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>>> John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc. (JBSS), together with its subsidiary, JBSS Ventures, LLC, processes and distributes tree nuts and peanuts in the United States. The company offers raw and processed nuts, including almonds, pecans, peanuts, black walnuts, English walnuts, cashews, macadamia nuts, pistachios, pine nuts, Brazil nuts, and filberts in various styles and seasonings. It also offers peanut butter in various sizes and varieties; snack and trail mixes, salad toppings, snacks, snack bites, dried fruit, and chocolate and yogurt coated products; baking ingredients; bulk food products; sunflower kernels, pepitas, almond and cashew butter, candy and confections, corn snacks, sesame sticks, and other sesame snack products; and various toppings for ice cream and yogurt. In addition, the company operates a retail store. The company provides its products under the Fisher, Orchard Valley Harvest, Squirrel Brand, Southern Style Nuts, and Sunshine Country brands, as well as under various private brands. It serves retailers and wholesalers, and commercial ingredient and contract packaging customers through a network of independent brokers, distributors, and suppliers. John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc. was founded in 1959 and is headquartered in Elgin, Illinois.
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$UURAF level II super thin.
$CVSI THANKS FORCHEAPIES...ADDING MORE!
$HEMP GOING BACK UP ALREADY..WEAK OUT, STRONG HOLDING!
One significant factor behind Sprott’s bullish Silver $21.00 per oucne outlook is the expectation that industrial demand, as the world embraces clean energy and electrification of the auto sector, will be expected to grow. http://thecrux.com/silver-market-could-still-hit-21-an-ounce-says-sprott-asset-management/
>>> How a Manhattan Scion Built a Rural Empire
Stefan Soloviev, heir to a $4.7 billion fortune, will remember “anyone who screwed me over.”
Bloomberg
By Patrick Clark
September 9, 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-09-09/stefan-soloviev-is-one-of-america-s-largest-landowners
Stefan Soloviev is in his “western office”—the passenger seat of a Chevy Silverado bouncing along a dirt road near the Kansas-Colorado border, his farm manager at the wheel.
It’s a far cry from his desk on the 45th floor of 9 W. 57th St. in Manhattan, a skyscraper famed for its Central Park views, private equity tenants and irascible owner—Soloviev’s 91-year-old father, billionaire developer Sheldon Solow.
Out here, the son is the empire builder. In ball cap and T-shirt, flexing elaborately tattooed arms, he works the phone as the four-ton truck kicks up a dust cloud between the wheat fields. His wheat fields.
Soloviev, who adopted the ancestral form of the family name, makes a quick call to his New York banker to trade some ETFs, and he has a word with a Kansas land broker when he spots a “For Sale” sign. Then he gets his Texas-based lawyer on the line to complain that someone else’s grain cars are idling on his railroad tracks. In a quiet moment, he contemplates the infinite horizon and quotes a fragment of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road: “… the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent.”
He’s 44 years old, an heir to a New York real estate fortune worth $4.7 billion, and a self-taught expert on dry-land agriculture.
Over the past two decades, Soloviev has acquired 325,000 acres—a little less than half the area of Rhode Island, or almost 400 Central Parks—enough to make him America’s 31st-largest land owner, according to the Land Report and data compiled by Bloomberg. Soloviev said that includes 135,000 acres of cropland in Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico, and about 190,000 acres of grass for his grazing cattle.
Like others on the Land Report list, Soloviev represents the ongoing shift in the ownership of farms and ranches, most of which have historically been family-owned. The 100 largest owners of private property in the U.S. collectively have 40 million acres, or about 2% of the nation’s land mass. Ten years ago, the top 100 had fewer than 30 million acres.
In the process, they’ve rewritten the rules for valuing agricultural land. Up until the early 1980s, the price of American ranch land was usually calculated as a function of the cattle it could support. Then magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes sold a ranch abutting Yellowstone Park, getting $7 million for land he’d paid $600,000 for a decade earlier, said Jim Taylor, a director at rural real estate firm Hall & Hall.
“The buyers didn’t care how many cows it ran,” Taylor said. “They paid for privacy, aesthetics, fishing, wildlife. All of those things started to figure into the equation.”
Soloviev, who has partnered with his father on some purchases, is rewriting the rules again, buying cheap land on the theory that he can increase production by applying new techniques and economies of scale.
For generations, local farmers plowed their land between crops, wiping out weeds at the cost of precious moisture. Soloviev’s farm workers leave wheat stubble on the ground and spray their fields with chemicals to prevent unwanted growth, preserving moisture for the next growing season. It helps that his company, Crossroads Agriculture, earns discounts by buying herbicides for a much larger operation than its neighbors. At the same time, Soloviev developed a reputation for venturing into parts of the territory that even locals viewed as dry and unproductive.
Soloviev owns farmland and ranches in Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico, along with a short-line railroad in eastern Colorado.
“People always say, ‘Why’s he buying all that junk?’” said Travis Weaver, a Tribune, Kansas-based broker at Farm & Ranch Realty. “For us growing up here, the land is just the land. But these guys come from the outside and see the value.”
Soloviev is buying cheap land for his ranching business, too. Around the same time that his father’s landmark office tower at 9 W. 57th St. was appraised at $2,000 a square foot, or $3.4 billion, Soloviev bought a 69,000-acre cow-calf operation near Roswell, New Mexico, for less than $200 an acre. “I will say I can put gain on cattle better and cheaper than anyone else in the United States and maybe, the world,” he said.
Soloviev’s father, Solow, was the son of a bricklayer who dropped out of New York University to go into real estate. Solow developed a reputation as a builder with a great sense of design and a mean litigious streak. In a career that has spanned seven decades, he has filed scores of lawsuits, including one against the insurer Conseco for selling the General Motors building to another investor. Solow didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Solow’s career-defining project is a few blocks from there, where he assembled a tract of land south of the Plaza Hotel and erected 9 W. 57th St., also known as the Solow Building. He commissioned a sloping facade from architect Gordon Bunshaft and populated the building with Wall Street firms including Apollo Global Management and Tiger Global Management and fashion house Chanel.
Soloviev started working in the family real estate business when he was a teenager, toiling in the parking garages in his father’s buildings. He dropped out of the University of Rhode Island in the mid-1990s to focus on trading commodities. That led him to lease storage space in Wichita, Kansas, during a period when the market was rewarding traders for taking physical possession of grains.
Before long, he decided he’d rather grow crops than trade them. He bought some farms in western Nebraska before landing in Greeley County, Kansas, a sparse expanse on the Colorado border that was named for the 19th century newspaper editor who exhorted young men to “Go West.” When Soloviev got there in 2006, it was an obscure region for an outside investor to set up shop, lacking the dependable rainfall and rolling rivers that irrigate the lusher lands of the U.S. Corn Belt.
The dry land was perfect for the operation that Soloviev wanted to build, at least if he could find farmers willing to sell family-owned fields to a New Yorker with a Russian surname. To soften up the taciturn farmers, Soloviev would bring his young son Quintin into their living rooms to help win them over with his wholesome charm. Soloviev struck deals for as little as $500 an acre in Kansas, $400 an acre across the state line in Kiowa County, Colorado, and even less in New Mexico.
“If you ever saw There Will Be Blood, that was Quintin and I,” Soloviev said, invoking the 2007 film in which an ambitious wildcatter played by Daniel Day-Lewis enlists his adopted son to persuade farmers to let him drill for oil on their land. “A lot of the acres that I bought right off the bat—that are probably our best acres and our cheapest acres—was by having him there, playing the part of the cute, little, blond boy.”
Soloviev lives on Long Island, where he’s installed his 17-year-old son Christian as the head of a smaller agricultural operation on 1,100 acres on the North Fork. The New York Times reported last year that Soloviev has 15 children, though he declined to confirm that figure.
“I understand it’s interesting,” he said. “It’s private.”
He spends much of his time working in Manhattan, where he helps manage the family real estate business. Lately, he’s focused on boosting occupancy at his father’s namesake building, which is famous for commanding high rents and running high vacancies. Soloviev said he’ll take over the business one day, and he’s happy his father trusts him to do that.
On a recent trip West, Soloviev had made the long drive in from Denver, past the wind farms and ghost towns, the vast ranches and grain fields, to oversee the start of the wheat harvest and check on some young hemp plants, a new crop for his agricultural business. On a morning after an unexpected rainstorm, he set out on a tour of his fields, talking business on his cell phone or chatting with an entourage that included a grain trader, a marijuana consultant who’d come to help with the hemp crop and Jacob Fehr, who runs Soloviev’s farms.
The day-to-day business of making the land profitable is nothing like developing Manhattan real estate, Soloviev explained. Yet farming and ranching, like any other business, poses new problems to solve. And scores to settle.
Soloviev’s railroad—a 122-mile defunct line he’s reviving after a long fight with the previous owner—is an answer to the high cost of moving his grains. It’s also a diversification into the logistics business that he’d like to extend from the railroad’s origin in Towner, Colorado, to the West Coast and beyond. When he sees a freighter with his name on the side passing beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, he said, he’ll know he’s succeeded.
Lately, Soloviev has been telling local farmers he’ll buy their grain at better prices than they can get from other companies, including Cargill Inc., which runs a grain elevator in nearby Cheyenne Wells. In addition to the potential economic benefit, the resuscitated railroad holds symbolic value for a farming community that has endured drought, commodity-price swings and population loss.
“Even if it’s one train a day, when people hear the whistle and see the train going by, they see that all is not lost,” said Priscilla Waggoner, editor of the Kiowa County Independent, a local newspaper.
Soloviev sees the railroad as a way to share his resources with neighbors. But there can also be a cost to crossing him.
“I want this to be the railroad of the people of eastern Colorado and western Kansas,” he said. “Anyone who screwed me over, anyone who said anything, I’ll remember them, and I will not let them be a part of it.”
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>>> U.S. Pot Industry Faces Antitrust Overhang: Cannabis Weekly
Bloomberg
By Kristine Owram
September 8, 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-08/u-s-pot-industry-faces-antitrust-overhang-cannabis-weekly?srnd=premium
Department of Justice reviews takeovers in fragmented industry
‘I think it will be a grinding process,’ iAnthus CEO says
California Pot Users Turn Out In Droves To Ring In Legal Sales
In this article
IAN
IANTHUS CAPITAL
3.38 CAD
LABS INC
Private Company
ENTERPRISES INC
Private Company
RECREATION INC
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CRESCO LABS
Private Company
The U.S. cannabis industry is highly fragmented, yet at least six acquisitions are languishing in the purgatory of Department of Justice antitrust reviews.
It’s ironic, as there’s certainly no risk of a cannabis cartel forming anytime soon. It’s also one of the primary reasons that many publicly traded U.S. cannabis companies have fallen 40% to 50% from their 2019 highs.
The industry consensus is that the reviews are the result of a government that’s trying to get up to speed on a new industry, rather than genuine concern about a pot monopoly, meaning the stock sell-off may be overdone.
“If you came in with a plastics deal they’ve probably got bios and databases on every plastics company in the history of mankind; you come in with cannabis and they would have no idea how big a company is or what they do,” said Hadley Ford, chief executive officer of iAnthus Capital Holdings Inc., whose recent acquisition of MPX Bioceutical escaped review and closed in February.
Here’s a list of the takeovers that are currently facing a holdup at the Department of Justice, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst Matt Bottomley:
ACQUIRER TARGET
Cresco Labs Inc. Origin House
MedMen Enterprises Inc. PharmaCann
Harvest Health & Recreation Inc. Verano Holdings
Curaleaf Holdings Inc. Select
Curaleaf Holdings Inc. Grassroots
Green Growth Brands Inc. Moxie
Bottomley believes the reviews are keeping some investors on the sidelines, since many of these companies are relying on the pending deals for aggressive pro-forma revenue growth.
However, “we believe the risk of the DOJ taking a hard stance against sector M&A on antitrust considerations is low given the nascent and disaggregated nature of the sector brought on by continued prohibition at the federal level,” Bottomley wrote in a note last week.
He expects the Department of Justice to begin approving deals as soon as next month, with Cresco’s proposed acquisition of Origin House the first to go. “As a result, we believe the closing of sector M&A could be the most near-term and material positive valuation catalyst in the sector for investors to get ahead of,” he said.
U.S. pot stocks are off 40-50% from 2019 highs
Curaleaf is the subject of two separate antitrust reviews for its $949 million acquisition of the Select brand and its $875 million takeover of closely held multi-state operator GR Companies Inc., known as Grassroots.
The cannabis deals that were announced late in 2018 and in the first quarter of this year should begin to receive approval in the fourth quarter, Curaleaf Chairman Boris Jordan told Bloomberg TV recently. However, that wouldn’t include his own company’s acquisitions, which were announced in May and July.
Over at iAnthus, Ford is less optimistic that the Department of Justice will act quickly.
“I can’t imagine any of them get denied ultimately but I think it will be a grinding process while the DOJ gets up the curve at everyone’s expense,” he said.
Upcoming Events This Week
WEDNESDAY 9/11
Aurora Cannabis Inc. reports its fiscal fourth-quarter results after markets close
CannaRoyalty to hold its annual general meeting
Cientific Group holds the International Conference on Cannabis and Medicinal Research in Osaka, Japan through Sept. 12
THURSDAY 9/12
The Grow Up Conference & Expo runs in Niagara Falls, Ontario, through Sept. 14
Arcview Group and Muisca Capital Group host the Cannabiz Latino Hub Impact Investment Summit in Bogota
The Females to the Front retreat, for “female founders and funders in the cannabis space,” is held in Palm Springs, California, through Sept. 15
Last Week’s Top Stories
Tilray’s Biggest Bull Slashes Pot Stock Price Target by 60%
Aurora Cannabis Sells Green Organic Dutchman Stake for C$87M
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>>> Farmers Ditch Soybeans for Weed’s Cousin, Hemp
Bloomberg
By Millie Munshi
August 8, 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-08/farmers-ditch-soybeans-for-weed-s-cousin-as-trade-war-rages-on
Head of growers group says he planted hemp for the first time
Congress legalized CBD last year, drawing investors to hemp
Some American farmers suffering under the weight of the U.S.-China trade war are trying to mitigate losses by turning to the latest craze in cash crops: hemp.
That’s according to John Boyd Jr., a soybean grower in Virginia who’s also founder of the National Black Farmers Association. Boyd has planted about 100 acres (40 hectares) of hemp this year to deal with the fallout of the trade dispute that saw China cut its buying of American agriculture imports by more than half in 2018. Purchases have continued to drop in 2019.
“We’re trying our hand at hemp for the first time,” Boyd said in an interview on Bloomberg Television with Alix Steel. “I’m taking a big risk there, and I know some other farmers are doing that as well.”
Falling Behind
2019 agriculture exports to China far below previous year's amounts
Hemp, weed’s more sober cousin, has become prized for its concentration of cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-psychoactive cannabis ingredient at the center of a wellness trend sweeping the U.S. and expanding worldwide. Congress legalized CBD in the U.S. last year, prompting investors to pour money into the industry and catching the attention of farmers.
American farmers, beset by one blow after another, have been desperate to find ways to shore up incomes. Years of overproduction were already keeping soybean, corn and wheat prices low, then Donald Trump’s trade war with China exacerbated the pain. While it’s difficult to break out of traditional crop rotations that help keep soils fertile, some producers have started planting fields with peas, hemp and other alternatives that aren’t as reliant on exports.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration announced two rounds of farm aid totaling about $28 billion to help soften the blow of Chinese tariffs, and the president has hinted he’s prepared to deliver more. Farmers of course welcome any relief, but many have said they’d rather have trade flows restored than receive aid payments.
“We need a fair market -- a fair market price,” Boyd said. “The best way to do that is to open up the trade barriers between the U.S. and China.”
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>>> Beyond Meat Fever Turns the Tiny Pea Into America’s Hot New Crop
Bloomberg
By Michael Hirtzer and Lydia Mulvany
July 3, 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-03/beyond-meat-fever-turns-the-tiny-pea-into-america-s-hot-new-crop
Even ‘traditional meat guys’ are planting more of the legume
Growers in the U.S. and Canada set to seed 20% more peas
There is, it would seem, nothing but bleak news in U.S. farm country. Soybean prices are down. Corn is also still way below its highs, as is wheat. Then there’s the trade war with China, which has cost farmers access to one of their biggest markets, and the non-stop spring rains, which inundated fields.
But there is one bright spot: the pea. Long an afterthought for most farmers -- largely just something planted to help with crop rotations -- the tiny legume has suddenly gotten pulled into the alt-protein craze fueled by the likes of Beyond Meat Inc. and the Impossible Burger.
Prices are moving higher, buoyed as well by rising demand from pet-food makers, and growers in the U.S. and Canada are now rushing to put more peas in the ground. Even those who are a bit put off by the whole vegetarian movement that’s driving the demand. Like Tony Fast. Beyond Meat’s goal of helping wean humans off meat consumption “does not interest me at all,” Fast says. “I am a traditional meat guy and pro-rancher.”
But with demand flat for the crops he’s been planting for years -- alfalfa for use in livestock feed and wheat -- Fast has turned to peas as a possible growth market. At his farm in northeastern Montana, the top U.S. pea growing state, he increased his plantings of the legume by about 20% to total 1,800 acres this season. Next year, he might sow 2,000 acres.
“At the beginning we didn’t see it as a money maker -- it just made the farm more sustainable,” Fast said by phone. But that’s changing now with his peas fetching close to $5 a bushel, up from about $2.80 a few years ago, which was roughly a break-even price. “I am excited for new markets for the peas.”
Alternative Crops
Part of the excitement comes after tariffs from India had clobbered the market. Prices for peas aren’t as transparent as say corn, where futures set a global benchmark, but many growers report they weren’t making much money from the legume. Still, the story the was the same for many staple crops, where excess supplies forced growers to look for alternatives.
So now whether they like the vegan burgers or not, North American farmers are boosting plantings. Growers in Canada and the U.S. are expected to seed about 20% more field peas this year, government data show. That’s happening even as U.S. farmers cut acres of principal crops including corn, soy and wheat by about 3%.
Opening Of The Beyond Meat Manhattan Beach Project Innovation Center -
Sandwiches made with Beyond Meat breakfast sausage
Plant-based companies have been around for decades, but products were aimed at vegans and vegetarians, a tiny market, according to Greg Wank, food and beverage lead at New York-based accounting and consulting firm Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP. Now that even meat-eating consumers are trying to get more of their protein from alternative sources, demand is taking off, underscoring the blistering debut of Beyond Meat. The shares are up about 500% since they started trading in May.
“It’s the right place and the right time,” Wank said.
To be sure, the market for pea crops is by no means as hot as the plant-protein stock. India’s tariffs have been in place for more than a year amid a global glut that’s kept a lid on prices. It’s also a tiny share of U.S. agriculture compared with mammoth crops like corn or soy. But the trade tensions have also forced the development of more processing capacity in North America.
In Saskatchewan, Oscar winner James Cameron announced an investment in Vanscoy-based pulse processing plant Verdient Foods, which U.S. ingredient maker Ingredion Inc. has also partnered with. In Manitoba, France-based nutrition company Roquette is building a pea protein plant that’s set to open next year. The company already operates a pea-protein plant in Vic-sur-Aisne, France, and has a supply agreement in place with Beyond Meat for this year.
Meanwhile, incessant rains in the U.S. meant not all farmers were able to get peas in the ground even if they wanted to.
Foiled Plantings
Jordan Carlson, 35, farms 3,500 acres with his dad near Gothenburg, Nebraska. He didn’t plant any peas for the first time in 10 years because of the deluge, and he’s predicting there could be some local shortages.
Even with India’s tariffs “the demand in food products is fairly high, and that’s keeping us from sinking on the price completely,” he said.
Some farmers are ready to welcome the changes that are ushering in that growth in demand. Even U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, a self-declared meat eater, wasn’t immune to the lure of a vegan burger on a recent visit to the Impossible Foods Inc. headquarters, where he said the company’s signature offering tasted “very good.”
“I’m excited about things like Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger that are putting pea protein in their burgers. It’s awesome,” said Paul Kanning, who grows yellow edible field peas in Flaxville, Montana. Kanning didn’t increase his pea acreage this season, but if consumer interest is strong, he’ll consider it for next year.
“The demand is going to do nothing but increase, I believe, and you will see production increase in various areas of the U.S.,” he said.
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>>> Deadly germs, Lost cures: A Mysterious Infection, Spanning the Globe in a Climate of Secrecy
New York Times
4-6-19
by MATT RICHTEL and ANDREW JACOBS
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/deadly-germs-lost-cures-a-mysterious-infection-spanning-the-globe-in-a-climate-of-secrecy/ar-BBVFPi7?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout#page=2
Last May, an elderly man was admitted to the Brooklyn branch of Mount Sinai Hospital for abdominal surgery. A blood test revealed that he was infected with a newly discovered germ as deadly as it was mysterious.
Doctors swiftly isolated him in the intensive care unit. The germ, a fungus called Candida auris, preys on people with weakened immune systems, and it is quietly spreading across the globe.
Over the last five years, it has hit a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical center to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa .
Recently C. auris reached New York , New Jersey and Illinois, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add it to a list of germs deemed “urgent threats.”
The man at Mount Sinai died after 90 days in the hospital, but C. auris did not. Tests showed it was everywhere in his room, so invasive that the hospital needed special cleaning equipment and had to rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles to eradicate it.
“Everything was positive — the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump,” said Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital’s president. “The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive.”
C. auris is so tenacious, in part, because it is impervious to major antifungal medications, making it a new example of one of the world’s most intractable health threats: the rise of drug-resistant infections.
For decades, public health experts have warned that the overuse of antibiotics was reducing the effectiveness of drugs that have lengthened life spans by curing bacterial infections once commonly fatal. But lately, there has been an explosion of resistant fungi as well, adding a new and frightening dimension to a phenomenon that is undermining a pillar of modern medicine.
“It’s an enormous problem,” said Matthew Fisher, a professor of fungal epidemiology at Imperial College London, who was a co-author of a recent scientific review on the rise of resistant fungi. “We depend on being able to treat those patients with antifungals.”
Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines.
Yet even as world health leaders have pleaded for more restraint in prescribing antimicrobial drugs to combat bacteria and fungi — convening the United Nations General Assembly in 2016 to manage an emerging crisis — gluttonous overuse of them in hospitals, clinics and farming has continued.
Resistant germs are often called “superbugs,” but this is simplistic because they don’t typically kill everyone. Instead, they are most lethal to people with immature or compromised immune systems, including newborns and the elderly, smokers, diabetics and people with autoimmune disorders who take steroids that suppress the body’s defenses.
Scientists say that unless more effective new medicines are developed and unnecessary use of antimicrobial drugs is sharply curbed, risk will spread to healthier populations. A study the British government funded projects that if policies are not put in place to slow the rise of drug resistance, 10 million people could die worldwide of all such infections in 2050, eclipsing the eight million expected to die that year from cancer.
In the United States, two million people contract resistant infections annually, and 23,000 die from them, according to the official C.D.C. estimate. That number was based on 2010 figures; more recent estimates from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine put the death toll at 162,000. Worldwide fatalities from resistant infections are estimated at 700,000.
Antibiotics and antifungals are both essential to combat infections in people, but antibiotics are also used widely to prevent disease in farm animals, and antifungals are also applied to prevent agricultural plants from rotting. Some scientists cite evidence that rampant use of fungicides on crops is contributing to the surge in drug-resistant fungi infecting humans.
Yet as the problem grows, it is little understood by the public — in part because the very existence of resistant infections is often cloaked in secrecy.
With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs. Even the C.D.C., under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. State governments have in many cases declined to publicly share information beyond acknowledging that they have had cases.
All the while, the germs are easily spread — carried on hands and equipment inside hospitals; ferried on meat and manure-fertilized vegetables from farms; transported across borders by travelers and on exports and imports; and transferred by patients from nursing home to hospital and back.
C. auris, which infected the man at Mount Sinai, is one of dozens of dangerous bacteria and fungi that have developed resistance. Yet, like most of them, it is a threat that is virtually unknown to the public.
