Have you ever wondered how anyone makes any money on a $2 bag of nacho-cheese flavored corn chips or a .25¢ apple? Economists and policy wonks have been talking about how we privatize profits and socialize loss here in the U.S. for at least a decade. If your eyes glazed over when you read that, you're not alone. Unfortunately, we can't afford to ignore how this big picture idea affects each and every one of us. What does it mean for Main Street America?

How we grow our nation's food is the perfect snapshot. Organic activists and locavores have also been talking about the same concept for just as long, if not longer: The hidden costs of cheap, industrial food.

We have a system of predatory agriculture in which corporations (aka Big Ag) pursue private gain relentlessly regardless of the social consequences. To bring it closer to home, social consequences can be defined as anything from polluting our water, land and air to impacting the health of our families to making the business of farming economically unsustainable.

All humans were built with the "fight or flight" response and our ancestors were no different. Like everyone, our ancestors experienced anxiety and likely bouts of depression; the issue is that generalized anxiety disorder as well as well as depression has and continues to rise at an alarming rate. Generally speaking, our ancestor did experience anxiety and depression, but not to the disordered extent that many people do today. What was once a necessary and built in mechanism to protect us from danger has become a constant for some people.

Anxiety disorder wasn't even diagnosed until 1980, not so long ago in the scope of medical diagnoses. While the root cause of anxiety and depression (which are often both present) is different for everyone, there are several dietary factors that contribute to these mental disorders.

Low-fat diets do not curb heart disease or help you live longer - the real enemy is sugar and carbohydrates, according to a leading scientist.

Current dietary advice is based on flawed evidence from the 1950s that has demonised saturated fat and put public health at risk, he said.

James DiNicolantonio, a cardiovascular research scientist in New York, said: 'We need a public health campaign as strong as the one we had in the 70s and 80s demonising saturated fats, to say that we got it wrong.'

Writing in the journal Open Heart, he added: 'There is no conclusive proof that a low-fat diet has any positive effects on health. Indeed, the literature indicates a general lack of any effect (good or bad) from a reduction in fat intake.

'The public fear that saturated fat raises cholesterol is completely unfounded.'

Experts believed the low-fat diet would lead to less obesity and diabetes - when the exact opposite was true, he added.

Introduction

A recent publication by Malhotra1 was refreshing, inspiring and hit on an important topic that has been heavily debated for over 50 years, that is, are saturated fats as bad as we have been led to believe?

History of the low-fat 'diet-heart' hypothesis

The vilification of saturated fat by Keys2 began two decades before the seven countries study, where Keys showed a curvilinear association between fat calories as a percentage of total calories and death from degenerative heart disease from six countries. However, he excluded data from 16 countries that did not fit his hypothesis. Indeed, data were available at the time from 22 countries, and when all countries were looked at the association was greatly diminished.3 Furthermore, no association existed between dietary fat and mortality from all causes of death.3 Thus, past data promoted by Keys showing that an increased percentage of fat calories consumed increases the risk of death are not valid (and certainly could never have proved causation). These data seemingly lead us down the wrong "dietary-road" for decades to follow, as pointed out by others.4 ,5

The consequences of replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates

The initial Dietary Goals for Americans, published in 1977, proposed increasing carbohydrates and decreasing saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet.6 ,7 This stemmed from the belief that since saturated fats increase total cholesterol (a flawed theory to begin with) they must increase the risk of heart disease. Moreover, it was believed that since fat is the most "calorie-dense" of the macronutrients, a reduction in its consumption would lead to a reduction in calories and a subsequent decrease in the incidence of obesity, as well as diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. However, the advice to increase carbohydrate intake seemingly made things worse, with an increase in its consumption (mainly corn syrup) paralleling the increased incidence of diabetes and obesity in the USA.8 In this analysis, fat was not associated with type 2 diabetes when total energy intake was accounted for,8 and the intake of saturated fat in the USA during this time was also not on the rise.9 These data provide a strong argument that the increase in the consumption of refined carbohydrates was the causative dietary factor for the diabetes and obesity epidemic in the USA.

Great April Fools' Day prank idea: Switch up your loved ones' sugar with salt. When they spit out their coffee and comment on the saltiness you can insist that it's really sugar and that there's nothing wrong, giving the prank a twisted flair.

But you'd be right - because there's friggin' GMO sugar in salt!

This applies to ingredients found in iodized table salt, and should concern people who are serious about allergy-inducing ingredients or who are seeking a different eating style.

While getting a natural allergy treatment for sugar I had to avoid it completely for 25 hours. At least I can flavor food with salt, I said, but was told to check the label. Haha - okay - whatever. But no, it's true - there was sugar! -

Nearly half a million elderly Americans likely died from Alzheimer's disease in 2010, a figure almost six times higher than previous estimates of annual deaths, according to a new study released on Wednesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that approximately 5 million people are living with Alzheimer's disease in the United States, and that 83,000 die from the condition each year.

