Health & Wellness
The world of meat-eaters got a rude awakening earlier this year when it was found that meat passed off as beef in the U.K. was actually horse meat. But, if you thought meat in the U.S. was safe from secret ingredients, the bliss of your ignorance may soon be shattered. A recent analysis into several different fast food hamburgers found relatively little meat, and a whole host of other "stuff".
According to GreenMedInfo, the study was to determine what exactly Americans are eating when they consume their 5 billion hamburgers annually. The burgers, from 8 different fast food establishments, were analyzed by weight and then microscopically for tissue types.
Their analysis found that water constituted about half of the weight of the burgers, with water content ranging from 37.7% to 62.4%, with an average of 49%. Meat, what you'd expect to make up the majority of the burgers, was found to be as low as 2.1% in some cases, to the maximum of 14.8% in others.
Over a thousand pedestrians had to make a trip to the emergency room in 2010 for 
injuries related to using their cell phone and walking.
According to a new nationwide study published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, more than 1,500 pedestrians were injured while walking due to cell phone distractions. This number has more than doubled since 2005, even though the total number of pedestrian injuries dropped during that time. The researchers from this study even believe that the number is actually higher than results show.
"If current trends continue, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of injuries to pedestrians caused by cell phones doubles again between 2010 and 2015," said Jack Nasar, co-author of the study and professor of city and regional planning at The Ohio State University. "The role of cell phones in distracted driving injuries and deaths gets a lot of attention and rightly so, but we need to also consider the danger cell phone use poses to pedestrians."
Nasar and colleagues found that people between the ages 16- and 25-years-old were most likely to be injured from distracted walking, and most were hurt while talking rather than texting. The team used data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) to make the finding. They examined data for seven years involving injuries related to cell phone use for pedestrians in public areas.
© Thinkstock
injuries related to using their cell phone and walking.
According to a new nationwide study published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, more than 1,500 pedestrians were injured while walking due to cell phone distractions. This number has more than doubled since 2005, even though the total number of pedestrian injuries dropped during that time. The researchers from this study even believe that the number is actually higher than results show.
"If current trends continue, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of injuries to pedestrians caused by cell phones doubles again between 2010 and 2015," said Jack Nasar, co-author of the study and professor of city and regional planning at The Ohio State University. "The role of cell phones in distracted driving injuries and deaths gets a lot of attention and rightly so, but we need to also consider the danger cell phone use poses to pedestrians."
Nasar and colleagues found that people between the ages 16- and 25-years-old were most likely to be injured from distracted walking, and most were hurt while talking rather than texting. The team used data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) to make the finding. They examined data for seven years involving injuries related to cell phone use for pedestrians in public areas.
© Thinkstock
A new study from the Mayo Clinic on our 'Medication Nation' showed almost 70 percent of Americans are being prescribed at least one prescription drug.
According to the study, published in the clinic's own Mayo Clinic Proceedings journal, antibiotics, antidepressants, and opioid painkillers are the top three groups of prescribed drugs in the US.
Study co-author Jennifer St. Sauver said the study provides insight into the prescribing habits of doctors, which may or may not be indicative of health trends.
"Often when people talk about health conditions they're talking about chronic conditions such as heart disease or diabetes," said St. Sauver, an epidemiologist at the clinic. "However, the second most common prescription was for antidepressants - that suggests mental health is a huge issue and is something we should focus on. And the third most common drugs were opioids, which is a bit concerning considering their addicting nature."
In the study, the researchers used information from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, a health research collaboration that includes medical records from people living in Minnesota's Olmstead County. According to study authors, the study cohort represented almost 99 percent of those living in the county and the statistics from the project are comparable to those from other US populations.
Now that the mainstream media is catching on to the public sentiment against GMO food, or at least against unlabeled GMO food, to the tune of millions of Americans who made it a point to drag themselves out of their homes to protest Monsanto last month (as well as at least 40 additional countries), inevitably the indictment will be made: "the anti-GMO movement is "unscientific."" Is that really so?
What we do know is that the unintended consequences of the recombinant DNA process employed to create genetically engineering organisms are beyond the ability of present-day science to comprehend. This is largely due to the post-Human Genome Project revelation that the holy grail of molecular biology, the overly-simplified 'one gene > one trait' model, is absolutely false.
© George Frey/Getty Images
A hazardous material clean-up crew lift up an oil soaked boom and move it to another location in a pond in Liberty Park on June 12, 2010 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The oil pipe owned by Chevron Oil Company broke several miles upstream and spewed out a significant amount of oil into Red Butte Stream before they were able to shut it off. At one point 50 gallons a minute was coming from the eight inch pipe.
A hazardous material clean-up crew lift up an oil soaked boom and move it to another location in a pond in Liberty Park on June 12, 2010 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The oil pipe owned by Chevron Oil Company broke several miles upstream and spewed out a significant amount of oil into Red Butte Stream before they were able to shut it off. At one point 50 gallons a minute was coming from the eight inch pipe.
