Would You Eat Zapped Bread?

Or turkey? Or fruits and vegetables? What if it gave them a longer shelf life? Or made them safer? This article talks about using a form of microwaves:

Bread That Lasts For 60 Days Could Cut Food Waste

It's not as if wheat emerges from the back yard, gets processed and made into bread every 4 hours. In today's marketplace, food travels great distances and experiences diverse environments.

On a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is "Yes! By all means give me the microwaved food!" and 1 is "Not a snowball's chance on Mars, well okay but, would I let that food slip past my lips," this paragraph pushes me closer to 1:

"He said that bread manufacturers added lots of preservatives to try and fight mould, but then must add extra chemicals to mask the taste of the preservatives. If bakers were able to use the microwave technology, they would be able to avoid these additives."

Microwaves don't bother me as much as the ionizing forms of radiation. But I think I'd even be OK with those, for every time I slide a knife through a cantaloupe I visualize pathogenic bacteria spreading out across every cut surface so help me god.
________Photo from EdTechLens.

Slow Motion Video Of Sprinting Cheetahs

Notice how the head is held in 3D space but the entire body is moving through x, y, and z. Actually it holds itself in z pretty well, preserving energy for forward movement and not wasting it bobbing up and down. You can really see this from the front shots.


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FDA Stops Operations At Nation's Largest Organic Peanut Butter Plant

Remember the Food Safety Act passed last year?

"The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the most sweeping reform of our food safety laws in more than 70 years, was signed into law by President Obama on January 4, 2011. It aims to ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus from responding to contamination to preventing it."

Well, in a first-ever use of their new powers, FDA told Sunland, Inc. they couldn't start distributing their peanut butter again until they had an effective clean-up plan. Sunland has already recalled just about everything they produced since 2010 and has been closed for months. They planned on reopening this week:

FDA Halts Operations At Peanut Butter Plant After 41 Sickened By Salmonella Poisoning

The FDA found salmonella all over Sunland's plant:

"FDA inspectors found samples of salmonella in 28 different locations in the plant, in 13 nut butter samples and in one sample of raw peanuts.

The agency also found improper handling of the products, unclean equipment and uncovered trailers of peanuts outside the facility that were exposed to rain and birds."

But Sunland's president and CEO Jimmie Shearer said:

"At no time in its 24-year history has Sunland, Inc. released for distribution any products that it knew to be potentially contaminated with harmful microorganisms."

Do you think FDA's use of the power is justified?
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Music: Joni Mitchell's "River" and "Woodstock"

Joni Mitchell's song "River" from her 1971 album, "Blue."



Wikipedia:

"Mitchell has deeply influenced fellow musicians in a diverse range of genres, and her work is highly respected by critics. Allmusic said, "When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century," and Rolling Stone called her "one of the greatest songwriters ever."

Here's a live recording of her song "Woodstock." She wrote it in a hotel room in New York City while watching the 1969 Woodstock festival on television.



Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young had a major hit with this recording of her song:


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Octopus Camouflage

Where's the octopus?



This isn't a reflex. This is a living thing processing visual information with half a billion neurons and responding. Isn't that intelligence?

Carl Zimmer in...

How Smart Is the Octopus?, Slate, 2008

...says, "So, is the octopus really all that smart? It depends on how you define intelligence." And he took a stab: "What we call intelligence is really just a set of behaviors and abilities that evolved in our ancestors as they adapted to a particular way of life."

So, intelligence is relative. However intelligent we may view an octopus, it's fair to say, as Zimmer did, "We'd fail pretty badly at an octopus-based test of intelligence."
________Thanks, Melinda!

Thomas Jefferson's Coffee Recipe

Or more likely a recipe from someone who worked in the kitchen at Jefferson's Virginia plantation, Monticello:



Transcription:

On one measure of the coffee ground into meal
pour three measures of boiling water.
boil it, on hot ashes lined with coal till the meal dis
     - appears from the top, when it will be precipitated.
pour it three times through a flannel strainer.
it will yield 2 1/3 measures of clear coffee.
an ounce of coffee meal makes 1 1/2 cup of clear coffee
     in this way.
the flannel must be rinsed out in hot or cold wa
     - ter for every making.