Other prominent strains of the fungus Candida — one of the most common causes of bloodstream infections in hospitals — have not developed significant resistance to drugs, but more than 90 percent of C. auris infections are resistant to at least one drug, and 30 percent are resistant to two or more drugs, the C.D.C. said.
Dr. Lynn Sosa, Connecticut’s deputy state epidemiologist, said she now saw C. auris as “the top” threat among resistant infections. “It’s pretty much unbeatable and difficult to identity,” she said.
Nearly half of patients who contract C. auris die within 90 days, according to the C.D.C. Yet the world’s experts have not nailed down where it came from in the first place.
“It is a creature from the black lagoon,” said Dr. Tom Chiller, who heads the fungal branch at the C.D.C., which is spearheading a global detective effort to find treatments and stop the spread. “It bubbled up and now it is everywhere.”
‘No need’ to tell the public
In late 2015, Dr. Johanna Rhodes, an infectious disease expert at Imperial College London, got a panicked call from the Royal Brompton Hospital, a British medical center outside London. C. auris had taken root there months earlier, and the hospital couldn’t clear it.
“‘We have no idea where it’s coming from. We’ve never heard of it. It’s just spread like wildfire,’” Dr. Rhodes said she was told. She agreed to help the hospital identify the fungus’s genetic profile and clean it from rooms.
Under her direction, hospital workers used a special device to spray aerosolized hydrogen peroxide around a room used for a patient with C. auris, the theory being that the vapor would scour each nook and cranny. They left the device going for a week. Then they put a “settle plate” in the middle of the room with a gel at the bottom that would serve as a place for any surviving microbes to grow, Dr. Rhodes said.
Only one organism grew back. C. auris.
It was spreading, but word of it was not. The hospital, a specialty lung and heart center that draws wealthy patients from the Middle East and around Europe, alerted the British government and told infected patients, but made no public announcement.
“There was no need to put out a news release during the outbreak,” said Oliver Wilkinson, a spokesman for the hospital.
This hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients — or prospective ones.
Dr. Silke Schelenz, Royal Brompton’s infectious disease specialist, found the lack of urgency from the government and hospital in the early stages of the outbreak “very, very frustrating.”
“They obviously didn’t want to lose reputation,” Dr. Schelenz said. “It hadn’t impacted our surgical outcomes.”
By the end of June 2016, a scientific paper reported “an ongoing outbreak of 50 C. auris cases” at Royal Brompton, and the hospital took an extraordinary step: It shut down its I.C.U. for 11 days, moving intensive care patients to another floor, again with no announcement.
Days later the hospital finally acknowledged to a newspaper that it had a problem. A headline in The Daily Telegraph warned, “Intensive Care Unit Closed After Deadly New Superbug Emerges in the U.K.” (Later research said there were eventually 72 total cases, though some patients were only carriers and were not infected by the fungus.)
Yet the issue remained little known internationally, while an even bigger outbreak had begun in Valencia, Spain, at the 992-bed Hospital Universitari i Politècnic La Fe. There, unbeknown to the public or unaffected patients, 372 people were colonized — meaning they had the germ on their body but were not sick with it — and 85 developed bloodstream infections. A paper in the journal Mycoses reported that 41 percent of the infected patients died within 30 days.
A statement from the hospital said it was not necessarily C. auris that killed them. “It is very difficult to discern whether patients die from the pathogen or with it, since they are patients with many underlying diseases and in very serious general condition,” the statement said.
As with Royal Brompton, the hospital in Spain did not make any public announcement. It still has not.
One author of the article in Mycoses, a doctor at the hospital, said in an email that the hospital did not want him to speak to journalists because it “is concerned about the public image of the hospital.”
The secrecy infuriates patient advocates, who say people have a right to know if there is an outbreak so they can decide whether to go to a hospital, particularly when dealing with a nonurgent matter, like elective surgery.
“Why the heck are we reading about an outbreak almost a year and a half later — and not have it front-page news the day after it happens?” said Dr. Kevin Kavanagh, a physician in Kentucky and board chairman of Health Watch USA , a nonprofit patient advocacy group. “You wouldn’t tolerate this at a restaurant with a food poisoning outbreak.”
Health officials say that disclosing outbreaks frightens patients about a situation they can do nothing about, particularly when the risks are unclear.
“It’s hard enough with these organisms for health care providers to wrap their heads around it,” said Dr. Anna Yaffee, a former C.D.C. outbreak investigator who dealt with resistant infection outbreaks in Kentucky in which the hospitals were not publicly disclosed. “It’s really impossible to message to the public.”
Officials in London did alert the C.D.C. to the Royal Brompton outbreak while it was occurring. And the C.D.C. realized it needed to get the word to American hospitals. On June 24, 2016, the C.D.C. blasted a nationwide warning to hospitals and medical groups and set up an email address, candidaauris@cdc.gov, to field queries. Dr. Snigdha Vallabhaneni, a key member of the fungal team, expected to get a trickle — “maybe a message every month.”
Instead, within weeks, her inbox exploded.
Coming to America
In the United States, 587 cases of people having contracted C. auris have been reported, concentrated with 309 in New York, 104 in New Jersey and 144 in Illinois, according to the C.D.C.
The symptoms — fever, aches and fatigue — are seemingly ordinary, but when a person gets infected, particularly someone already unhealthy, such commonplace symptoms can be fatal.
The earliest known case in the United States involved a woman who arrived at a New York hospital on May 6, 2013, seeking care for respiratory failure. She was 61 and from the United Arab Emirates, and she died a week later, after testing positive for the fungus. At the time, the hospital hadn’t thought much of it, but three years later, it sent the case to the C.D.C. after reading the agency’s June 2016 advisory.
This woman probably was not America’s first C. auris patient. She carried a strain different from the South Asian one most common here. It killed a 56-year-old American woman who had traveled to India in March 2017 for elective abdominal surgery, contracted C. auris and was airlifted back to a hospital in Connecticut that officials will not identify. She was later transferred to a Texas hospital, where she died.
The germ has spread into long-term care facilities. In Chicago, 50 percent of the residents at some nursing homes have tested positive for it, the C.D.C. has reported. The fungus can grow on intravenous lines and ventilators.
Workers who care for patients infected with C. auris worry for their own safety. Dr. Matthew McCarthy, who has treated several C. auris patients at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, described experiencing an unusual fear when treating a 30-year-old man.
“I found myself not wanting to touch the guy,” he said. “I didn’t want to take it from the guy and bring it to someone else.” He did his job and thoroughly examined the patient, but said, “There was an overwhelming feeling of being terrified of accidentally picking it up on a sock or tie or gown.”
The role of pesticides?
As the C.D.C. works to limit the spread of drug-resistant C. auris, its investigators have been trying to answer the vexing question: Where in the world did it come from?
The first time doctors encountered C. auris was in the ear of a woman in Japan in 2009 (auris is Latin for ear). It seemed innocuous at the time, a cousin of common, easily treated fungal infections.
Three years later, it appeared in an unusual test result in the lab of Dr. Jacques Meis , a microbiologist in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who was analyzing a bloodstream infection in 18 patients from four hospitals in India. Soon, new clusters of C. auris seemed to emerge with each passing month in different parts of the world.
The C.D.C. investigators theorized that C. auris started in Asia and spread across the globe. But when the agency compared the entire genome of auris samples from India and Pakistan, Venezuela, South Africa and Japan, it found that its origin was not a single place, and there was not a single auris strain.
The genome sequencing showed that there were four distinctive versions of the fungus, with differences so profound that they suggested that these strains had diverged thousands of years ago and emerged as resistant pathogens from harmless environmental strains in four different places at the same time.
“Somehow, it made a jump almost seemingly simultaneously, and seemed to spread and it is drug resistant, which is really mind-boggling,” Dr. Vallabhaneni said.
There are different theories as to what happened with C. auris. Dr. Meis, the Dutch researcher, said he believed that drug-resistant fungi were developing thanks to heavy use of fungicides on crops.
Dr. Meis became intrigued by resistant fungi when he heard about the case of a 63-year-old patient in the Netherlands who died in 2005 from a fungus called Aspergillus. It proved resistant to a front-line antifungal treatment called itraconazole. That drug is a virtual copy of the azole pesticides that are used to dust crops the world over and account for more than one-third of all fungicide sales .
A 2013 paper in Plos Pathogens said that it appeared to be no coincidence that drug-resistant Aspergillus was showing up in the environment where the azole fungicides were used. The fungus appeared in 12 percent of Dutch soil samples, for example, but also in “flower beds, compost, leaves, plant seeds, soil samples of tea gardens, paddy fields, hospital surroundings, and aerial samples of hospitals.”
Dr. Meis visited the C.D.C. last summer to share research and theorize that the same thing is happening with C. auris, which is also found in the soil: Azoles have created an environment so hostile that the fungi are evolving, with resistant strains surviving.
This is similar to concerns that resistant bacteria are growing because of excessive use of antibiotics in livestock for health and growth promotion. As with antibiotics in farm animals, azoles are used widely on crops.
“On everything — potatoes, beans, wheat, anything you can think of, tomatoes, onions,” said Dr. Rhodes, the infectious disease specialist who worked on the London outbreak. “We are driving this with the use of antifungicides on crops.”
Dr. Chiller theorizes that C. auris may have benefited from the heavy use of fungicides. His idea is that C. auris actually has existed for thousands of years, hidden in the world’s crevices, a not particularly aggressive bug. But as azoles began destroying more prevalent fungi, an opportunity arrived for C. auris to enter the breach, a germ that had the ability to readily resist fungicides now suitable for a world in which fungi less able to resist are under attack.
The mystery of C. auris’s emergence remains unsolved, and its origin seems, for the moment, to be less important than stopping its spread.
Resistance and denial
For now, the uncertainty around C. auris has led to a climate of fear, and sometimes denial.
Last spring, Jasmine Cutler, 29, went to visit her 72-year-old father at a hospital in New York City, where he had been admitted because of complications from a surgery the previous month.
When she arrived at his room, she discovered that he had been sitting for at least an hour in a recliner, in his own feces, because no one had come when he had called for help to use the bathroom. Ms. Cutler said it became clear to her that the staff was afraid to touch him because a test had shown that he was carrying C. auris.
“I saw doctors and nurses looking in the window of his room,” she said. “My father’s not a guinea pig. You’re not going to treat him like a freak at a show.”
He was eventually discharged and told he no longer carried the fungus. But he declined to be named, saying he feared being associated with the frightening infection.
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>>> Kale joins list of ‘dirty dozen’ fruits and vegetables most likely to contain pesticides
MarketWatch
By Jacob Passy
Mar 20, 2019
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/kale-joins-list-of-dirty-dozen-fruits-and-vegetables-most-likely-to-contain-pesticides-2019-03-20
Almost 70% of the produce sold in the U.S. comes with pesticide residues
Unless its organic kale like what this farmer is harvesting, health-conscious consumers are going to want to steer clear.
You may want to put the green juice down for this one.
Kale ranked as a third-worst fruit or vegetable behind strawberries and spinach when it comes to pesticide contamination, according to the Environmental Working Group’s annual “Dirty Dozen” report. Over 92% of kale samples were found to have two or more pesticide residues — and a single piece of kale could have up to 18 pesticides on or in it.
One of the pesticides commonly found with kale was Dacthal, or DCPA. The pesticide, which is banned in Europe and was classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a possible carcinogen, was found on nearly 60% of the kale samples tested.
Here is the full list of the “Dirty Dozen” fruits and vegetables:
. Strawberries
. Spinach
. Kale
. Nectarines
. Apples
. Grapes
. Peaches
. Cherries
. Pears
. Tomatoes
. Celery
. Potatoes
The Environmental Working Group’s ranking is based on an analysis of test data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. USDA personnel test fruits and vegetables for pesticide residues regularly, making sure to replicate how shoppers would consume the product. For instance, if consumers regularly wash and peel a fruit before eating it, the USDA testers will do that before examining the product for pesticides.
The USDA changes the batch of fruits and vegetables it tests based on consumers’ eating habits. As such, kale had not been examined in nearly a decade. The last time the USDA included kale in its testing, from 2006 to 2008, the leafy green ranked No. 8 on the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list.
In those intervening years, kale has becoming an increasingly popular food, particularly among health-conscious consumers. A growing number of food products now contain kale as an ingredient, and scientists are even working to create a tastier version of the broccoli relative.
Consumers should opt for organic food whenever possible to reduce their exposure to pesticides, experts say.
But the vegetable’s soaring popularity isn’t necessarily to blame for its propensity for pesticide contamination. “Some of the changes could be due to more harvesting of kale, it could also be due to analytical methods changing when we’re testing,” said Alexis Tremkin, a toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group.
Another factor could be how kale is grown. Dacthal, the potentially carcinogenic pesticide, is typically applied directly to soil as a weed-killer. Because it’s in the soil, it can then be absorbed into the plant itself, said Carla Burns, a research analyst at the Environmental Working Group . Growing practices like this may explain the pesticide contamination that’s endemic to much of the “Dirty Dozen” fruits and vegetables.
Altogether, some 70% of the conventionally-grown produce sold in the U.S. has pesticide residues, according to the report. However, consumers should stop eating fruits and vegetables as a result.
Instead, consumers should opt for organic food whenever possible to reduce their exposure to pesticides, experts say. And when that’s not feasible, they should opt instead for fruits and vegetables that are less likely to be contaminated.
The Environmental Working Group also released its annual “Clean Fifteen” produce list. Less than 30% of those fruits and vegetables have pesticide contamination, based on the USDA’s testing. The “Clean Fifteen” includes the following:
. Avocados
. Sweet corn
. Pineapples
. Frozen sweet peas
. Onions
. Papayas
. Eggplants
. Asparagus
. Kiwis
. Cabbages
. Cauliflower
. Cantaloupes
. Broccoli
. Mushrooms
. Honeydew melons
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Corteva Agriscience -- >>> DowDuPont™ Agriculture Division to Become Corteva Agriscience™ as It Progresses Toward Becoming a Stand-alone Company
FEBRUARY 26, 2018
http://www.dow-dupont.com/news-and-media/press-release-details/2018/Dowdupont-Agriculture-Division-to-Become-Corteva-Agriscience-as-It-Progresses-Toward-Becoming-a-Stand-Alone-Company/default.aspx
Corteva Agriscience™ Embodies the Company’s Purpose of Enriching the Lives of Those Who Produce and Those Who Consume, Ensuring Progress for Generations to Come
WILMINGTON, Del., Feb. 26, 2018 – The Agriculture Division of DowDuPont™ (NYSE: DWDP) today announced the name of the intended company once it is spun-off, which is expected to happen by June 1, 2019. The intended Agriculture company will become Corteva Agriscience™ (kohr-'teh-vah), which is derived from a combination of words meaning “heart” and “nature”.
“This is the start of an exciting journey,” said James C. Collins, Jr., chief operating officer, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont. “Corteva Agriscience™ is bringing together three businesses with deep connections and dedication to generations of farmers. Our new name acknowledges our history while looking forward to our commitment to enhancing farmer productivity as well as the health and well-being of the consumers they serve. With the most balanced portfolio of products in the industry, nearly a century of agronomic expertise and an unparalleled innovation engine, Corteva Agriscience™ will become a leading Agriculture company, focused on working together with the entire food system to produce a secure supply of healthy food.”
Corteva Agriscience™ brings together DuPont Crop Protection, DuPont Pioneer and Dow AgroSciences to create a market-shaping, standalone agriculture company with leading positions in Seed Technologies, Crop Protection and Digital Agriculture.
The intended company has developed some of the best talent, technology, innovation and R&D capabilities that will uniquely position it to transform our food system by helping farmers grow better, abundant and healthier crops while using fewer natural resources.
“We will continue to invest in some of the most recognized and premium brands in agriculture: Pioneer®, Mycogen®, and the newly launched Brevant™ seed brands, as well as our award-winning Crop Protection products, such as Aproach® Prima fungicide and Quelex™ herbicide with Arylex™ active, while bringing new products to market through our solid pipeline of active chemistry and technologies,” said Collins.
In addition to announcing the corporate name, the intended Agriculture company unveiled the Corteva Agriscience™ brand identity and logo today (www.corteva.com) at Commodity Classic, the largest farmer-led convention and trade show in the United States.
The corporate headquarters for the intended company will be located in Wilmington, Delaware, and will include key corporate support functions. Sites in Johnston, Iowa, and Indianapolis, Indiana, will serve as Global Business Centers, with leadership of business lines, business support functions, R&D, global supply chain, and sales and marketing capabilities concentrated in the two Midwest locations.
DowDuPont will support the new brand name through a series of recognition events between now and the time the division becomes an independent company.
About DowDuPont
DowDuPont (NYSE: DWDP) is a holding company comprised of The Dow Chemical Company and DuPont with the intent to form strong, independent, publicly traded companies in agriculture, materials science and specialty products sectors that will lead their respective industries through productive, science-based innovation to meet the needs of customers and help solve global challenges. For more information, please visit us at www.dow-dupont.com.
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Calavo Growers (CVGW) - >>> Avocado sales could more than double this year, helped by demand from China's middle class
CNBC
by Jeff Daniels
Jan 2018
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/10/chinas-middle-class-is-boosting-demand-for-avocados.html
Avocado sales are expected to more than double this year as more health-conscious consumers in China show an interest in the "heart-healthy" avocados.
One big beneficiary of the growing demand is Mexico the global leader in avocado production.
China could start producing enough of its own crop, including the Hass variety, to cut into imports of the fruit, yet, experts say that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
A worker of the San Lorenzo Packing Company checks and fills boxes with avocados that will be shipped to U.S. in the state of Michoacan, Uruapan, Mexico.
Avocado sales to China are expected to more than double this year as demand continues to grow for the fruit from the country's expanding middle-class population.
"It appears to just double every year, from what we've seen," Steve Barnard, president of Oxnard, California-based Mission Produce, the world's largest distributor of avocados. "It maybe more than double this year."
And, the pace of growth shows no sign of slowing as more health-conscious consumers in the world's most populous nation show an interest in the "heart-healthy" avocados, executives say. The fruit also appeals to "young, trendy people," said Barnard.
One big beneficiary of the growing demand is Mexico, the global leader in avocado production. Even through the U.S. market remains lucrative, avocado marketers in the Mexican state of Jalisco recently hosted a Chinese delegation in hopes of grabbing a piece of the action that now is dominated by the neighboring state of Michoacan.
"The Chinese market has been growing at a very fast pace," said Ramon Paz, an advisor for the Avocado Producers and Exporting Packers Association of Mexico (APEAM). "Our numbers show big growth but the total absolute numbers are still modest compared to other markets like the U.S. But of course the potential is huge."
According to Chicago-based researcher Technomic, "Avocado has evolved into a trending ingredient worldwide and has particular resonance in China — where it's commonly known as butter fruit — due to its somewhat exotic positioning."
Most of the demand in China is from "urban consumers" in the largest cities of Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, said Paz. He said Chinese millennials who have traveled overseas also are helping to grow the market.
Still, Paz said the U.S. market remains a priority market for Mexican shippers for several reasons, including shorter transportation time, reduced risks and generally more favorable payment arrangements too. That said, he also indicated that demand for avocados also is strong in Japan and parts of Europe.
Mexico plans to ship 1.8 billion pounds of avocados to the U.S. in the current 2017-18 season, which runs from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018, according to Paz. By comparison, Latin American countries as a group shipped about 76 million pounds of avocados last season to China.
Even so, there's a risk that with all the Latin American avocados going to China it could one day increase the cost to American consumers. Mexican-grown avocados account for almost 80 percent of the creamy fruit sold in the U.S. market.
"It could affect it, yes, because it's pulling product out of Chile, Peru or Mexico that would would be available to ship here," said Barnard. And he added, "The Chinese pay pretty good — you get a premium."
The wholesale prices of avocado in the United States more than doubled last fall due to supply hiccups in Mexico. Supplies from Mexico ended up about 20 percent below the average last season and California's harvest was about half its usual amount, according to Paz.
"When you see 20 percent less, it has an impact in the market," said Paz. "We had a short crop basically because avocados have a tendency to produce more one year and less the next year. This year the Mexican crop is back to normal and California is forecasting a regular crop, although they had some problems with the recent wildfires."
Despite last year's higher prices, demand didn't fall off as Americans appear to be willing to pay more for their avocado and guacamole. Paz estimates avocado demand in the U.S. is growing about 10 to 12 percent per year.
Executives say there's also demand for avocados coming from other parts of Asia as well as Europe along with countries such as Argentina, which in the past two years has increased exports by around 50 percent from Chile.
"Between the nutrition and the health benefits and the versatility of use, avocados is obviously one of the fastest-growing produce items in the world as far as consumption," said Barnard.
Mission, which is privately held, grows, packs and ships avocados all over the world and has production operations in Chile, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and the United States.
Said Barnard, "As someone right in the middle of it, we're continuing to increase supply because we don't see this thing slowing down any."
Barnard believes the retail prices of avocados in the U.S. will average "significantly lower" in 2018 compared with 2017. "If you get it down to around a dollar apiece for a medium-sized fruit, the stuff will fly off the shelves."
Per capita consumption in the U.S. of avocados is around 7 pounds per person, up from 4 pounds in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And produce executives say China is just a fraction of that amount today but if it approached the American levels it would be about 10 times the amount of fruit produced in the world.
Meantime, more avocados entering the Chinese market this year will get sent to ripening rooms in large distribution centers to allow the green fruit to become ready-to-eat. A drawback before the ripening rooms was Chinese consumers having to wait for the fruit to ripen before consuming it.
"The ripe fruit is growing much faster than unripe fruit, for obvious reasons — same as it does here," said Barnard. "We put a ripening distribution center over there last March, and we're already adding a second one."
Mission Produce sends full containers of avocados packed either in Mexico, Chile or Peru to China and then refrigerates it. "Upon demand, we'll ripen it and ship it out to the customers," said Barnard.
The ripening process for avocados is similar to bananas shipped green from Latin America that are then put into special ripening rooms to make them ideal for eating. Nature's ripening process is stimulated by using ethylene, which is a natural gas, along with ideal heat, humidity and airflow.
Mission first started selling into the Chinese market about four years ago and has two local partners for its ripe avocado brand, Mr. Avocado, in the Asian country. The U.S. company's joint venture partners include Chinese importer Lantao and a local retailer Pagoda, operator of 2,500 fruit-shop outlets.
"I have been in those fruit shops and you see a little bit of everybody buying," said Barnard. "You see mothers and college kids. They eat pretty healthy over there — a lot of vegetables. And the fruit just adds another variable to the diet."
Bernstein analyst: Higher avocado prices the source of Chipotle's earnings miss Bernstein analyst: Higher avocado prices the source of Chipotle's earnings miss
The Mr. Avocado brand has been using social media advertising in China to spread awareness of avocados and their health benefits. They also are doing suggestions on how to eat the fruit.
Interestingly, the Chinese also have some avocados grown within their borders in regions such as Guangxi, located north of Vietnam. There also have been state-run farms doing trial plantings over the decades, even before significant demand existed in the domestic market.
"They have some trials in the south," said Barnard. "We're monitoring it."
He said the Chinese "have a big learning curve to go over" to launch large-scale avocado production and also would face logistical challenges since production is "in the middle of nowhere."
The avocado plant found in China is largely a tropical variety and similar to the kind found in Brazil or the Dominican Republic. It tends to have less oil and less flavor than the more popular Hass avocado.
One future possibility is China could start producing enough of its own crop, including the Hass variety, to cut into imports of the fruit. Yet, experts say that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
"Relative to the market, it will not have very large impact ... in the next several years," said Paz. "But you never know with China how big they will go with Hass avocados."
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>>> Congress Finally Can Tell Hemp From Pot
For almost 50 years, hemp has been lumped together with heroin, LSD, and Ecstasy, but new legislation could soon make the crop legal for farmers still struggling from the loss of tobacco.