"Many people do not realize that Alzheimer's is a fatal disease," said lead author Bryan D. James of the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago.

"Alzheimer's disease starts in the part of your brain that controls your memory and thinking, but over years it spreads to the parts of your brain that control more basic functions such as breathing and swallowing," he told Reuters Health in an email.

Current national estimates are based on death certificates, which tend to underestimate deaths from dementia, he and his colleagues write in the journal Neurology.

A new lawsuit claims that despite growing evidence of harm caused by dental amalgam, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to delay the protection of public health against mercury tooth fillings.

The case has a number of plaintiffs, including the International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology, which claim that the FDA has failed to respond within a reasonable time to petitions calling for either a formal ban of dental amalgam use, or placement in FDA's Class III, which requires: 1) additional restrictions for vulnerable individuals; 2) more stringent proof of safety; and 3) an Environmental Impact Statement.

According to attorney James M. Love, who filed the lawsuit on March 5, 2014, American consumers and dental professionals are being misled by the American Dental Association (ADA) -- the largest and most powerful advocate for continued amalgam use.

"The ADA has misrepresented FDA's lack of regulation as proof of safety, and continues to use this toxic dental filling, despite scientifically demonstrated risks," said Love. "Most individuals remain unaware that those 'silver' fillings, prevalently used as a dental restoration and covered by insurance policies, consist of 45-55 per cent metallic mercury, and that there are health and environmental risks associated with those fillings."

Top scientists have repeatedly warned the FDA of the risk of harm caused by dental fillings, the lawsuit notes. For example, a February 2014 study, "[n]ew science challenges old notion that mercury dental amalgam is safe," published in the peer-reviewed journal, Biometals, uses the same studies cited by FDA in 2006, demonstrating that children are particularly at risk for mercury poisoning.

A diet rich in meat, eggs, milk and cheese could be as harmful to health as smoking, according to a controversial study into the impact of protein consumption on longevity.

High levels of dietary animal protein in people under 65 years of age was linked to a fourfold increase in their risk of death from cancer or diabetes, and almost double the risk of dying from any cause over an 18-year period, researchers found. However, nutrition experts have cautioned that it's too early to draw firm conclusions from the research.

The overall harmful effects seen in the study were almost completely wiped out when the protein came from plant sources, such as beans and legumes, though cancer risk was still three times as high in middle-aged people who ate a protein-rich diet, compared with those on a low-protein diet.


But whereas middle-aged people who consumed a lot of animal protein tended to die younger from cancer, diabetes and other diseases, the same diet seemed to protect people's health in old age.

The findings emerged from a study of 6,381 people aged 50 and over who took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) which tracks a representative group of adults and children in the US.

The study throws doubt on the long-term health effects of the popular Atkins and Paleo diets that are rich in protein. Instead, it suggests people should eat a low-protein diet until old age when they start to lose weight and become frail, and then boost the body's protein intake to stay healthy. In the over-65s, a high-protein diet cut the risk of death from any cause by 28%, and reduced cancer deaths by 60%, according to details of the study published in the journal Cell Metabolism.


Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, said that on the basis of the study and previous work, people should restrict themselves to no more than 0.8g of protein a day for every kilogram of body weight, equivalent to 48g for a 60kg person, and 64g for an 80kg person.

Abstract

Alzheimer's is a devastating disease whose incidence is clearly on the rise in America. Fortunately, a significant number of research dollars are currently being spent to try to understand what causes Alzheimer's. ApoE-4, a particular allele of the apolipoprotein apoE, is a known risk factor. Since apoE plays a critical role in the transport of cholesterol and fats to the brain, it can be hypothesized that insufficient fat and cholesterol in the brain play a critical role in the disease process. In a remarkable recent study, it was found that Alzheimer's patients have only 1/6 of the concentration of free fatty acids in the cerebrospinal fluid compared to individuals without Alzheimer's. In parallel, it is becoming very clear that cholesterol is pervasive in the brain, and that it plays a critical role both in nerve transport in the synapse and in maintaining the health of the myelin sheath coating nerve fibers. An extremely high-fat (ketogenic) diet has been found to improve cognitive ability in Alzheimer's patients. These and other observations described below lead me to conclude that both a low-fat diet and statin drug treatment increase susceptibility to Alzheimer's.

New York City is seeing an outbreak of a rare skin infection that comes from handling raw seafood, causing skin lesions, pain and swelling to the hands and arms and even difficulty moving fingers, officials said.

Health officials are warning those who purchase raw fish and seafood at Chinatowns in Manhattan, Queens or Brooklyn to wear waterproof gloves when handling those items, and to seek medical care if they discover red bumps on hands or arms.

The bacteria causing the infection is called Mycobacterium marinum and it gets into the body through a cut or other injury, the Health Department said.

If the infection goes deep enough, surgery may be necessary.