Health & WellnessS


Bacon

Most Vegetarians Return to Eating Meat

Sarah
The Healthy Home Economist
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 06:47 UTC
Meat

It appears that for the vast majority of vegetarians, abstaining from meat is only a phase rather than a permanent life choice.

According to Psychology Today, roughly 75% of vegetarians eventually return to eating meat with 9 years being the average length of time of abstinence.

The most common reason former vegetarians cited as the reason they returned to meat was declining health. One vegetarian turned omnivore put it very succinctly:

"I'll take a dead cow over anemia any time."

Other former vegetarians cited persistent physical weakness despite eating a whole foods, PETA recommended diet while others returned to meat at the recommendation of their doctor.

Another big reason that vegetarians returned to meat was due to irresistable cravings. This occurred even among long term vegetarians. Respondents talked about their protein cravings or how the smell of cooking bacon drove them crazy.

One survey participant wrote:

"I just felt hungry all the time and that hunger would not be satisfied unless I ate meat."

Another put it more humorously:

Starving college student + First night back home with the folks + Fifty or so blazin' buffalo wings waiting in the kitchen = Surrender.

Comment: For a good read that goes into detail regarding the health issues of vegetarianism, as well as other issues - the supposed (but nonexistent) advantages in terms of ethics, politics and sustainability - The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith (review and summary) is highly recommended. For another article, there's also SOTT's own Burying The Vegetarian Hypothesis.

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Bulb

Best of the Web: Diet, nutrient levels linked to cognitive ability, brain shrinkage


Oregon State University
Wed, 28 Dec 2011 06:39 UTC
Image
© Unknown
New research has found that elderly people with higher levels of several vitamins and omega 3 fatty acids in their blood had better performance on mental acuity tests and less of the brain shrinkage typical of Alzheimer's disease - while "junk food" diets produced just the opposite result.

The study was among the first of its type to specifically measure a wide range of blood nutrient levels instead of basing findings on less precise data such as food questionnaires, and found positive effects of high levels of vitamins B, C, D, E and the healthy oils most commonly found in fish.

The research was done by scientists from the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Ore., and the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University. It was published today in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"This approach clearly shows the biological and neurological activity that's associated with actual nutrient levels, both good and bad," said Maret Traber, a principal investigator with the Linus Pauling Institute and co-author on the study.
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Beaker

GM Foods Touted "Benefits" are Actually False Claims

Andre Evans
Activist Post
Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:39 UTC
no gmo
© n/a
Genetically Modified foods are prominently featured in today's food supply. In fact, GMOs are so prominent that if a product is not labeled as GMO free, then it can be assumed that there is at least some amount of genetic alteration within the food.

GMOs dominate conventional food supplies and popular products, perpetuating their adverse effects on the people who eat them.

Before the whistle was blown on the dangers of GM foods, like any other invariably unpopular thing pushed by corporations, claims were that GMOs could actually be beneficial to the food supply, and provide positive value. But how legitimate are any of these claims?

"GM Crops Require Less Herbicide/Pesticide Usage"

Pesticide toxicity is an obvious concern when dealing with crops. Gene tailoring the crops into producing a pesticide theoretically means that you should have to use less.
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Heart - Black

Human Bodies Contain Too Many Damaging Chemicals

Geoffrey Lean
The Telegraph, UK
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:30 UTC
chemicals
© Everett Collection/Rex FeatureThe International Year of Chemistry failed to tackle the worrying proliferation of potentially damaging chemicals.
The International Year of Chemistry failed to tackle the worrying proliferation of potentially damaging chemicals.

You would be forgiven for not noticing, but today marks the end of an official year of "worldwide celebration", designed to "generate enthusiasm" and "reach across the globe". For despite its hopeful hype, the UN's International Year of Chemistry appears to have had far less public impact in Britain even than its 2008 predecessor - the International Year of the Potato.

The spotlight on spuds did at least attract some national press attention: this year's science one got scarcely a mention - though it did make 350 words in the Baluchistan Times on Thursday.

It's not as if nothing was happening. The Swiss issued a commemorative postage stamp; there was an international conference on the remote Lord Howe Island in the Pacific; 10-year-old Poorvie Choudhary set a new world record for reciting the 118 elements in the periodic table in 27.6 seconds in Rajasthan; and two weeks ago there was a "Chemistry Caroling Event" in San Francisco ("I am dreaming of a white precipate", "Deck the labs with rubber tubing", and so on). But all to little avail.

It is a shame, for there is much to celebrate. Chemicals have brought us enormous benefits, swelling our harvests, beating back previously unconquerable diseases, and producing a host of consumer goods that underpin modern life.

And the year has also been a missed opportunity for tackling, as had been hoped at its outset, the downside of this chemical revolution - what Yale Professor John Wargo describes as "an unexpected side effect" of our prosperity, "a change in the chemistry of the human body". For many of the substances that have built our economies are now embedded in our tissues and coursing through our veins: some, it seems, are up to no good.

Comment: This is a major health issue we love to discuss. For further reading on how chemicals in our food, water and environment affect our health, Detoxify or Die by Sherry Rogers is available here.

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Health

Report: Chinese Man Likely Infected with Bird Flu


CNN
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:44 UTC
avian flu virus
© n/a
A 39-year-old man in a southern Chinese hospital is suffering from what appears to be a contagious strain of avian flu, state media reported Friday.

The man -- identified by Xinhua as a bus driver with the surname Chen -- was hospitalized in Shenzhen on December 21 as he battled a fever. He tested positive for the H5N1 avian influenza virus, a provincial health department said Friday, according to the official news agency.

Chen was in critical condition Friday at the hospital, the health department said.

The man had not traveled out of the city of Shenzhen, nor did he have direct contact with poultry in the month before he came down with the fever, according to the department.

