An interview with the acclaimed writer about his new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.

Clearly, author Michael Pollan can take the heat, because he's in the kitchen. And in the barbeque pit, the bakery and the cheese cave. After revolutionizing the way our nation thinks about agriculture in his previous bestsellers like The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan has taken on cooking in his new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. Loyal Pollan readerswill recognize some of the memes in Cooked from previous newspaper columns by Pollan, like a 2009piece remarking on how Americans now cook less than ever, but love watching people cook on TV.

In Cooked, Pollan looks at four different processes to transform our food, corresponding to the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth. The four processes examined are, respectively, barbeque, pot cooking, bread baking, and fermentation. As he goes, he reflects on the impact spending hours cooking in the kitchen and sharing home-cooked meals has on his family, even in ways that have nothing to do with food. He also shares the science behind why certain cooking methods work the way they do, like why slowly cooking meat over wood and smoke for a long period of time at low temperatures produces the flavors it does, or what - exactly - the "fifth flavor," umami, is.

Don't over do it

George Washington's death in 1799 was attributed to a discredited practice called "blood letting", accepted in the 1700's as treatment for virtually any ailment. One day. George Washington contracted a sore throat, and his doctors removed seven pints of blood (3,750 ml over 9 hours, half of his blood volume). The result was hypovolemic shock and cardiac arrest.(7)

Measuring Hematocrit in 1799

Perhaps the outcome would have been different if Mr. Washington's doctors had measured his blood count (hemoglobin/hematocrit), serum iron and ferritin levels during the blood letting procedure so they would know when to stop, Unfortunately, modern medicine arrived too late to save Mr. Washington from his overzealous doctors.

Is there a health benefit to donating blood regularly?

Some people actually make a practice of donating blood at the blood bank on a regular basis. Afterwards, one might feel good about doing such a "good deed". You might also wonder if there is a health benefit to donating blood on a regular basis. A study from Finland says there is.

Finland- Donating blood every two months

In a study done in 1997 in Finland, people who regularly donated blood at the blood bank had an 88% decrease in myocardial infarction.(1) This study from Helsinki Finland included 2,862 males aged 42-60 followed for 9 years. Heart attack rates for blood donors was only 0.7%, compared to 12.5% for non-donors.

Another 1997 study from Kansas City showed a 50% reduction in heart attacks in non-smoking male blood donors.(2)

I was intrigued by this information which I learned from Jonathan V. Wright MD in his April newsletter and again presented during his workshop at the Orlando A4M meeting in April 2013.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, may be "the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment," say authors

The active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide may be "the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment," being responsible for a litany of health disorders and diseases including Parkinson's, cancer and autism, according to a new study.

It's "the most popular herbicide on the planet," widely used on crops like corn and soy genetically engineered to be "Roundup Ready," and sprayed on weeds in lawns across the US. But in the peer-reviewed study published last Thursday in the journal Entropy, authors Anthony Samsel, an independent scientist and consultant, and Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at MIT, crush the industry's claims that the herbicide glyphosate is non-toxic and as safe as aspirin.

An antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhea - now considered a superbug - has some analysts saying that the bacteria's effects could match those of AIDS.

"This might be a lot worse than AIDS in the short run because the bacteria is more aggressive and will affect more people quickly," said Alan Christianson, a doctor of naturopathic medicine.

"Getting gonorrhea from this strain might put someone into septic shock and death in a matter of days," Christianson said. "This is very dangerous."

"It's an emergency situation," said William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors. "As time moves on, it's getting more and more dangerous."

A hidden epidemic is poisoning America. The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them. We can't escape it in our cars. It's in cities and suburbs. It afflicts rich and poor, young and old. And there's a reason why you've never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name - and no antidote.

The culprit behind this silent killer is lead. And vinyl. And formaldehyde. And asbestos. And Bisphenol A. And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised "better living through chemistry," but instead produced a toxic stew that has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the United States into one grand unnatural experiment.

Today, we are all unwitting subjects in the largest set of drug trials ever. Without our knowledge or consent, we are testing thousands of suspected toxic chemicals and compounds, as well as new substances whose safety is largely unproven and whose effects on human beings are all but unknown. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) itself has begun monitoring our bodies for 151 potentially dangerous chemicals, detailing the variety of pollutants we store in our bones, muscle, blood, and fat.

None of the companies introducing these new chemicals has even bothered to tell us we're part of their experiment. None of them has asked us to sign consent forms or explained that they have little idea what the long-term side effects of the chemicals they've put in our environment - and so our bodies - could be. Nor do they have any clue as to what the synergistic effects of combining so many novel chemicals inside a human body in unknown quantities might produce.

An influential group of worldwide cancer experts has warned that the astronomical prices charged by drug companies are in effect condemning some patients to death.

More than 100 leading cancer specialists have accused the world's drug industry of "profiteering" from cancer patients in the same way that unscrupulous food vendors raise the price of basic food stuffs after a natural disaster.

The authors of the article, which appeared in the journal Blood, are all specialists in blood cancer. Blood cancers, such as Leukemia, have been proven to be very responsive to cancer drugs.