The Atlantic
OLIVIA PASCHAL
AUG 7, 2018
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/congress-finally-knows-the-difference-between-hemp-and-pot/566942/
Hemp could soon become a legal crop in America.LUCY NICHOLSON / REUTERS
Hemp is currently a Schedule I federally controlled substance, in the same legal category as LSD, heroin, and Ecstasy. Like all forms of cannabis, it was criminalized in 1970, partially because Congress was worried that law enforcement couldn’t tell the difference between hemp and marijuana. “There was tremendous biological understanding of the difference, but Congress was not making policy based on this—they were basing it on fear,” said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of Marijuana: A Short History.
Now, four years after universities and state agriculture departments were allowed to begin growing limited quantities of hemp for research purposes, Congress is expected in September to make the crop legal for Americans to grow for the first time in nearly 50 years. Legalization as part of the 2018 omnibus farm bill would be a major victory for American hemp producers, who believe hemp cultivation could become a billion dollar–plus industry, given hemp’s growing use in pharmaceuticals, food, and textiles. But legalization is just the first step in cultivating the American hemp industry, with many challenges ahead for farmers to ensure the viability of what is essentially a brand-new crop: establishing a supply chain, creating technologies for large-scale cultivation, and building markets both at home and abroad. These are daunting tasks for a crop whose prospects had been ruined for half a century by its association with marijuana.
Hemp and marijuana are both types of Cannabis sativa, but they’re bred differently, and have different biological attributes. Most importantly, hemp does not have psychoactive properties, because it has far lower levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) than marijuana. The two plants look different, too—hemp stalks are long, thin, and fibrous, while marijuana grows closer to the ground.
Hemp Is Used in Over 25,000 Products — Now Including BMWs
Still, for decades after hemp was criminalized, Congress wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. “Everybody said, ‘That’ll never happen! Everybody thinks that it’s pot, and nobody’s going to support it,’” said Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon who started the legalization push back in 2012.
Hemp’s multitude of uses include food, lotion, and (perhaps most profitably) a recently approved epilepsy drug called Epidiolex made of cannabidiol (CBD), a cannabinoid that can be extracted from cannabis in both its marijuana and hemp forms. It’s legal to sell products made from hemp in the United States, but the market is currently filled almost entirely by imports from other countries.
Around the same time Wyden introduced his first bill to legalize hemp, Kentucky state officials started to consider the crop as an alternative for farmers struggling to make profits on tobacco, which has historically been the state’s top agricultural commodity but whose importance has declined in recent years. In 2012, James Comer, then Kentucky’s agricultural commissioner and now a first-term congressional representative, made legalizing hemp under state law his top priority. Legalization passed the Kentucky legislature with bipartisan support, but was stalled by the state’s attorney general because of hemp’s federal status.
So Kentucky’s hemp advocates turned their attention to Congress. Legalizing hemp, they argued, could give Kentucky farmers a chance to corner the market and help make up for some of the tobacco losses.
In 2013, after hearing from officials and advocates for several months, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, jumped on board with the proposition. That year, a bipartisan coalition of the two Republican senators from Kentucky—McConnell and Rand Paul—and the two Democratic senators from Oregon—Wyden and Jeff Merkley—introduced the first version of the Industrial Hemp Farming Act, which would have removed hemp from the controlled-substances list and made it legal to grow as an agricultural commodity.
They weren’t successful, in large part because hemp’s continued association with pot made it too much of a political liability. But with the Senate’s top Republican publicly arguing that hemp wasn’t marijuana and shouldn’t be treated as such, members of both parties began to sign on to the Senate version of the bill.
At McConnell’s urging, the 2014 farm bill created the pilot research program that authorized universities and state departments of agriculture to grow and research hemp. Because hemp was still a controlled substance, there were many restrictions on its cultivation—farmers who wanted to participate in the program had to get a waiver from the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the number of acres farmers could legally plant was strictly limited. But, according to a congressional report, at least 19 states participated in the pilot program, and at least 40 have since passed legislation relating to the cultivation of industrial hemp. “I’m one of hemp’s biggest advocates, and I never expected it to go this fast,” said Jonathan Miller, a former Kentucky state official who is the general counsel, the spokesperson, and a registered lobbyist for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable.
So far, according to its proponents, this limited research endeavor has been a success. “Last year alone, the hemp pilot program yielded more than $16 million for Kentucky farmers,” McConnell wrote in an April op-ed. Geoff Whaling, the chairman of the National Hemp Association, said that American farmers can’t keep up with the growing U.S. demand for hemp, which is currently filled by imports from other countries such as Canada and China.
The most recent version of the legislation to legalize growing hemp was introduced in April, with McConnell as the primary sponsor. Though that version never made it to the House, McConnell eventually worked it into the Senate’s version of the farm bill. There’s no organized opposition, with the exception of a brief objection to the bill’s definition of hemp from Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who nonetheless classifies himself as “pro-hemp.”
Despite all the hype surrounding hemp’s economic potential, nobody is really sure what to expect once it’s legalized. A recent congressional report noted that even in Kentucky, studies concluded that “short run employment opportunities evolving from a new Kentucky hemp industry appear limited.” It also cited a U.S. Department of Agriculture study that concluded with “uncertainty” about the long-term demand for hemp and the “potential for oversupply” in the U.S. market.
Then there’s the fact that hemp hasn’t been grown in the living memory of many, if not most, farmers in the United States. There’s simply not many people with experience growing the crop—a situation exacerbated by the bill itself. The farm bill’s language precludes people with drug-felony convictions from cultivating hemp, which means that many people with experience growing cannabis in the form of marijuana would be federally prohibited from growing its sister plant. Despite the relative success of the campaign to distinguish hemp from pot, it hasn’t been able to shake this relic of hemp’s history; Politico reported that the provision was added in early July to appease Grassley.
Though at least one advocacy group has condemned the ban on people with drug-felony convictions, backers have largely brushed aside criticism. Yet because drug-felony convictions disproportionately impact communities of color, the provision could serve to keep black, Latino, and Native American farmers out of the hemp market—much as similar laws at the state level have served to exclude them from the medical-marijuana industry.
“This amendment will force many African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic/Latinos and others who have a state or federal drug felony convictions to shut down existing hemp operations and they will be unable to grow, process or own a hemp business in the future,” GrowHempColorado said in a statement. Federal agriculture policy has historically favored white farmers, both explicitly and implicitly, and bans like this could further this exclusion while providing another profitable crop for large-scale, mostly white farmers.
There’s also logistical questions to legalization. “If this legislation passes, its gonna cause quite a bit of chaos,” said Cory Sharp, a hemp farmer and the CEO of HempLogic, a company that consults with farmers who are considering entering the industry and is developing machinery to aid in processing hemp crops. He’s worried that, once hemp is legalized, farmers are going to jump in without understanding the complexities of the crop they’re getting into. And, he says, the infrastructure to properly process the amount of hemp that will hit the market once its legalized simply doesn’t exist yet. “Farmers are struggling right now, so they’re not thinking it all the way through,” he said.
Sharp also worries that farmers are all going to get into the type of hemp that seems most profitable on the surface—hemp grown for pharmaceutical drugs that use CBD—without considering all the red tape that comes along with that pursuit. “Hemp is three distinct disciplines. You have hemp made for food, made for fiber, and made for pharma,” he said. “Each one of those disciplines has a distinct, different way of growing and processing.” Farmers unfamiliar with the crop, he’s worried, might start growing without thinking about what market they want to sell their hemp to.
Though he’s much more optimistic about hemp’s future, Whaling, of the National Hemp Association, largely agrees about the challenges. “We need to be wise and be methodical about the steps that we take, because if we start to grow this product because people think that it’s new, it’s easy, it’s a panacea crop, it’s going to solve a lot of problems for farmers, and we don’t have the facilities in place to process it, then everyone will give up and it’ll fall flat on its face,” he said. “We need to go from zero to millions of acres of fiber, and the question is how we start to build that supply chain because the largest processing equipment for hemp today only processes 14,000 acres.”
Wyden argues that the pilot program has allowed states that took full advantage of it ample time to prepare for the crop’s full legalization. “That was the point of those extra years” of research, he said. “Certainly in states like Oregon and Kentucky, the fact that I introduced the bill in 2012, that we started making preparations for this day with the research and the pilot projects. We now have 400-plus farmers ready to go, so a fair amount of foresight has gone into this.”
In all likelihood, it’ll be clear soon enough if producers are prepared for the onslaught of hemp. Both McConnell and Comer are on the farm bill’s congressional conference committee, putting two of hemp’s biggest advocates in prime positions to advocate for its inclusion in the joint bill that is scheduled to be brought before both chambers by the end of September.
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>>> Scotts Miracle-Gro downgraded on headwind concerns
By Tonya Garcia
June 20, 2018
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/scotts-miracle-gro-downgraded-on-headwind-concerns-2018-06-20?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. SMG, +0.55% was downgraded to underperform from market perform at Raymond James on concerns that expectations are too high to overcome near-term challenges. Raymond James analysts identify four headwinds: the elimination of a $20 million annual payment from Monsanto/Bayer AG BAYN, +1.75% after a revised marketing agreement; $20 million higher commodity and transportation costs; $20 million more in incentive compensation; and $20 million more in wage and benefit inflation. Pricing, volumes and other factors are not expected to offset those headwinds. "[W]e should note that all of the year-over-year improvement relates to Scotts Miracle-Gro's recent acquisition of the Sunlight Supply hydroponics business, which is expected to be dilutive this year and accretive next," wrote Joseph Altobello in a note. "Conversely, we expect no meaningful base profitability improvement next year for the combined U.S. Consumer and legacy Hawthorne hydroponics businesses." Scotts Miracle-Gro shares are down 0.2% in Wednesday premarket trading, and down nearly 23% for 2018 so far. The S&P 500 index SPX, +0.33% is up 3.3% for the year to date.
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>>> 7 Surprising Benefits of Sorghum
https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/cereal/sorghum.html
The major health benefits of sorghum include its ability to prevent certain types of cancer, help control diabetes, offer a dietary option to people with celiac disease, improve digestive health, build strong bones, promote red blood cell development, and boost energy and fuel production.
Table of Contents
•What is Sorghum?
•Sorghum Nutrition Facts
•Health Benefits of Sorghum
Improves Digestive Health
Cancer Prevention
Diabetes Control
Relieves Gluten Allergy
Improves Bone Health
Increases Circulation
Boosts Energy Levels
What is Sorghum?
Sorghum is the broad term for an entire genus of grasses [1] that are native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world. While there are more than 30 different species of sorghum, only one is harvested for human consumption, while the others are primarily used as a fodder for animals. The important species for humans, Sorghum bicolor, is native to Africa, but can now be found all around the world as a staple food. It is also cultivated in many different countries. Sorghum is primarily used in the production of sorghum molasses, sorghum syrup and as a grain. Also, it can be used in the production of alcoholic beverages and even bio-fuels around the world. It is widely considered the fifth most important cereal crop in the world.
The versatility of sorghum, combined with the fact that it is acceptable for people with wheat allergies to eat, makes it extremely important as a staple crop in the world. Furthermore, the vast health benefits associated [2] with sorghum make it a great alternative to other types of grains, grasses, and cereals that are commonly consumed across the globe.
Sorghum
Sorghum Nutrition Facts
Sorghum is a powerhouse [3] in terms of nutrients. When included in the diet, it can provide vitamins like niacin, riboflavin, and thiamin, as well as high levels of magnesium, iron, copper, calcium, phosphorous, and potassium, as well as nearly half of the daily, required intake of protein and a very significant amount of dietary fiber (48% of the recommended intake).
Health Benefits of Sorghum
The health benefits of sorghum in relation to our digestive process are innumerable. It helps in treating many diseases as well. Let’s discuss the benefits in detail.
Improves Digestive Health
It seems like many healthy foods contain some amount of dietary fiber, which greatly improves the functionality of the digestive system. However, sorghum is one of the best [4] foods out there for dietary fiber. A single serving of sorghum contains 48% of your daily recommended intake of dietary fiber, means that your digestive tract will keep your food moving along rapidly, preventing cramping, bloating, constipation, stomach aches, excess gas, and diarrhea. Furthermore, excess amounts of fiber in the body helps to scrape off dangerous cholesterol (LDL), which helps to improve heart health and protect your body from conditions like atherosclerosis, heart attack, and stroke.
Cancer Prevention
The bran layer of the sorghum grains contains [5] important antioxidants that are not found in many other types of food. These antioxidants have been directly connected to a reduced chance of developing various types of cancer, including esophageal cancer, particularly in comparison to people who regularly eat wheat and corn. Antioxidants are the beneficial compounds that neutralize and eliminate free radicals in the body, which often cause healthy cells in the body to mutate into cancerous cells.
Diabetes Control
Excessive carbohydrates break down into simple sugars and wreak havoc on the glucose levels in the body, leading [6]to diabetes, or causing chaos for people who already suffer from this disease. However, the tannin-rich bran of sorghum actually has enzymes that inhibit the absorption of starch by the body, which can help to regulate insulin and glucose levels in the body. By keeping these levels balanced, diabetics won’t suffer as many plunges and spikes in their glucose levels, thereby preventing diabetic shock and other health complications.
Relieves Gluten Allergy
Celiac disease is a severe [7] allergy to gluten, which is primarily found in wheat-based products. Surprisingly, gluten is found in thousands of normal food items, making the life for those suffering from celiac disease very difficult. Fortunately, alternative grains and grasses, such as sorghum, can be eaten safely by those suffering from this increasingly common condition, without the painful inflammation, nausea, and gastrointestinal damage that gluten causes.
Improves Bone Health
Magnesium is found in high quantities in sorghum, which means that your calcium levels will be properly maintained, as magnesium increases calcium absorption in the body. These [8] two minerals are also integral to the development of bone tissue and speed up the healing of damaged or aging bones. This can prevent conditions like osteoporosis and arthritis, thereby keeping you active and healthy into your old age.
Increases Circulation
Copper and Iron are also found [9] in sorghum, and in a similar way as magnesium and calcium, copper helps to increase the absorption of iron into the body. This means a decreased likelihood of developing anemia, which is another name for iron deficiency. With enough iron and copper in your system, red blood cell development is increased, thereby boosting circulation of the blood, stimulating cellular growth and repair, and increasing the hair growth of the scalp, while also boosting the energy levels in the body. A single serving of sorghum contains 58% of your daily recommended intake of copper.
Boosts Energy Levels
Niacin, also known as vitamin B3, is a key component [10] in transforming food into usable energy and fuel for the body. Breaking down and metabolizing nutrients into energy will keep your energy levels stable throughout the day. Sorghum contains 28% of your recommended niacin intake per day.
Word of Caution: There are no known concerns or cautions against adding sorghum to your diet. As it is a grass, there is the possibility of some people being allergic to it, but the cases of sorghum being allergenic are very rare. Furthermore, with the high content of certain minerals and vitamins, the only real danger is getting too much of a good thing, so eat sorghum in moderation and enjoy all of the wonderful health benefits!
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>>> Weed killer glyphosate wins five-year approval in EU vote
(Correction -- People killer glyphosate wins five-year approval in EU vote)
By Daniel Uria
Nov. 27, 2017
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2017/11/27/Weed-killer-glyphosate-wins-five-year-approval-in-EU-vote/1791511827024/?st_rec=7441528131347
A European Union appeal committee voted to extend the lease of the weed killer glyphosate for five years on Monday
Nov. 27 (UPI) -- The European Union voted to grant controversial weed killer ingredient glyphosate a new, five-year lease Monday.
With glyphosate's registration set to expire in December, an EU appeal committee voted to extend glyphosate's lease for five years, a third the length of the typical 15-year lease.
A petition by 1.3 million EU citizens called for glyphosate to be banned after the herbicide was declared "probably carcinogenic to humans" by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015.
"The guidelines maintained by [the European Chemicals Agency] would easily classify this compound as a group 1B carcinogen and, as such, it should be banned for use in Europe," IARC advisor Chris Portier said following the decision.
Glyphosate is used in weed-killing products such as Monsanto's Roundup. The National Farmers Union says the herbicide is used in practices it views as environmentally friendly.
"Glyphosate reduces the need to use other herbicides, it helps to protect soil and cut greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the need for ploughing, and it enables farmers in this country to grow crops that help produce safe, affordable, high-quality British food," the union's vice-president, Guy Jenkins, said.
A total of 18 EU states voted in favor of extending glyphosate's lease, while nine voted against and one abstained in the vote weighted by each member state's population.
"Today's vote shows that when we all want to, we are able to share and accept our collective responsibility in decision making," EU health commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis said.
Following the decision French President Emmanuel Macron called for government officials to establish a plan to ban glyphosate in France within three years.
Traces of glyphosate have been found in tests of foodstuffs, water, topsoil and human urine, according to the Detox Project, an organization that allows people to test themselves for traces of the chemical compound.
"The people who are supposed to protect us from dangerous pesticides have failed to do their jobs and betrayed the trust Europeans place in them," Greenpeace EU food policy director Franziska Achterberg said.
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>>> Monsanto name to disappear in merger with Bayer
(Satan by any other name is still Satan)
By Ed Adamczyk
June 4, 2018
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/06/04/Monsanto-name-to-disappear-in-merger-with-Bayer/7441528131347/
June 4 (UPI) -- The $66 billion merger of Monsanto and Bayer means the abandonment of the Monsanto name, Bayer said in a statement Monday.
Effective Thursday, "Bayer will remain the company name. Monsanto will no longer be a company name. The acquired products will retain their brand names and become part of the Bayer portfolio," Bayer said.
The German company, known for health and agriculture products, will become the sole shareholder of St. Louis-based Monsanto, a company whose strengths in seeds and pesticides have made it a lightning rod for critics who blame its products for environmental degradation. The merger was announced in 2016, and won conditional approval from U.S. and European Union regulators in May after the merged company agreed to divest itself of $9 billion in businesses to maintain competition.
Bayer CEO Walter Baumann indicated he is aware the new company, now with 115,000 employees globally, has an image issue.
"We aim to deepen our dialogue with society. We will listen to our critics and work together where we find common ground," Baumann said. "Agriculture is too important to allow ideological differences to bring progress to a standstill. We have to talk to each other. We need to listen to each other. It's the only way to build bridges."
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>>> This Is the Easiest Way to Tell if Your Eggs Have Gone Bad
Rachael Pack
5/22/2018
http://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/tipsandtricks/this-is-the-easiest-way-to-tell-if-your-eggs-have-gone-bad/ar-AAxErBh?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
This Is the Easiest Way to Tell if Your Eggs Have Gone Bad© Dreamstime This Is the Easiest Way to Tell if Your Eggs Have Gone Bad
Unless you have a direct and reliable source for eggs, it is often hard to tell when your eggs were actually laid. Store-bought eggs do have “best by” dates listed on their cartons, and although that date can give a clue as to the freshness, it ultimately cannot determine if an egg is still good to eat.
With this easy trick, however, you can tell in just seconds whether your egg has gone bad.
First, place your eggs in a bowl and fill it with water to cover.
If your egg lies on its side on the bottom of the bowl:
Your egg is still fresh.
If your egg sits upright but is still resting on the bottom of the bowl:
Your egg is on the older side, but still good to go.
If your egg floats:
Your egg has expired. If consumed, you could get food poisoning.
Why does this work, you ask?
As an egg ages, some of the liquids of which it is composed evaporate into gas, and since eggs are very slightly porous, some of this gas escapes. The end result is that an old egg has slightly less liquid (because some has evaporated) and slightly more gas (because the liquid takes up less space) — which is consequently why old eggs float. New, fresh eggs have little or no air trapped inside their shells and therefore sink in water.
Older eggs, the ones that sit upright on the bottom of the bowl, though, are perfect for hard-boiled creations like egg salad or deviled eggs, because as the egg’s air pocket grows, it pulls away from the inside of the shell, making it much easier to peel.
For fried or poached eggs, fresher eggs tend to be the better choice because the whites have more structure; meaning that the white sits tight next to the yolk and isn’t as watery as an older egg. Test this for yourself: Crack an old egg and a new egg side by side. You’ll see that the newer egg sits taller and tighter than the older one.
Lastly, if you find that your egg white is slightly opaque and cloudy, don’t worry! This means the egg is still permeated with carbon dioxide from being laid and it is actually a sign of freshness.
So there you have it, the ultimate way to determine whether or not any questionable eggs you might have lurking in your fridge are bad or not. If your eggs are good to go, the world (or kitchen) is your oyster, so go ahead and start egg-sperimenting with these 50 ways to cook an egg.
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>>> The Real Reason Why Egg Yolks Are Different Colors
Reader's Digest
Camille Berry
May 2018
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http://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodculture/the-real-reason-why-egg-yolks-are-different-colors/ar-AAy2aFH?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
Eggshells can come in a rainbow of colors, but did you know that egg yolks come in a variety of shades as well? We’ve all seen the pale yellow yolks found in store-bought cartons, and you’ve likely encountered the richly hued orange yolks when you pick up eggs at a farmers market. Either way, they make for a tasty morning scrambled egg feast!
But do you ever wonder why some yolks are darker than others? Stick around and we’ll break it down for you.
The Secret Behind Egg Yolk Color
Despite this common misconception, the exact shade of your egg yolk has nothing to do with the chicken breed—although it can affect the color of the eggshell. Here’s the real difference between white and brown eggs. The shade of an egg yolk is completely determined by the hen’s diet. Hens that are given feed full of yellow-orange pigments will lay eggs with darker yolks. It’s as simple as that! No artificial coloring is allowed in chicken feed, but some farmers will add marigold petals to give yolks an orangey color boost. Reddish yolks are made possible by adding capsicum (i.e. red bell peppers) to chicken feed, and throwing in a dash of paprika can have the same effect.
(Is a carton of 'cage-free' eggs worth the extra cost? Here’s our guide on how to choose the best eggs.)
What Egg Yolk Color Means for Your Health
OK, so now we know why yolks can vary in color. But does a darker yolk mean a more nutrient-rich egg? You may be surprised to find out that this actually isn’t the case! A pale yellow yolk and a deep orange-gold yolk will have the same amount of protein and fat, although a darker yolk may mean more vitamins and less cholesterol. But the jury is still out on that one.
That said, some folks swear (the author included!) that the darker the yolk, the tastier the egg. You may not notice it as much in a hearty breakfast casserole, but when it comes to a relatively simple French omelet with a few ingredients, an egg with a darker yolk can give your breakfast a major flavor boost.
Regardless of the color of your yolk, eggs are a great way to get extra protein in your diet. Don’t miss these 55 delicious ways to have eggs at every meal.
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>>> Scotts Miracle-Gro shares slip after $450 million acquisition announced
By Tonya Garcia
Apr 18, 2018
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/scotts-miracle-gro-shares-slip-after-450-million-acquisition-announced-2018-04-18?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. SMG, +0.45% shares are down 2.2% in Wednesday trading after the lawn and garden company announced an agreement to acquire Sunlight Supply Inc., a hydroponics distributor, for $425 million in cash and $25 million in Scotts Miracle-Gro equity upon completion of the deal. The deal will create a distribution model for The Hawthorne Gardening Co., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Scotts Miracle-Gro. Hawthorne had 2017 sales of about $290 million and has a portfolio of brands that includes Gavita and Botanicare. Sunlight has a 350,000-square-foot distribution center in Vancouver, Wa. along with three other North American facilities. Hawthorne Gardening and Sunlight Supply are expected to have about $600 million in annualized sales. In fiscal 2018, the deal is expected to be dilutive by 30 cents to 40 cents per share on an adjusted basis. The company expects to achieve $35 million in financial synergies by the end of fiscal 2019 and incur about $15 million to $20 million in restructuring charges to achieve the synergies. Benefits are expected to improve year-over-year by 60 cents to 80 cents per share on an adjusted basis in fiscal 2019. Scotts Miracle-Gro will announce fiscal second quarter results on May 1. "Strategically, we like the transaction as it fits extremely well with Scotts Miracle-Gro's Hawthorne hydroponics subsidiary," Raymond James analysts wrote in a note. "As with its core U.S. Consumer business, the new vertically-integrated operating model is likely to bring Hawthorne closer to its retailer customers and improve its visibility, while also yielding cost synergies which Scotts Miracle-Gro estimates at $35M by FY19." Raymond James rates Scotts Miracle-Gro market perform. Scotts Miracle-Gro shares are down 22.2% for the year so far while the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.85% is up 1.3% for the period.
