What Food Has...

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?¹
________¹ A bunch of spinach.

No Risk

Wildfires are bearing down on a nuclear facility in New Mexico where 30,000 drums of nuclear waste are sitting in the open. From:

Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory Under Siege From Raging Wildfire, The Telegraph, June 29, 2011

"Joni Arends, executive director of the Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety group, said: “The concern is that these drums will get so hot that they’ll burst. That would put this toxic material into the plume. It’s a concern for everybody.”

However,

"Officials have said there is no risk of contaminated material getting into the giant smoke plume rising over the area."

No risk. That's not the same as low risk. If I am sitting in a cabin off the shore of Lake Wallenpaupack tapping away on my laptop, there is no risk that I will fall out of an aircraft. No risk. I'm not going to sit in my cabin wearing a parachute because there is no risk.

But those Los Alamos officials:

"... have stepped up efforts to monitor radiation levels in the air, using 60 monitors. The Environmental Protection Agency also deployed a special plane to test the air at higher levels."

Why, if there is no risk? It tarnishes your credibility. You may need that for later. Tokyo Electric Power Company did.
________

Blood Glucose: From Highs To Lows Almost Overnight

I've been flipping through the American Diabetes Association's abstracts from their 71st Scientific Sessions. This gastric surgery phenomenon is weird. People just stop being diabetic, or at least they have close-to-normal blood markers after surgery, before they really lose much weight. Some people, especially if their glucose levels were not that high prior to surgery, end up with hypo attacks ... instances of abnormally low blood glucose, especially after they eat. I wonder what's going on?

I'll leave you in the potato chip abyss.


________Our Terra brand Yukon Gold Potato Chips. Says on the back in small print, "Servings per container 5." Must be a typo.

Type 2 Diabetes "Reversible"

I don't know what kind of press this study will get. It was small, just 11 people, and it was published in a non-US journal. The research was conducted in the UK (although the findings are being presented at the ADA conference in San Diego this weekend). I hope it gets media attention, because it drives home a useful point, that a life with diabetes after a diagnosis isn't a foregone conclusion:

Reversal Of Type 2 Diabetes: Normalisation Of Beta Cell Function In Association With Decreased Pancreas And Liver Triacylglycerol, Diabetologia, June 9, 2011

Studies have been showing that people with type 2 diabetes who undergo gastric bypass surgeries can - within a matter of days - stop being diabetic. Was it some hormone? Some change in concentration of branched-chain amino acids? Maybe it was just the weight loss, because it is known that weight loss - no matter how it's achieved - can reduce markers of diabetes and can reduce or eliminate need for diabetes meds.

This study supports a weight loss hypothesis, or more specifically, a fat-loss hypothesis. After one week of consuming about 600 calories a day, all 11 participants (7 men, 2 women) essentially reversed their diabetes. (Participants didn't get gastric bypass. They changed only their diet.)

After 1 week, fasting blood glucose decreased from 166 to 106 mg/dl (and stayed there, so most of the benefit was from 1 week of dieting).

After 8 weeks:

• Average weight loss was 34 lbs (229 to 195 lbs).
  
• Average loss around the waist was 5.2 inches (42.3 to 37.1 inches).
  
• HbA1c dropped from 7.4% to 6.0%
  
• Triglycerides in the pancreas dropped from 8% to 6%
  
• Triglycerides in the liver dropped from 13% to 3%.

Conclusion: "The abnormalities underlying type 2 diabetes are reversible by reducing dietary energy intake."

Curiously, insulin sensitivity throughout the body did not improve, just the liver became less insulin resistant.

The authors say their study shows that "excess lipid accumulation in the liver and pancreas" is responsible for type 2 diabetes, that is, for abnormal insulin secretion and insulin resistance.

Participants consumed a 510-calorie liquid diet (Optifast: 46.4% carb, 32.5% protein, 20.1% fat) with an additional 90 calories from non-starchy vegetables. They drank 2 liters of water a day. They weren't any more active than before the study.

Note: This was a proof-of-concept study, not dietary advice. Any very low calorie diet (or low-carb ketogenic diet) really ought to be monitored by a professional. These diets result in higher levels of blood ketones which are acidic and require buffering or else blood pH drops ... a dangerous scenario.
________

Possible Sixth Sense In Humans: Perception Of Magnetic Fields

Our ability to see, smell, taste, touch, and hear are provided in part by dedicated structures or organs that have receptors for specific stimuli. Can we add to that list the ability to detect or "sense" magnetic fields? If so, what group of cells provide the input?