The story this recipe led to is fascinating. I saw the recipe on Maria Popova's Brain Pickings site, where she reviews the book from whence it came, Thomas Jefferson's Creme Brulee: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings Introduced French Cuisine to America.

The recipe may have originated with Hemings. And Hemings, it turns out, lived a life worthy of any biographer. He was born a slave, in fact a half-brother to Jefferson's wife (Jefferson's father-in-law had 6 children with his slave Betty Hemings, James' mother). At the age of 19, Hemings traveled with Jefferson to Paris, apprenticed with several master chefs, became the head chef at Jefferson's private residence on the Champs-Elysées, used a portion of his wages to pay for French lessons, returned to Philadelphia with Jefferson where he ran his kitchen there, and for a brief time the kitchen at Monticello while Jefferson was President. Hemings was an intelligent, educated, well-traveled master chef, and in later life a free man, but he died of an apparent suicide at the age of 36 with little material legacy save for an inventory of cooking utensils and 4 recipes.
________The coffee photo is mine from this morning. I make it not unlike this recipe, with about 3 or 4 measures of water to 1 measure of coffee grounds. I mix them together in a French Press, let sit a few minutes (without boiling), and plunge the mesh strainer, trapping the grounds on the bottom.

Giving Thanks

I was being very quiet taking photos of these birds. I don't know what they are but that yellow streak on their head should be some give away.





While I was snapping, this young deer stepped out from the bushes directly behind the birds. You can just make out his emerging antlers. He high-tailed it a second later. I love his curiosity.



Thank you to everyone for reading and commenting and emailing and sharing your own stories and curiosities. I've learned so much from you all. I have so much more to learn.
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Bristol Stool Chart

The chart was developed to classify human feces for medical purposes:¹

• Types 1 and 2 indicate constipation.
  
• Types 3 and 4 are considered ideal stools (especially the latter), as they are easy to defecate while not containing excess liquid.
  
• Types 5, 6 and 7 tend towards diarrhea.

________¹Stool Form Scale As A Useful Guide To Intestinal Transit Time, Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology, 1997.

Walking While Working

Employees at at Salo, a Minneapolis-based financial consulting firm, walk while working on treadmill desks.
The firm offers treadmill desks for employee use and encourages an active workplace environment.

Source: Can You Move It And Work It On A Treadmill Desk?

Treadmill desks. I don't know. I can see the advantages. But it seems to accommodate an already healthy body, with good vision and a steady hand. It also goes against the idea of mindfully doing what you're doing. I mean, I wouldn't feel comfortable having a doctor explain to me the results of my MRI while she's walking on a treadmill. Maybe that's an extreme case, but it demonstrates the distribution of focus walking while working demands.
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Cochrane Researchers Weigh In On The Flu Shot

From:
Vaccines For Preventing Influenza In Healthy Adults, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, July, 2010

• There are over 200 viruses and agents that cause influenza. The flu vaccine covers up to 15% of those.
  
• "4% of unvaccinated people versus 1% of vaccinated people developed influenza symptoms." (So, 96% of people who didn't get a flu shot avoided getting the flu on their own, when exposed.)
  
• "Vaccination had no effect on hospital admissions or complication rates."
  
• "We found no evidence that vaccinations prevent viral transmissions."
  
• "Inactivated vaccines caused local harms and an estimated 1.6 additional cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (a form of progressive paralysis) per million vaccinations."
  
• "Industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size."
  
• "Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the vaccines."

This Cochrane Review included one of the largest collections of randomized evidence on influenza. It consisted of 36 trials, 15 of which were conducted by industry and, given the last point above, were likely biased. The Review still found no evidence of benefit for hospital admissions, flu complications, or transmission rates, and only a weak benefit for symptom reduction.

