Attention, college students cramming between midterms and finals: Binging on soda and sweets for as little as six weeks may make you stupid.
A new UCLA rat study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain, hampering memory and learning—and how omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the disruption. The peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology publishes the findings in its May 15 edition.
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Guest post by Michele Simon, Appetite for Profit
This week, the nation’s top public health experts gathered at a much-trumpeted obesity conference hosted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called Weight of the Nation. (A quick glance at the agenda reveals nothing that would even begin to challenge the food industry.)
Released at this bland event was an equally uninspired report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM, an advisory arm of Congress) called, Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation. The irony of the report’s title gets lost among the 478 pages that aim to solve “this complex, stubborn problem” with “a comprehensive set of solutions.”
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by Katherine Gustafson, via Yes! Magazine
It isn’t always easy finding fresh, high-quality food in this country. Supermarkets with their long, complex supply chains usually offer unripe or subpar produce that leaves a lot to be desired. But the usual alternative methods of provision have distinct limitations. Luckily, technology provides one great answer to this dilemma, opening up an important new avenue for small-scale producers to connect to customers.
Only local farms can deliver the very freshest produce. But while the common methods of providing this bounty to consumers—community supported agriculture (CSA) plans and farmers’ markets—are essential components of a revitalizing fresh-food sector, they don’t always provide a sufficiently flexible or robust shopping experience.
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Guest post by Courtney Pineau, Communications Manager of the Non-GMO Project
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In our household, spring cleaning is often inspired by those first days of springtime sun when I discover the cobwebs and dust bunnies that have been hiding in the shadows all winter. It’s amazing what a little light can expose. Spring cleaning our diets is the same way–when you look a little closer you often find that your food contains unwanted GMO ingredients. I hope these spring cleaning tips help you find new ways to nourish your family with healthy non-GMO foods.
by Sharon Begley, Reuters, via The Huffington Post
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U.S. hospitals are ripping out wall-mounted toilets and replacing them with floor models to better support obese patients. The Federal Transit Administration wants buses to be tested for the impact of heavier riders on steering and braking. Cars are burning nearly a billion gallons of gasoline more a year than if passengers weighed what they did in 1960.
by David Katz, MD, via The Huffington Post
There was an expression, once commonly used, to describe a situation in which it was easy to exploit people: "like taking candy from a baby." As with all such similes, the illustration itself was meant to be the extreme, self-evident case. Stealing a baby's candy is something so outrageously objectionable that all decent people must oppose it. It would concern anyone, and everyone. It would be everybody's business.
We don't hear that expression much any more for fairly obvious reasons. There is, if anything, far too much "candy"—and variations on the theme of candy, such as soda, sugary cereals, and so on—to go around; and too much of it in particular heads right into the mouths of our babes. The new-age problem is selling far too much candy to babies (well, children, really). That, too, is objectionable!
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by Caren Baginski, via NewHope 360
After a whirlwind of a week for Kellogg-owned Kashi Company, the natural cereal and granola giant has announced its intent to ditch GMOs in two existing product lines by 2014. And by 2015, all new Kashi foods will contain 70 percent organic ingredients and also be Non-GMO Project Verified. While the company was already moving toward non-GMO, what prompted this sudden announcement?
Perhaps it was consumer outrage to an anti-GMO viral photo circulated on Facebook created a PR nightmare for Kashi—one that the company tried to curb with a video response that didn't satisfy consumers. On April 30, 2012, the brand offered a more satisfying response to its customers, and one that's surely capturing the attention of natural retailers as they evaluate their role in effecting healthy change in the market.
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by Bruce Boyers
Joel Salatin—farmer, author, featured speaker, and the subject of several documentaries—has spent his life learning from nature how a food system is supposed to function, and putting it into practice at his Polyface Farm. Then, raising his eyes up from his tractor, he has wondered how average citizens, having no connection to the sources of their food and possessing no food security whatsoever, could possibly think they could go on this way.
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by Anna Soref
It’s not everybody who could turn down a request from the late Paul Newman to open a restaurant, especially if that someone were a passionate chef. But for Michel Nischan, when that offer was made, the time wasn’t right; he was too busy helping nonprofits and socially responsible businesses make the world a better place. Yup, he turned down what most would see as a dream job with a dream partner to continue doing the right thing.