Foley et al.'s work suggests that humans may very well have this ability, and that the same proteins, called cryptchromes, which generate our circadian rhythm (our 24-hour biological clock) may allow us to sense magnetic fields:

Human Cryptochrome Exhibits Light-Dependent Magnetosensitivity, Nature Communications, May 2011

"Humans are not believed to have a magnetic sense, even though many animals use the Earth's magnetic field for orientation and navigation. One model of magnetosensing in animals proposes that geomagnetic fields are perceived by light-sensitive chemical reactions involving the flavoprotein cryptochrome (CRY). Here we show using a transgenic approach that human CRY2, which is heavily expressed in the retina, can function as a magnetosensor in the magnetoreception system of Drosophila and that it does so in a light-dependent manner.

The results show that human CRY2 has the molecular capability to function as a light-sensitive magnetosensor."

But the study doesn't address what our eyes or brains may be doing with this information:

"However, we do not yet know whether this capability is translated into a downstream biological response in the human retina.

Nonetheless, the transgenic findings with hCRY2, together with its anatomical location in the human retina and previous work showing field effects on the visual system, suggest that a reassessment of human magnetosensivitiy may be in order."

Wikipedia says that ESP or extrasensory perception "involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind." I'm skeptical. However, sensing of magnetic fields, if we have the ability at all, would not fall under this heading since it looks to involve a physical sensor.

I saw this study in a story on Science 2.0 this morning:
Protein In The Human Retina Can 'Sense' Magnetic Fields
________Diagrams via Swiss National Science Foundation:

The strength of a magnetic field "is proportional to the electrical current within the wire." The direction of the field depends on the direction of current. A magnetic field generated by a coil of wire has "a strength not only proportional to the current but also the number of loops in the coil."

Sewage Mud Is Rich In Protein, Enter Turd Burgers

This doesn't appear to be a joke. Maybe it is.

"After the protein is extracted, we add reaction enhancer and put it in the exploder."

Note the sign on the refrigerator at 1:33 minutes.
________

"Protein" Does Not Equal "Meat"

The meat industry has ingrained in the American psyche the idea that "protein" = "meat." It's a deception.

All food contains protein. If you are consuming adequate calories from a variety of foods, you are getting enough protein.

Here are some foods along with their protein amounts:

Sweet potato, 1 cup cooked, 4g
Kale/collards/chard/spinach, 8 ounces (about 1 cup), boiled, 8g
Romaine lettuce, 2 cups, raw, 2g
Tomato, 3 inch, raw, 2g
Brown rice, long grain, 1 cup cooked, 5g
Oatmeal, cooked with water, 1 cup, 6g
Popcorn, 2 cups, air-popped, 2g
Red potato, baked, 3.5 inch, 7g
Lentils, 1 cup cooked, 18g
Kidney beans or black beans, 1 cup, boiled, 15g
Peas, frozen, boiled, 1/2 cup, 4g
Almonds, 1 ounce, 6g
Raisins, 1 small box, 1g
Orange, 2.5 inches, 1g

The Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) for protein for a 120-pound adult is 43.5 grams/day (0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight). For a 180-pound adult it's 65 grams/day.

If I ate just the items in bold, I would surpass my protein requirements for the day. And I would not be eating meat or any other food of animal origin. I wouldn't even be eating any soy products.

In the US, there is a greater risk for getting too much protein than for getting too little. Anyone with compromised liver or kidney function (e.g many people with established diabetes or hypertension) are put upon to rid the body of excess nitrogen in the protein's amino acids. And there's that ominous graph showing the more protein you eat, the more calcium you excrete.
________

Harvest Mark: How To Trace Your Food

You can find out a little more about the origins of your fresh food by entering its HarvestMark code into the website, HarvestMark.com, or by using a phone app.

Clicking the image takes you to their site:


________

Japanese Food Guide Isn't A Pyramid Or A Plate, It's A Spinning Top

I saw their top on the US Department of Agriculture's site for Ethnic Food Guides. There are also pyramids or guides from Canada and Singapore, an Asian Pyramid, Native American Pyramid, and of course the Mediterranean Pyramid.

The differences among these food guides are subtle (no one has meat, or "protein" as the USDA calls it, as the core food group) but meaningful. The Singapore Pyramid says "1/2 serving should come from dairy or other high calcium products," presumably each day. In contrast, our new MyPlate has one serving of dairy consumed with every meal, presumably 3 times a day. And, incredibly, the Mediterranean Pyramid puts red meat at the absolute pinnacle of its pyramid! The only way it could depict "eat less of this" is if it didn't appear at all.