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VITAHEMP has released its "Black Label" Premium range of Hemp Seed Oil soft gel capsules.
120CAPS x 750mg. Hemp Seed Oil Capsules are a wonderful plant-based alternative to conventional fish oil. Each soft gel capsule contains a rich source of EFA's (Omega 6 and 3) in a 3:1 ratio and Gamma Linolenic Acid.
If you are taking Fish Oil capsules consider this plant-based alternative. No fishy aftertaste! (y)
https://www.facebook.com/vitahemp/
https://vitahemp.com/product/hemp-seed-oil-capsules/
With a great distribution network, they have managed to get a major window to the public for there Products. They also sell on-line threw there e-shop on the website.
8 Products so far and more on the way - hemp will be big !
Perilla oil -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perilla_oil
>>> Perilla oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from perilla seeds. Having a distinct nutty aroma and taste, the oil pressed from the toasted perilla seeds is used as a flavor enhancer, condiment, and cooking oil in Korean cuisine.[1] The oil pressed from untoasted perilla seeds is used for non-culinary purposes.[1]
Production
Perilla oil is obtained by pressing the seeds of perilla, which contains 38-45% lipids.[2][3][4
Nutrition
Perilla oil is considered a rich source of fatty acids, and contains both saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids in perilla oil are mainly palmitic (5-7%) and stearic (1-3%). Monounsaturated fatty acids in perilla oil are oleic (12-22%), while polyunsaturated fatty acids in perilla oil are linoleic (13-20%), gamma-linolenic (0-1%), alpha-linolenic (54-64%), and arachidic (0-1%).
In comparison to other plant oils, perilla oil exhibits one of the highest proportion of omega-3 fatty acids, which is between 54-64%.[5] The omega-6 fatty acid component is usually around 14%.[6][7]
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>>> What Is the Mediterranean Diet?
March 26, 2018
by Sherry Christiansen
https://www.alzheimers.net/the-mediterranean-diet/
In the mid-1900’s, scientists became aware that people in several Mediterranean countries were healthier and lived longer than in other regions of the world. So, researchers started studying the diet and lifestyle of the Mediterranean people to find out if what they ate, and how they lived had anything to do with the reason they were healthier.What Is the Mediterranean Diet?
Researchers discovered that the diet of the Mediterranean people was much different than the Western diet and its benefits include a reduction of cardiovascular disease, lower risk of cancer, reduced incidence of inflammation, oxidative stress and lower insulin levels. Thus, the Mediterranean Diet was born.
Foods in the Mediterranean Diet
The people in the Southern regions of Greece and Italy have many things in common when it comes to diet and lifestyle. They eat mostly fresh, locally grown food (not having access to many of the unhealthy processed foods in the Western diet) for one.
Other foods on the diet include:
•A wide range of brightly colored (dark skinned) fresh fruits and vegetables
•Extra virgin olive oil (replacing butter, which is high in saturated fat)
•Moderate amounts (2 to 3 times per week) of fresh, locally caught wild, cold-water fish
•Primarily vegetable sources of protein, such as beans and legumes
•Small amounts of red wine
•Very little red meat
•Whole grains
Perhaps just as important as the food eaten in the Mediterranean Diet, is the lifestyle of the people, who socialize frequently and are physically active every day.
Clinical study findings were so astounding for overall health and disease prevention, that the Mediterranean Diet began to be studied for its effect on many different illnesses — including Alzheimer’s disease.
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“Based on studies, the Mediterranean diet is considered by some experts to be an excellent method for reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. By one estimate, this diet can decrease disease risk by as much as 40% in older patients. The more strictly patients adhere to the diet, the more dramatically their risk is reduced,” says Dr. Richard Isaacson, M.D., Harvard trained Neurologist, in his book titled, “The Alzheimer’s Treatment & Prevention Diet.”
Foods to Avoid on the Mediterranean Diet
•Animal products such as eggs, low-fat cheese and yogurt (in moderation)
•Artificial sugar
•Fried food
•Processed foods (crackers, boxed instant foods, packaged potato chips and more)
•Red meat should be limited (rarely)
•Starchy foods
•Sugary foods
•Trans-fats (lard)
•Unhealthy saturated fats (butter)
•White pasta
Foods to Eat on the Mediterranean Diet
•Bright colored, thick-skinned fruits, including: apples, berries, red grapes and oranges
•Brightly colored vegetables such as: broccoli, Brussel sprouts, carrots, eggplant, peppers and tomatoes
•Cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil (a great source of monounsaturated fat that lowers bad cholesterol [LDL] raises healthy cholesterol [HDL] levels)
•Fresh herbs and spices
•Fresh, wild-caught cold-water fish such as: cod, mackerel, oysters and tuna
•Green leafy vegetables such as: collard greens, kale, spinach and Romaine lettuce
•Lean meat such as: chicken and turkey
•Nuts and seeds like: Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds and walnuts
•Red wine (in limited amounts, 1 glass per day for women, 2 glasses per day for men)
•Whole grains such as: barley, oatmeal, quinoa and more
Other Things to Note About the Mediterranean Diet
Dairy Intake
Low-fat dairy should only be eaten in moderation on the Mediterranean diet — such as 1-2 servings per day of plain (no sugar added) Greek yogurt with live cultures, a 4-ounce glass of low-fat milk, or 1 to 2 ounces of low-fat cheese. Only eat dairy from grass-fed cows, because these products are higher in healthy fats, than cows that are fed corn.
Fatty Acids
Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids are important to overall health. Healthy fats are a vital part of the Mediterranean Diet.
Fatty fish from cold water sources, rich in omega-3 fatty acids, was shown in studies to be an important factor in brain and heart health. Healthy choices of wild caught fish high in omega-3 fatty acids include:
Fish should not be fried in oil, but rather baked or broiled. Avoid large amounts of shellfish, which is not considered part of the Mediterranean diet. Farm raised fish is considered by many food experts to be unhealthy and toxic, and it should be avoided altogether.
Recent studies indicate that omega-3 fatty acids protect against heart disease and stroke, reduce blood pressure, raise HDL (good cholesterol) and lower triglycerides. Omega-6 fatty acids mostly come from plant oils (such as corn oil) and from nuts and seeds.
Healthy Omega-3/Omega-6 Ratio
The American Heart Association recommends limiting food calories from omega-6 fatty acids to 5-10%. A diet high omega-6 fatty acid is associated with weight gain in human studies, whereas a high omega-3 fatty acid (fresh wild caught fish) intake decreases the risk for inflammation and weight gain while lowering bad cholesterol. In general, the Western diet is very high in omega-6 fatty acids, and too low in omega-3 fatty acids. It’s important to note that omega-6 fatty acids are healthy when the ratio is correctly balanced.
According to the American Heart Association, fatty fish (such as albacore tuna, herring, lake trout, mackerel, salmon and sardines should be eaten at least 2 times per week, with an average serving of 3.5 ounces cooked or ¾ cup flaked fish.
Those with a high risk of heart disease, or people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, may need to take a supplement of omega-3 fatty acid — under the supervision of the physician. High doses of omega-3 supplements could have dangerous side-effects (such as bleeding).
Foods High in Omega 3 Fatty Acids
•Albacore tuna
•Cod Liver and Krill Oil
•Flax seed oil (has both Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids
•Lake trout
•Wild caught cod
•Wild caught herring
•Wild caught mackerel
•Wild oysters
•Wild caught salmon
Foods High in Omega 6 Fatty Acids
•Flaxseed Oil (has both Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids)
•Grapeseed oil
•Pine nuts
•Pistachios
•Pumpkin seeds
•Unprocessed Non-GMO Corn, Safflower, Sunflower, Sesame and Soybean Oil
•Walnutsm
The Mediterranean Diet, found to lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, is also thought to slow down symptoms of memory loss in people in the early stages of the disease. According to a recent Harvard Health publication:
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“This has been shown to help thwart Alzheimer’s or slow its progression.” Dr. Marshall of Harvard Health added, “A recent study showed that even partial adherence to such a diet is better than nothing, which is relevant to people who may find it difficult to fully adhere to a new diet.”
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>>> How Do Antioxidants Lend Themselves to Brain Health?
March 30, 2018
by?Sherry Christiansen
https://investorshub.advfn.com/secure/post_new.aspx?board_id=25497
Many people know that antioxidants are components of healthy foods that help boost the immune system. But, what exactly are antioxidants, how do they work and can they improve brain health?How Do Antioxidants Lend Themselves to Brain Health?
Antioxidants
Antioxidants are compounds found in food sources. They play an instrumental role in protecting the enzymes, fats and vitamins in the body. These natural substances help to delay or prevent certain types of damage to the cell. Brightly colored fruits and vegetables, such as those that are part of the Mediterranean diet, are a great source of antioxidants. In general, the brighter the color, the higher the level of disease-fighting antioxidants in food.
Examples of antioxidants include:
•Beta-carotene
•Lutein
•Lycopene
•Selenium
•Vitamin A
•Vitamin C
•Vitamin E
Antioxidants can be broken down into two groups including:
1.Flavonoids are primarily found in plants, approximately 4,000 flavonoids have been identified. This group is broken down into seven different categories, including anthocyanidins (from blueberries, grapes and wine) and catechins/epicatechin (found in cocoa, dark chocolate and tea) and more.
2.Non-flavonoids include three categories: minerals, plant pigments and vitamins. Plant pigments include carotenoids (found in orange fruits and vegetables, such as carrots and pumpkins). Vitamin C and E are the primary vitamin antioxidants. Selenium is an example of a mineral antioxidant enzyme, found in Brazil nuts, eggs, fish, grains and meat.
Antioxidants in the Body
Oxidative stress is a condition that is thought to contribute to age-related illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s disease. It results from the body’s inability to detoxify the harmful end products of metabolism (breaking down food into energy). Oxygen is required when food is burned for energy, but during that process, dangerous byproducts are produced called free radicals. As the body ages, it is not as efficient in removing free radicals, and the result is damage to the cells.
One of the most severe examples of free radical attack on the body is memory loss.
Several factors are known to speed up the production of free radicals, including excessive alcohol intake, a diet high in saturated and trans-fats and smoking. Environmental sources (such as pollution) can result in free radicals in the body as well.
Antioxidants and Brain Health
Studies have shown that antioxidants may help to counteract the unstable molecules that comprise free radicals, counteracting the negative effects of oxidative stress. Recent studies discovered that antioxidants may reverse some of the symptoms of aging (such as memory loss).
The brain uses an abundance of oxygen due to its high metabolic activity. This makes the brain more susceptible to free radical attack than just about any other area of the body. Free radical attack on brain cells results in memory loss.
Two types of flavonoids called “luteolin” and “diosmin” were shown to reduce levels of beta-amyloid (a hallmark symptom of Alzheimer’s disease) in the brain. Luteolin can be found in abundance in green peppers and tomatoes, and lemons are high in diosmin.
Studies have also shown that flavonoids called “anthocyanins” found in red berries, are associated with decreasing cardiovascular risks. What’s good for the heart is good for the brain (because cardiovascular disease increases the risk of Alzheimer’s), so, flavonoids are also highly recommended for brain health and Alzheimer’s prevention. In fact, berries are recommended daily on the Alzheimer’s Prevention diet due to the strong evidence that regular intake (a half a cup twice a week of blueberries or strawberries) was associated with delaying cognitive decline for over two years.
Top Antioxidant Foods
•Artichoke (boiled)
•Cilantro
•Cinnamon
•Citrus fruit
•Cocoa
•Cranberries
•Dark chocolate
•Ginger and turmeric
•Goji berries
•Green tea
•Kidney beans
•Oregano
•Pecans
•Tomatoes
•Wild blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries
Many studies have also been done on the effects of cocoa powder flavonoids on memory loss. Flavonoids from cocoa were found in clinical research studies to inhibit the death of neurons by interfering with free radicals in the brain. The primary flavonoid in cocoa and chocolate is called epicatechin, which was found to improve cognitive function in animals and humans. In rat studies, flavonoids from cocoa and chocolate were found to preserve cognitive abilities. Human studies discovered that cocoa flavonoids lowered the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and stroke.
A 2012 study of people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who drank a specific type of cocoa drink, called Cocoa Via, resulted in significant improvement memory function in study participants. It’s important to note that many of the flavonoids are removed when most brands of cocoa are processed from its raw form and that the study involved a particular type of pure, unsweetened cocoa, called CocoaVia.
Resveratrol is part of a group of compounds that act like antioxidants, called polyphenols. Resveratrol is thought to protect the body against damage that can increase the risk of diseases, such as cancer and heart disease. Resveratrol is found in the skin of red grapes, so it’s abundant in blueberries, cocoa powder, cranberries, grape juice, peanuts and wine. Some preliminary animal studies have shown that resveratrol helped to delay cognitive decline, but human studies are somewhat limited. One study did, however, discover that memory function improved in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease who took supplemental resveratrol.
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>>> Did a popular sugar additive fuel the spread of two superbugs?
By Amina Khan
Los Angeles Times
1-4-18
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/did-a-popular-sugar-additive-fuel-the-spread-of-two-superbugs/ar-BBHRdlq?
A widely used sugar additive called trehalose may have contributed to the emergence of two hyper-virulent strains of the bacterium Clostridium difficile, shown here.© Centers for Disease Control and Prevention A widely used sugar additive called trehalose may have contributed to the emergence of two hyper-virulent strains of the bacterium Clostridium difficile, shown…
Two bacterial strains that have plagued hospitals around the country may have been at least partly fueled by a sugar additive in our food products, scientists say. Trehalose, a sugar that is added to a wide range of food products, could have allowed certain strains of Clostridium difficile to become far more virulent than they were before, a new study finds.
The results, described in the journal Nature, highlight the unintended consequences of introducing otherwise harmless additives to the food supply.
C. difficile is a nasty bacterium — infection can result in severe diarrhea and death — and numbers among the most prevalent hospital-acquired infections in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly half a million people were sickened by the bug in 2011. Some 29,000 of those patients died within 30 days of being diagnosed with C. difficile, and about 15,000 of those deaths were directly linked to the infection.
The disease wasn’t always such a scourge of the sick and hospitalized, and scientists have long been trying to figure out why certain strains have become so successful in recent years. The misuse and overuse of antibiotics has long been thought to be responsible for the rise of many kinds of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.”
To probe the mystery, a team of scientists led out of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas examined two particularly successful lineages of C. difficile, RT027 and RT078, examining what kind of carbon-rich molecules they ate. Both types, they noticed, seemed very good at using low concentrations of the sugar trehalose as a sole carbon source.
The researchers analyzed the genomes of both RT027 and RT078. While both had RNA sequences that allowed each type to take advantage of trehalose in low doses, they did so in very different ways.
C. difficile bacteria have genes that can break trehalose into glucose (a simpler, more useful sugar) and its derivatives. But a special protein called TreR blocks the microbes from metabolizing trehalose unless the concentration of trehalose in the environment is very high.
In RT027, the TreR protein is modified in a way that lowers the bar, allowing the bacteria to metabolize trehalose even in quite low concentrations.
RT078, however, is using a different mechanism to do the same thing, having picked up four genes that are used in taking up and metabolizing trehalose. (Just one of them, it turns out, was responsible for its powered-up ability to grow in small amounts of trehalose.)
“Unexpectedly, RT078 does not share the genetic alteration in TreR that is found in RT027,” Jimmy D. Ballard of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, who was not involved in the study, wrote in a commentary. Thus, “it therefore seems that two epidemic strains of C. difficile have optimized trehalose metabolism in unrelated ways.”
The researchers tested their findings in mice. If they removed a gene for trehalose metabolism in RT027, then the strain became far less virulent. And if they added trehalose to the diets of animals affected with an unaltered RT027, the mice’s risk of death shot up.
So, was the trehalose causing a bacterial population boom? Not really. The scientists found the RT027 bacterial load in the mice to be roughly the same regardless of whether they were fed this sugar. Instead, scientists think the microbes’ improved ability to metabolize the sugar meant that they also produced more C. difficile toxins — making the bacteria far more virulent.
The researchers also took fluids from the small intestines of three human study participants who were fed a typical diet and tried to grow different strains of C. difficile in it. Sure enough, RT027 responded to the trehalose in the bodily fluid, while other strains did not.
There’s another reason scientists suspect trehalose is feeding the growth of these C. difficile superbugs: Both started making their big breaks roughly around the same time, researchers said.
“Although considered an ideal sugar for use in the food industry, the use of trehalose in the United States and Europe was limited before 2000 owing to the high cost of production (approximately U.S. $700 per kilogram),” the authors pointed out. “The innovation of a novel enzymatic method for low-cost production from starch made it commercially viable as a food supplement (approximately U.S. $3 per kilogram).”
For now, this evidence doesn’t definitively prove whether trehalose helped fuel the C. difficile strains. But the findings are pretty telling and worthy of more study, Ballard said.
“Despite these concerns, the correlative findings of Collins and colleagues’ study are compelling,” he added. “It is impossible to know all the details of events surrounding the recent C. difficile epidemics, but the circumstantial and experimental evidence points to trehalose as an unexpected culprit.”
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>>> AgroFresh Solutions, Inc., (AGFS) formerly Boulevard Acquisition Corp., is a developer of agricultural technologies that preserve the freshness and value of fresh produce, including apples, pears, kiwifruit, avocados and bananas, as well as flowers. The Company's principal product, The SmartFresh Quality System (SmartFresh), regulates the post-harvest ripening effects of ethylene, the naturally occurring plant hormone that triggers ripening in certain fruits and vegetables, through technology. SmartFresh is naturally biodegradable and leaves no detectable residue, which has significant consumer appeal. SmartFresh allows growers and packers to deliver just harvested freshness on a year-round basis. An integral part of the SmartFresh sales process is the AgroFresh Whole Product offering, which is a direct service model that provides customers with on-site applications of SmartFresh at their storage facilities combined with advisory services. The Company operates in approximately 40 countries <<<
>>> Calavo Growers, Inc. operates in the avocado industry. The Company provides value-added fresh food. The Company distributes its products both domestically and internationally and internationally. It operates in three business segments: Fresh products, Calavo Foods and Renaissance Food Group, LLC (RFG). The Company is engaged in marketing and distributing avocados, prepared avocados and other perishable foods, which allows it to deliver an array of fresh and prepared food products to food distributors, produce wholesalers, supermarkets, convenience stores and restaurants on a worldwide basis. The Company procures avocados principally from California and Mexico. Through its various operating facilities, the Company sorts, packs, and/or ripens avocados, tomatoes and/or Hawaiian grown papayas; processes and packages fresh cut fruit and vegetables, salads, wraps, sandwiches, fresh snacking products and a range of behind-the-glass deli items, and produces and packages guacamole and salsa. <<<
Calavo Growers - >>> Blame Brooklyn, blame hipsters: Avocado prices are out of control
By Ciara Linnane
Published: May 6, 2017
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/blame-brooklyn-blame-hipsters-avocado-prices-are-out-of-control-2017-05-04?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
U.S. consumption grew to 7 pounds a head in 2014, up from 1.1 pounds in 1989
With unfortunate timing — right ahead of Cinco de Mayo celebrations — avocado prices have spiked to a record high, raising the cost of our beloved guacamole bowls.
Avocado prices have climbed to an average of $1.25 a pop, according to trade group Hass Avocado Board, which scans data directly from retailers’ cash registers to track the price. As recently as January, the average selling price was just 89 cents, and in February, it hit a low of 77 cents.
The reason is a sharp rise in demand for the creamy fruit, beloved by Mexicans, hipsters and health nuts. Avocados have become popular for their health benefits, and have been marketed for the past few years as a “superfood,” along with kale, blueberries and wheatgrass. The fruit is a source of potassium, beneficial mono-unsaturated fat, vitamins E, K and folate and is promoted as a nutritious option for diabetics.
That has helped boost demand for dishes such as avocado toast, salads and smoothies, and has even prompted an Italian chef to open the first avocado-based restaurant in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, according to the New York Times.
U.S. consumption grew to 7 pounds a head in 2014, the last year for which data is available, from 1.1 pounds in 1989, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center (AgMRC), which allied with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The U.S. imports most of its avocados from Mexico, followed by Chile. California produced $328 million worth of the fruit in 2014, producing 164,000 tons, or 83% of total U.S. volume. The fruit is also grown in Florida and Hawaii.
Demand has soared at a time when the crop is thin, a function of the fruit’s “alternate bearing” pattern.
“Certain varieties, such as the Hass, have a tendency to bear well only in alternate years,” according to an AgMRC report from January. The Hass is the main variety grown in California.
“After a season with a low yield, due to factors such as cold (which the avocado does not tolerate well), the trees tend to produce abundantly the next season. This heavy crop depletes stored carbohydrates, resulting in a reduced yield the following season, and thus the alternate bearing pattern becomes established,” said the report.
Shares of Calavo Growers Inc. CVGW, +1.29% closed down 0.1% Thursday, and have gained 6% in 2017, while the S&P 500 SPX, +0.51% has gained 6.7%.
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>>> 50 Foods You Should Never Eat
Rodale Wellness
Leah Zerbe
1/13/2016
http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/50-foods-you-should-never-eat/ss-BBodjvN?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout#image=2
Whole Wheat Bread
William Davis, MD, creator of Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox
The Problem: Modern wheat is nothing like the grain your mother or grandmother consumed. Today, wheat barely resembles its original form, thanks to extensive genetic manipulations during the 1960s and 1970s to increase the grain's yields. "You cannot change the basic characteristics of a plant without changing its genetics, biochemistry, and its effects on humans who consume it," Dr. Davis notes.
Dr. Davis makes the case that modern-day wheat is triggering all sorts of health problems, everything from digestive diseases like celiac and inflammatory bowel disease to acid reflux, obesity, asthma, and skin disorders. "If there is a food that yields extravagant, extraordinary, and unexpected benefits when avoided, it is bread," says Dr. Davis. "And I don’t mean white bread, I mean all bread: white, whole wheat, whole grain, sprouted, organic, French, Italian, fresh, day-old…all of it."
The Solution: Try eliminating wheat altogether from your diet for a few weeks to see if you note health improvements. But be prepared for the wheat withdrawal syndrome of nausea, headache, fatigue and depression, and a host of other strange side effects of going grain-free during your first wheat-free week, since there are opiates that develop from the gliadin protein of wheat. Once you are through this process, you'll feel better, maybe better than you have in years.
Non-Dairy Coffee Creamer
The Problem: The health benefits of coffee are pretty impressive, so don't go throwing them away by splashing non-dairy creamer in your morning joe. Fake creamers are full of hard-to-pronounce ingredients, including liver-damaging high-fructose corn syrup, inflammatory hydrogenated oils that would never exist in nature, and artificial flavors.
The Solution: Drink your coffee black, or if you want to add cream, opt for organic from grass-fed cows or organic unsweetened coconut milk without the food additive carrageenan
Grape Jelly
The Problem: Concord grapes are delicious (and are one of the few fruits native to North America), but the way most of us taste them is in the form of high-fructose-laden grape jelly. "Even though it's given away for free like ketchup in little plastic packets, it's basically a jelly-textured candy loaded with various forms of sugar, artificial colors, and flavors," Gustafson says.
The Solution: Gustafson suggests opting for real fruit, honey, or apple butter on your PB&(F, H, or AB) sandwich. If you do reach for jelly in the store, look for low-sugar, organic versions—organic bans the use of artificial colors and flavors and requires that the grapes be grown without the use of chemical pesticides. (Nonorganic grapes are one of the most pesticide-laden fruits.)
