BiG TeA PaRtY

Plant Foods For Preserving Muscle Mass

The acid or alkaline properties of food are not something the average American eater ever takes into account. But it’s a big issue in many Asian food philosophies. Now some scientific studies are proving there may be something to this. A list of potassium rich foods is at the end. Love, Elizabeth Fiend

Source: ScienceDaily

Fruits and vegetables contain essential vitamins, minerals and fiber that are key to good health. Now, a newly released study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS)-funded scientists suggests plant foods also may preserve muscle mass in older men and women.

The study was led by physician and nutrition specialist Bess Dawson-Hughes at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, Mass.

The typical American diet is rich in protein, cereal grains and other acid-producing foods. In general, such diets generate tiny amounts of acid each day. With aging, a mild but slowly increasing metabolic “acidosis” develops, according to the researchers.

Acidosis appears to trigger a muscle-wasting response. So the researchers looked at links between measures of lean body mass and diets relatively high in potassium-rich, alkaline-residue producing fruits and vegetables. Such diets could help neutralize acidosis. Foods can be considered alkaline or acidic based on the residues they produce in the body, rather than whether they are alkaline or acidic themselves. For example, acidic grapefruits are metabolized to alkaline residues.

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Your Lifestyle, Your Genes and Cancer

NEW RESEARCH EXPLORES THE COMPLEX INTERACTIONS THAT CAUSE OUR MOST DREADED DISEASE

~ A look into steps you can take to reduce your risk ~

by Robert A. Weinberg, Ph.D., and Anthony L. Komaroff, M.D. (Posted by VaLerie K)
NEWSWEEK

We’ve known for a long time that a high-fat diet, obesity and lack of exercise can increase the risk of developing heart disease and type 2 diabetes, two conditions that affect millions of Americans. What we are finding out now is that those same lifestyle factors also play an important role in cancer. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can do something about your lifestyle. If we grew thinner, exercised regularly, avoided diets rich in red meat (substituting poultry, fish or vegetable sources of protein) and ate diets rich in fruits and vegetables, and stopped using tobacco, we would prevent 70 percent of all cancers.

The strongest evidence of the importance of lifestyle in cancer is that most common cancers arise at dramatically different rates in different parts of the globe. Several cancers that are extremely common in the United States—colon, prostate and breast cancer—are relatively rare in other parts of the world, occurring only 1/10th or 1/20th as often. Equally striking, when people migrate from other parts of the world to the United States, within a generation their cancer rates approach those of us whose families have lived in this country for a long time. Even if people in other parts of the world stay put, but adopt a U.S. lifestyle, their risk of cancer rises; as Japanese have embraced Western habits, their rates of colon, breast and prostate cancer have skyrocketed.

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Water crisis to be biggest world risk

You think we got it bad now with the high oil prices. Just you wait until we run out of water!

Man, it’s gonna get really nasty!

Posted by: Elizabeth Fiend

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Source: Daily Telegraph

A catastrophic water shortage could prove an even bigger threat to mankind this century than soaring food prices and the relentless exhaustion of energy reserves, according to a panel of global experts at the Goldman Sachs “Top Five Risks” conference.

An iceberg melts in Kulusuk Bay, eastern Greenland. The melting of Himalayan glaciers threatens the water supply to the world’s rivers

Nicholas (Lord) Stern, author of the Government’s Stern Review on the economics of climate change, warned that underground aquifers could run dry at the same time as melting glaciers play havoc with fresh supplies of usable water.

“The are retreating, and they are the sponge that holds the water back in the rainy season. We’re facing the risk of extreme run-off, with water running straight into the Bay of Bengal and taking a lot of topsoil with it,” he said.

“A few hundred square miles of the Himalayas are the source for all the major rivers of Asia - the Ganges, the Yellow River, the Yangtze - where 3bn people live. That’s almost half the world’s population,” he said.

Lord Stern, the World Bank’s former chief economist, said governments had been slow to accept the awful truth that usable water is running out. Fresh rainfall is not enough to refill the underground water tables.

“Water is not a renewable resource. People have been mining it without restraint because it has not been priced properly,” he said.

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posted by: VaLerie K

How to Keep Your Feet Happy

by Allison Aubrey, NPR

If you’ve ever had heel pain when you first put your bare feet on the floor after waking up in the morning, it’s very likely the beginnings of a common condition known as plantar fasciitis. And shoes can contribute to the problem.