A notable feature of this guide from Japan is how little fruit it recommends. If you liken the top's bottom to our pyramid's tip, you'd be eating fruit more as a condiment than as a substantial portion of the day's calories. And look at the quantity of vegetables!

I'll come clean ... I think our new MyPlate is a little fruit-heavy. But it's a minor grievance.
________

Do Bacteria Have Sex?

In my previous post, I wondered if bacteria have gender; do they come in male and female versions? I'm still not sure, but they nonetheless engage in "bacterial conjugation" or what this biologist calls "DNA swapping."

"DNA swapping is my picturesque terminology to describe the fascinating and strange ability of bacteria to behave as if they are a super-organism comprised of different cell types instead of just different species of single-celled organisms. Basically, bacteria do not respect conventional species concepts. By this, I am referring to their habit of sharing small segments of their DNA with neighboring bacteria, regardless of "species". Because bacterial DNA swapping is different to what we see when parents provide copies of their DNA to their offspring (vertical gene transfer), this process has another name: horizontal gene transfer. More than simply hybridising a horse with a donkey to create a sterile mule, bacterial "species" that are as different from each other as a human and a parrot can share select segments of their DNA and still be capable of reproducing.



Bacterial conjugation is where one bacterium -- the donor -- transfers DNA to another bacterium -- the recipient -- using a "sex pilus" (the word "pilus" is misspelled in the above diagramme). But conjugation is not identical to sexual reproduction because, instead of sharing half its genome with its offspring, donor bacteria only transfer a small segment of DNA to recipient bacteria -- which are not its offspring. This small segment of bacterial DNA is not contained within the bacterial genome at all. Instead, it is a small ring of extrachromosomal DNA known as a "plasmid". Plasmids do not contain any of the hundreds of basic housekeeping genes that are essential for life. Instead, they contain just a few "extra" genes that may come in handy under certain circumstances; genes such as those encoding resistance to a particular type of antibiotic, for example.
...
Almost like miniature stamp collectors, bacteria are avid collectors and hoarders of plasmids. Further, they are not picky about the sorts of DNA they acquire nor are they particular about the plasmid DNA's source. Friendly gut-dwelling E coli can pick up genes that, in a Jekyll-and-Hyde scenario, can transform them into little monsters that are harmful or fatal to their hosts."
- Food Poisoning Reminds Us That Bacteria Do Have Sex, The Guardian, May 30 2011

It looks like the plasmid in the diagram encodes for a pilus?
________
This reminds me of the DNA swapping that goes on when we eat genetically engineered food. The authors of the study in my post GMO-Fed Livestock Incorporate Foreign GMO Genes Into Their Own Tissues said:

"This study confirms that feed-ingested DNA fragments (endogenous and transgenic) do survive to the terminal GI tract and that uptake into gut epithelial tissues does occur."

It wasn't just the colon, they found the foreign DNA in the animals' liver and kidney too, which infers some systemic travel. It made me wonder how much foreign DNA gets incorporated into our tissues when we eat genetically engineered food. And would that DNA then be capable of manufacturing the very pesticides for which it was designed?

Why won't the US require that genetically engineered foods be labeled? Europe does.
________Image: Adenosine/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Excerpts From: An Open Letter To President Obama From E.coli 0104:H4

"Dear President Obama:

My name is E.coli 0104:H4. I am being detained in a German Laboratory in Bavaria, charged with being "a highly virulent strain of bacteria." Together with many others like me, the police have accused us of causing about 20 deaths and nearly five hundred cases of kidney failure - so far.* Massive publicity and panic all around.

You can't see me, but your scientists can. They are examining me and I know my days are numbered. I hear them calling me a "biological terrorist," an unusual combination of two different E.coli bacteria cells. One even referred to me as a "conspiracy of mutants."

It is not my fault, I want you to know. I cannot help but harm innocent humans, and I am very sad about this. I want to redeem myself, so I am sending this life-saving message straight from my Petri dish to you.

This outbreak in Germany has been traced to food - location unknown. What is known to you is that invisible terrorism from bacterium and viruses take massively greater lives than the terrorism you are spending billions of dollars and armaments to stop in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Your agencies, such as the Center for Disease Control, conduct some research but again nothing compared to the research for your missiles, drones, aircraft and satellites.

You speak regularly about crushing the resistance of your enemies. But you splash around so many antibiotics (obviously I don't like this word and consider it genocidal) in cows, bulls, chickens, pigs and fish that your species is creating massive antibiotic resistance, provoking our mutations, so that we can breed even stronger progeny. You are regarded as the smartest beings on Earth, yet you seem to have too many neurons backfiring.

