, oil and processed food are now subject to the tax if they contain more than 2.3% saturated fat."

ABCNews:

“Higher fees on sugar, fat and tobacco is an important step on the way toward a higher average life expectancy in Denmark,” health minister Jakob Axel Nielsen said when he introduced the idea in 2009, according to The Associated Press, because “saturated fats can cause cardiovascular disease and cancer.”

Saturated fats cause cancer? I'd be more inclined to believe other things in food like arsenic cause cancer. Saturated fat ... our body manufactures it.

“We get the taxes, but never a reduction on anything to complement the increases, such as on healthy foods,” said Clausen.

Boy, I agree with that. If you really care about keeping your population fit, subsidize produce. Dan Flynn over at Food Safety News reports, "a Belgian lawmaker said fat taxes would not change consumer eating habits, but "only fill the treasury."

Dan Flynn at Food Safety News:

"Taxes on food are among the most regressive in that they apply to commodities that must be purchased by low-income households."

That's why I'm against taxing food, any food ... soda, butter, sugar, chocolate. Soon we'll be taxing lettuce because of the health impact of consuming a food that's increasingly contaminated with toxic bacteria.
________

Arsenic In Chicken

2011-10-03T10:03:00.014-04:00

I was curious about Dr. Greger's arsenic-in-chicken post. I looked at this study, which claims to be the first report of arsenic in national samples of poultry in the US:

Mean Total Arsenic Concentrations in Chicken 1989-2000 and Estimated Exposures for Consumers of Chicken, Environmental Health Perspectives, 2004

It found:

The mean concentration of total arsenic in young chickens was 0.39 ppm, 3- to 4-fold higher than in other poultry and meat.
At consumption of 60 g chicken/day (about 2 ounces), people may ingest 1.38-5.24 µg/day of inorganic arsenic.
At consumption of 350 g chicken/day (about 12 ounces), people may ingest 21.13-30.59 µg inorganic arsenic/day and 32.50-47.07 µg total arsenic.

Look at those arsenic levels in young chickens floating above the rest. This was a decade ago, maybe things have changed:

I don't understand how bad that is, 0.39 parts per million (or 390 ppb) doesn't sound like much. Here's some background from Lasky's literature review:

Arsenic is a heavy metal. Chronic exposure in the range of 0.01-0.04 mg/kg/day (10-40µg/kg/day) has been associated with:

Increased incidence of lung cancer, bladder cancer, skin cancer, and all cancers in Taiwan.
Respiratory cancers in Montana
Bladder cancer in Finland
Increased mortality from hypertensive heart disease, nephritis and nephrosis, and prostate cancer in Utah
Late fetal mortality, neonatal mortality, and postnatal mortality in Chile
Genetic damage in Mexico

So, if someone weighed 120 pounds (54.4kg), exposure of 544µg per day might cause health problems. But...

In January, 2006, 2 years after Lasky published his study, the EPA officially lowered their maximum contamination level in water from 50µg/L to 10µg/L. It was based on work by the National Research Council which found that chronic low-level exposure to arsenic may be associated with an increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, skin disorders, gastrointestinal diseases, and cancer.¹

The NRC and now EPA say that chronic exposure to more than about 20µg arsenic in a day (assuming 2 liters water @ 10µg/L) is a human health risk?

Back to chicken ... Three pieces of chicken, say a thigh, breast, and drumstick (sans bone, skin, breading) weighs about 188 grams,² supplying, according to Lasky's work, up to 25µg total arsenic. A small bucket of KFC, with 8 pieces (2 each wing/thigh/breast/drumstick) contains about 402g chicken flesh supplying up to 54µg total arsenic ... 5 times the amount you would find in one liter of water containing the EPA's maximum contamination level!

Two final points:

1. The amount of arsenic in chicken may be more, as Silbergeld describes:³

"Lasky et al. (2004) probably underestimate the true risks. First, as the authors carefully noted, they had to estimate the concentrations of arsenic in muscle using the only U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data available, analyses of liver concentrations. It would be interesting to know why the USDA does not analyze arsenic in muscle, the tissue most commonly consumed by humans. In 1981, Westing et al. (1981) reported higher levels of arsenic in edible muscle tissue from cattle given feeds containing poultry litter.
...
Under repeated doses (Hughes et al. 2003, in mice), the ratio of liver to muscle arsenic changed dramatically over time, and at day 17, arsenic in muscle was higher than in liver.
...
Thus, it is likely that the actual concentrations of arsenic in edible portions of broiler poultry are higher than the estimates of Lasky et al. (2004)."

