A diet high in vegetables has always been considered as a key component to good health and staying slim. However, nutritionists are becoming increasingly aware that the quantity consumed and the preparation technique can negate or even reverse any positive effects of eating vegetables. An international team of researchers led by Zumin Shi at Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Nanjing, China, and the University of Newcastle in Australia1 has found that although Chinese people eat a lot of vegetables, the amount of oil used in cooking vegetables is increasing the risk of becoming obese.

In 2002, the researchers randomly selected 2,849 men and women aged 20 years and over in Jiangsu province - an economically booming area in China - to undertake a questionnaire about their food patterns, sociodemographic factors, medical history and lifestyle. The participants' height, weight and waist circumference were also measured.

Of all those surveyed, 8.0% of men and 12.7% of women were generally obese (had a very high body mass index), and 19.5% of men and 38.2% of women were centrally obese (had a large waist size). Through statistical analysis of the participants' food patterns, the researchers found that a higher vegetable intake was strongly associated with a higher vegetable oil and energy intake. After adjusting for sociodemographic factors, a vegetable-rich diet was independently linked to a higher risk of obesity.

Most Chinese people love stir-frying their vegetables, and the country's booming economy means they can add oil to their cooking more generously than ever before. This finding does not undermine the benefits of eating vegetables, but rather reminds people how a healthy food can turn unhealthy if not prepared appropriately.

Jenna Woginrich was a vegetarian for the bulk of her adult life, starting once she discovered the horrors of the brutal American factory farm system and its effects on the environment. Now, after a decade, she is a vegetarian no longer. Instead, she owns and operates a small farm where she raises her own chicken, pork, lamb, rabbit, turkey and eggs.

Woginrich had a change of heart when realized that her aversion to meat wasn't solving the animal welfare problem. She decided that the real way to make sure that animals she ate lived a happy, respectable life was to raise them herself.

Writing in AlterNet, Woginrich argues:

"Every meal you eat that supports a sustainable farm changes the agricultural world. I cannot possibly stress this enough. Your fork is your ballot, and when you vote to eat a steak or leg of lamb purchased from a small farmer you are showing the industrial system you are actively opting out."

Sources:

AlterNet January 19, 2011

A small but nonetheless not insignificant number of women who want rounder, bigger bottoms are truly embracing dangerous ways of getting there. First, a young British model died after she flew to a foreign country for an injection of silicone administered illegally.

Now a report in the UK's "Sun" says that thousands of British women are taking a dangerous group of over-the-coutner treatments that claim to contain chicken plumping chemicals. But as Jezebels' Anna North points out:

For the first time, scientists have monitored the comings and goings of a membrane protein in living animals. They found that a muscle protein that receives messages from nerve fibers skulks away if ignored. This may explain why withdrawal of neuromuscular blocking agents sometimes is fatal to patients who have been on respirators. And it supports the idea that learning involves rapid molecular changes at cellular junctions in the brain.

"Our study shows that activity in the nervous system has a surprisingly rapid effect on the structure of synapses" the structures where nerve cells communicate with their targets," says Jeff W. Lichtman, M.D., Ph.D., head of the research team.

Lichtman is a professor of neurobiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He and his colleagues report their findings in the Oct. 15 issue of Science. Postdoctoral fellow Mohammed Akaaboune, Ph.D., is first author of the paper, which is accompanied by a commentary from Miriam M. Salpeter, Ph.D., of Cornell University.

Neuromuscular synapses connect nerve terminals to muscle fibers. When the nerve terminal releases a chemical signal called acetylcholine, protein molecules on the muscle fiber's surface bind the acetylcholine and initiate a chain of events that lead to muscle contraction. These protein molecules, called acetylcholine receptors, huddle under the nerve terminal so they are in the best place to receive the chemical signal.

Medical researchers have found a missing link that explains the interaction between brain state and the neural triggers responsible for learning, potentially opening up new ways of boosting cognitive function in the face of diseases such as Alzheimer's as well as enhancing memory in healthy people.

Much is known about the neural processes that occur during learning but until now it has not been clear why it occurs during certain brain states but not others. Now researchers from the University of Bristol have been able to study, in isolation, the specific neurotransmitter which enhances learning and memory.

Acetylcholine is released in the brain during learning and is critical for the acquisition of new memories. Its role is to facilitate the activity of NMDA receptors, proteins that control the strength of connections between nerve cells in the brain.

Currently, the only effective treatment for the symptoms of cognitive impairment seen in diseases such as Alzheimer's is through the use of drugs that boost the amount of acetylcholine release and thereby enhance cognitive function.