You are hung up on certain kinds of preventable violence without any risk/benefit analysis. This, you should agree, is utterly irrational. You should not care where the preventable violence comes from except to focus on its range of devastation and its susceptibility to prevention or cure!

E-cologically yours,
E.coli 0104:H4 (for the time being)"

The above was excerpted from: An Open Letter to President Obama from E.coli 0104:H4 by Ralph Nader, June 3, 2011

* Bill Marler has been keeping track. On June 12 he wrote: "35 dead and likely to rise! 812 with acute kidney failure – at least 100 will require kidney transplants! Many of the others ill will suffer with brain damage, kidney dysfunction, diabetes, bowel and heart disease for the remainder of their lives!"
- German Sprout Farmer's "Bad Luck" - I say E. coli!

I have to agree with mister or misses E.coli 0104:H4 up there. If 35 Americans died and hundreds were maimed by the hand of a terrorist, we would be up in arms. We would not be classifying those deaths a result of "bad luck." We would be enacting policies to protect ourselves from further assault, not perpetuating behaviors that invite these biological terrorists.
________E. coli are poo bacteria from I Love Bacteria.

Meadows School Project: Students And Seniors Unite

What a great way to bring generations together.

Students, ages 9 to 12, were bussed to an assisted living facility in Canada where they spent their full day of classes, for 5 weeks in the fall and 3 weeks in the spring:

"For the children, the project plan required that students spend time on their dedicated studies, which for a large part adapted well into the senior context. (i.e. study of immigration, study of the body's growth and aging, literature studies, singing, poetry memory work, spelling bees, and so on.) It also required each student to participate in at least ninety minutes of public service each week (e.g. setting the dining room tables, filling bird feeders, cleaning the classroom, etc.). The third aspect of the project created designated daily times for older adults and children to connect one-on-one, in small groups, or in audience/performer orientations."
- Meadows School Project: History of a Full Intergenerational Immersion Project 2000-2008

The video is rather moving towards the end. Sharon MacKenzie, the teacher who started the project:

"This is the texture of the society and the community that I think we're starting to lose."

________

Let Someone Look Deep Into Your Eyes

A little fact I picked up from a book I'm reading, Eternity Soup by Greg Critser:

"Every gram of human tissue has one billion cells, and every cell must be within five microns (or five 25,000ths of an inch) of a blood vessel."

A gram is puny. About a quarter of a teaspoon of sugar weighs a gram. But that's the weight of a dry item. Wet living cells may be denser and take up less volume. The extent of blood-vessel branching needed to support the billion cells in something the size of a pencil eraser is just incredible.

In people with diabetes, the very tiny blood vessels, the capillaries, in the retina of the eye (and of course elsewhere like the kidney) get clogged and leak. Eventually, when insufficient nutrients reach the retina, new blood vessels grow (which is also incredible). These new vessels are very fragile though and aren't as efficient as the ones they replace.

All those leaking vessels eventually lead to vision loss ... but not at first! In the beginning, when your macula is swelling and your vessels are leaking ... you may notice nothing, feel nothing, see nothing unusual ... maybe a few floaters or some blurry vision. It's why anyone with diabetes really should have someone look deep inside their eyes regularly. (Sadly, millions of people don't even know they have diabetes and their retinopathy is silently progressing.¹)
________¹ CDC: National Diabetes Fact Sheet, 2011 (pdf):
Undiagnosed: 7.0 million
Prediabetes: 79 million

Losses And Bailouts

Should taxpayers bail out farmers who experience losses when one of them fails to uphold safety/risk-based standards?

Should taxpayers bail out financial institutions that experience losses when one of them fails to uphold safety/risk-based standards?

Should taxpayers bail out employees who lose their jobs when businesses fail to uphold safety/risk-based standards?

Or should taxpayers let businesses and workers suffer losses?

Just mulling this over, in the wake of the European Unions's proposal to bail out farmers. I don't really know.

E.coli: Concern Grows Over Lack Of Answers, Compensation Packaged Rejected, Food Production Daily, June 8 2011
________
Update: Bill Marler just put a dollar figure on the cost of damage and human suffering wrought by Germany's E. coli outbreak: $2.84 billion. That doesn't include bailout funds to farmers which are running about 400 million euros (584 million dollars). That puts the EU's cost right now at about $3.4 billion.

Who pays? If taxpayers were assessed, say, several hundred dollars each to cover this cost, do you think there would be more stringent food safety regulations? (If taxpayers were assessed a yearly cost to support war, maybe there would be fewer wars.)