2. The arsenic we get from chicken is in addition to that which we get from other sources, notably water, but also, dust, fumes, poultry litter (sold in organic soil blends, fed to cattle), and other arsenic-containing foods (seafood, rice, mushrooms, pork, eggs, apple juice...)

Why is arsenic in chicken?

"Arsenic is an approved animal dietary supplement and is found in specifically approved drugs added to poultry and other animal feeds."
- Lasky et al., 2004

Arsenic is toxic to organisms that infect chicken's intestines. By controlling these parasites, chickens grow faster and bigger. So, it's used as a growth promoter.

There really does appear to be a lot of arsenic in chicken.
________¹Arsenic In Drinking Water, 2001 Update, NAP
²Weight of chicken pieces sans breading, skin, and bones from NutritionData:
Thigh: 52g
Breast: 86g
Drumstick: 50g
Wing: 13g
³ Arsenic In Food, Silbergeld, Environmental Health Perspectives, 2004

Protein And The Kidneys

2011-10-03T07:14:00.001-04:00

I am genuinely curious if low-carb proponents advise a high-protein diet for renal insufficiency.
________

Finding Produce In Philadelphia

2011-10-02T03:47:00.000-04:00

________

"Shots Rang Out, As Shots Are Wont To Do"

2011-10-01T17:37:00.004-04:00

I can't resist posting this:
Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays

Some...

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. - Russell Beland, Springfield

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. - Sue Lin Chong, Washington

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center. - Russell Beland, Springfield

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. - Unknown

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree. - Jack Bross, Chevy Chase

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can. - Wayne Goode, Madison,AL

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. - Russell Beland, Springfield

The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play. - Barbara Fetherolf, Alexandria

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River. - Brian Broadus, Charlottesville

The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of "Jeopardy!" - Jean Sorensen, Herndon

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. - Jerry Pannullo, Kensington

It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before. - Marian Carlsson, Lexington

________

Flying Reptiles, Coming To A Theater Near You

2011-09-30T14:22:00.005-04:00

David Attenborough's account of reptiles that lived 170 million years ago - reptiles that could fly - is being released this December.

The structure and animation of the pterosaur in this film is promoted as true to fossil record. So I had to watch it 17 times and "omg" 17 times. They didn't have feathers, they had flaps of skin that ran from their wrists to their ankles. Like bats? Attenborough said it made walking difficult. You can see in this clip how they walked on their wings when grounded.

I wish they hadn't called them monsters.

________

Do Not Try To Wash The Cantaloupe

2011-09-29T07:27:00.004-04:00

The listeria outbreak from cantaloupes has caused at least 72 illnesses and up to 16 deaths so far. Those numbers are expected to rise since the time it takes to show symptoms can be a month or longer. Can you imagine trying to recall what you ate a month ago?

I know listeria by its connection with hot dogs and deli meats. Never heard it linked to produce. An unusual feature is that it grows well in the cold temperatures that impede the growth of other organisms.

As usual, Bill Marler has been furiously updating. This pronouncement from his blog this morning deserves attention:

"And, for the argument that the sick and dead should have washed away the listeria, the FDA advises consumers not to eat the recalled cantaloupes and to throw them away. In Fact, the FDA says:
Do not try to wash the harmful bacteria off the cantaloupe as contamination may be both on the inside and outside of the cantaloupe. Cutting, slicing and dicing may also transfer harmful bacteria from the fruit’s surface to the fruit’s flesh."

________Photo of workers in field of rotting cantaloupes on Jensen Farm in Colorado, from the Guardian.

High Protein Diets Increase Risk For Diabetes

2011-09-26T07:50:00.007-04:00

Ulrika Ericson, in an oral presentation at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) this month, reported results from her team's large population-based study (27,140 participants from Sweden).

They found that:

A high-protein intake was associated with an increased risk for type 2 diabetes.
Replacing protein with carbohydrate, notably fiber-rich breads and cereals, was associated with a lower risk for type 2 diabetes.

These findings held true for both men and women. Men benefited especially from a high-carbohydrate diet.

I think, as I've said for some time, that low-carb diets assist weight loss, but given the individual, that diet may come at the expense of long-term health. Above is more evidence of that. I don't discount a person-centered approach, but you still have to base the approach on evidence.

More evidence:

Dietary Intake of Total, Animal, and Vegetable Protein and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-NL Study, Diabetes Care, 2010

"CONCLUSIONS: Diets high in animal protein are associated with an increased diabetes risk. Our findings also suggest a similar association for total protein itself instead of only animal sources. Consumption of energy from protein at the expense of energy from either carbohydrates or fat may similarly increase diabetes risk."

