Tag Archives | Diet

BPA From Plastics, Food Packaging, Linked To Obesity

By on September 25, 2012 in News 5

Americans may be growing fat not only from the foods we eat, but from the hormone-disrupting materials in which those foods are given to us. Via the Smithsonian:

Since the 1960s, manufacturers have widely used the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) in plastics and food packaging. A study by researchers from New York University, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at a sample of nearly 3,000 children and teens across the country and found a “significant” link between the amount of BPA in their urine and the prevalence of obesity.

The researchers speculate on a possible underlying mechanism, alluding to other studies that have shown that the chemical may disrupt mechanisms of human metabolism in ways that increase body mass. They also note studies that have revealed associations between urinary levels of BPA and incidences of adult diabetes, cardiovascular disease and abnormal liver function.

The vast majority of BPA in our bodies comes from ingestion of contaminated food and water.

… Read the rest

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Missouri Family Wins Right To Grow Vegetables In Its Yard

By on August 9, 2012 in News 12

Who would think that using one’s garden for, well, gardening would be a subversive act? Apparently, in the suburbs, it now takes a legal battle to grow edible plants in one’s yard. Via Good:

Urban farmers as outlaws: It’s becoming a familiar tale. Whether it’s a $2,500 fine for growing chard in Oakland or bans on backyard chickens in Pensacola, the civic agrarian often bumps up against the cold hard edge of the law.

Karl Tricamo of Ferguson, Missouri, on the outskirts of St. Louis, ripped the sod up from the front of his brick tract home last year and started tilling his modest plot. He delighted in the tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers he raised just steps from his front door. Tricamo estimates that 80 percent of their vegetables now come from his former lawn.

Ferguson city officials, though, didn’t appreciate Tricamo’s industrious green thumb and cited him for violations of the “exterior appearance code.” Code enforcers routinely did creepy drive-bys or parked in front of his house observing the locavore scofflaw.

… Read the rest

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Hold That Cheeseburger: Your Diet Can Change Your Future Kids’ DNA

By on July 28, 2012 in News 5

Via LiveScience:

You are what you eat. Or rather, your children will be. Animal experiences seem to suggest that an individual’s dietary habits can actually change their DNA, leading to greater risks for mutations in subsequent generations. Does this mean that you’re doomed to have a McBaby? No, not necessarily: With the right food choices the genetic changes may be beneficial as well.

“It is possible that eating more omega-3 fatty acids, choline, betaine, folic acid and vitamin B12, by mothers and fathers, possibly can alter chromatin state and mutations, as well as have beneficial effects…leading to birth of a ‘super baby’ with long life and [lower risk] of diabetes and metabolic syndrome,” Singh told LiveScience. “This is just a possibility, to be proven by more experiments.”

Read more at LiveScience.… Read the rest

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Human Ancestors Were For The Most Part Vegetarian

By on July 24, 2012 in News 38

Looking to free your diet from the perversions of modernity and eat paleo-style? When our ancient predecessors were developing their digestive systems, they did so on a steady ration of plants — which are what most primates eat to this day, writes Scientific American:

An entire class of self-help books recommends a return to the diets of our ancestors–Paleolithic diets, caveman diets, primal diets and the like. But what did our ancestors eat?

A paleo diet is an arbitrary thing. Which paleo diet should we eat? The one from twelve thousand years ago? A hundred thousand years ago? Forty million years ago? I would argue that, IF we want to return to our ancestral diets, we might reasonably eat what our ancestors spent the most time eating during the largest periods of the evolution of our guts. If that is the case, we need to be eating fruits, nuts, and vegetables—especially fungus-covered tropical leaves.

… Read the rest

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Disinfo OpenVideo: Download ‘Planeat’

By on July 6, 2012 in News, OpenVideo 6

Every Friday The Disinformation Company offers a different disinformation® documentary as a DRM-free download for the discounted price of $1.99. The sale price is available for one week only, Friday to Friday. All digital downloads are high quality MP4 video. This week’s disinformation® OpenVideo is PLANEAT.

DOWNLOAD

Where have we gone wrong? Why has the death rate from heart disease and cancer exploded in recent times? Why are the ice caps melting, the oceans dying and the forests being cut down as we produce the food necessary to support our burgeoning populations?

