August 2011
38 posts
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What's behind blue and red fruit? →
The blue pigments in blue berries, black berries, and grapes are anthocyanins, which are also responsible for red coloration in fruits like strawberries and cherries. Under acidic conditions, anthocyanins appear red and under basic conditions, they appear blue.
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The Obesity Epidemic in the United States is... →
Meats, eggs, and nut kcals decreased 4%.
Dairy kcals decreased 3%.
Percentage of fruit kcals stayed the same.
Percentage of vegetable kcals stayed the same.
Flour and cereal product kcals increased 3%.
Added fat kcals are up 7%,
Added sugars kcals decreased 1%
Total energy intake in 1970 averaged 2172 kcal. By 2007 this hiked up to 2775 kcal, a 603 kcal increase.
Taking a hard look at...
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Low Vitamin D and Diabetes →
Researchers measured Vitamin D levels in over 5,000 people without diabetes. After five years, researchers measured Vitamin D levels again and determined that 200 of the participants had developed diabetes. They found that 6 in 100 people with low Vitamin D levels developed diabetes, versus 3 in 100 with regular levels that developed diabetes. When they factored in diabetes risk factors, the...
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FDA Finally Removed Inorganic Arsenic from Chicken... →
“The agency said it recently conducted a study of 100 broiler chickens that detected inorganic arsenic at higher levels in the livers of chickens treated with 3-Nitro compared with untreated chickens … Pfizer said sale of 3-Nitro would be stopped by early July in order to allow animal producers to transition to other treatments.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has...
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Your Multivitamin May Contain Toxic Selenite →
According to PAN, a database for pesticide chemicals, both sodium selenite and sodium selenate are classified as “Highly Toxic,” based on oral administration trials using rabbits and rats. And according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the highest allowable level of selenium in public drinking water is 50 parts per billion, which is equivalent to 50 micrograms, dry...
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Dr. Jack Thrasher on the Health Dangers of Molds →
This is an interesting article, and something to consider if you have persistent symptoms of a variety of potential types
Frequent headachesDepressionChronic fatigueAllergiesNeurological problems; poor concentration and forgetfulnessSkin rashesStomach and digestive problems, such as dysbiosis, leaky gut, and frequent diarrheaChronic sinusitisJoint aches and painsMuscle wastingFrequent feversAsthma...
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Is Sugar Toxic? Does fructose contribute to... →
Feed animals enough pure fructose or enough sugar, and their livers convert the fructose into fat — the saturated fatty acid, palmitate, to be precise, that supposedly gives us heart disease when we eat it, by raising LDL cholesterol. The fat accumulates in the liver, and insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome follow.
Michael Pagliassotti, a Colorado State University biochemist who did many...
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Sucrose and HFCS-55 (high fructose corn syrup)... →
Sweetness comparison for selected nutritive sweeteners
Sugars
Sweetness intensity (crystalline)
Relative sweetness (10% syrup)
Absolute sweetness (syrups)
Fructose 180 117 —
Sucrose 100 100 100
HFCS-55 — 99 97
Glucose 74–82 65 —
You’ll note that this contrasts with how fructose crystals are much sweeter.
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Why do avocados turn burn after you cut them? →
“During the preparation of avocado puree and guacamole, the polyphenol substrates are brought into intimate contact with polyphenolase enzymes and oxygen, resulting in undesirable darkening of the avocado flesh within several hours.”
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More evidence that if you put on sunscreen, all... →
Recent in vitro and animal studies have reported estrogen-like activity of chemicals used in sunscreen preparations. We investigated whether the three sunscreens benzophenone-3 (BP-3), octyl-methoxycinnamate (OMC), and 3-(4-methylbenzylidene) camphor (4-MBC) were absorbed and influenced endogenous reproductive hormone levels in humans after topical application. In this 2-wk single-blinded study...
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How long does it take to work off long-term sleep... →
it can take several weeks to fully work off a sleep debt; there were some studies done on this by Wehr at NIMH in the 90s. I think this is their main paper:
http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/265/4/R846.abstract
They found that if they took otherwise healthy people and put them in an environment where they could sleep up to 14 hours per day, they slept well over their baseline amount (as...
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Pesticides are linked to multiple problems :... →
http://www.safelawns.org/blog/index.php/2011/05/researchers-find-link-between-third-pesticide-and-parkinsons-disease/
IN 2009, researchers at UCLA linked Parkinson’s Disease (PD) to two chemicals commonly sprayed on crops to fight pests. The study didn’t examine farmers, but rather focused on people living near the farm fields where the chemicals maneb and paraquat were sprayed. They found...
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Avoid pesticides for a healthy brain →
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/oem.2009.047811
Considering that the oldest farmers started their occupational exposure in the 1970s and that latency is important, pesticides used in vineyards during the 1970s and 1980s are of primary concern for the effects we observed. During that period, the most probable fungicides used were dithiocarbamates, phtalimides, dicarboximides, triazoles and inorganic...
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Fructose and Sucrose content of vegetables →
click through for the table
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How fructose and HFCS increase uric acid and give...