Diet Soda
The Problem: Dr. Eliaz stays away from any diet soda and foods, sugar-free candies, and gum containing artificial sweeteners such as sucralose, aspartame, acesulfame K, and neotame, among others. "The safety data on these sweeteners is shrouded in controversy and conflicts of interest with the manufacturers of these chemical compounds," Dr. Eliaz warns. "Independent research strongly suggests that when metabolized in the body, these sweeteners can cause health-related issues and problems related to metabolism and weight gain, neurological diseases, joint pain, digestive problems, headaches, depression, inflammatory bowel disease, chemical toxicity, and cancer, among others."
The Solution: From its weight gain effects to the overload of artificial sweeteners, the disturbing side effects of soda are enough to break the fizzy habit. If you're craving a soda but want to avoid the shady sweeteners, fake food dyes, and preservatives found in popular brands, try making one of these naturally flavored water recipes, or brew your own kombucha, a naturally bubbly fermented tea that's easy to make at home.More: How Soda Destroys Your Body
Canned Tomatoes
The Problem: The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, or BPA, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Studies show that the BPA in most people's bodies exceeds the amount that suppresses sperm production or causes chromosomal damage to the eggs of animals. "You can get 50 micrograms of BPA per liter out of a tomato can, and that's a level that is going to impact people, particularly the young," says vom Saal. "I won't go near canned tomatoes."
The Solution: To avoid negative BPA health effects, choose tomatoes in glass bottles (which do not need resin linings), such as the brands Eden Organic and Bionaturae. You can also look for tomatoes in Tetra Pak boxes instead of cans.
Sprouts
The Problem: Sprouts have been the source of so many major food recalls that they're really not worth the risk, Powell says. Be they bean or broccoli, alfalfa or pea, sprouts have been at the center of at least 55 outbreaks of foodborne illness, affecting more than 15,000 people over the last 20 years. Often, sprouts harbor salmonella, E. coli, or listeria; they're vulnerable to contamination because the seeds require moist, warm conditions in order to sprout—ideal conditions for bacteria to thrive and multiply in.
The Solution: Get the crunch of sprouts—without the added bacteria—by shredding cabbage or carrots onto your sandwiches. If you really enjoy the flavor of sprouts, cook them first, but watch out for cross-contamination.
Chicken Wings
The Problem: A single chicken wing has 81 calories and 5 grams of fat. Given that most people don't eat just one, a lone feast of chicken wings could easily lead to 1,000 extra calories and 50 grams of fat—nearly two or three days worth of artery-clogging fat! "Since 500 extra calories per day leads to two pounds per week, chicken wings are a recipe for weight gain," Dr. Bhatia says.
The Solution: If you like chicken, try baked or grilled versions to avoid a calorie overload. Since conventional chicken feed often contains antibiotics to stimulate faster growth (and sometimes even arsenic), choose organic whenever you can. If you want to go the veggie route, try this delicious vegan Buffalo wings alternative.
Nonorganic Strawberries
The Problem: While filming Food Inc., Kenner says he wanted to film strawberry farmers applying pesticides to their fields. "The workers wear these suits to protect themselves from the dozens and dozens of known dangerous pesticides applied to strawberries," he says. "When I saw this, I thought to myself, if this is how berries are grown, I don't really want to eat them anymore. I haven't been able to eat a nonorganic strawberry ever since." Unfortunately, for the food-concerned public, he wasn't able to get footage of these farmers. "I guess they didn't think it looked too appetizing."
The Solution: Opt for organic strawberries! The Environmental Working Group, which analyzes U.S. Department of Agriculture pesticide-residue data, has found 13 different pesticide residues on conventionally grown strawberries.
Butter-Flavored Popcorn
The Problem: Diacetyl is used in a lot of fake butter flavorings, despite the fact that the chemical is so harmful to factory workers that it's known to cause an occupational disease called "popcorn lung," Scranton says. After news of the chemical got out to the popcorn-eating public, companies started replacing diacetyl with another additive—which can actually turn into diacetyl under certain conditions, she adds. Neither chemical is disclosed on microwave-popcorn bags because the exact formulations of flavorings are considered trade secrets. "It's a classic example of the need for better chemical regulation and improved transparency on the chemicals used in our food and other household products," she says.
The Solution: Make your own popcorn using real butter. Pop it on the stovetop in a pot or go an easier homemade popcorn route: Put a small handful of kernels into a brown paper lunch bag and stick the bag in the microwave. The kernels will pop just like those fake-butter-flavored kernels in standard microwave popcorn bags. When they're done, pour some melted organic butter over them. "Makes pretty good popcorn at a fraction of the cost!" Scranton says.
Nonorganic Green Beans
The Problem: Green beans are consistently rated one of the riskiest picks in your produce aisle. In a recent Consumer Reports report, researchers found that green beans tainted with chemical insecticide acephate—and its breakdown product methamidophos—ranked No. 1 as a risk driver for chemical contamination. Its use on green beans accounted for around one-half of total risk across all pesticides and food. Because of this, green beans fall into the report's "very high-risk vegetable" category. And the thing about green beans is that they are consistently contaminated with toxic pesticides. Looking at the measure of both the amount of pesticide residues found on the beans and the chemicals' toxicity, green beans have landed on the very-high-risk category nearly every year since testing began in 1992.
The Solution: Make sure you always opt for organic green beans. Better yet, plant your own. They're incredibly easy to grow, take up little room in the garden, and produce a bountiful harvest in less than two months.
Farmed Salmon
The Problem: "Fish is naturally low in saturated fat, and some types, like salmon, are also high in omega-3 fat, reducing the risk of stroke and heart attack and inflammation throughout the body. While Americans need to eat more seafood and less red meat, some fish such as farmed salmon are contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides (including dieldrin and toxaphene) and antibiotics," she says. And unlike wild salmon, farmed salmon are fed a mixture of other fish ground into fishmeal and fish oil, and they concentrate more toxins in their fat tissue than do other fish, Dr. Cuomo notes.
The Solution: "Fish is an important part of my family's diet, and I am very careful to choose wild salmon, rather than farmed salmon, which contains many carcinogens," Dr. Cuomo
Margarine
Dave Asprey, author of The Bulletproof Diet
The Problem: "If you could pick one type of fat that would destroy your performance, decrease your brain function, damage your health, and shorten your life, it would have to be margarine and other trans fats," Asprey says. "They lower your HDL cholesterol and increase your risk of heart disease, increase your triglyceride levels, and damage your arteries and your heart." Not only that, but the inflammatory fats found in margarine impact brain function through inflammation.
The Solution: Instead of margarine, Asprey recommends fats like ghee, avocado oil, coconut oil, and grass-fed butter. Or get a healthy dose of healthy fat with this Bulletproof coffee recipe.
Gummy Vitamins
Mark Moyad, MD, MPH, author of The Supplement Handbook
The Problem: Vitamins in the form of candy? Sounds like a dream to the parents of picky eaters. Too bad it's too good to be true. Each serving is about 15 calories a day and, while 2 or 3 grams of sugar a day (often as corn syrup) doesn't seem like much, Dr. Moyad points out that this translates to nearly 6 cups of sugar a year. Not to mention, gummies contain artificial food dyes and can contain a laundry list of other problematic ingredients: "Many contain gluten, and some also contain corn syrup, carmine, and pregelatinized cornstarch," he says.
The Solution: "Always go to food for nutrition first," says Dr. Moyad. "Don't teach kids to rely on pills at such a young age." Liquid multivitamins can be a good alternative for kids (especially those who can't swallow pills). Double-check the labels for dyes first, and pick one that touts the NSF certification.
Instant Noodles
Jean Nick, senior information analyst at the Rodale Library
The Problem: This frat-house staple contains ingredients like MSG that can actually trigger not just excessive food cravings, but painful migraines, too. In fact, Baylor University researchers recently found that eating instant noodles two or more times a week increases your risk of cardiometabolic syndrome, raising your likelihood of developing heart disease and other conditions, such as diabetes and stroke, explains Nick.
The Solution: To avoid one of the worst ingredients in the ramen packets, MSG (and all of the sneaky names for MSG)—and to inject some nutrition into your cup of noodle meal—stir up this healthy instant noodle recipe.
Nonorganic Corn
Maryam Henein and George Langworthy, directors of Vanishing of the Bees
The Problem: Today's corn plants are more like little pesticide factories with roots. Most of the nation's corn supply is genetically engineered to either produce its own pesticide supply within the plant or withstand heavy sprayings of chemicals, which wind up inside of the food. That's problematic not just for bees, but for people, too. "I avoid corn because most is genetically modified, and on top of that, most of the seeds are treated with systemic pesticides that kill bees," says Henein. "And let’s not be fooled, the sublethal effects of these pesticides also slowly impair our health."
The Solution: In one form or another, corn is present in the vast majority of processed foods. From ketchup to salad dressing, and even bread, it’s hard to escape corn ingredients. One to especially look out for? "I always try to avoid foods containing high-fructose corn syrup," says Langworthy. "Not only is it unhealthy, but the pesticides used in the production of the corn is detrimental to honeybees and other pollinators."
To avoid genetically engineered corn, which has never been tested for longterm impacts on human health, choose USDA organic or Non-GMO Verified foods.
Artificial Sweeteners
Maria Rodale, CEO of Rodale, Inc. and author of Organic Manifesto
The Problem: Ironically, there's a lot of evidence that suggests using artificial sweeteners, which have zero calories, is just as bad for your waistline as using regular, high-calorie sugar. For instance, research from the University of Texas has found that mice fed the artificial sweetener aspartame had higher blood sugar levels (which can cause you to overeat) than mice on an aspartame-free diet. Not only are they bad for your health, but scientists have also detected artificial sweeteners in treated wastewater, posing unknown risks to fish and other marine life. Plus, as Rodale says, "They're unnatural, nonorganic, taste horrible, and lead to all sorts of bad health consequences, false expectations, and short-term strategic thinking."
The Solution: Refined white sugar isn't any healthier, but you can replace it with small amounts of nutritious sweeteners, including honey, blackstrap molasses, and maple syrup, all of which have high levels of vitamins and minerals, or make homemade healthy sweeteners that are far better for your diet.
Processed Honey
Gerard E. Mullin, MD, author of The Gut Balance Revolution
The Problem: "Refined honey is among the most insidious sweeteners of all time," says Dr. Mullin. The pasteurization process eliminates the health properties of honey, essentially turning it into just another form of sugar. To make things more confusing, research has shown that more than 75 percent of honey has been processed to the point where it isn't even considered honey anymore. Some honey is even blended with high-fructose corn syrup, additives, and other flavorings.
The Solution: In moderation, raw honey from your local farmer's market has the opposite effect on your health. "Good data show that a teaspoon or less per day of raw honey has positive effects on gut microbimone health," Dr. Mullin says. Raw honey may have an antimicrobial effect against harmful pathogens in your gut, including E. coli. At the same time, this superfood can help promote the growth of healthy bacteria. "Honey also has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, immune-regulating, and anti-tumor properties," he points out. It can also improve many aspects of your health, including allergies, bone health, diabetes, and wound healing.
Agave
Robert Lustig, MD, author of Fat Chance
The Problem: Don't trust the health halo claims associated with the natural sweetener agave. While it is technically a low-glycemic food, it actually drives up blood fructose, which is way worse, Dr. Lustig explains. "Fructose causes seven times more cell damage than glucose because it binds to cellular proteins seven times faster and releases 100 times the number of oxygen radicals (like hydrogen peroxide, which damages cells)," he notes.In addition, fructose is turned into fat in the liver, which contributes to the development of metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes. "Glycemic index is irrelevant; fructose damages your body unrelated to glycemic index. Agave nectar should have a skull and crossbones," Dr. Lustig says.
The Solution: Retrain your tastebuds to not want excessively sweet foods. When you feel like reaching for something sweet, try one of these 25 sugar-free ways to stop sugar cravings instead.
Table Salt
Josh Axe, DNM, DC, CNS, and founder of DrAxe.com
The Problem: Table salt starts out as a healthy sea salt, but the extreme processing that happens next makes this one of the worst things you can put in your body. Manufacturers strip it of all its minerals and heat it to around 1,200 degrees, completely changing its chemical structure. Then, the naturally-occurring iodine that was destroyed is replaced with potassium iodide, and the salt is stabilized with dextrose, which turns it purple. Finally, it is bleached white.
The Solution: For an all-natural, unprocessed way to add flavor to food, choose Celtic sea salt or Himalayan salt. You'll also get a heavy dose of health benefits, including bone support, improved cognitive function and pH balancing.
Food Dyes
Michael F. Jacobson, PhD, executive director of Center for Science in the Public Interest
The Problem: Small studies link some food dyes to hyperactivity in children and cancer in animals, and that's one reason Jacobson avoids them. Red #3 causes cancer in lab rats, and Yellow #5 and Yellow #6 may contain cancer-causing contaminants. Food dyes, often used together with artificial and natural flavorings, are used to make foods appear more healthful than they actually are and to replace truly healthy ingredients like fruit, fruit juice, and vegetables. For instance, Tropicana Twister Cherry Berry Blast contains no berry or cherry juice, but lots of the artificial dye Red #40.
The Solution: Read labels anytime you're considering buying a prepackaged food. Food dyes can crop up in some really unexpected places, even in healthy foods like cheese and yogurt. The good news? Some companies are starting to remove food dye from foods.
Charred Meat
Natasha Turner, ND, author of The Supercharged Hormone Diet
The Problem: While everyone loves a good barbecue, grilling meats can produce carcinogens if you aren’t careful. The two most associated with charring are HCAs (heterocyclic amines) and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). HCAs form when meat is cooked at high temperatures; PAHs are created when the flames touch the meat or when fat drips into the flames and produces smoke, which then rises and coats the food.
The Solution: To grill more healthfully, lower the heat on your gas grill or increase the distance between the fire and the meat if using a charcoal grill. Choose smaller cuts of meat, flip them often, and use a meat thermometer when cooking at lower temperatures so you can check to be sure the meat is fully cooked. Homemade grilling marinades, particularly ones containing rosemary, can reduce the risk of HCAs by up to 99 percent.
Nonorganic Potatoes
Mark Kastel, cofounder at Cornucopia Institute
The Problem: Insects love potatoes. To counter that, nonorganic farmers generally spray chemicals on potato plants several times a year in the field. "But if that's not enough, in many production systems, their vines are sprayed with an herbicide just prior to harvest so they can be more easily harvested," Kastel explains. After harvest and washings, potatoes are often sprayed with a mold and sprout inhibitor—right on the skin, the high-fiber part that is also high in nutrients that we all should all be eating.
The Solution: Buy organic potatoes, including antioxidant-rich blue potatoes, at your farmer's market. "They are cheap and have one of the lowest premiums you need to pay to eat organically," Kastel notes.
>>> Calavo Growers, Inc. engages in marketing, and distribution of avocados, prepared avocados, and other perishable foods. It operates through Fresh Products, Calavo Foods, and Renaissance Food Group segments. The Fresh Products segment grades, sizes, packs, cools, and ripens avocados for delivery to the customers. The Calavo Foods segment procures and processes avocados into wide variety of guacamole products, and distributes the processed products to the customers. The Renaissance Food Group segment produces, markets, distributes, nationally a portfolio of healthy fresh packaged food products for consumers via the retail channel. The company was founded in 1924 and is headquartered in Santa Paula, CA. <<<
Lectins - >>> The Next Gluten
Plant proteins called lectins are an emerging source of confusion and fear.
The Atlantic
James Hamblin
Apr 24, 2017
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/04/the-next-gluten/523686/
Two weeks ago, a publicist sent me an early copy of a book that claimed it would change everything I thought I knew about food.
That happens a lot. This one caught my eye because it warned of the “hidden dangers lurking in my salad bowl,” and I was eating a salad.
The book, The Plant Paradox, has an image of an artfully smashed tomato on the cover, and it tells readers that eating tomatoes is “inciting a kind of chemical warfare in our bodies, causing inflammatory reactions that can lead to weight gain and serious health conditions.”
Tomatoes and ill-timed references to chemical warfare are, apparently, only a small part of the problem. The Plant Paradox urgently warns against eating wheat, beans, and peanuts, among other plants.
The publisher—the “health, wellness, lifestyle, and inspirational” division of HarperCollins called Harper Wave—elaborates that readers will learn to be wary of compounds found in “grains of all kinds (especially whole wheat), beans and legumes (especially soy), nuts (especially almonds), fruits and vegetables (eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, etc.)” in addition to “dairy and eggs.”
That doesn’t leave much on the table. In the midst of soaring rates of obesity and diabetes that many experts believe are clearly linked to an abundance of low-nutrient, low-fiber, sugar-enhanced, heavily processed foods, it could seem an odd time to be warning people against fruits and vegetables. Yet the author, Steven Gundry, appears to be legitimately medically credentialed: a grey-haired, arms-folded, white-coat transplant surgeon whose biography touts a Yale degree. He holds patents on several medical devices, including cardiac cannulae and a suction retractor. He wears glasses. His book carries the endorsement of Dr. Oz.
For readers who are experiencing “cravings, digestive issues, headaches, brain fog, lack of energy, aching joints, morning stiffness, adult acne, or a host of other conditions you just can’t shake,” the publisher’s sell is enticing: “Americans spend billions of dollars on gluten-free diets in an effort to protect their health. But what if we’ve been missing the root of the problem?”
We have been, most health experts agree. But the root of the problem is ... plants?
Come to think of it, I had recently read that Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen’s diet guru severely limits their tomato intake. (“Tomatoes trickle in every now and then, but just maybe once a month. I’m very cautious about tomatoes. They cause inflammation.”) I thought that might have been an aberrant belief about the pro-inflammatory properties of one plant.
But no. The common factor among foods on the book’s list is a broad category of proteins called lectins. And those proteins are where the author of The Plant Paradox really targets his ire. Gundry writes on his web site, “I believe lectins are the #1 Biggest Danger in the American Diet.”
The book itself is equally severe. It whips readers back and forth between hyperbolic claims of danger and TED-style clichés that confer a sense of superiority upon believers—a promise of being privy to life-altering secrets. The preface begins with a sentence that has almost certainly been written before: “Suppose that in the next few pages I told you that everything you thought you knew about your diet, your health, and your weight is wrong?”
Are you telling me, or is this an exercise in supposition? How do you know what I know? And why do you have access to a truth that no one else in the world has? Is it possible you’re able to presume that your argument will totally upend my understanding of nutrition because the argument is so far afield that no one could take it seriously?
People do, though. In fact, the book seems to be a sort of culmination of a long-percolating hypothesis about the imminent dangers of lectins. It’s especially common among purveyors of dietary supplements. The story goes: We need nutrients to survive, but many plants makes us sick, so synthetic supplement pills and powders are the prudent approach.
The idea is based in just enough evidence to be seriously convincing in the right hands. So for people concerned with “addressing the root of the problem”—unscrupulous marketing messages—and staving off another fad like the global gluten obsession, it’s worth considering lectins.
* * *
In 1988, a British hospital served its staff a special lunch for “healthy eating day.” One dish contained red kidney beans. A medical journal recounts the aftermath. At 3:00 p.m. a surgical assistant vomited in the operating room. Over the next four hours, the hospital staff was rocked by vomiting and diarrhea. I can end the description there.
Everyone recovered by the next day, and tests of the food didn’t reveal any of the common causes of food poisoning. Eventually the incident was traced to the red kidney beans, which have an especially high concentration of the lectin phytohaemagglutinin.
This is a lectin that’s known to be dangerous, and it’s why people read that kidney beans are harmful when eaten raw. For example, a reader of Penn State University’s Home Food Preservation advice site writes: “I read that kidney beans are harmful when eaten raw. Several day care and nursery schools have dry beans (different varieties) out for kids to play with. What danger would there be if a child ate a few of these raw beans?”
Possibly some danger. The site goes on to advise the parent—presumably a parent—that Kidney Bean Poisoning is caused by phytohaemagglutinin, and that different types of lectins are found in many species of beans. As few as four undercooked kidney beans can bring on symptoms, but lectins are inactivated with cooking, “so fully cooked or canned kidney beans are safe to eat.” (Though undercooking may actually increase lectin activity, making the beans more dangerous than were they eaten raw.)
Lectins are a group of proteins that bind to carbohydrates. They are sometimes referred to as a type of “anti-nutrient,” a category that also includes fiber. This term refers to compounds in foods that aren’t nutrients, and whose role in human health is unclear, but may have evolved in plants to dissuade predators.
David Jenkins, a professor of nutritional sciences and medicine at the University of Toronto, explained to me, “Lectins help protect plants from being digested, so they’ve been called anti-nutrients for a long time.” Lectins levels are especially high in legumes (e.g., black beans, soybeans, lima beans, kidney beans, and lentils) and grain products. When eaten in those foods, the lectins typically bind to carbohydrates and pass through the human digestive tract. But when the starches in the above plants haven’t begun to be hydrolyzed by cooking, unbound lectins are free to interact with cells in our intestines. That interaction can, in some cases, cause symptoms of food poisoning.
“Presumably if you take a load of cooked food—with lectins, which may or may not be destroyed by the heat—you’ve also got some floating carbohydrates, so a lot of the lectins are effectively deactivated,” said Jenkins. “But if you eat raw food of certain types––the nightshade family especially and some of the legumes—then you may get a lot of lectins and not much of the carbohydrate that lectins can attack. But they can attack the carbohydrate on your cells. So maybe it’s not a good idea.”
Stories of lectin poisoning are not especially rare. In The Independent the food writer Vicky Jones describes a dinner party in which she used Greek butter beans in a dish without boiling them first. Soon everyone was violently ill. It came on so quickly that before they could consider going to the emergency room, “death seemed preferable to [trekking to the] hospital.”
Jones recovered fully, as most lectin-poisoned people do. Most. There are cases like that of the most famous person to be killed by an umbrella, the dissident journalist Georgi Markov. This was in 1978. He was standing at a bus top when something pierced the back of his thigh. It was an injection delivered through the tip of an umbrella carried by a man who ran off.
Markov grew febrile and died four days later. Pathology reports said the cause of death was a microscopic dose of the poison ricin. Ricin is found in the seeds of the castorbean plant, a shrub-like entity with large, long-stemmed leaves. In a world that fetishizes natural products and remedies, ricin is as natural as natural gets. And it is, you guessed it, a type of lectin.
Which then makes you think, maybe the bookseller’s reference to lectins inciting chemical warfare in our bodies isn’t far off?
* * *
The author Steven Gundry left his position as chairman of cardiothoracic surgery at Loma Linda Medical Center 15 years ago to focus on food-based health interventions. The departure was occasioned by a personal bodily transformation that included shedding 70 pounds. According to his bio at the World Wellness Institute, he and his wife, Penny, now live in Palm Springs and Montecito, California, with their three dogs, Bella, Black Pearl, and Fanny Foo Foo.
Gundry graduated from Yale in 1972 and went on to earn a medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia, though the latter affiliation is rarely mentioned when he gives interviews and does promotional videos about his “revolutionary new method.” Today he is, he says, in high demand from patients around the world. His list of patients includes the self-help entrepreneur and seller of dietary supplements Tony Robbins. I asked Gundry how that came about.
“Tony called me up one day, says, ‘Hey, can I come and see you?’” he told me recently. “I go, ‘Oh, hi, Tony.’ He says, ‘I think I want you to be my doctor.’ And I say, ‘Okay.’ And I still remember the day.”
The story wasn’t as good as I had hoped. But it ended with a captivating moment: “We sat in the exam room and we chatted, and he left and he said, ‘You know I’m a really good judge of character. I’m a judge of the real deal. And he says, you know something, you’re the real deal. And yeah, I want you to be my doctor.”
The decision wasn’t clearly lectin-related. I asked Gundry when he became convinced that these were the leading danger in our food system. “I first studied the effect of plants on humans for my Yale thesis,” he said, “… and it was a 185-page thesis, and luckily I got honors on it.” From there he told of his personal transformation, when he was “so overweight despite running 30 miles a week and going to the gym one hour every day.”
That’s an impressive amount of time in the gym for anyone, much less a surgeon. I didn’t get a clear picture of the origin of his lectin conviction, but he did assure me that he is reaching people.