And a post from a few weeks ago based on a new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: High-Protein Diet Worse For Insulin Sensitivity Compared To High-Cereal-Fiber Diet

"Insulin sensitivity was 25% higher after 6 weeks of the high-cereal-fiber diet than after 6 weeks of the high-protein diet."

Not only did the cereal-fiber group eat less protein, but they absorbed less of the protein they did eat owing to interference from increased fiber. This lower protein may have contributed to improved insulin sensitivity.
________

LibreOffice

2011-09-24T15:37:00.005-04:00

I was looking for a good Office suite. I'd been using MS Office 2003 for the longest time and was satisfied. But when I switched computers I never bothered to load it, using Google Docs and Spreadsheet instead. I liked them, and although I liked the ease of keeping my docs on the cloud (I use more than one computer and it made hopping around convenient) I was concerned about security.

Someone suggested I look into OpenOffice. It's free, downloadable, open source. But I read that Oracle, who owned it, started charging for some features. They ceased developing it in April of this year and handed it over to Apache in June. I didn't like the looks of that.

In the mean time, some of the original developers had broken off and started their own suite called LibreOffice. The two appear to be identical, for my humble uses at least. So I downloaded LibreOffice and have been using it for a few days. (It's useful on Ubuntu too. In fact, the crew who started LibreOffice were publicly encouraged by RedHat and Canonical, as well as Google.)

I'm very pleased so far. Has anyone else used it?
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Magnesium May Improve Sleep

2011-09-24T07:25:00.011-04:00

I'm collecting studies that address the effect of magnesium on sleep.

This first article is from the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, of all places:

Do You Have Trouble Sleeping? More Magnesium Might Help
by: Forrest H. Nielsen PhD (Frosty) (I'm linking the author because I think he has a laudable career in the field of nutrition research.)

Excerpts:

"A low intake of the mineral magnesium may be one nutritional factor causing sleep problems."

"Magnesium plays a key role in the body's chemistry that regulates sleep. This may be why persons with long-term lack of sleep, or abnormal brain waves during deep sleep, often have low magnesium in their blood."

"Magnesium treatment increased deep sleep and improved brain waves during sleep in 12 elderly subjects. (See below.) Magnesium treatment decreased time to fall asleep and improved sleep quality of 11 alcoholic patients who often have a low magnesium status. (See below.) Magnesium deficiency increased time awake at the expense of deep sleep in rats. Feeding magnesium to the rats restored their sleep patterns to normal."

"A national food consumption survey found that many Americans, especially older women, consume less than the RDA for magnesium."

"Another risk factor for low magnesium status in older women is the use of calcium supplements without magnesium for bone health. High calcium intakes can make magnesium deficiency worse."

"Foods that have good amounts of magnesium are whole grains, nuts and green leafy vegetables. Green leafy vegetables are a good source of magnesium because the green color is chlorophyll, a chemical that contains magnesium and converts sunlight into food energy."

________
Oral Mg(2+) Supplementation Reverses Age-Related Neuroendocrine And Sleep EEG Changes In Humans, Pharmacopsychiatry, 2002

This was a placebo-controlled, randomized cross-over study with 12 older (aged 60 to 80 years) participants. Magnesium supplementation (30 mmol/730 mg) significantly reversed electroencephalogram (EEG) changes, including decreased slow wave sleep, that occur during aging.

This was interesting:

"The similarities of the effect of Mg(2+) and that of the related electrolyte Li+ furthermore supports the possible efficacy of Mg(2+) as a mood stabilizer."

Magnesium as an anti-depressant?
________
Magnesium Treatment Of Primary Alcohol-Dependent Patients During Subacute Withdrawal: An Open Pilot Study With Polysomnography, Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research, 2004

Here, magnesium treatment (30 mmol/730 mg) of alcohol-dependent patients (alcohol consumption is known to disturb magnesium metabolism) significantly decreased sleep onset latency (the time it takes to fall asleep) and improved subjective sleep quality. Unfortunately, this one didn't have a placebo group.
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Clinical, EEG, Electromyographic And Polysomnographic Studies In Restless Legs Syndrome Caused By Magnesium Deficiency, Romanian Journal Of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1993

This small study (10 cases of restless leg syndrome) found magnesium deficiency linked to:

Agitated sleep with frequent periods of nocturnal awakenings.
Changes in the intensity and duration of sleep stages, favoring light sleep periods over deep sleep periods
Decrease of duration and percentage of REM sleep.