So this article below introduces the idea of fructose and its effects on Uric acid. It also mentions some things I’ve talked about before about how fructose doesn’t provoke an insulin response.
Fructose elevates uric acid, which decreases nitric oxide, raises angiotensin, and causes your smooth muscle cells to contract, thereby raising your blood pressure and potentially damaging...
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What sugars are in coconut water? →
Research by Kuberski6 identified the sugars contained in coconut water, detecting glucose, sucrose and fructose in the proportion of approximately 50, 35 and 15%, respectively, but their study did not relate whether these proportions remained constant during different months. The current study found that the proportions of these sugars varied depending on the stage of maturation of the coconuts:...
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150 lb Body Builders eat 3 lbs of meat equivalent...
It has been speculated that the minimum protein intake required to promote muscle gain is about 1g/per pound body weight. Bodybuilders often consume 2g/per pound body weight per day. This means that a 150lb bodybuilder may consume 300g protein (equivalent to three pounds of meat or 50 eggs) per day. That’s a lot of protein to shove in…
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Food Allergies and the Paleolithic Diet; Data on...
This site has some data on food allergies
The incidence of Food Allergy in Australian Children
(Based on David Hill’s report, Royal Children Hospital, Melbourne)
Egg 3.2%
Cow’s Milk 2%
Peanut 1.9%
Sesame Seed 0.42%
Cashew Nut 0.33%
Hazelnut 0.18%
Walnut 0.18%
Brazil Nut 0.07%
Almond 0.02%
Wheat 0.15%
Soy 0.10%
Fish 0.07%
Multiple Food Allergies
Based on David...
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How Long Does It Take to Digest Food? Why does it... →
This site says after full digestion…
the food has spent between 30 minutes and 2 hours in the stomach and between 2 and 6 hours in the small intestine and 90% of the nutrients have been extracted. The left over material has lots of water and sodium left in it. The body wants to reclaim these substances before defecation; food takes 72 hours to be processed in the large intestine. The...
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That alcohol in your mouthwash doesn't help fight...
Alcohol [is used as a] solvent (no it isn’t there to fight bacteria). It also unfortunately dries the mouth out which is counterproductive so most companies are shying away from this
Here is a link on alcohol based mouthwash and oral cancer.
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Wait until 30 minutes after a meal to brush your... →
Anytime you eat or drink anything that is sugary, the bacteria in your mouth feed on these sugars to make acids. These bacterial acids cause the pH in your mouth to drop below normal levels and make your tooth enamel “softer” and more vulnerable to abrasion. For most people the pH at which your tooth enamel begins to demineralize is about pH ~5.5. The process of bringing your oral pH...
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Acidic Mouthwashes are Eroding Enamel →
The click through has a good list of which mouthwashes are highest in Ph and thus least likely to damage teeth.
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“Alcohol kills germs. True statement… but an incomplete statement....”
– When you’re sick is it good or bad to drink alcohol? - Quora
Interesting as people use alcohol to sterilize etc.
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How does the paleo diet philosophy address the... →
The assertion that “most paleolithic humans never lived beyond 35 years old” is misleading; it would be more accurate to say that the median life expectancy of Paleolithic humans is about 35 years.
A slightly better way to frame the question is “How does the health and longevity of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers compare with that of the Neolithic farmers who succeeded...
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4 studies showing the effectiveness of the...
It’s not just about losing weight. It’s about getting healthier as measured a number of different ways. Take a look….
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/10/paleolithic-diet-clinical-trials.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/10/paleolithic-diet-clinical-trials-part.html
...
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How Cooking Affects Vitamin A →
food preparation and processing can reduce the provitamin A carotenoid content of foods by up to 90% Deep-frying, prolonged cooking, combining several preparation and processing methods, baking, and pickling (with the possible exception of the pickling of olives) all result in substantial losses of provitamin A carotenoids β-Carotene is up to three times more available from cooked and pureed than...
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Drinking & driving laws are stricter outside the... →
The legal limit, once as high as .15% in some states, is now .08% in all 50 states. Some experts still consider it generous. Reaction time starts to slow at only half that amount, and much of the world sets stricter limits. It’s .02% in China, .03% in most of India and .05% in much of Europe.
Drinkers who think they can tell when they’ve had enough are very often wrong....
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If you live within 1.5 miles of an innerstate... →
Reviewing the birth records of more than 81,000 infants, researchers found that the risk of having a baby born before 30 weeks of gestation increased 128 percent for women who live near the worst traffic-generated air pollution.
In addition, preeclampsia increased 42 percent for women who lived in those areas, according to the study, published online in the scientific journal Environmental...
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Too much fructose leads to weight gain & diabetes.... →
fructose is “isocaloric but not isometabolic.” This means you can have the identical amount of calories from fructose or glucose, fructose and protein, or fructose and fat, but the metabolic effect will be entirely different.
fructose consumption leads to decreased signaling to the central nervous system from two hormones, leptin and insulin, both of which play key roles in hunger...
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If you run a food or health blog&want me to pay...