“The interesting thing about my whole program is that I have never advertised what I do,” he said, describing a long wait list at his practice. I pointed out that I had watched a YouTube infomercial that lasted almost an hour. I asked, “In what sense do you not advertise?”
“Oh, I mean, my practice. I’ve never gone and spoken to an audience, you know, come and be my patient. I’ve never taken an ad in a newspaper, come and be my patient. And the YouTube is not to get patients into my office, it’s to have them try supplements.”
Yes, he also sells supplements he recommends. The last 20 or so minutes of his infomercial is a string of claims about how supplies are running low, and it’s important that you act immediately, and that if you do manage to get through to a customer representative you should order as much as you have room to store—the shelf life is great, etc. And the necessity of supplements is the crucial argument of the book. He writes, “Getting all of the nutrients you need simply cannot be done without supplements.”
The GundryMD line of products includes something he invented called vitamin G6. Another is a “lectin shield” that’s “designed to neutralize the effects of lectins.” These are available on his website for $79.99. There you can also get six jars of Vital Reds for $254.70. (Despite the name and claims to “boost energy and metabolism,” these reds claim not to be amphetamines.) I asked him when he got into the chemistry business.
“For years and years and years and years, my patients would complain to me, ‘Why don't you come out with a line of powders?’” he said. “Because I hate swallowing pills, and I hate going to four different, five different stores and getting the supplements you want me to take. Why don't you just come up with your own line?’ And I’d go, yeah, yeah, yeah. And my first three supplements were powders, because I listened to my women patients say, ‘Please, don't make us swallow pills. They hate it.”
Gundry assured me that the conflict of interest shouldn’t undermine his authority. “Unlike a lot of other books I've seen which are basically hawking products, this book is hawking getting yourself healthy with basically correct food choices.”
“Right—”
“Now, if they want to buy my products, that’s fine. You know, I’ll certainly tell people what they are.”
* * *
This degree of conflicts of interest is, in science and journalism, the sort of thing that invalidates an expert opinion. But the books and YouTube videos succeed because they strike at a primal type of fear. It’s easy to reason that if there’s even a 1-percent chance that this doctor is right, why not play it safe and avoid lectins?
For one, some research suggests that certain lectins could actually be beneficial in activating elements of the immune system. A lectin in mistletoe, for example, seems to inhibit growth of tumor cells. The evidence is very preliminary, but it’s enough to suggest that these proteins aren’t simply tolerable in small amounts, but that exposure to them serves a purpose.
The much stronger evidence is that the longest-lived, healthiest people in the world tend to subsist largely on plant-based diets. (Those include lectins, often in abundance.) This case for basing a healthy life around what seems to be working for large groups of people in the real world is famously argued by Dan Buettner in his explorations of what he calls “the blue zones,” the homes of the world’s longest-lived people. This suggests that some degree of exposure to lectins could be beneficial, in the same way that sunlight and water are both toxic and necessary to human health, depending entirely on dose and context.
I asked Gundry about those long-lived people. “Grains and beans are negative aspects of the Mediterranean Diet that are countered by the large amounts of olive-oil polyphenols, large amounts of red-wine polyphenols, and fish,” he said. “Dan, I think, has missed the point of the blue zones. The commonality is that all of the blue zones eat a very limited animal-protein diet.”
David Jenkins remains unconvinced. By phone from Toronto, he reminded me that in most places, past generations ate more seeds and beans and nuts than many people do today. “Now even if you go to Boston, the home of Boston Baked Beans, you’ll rarely see a baked bean,” he said. “In Europe, the Dutch used to eat 30 grams of beans a day at the turn of the 19th century. They don’t eat a bean now,” he continued, rattling off several other examples of the recent decline of beans.
“So what I’m saying is that if [Gundry] is right, we should be getting much better, because we’re cutting these things out of the diet. We’re eating a diet of, basically, processed wheat, which is white flour with very little lectin. And we’re eating more meat. Our current dietary habits are steering away from plant foods, and that doesn’t seem to have made us healthier.”
Jenkins speaks with a clinical British lilt, in bursts broken by word-choosing pauses. He notes that just because a substance seems to disrupt digestion in some context doesn’t mean it’s evil in every context. The “anti-nutrient” fiber was, for example, once thought to be worthless since it wasn’t digestible. Now it appears to be extremely beneficial.
“I think you’re on stronger epidemiological ground if you say that processed food is associated with ill health in Western cultures, rather than plant foods. There's some validity to the idea, but I think he may be aiming his guns in the wrong direction,” said Jenkins.
This would counter Gundry’s claim that “lectins don’t get broken down by your GI tract, so they disrupt your digestion [and] reduce energy absorption.”
“If you look around, if you go to any of the beaches in North America—and certainly the lakes—you’ll see the size of people increasing,” said Jenkins. “I’ve watched it over the last 30 years.
“I think one's got to be careful, because this may be much more importantly nuanced.”
Nuance, though, is an enemy of marketing. I also asked Gundry why the dangers of lectins didn’t appear in his first book, Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution: Turn Off the Genes That Are Killing You and Your Waistline (Amazon lists it as a “number-one bestseller in genetics”). He blamed his editor for the omission. He was working with another publisher at the time, and though he wanted to include lectins on his list of things to avoid, he claims the editor said, “I don't care if you can prove it, I need to sell books. And you’re gonna help me.” So the faithful author acquiesced and permitted soy and grains.
“It became a very good selling book, so all is well,” Gundry said. “But when people would come to my office, I would give them the original list.”
A great challenge for the capitalist approach to health is how to sell products without misinforming or misleading people. If the goal of advertising is to make a lot of people want to buy your product––or feel that they need it––there is plenty of grey area in which to manipulate scientific claims.
Book publishing remains one of the industries that drives health trends, with “M.D.” being valuable currency on covers. It tells readers that this is the work of an expert to be used as a reference for your health. For some publishers, conflicts of interest like Gundry’s don’t seem to preclude an author from being sold as the definitive expert on the pathology whose existence necessitates purchase of products sold by the author.
I asked Harper Wave (the imprint of HarperCollins) for a comment on the decision to publish and sell Gundry’s book in this way. I got no reply. Though, at some point since then and my interviews a week ago, the supplement infomercial I mentioned above has been deleted from YouTube.
Book publishers are rarely held accountable for publishing invalid health information. Rather, there seems to be an incentive to publish the most outlandish claims that purport to upend everything the reader has ever heard. This is a problem much bigger than any plant protein. Cycles of fad dieting and insidious misinformation undermine both public health and understanding of how science works, giving way to a sense of chaos. It seems that every doctor has their own opinion about how to protect your body from calamity, and all are equally valid, because nothing is ever truly known.
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Best anti-inflammatory foods -
http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/the-grilling-mistake-that%e2%80%99s-making-you-sick/ar-BBCJGhI?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
1. Blueberries
A study in the Journal of Nutrition showed that eating berries daily could significantly reduce inflammation. And another study in the same journal found that fruit-based drinks could neutralize the inflammatory effects of high-fat, high-carb meals. Why is this exactly? Well berries contain a class of antioxidants called flavonoids, but it's the anthocyanins, specifically, that contribute their anti-inflammatory effects by effectively turning off inflammatory and immune genes. And when it comes to anthocyanins, blueberries are king. On top of that, blueberries are rich in vitamin C and another polyphenol, resveratrol, which have both been found to promote anti-inflammatory responses through decreasing inflammatory free radicals
2. Raw Oats
Throw together a jar of overnight oats packed with dark chocolate, berries, nuts, and a dash of cinnamon, and you'll be fighting inflammation and drastically reducing belly fat. The raw oats are a resistant starch, a type of carb that passes through your gut undigested. Instead of feeding you, it feeds your healthy gut bacteria, which in turn produce a fatty acid that encourages more efficient fat oxidation known as butyrate. Higher levels of butyrate reduce inflammation in your body and help reduce insulin resistance as well. Less inflammation means less bloating and a slimmer you.
3. Ginger
Researchers attribute ginger's health benefits to gingerols, compounds that are antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and anti-disease. According to numerous studies, these compounds block several genes and enzymes in the body that promote inflammation. When University of Arizona researchers gave rats with experimental rheumatoid arthritis a crude ginger extract, which included the essential oils and other compounds found only in the root itself, it was able to inhibit joint swelling and inflammation. Fresh ginger is richest in gingerol, so grate up the root, throw it in a mesh bag, steep, and sip on ginger tea.
4. Green Tea
Say hello to your secret weight-loss tool. Green tea—a humble drink that's been cherished as a health miracle for centuries and is even the cornerstone of the bestselling The 7-Day Flat-Belly Tea Cleanse. These benefits stem from catechins, the group of antioxidants concentrated in the leaves of tea plants. And the most powerful of all catechins, a compound called epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG, is found almost exclusively in green tea. Scientific studies, like one in the Journal of Advanced Pharmaceutical Technology&Research, suggest that the high EGCG and polyphenol content in green tea make it a stronger anti-inflammatory elixir than other teas like black tea. These anti-inflammatory properties have also been implicated in preventing the development and growth of skin tumors.
5. Dark Chocolate
Great news for all you chocoholics! A recent study found that antioxidants in cocoa prevented laboratory mice from gaining excess weight and actually lowered their blood sugar levels. And another study at Louisiana State University found that gut microbes in our stomach ferment chocolate into heart-healthy, anti-inflammatory compounds that shut down genes linked to insulin resistance and inflammation. To enhance the effects, try pairing your chocolate with some apple slices: The fruit speeds up the probiotic fermentation process, leading to an even greater reduction in inflammation and weight. Psst, make sure you're choosing the right kind! Look for cacao content of 70 percent or above because these contain the highest amounts of antioxidants.
6. Wild Salmon
When it comes to fats, there's one variety you definitely don't want eat less of: omega-3s! These healthy fats are famous for their anti-inflammatory properties. And fatty fish are one of the best sources of this class of polyunsaturated fats. Wild salmon provides you with both EPA and DHA. And unlike plant omega-3s, these two fatty acids are already in an active form, meaning they'll more efficiently attack excess inflammation through the increase in adiponectin—a hormone that enhances your muscles' ability to use carbs for energy, boosts metabolism, and burns fat—which ultimately decrease inflammation markers.
7. Red Peppers
Peppers are an anti-inflammatory superfood—but go red to reap the most benefits. Out of the three colors of bell pepper, red have the highest amount of inflammatory-biomarker-reducing vitamin C along with the bioflavonoids beta-carotene, quercetin, and luteolin, according to research in the Journal of Food Science. Luteolin has been found to neutralize free radicals and reduce inflammation. Beta-carotene is a carotenoid, fat-soluble compounds that are associated with a reduction in a wide range of cancers, as well as reduced risk and severity of inflammatory conditions such as asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. And allergy research has shown that quercetin acts as a mast-cell stabilizer, which decreases the number of cells reacting to an allergen. Mast cells are responsible for releasing histamine during inflammatory and allergic reactions.
8. Turmeric
You can thank curcumin for turmeric's beautifully bright, yellowy-orange color—but that's not all it's good for. This active compound has been found to contain potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Studies have shown curcumin directly inhibits the activation of inflammatory pathways through shutting off production of two pro-inflammatory enzymes, COX-2, and 5-LOX. For this reason, curcumin has been implicated in a range of beneficial health effects, from preventing cognitive decline, liver damage, and heart disease, while easing joint inflammation and pain associated with arthritis.
9. Beets
Besides being a source of many phytochemicals, including ascorbic acid, carotenoids, and flavonoids, beets are a unique source of betalain pigments, which have been found to display potent antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and chemopreventive activity. One of these pigments, betaine, is a nutrient that not only fights inflammation, but also is known to rev your metabolism, positively influences the mechanism for insulin resistance, boost your mood, and shut down genes that encourage fat to hang around. A review in the journal Nutrients has associated eating beets with lower levels of inflammatory markers—including CRP as well as interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor, which are released by harmful belly fat—as well as a decrease in risk of plaque buildup, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes.
10. Broccoli
This anti-inflammatory benefit could be linked to the sprouts' glucosinolate content. These compounds help prevent unwanted inflammation when they're converted to I3C—a compound that research has found to decrease the production of pro-inflammatory mediators on a genetic level. It's also high in vitamin K, a vitamin found in many cruciferous and leafy green veggies, which can help regulate inflammatory responses in the body. Just don't nosh on it raw if you have a pollen allergy!
11. Black Beans
Similar to raw oats, black beans and most other pulses pack a strong resistant-starch punch, providing the source of fuel for your healthy gut bugs to ferment into the inflammation-reducing fatty acid butyrate. A half-cup of black beans not only packs 3.1 grams of resistant starch, it also carries nearly 20 grams of protein and 14 grams of filling fiber, making black beans a delicious fat-fighting triple threat. Not only that but black beans are high in anthocyanins, antioxidants which have also been associated with lowering inflammation. According to a recent study in the journal Nutrients, when patients with metabolic syndrome consumed a meal with black beans, their levels of postprandial insulin (i.e. those measured right after a meal) were lower and antioxidant concentration higher than subjects who ate a meal with a similar amount of fiber or a similar amount of antioxidants. High levels of postprandial glucose and insulin have been implicated in increases in inflammation and oxidative stress—making black beans a potent Western-diet inflammation-fighter.
12. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Add fighting inflammation to the list of Mediterranean diet benefits—right next to reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and dialing up weight loss. While researchers initially believed many benefits were conferred by the presence of healthy monounsaturated fats, they also found that other oils with MUFAs, particularly oleic acid, did not exhibit the same health benefits. Now, researchers have found the key component is oleocanthal. This compound, found only in extra virgin olive oils (as these are unrefined and contain more phenolic compounds), has a significant impact on inflammation and helps reduce joint cartilage damage, working similarly to ibuprofen in that it prevents the production of pro-inflammatory COX-1 and COX-2 enzymes.
13. Tomatoes
Tomatoes are a great source of lycopene, an antioxidant that protects your brain and fights depression-causing inflammation. Because lycopene lives in tomato skins, you'll get more of the stuff if you throw a handful of cherry tomatoes into your next salad instead of slicing up one full-size tomato. And if you're not a fan of the tart, raw tomatoes, don't sweat it; Research has proven that processed tomatoes have an even higher amount of lycopene than the fresh ones. Whatever your choice, enjoy them with a little olive oil, which has been shown to increase fat-soluble lycopene absorption.
14. Chia Seeds
With 9 grams of healthy fats (including inflammation-quelling ALA omega-3s) alongside a whopping 11 grams of fiber and 4 grams of protein per ounce, chia seeds can stabilize blood sugar, boost weight loss, suppress appetite, and even help keep your body hydrated throughout the day. Put them all together, and you have an inflammation-fighting superfood. According to a study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, loafs of bread supplemented with increasing doses of chia seeds were found to decrease spikes in blood sugar in a dose-dependent manner. Post-eating blood sugar spikes have been implicated in causing increases in inflammation due to the overproduction of inflammatory free radicals called reactive oxygen species (ROS). Fit chia seeds into your diet in any one of these 45 Best-Ever Chia Pudding Recipes for Weight Loss!
15. Pineapple
Pineapple contains bromelain, the enzyme which acts as a meat tenderizer as well as a powerful anti-inflammatory. What researchers have noted is that many anti-inflammatory foods act not necessarily by reducing inflammation directly, but by alleviating symptoms that can eventually cause inflammation. Bromelain has been found to be beneficial in reducing asthmatic symptoms through decreasing the spread of proinflammatory metabolites and relieving post-exercise inflammation by helping to repair and resolve muscle soreness through its significant levels of potassium. While all parts of the pineapple contain this magical compound, most of the bromelain in pineapple is in the stem. Because the stem is a little on the tough side, you can blend or juice the core with the sweeter flesh to reap the bloat-beating benefits. Try it in our Pina Colada Smoothie, it's one of our 15 Healthy, 5-Ingredient Breakfast Ideas.
16. Spinach
Spinach attacks inflammation from all sides. It's rich in carotenoids, and vitamins C, E, and K—all of which have been found to protect the body from pro-inflammatory cytokines. A form of vitamin E called alpha-tocopherol was found to decrease inflammation in patients with coronary artery disease in a The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study. And in a separate study in the Canadian Journal of Surgery, vitamin E administration was found to reverse levels of the same inflammatory adipokine compounds released by belly fat: tumour necrosis factor-a and interleukin-6.
17. Whole Grains
Brown rice, quinoa, millet, and amaranth all are packed with fiber that helps produce butyrate, a fatty acid that turns off genes related to inflammation and insulin resistance. The high B vitamin content of whole grains (which is nearly entirely lost during the refinement process) also helps reduce the inflammatory hormone homocysteine in the body. Not only that but high fiber foods also suppress appetite. According to a team of international researchers, a molecule called acetate is naturally released when fiber is digested. Acetate then travels to the brain, where it signals us to stop eating. And if you eat less, you're less likely to be taking in more pro-inflammatory foods.
18. Eggs
Besides keeping brittle bones at bay, Vitamin D also fends off depression and colds, reduces the risk of certain cancers, and perhaps most importantly, diminishes inflammation. Previous research has found a correlation between vitamin D deficiency and increased levels of pro-inflammatory markers. While your body produces D whenever your skin is directly exposed to sunlight, if you've been finding that you're glued to your desk more often than you'd like, it might be best to get some vitamin D into your diet as well, and whole eggs are a great solution. The yolk contains a host of fat-blasting and health-boosting nutrients from vitamin D to fat-blasting choline.
19. Garlic
There's now science to back-up the smelly, cold-busting benefits of garlic. Researchers hypothesize garlic's cold-fighting power comes from the compound allicin, which blocks enzymes that play a role in bacterial and viral infections. In terms of an inflammatory response, a review of Anti-Cancer Agents in Medicinal Chemistry explained that aged garlic extract has been found to favorably stimulate anti-inflammatory proteins while suppressing inflammatory markers in chronic inflammation environments. Taking an aged-garlic supplement provides the highest concentration of bioavailable compounds, but studies have also shown that fresh garlic can provide subtle benefits. Just be sure to crush the garlic first to kickstart production of the bioactive allicin compound—it's just one of our 20 Ways to Boost the Nutrient Content of Your Food.
20. Oysters
Willow Jarosh, RD, tells us, "Healthy nutrients like copper help maintain anti-inflammatory and antioxidant responses in the body." That's because this essential mineral acts as a critical cofactor in the body's anti-inflammatory responses. The enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD) plays an important antioxidant role in deactivating cell-damaging, free-radicals. And in order to function properly, it utilizes the support of three minerals: copper, zinc, manganese. And guess what? Oysters are full of all three. Oh, not to mention, they're also a great source of inflammation-quelling omega-3s.
21. Kamut
There's a new superfood in town, and its name is kamut—or Khorasan wheat. This ancient grain boasts more protein gram-for-gram than quinoa, it's loaded with energy-boosting, muscle-protecting minerals like magnesium, potassium, and iron, and comes complete with an amazing 7 grams of hunger-busting fiber per cup. Subbing out meat for plant-based vegan foods is great for reducing inflammation because animal protein is one of the top sources of inflammatory saturated fats. Plus, a study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that eating kamut reduces levels of cytokines: compounds which cause inflammation throughout the body
22. Yogurt
Cultivating a proper gut garden is essential for good health, particularly when it comes to fighting inflammation. That's because your good gut bugs break down foods into anti-inflammatory fatty acids which not only decrease inflammation but may also help shut off your fat genes. And when they aren't healthy, they can't do this. Adding cultured, fermented foods—known as probiotics—into your diet can recolonize your gut with beneficial microbes, which can then assist with fending off inflammation. Low sugar yogurt (with live active cultures) is one of the most accessible sources of probiotics, but you can also eat kefir, sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi, and cheese.
23. Apples
In order for your probiotic efforts to succeed, you also have to incorporate foods known as prebiotics into your diet. This groups of high fiber foods provide your gut bugs with the fuel they use to function and ferment. Apple peels are full of pectin, a natural fruit fiber that a study published in the journal Anaerobe found to be powerful enough to support the growth of the beneficial bacteria Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus. Not to mention, apple peels also provide an average of 10 mg of quercetin—an endurance-boosting, anti-inflammatory antioxidant. Feed your bugs with more fiber-rich foods by checking out these 15 Prebiotic Foods For Better Gut Health.
24. Nuts
Although not as strong as animal-based omega-3s, DHA and EPA, nuts (particularly, walnuts) are a great source of a plant-based, anti-inflammatory omega-3 known as ALA. Almonds are one of the best sources of antioxidant vitamin E, which helps protect cells from oxidative damage (a byproduct of inflammation), and hazelnuts contain the highest amount of immuno-protective oleic acid.
25. Canned Light White Tuna
According to a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the most effective omega-3 when it comes to reducing specific markers of inflammation is DHA over EPA. So how do you get more of the powerful fat into your diet? It's easy (and cheap)—just grab a can of light skipjack tuna (we prefer this brand), which is one of the best sources of the bioactive fatty acid.
26. Rosemary
It's not just a staple when you're marinating your lemon chicken; this flavorful herb is also a powerful anti-inflammatory thanks to its high concentration of antioxidant compounds. (In fact, you'll often see "rosemary extract" listed on your natural processed goods as an antioxidant preservative.) Scientists believe the anti-inflammatory activity comes from the presence of carnosic acid and carnosol, two polyphenolic compounds in rosemary which a study published in the journal BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine discovered could effectively inhibit the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines
27. Bone Broth
Don't dismiss bone broth as just another health fad—there's solid evidence to back up its rightful place in your diet. To make it, bones are left to simmer in water for an extended period of time, extracting and breaking down their collagen and other nutrients. Some of that broken down material from the cartilage and tendons is glucosamine (which you may have seen sold as a supplement for arthritis and joint pain). According to a study published in the journal PLoS One, when overweight, middle-aged adults took a glucosamine supplement, they were able to decrease serum CRP (inflammation biomarker) levels by 23 percent more than those who didn't take a supplement. The stock is also full of anti-inflammatory amino acids (glycine and proline), and the ample levels of gelatin will help rebuild your gut lining to further assist with your anti-inflammatory gut microbes.
28. Coconut Oil
One of the lesser-known benefits of coconut oil is that it's a powerful anti-inflammatory food. The fats found in cold-pressed, virgin coconut oil are teeming with anti-inflammatory properties, according to a study published in the journal Pharmaceutical Biology. Another study, published in Medical Principles and Practice proposes that coconut oil is likely only effective in treating acute inflammation, such as at the site of an infection or injury, rather than the chronic inflammation associated with weight gain and other diseases
29. Raw Honey
If you've ever suffered from indigestion after eating, you're familiar with the importance of digestion enzymes. But there's another group of enzymes that's also important to your health: proteolytic enzymes. These enzymes are essential when it comes to modulating the inflammatory response. They do so by helping to break down proteins and cellular debris and clears them out to reduce your body's immune and inflammatory response. Raw honey is one of the best sources of these enzymes because—brace yourself—honey is made by bees' enzyme-rich saliva. Multiple animal studies have found honey to be effective in alleviating symptoms of inflammatory diseases, such as IBS. Bonus: the sweetener is also full of anti-inflammatory polyphenols, carotenoids, antioxidants, and vitamins.
30. Miso
Miso packs an anti-inflammatory one-two punch. Not only is it a fermented food, which means it's rich in probiotic compounds that ferment fibers into anti-inflammatory compounds, but it's also made from soy. What's so special about soy? Several studies have suggested that soy's isoflavones—estrogen-mimicking compounds—may be powerful anti-inflammatories. In fact, a review of isoflavones published in a 2016 issue of the journal Nutrients concluded that isoflavones reduce inflammation by reducing pro-inflammatory enzyme and cytokine activities. We explain why we give fermented soy the A-Ok in our exclusive report: 14 Things That Happen To Your Body When You Eat Soy.
>>> Why Cauliflower Is the New 'It' Vegetable
Mahita Gajanan
Jul 14, 2017
http://time.com/4845148/cauliflower-rice-menu/
Cauliflower used to be a boring vegetable. When chef Eric Ripert was growing up in France, he saw it as something to buy only when "there was nothing else on the shelf." Typically perceived as the less colorful, less delicious cousin of broccoli, cauliflower was usually boiled and served plain, as an uninspiring side dish.