Taxpayers end up paying anyway, there just isn't an accounting for it in a place we'd notice, like our tax returns.
________

How To Fill USDA's New MyPlate, Or Not

Here's the USDA's new MyPlate, with samples, from an article in USAToday:



What do you think? Oh boy. I suppose the essence was captured. (What is that tan rectangle, lower right?) But I would have filled it differently.

• First off, is this how people eat? I mean, is it realistic to recommend steamed "protein" and boiled vegetables to a construction worker? To a fast food employee? An office worker? That is, to anyone who isn't home or near a kitchen during the day? OK, I guess you could brown-bag it.
  
• The proportions. I can see right off that their effort to visualize "more of this and less of that" has failed.
  
• The "protein" people must be very happy that their "protein" is singled out and included in every meal an American is advised to eat. Likewise dairy. Manu said it best: "Dairy sits in a cup? what's the meaning of this you should drink dairy at every meal like it was water?"

Both Dr. Andrew Weil and the Weston A. Price Foundation recommend that dairy be full fat. The USDA says dairy should be low-fat or fat-free. Who knows? I say put your hand over that blue circle and pretend it isn't there.________

Goodbye Pyramid, Hello Plate

Here's the USDA's new icon to accompany their new 2010 Dietary Guidelines. It replaces all the pyramids:

MyPlate.gov

Praise? Criticism?

I like it. It reminds me of PCRM's (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) Power Plate. One word doesn't fit for me though: "protein." Fruits, vegetables, and grains are recognizable foods. Protein is an organic compound, a chemical. All food contains protein. Why would they do that?
________

Longterm Use of Low-Carb, High-Protein Diets May Risk Health

This post on the New York Times Well blog has been making rounds:

Eating Fat, Staying Lean

What do you think? Is a "meatier, cheesier, high-fat, low-carbohydrate spread" better for health? While I think low-carb diets are effective for weight loss in the short term, I don't believe they are healthful in the long term.

A low-carbohydrate diet is, by default, a high-protein diet (as well as a high-fat diet). That protein, often from animal foods, may cause problems.

High-protein diets make demands on the liver and kidneys, which have to work harder to get rid of the extra nitrogen. Ammonia, the nitrogen compound produced after proteins are deaminated, is toxic in even small amounts (it raises blood pH). So ammonia is combined in the liver with carbon dioxide to make the less-toxic urea. Urea is then sent to the kidneys for excretion.

People with diabetes, kidney disease, and high blood pressure can have compromised kidneys which, when presented with excess urea from high-protein diets, may fail to adequately dispose of it. They often have elevated blood urea nitrogen (BUN) levels.

Remember this study I blogged about? It found elevated BUN not just in people with compromised kidneys ... but in healthy young men fed a high-protein diet:

Effect Of Short-Term High-Protein Compared With Normal-Protein Diets On Renal Hemodynamics And Associated Variables In Healthy Young Men, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, December 2009

"The glomerular filtration rate, filtration fraction ... blood urea nitrogen, serum uric acid, glucagon, natriuresis, urinary albumin (protein in the urine), and urea excretion increased significantly with the high-protein diet.

Conclusions: A short-term high-protein diet alters renal hemodynamics and renal excretion of uric acid, sodium, and albumin. More attention should be paid to the potential adverse renal effects of high-protein diets."

A more recent and longer term study found kidney damage in pigs fed a high-protein diet:

Long-Term High Intake of Whole Proteins Results in Renal Damage in Pigs, Journal of Nutrition, September 2010

"The [high protein] compared with [normal protein] diet resulted in enlarged kidneys at both 4 and 8 months. Renal and glomerular volumes were 60–70% higher by the end of the study. These enlarged kidneys had greater evidence of histological damage, with 55% more fibrosis and 30% more glomerulosclerosis. Renal monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 levels also were 22% higher in pigs given the HP diet. Plasma homocysteine levels were higher in the HP pigs at 4 mo and continued to be elevated by 35% at 8 mo of feeding.

These findings suggest that long-term intakes of protein at the upper limit of the AMDR* from whole protein sources may compromise renal health."

* Acceptable macronutrient distribution range

The pigs on the high-protein diet were getting 35% of their calories from protein (as opposed to 15%), primarily egg and dairy protein.

Unfortunately, many people don't know they have diabetes, kidney disease, or high blood pressure because all are silent in the early stages. Eating a high-protein diet with any of these conditions may accelerate organ failure. Even Loren Cordain, author of the Paleo Diet concedes this.¹

If you're not young and healthy and would like to experiment with a low-carb diet, it would be sensible to get your serum creatinine and urinary protein, as well as blood glucose and blood pressure, checked periodically.
________¹ The Protein Debate: Loren Cordain, PhD, T. Colin Campbell, Phd