Against a backdrop of colorful and delicious food grown by organic farmers and prepared in the kitchens of world-famous chefs, PLANEAT for the first time brings together the ground-breaking stories of three prominent scientists who have made it their life’s work to answer these questions…

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Vegan Privilege

By on July 1, 2012 in News 237

SuicideGirls (CC)

We’ve all heard of white privilege and male privilege and white male privilege, but is veganism a privilege?  And does it need to be checked?  There are many more discussions of the subject online than you probably imagined.

An argument in favor, from My Life as a Feminista:

Choosing to have a vegan diet is privileged for numerous reasons:

  • It is a privilege to have access to information about alternative diets; this includes knowing what recipes to use, what foods to purchase, and how to make things that taste good.
  • Depending on where you live, you may or may not have access to a wide range of vegan foods.  Being able to go to the grocery stores requires transportation to/from; the closest store may not be vegan-friendly and you may have to drive for many miles to find a store where you can get all your shopping done.

… Read the rest

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High Fructose Corn Syrup Can Make You Dumb

By on May 16, 2012 in News 15

Corn_syrupYou have been warned (via AFP/Yahoo News):

Eating too much sugar can eat away at your brainpower, according to US scientists who published a study Tuesday showing how a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup sapped lab rats’ memories.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) fed two groups of rats a solution containing high-fructose corn syrup — a common ingredient in processed foods — as drinking water for six weeks. One group of rats was supplemented with brain-boosting omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), while the other group was not.

Before the sugar drinks began, the rats were enrolled in a five-day training session in a complicated maze. After six weeks on the sweet solution, the rats were then placed back in the maze to see how they fared. “The DHA-deprived animals were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity,” said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA…

[continues at via AFP/Yahoo News]… Read the rest

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Where’s The Beef? Meat-Seeking Early Humans Wiped Out Most of the Prehistoric Large Animals

By on April 29, 2012 in News 0

SmilodonAnn Gibbons writes on Science:

When human ancestors began scavenging for meat regularly on the open plains of Africa about 2.5 million years ago, they apparently took more than their fair share of flesh. Within a million years, most of the large carnivores in the region—from saber-toothed cats to bear-size otters—had gone extinct, leaving just a few “hypercarnivores” alive, according to a study presented here last week at a workshop on climate change and human evolution at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Humans have driven thousands of species extinct over the millennia, ranging from moas—giant, flightless birds that lived in New Zealand—to most lemurs in Madagascar. But just when we began to have such a major impact is less clear. Researchers have long known that many African carnivores died out by 1.5 million years ago, and they blamed our ancestor, Homo erectus, for overhunting with its new stone tools.

… Read the rest

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Swiss Woman Starves to Death on Sunlight Diet

By on April 29, 2012 in News 12

SunlightVia the Herald Sun:

The woman embarked on the diet after watching the controversial 2010 documentary film In The Beginning There Was Light, newspaper Tages Anzeiger said.

The movie centres on Swiss chemistry doctor Michael Werner, 62, and 83-year-old Indian yogi Prahlad Jani, who both claim to derive sustenance from spiritual means rather than the intake of food — a concept also known as breatharianism.

Werner claims to have lived without food since 2001, while Jani told the documentary of how he had lived for 70 years not only without food, but also without water.

The woman, from the east of Switzerland, saw the movie and decided to try to survive entirely on light, preparing for the process by reading a book by Australian breatharian Ellen Greve, who goes by the name Jasmuheen. In line with the book, the Swiss woman, who was in her early 50s, did not eat or drink anything for a week — and even spat out her saliva — before resuming drinking in the second and third weeks.

… Read the rest

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Is Your Favorite Ice Cream Made with Monsanto’s Artificial Hormones?

By on April 4, 2012 in News 7

Ice Cream dessert 02Monsanto has been in the news again, with a U.S. District Court ruling that the USDA has to at least go through the motions of regulating the company’s genetically engineered sugar beets. Monsanto, you may know, is not likely to win any contests for the most popular company. In fact, it has been called the most hated corporation in the world—which is saying something, given the competition from the likes of BP, Halliburton, and Goldman Sachs.

This has gotten me thinking about, of all things, ice cream, and of how Monsanto’s clammy paws can be found in some of the most widely sold ice cream brands in the country. These brands could break free from Monsanto’s clutches. So far they haven’t, but maybe this is about to change.

Ben & Jerry’s gets all their milk from dairies that have pledged not to inject their cows with genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH).… Read the rest

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