________There does appear to be something to this.
The pumpkin seed photo is from NutsOnline. I used to buy dried tomatoes from them until I posted about them and they ran out. Info: An ounce of pumpkin seeds have 150 mg of magnesium, thanks shaun! The DRI for magnesium is 320 mg for adult women, 420 mg for adult men.
Related post: Magnesium For Hot Flashes?________

Former JAMA Editor Dr. George Lundberg's List Of What Is Wrong In Medicine Today

2011-09-20T06:58:00.000-04:00

Here's a list of some problems with modern medicine by Dr. George Lundberg. There are some real gems here:

22 Things Amiss In Medicine Today (Part 1)
22 Things Amiss In Medicine Today (Part 2)

Dr. Lundberg was previously editor of JAMA for 17 years, for the last 10+ years editor of Medscape. (You may remember Lundberg. He was famously fired from JAMA during the President Clinton/Monica Lewinsky years for allowing a study to be published that reported 60% of college students considered "oral sex" as not "having sex.")

In his own words:
Part 1:

Part 2:

I liked this one, his number 11:

"Absence of a test that will distinguish well from sick. The lack of a test leads to the erroneous assumption of sickness as the rule of thumb for almost all patients."

And then, once sick, a patient becomes a consumer of costly (but highly profitable) drugs, surgery, invasive tests, and other therapies. This test, the one that doesn't exist, is exactly what we need to contain healthcare costs. We shouldn't be lowering the age for Medicare and finding other ways to deny citizens coverage. We should be containing costs. But the medical establishment lobbies powerfully.
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Fatty Foods Contain More Fat-Soluble Industrial Pollutants

2011-09-19T14:59:00.007-04:00

People I mention this to (Dr. Greger: "Eating Chicken May Lead To A Smaller Penis") don’t believe it. He was discussing a study where pollutants (phthalates, found in high levels in chicken) increased the risk that women would bear males with a smaller scrotum and penis.

Why wouldn’t chemicals that act as endocrine disruptors result in poor endocrine (sexual) function? And that 10-fold increase in risk isn’t something to sneeze at. Smoking increases the risk for lung cancer by that much, although I know some still say smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer.

It makes sense to me that fat-soluble industrial chemicals would be found in higher quantities in the fatty tissue of livestock where they bioaccumulate. So, I was concerned about their findings on vegetables. I can see that non-animal products are, if not a non-contaminated food, at least a less-contaminated food.

Here's Dr. Greger discussing a study that found vegans have less industrial pollutants in their blood than omnivores:

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Dr. Greger: "Eating Chicken May Lead To A Smaller Penis"

2011-09-16T07:30:00.004-04:00

Oh, Dr. Greger isn't going to make friends with poultry producers, or people who like KFC:

Eating Chicken May Lead To A Smaller Penis

I thought he was kidding until I read it. He's entirely serious.

"Researchers measured the levels of phthalates flowing through the bodies of pregnant women, and then later measured the size and characteristics of their infant sons’ genitalia between ages 2 months to 3 years. The women who had the most phthalate exposure had up to 10 times the odds of giving birth to sons with one or both testicles incompletely descended, their scrotum categorized as small and/or “not distinct from surrounding tissue,” and a significantly smaller penile volume, a measure of penis size taking into account both length and girth. In other words, the more phthalates pregnant women are exposed to, the “increased likelihood of testicular maldescent, a small and indistinct scrotum, and smaller penis size.” "

As to which foods contain the most phthalates, he cites this study:

Dietary Intake Is Associated With Phthalate Body Burden In A Nationally Representative Sample, Environmental Health Perspectives, 2010

Which says:

"In the current study, creatinine adjusted levels of MEHP (a metabolite of DEHP) were significantly associated with poultry consumption; total meat, poultry, and fish consumption; and discretionary solid fat consumption in multivariate regression models."

I see that vegetables were a significant source for the lower molecular weight phthalates, which they say are more water soluble than heavier weight. I don't know the implication of that.

"The results from this study, combined with results from previous studies, suggest that the food supply is contaminated with phthalates, among other chemicals."

________The photo is one of mine ... from days gone by.

Magnesium For Hot Flashes?

2011-09-15T15:40:00.007-04:00

Letter to the editor in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that documented two cases where oral magnesium was thought to reduce hot flashes:

Magnesium Supplements for Menopausal Hot Flashes, Thomas J. Smith, 2009

1. 68-year-old woman, hot flashes hourly (24 per day) of moderate severity that interfered with sleep and drenched her nightclothes:

"She prepared for a routine colonoscopy with 300 mls of magnesium citrate, and that night had no hot flashes at all. Subsequently, she used over the counter magnesium 250 mg, and then 400 mg, with reduction in her hot flashes to three or four a day of mild severity that did not interrupt her life or sleep or cause drenching sweats. She categorized her hot flashes as very bothersome before magnesium and not bothersome after magnesium. Her sleep and overall well-being improved."