That reputation couldn't be more different today. You can now find the once humble veggie roasted and served like a steak at the Mexican restaurant La Condesa in Austin, or sliced into a sandwich along with eggplant at Bocado in Atlanta. At Le Bernardin, a Michelin-starred French seafood restaurant in New York City, executive chef Ripert thinly carves it and serves it raw as a garnish atop crab cakes.
"Today we see it everywhere," he says.
Driven by carbo-adverse consumers' desire for a healthy alternative to white rice and gluten-filled grains, demand for cauliflower has grown steadily over the past few years. U.S. farmers sold $390 million worth of cauliflower in 2016, a steep climb from 2012, when $239 million in cauliflower was sold (and a slight drop from the $402 million in cauliflower sold in 2015, largely due to California's drought, which hit farms in the state). Grocery stores and vegetable suppliers have taken note of the demand, expanding their lines to include more inventive products, from cauliflower pizza crust to cauliflower tots. Hottest of all is cauliflower "rice," a grainy substance made by pulsing cauliflower florets in a food processor and lightly cooking the pieces in oil.
Last summer, Whole Foods introduced a 365-branded cauliflower rice to its freezer section. It now ranks at No. 4 in the store's top 10 frozen vegetables, a list that previously was limited to mainstays like broccoli, peas and spinach, says Jenna Layden, senior buyer for the private label brand at Whole Foods. Cauliflower rice is so popular at Trader Joe's that the grocery chain recently began enforcing a two-bag limit per customer, rationing it so that there's enough to go around. When manufacturer B&G acquired Green Giant in 2015, the company immediately expanded its cauliflower line to include three types of cauliflower rice, increasing the amount of the vegetable harvested every week from 5 acres to 35 acres, according to Green Giant VP and general manager Jordan Greenberg.
The versatility of cauliflower has boosted its popularity. It can be mashed and buttered like potatoes, sautéed in spices for a curry or tossed in buffalo sauce and fried to make meatless chicken wings. The more home cooks learn about the creative ways they can prepare cauliflower, the more we're seeing it on the dinner plate — in a phenomenon similar to Brussels sprouts' growth about four years ago, says Michael Solmonov, the chef at Zahav, an Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia.
“Back in the day before people caramelized Brussels sprouts, it was synonymous with things people wouldn’t eat,” Solmonov says. “Cauliflower was something people boiled or blanched and shocked and reheated with butter. I don’t have anything against boiling vegetables, but that’s not the way you get people excited about it. Roasting the s--t out of it is exciting.”
That excitement has catapulted cauliflower to entree status for some "veg-forward" chefs who aim to make vegetables, instead of meat, the center of a meal. At abcV, a vegetarian restaurant in New York City, cauliflower comes roasted whole, served with a steak knife, chef Neal Harden says.
“It’s really like the roast in the middle of the table, kind of like how animal proteins would be,” Harden says. “We’re trying to take vegetables that people might have thought were boring and do something a little different with them.”
Cauliflower's allure can partly be traced to recent low-carb dietary trends. Cauliflower rice contains less than one-eighth the calories of white or brown rice and about one-ninth the carbs. Instead, it's packed with vitamins C, K and B6 and folate. One small head of cauliflower has more than 125 mg of vitamin C — nearly twice as much as a medium orange.
Cauliflower also fits into a recent trend of old-fashioned vegetables gaining new traction as more people gravitate toward plant-based foods, chefs say. Gina Nucci, director of corporate marketing at Mann’s Packing, a fresh vegetable supplier, points to the recent popularity of beets as an example of “trying to bring back what’s old." And of course kale, once an afterthought in the vegetable aisle, has enjoyed huge popularity recently in the food world. Nucci sees kohlrabi as the next under-appreciated veggie to be rediscovered.
Ripert, who created his own recipe for cauliflower couscous, which he posted on his website, is placing his bets for the next trendy vegetable on leeks.
“The next vegetable is something we use now probably, that we forgot about, but will come back,” he says.
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>>> Nutrition 101: Health Benefits of Bison
https://www.families.com/blog/nutrition-101-health-benefits-of-bison
I suppose it’s saying a lot about me that I accept food from strangers. Let me qualify that. I accept food from strangers dressed in white uniforms who work in meat markets. Nope. That doesn’t make it sound any better. But, what was better than any snack I’ve had in a long time was the free sample of cooked bison meat I got during a recent trip to the market.
Bison (also known as buffalo) is becoming increasingly popular in America. It’s sometimes called the “better red meat” and is a great choice for people who are looking for ways to reap health benefits from the foods they eat.
So why is bison referred to as the “better red meat?” Nutritionists say it’s because buffalo meat is one of the most nutrient rich meats available. It not only contains a high proportion of protein and minerals in relation to its calorie content, but it is also an excellent source of iron, zinc, phosphorus, niacin, vitamin B6 and B12.
What’s more, bison themselves are healthier animals. Typically, bison graze on grass and are not fed commercial feed or grains. They are also not subjected to drugs, chemicals and hormones. Consequently, they have a lower fat content than beef and pork. In fact, if you were to compare a 3-ounce portion of bison meat with the same portion of lean beef you would see that the bison has 143 calories and 2.4 grams of fat, while the lean beef has 211 calories and 10 grams of fat. Likewise, when compared with lean pork, which contains 212 calories and 9 grams of fat, bison is the healthier choice. Also, since bison feed primarily on grass their levels of omega-3 fat and conjugated linolenic acid (CLA) both of which help to reduce cancer, heart disease and diabetes, are higher.
Now that we’ve established what a wonderfully healthy alternative to beef bison is I know what you are dying to know: how does it taste? Honestly, it tastes similar to beef, but it is a bit sweeter and the handful of pieces I had were very tender. Some say bison tastes richer than beef, but I would say I didn’t find my samples to be overwhelming rich. The texture is similar to beef as well.
I think it is important to mention that because bison is lower in fat it’s critical not to overcook it. I was told if you cook bison at a lower temperature you avoid drying it out and making the meat too tough.
Overall, I would say my first experience eating bison meat was a pleasant one. And considering the health benefits one derives from eating the it, I would seriously consider opting to prepare a bison dish for my family. (Or at least having someone prepare one for me at a restaurant.)
Are you a fan of bison meat?
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Organics ETF (ORG) - >>> Whole Foods deal lifts thinly traded Organics ETF
By Ryan Vlastelica
June 16, 2017
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/whole-foods-deal-lifts-thinly-traded-organics-etf-2017-06-16?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
An exchange-traded fund dedicated to organic products rose on Friday, lifted after Amazon.com agreed to buy Whole Foods in a $13.7 billion deal. The Organics ETF ORG, +3.43% gained 2.9% in early trading, extending its year-to-date gain to 16.4%. Whole Foods WFM, +29.10% is the second-largest holding of the fund, comprising 18.1% of the portfolio. Shares of Whole Foods surged 27% in heavy trading on Friday, while Amazon.com AMZN, +2.44% was up 3.2%. The Organics ETF is small, with only $5.5 million in assets, and it is thinly traded, with a 30-day average below 4,000 shares, according to FactSet. Only 800 shares exchanged hands in the first half-hour of trading on Friday. <<<
Lectin Toxicity -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectin
>>> Digestion and immune distress[edit]
Foods with high concentrations of lectins, such as beans, cereal grains, seeds, nuts, and potatoes, may be harmful if consumed in excess in uncooked or improperly-cooked form. Adverse effects may include nutritional deficiencies, and immune (allergic) reactions.[16] Possibly, most effects of lectins are due to gastrointestinal distress through interaction of the lectins with the epithelial cells of the gut. A recent in vitro study has suggested that the mechanism of lectin damage may occur by interfering with the repair of already-damaged epithelial cells.[17]
Lectins are considered another major family of protein antinutrients (ANCs), which are specific sugar-binding proteins exhibiting reversible carbohydrate-binding activities. Lectins are similar to antibodies in their ability to agglutinate red blood cells.
The toxicity of lectins has been identified by consumption of food with high lectin content, which may lead to diarrhea, nausea, bloating, and vomiting.
Many legume seeds have been proven to contain high lectin activity, termed hemagglutinating activity. Soybean is the most important grain legume crop in this category. Its seeds contain high activity of soybean lectins (soybean agglutinin or SBA). SBA is able to disrupt small intestinal metabolism and damage small intestinal villi via the ability of lectins to bind with brush border surfaces in the distal part of small intestine.[citation needed]
Heat processing can reduce the toxicity of lectins, but low temperature or insufficient cooking may not completely eliminate their toxicity, as some plant lectins are resistant to heat.
Lectin and leptin resistance[edit]
Lectin may cause leptin resistance, affecting its functions (signal have high levels of leptin and several effects gathering to protect from lipid overload), as indicated by studies on effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms on the function of leptin and the leptin receptor.[18] Such leptin resistance may translate into diseases, notably it could be responsible for obesity in humans who have high levels of leptin.
Lectin may involve in pattern recognition and pathogen elimination in the innate immunity of vertebrates including fishes.[19]
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A biochemist explains the mechanism by which Aspartame could cause Alzheimer's (link below),
Summarizing, Aspartame consists of two amino acids (aspartic acid and phenylalanine) linked by a weak methyl bond. In aqueous solution, the methyl bond quickly breaks, resulting in methanol (wood alcohol) which subsequently is oxidized to formaldehyde, which is extremely toxic to brain cells. See his presentation for the details -
>>> Diet Soda May Triple Stroke Risks: Other Reasons Why Artificially Sweetened Beverages Are Not The Healthier Option
23 April 2017
By Allan Adamson
Tech Times
https://investorshub.advfn.com/secure/post_new.aspx?board_id=25497
Diet soda is not a healthier option to sugary drinks. Besides diet soda's links to stroke and dementia, here are other reasons why health experts advise steering away from beverages that use artificial sweeteners.
Many people who want healthier options to sugary beverages have turned to diet drinks over the past few decades. Unfortunately, drinks that use artificial sweeteners are actually not the healthier option.
Diet Drinks: Links To Stroke And Dementia
In a new research published in the journal Stroke, researchers found that people who drink at least one artificially sweetened soft drink daily are three times more likely to suffer from ischemic stroke compared with those who do not drink these beverages.
Drinking one artificially sweetened soft drink a day was also found to be associated with three times an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia.
"After adjustments for age, sex, education (for analysis of dementia), caloric intake, diet quality, physical activity, and smoking, higher recent and higher cumulative intake of artificially sweetened soft drinks were associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke, all-cause dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease dementia," study researcher Matthew Pase, from Boston University School of Medicine, and colleagues wrote in their study. Sugar-sweetened beverages were not associated with stroke or dementia."
Besides links to stroke and dementia, consuming diet soda has also been associated with diabetes, abdominal fat, and even weight gain. There are several other reasons why consuming diet drinks on a regular basis is being frowned upon by health experts.
Diet Drinks And Artificial Sweeteners Confuse The Body
Artificial sweeteners have more intense flavor compared with real sugar, so consuming products like diet soda may dull the senses to naturally sweet but healthier food such as fruits. Diet soda and artificial drinks also trick the body into thinking that it consumes real food and sugar, which could cause metabolic confusion and overconsumption.
"You've messed up the whole system, so when you consume real sugar, your body doesn't know if it should try to process it because it's been tricked by the fake sugar so many times," said Purdue University researcher Susan Swithers, who has conducted studies on diet drinks and artificial sweeteners.
Diet Drinks Do Not Have Nutritional Value
Many people with diabetes or obesity switch from sugary drinks to diet beverages supposedly as a step to better health, but consuming diet soda does not give the body any nutritional value. Health experts said that plain old water remains the best no-calorie beverage. Water is also essential for many bodily processes and replacing it with diet soda is not a healthy thing.
"Just because a beverage is advertised as being healthy because it doesn't have any sugar doesn't mean that it is healthy," Pase said. "Artificial sweeteners may have effects in the body that we haven't begun to explore."
Artificial Sweeteners May Alter The Gut Bacteria
Studies have found an association between artificial sweeteners, obesity, and diabetes. A study conducted by scientists from Israel found evidence that may help explain why consuming artificial sweeteners such as those used in diet drinks may lead to weight problems and other body ailments.
Their study involving mice suggested that the sweeteners change the population of intestinal bacteria that are involved in metabolism, the conversion of food into energy or stored fuel, which in turn could result in a range of health problems
- See more at:
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/205673/20170423/diet-soda-may-triple-stroke-risks-other-reasons-why-artificially-sweetened-beverages-are-not-healthier-option.htm#sthash.GGOF8mHp.dpuf
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>>> Hormones In Food: Should You Worry?
HUFFINGTON POST
May 25, 2011
Carina Storrs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/31/hormones-in-food-should-y_n_815385.html
A salmon that grows to market size twice as fast as normal. Dairy cows that produce 15 percent more milk. Beef cows that grow 20 percent faster.
What do these hyper-productive animals have in common? Thanks to injections and implants (in the case of cows) or genetic engineering (in the case of salmon), they contain artificially high levels of sex or growth hormones.
Are these hormones dangerous to the humans who eat the food or drink the milk? The food industry says no — and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agrees, at least when it comes to cows.
The FDA, which regulates the use of hormones in livestock, hasn’t yet decided whether it will approve the sale of a genetically engineered salmon patented by the biotech company AquaBounty. If the salmon — which is wired to produce growth hormone year-round, instead of just in the spring and summer — gets an OK from the agency, it will be the first genetically engineered animal to wind up on your dinner plate. (Genetically engineered fruits and vegetables have been around for years.)
The FDA’s stamp of approval isn’t likely to reassure those who worry that excess hormones in the food supply are contributing to cancer, early puberty in girls, and other health problems in humans. For years, consumer advocates and public health experts have fought to limit the use of hormones in cows, and some support a ban on the practice similar to the one in place in Europe, where food regulations are generally more stringent than in the U.S.
But it’s not clear if such hormones truly are bad for our health. Surprisingly little research has been done on the health effects of these hormones in humans, in part because it’s difficult to separate the effects of added hormones from the mixture of natural hormones, proteins, and other components found in milk and meat. Buying organic may reassure shoppers, but there’s little proof these products are indeed safer.
Growth Hormones
In 1993, the FDA approved recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a synthetic cow hormone that spurs milk production when injected into dairy cows, and consumer groups have been concerned about it ever since. The manipulation of growth hormone in the AquaBounty salmon has sparked similar concerns.
By itself, rBGH has no discernible effect in humans and is of little concern to your health, and the growth hormone in AquaBounty’s salmon is expected to be inconsequential to your health as well. The actual fear is that manipulating growth hormones in cows — or salmon — may increase another hormone, insulin-like growth factor (IGF), which could mimic the effects of human growth hormone in harmful ways. In fact, research has found that milk from rBGH-treated cows contains up to 10 times more IGF than other milk.
Higher blood levels of IGF (regardless of what causes them) have been associated with an increased risk of breast, prostate, and other cancers in humans. In a 2004 study, patients with above-average IGF levels had nearly a 50 percent higher risk of prostate cancer and a 65 percent higher risk of hormone-dependent premenopausal breast cancer than people with below-average levels.
Many factors — including genes, smoking, and fat intake — contribute to these cancers, but “it’s very likely that at least part of that [risk] is related to IGF levels,” especially where prostate cancer is concerned, says Walter Willett, M.D., chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston.
While consuming lots of milk and other dairy has been shown to raise blood levels of human IGF, the increase is probably not a direct effect of the animal’s IGF level or the IGF found in these foods. That’s because the amount of IGF in dairy products — whether or not it’s from rBGH-treated cows — pales in comparison to what is naturally in your body.
“Just [to get] the amount of IGF secreted in your saliva and digestive tract in a day, you’d have to drink about 95 quarts of milk,” says Terry Etherton, Ph.D., a professor of dairy and animal science at Pennsylvania State University and the author of a blog about food biotechnology.
And you’d have to eat at least 170 three-ounce servings of genetically modified salmon. (The IGF levels in the AquaBounty salmon and regular salmon are comparable, although consumer advocates say the studies that determined this are too small to be reliable.)
So if the amount of IGF in milk is negligible, how does milk consumption increase our IGF levels? Milk in general — and the proteins, sugar, minerals, and non-IGF hormones it contains — may somehow cause the human body to make more of its own IGF, Dr. Willett says.
Sex Hormones and Early Puberty
IGF isn’t the only hormone found in the food supply. Ranchers have been fattening up cattle with sex hormones — most notably estrogen — since the 1950s. Today most beef cows in the U.S. — except those labeled “organic” — receive an implant in their ear that delivers a hormone, usually a form of estrogen (estradiol) in some combination with five other hormones. (These hormones are not given to chicken and pigs because they don’t have the same growth-promoting effect in these animals, although antibiotics are given to all three species for similar growth-promoting reasons.)
One concern is that such hormones may spur earlier puberty in children, who are, on average, entering puberty at a younger age than they did a generation or two ago, for reasons that are unclear.
But Ann Macrina, Ph.D., a researcher in the Department of Dairy and Animal Science at Pennsylvania State University, says that the amount of estrogen found in meat is vanishingly small compared to the level in our bodies. A three-ounce serving of beef from an estrogen-treated cow contains less than a billionth of a gram of estrogen, a level around 400,000 times lower than estrogen in women and nearly 100,000 times lower than that in men.
However, even miniscule amounts of estrogen could affect prepubescent girls and boys, says Dr. Willett. “[For] a girl who’s not producing hormones herself, they could be quite substantial.”
A 2009 study found that children who consumed the most protein from animal sources entered puberty about seven months earlier than those who consumed the least. “It doesn’t matter so much if it’s milk, cheese, or meat — all these animal proteins have a clear impact on [our] IGF system,” says Thomas Remer, Ph.D., one of the authors of the study and a professor at the Research Institute of Child Nutrition, in Germany.
Still, hormones added to the food supply are probably not the biggest culprit behind early puberty. It’s more likely that meat, milk, and similar foods help trigger earlier puberty because they are rich in protein, calories, and nutrients, says Marcia Herman-Giddens, an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, in Chapel Hill, and the lead author of an influential 1997 study on early puberty in girls.
However, Herman-Giddens cautions that more research is needed to untangle the many factors involved. For instance, she says, rising rates of overweight and obesity — and the processed foods, high-calorie drinks, and lack of exercise driving them — are “probably the biggest reason” for the trend toward earlier puberty. (Fat cells stimulate the body to produce estrogen.) Pesticides, flame-retardants, plastics, and other chemicals in the environment that can disrupt hormones may also be partly to blame.
Organic Or Not?
Organic beef and dairy products certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) come with the guarantee that the cows were not treated with rBGH or sex hormones. They also come with a much heftier price. Is the peace of mind worth the extra cash?
Probably not, says Dr. Willett, who advocates cutting back on meat in general. Most people should eat no more than two servings of red meat per week, Dr. Willett says, and “if you’re [only] having a couple of servings a week, it doesn’t make much difference whether it’s organic or not.”
Dr. Willett offers similar advice regarding organic dairy. On the other hand, experts like Herman-Giddens urge consumers to stay away from rBGH-treated milk because of its potentially higher IGF levels, and the fact that it does not have any added health benefits over regular milk. Instead of switching to organic milk, Dr. Willett recommends cutting back on dairy altogether, despite USDA recommendations that call for three servings a day of dairy.
Bruce Chassy, Ph.D., a professor of food microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says “propaganda” from organic farming groups has created misconceptions about — and resistance to — rBGH among consumers. In fact, Chassy argues that manipulating growth hormones has benefits: rBGH-treated cows are better for the environment, not just the bottom line, since farmers can get the same amount of milk with fewer cows. Similarly, the AquaBounty salmon consumes 10 percent less feed during its lifecycle than a regular farmed salmon.
The most lasting effect of the fears surrounding hormones in the food supply may be the value of “organic” or “hormone free” as selling points, Chassy says.
“I think there are a lot of farms that are not using [rBGH] because they perceive that consumers do not want [rBGH]-treated milk,” he says. He predicts that the AquaBounty salmon will likely inspire “marketing campaigns for ‘hormone-free’ fish.” It’s a ridiculous claim, he argues, since all fish — and all meat and milk — has hormones.
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Monsanto - >>> Bayer inks $66B deal to acquire Monsanto
CBS
9-14-16
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bayer-inks-66b-deal-to-acquire-monsanto/
FRANKFURT, Germany - German drug and farm chemical company Bayer AG (BAYN) says it has signed a deal to acquire seed and weed-killer company Monsanto (MON) for $66 billion in cash.
Bayer says it is paying Monsanto shareholders $128 per share, which represents a 44 percent premium over Monsanto’s closing price on May 9, the day before a proposed deal was announced.
“We believe that this combination with Bayer represents the most compelling value for our shareowners, with the most certainty through the all-cash consideration,” said Monsanto chairman and CEO Hugh Grant in a joint statement.
The deal is subject to approval by Monsanto shareholders and anti-trust regulators.
Bayer said Wednesday the transaction brings together two different but complementary companies. Bayer makes a wide range of crop protection chemicals, while Monsanto is known for its seeds business.
Leverkusen-based Bayer said the merged companies’ agriculture business would have its seeds business and North American business headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, where Monsanto is currently based.
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Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome - >>> Mysterious illness tied to marijuana use on the rise in states with legal weed
12-28-16
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mysterious-illness-tied-to-marijuana-use-on-the-rise-in-states-with-legal-weed/
NEW YORK -- For more than two years, Lance Crowder was having severe abdominal pain and vomiting, and no local doctor could figure out why. Finally, an emergency room physician in Indianapolis had an idea.
“The first question he asked was if I was taking hot showers to find relief. When he asked me that question, I basically fell into tears because I knew he had an answer,” Crowder said.
The answer was cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS. It’s caused by heavy, long-term use of various forms of marijuana. For unclear reasons, the nausea and vomiting are relieved by hot showers or baths.
“They’ll often present to the emergency department three, four, five different times before we can sort this out,” said Dr. Kennon Heard, an emergency room physician at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colorado.
He co-authored a study showing that since 2009, when medical marijuana became widely available, emergency room visits diagnoses for CHS in two Colorado hospitals nearly doubled. In 2012, the state legalized recreational marijuana.
“It is certainly something that, before legalization, we almost never saw,” Heard said. “Now we are seeing it quite frequently.”
Outside of Colorado, when patients do end up in an emergency room, the diagnosis is often missed. Partly because doctors don’t know about CHS, and partly because patients don’t want to admit to using a substance that’s illegal.
CHS can lead to dehydration and kidney failure, but usually resolves within days of stopping drug use. That’s what happened with Crowder, who has been off all forms of marijuana for seven months.
“Now all kinds of ambition has come back. I desire so much more in life and, at 37 years old, it’s a little late to do it, but better now than never,”he said.
CHS has only been recognized for about the past decade, and nobody knows exactly how many people suffer from it. But as more states move towards the legalization of marijuana, emergency room physicians like Dr. Heard are eager to make sure both doctors and patients have CHS on their radar.
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>>> Fukushima radiation has reached U.S. shores
USA TODAY
12-9-16
Tracy Loew
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fukushima-radiation-has-reached-us-shores/ar-AAlkXUr?OCID=ansmsnnews11
SALEM, Ore. -- For the first time, seaborne radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected on the West Coast of the United States.
Cesium-134, the so-called fingerprint of Fukushima, was measured in seawater samples taken from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon, according to researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Because of its short half-life, cesium-134 can only have come from Fukushima.
For the first time, cesium-134 has also been detected in a Canadian salmon, according to the Fukushima InFORM project, led by University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen.
In both cases, levels are extremely low, the researchers said, and don’t pose a danger to humans or the environment.
Massive amounts of contaminated water were released from the crippled nuclear plant following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. More radiation was released to the air, then fell to the sea.
Woods Hole chemical oceanographer Ken Buesseler runs a crowd-funded, citizen science seawater sampling project that has tracked the radiation plume as it slowly makes its way across the Pacific Ocean.