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Guest post by Michele Simon, Appetite for Profit
Interview with Rod Morrison of Rocky Mountain Organic Meats
Rod Morrison is president of Rocky Mountain Organic Meats, a Wyoming company that produces 100% Certified Organic, pasture raised and finished meats. As a sustainable farmer who understands the realities of meat production, he has an opinion or two about the recent uproar over pink slime.
MS: What do you make of the whole pink slime debacle?
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Vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements have a tremendously safe track record, yet they are often singled out as being potentially dangerous by government agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
This – the notion that dietary supplements are unsafe -- is the premise behind the FDA's Draft Guidance on New Dietary Ingredients, which would require the supplement industry to prove the safety of natural ingredients that, in many cases, have been on the market and used safely for decades.
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North Carolina is a state known for its agricultural production—tobacco, corn and soy. It is also the number two pork-producing state in the nation. Yet since 1994, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS)—a joint effort between two of the state’s leading universities and its Department of Agriculture—has been heavily researching and promoting organic, sustainable and local agriculture. Today, CEFS’s impact is being felt statewide, creating highest-ever demand for local and sustainable production and setting a remarkable example for many other states in
the nation.
Foraging for food — whether it’s ferreting rare mushrooms in the woods, picking abundant lemons from an overlooked tree, or gathering berries from an abandoned lot — is all the rage among the culinary crowd and the DIY set, who share their finds with fellow food lovers in fancy restaurant meals or humble home suppers.
But an old-fashioned concept — gleaning for the greater good by harvesting unwanted or leftover produce from farms or family gardens — is also making a comeback during these continued lean economic times.
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Legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow once said, “The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.” One of those rare people who not only see but act on what was has clearly been invisible to most of us is Gary Oppenheimer. Since he founded AmpleHarvest.org, he has been named CNN Hero, has received major media coverage, has spoken at TEDx Manhattan, has been praised by First Lady Michelle Obama, and was even invited to the White House to meet the President.
What’s it all about? AmpleHarvest.org matches the food pantries used by more than 50 million Americans living in food-insecure homes with the over 40 million people who grow fruits, vegetables, herbs and nuts in home gardens—and who often have an excess. Prior to the site, the problem was that gardeners could not find local food pantries (also called food shelves, food closets, food cupboards or food banks in some areas) to donate to, as many were not online. AmpleHarvest.org provides a central repository for these pantries so that gardeners can easily locate those nearest them.
by Mark Hyman, MD, via The Huffington Post
I'm a food addict. We all are. Our brains are biologically driven to seek and devour high-calorie, fatty foods. The difference is that I have learned how to control those primitive parts of my brain. Anyone can this if they know how. In this article, I will share three steps to help you counteract those primitive parts of your brain that have you chasing high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods. But before you can update your brain's biological software, you've got to understand why it developed in the first place.
Calories = Survival
The brain's desire to binge on rich food is a genetic holdover from the days of hunter-gatherers. Given what scientists know today about our early ancestors it makes sense that our brains are hardwired to fixate on high-calorie foods.
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by Mark Hyman, MD, via The Huffington Post
Two seemingly groundbreaking studies, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine found that Type 2 diabetes, or "diabesity," could be cured with gastric bypass surgery. The flurry of media attention and medical commentary hail this as a great advance in the fight against diabetes. The cure was finally discovered for what was always thought to be a progressive incurable disease. But is this really a step backwards? Yes, and here's why.
No one is asking the most obvious question. How did the surgery cure the diabetes? Did the surgeons simply cut out the diabetes like a cancerous tumor?
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by Twilight Greenaway, via Grist.org
At Gathering Together Farm, in Philomath, Ore., owners Sally Brewer and John Eveland sit down with all their employees three times a week for an all-farm lunch. At the height of the growing season, Gathering Together Farm employs as many as 100 people, so Brewer and Eveland bring in employees on those days especially to cook. It’s no small expense, but it’s a way to ensure that the field crew gets face time with the irrigation crew, the office employees, and the farmers market crew.