2. 54-year-old woman who went into natural menopause at age 52, 3 or 4 hot flashes each night, less common during the day:

"She watched “Dr. Phil” on TV, and the guest suggested a combination of Vitamin D at 400 U, calcium at 1,200 mg, and magnesium at 600 mg for weight loss (the purported mechanism was to turn fats into soaps that would not be absorbed). She began these supplements, and overnight her hot flashes diminished to half their frequency and severity. She also described her prior hot flashes as very bothersome, and nonexistent after beginning the regimen."

Hard to tell if it was the magnesium in the second case. The first case offers some strong anecdotal evidence. A 300 ml colonoscopy prep delivers about 2 grams of magnesium, almost 6 times the upper intake level. (The DRI for magnesium for these women is 320 mg/day, with an upper limit of 350 mg.) When she pulled back to 400mg she still had considerable relief.

They sure do sell a lot of magnesium citrate at Vitamin Shoppe. Maybe it has more to do with bowel stimulation.

Related post: Magnesium May Improve Sleep
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Dr. Cinque On The Paleolithic Diet, Specifically Protein Intake

2011-09-15T11:43:00.006-04:00

I get a kick out of Dr. Ralph Cinque's blog. I like it! I don't have to agree with someone to enjoy reading them. In the case of Cinque, I agree with a lot.

He recently wrote a six-part series on "Ancestral Health." It's his response to arguments presented at the Paleo conference in Los Angeles last month. (The Paleolithic Diet is based on the presumed diets of hunter/gatherer humans that lived about 100,000 years ago.)

This is an excerpt from his Part 2:

"Our total need for protein isn’t that great. The US government, which is no enemy of the beef and dairy trusts, says that adults need about 60 grams of protein a day, which is about 2 ounces- a little more for men and a little less for women. 60 grams of protein comes to 240 calories, and if a man gets 2400 calories total, that comes to 10% of calories. The government admits that there is a significant “safety factor” (excess) built in to that figure, and other organizations, such as the World Health Organization, cite a much lower requirement."
...
"One researcher who has studied it a lot is Dr. Mark Hegsted of Harvard University, and he concluded from his vast work that, based on all the considerations for protein utilization in the body, that humans need .8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.",

Protein eaten above our needs gets broken down and some of it can be used as fuel. This is what he says about consuming protein above our needs:

"So, we can use protein as a fuel. So, what’s the big deal? The big deal is that 15% of the amino acid is nitrogenous, and nitrogen doesn’t burn. When that amino group (NH2) gets split off, it immediately tends to pick up another hydrogen (since nitrogen has three hands) forming NH3 which is ammonia. You know how caustic and irritating ammonia is. Burns the nose, right? Well, it burns inside of you as well. The body has to get rid of ammonia pronto, so it combines two amino groups with one molecule of carbon dioxide to form a different substance: urea. Urea is essentially non-irritating. It is a waste product, but it doesn’t burn like ammonia. So, it’s easier to handle. The more protein you eat, the more urea you form. And the more urea you form, the greater the burden on your liver and particularly your kidneys.
...
"People who eat high-protein diets tend to have higher levels of blood urea nitrogen (BUN). Ideally, BUN should be in the teens. I have even seen it in the single digits in people who scrimp on protein. But people who eat high-protein diets are usually in the 20s, and sometimes in the 30s, and I don’t consider it a good thing or a harmless thing. Why should turning the blood more urinous be considered OK?"

This is a fair argument. In older people, people with hypertension, diabetes, kidney or liver conditions, excess protein does present a problem. What does a low-protein Paleolithic Diet look like?
________Photo from Yahoo News, who did a piece about the Paleo conference.

Dr. Michael Gregor For NutritionFacts.org

2011-09-14T15:44:00.006-04:00

I just came across Dr. Michael Gregor's blog on a new site, NutritionFacts.org. The About page claims "NutritionFacts.org is brought to you by the [Toronto-based] Jesse & Julie Rasch Foundation in partnership with Michael Greger, M.D."

Dr. Gregor is aligned nutritionally with Drs. Campbell, Barnard, Ornish, and the like, and with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. So his advice is likely based on a low-fat, plant-centric diet with little to no animal products.

As the author of the book, "Carbophobia: The Scary Truth about America's Low-Carb Craze," his blog will probably only appeal to a select group. After reading several of his recent blog posts though, his nutrition advice seems reasonable.
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