I've been noncommittal about the flu vaccine thinking it doesn't hurt and might help. It's difficult to remain noncommittal when an independent, international, evidence-based group of researchers says:

"The results of this review seem to discourage the utilization of vaccination against influenza in healthy adults as a routine public health measure."

Here's Tom Jefferson from the Cochrane Vaccines Field describing the findings:


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Animal Photos By Tim Flach

Tim Flach Photography





This one is disturbing. I found the photos on the Daily Mail (there are others there), which referred to "specially-bred featherless chickens." So, humans tamper with chickens' genes to, I don't know, make processing easier? Is there another reason?


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How To Roast Chestnuts

This video from About.com shows a great way to cook fresh chestnuts. In a nutshell:

1. Score the chestnuts.
2. Boil the chestnuts.
3. Roast the chestnuts.
4. Steam the chestnuts.

Here are a few I cooked today while making dinner, using the techniques described in the video.
My bag of chestnuts:



My chestnuts boiling. (First, score the chestnuts in one slice along the rounded side. The video shows this nicely. Add the nuts to a pot, cover with cold water and a dash of salt, bring to a boil.)



My chestnuts roasting. (After the nuts come to a boil, fish them out and immediately transfer them to a hot oven, about 425 degrees F. I was already roasting potatoes so I decided to let the oven do double duty. You can see I don't even use a pan ... less clean up!)



My chestnuts ready to pop open and eat. (After the chestnuts roast in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes, transfer to a bowl and cover for 15 minutes so they steam-cook the rest of the way. They'll be warm and easy to handle.)



The one departure here from tradition is boiling before roasting. I've tried roasting without boiling and I have to say ... boiling them first makes a moister (not chalky) nut that cooks evenly. They're also less apt to singe if you leave them in the oven a hair too long.

By the way, chestnuts are very low in fat. These 3 have about:

• 69 calories
• 1 gram total fat
• 15 grams carbohydrate
• 1 gram protein
• 1 gram fiber

________

Placebo Response Activated Without Conscious Awareness

The study below adds to prevailing thought that belief or expectation are required for the placebo (or nocebo) response to kick in. Belief and expectation involve conscious thought. Here, researchers used a nonconscious stimulus (fraction-of-a-second image flash) to successfully engage the placebo response.

Nonconscious Activation Of Placebo And Nocebo Pain Responses, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2012

"Significant placebo and nocebo effects were found in both experiment 1 (using clearly visible stimuli) and experiment 2 (using nonconscious stimuli), indicating that the mechanisms responsible for placebo and nocebo effects can operate without conscious awareness of the triggering cues. This is a unique experimental verification of the influence of nonconscious conditioned stimuli on placebo/nocebo effects and the results challenge the exclusive role of awareness and conscious cognitions in placebo responses."

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) described the study:

"In this study, researchers conducted two experiments on a total of 40 healthy participants. Both experiments began with a conditioning (or introductory) phase in which researchers administered a series of rapid high and low heat stimuli to participants’ forearms, while showing pictures of men’s facial expressions of either mild discomfort or severe pain that corresponded with the stimuli.

In the first experiment, the researchers again administered heat stimuli to the participants’ arms while showing them pictures of men’s faces – but this time, the stimuli were at a constant moderate temperature throughout the experiment. Participants were told that each picture is paired with a pain stimulus on their arms, and they were asked to rate the level of pain they felt using a scale of 0 to 100 (0 = no pain, and 100 = worst imaginable pain). Although the heat stimuli were constant, when participants were shown the facial expression of high pain, they rated their own pain levels at almost three times higher than when they were shown facial expressions of low pain.

In the second experiment, the researchers repeated the test on a separate group of participants, but showed the images for a much shorter time so that the participants were not able to consciously recognize the expressions. Despite this, the participants’ pain scores still correlated with the “high” and “low” pain images."

