Manal Elfakhani wrote . . . . . . The holiday season is in full swing, and with it comes time for family celebration while gathering around tables full of delicious foods with seasonal spices! But it can also be a stressful time of year, with substantial meal preparation as well as stress in the […]
via Thirteen Ways to Keep Free Radicals Away, and Why It’s So Important — Cooking with Kathy Man
Recent headlines highlight a study conducted by the USDA investigating if honey has the same negative health impacts as sugar and high fructose corn syrup. The study by Dr. Susan K. Raatz concludes that any source of sugar will have the same health impact; that sugar is sugar. An article discussing the study was published in the Washington Post by reporter Peter Whoriskey entitled “Honey isn’t as healthy as we think”. Subsequent articles followed with headlines such as “Honey just as bad as high-fructose corn sweetener” and “A New Study Comes Down Hard on Honey“, among dozens of others from SHAPE, Women’s Health to reposting’s on facebook and twitter by the Kitchn and even writer David Lebovitz. That was enough. Continue reading
“The main problem with the past decades’ low-fat trend is that it has been misinterpreted.”
That is how the Los Angeles Times article begins and then it is elaborated upon by Dr. David Heber, founding director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition: “There is no real low-fat controversy, the problem wasn’t low fat; the problem was that when we lowered fat content, we increased carbohydrate and sugar content.”
Here’s the problem with that statement and they say it themselves: “If you cut back on saturated fat, you’re going to replace it with either unsaturated fat or carbohydrates. The type of replacement can have a major impact on health outcomes.” (at the time of the advice, they believed “fat was fat” btw) Continue reading
Rosie O’Donnell on a recent episode of “The View” shared her experience with a near fatal heart attack and its association with her obesity. Rosie has since had surgery to address her obesity, which she refers to as the disease that caused her heart problems, health problems and almost destroyed her life. However, is obesity a disease?
This is a tricky concept. The way Rosie and her doctor spoke about it on the show was a little off to me. That obesity causes heart disease and diabetes. I do not think its quite that linear, direct or simple. And it begs the question what is causing obesity? Continue reading
Several articles have popped up in major News, Medical and University sites about Cancer with headlines such as “Random gene mutations primary cause of cancer” and “Bad luck, not genes or the environment, cause for many cancers, researchers find“.
The most provocative aspect of the study by Tomasetti and Vogelstein is not what is causing cancer, we know that certain environmental carcinogens like smoking can be responsible for cancer. Rather its that we just learned definitively that most cancers are not coming from direct and linear impacts. The either/or argument that cancer is either “just genetic” or “just a single environmental impact” has been officially squashed. What does that leave? Well according to the lead researcher: pure chance. Continue reading
My Sunday morning peruse of recipes and news led me to click on Jamie Oliver’s post “Dairy & gluten-free Chocolate Chip and Avocado Cookies”. It started off very politically correct and Jamie (correction: This was written by Bee Berrie of Bee’s Bakery) carefully skirting any political do’s or don’ts of agreement on removing such things as gluten and dairy and just discussing the joys of learning something new. This is the way many of us live our lives exploring options and respecting others curiosity and even issues. She does such a great job of expressing this until she gets to one sentence. “… butter is high in saturated fat – the bad type of fat that can increase the levels of cholesterol in your bloodstream”. I don’t blame Jamie Bee she is only repeating what she has heard. Replacing or getting larger variety of fats is healthy for us. But calling saturated fat “bad” is like yelling at your dog or your lover that he/she is bad when they misbehave. Continue reading
A recent question “What exactly is good food?”:
Here’s my reply…
For me I take the philosophy of a “stress approach” and systems (it depends on the system) approach to good food. So fats/sugars can be physiologically stressful, so balance those main (high quality sourced) macronutrients (meat-carb-fat) with quality micronutrients (whole fruit, vegetables, herbs) or traditional sauce condiments that include fermented foods or dairy (probiotic source). This creates a “balanced” meal for our systems that is also delicious!
The media loves ‘your genes are to blame’ stories http://t.co/WqGo8t1v1X despite the fact that they’re scientifically empty
— Vaughan Bell (@vaughanbell) March 28, 2014
“MindHacks” writer Vaughan Bell’s tweet subsequently retweeted by “Not Exactly Rocket Science” Blogger Ed Yong states that the media turns “blame your genes” into attention-grabbing headlines. They worry the headlines are misleading the public into thinking they are no longer responsible for their problems. That the articles are for those who want to absolve themselves of responsibility for badly behaving toddlers or so they can blame their genes rather than themselves for being a lazy couch potato or binge eating. If we can blame our genes then we are not responsible, right? But where does that thought process come from? Most likely from our instruction that genes are out of our control random things we inherent from our parents. Therefore if genes are to blame, then we, our environment, is not. Those were our choices, either our genes or our environment were to blame for such things.
In defense of the articles, that is not what the authors or researchers seem to be actually saying. Continue reading
The Meal Matters Most 