“It’s a huge meal, and it’s part of the benefits package,” says Rose Mahoney, who helps manage the farm. “It really has a family feeling.”
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A community-supported agriculture (CSA) share can be a culinary battle royale. Every other week, it’s you versus a mystery box. No tap outs, no substitutions. Just a bitter melon so fresh, you wouldn’t dare toss it out. And while there’s something to be said for experimentation, sometimes you just want something a little more familiar, something easy to pack for lunch, something the kids will touch. Or maybe you’re just having a mad craving for heirloom radishes?
Guest post by Michele Simon and Kelle Louaillier
To call McDonald’s latest advertising campaign aimed at children cynical doesn’t give enough credit to the fast food giant and its ad agency, Leo Burnett. The company says the new series of ads starting this month is part of McDonald’s “nutrition commitment to promote nutrition and/or active lifestyle messages in 100 percent of its national communications to kids.”
How will the purveyor of Big Macs, fries and Coke accomplish this lofty goal? Perhaps by explaining that McDonald’s is an occasional treat? Or that sharing home-cooked meals is one of the best ways for families to ensure good eating habits? Perhaps McDonald’s could educate kids about the federal MyPlate recommendations to make half your meal fruits and vegetables?
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Backyard gardeners who make their own charcoal soil additives, or biochar, should take care to heat their charcoal to at least 450 degrees Celsius to ensure that water and nutrients get to their plants, according to a new study by Rice University scientists.
The study, published this week in the Journal of Biomass and Bioenergy, is timely because biochar is attracting thousands of amateur and professional gardeners, and some companies are also scaling up industrial biochar production.
“When it’s done right, adding biochar to soil can improve hydrology and make more nutrients available to plants,” said Rice biogeochemist Caroline Masiello, the lead researcher on the new study.
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by Madeline Ross, via Grist.org
It seems like every month someone launches a new eating experiment. Whether it’s eating only food grown within 100 miles for a year, growing an entire family’s food supply on an acre in Appalachia, or raising corn in the Midwest, the modern food movement has been shaped around many such specific, time-bound efforts.
The new film Eating Alabama starts out along similar lines, as filmmaker Andrew Beck Grace and his wife Rashmi return to their home state of Alabama to film a yearlong attempt to eat locally and seasonally. In the process, Andrew sifts through family photos of farms long buried under suburbia, and travels the state interviewing the farmers scraping by in present day Alabama. The result is a film that artfully combines one family’s story with an in-depth look at a group of small farmers committed to rebuilding the local food system in the South.
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The stomachs of wild honey bees are full of healthy lactic acid bacteria that can fight bacterial infections in both bees and humans.
A collaboration between researchers at three universities in Sweden—Lund University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Karolinska Institutet—has produced findings that could be a step towards solving the problems of both bee deaths and antibiotic resistance.
The researchers have now published their results in the scientific journal PLoS ONE and the legendary science photographer Professor Lennart Nilsson from Karolinska Institutet has illustrated the findings with his unique images.
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When deciding what’s healthy and what’s not, it pays to take note of what the actual experts are saying, as opposed to just listening to industry propaganda regurgitated by talking heads in the mass media and government health agencies.
Wake Up World has assembled a list of foods that are avoided by people who know the facts.
Here are a few examples:
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by Mark Hyman, MD, via The Huffington Post
Americans are overfed and undernourished. That's right, the most obese children and adults in the country are also the most nutritionally deficient!
The mistake is to think that if you eat an abundance of calories, your diet automatically delivers all the nutrients your body needs. But the opposite is true. The more processed food you eat, the more vitamins you need. That's because vitamins and minerals lubricate the wheels of our metabolism, helping the chemical reactions in our bodies run properly. Among those biochemical processes greased by nutrients is the regulation of sugar and burning of fat.
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by David Katz, MD, via The Huffington Post
I don't think Mary Poppins had this in mind at all.
Kids these days—and adults, for that matter—are consuming far too many spoons full of sugar. This sugar excess contributes importantly to the epidemic of obesity, and all of its consequences—diabetes in particular. Diabetes and other complications of obesity require pharmacotherapy much of the time. And there we have it: spoons full of sugar, helping medicine go down.
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