As a result, residents of the three communities received different levels of protection.
No houses were evacuated in Salt Lake City, Utah, where a ruptured pipeline leaked 33,000 gallons of medium grade crude oil before it was discovered on the morning of June 12, 2010. The oil ran down Red Butte Creek, past neighborhoods where windows were left open in the summer heat. The fumes, which are known to cause drowsiness, left some people so lethargic that they didn't wake up until after noon.
In Marshall, Mich. officials called for a voluntary evacuation after more than a million gallons of heavy Canadian crude spilled into the Kalamazoo River on July 25, 2010. But they agonized over the decision for four days before making that recommendation.
In Mayflower, Ark. authorities quickly evacuated 22 families after a broken pipeline leaked about 200,000 gallons of heavy crude on March 29, 2013. But people living in the same subdivision, just a few blocks away, were not asked to leave. Neither were the residents of the lakeside community where the oil eventually pooled and where the cleanup continues today.
After each of these spills, people complained of headaches, nausea and respiratory problems - short-term symptoms that health experts say are common after any chemical spill and usually disappear as the air clears.
© greenglobaltravel.com
So what do we know? Very little, as it happens.
We know that there is a field with wheat that has been grown from genetically engineered seeds. We know Monsanto says it is shocked that this has happened, while cynics (and I'm one of them) believe that Monsanto is shocked like Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) was when he found out there was actually gambling going on at Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca.
I'm not going to litigate the whole GMO issue here. For one thing, it would take way too long and would be way too complicated. For another, I'm not nearly smart enough to understand it all, much less explain it.
As Olympians go for the gold in Vancouver, even the steeliest are likely to experience that familiar feeling of "butterflies" in the stomach. Underlying this sensation is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our "second brain".
A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body.
The idea that fat caused harm was never based on any facts and has now been proven to be completely false.
But yet this bias against perfectly healthy foods lingers on... foods that have been demonized for the sole reason that they are naturally high in saturated fats.
Here are 4 foods that were considered "dangerous" due to their fat content, but are actually extremely healthy.
© nunro
Being vegetarian saves cows' lives, but threatens the future of other sentient creatures.
Being vegetarian saves cows' lives, but threatens the future of other sentient creatures.
Renowned ethicist Peter Singer says if there is a range of ways of feeding ourselves, we should choose the way that causes the least unnecessary harm to animals. Most animal rights advocates say this means we should eat plants rather than animals.
It takes somewhere between two to ten kilos of plants, depending on the type of plants involved, to produce one kilo of animal. Given the limited amount of productive land in the world, it would seem to some to make more sense to focus our culinary attentions on plants, because we would arguably get more energy per hectare for human consumption. Theoretically this should also mean fewer sentient animals would be killed to feed the ravenous appetites of ever more humans.
But before scratching rangelands-produced red meat off the "good to eat" list for ethical or environmental reasons, let's test these presumptions.
Published figures suggest that, in Australia, producing wheat and other grains results in:
- at least 25 times more sentient animals being killed per kilogram of useable protein
- more environmental damage, and
- a great deal more animal cruelty than does farming red meat.
© CP Archive
Chronic wasting disease is so well established in Saskatchewan and Alberta that the federal government and some provinces are rethinking how to deal with what is commonly known as CWD.
Chronic wasting disease is so well established in Saskatchewan and Alberta that the federal government and some provinces are rethinking how to deal with what is commonly known as CWD.
The fatal infectious disease is so well established in Saskatchewan and Alberta that the federal government and some provinces are rethinking how to deal with what is commonly known as CWD.
In 2005, Ottawa announced a national strategy to control chronic wasting disease in the hope of finding ways to eradicate it. Now the emphasis is shifting to preventing CWD from spreading, especially in the wild.
"We have to realize that we may not be able to eradicate this disease currently from Canada, given that we don't have any effective tools, so we may be looking at switching from eradication to control," said Penny Greenwood, national manager of domestic disease control for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The agency says it is working with the provinces and the game-ranching industry to come up with a better plan, perhaps by next spring.
"We feel that the current program that we have had in place for chronic wasting disease ... is not effective in achieving its goals," Greenwood said.
CWD is caused by abnormal proteins called prions and is similar to mad cow disease. There is no vaccine against it. Symptoms can take months or years to develop. They include weight loss, tremors, lack of co-ordination, paralysis and, ultimately, death.
Comment: Learn more about the gut-brain connection and how this important relationship affects our mood, well being and behavior:
The Neuroscience of the Gut
Brain, heart and gut minds
A gut check for many ailments
Are Gut Bacteria In Charge?
Pay attention to your body's 'second brain'
'Knowing it in your gut' is real": The state of your immune system and your gut bacteria influences your personality
The Real Butterfly in Your Stomach: Scientists Explore the Possibility of a "Second Brain" in Our Gut
Mind-Gut Connection: Why Intestinal Bacteria May Have Important Effects on Your Brain
Link between gut bacteria and behavior: That anxiety may be in your gut, not in your head