The specialists are keen to get the message across that they understand that drug companies must make a profit on what they do, but the profit should be in relation to the money invested and should not take advantage of people with life threatening medical conditions.

"What determines a morally justifiable 'just price' for a cancer drug? A reasonable drug price should maintain healthy pharmaceutical industry profits without being viewed as 'profiteering'. This term [profiteering] may apply to the trend of high drug prices where a life threatening medical condition is the disaster," the specialists wrote in the report.

Joanne Webster, professor of parasite epidemiology at Imperial College London, explains that many parasites favor the brain, "because it shelters them from the full fury of the immune system". But, she says, "it also gives them direct access to the machinery to alter the host's behavior".

The Telegraph reported that,

There is a single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, which is found in domestic cats, and is estimated to infect 350,000 people a year in Britain. Its effect on humans became the obsession of Jaroslav Flegr, professor of evolutionary biology at Charles University in Prague, who linked it with disturbed behaviours such as reckless driving and a greater risk of suicide. Rats infected with Toxo, as scientists at Imperial College discovered, actually like the smell of cat urine, instead of being terrified by it. And studies at Stanford University in California have revealed the neural changes that lay behind this transformation.

Toxo - which comes in the form of tiny single-celled cysts - was clustered in two areas of the brain: those controlling fear and pleasure. Pathways that normally responded to the smell of cat urine with alarm had been damped down, while the pleasure hormone dopamine, normally released in response to female rodent urine, was now triggered by the whiff of cat. Most recently, researchers have shown that Toxo's DNA includes two genes that boost dopamine production. Human brains have plenty of similarities with those of rats and mice, suggesting that the greater number of car crashes among those with Toxo infection could be due to it damping fear responses.

For nine months, the umbilical cord is a lifeline between mother and baby, sending oxygenated blood to the growing fetus. Once the baby is born, usually within the first minute of birth, that connection is often quickly severed. Mounting evidence suggests that clamping the cord within seconds of the baby's arrival deprives it of vital blood from the placenta -- which can lead to iron deficiency and anemia in later life.

Medical bodies, senior doctors and the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) want maternity staff to instead leave the umbilical cord untouched for anything from 30 seconds to whenever it stops pulsating naturally - usually within two to five minutes.

"The later the better," said Midwife Naomi Karns. "Between four to five minutes is the ideal delay period in cutting the cord to maximize therapeutic potential."

The umbilical cord carries nutrients and oxygen from mom-to-be's placenta to the developing infant's abdomen. (It leaves a life-long impression in the form of the belly button.) When the practice of immediate cord clamping first began about a half century ago, the value of cord blood, especially its stem cells, which can develop into a suite of other cells, was not known. But now we know that stem cells have many therapeutic properties.

A review, which appears in an issue of the Cochrane Collaboration, found that delaying the clamping of the umbilical cord for up to 120 seconds in premature infants can lead to an increased number of red blood cells, the need for fewer transfusions due to anemia or low blood pressure, and a decreased risk of bleeding in the brain.

Anemia - a disorder which means you have a less than the normal quantity of hemoglobin in the blood - can later be associated with brain development and can affect cognitive ability.

It's important for parents to at least consider the potential dangers and lack of necessity of vaccinations. Now some pediatricians are withholding treatment for children whose parents' have rejected all or some vaccinations - this simply isn't right. But it's important not to cave in to those pressures, and continue researching vaccines from multiple sources.

Vaccine Advocate Says Children Can Receive 10,000 Vaccines at Once

An example of, let's call it lunacy, from high places in the vaccine industry, Dr. Paul Offit once publicly remarked that children can safely receive 100,000 vaccines at once. He later changed that to 10,000. Unfortunately, this leading pediatrician who holds influential University and Clinical positions has media clout and has been interviewed often.

He has written publications refuting vaccination dangers and condemning those who refuse vaccinations for their children, even to the point of encouraging pediatricians to not provide care for children not vaccinated.

Energy-intensive industrial farming practices that rely on toxic chemicals and genetically engineered crops are not just undermining public health - they're destroying the planet.

Here's how:

Generating Massive Greenhouse Gas Pollution (CO2, Methane, Nitrous Oxide) and Global Warming; While Promoting False Solutions Such as Industrial Biofuels, So-Called Drought-Resistant Crops, and Genetically Engineered Trees

Evaluations of corn grown for ethanol show that whatever reduction in emissions you get from burning corn instead of oil in the gas tank is more than offset by the fact that producing biofuel from corn requires as much fuel as it could replace.

Corn production, like the production of all of the crops (corn, cotton, canola, soy, and now, sugar beets and alfalfa) that Monsanto has so successfully industrialized through its business model of selling patented GMO seeds to increase the use of its pesticides, is very fossil fuel intensive.

But that's just the beginning of Monsanto's contribution to agriculture's green house gas emissions. With ever-increasing acreage, where are all those GMO crops going? They're being fed to animals, and when you look at emissions from factory farms, you'll wish we burned them in the gas tank instead!