The Oregon samples, marking the first time cesium-134 has been detected on U.S. shores, were taken in January and February of 2016 and later analyzed. They each measured 0.3 becquerels per cubic meter of cesium-134.
Buesseler’s team previously had found the isotope in a sample of seawater taken from a dock on Vancouver Island, B.C., marking its landfall in North America.
In Canada, Cullen leads the InFORM project to assess radiological risks to that country’s oceans following the nuclear disaster. It is a partnership of a dozen academic, government and non-profit organizations.
Last month, the group reported that a single sockeye salmon, sampled from Okanagan Lake in the summer of 2015, had tested positive for cesium-134.
The level was more than 1,000 times lower than the action level set by Health Canada, and is no significant risk to consumers, Cullen said.
Buesseler’s most recent samples off the West Coast also are showing higher-than background levels of cesium-137, another Fukushima isotope that already is present in the world's oceans because of nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s.
Those results will become more important in tracking the radiation plume, Buesseler said, because the short half-life of cesium-134 makes it harder to detect as time goes on.
Cesium-134 has a half-life of two years, meaning it’s down to a fraction of what it was five years ago, he said. Cesium-137 has a 30-year half-life.
A recent InFORM analysis of Buesseler’s data concluded that concentrations of cesium-137 have increased considerably in the central northeast Pacific, although they still are at levels that pose no concern.
“It appears that the plume has spread throughout this vast area from Alaska to California,” the scientists wrote.
They estimated that the plume is moving toward the coast at roughly twice the speed of a garden snail. Radiation levels have not yet peaked.
“As the contamination plume progresses towards our coast we expect levels closer to shore to increase over the coming year,” Cullen said.
Even that peak won’t be a health concern, Buesseler said. But the models will help scientists model ocean currents in the future.
That could prove important if there is another disaster or accident at the Fukushima plant, which houses more than a thousand huge steel tanks of contaminated water and where hundreds of tons of molten fuel remain inside the reactors.
In a worst-case scenario, the fuel would melt through steel-reinforced concrete containment vessels into the ground, uncontrollably spreading radiation into the surrounding soil and groundwater and eventually into the sea.
“That’s the type of thing where people are still concerned, as am I, about what could happen,” Buesseler said.
Scientists now know it would take four to five years for any further contamination from the plant to reach the West Coast.
Tracking the plume
Scientists are beginning to use an increase in cesium-137 instead of the presence of cesium-134 to track the plume of radioactive contamination from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster. These figures show the increase in cesium-137 near the West Coast between 2014 and 2015.
Graphic courtesy Dr. Jonathan Kellogg of InFORM, with data from Dr. John Smith, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Dr. Ken Buesseler, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
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>>> Man's liver inflammation linked to 'common energy drink': study
?
http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/Mans-liver-inflammation-linked-to-common-energy-drink-study/ar-AAjJo1N?OCID=ansmsnnews11
A construction worker who drank four to five energy drinks every day for three weeks, was hospitalized with severe liver problems "likely" caused by excessively imbibing the seemingly harmless substance, researchers said Tuesday.
The man, 50, was admitted to a hospital in Florida after feeling unwell for two weeks, with abdominal pain quickly progressing to nausea and vomiting.
He thought his symptoms were flu-like, but became alarmed when his urine became dark and his skin and the whites of his eyes turned yellow.
The man had recently started taking four to five daily servings of "a common energy drink" to help him get through long days at work -- the only change in his diet or habits, said a report in the journal BMJ Case Reports.
An examination revealed the man had severe hepatitis, a type of liver inflammation, and possible liver damage.
The symptoms were "likely" caused by excessive energy drink consumption, the team wrote.
It is the second known case of its kind, they added.
The man's daily intake of vitamin B3, or niacin, was about 160-200 milligrams for the three-week period, "below the threshold expected to cause toxicity", the authors said, but similar to the previous known case.
"Toxicity is likely worsened by accumulative effect. Each bottle of his energy drink contained 40 mg of niacin or 200 percent of the recommended daily value," said a BMJ statement summarizing the findings.
The man's symptoms disappeared on day three of hospitalization and he was discharged on day six with instructions to avoid any niacin-containing products.
The observed link may have been a mere coincidence, and does not constitute proof that the drink caused the man's illness, the team underlined.
But it could be a red flag, they said.
"Based on this case and the previous report, we suggest that patients with pre-existing hepatic disorders should use caution when consuming energy drinks containing niacin," said the study.
Doctors should also be aware of the potential "adverse effects" and consider excessive energy drink consumption as a diagnostic option when otherwise healthy adults suddenly develop acute hepatitis.
The patient had previously contracted the Hepatitis C virus, but the team dismissed this as the cause of his illness, saying it had been too long ago.
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>>> Scotts Miracle-Gro Company manufactures, markets, and sells consumer lawn and garden products worldwide. The company's Global Consumer segment offers lawn fertilizers, grass seed products, spreaders, other durable products, and outdoor cleaners, as well as lawn-related weed, pest, and disease control products; water soluble and continuous-release plant foods, potting mixes, garden soils, mulch and decorative groundcover products, landscape weed prevention products, plant-related pest and disease control products, organic garden products, live goods and seeding solutions, and hydroponic gardening products; and insect and rodent control products, and selective and non-selective weed control products to protect homes and maintain external home areas. This segment provides its products primarily under the Scotts, Turf Builder, EZ Seed, Water Smart, PatchMaster, EverGreen, Fertiligène, Substral, Miracle-Gro Patch Magic, Weedol, Pathclear, KB, Celaflor, EdgeGuard, Snap, Handy Green II, OxiClean, Miracle-Gro, Osmocote, Hyponex, Earthgro, SuperSoil, Ortho, Miracle-Gro Organic Choice, Nature's Care, Whitney Farms, EcoScraps, General Hydroponics, AeroGarden, Substral, ASEF, Scotts EcoSense, Naturen, Fafard, Tomcat, Roundup, Groundclear, Nexa Lotte, and Home Defence brand names. Its Scotts LawnService segment offers residential and commercial lawn care, tree and shrub care, and pest control services through the periodic applications of fertilizer and control products. As of September 30, 2015, this segment had 88 company-operated locations; and 94 independent franchisees operated locations. The company primarily serves home centers, mass merchandisers, warehouse clubs, large hardware chains, independent hardware stores, nurseries, garden centers, food and drug stores, and indoor gardening and hydroponic stores through a direct sales force and network of brokers and distributors. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company was founded in 1868 and is headquartered in Marysville, Ohio.
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>>> Scientists discover what’s killing the bees and it’s worse than you thought
Outlawing a type of insecticides is not a panacea. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
by Todd Woody
July 24, 2013
As we’ve written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated America’s apis mellifera population that one bad winter could leave fields fallow ( http://tinyurl.com/crq3gnk ). Now, a new study has pinpointed some of the probable causes of bee deaths and the rather scary results show that averting beemageddon will be much more difficult than previously thought.
Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE ( http://tinyurl.com/k33puzd ), scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.
When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite called Nosema ceranae. The parasite has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample. Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite.
Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as they’re designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.
“There’s growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study’s lead author, told Quartz.
Labels on pesticides warn farmers not to spray when pollinating bees are in the vicinity but such precautions have not applied to fungicides.
Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the country’s surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds. And that’s not just a west coast problem—California supplies 80% of the world’s almonds, a market worth $4 billion.
In recent years, a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids has been linked to bee deaths and in April regulators banned the use of the pesticide for two years ( http://tinyurl.com/ctvkpo2 ) in Europe where bee populations have also plummeted. But vanEngelsdorp, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, says the new study shows that the interaction of multiple pesticides is affecting bee health.
“The pesticide issue in itself is much more complex than we have led to be believe,” he says. “It’s a lot more complicated than just one product, which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class of product.”
The study found another complication in efforts to save the bees: US honey bees, which are descendants of European bees, do not bring home pollen from native North American crops but collect bee chow from nearby weeds and wildflowers. That pollen, however, was also contaminated with pesticides even though those plants were not the target of spraying.
“It’s not clear whether the pesticides are drifting over to those plants but we need take a new look at agricultural spraying practices,” says vanEngelsdorp.
http://qz.com/107970/scientists-discover-whats-killing-the-bees-and-its-worse-than-you-thought/
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>>> EWG's 2016 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™
https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php
Nearly three-fourths of the 6,953 produce samples tested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2014 contained pesticide residues - a surprising finding in the face of soaring consumer demand for food without synthetic chemicals.
This year's update of EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ reports that USDA tests found a total 146 different pesticides on thousands of fruit and vegetable samples examined in 2014. The pesticides persisted on fruits and vegetables tested by USDA - even when they were washed and, in some cases, peeled.
The USDA findings indicate that the conventional fruit and produce industries are ignoring a striking market trend: American consumers are voting with their pocketbooks for produce with less pesticide. Yet EWG’s Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ recognizes that many people who want to reduce their exposure to pesticides cannot find or afford an all-organic diet. It helps them identify conventionally grown fruits and vegetables that tend to test low for pesticide residues. When they want foods whose conventional versions test high for pesticides, they can make an effort to locate organic versions.
Highlights of the Dirty Dozen™ for 2016
EWG singles out produce with the highest pesticide loads for its Dirty Dozen™ list. This year, includes strawberries, apples, nectarines, peaches, celery, grapes, cherries, spinach, tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers.
Each of these foods tested positive for a number of different pesticide residues and showed higher concentrations of pesticides than other produce.
Key findings:
?More than 98 percent of strawberry samples, peaches, nectarines, and apples tested positive for at least one pesticide residue.
?The average potato had more pesticides by weight than any other produce.
?A single grape sample and a sweet bell pepper sample contained 15 pesticides.
?Single samples of strawberries showed 17 different pesticides.
The Clean Fifteen™
EWG's Clean Fifteen™ list of produce least likely to hold pesticide residues consists of avocados, sweet corn, pineapples, cabbage, frozen sweet peas, onions, asparagus, mangoes, papayas, kiwis, eggplant, honeydew melon, grapefruit, cantaloupe, and cauliflower. Relatively few pesticides were detected on these foods, and tests found low total concentrations of pesticides on them.
Key findings:
?Avocados were the cleanest: only 1 percent of avocado samples showed any detectable pesticides.
?Some 89 percent of pineapples, 81 percent of papayas, 78 percent of mangoes, 73 percent of kiwi and 62 percent of cantaloupes had no residues.
?No single fruit sample from the Clean Fifteen™ tested positive for more than 4 types of pesticides.
?Multiple pesticide residues are extremely rare on Clean Fifteen™ vegetables. Only 5.5 percent of Clean Fifteen samples had two or more pesticides.
See the full list.
Dirty Dozen PLUS™
For the fourth year, we have expanded the Dirty Dozen™ with a Plus category to highlight two types of food that contain trace levels of highly hazardous pesticides. Leafy greens - kale and collard greens - and hot peppers do not meet traditional Dirty Dozen™ ranking criteria but were frequently found to be contaminated with insecticides toxic to the human nervous system. EWG recommends that people who eat a lot of these foods buy organic instead.
Leafy greens and hot peppers carry toxic pesticides.
Two American food crops - leafy greens and hot peppers - are of special concern for public health because residue tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture have found these foods laced with particularly toxic pesticides. Among the chemicals at issue are organophosphate and carbamate insecticides. These are no longer detected widely on other produce, either because of binding legal restrictions or voluntary phase-outs.
Leafy greens did not qualify for EWG's Dirty Dozen™ list this year under the traditional EWG Shopper's Guide rating system, which highlights produce with the highest number and concentrations of pesticides. Still, because of the extraordinary toxicity of the pesticides detected on them, we are highlighting them in this special Plus section.
USDA tests of 739 samples of hot peppers in 2010 and 2011 (USDA 2010, 2011) found residues of three highly toxic insecticides — acephate, chlorpyrifos, and oxamyl — on a portion of sampled peppers at concentrations high enough to cause concern. These insecticides are banned on some crops but still allowed on hot peppers.
In tests conducted in 2007 and 2008, USDA scientists detected 51 pesticides on kale and 41 pesticides on collard greens (USDA 2007, 2008). Several of those pesticides — chlorpyrifos, famoxadone, oxydemeton, dieldrin, DDE and esfenvalerate — are highly toxic. Although many farmers may have changed their pesticide practices since 2008, chlorpyrifos and esfenvalerate are still permitted on leafy greens. Organochlorine pesticides DDE and dieldrin were banned some years ago but persist in agricultural soils and still make their way onto leafy greens grown today.
EWG recommends that people who frequently eat leafy greens and hot peppers buy organic varieties. If you cannot find or afford organic types, cook them, because pesticides levels typically diminish when food is cooked.
The federal Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 mandated that the U.S. Environmental Protection Act improve its regulation of pesticides and reduce the risks of pesticide exposure for children. The act prompted EPA to restrict the use of many chemicals, including organophosphate pesticides, which are potent neurotoxins. Even in low doses, they can impair children's intelligence and brain development. Over the past two decades, organophosphates have been withdrawn from many agricultural uses and banned from household pesticides. Yet they can still be applied to certain crops.
Several long-term studies of American children initiated in the 1990s found that children's exposures to toxic organophosphate insecticides in not only agricultural communities but also cities were high enough to cause subtle but lasting damages to their brains and nervous systems (Bouchard 2011, Rauh 2011, Engel 2011).
The EPA and some in the agriculture industry argue that restrictions enacted after these children were born would ensure that contemporary children's exposures to these pesticides from food are safe.
However, a study led by Stephen Rauch of British Columbia's Children's Hospital and published in 2012 in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives found decreases in infant birth weight and shorter pregnancies among 300 Ohio mothers exposed to organophosphates during pregnancy (Rauch 2012). These pregnancies occurred after major organophosphate restrictions took effect in the early 2000s. The Rauch study indicates that organophosphate exposures must be further curtailed to protect children's health.
The EPA should continue to restrict toxic pesticides, including organophosphate and carbamate insecticides that are still allowed on many crops. Until this happens EWG will continue to publish a Dirty Dozen Plus™ list that highlights crops tainted with unusually risky pesticides. The USDA should expand its produce-testing program to conduct more frequent analyses of pesticide residues on popular foods. To name a few, kale, collard greens, strawberries, cherries and tomatoes have not been tested since 2009 and are overdue for retesting.
Genetically engineered crops
Most processed food typically contains one or more ingredients derived from genetically engineered crops. GMO food is not often found in the produce section of American supermarkets. A small percentage of zucchini, yellow squash and sweet corn in the produce cooler is GMO. Most Hawaiian papaya is GMO.
Other varieties of GMO foods are currently being tested. The USDA may approve them in the future. Since U.S. law does not require labeling of genetically engineered produce, EWG advises people who want to avoid GMO crops to purchase organically-grown foods or items bearing the "Non-GMO Project Verified" label. EWG recommends that consumers check EWG's Shopper's Guide To Avoiding GMO Food, and FoodScores database and EWG's Healthy Living App which can help identify foods likely to contain genetically engineered ingredients.
How consumers can avoid pesticides
Smart shopping choices matter. People who eat organic produce eat fewer pesticides. A study by Cynthia Curl of the University of Washington published February 5, found that people who report they "often or always" buy organic produce had significantly less organophosphate insecticides in their urine samples, even though they reported eating 70 percent more servings of fruits and vegetables per day than adults reporting they "rarely or never" purchase organic produce (Curl 2015). Several long-term observational studies have indicated that organophosphate insecticides may impair children’s brain development.
In 2012, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued an important report that said that children have "unique susceptibilities to [pesticide residues'] potential toxicity." The pediatricians' organization cited research that linked pesticide exposures in early life and "pediatric cancers, decreased cognitive function, and behavioral problems." It advised its members to urge parents to consult "reliable resources that provide information on the relative pesticide content of various fruits and vegetables." One key resource, it said, was EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ (AAP 2012).
With EWG's shopping tool, people can have the health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables with less exposure to pesticides.
Methodology
EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ ranks pesticide contamination on 48 popular fruits and vegetables based on an analysis of more than 35,200 samples taken by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and federal Food and Drug Administration. The USDA doesn't test every food every year. EWG generally uses the most recent sampling period for each food. However the USDA only tested 176 samples of strawberries during the last three months of 2014 so we included test data from 2009 as well. Nearly all the tests that serve as the basis for the guide were conducted by the USDA, whose personnel washed or peeled produce to mimic consumer practices. It is a reasonable assumption that unwashed produce would likely have higher concentrations of pesticide residues.
In order to compare foods, EWG looked at six measures of pesticide contamination:
?Percent of samples tested with detectable pesticides
?Percent of samples with two or more detectable pesticides
?Average number of pesticides found on a single sample
?Average amount of pesticides found, measured in parts per million
?Maximum number of pesticides found on a single sample
?Total number of pesticides found on the commodity
For each metric, we ranked each food based on its individual USDA test results, then normalized the scores on a 1-100 scale, with 100 being the highest. A food's final score is the total of the six normalized scores from each metric. The Shopper's Guide™ Full List shows fruits and vegetables in order of these final scores.
Our goal is to show a range of different measures of pesticide contamination to account for uncertainties in the science. All categories were treated equally. The likelihood that a person would eat multiple pesticides on a single food was given the same weight as amounts of the pesticide detected and the percent of the crop on which any pesticides were found.
The EWG's Shopper's Guide™ is not built on a complex assessment of pesticide risks but instead reflects the overall pesticide loads of common fruits and vegetables. This approach best captures the uncertainties about the risks and consequences of pesticide exposure. Since researchers are constantly developing new insights into how pesticides act on living organisms, no one can say that concentrations of pesticides assumed today to be safe are, in fact, harmless.
EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ aims to give consumers confidence that by following EWG's advice, they can buy foods with fewer types of pesticides and lower overall concentrations of pesticide residues.
References:
AAP 2012. Organic Foods: Health and Environmental Advantages and Disadvantages. American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition and Council on Environmental Health. e1406 -e1415. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2012-2579. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/5/e1406
Bouchard M, Chevrier J, Harley K, et al. 2011. Prenatal Exposure to Organophosphate Pesticides and IQ in 7-Year Old Children. Environ Health Perspect 119(8): 1189–1195.
Curl CL, Beresford SAA, Fenske RA, et al. 2015. Estimating Pesticide Exposure from Dietary Intake and Organic Food Choices: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Environmental Health Perspectives. Advanced publication February 5, 2015. DOI: 10.1289/ehp1408197 http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/advpub/2015/2/ehp.1408197.acco.pdf
Engel SM, Wetmur J, Chen J, et al. 2011. Prenatal Exposure to Organophosphates, Paraoxonase 1, and Cognitive Development in Childhood. Environ Health Perspect 119(8): 1182-1188.
Rauch SA, Braun JM, Barr DB, et al. 2012. Associations of Prenatal Exposure to Organophosphate Pesticide Metabolites with Gestational Age and Birth Weight. Environ Health Perspect. 120(7): 1055–1060.
Rauh V, Arunajadai S, Horton M, et al. 2011. 7-Year Neurodevelopmental Scores and Prenatal Exposure to Chlorpyrifos, a Common Agricultural Pesticide. Environ Health Perspect. 119(8): 1196-1201.
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>>> 7 Best Foods to Buy Organic
? 10/11/2013
By Caroline Young
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/builtlean/best-food-to-buy-organic_b_3779168.html
While it may seem like the organic food movement became popular over the past two decades, it is actually a much older concept. Everyone ate organic fruits and veggies before World War II, because all crops were organic. It was after that when many farmers started “conventionally” growing crops: spraying them with new, synthetic pesticides and chemicals to reduce weeds, insects and rodents. Now many of us enter the produce section with some confusion, as we are offered every fruit and veggie grown in two very different ways.
What’s the Difference Between Conventional and Organic Foods?
Conventional foods differ from organics in several ways, including the use of chemical versus natural fertilizers (i.e., compost) to feed soil and plants. Conventional farmers also use synthetic herbicides to manage weeds, while organic farmers use environmentally generated plant-killing compounds. Therefore, organic produce has significantly fewer pesticide residues than conventional produce.
The USDA organic regulations also ban the use of food additives, processing aids, and fortifying agents found in conventional foods, like artificial sweeteners and coloring, preservatives and monosodium glutamate.
Global organic food sales have skyrocketed from a total of $1 billion in 1990 to $29 billion by 2011. However, those numbers only represent about 4.2 percent of all food sold in the U.S. during this time period. And as more and more people buy organic foods for their health benefits, these foods often get a bad rap for higher costs.
In the conversation over benefit vs. price, some studies reveal doubt around organic foods truly having significantly higher nutritional benefits than conventional foods. Despite the skeptics, there is a rising agreement in the scientific community that small amounts of pesticides and other chemicals have negative effects on health. Pregnant women and mothers should especially be aware because studies show fetuses and young children may be more negatively affected by harmful exposure to low levels of pesticides.
1) Potatoes
When deciding which foods to buy organic, potatoes are a must. Most conventionally-grown have one of the highest pesticide contents among fruits and veggies. The USDA discovered 81 percent of potatoes tested in 2006 contained pesticides even after being washed and peeled.
2) Beef
When animals are conventionally raised, they are fed growth hormones and medications to fight disease and speed growth, which inevitably end up in our hamburgers and our bodies. The hormones push cows’ estrogen and testosterone levels unnaturally high. In turn, those hormones can possibly have strong effects on our natural body processes. The European Union actually banned all hormones in beef. On the other hand, organic farmers try to match the natural behavior of animals and permit access to the outdoors. To reduce diseases, organic farmers take measures like rotational grazing, clean housing, and organic balanced diets with no animal by products.
3) Milk
To increase the quantity of milk produced, cows raised conventionally are given rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), which is banned in the European Union and Canada, among others. While there is no solid scientific evidence rBGH can harm us, it may benefit us to drink milk free of rBGH given the American Cancer Society has determined the potential harm to humans is inconclusive and rBGH can cause adverse health effects in cows.
4) Apples
Apple peel is one of this popular tree fruit’s healthiest parts, offering phytochemicals that can reduce risk of cancer and heart disease. Unfortunately, the peel is where pesticides accumulate, putting apples at the top of the organic foods priority list.
5) Strawberries
Do you wonder why the conventional strawberries sometimes appear a bit brighter in color than their organic counterparts? It’s because some of them are enhanced with a substance containing the contaminant fungicide captan. Plus, conventional strawberries with the most pesticides are often the imported ones because pesticide restrictions are not always the same in other countries.
6) Kale and Spinach
While spinach and kale offer many nutrients with very low calories, they are often sprayed with more than 20 kinds of pesticides before being tossed in our salads and cooked in our omelets. A USDA study found 58 pesticide residues are usually contained in spinach.
7) Peaches
Peaches, while juicy and delicious, are high on the list of tree fruits for being the most susceptible to pesticide residue, and usually contain levels above the legal limits. Contaminants in peaches are fungicides captan and iprodione, which have been linked to cancer.
Going Organic Can Help Our Planet
Production of conventional foods may cost the planet a whole lot more than a few extra bucks at the grocery store. Overtime, pesticides and herbicides used in the harvest of conventional foods contaminate groundwater, promote erosion, and destroy soil structures. Plus, they can threaten the U.S. food supply by contributing to “colony collapse disorder,” or the mysterious die-off of pollinating honeybees.
Conventional Produce Is Better Than None
While it is beneficial to our health and planet to buy organic foods as much as possible, it can be hard to dole out the extra cash, especially during slower economic times. If it is just not in the budget, don’t fret. The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that advocating for policies to both individual and global health, created a list of produce called the “Clean 15,” which are your safest choices. They have the smallest pesticide load and the safest conventional foods to consume. Some of the foods include mushrooms, pineapple, avocado, asparagus, and sweet potatoes.
Remember, it is important to keep plenty of fruits and veggies as part of a balanced diet, and not to sacrifice the benefits of eating fruits and veggies for the risk of pesticide exposure. Focus on going organic when it fits into your life, especially focusing on the foods you eat most often and high-pesticide foods, including BuiltLean’s top seven.
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