Medical experts warned the public of a health risk from sipping hot drinks directly from small openings in the plastic covers of takeaway hot drinks.

Toxic discharge released from the plastic covers could have a negative impact on the endocrine and reproductive systems, they said.

The experts suggested that people should remove the cover before drinking the beverage.

Local beverage vendors, however, dismissed the concerns, responding that their plastic cover products have passed official safety tests.

The following are excerpts from local media coverage of the issue:

Liberty Times:

The Taiwan Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology warned that bisphenol A (BPA) toxicity can be produced when hot drinks are sipped through small openings in plastic covers.

Getting a good night's sleep has long been known to cement the day's memories, moving them from short-term storage into long-term holding, but new research shows that it's not automatic. A night of z's is helpful only if you know a test is coming or, more generally, if you explicitly tell yourself you'll need the information in the future. In other words, don't expect eight hours of shut-eye to help you on a pop quiz.

In an elegant series of experiments, scientists at the University of Lübeck in Germany tested memory by having volunteers learn 40 word pairs, or the location of 15 cards in a Concentration-type game plus a sequence of finger taps (pinkie, index, forefinger...). Sleep improved retention only in those who had been told they'd be tested 10 hours later, not in those for whom the quiz came as a surprise, says a report in the Journal of Neuroscience. "Merely expecting that a memory will be used in a test determines whether sleep benefits its consolidation," says Lübeck's Jan Born.

The idea that protein leaches calcium from the bones has been around for a while. It is related to the notion that protein, especially from animal foods, increases blood acidity. The body then uses its main reservoir of calcium, the bones, to reduce blood acidity. Chris Masterjohn does not agree with this idea. This post generally supports Chris's view, and adds a twist to it, related to plant protein consumption.

The "eat-meat-lose-bone" idea has apparently become popular due to the position taken by Loren Cordain on the topic. Dr. Cordain has also made several important and invaluable contributions to our understanding of the diets of our Paleolithic ancestors. He has argued in his book, The Paleo Diet, and elsewhere (see, e.g., here) that to counter the acid load of protein one should eat fruits and vegetables. The latter are believed to have an alkaline load.

If the idea that protein leaches calcium from the bones is correct, one would expect to see a negative association between protein consumption and bone mineral density (BMD). This negative association should be particularly strong in people aged 50 and older, who are more vulnerable to BMD losses.

As it turns out, this idea appears to be correct only for plant protein. Animal protein seems to be associated with an increase in BMD, at least according to a study by Promislow et al. (2002). The study shows that there is a positive multivariate association between animal protein consumption and BMD; an association that becomes negative when plant protein consumption is considered.

1.There are no tests in existance that can prove mental "disorders" are medical conditions. Psychriatric diagnosis is based solely on opinion.

The psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars a year in order to convince the public, legislators and the press that psychiatric disorders such as Bi-Polar Disorder, Depression, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, etc., are medical diseases on par with verifiable medical conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. This is simply a way to maintain their hold on a $84 billion dollar-a-year psychiatric drug industry that is based on marketing and not science. Unlike real medical disease, there are no scientific tests to verify the medical existence of any psychiatric disorder. Despite decades of trying to prove mental disorders are biological brain conditions, due to chemical imbalances or genetic factors, psychiatry has failed to prove even one of their hundreds of so-called mental disorders is due to a faulty or "chemically imbalanced" brain. To counter this obvious flaw in their push to medicalize behaviors, the psychiatric industry will claim that there are certain medical conditions that do not have a verifiable test so this is why there isn't one for "mental illness." This is frankly a lame argument; Whereas there may be rare medical conditions that do not have a verifiable medical test, there are virtually no psychiatric disorders that can be verified medically as a physical abnormality/disease. Not one.

For years, Donna Gates has lectured about the abdominal brain, and its relation to the more common known brain in our head. Body Ecology was excited to find science pointing toward a better understanding of this relationship and the importance of a probiotic rich diet.

A recently published study found that the microbes an infant receives at birth and shortly after have the capacity to shape how the brain develops and even behavior later in adult life.

The study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) was conducted with mice. Using mice that were germ free and those that were specific pathogen free, meaning that they had the usual array of microbes, scientists determined that germ free mice were more active and less prone to anxiety. Germ free mice had the tendency to roam open spaces and spend more time in lit areas, whereas mice harboring the usual collection of microbes were less active and preferred to hide in dark corners.

Additionally, when germ free mice were exposed early in life to non-pathogenic microbes, they adopted anxiety-like response patterns. However, if exposed later in life and into adulthood, germ free mice remained uninhibited. (1)

The study implies that microbes do more than keep the gut healthy.