The impact of this is bewildering. It's amazing enough that we can feel more or less pain by just looking at a picture of someone showing or not showing pain. But ... How many subliminal cues are we exposed to in a day that have the potential to effect our behavior and our health?
________

Music: Chopin's Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1

Composed by Chopin when he was about 20 years old.
Played here by Arthur Rubinstein.


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Low Rates Of Type 2 Diabetes Among Black Tea Drinkers

This association between tea (and sometimes coffee) and diabetes keeps cropping up. I've worked in this field for over 16 years and almost every year some study addresses it. Here's another study:

Low Prevalence Of Type 2 Diabetes Among Regular Black Tea Drinkers

"The authors systematically mined information on black (fermented) tea consumption in 50 countries across every continent ... [and found that] the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is low in countries where consumption of black tea is high."

It's an epidemiological study so there are limitations:

"[The authors] caution that the quality and consistency of data among all 50 countries are likely to vary, as will the criteria used to diagnose diabetes. And what may seem positive at the population level may not work as well as the individual level.

They also point out that various factors are likely to have contributed to the dramatic rise in diabetes prevalence, and that a link between black tea consumption and the prevalence of the disease does not imply that one is caused by the other."

But their findings back those of previous research:

"These original study results are consistent with previous biological, physiological, and ecological studies conducted on the potential of [black tea] on diabetes and obesity."

They said this about black tea vs. green tea, which makes me wonder if something like oolong tea, which is only partially fermented, may be the best of both worlds:

In recent years, a great deal of interest has focused on the health benefits of green tea, which contains simple flavonoids called catechins, thought to have anti-inflammatory properties, say the authors.

But the fermentation process, which turns green tea black, induces a range of complex flavonoids, including theaflavins and thearubigins, to which several potential health benefits have been attributed, they add.

Here's a link on how to make the perfect cup of tea. Is there is such a thing?

Making The Perfect Cup Of Tea Involves A Secret Ingredient – Patience, Claims A New Study, The Telegraph, June 2011
________The photo is from a 2009 ScienceDaily article on a study that found, you guessed it, drinking black tea might help manage diabetes.

Snapshot Of Obesity Epidemic: 1985 To 2010

Why do you think?
________Maps from the new blog by Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health.

Does Calcium Inhibit Iron Absorption?

Does calcium inhibit iron absorption? According to the study below, yes, but the effect is temporary and adaptation occurs, resulting in no appreciable impact on iron status.

Calcium And Iron Absorption - Mechanisms And Public Health Relevance, International Journal For Vitamin and Nutrition Research, October 2010

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, set up an intestinal cell culture model and assessed calcium (Ca) and iron (Fe) interaction and transport. From the abstract:

"Studies on human subjects have shown that calcium (Ca) can inhibit iron (Fe) absorption, regardless of whether it is given as Ca salts or in dairy products. This has caused concern as increased Ca intake commonly is recommended for children and women, the same populations that are at risk of Fe deficiency.

However, a thorough review of studies on humans in which Ca intake was substantially increased for long periods shows no changes in hematological measures or indicators of iron status. Thus, the inhibitory effect may be of short duration and there also may be compensatory mechanisms.
...
[We found] the effect of Ca on Fe absorption may be of short duration and adaptation may occur with time. This may explain why studies on long-term Ca supplementation of different groups fail to show any adverse effects on Fe status."

________

Iron On A Vegan Diet

Here's what the National Institutes of Health (NIH) say:

"Total dietary iron intake in vegetarian diets may meet recommended levels; however that iron is less available for absorption than in diets that include meat. Vegetarians who exclude all animal products from their diet may need almost twice as much dietary iron each day as non-vegetarians because of the lower intestinal absorption of nonheme iron in plant foods.
-NIH, Office of Dietary Supplements: Iron

These are the current RDA's:



By these guidelines, premenopausal women who exclude animal food from their diets may need almost 36 mg of iron each day, adult men 16 mg.