Walking Down a Painful Path

Elizabeth Kinkel has never had heel pain or heard much about plantar fasciitis.

But a quick inspection of the 24-year-old architect’s work shoes of choice do not make podiatrist Steve Pribut happy.

When we approached her on the street in Washington, D.C., she was on her way to work and wearing flip-flops.

“They’re pretty comfortable,” she says, adding that they keep her feet cool. “I just wear them walking back and forth to work, and then put on heels once I get into office.”

Pribut, who is not a fan of flip-flops, interrupts her, “I notice a Band-Aid on that foot. Is that from a heel?”

“Yeah,” says Kinkel, “they’re from some really cute wedge sandals. But they dig in because they’re new.”

Kneeling down for a quick examination, Pribut explains that both of Kinkel’s workday shoe choices — the flip-flops and the backless sandals — pose the same potential problem and could lead to plantar fasciitis.

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A City Committed to Recycling Is Ready for More

By FELICITY BARRINGER

Source: New York Times

Posted by: Elizabeth Fiend

SAN FRANCISCO — Mayor Gavin Newsom is competitive about many things, garbage included. When the city found out a few weeks ago that it was keeping 70 percent of its disposable waste out of local landfills, he embraced the statistic the way other mayors embrace winning sports teams, improved test scores or declining crime rates.

But the city wants more.

So Mr. Newsom will soon be sending the city’s Board of Supervisors a proposal that would make the recycling of cans, bottles, paper, yard waste and food scraps mandatory instead of voluntary, on the pain of having garbage pickups suspended.

“Without that, we don’t think we can get to 75 percent,” the mayor said of the proposal. His aides said it stood a good chance of passing.

How does he describe his fixation with recycling dominance? “It’s purposefulness that could otherwise be construed as ego,” Mr. Newsom said. “You want to be the greatest city. You want to be the leading city. You want to be on the cutting edge. I’m very intense about it.”

In a more businesslike tone, Jared Blumenfeld, the director of the city’s environmental programs, addressed one of the main reasons the city keeps up the pressure to recycle. “The No. 1 export for the West Coast of the United States is scrap paper,” Mr. Blumenfeld said, explaining that the paper is sent to China and returns as packaging that holds the sneakers, electronics and toys sold in big-box stores.

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If The Meat On Your Plate Was From a Cloned Animal, Would You Eat It?

Cloned animals and their offspring have been declared safe to eat; how soon will their meat be on sale in the US?

by Ed Pilkington
The Guardian
April 21 2008

Posted by: VaLerie K

It is an absurdly pretty setting. A row of conifers borders snowbound fields that stretch for miles to a low horizon. Birds are nesting. Magnificent Angus cattle meander under a metallic blue sky, with the sweet smell of silage hanging over everything.

A sign nailed to one of the cattle pens provides the first clue that this picture postcard view is not as quaintly old-fashioned as it looks: “For Biosecurity: Authorised Personnel Only.” The second clue comes in the form of two young red Holstein heifers, identified by eartags as numbers 306 and 307, sitting quietly on a bed of straw. By their perfect bone structure and proportions, a breeder could tell that these are very fine animals; to me they are just absurdly pretty, like their surroundings. Their fluffy rust-red-and-white coats and pink wet noses are programmed to make you smile involuntarily. Then you notice that they are the spitting image of each other, the same white blazes running down their foreheads and the same doe-like eyes.

These are not twins, though they do have identical genetic makeup. They were created from separate embryos containing the DNA extracted from a prize-winning red Holstein cow, Miss Leader Red Rose. In short, 306 and 307 are clones.

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Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Source: The New York Times

Posted by: Elizabeth Fiend

Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya.

In the United States, FreshDirect proclaims kiwi season has expanded to “All year!” now that Italy has become the world’s leading supplier of New Zealand’s national fruit, taking over in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.

Food has moved around the world since Europeans brought tea from China, but never at the speed or in the amounts it has over the last few years. Consumers in not only the richest nations but, increasingly, the developing world expect food whenever they crave it, with no concession to season or geography.

Increasingly efficient global transport networks make it practical to bring food before it spoils from distant places where labor costs are lower. And the penetration of mega-markets in nations from China to Mexico with supply and distribution chains that gird the globe — like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco — has accelerated the trend.

But the movable feast comes at a cost: pollution — especially carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas — from transporting the food.

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