Shenzhen borders Hong Kong, where more than 17,000 chickens were ordered culled on the same day that Chen was hospitalized. That decision came after a chicken carcass tested positive for avian flu.
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Ambulance

Deadly Tuberculosis Stalks Europe

John Donnelly
GlobalPost
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:08 UTC
Annika Negin, 22, of Tallinn, Estonia
© John DonnellyAnnika Negin, 22, of Tallinn, Estonia, learned nine months ago she had multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. Doctors said she likely contracted the illness from her father. Negin is committed to taking drugs for another nine to 15 months, and represents part of Estonia's successful approach to fighting TB: persuading patients to take their medication.
Belarus, with highest rate ever recorded for MDR-TB, asks for help

Geneva, Switzerland - On the sidelines of a conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, just three months ago, a senior health official from Belarus met privately with Mario Raviglione, whose job here at the World Health Organization's headquarters is to control the spread of tuberculosis around the world.

Belarus needed help. It had just confirmed a study that found 35 percent of all TB cases in the capital of Minsk were multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) - the highest rate in the world ever recorded for the deadly disease, which takes up to two years to treat and is cured in Western Europe only one third of the time.

"It's a real tragic situation," Raviglione, director of WHO's Stop TB Department, said, looking back at that moment with the Belarus official. "But they came out openly about this and they wanted help, which is very positive. For a long time, several countries have been hiding their realities about multi-drug resistant TB."

The WHO's Regional Office for Europe recently released a report that warned about the spread of the hard-to-treat MDR-TB into all of Europe, making the case that the relatively wealthy capitals of the West faced the grave danger of a much higher number of cases if the entire region did not move quickly to put in place effective control measures.
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Cow

Modern Miracle Men - Relating To Proper Food Mineral Balances, By Dr. Charles Northen

Rex Beach
bioelectrichealth.org
Fri, 01 Jun 1990 15:00 UTC
Image
Modern Miracle Men - Dr. Charles Northen, Who Builds Health From The Ground Up

Reprinted from Cosmopolitan, 1 June 1936

This quiet, unballyhooed pioneer and genius in the field of nutrition demonstrates that countless human ills stem from the fact that impoverished soil of America no longer provides plant foods with the mineral elements essential to human nourishment and health! To overcome this alarming condition, he doctors sick soils and, by seeming miracles, raises truly healthy and health-giving fruits and vegetables.

Do you know that most of us today are suffering from certain dangerous diet deficiencies which cannot be remedied until the depleted soils from which our foods come are brought into proper mineral balance?

The alarming fact is that foods - fruits and vegetables and grains - now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contains enough of certain needed minerals, are starving us - no matter how much of them we eat!

This talk about minerals is novel and quite startling. In fact, a realization of the importance of minerals in food is so new that the textbooks on nutritional dietetics contain very little about it. Never the less, it is something that concerns all of us, and the further we delve into it the more startling it becomes.
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Syringe

Bio Fear Mongering?: WHO 'deeply concerned' by deadly flu research


Reuters
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 08:21 UTC
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© Jayanta Dey/ReutersHealth workers carry poultry for disposal at Gandhigram village, about 22 miles west of Agartala, capital of India's northeastern state of Tripura, March 7, 2011, after an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu.
London - The World Health Organization [WHO] issued a stern warning on Friday to scientists who have engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying their work carries significant risks and must be tightly controlled.

The United Nations health body said it was "deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences" of work by two leading flu research teams who this month said they had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily transmissable form capable of causing lethal human pandemics.

The work by the teams, one in The Netherlands and one in the United States, has already prompted an unprecedented censorship call from U.S. security advisers who fear that publishing details of the research could give potential attackers the know-how to make a bioterror weapon.

The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity has asked two journals that want to publish the work to make only redacted versions of studies available, a request to which the journal editors and many leading scientists object.

Comment: From Wikipedia: "Biological warfare (also known as germ warfare) is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi with intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war."

Governments do not always claim war in order to begin reducing or weakening a population of what is considered, less desirable peoples. Consider the items in your local Grocery store that can have a negative affect on (your) a persons immune systems. It is not by accident that there are items once considered healthy and beneficial which retard and/or disrupt our ability to fight off illness. See the Diet and Health section of our Forum for more information and discussion.

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Heart - Black

Virus Sickens 110,000 in Vietnam, Kills 166


The Associated Press
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00 UTC
Vietnam says an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease has infected more than 110,000 people this year and killed 166, most of them children under 5 years old.

A Health Ministry official said Friday that the infection rate was slowing from a September peak of 3,000 per week to about 1,500 per week in December. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing policy.

The virus typically infects up to 15,000 children per year in Vietnam, killing 20 to 30 of them. Most people recover quickly from the illness after little more than a fever and rash.

The official says this year's figures cannot easily be compared to previous years, because the government has only collected thorough data on this disease in the past year.
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Health

Chinese City Finds Cancer-Causing Fungi in Food

Melanie Lee
Reuters
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00 UTC
Chinese food safety regulators in the southern city of Shenzhen have found carcinogenic mildew in peanuts and cooking oil, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

The cancer-causing substance, called aflatoxin, triggered public concern this week after milk giant Mengniu Dairy Co Ltd said last weekend its Sichuan plant had destroyed products found by a government quality watchdog to contain it.

Aflatoxin occurs naturally in the environment and is produced by certain common types of fungi. It can cause severe liver damage, including liver cancer.

Xinhua reported that the Shenzhen market supervision bureau had said it found up to 4.3 times of the permitted level of aflatoxin in peanuts sold in two supermarkets and one frozen food store, and up to four times the allowed level of aflatoxin in cooking oil in four restaurants.
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