That's a lot of iron. As a gauge, a 3 ounce serving of beef chuck provides about 2.7 mg iron; a half cup of cooked soybeans provide about 4.4 mg iron; a half cup of cooked lentils provide about 3.3 mg iron. And those foods are good sources, as servings go. (Notable in these figures is that red meat doesn't provide more iron than plant food. The argument that the iron in meat is of a form, heme iron, which is more available for absorption, is tricky for two reasons. One, most of the iron in meat is of the nonheme variety. "Less than 40% of the iron in meat, poultry, and fish is in the heme form." Two, other foods eaten can substantially inhibit or enhance absorption of iron, whether heme or nonheme.)

Maybe there's a mechanism, like the one we saw with calcium, that has us absorb more iron when our stores are low. This paper describes just that mechanism:

Bioavailability Of Iron, Zinc, And Other Trace Minerals From Vegetarian Diets, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, September 2003

"Because of apparent upregulation of nonheme iron absorption, nonheme iron contributes more than heme iron to the total amount of iron absorbed in people with low body iron stores. Thus, the generally less well absorbed nonheme iron in vegetarian diets is more responsive than heme iron to differences in body iron status: nonheme iron absorption can be more completely limited by those with high iron stores, while being nearly as well absorbed as heme iron by those with very low iron stores."

Not only do we absorb more iron when our stores are low, but we discard it if our stores are high - more so if it's plant-derived nonheme iron.

So, of the two points above that address iron absorption - iron type (heme vs. nonheme) and "other foods eaten" - it appears that the "other foods eaten" has a greater impact. Well, it appears...

Below is a table from Hunt which shows enhancers and inhibitors of iron absorption:



Ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, is found in higher amounts in peppers, cabbage, broccoli, oranges, grapefruit, berries, and lots of other vegetables and fruits. Carotenes are found in orange (pumpkin, carrot, sweet potato), and green (kale, spinach) vegetables. Phytic acid is found in higher amounts in the bran of nuts, seeds, and cereal grains. Sesame seeds, almonds, walnuts, peanuts, corn, oats, rice, wheat, soybeans, chick peas ... these all have higher amounts of phytic acid and will inhibit iron absorption. Soaking, sprouting, and cooking reduce phytic acid to some degree. It looks like red wine can both enhance iron absorption because of its alcohol and inhibit it because of its polyphenols. Probably a wash that drink.

So, if vegetarians do things like combining iron-rich foods with vitamin C and carotene sources, using iron cookware, drinking coffee and tea between meals, prepping foods to reduce phytic-acid content, will it have a significant impact on iron absorption? Hunt says probably not, but if the diet is suitably varied, it doesn't matter: "Although vegetarians tend to have lower iron stores than omnivores, they appear to have no greater incidence of iron deficiency anemia."

I still can't get my mind wrapped around that 36 mg/day recommendation above. It's almost impossible to do without supplementing. Hunt says the same:

"The suggested modification of dietary iron recommendations for vegetarians might imply a need for routine iron supplementation for vegetarian women of fertile age, but the long-term benefit of such supplementation has not been tested."

And she gives these reasons for being careful:

• Iron supplementation reduces the efficiency of iron absorption from the diet.
• Iron supplementation must be continuous to have a long-term influence on serum ferritin of women with low iron stores.
• Iron supplementation may be associated with increased oxidative stress by the unabsorbed iron in the lower bowel.
• Excess iron has been linked to increases in colorectal cancer risk.
• Greater serum ferritin of meat eaters has been associated with reduced insulin sensitivity.
• Increased risk of heart disease has been observed in those with hemochromatosis (an iron storage disorder affecting ~9.5% of Caucasians).

After all this, what have I learned? Getting enough iron on a vegan diet doesn't seem that much different from getting enough iron on a diet that includes meat.
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