The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

photo credit: ex.libris

Recently, Medical News Today ran an article about a study conducted in Sweden on the effects of a vegan diet on indicators of cardiovascular disease. Researchers are looking for alternative methods for treating cardiovascular disease indicators, like high cholesterol, for people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. While the study only included 66 participants, 38 of which were assigned to the gluten-free vegan diet, there was some indication the participants on the gluten-free diet dropped cholesterol and weight:

The study found that there were reductions in weight and ‘bad’ cholesterol for those on the vegan diet. However, it did not involve enough people or last long enough to look at the effects of the vegan diet on cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks or strokes. Furthermore, the long-term effects of the gluten-free vegan diet are uncertain. Many of the people assigned to the vegan diet [almost half] did not keep it up for the entire year, and it may be difficult for people used to a non-vegan diet to make such a big change in their eating habits.

It is not clear from this study whether the gluten-free vegan diet offers any specific advantages over other healthy diets aimed at reducing bad cholesterol or weight loss. All individuals who wish to reduce their chances of cardiovascular disease should aim to eat a healthy diet, maintain a healthy weight, stop smoking and do an appropriate level of exercise.

It’s easy to see why half the participants on the gluten-free diet dropped out - their diet consisted solely of “vegetables, nuts, fruits, buckwheat, millet, rice, corn, sunflower and sesame seeds.” It’s unclear, of course, how creative the study conductors were with assembling the ingredients into meals. I imagine, no matter what, it must be hard to take people who are used to meat and cheese diets and remove everything familiar in favor of gluten-free food. It will be interesting to see if this study inspires another specifically designed to study the health benefits of a gluten-free vegan diet versus other diets.

The article ends with this tidbit:

Sir Muir Gray adds… The evidence is mounting; if you want to stay healthy and save the planet - eat less, eat more plants and eat only food that your great grandmother would recognise if she were alive today.

Of course, it’s not that easy any more. The foods my great grandmother would recognize, like chicken and beef, may look the same, but are now full of corn, calories and chemicals that have changed the health value beyond recognition. Healthy eaters are once again relegated to foraging for food, but the landscape has changed - no longer are we hunting and gathering in the wild jungles, but instead grocery stores and restaurant chains.

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I had no idea what kind of horrors awaited this month’s issue of Consumer Reports. An article discussing E.coli-related beef recalls discussed the difference in number between 2006 and 2007. In ‘06, there were less than 200,000 recalled. Can you guess how many in pounds in ‘07? I couldn’t either:

Over 25 MILLION pounds.

It gets better - according to the article:

If meat tests positive for the bacteria, companies are allowed to cook it for sale in other products such as pizza or tacos. While thorough cooking should kill E.coli, diverting tainted meat creates an opening for cross-contamination.

Think about all the places you obtain pre-cooked beef from: fast-food tacos and hamburgers, tubs of pre-cooked beef at the supermarket, restaurants probably use quite a bit in their salads and dishes. I hate to sound like a cynic, but I can’t say that I trust a slaughterhouse who maintains sub-standard working environments and a swinging-door work-force to properly cook tainted beef and protect other carcasses from becoming contaminated. Apparently, with over 25 million pounds of beef recalled, the system isn’t working.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t quickly find a chart that shows the yearly recall amount for the past few years - you would think this kind of information would be made available. In any event, 25 million pounds recalled for E.coli in one year is a phenomenal amount. Consumer Reports listed a few circumstances that may have contributed to the problem:

…Rising oil prices have encouraged greater production of ethanol, which creates a corn byproduct that increasingly is being used as cattle feed. This feed appears to make the animals’ digestive tracts even more hospitable breeding grounds for the toxic strain of E.coli bacteria, [according to USDA officials]. [Ed - By the way, as Michael Pollan points out in ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’, since cows cannot digest corn naturally, their stomachs will explode unless treated with antibiotics - corn-based cattle feed is also a main contributor to the rise in antibiotics and hormones in beef.]

…Carcasses can move through slaughter-houses at a rate of up to 390 per hour, making inspection difficult.

This article reminded me of something I read recently about a slaughterhouse in California who supplies the local schools being caught on tape processing “downer,” or obviously ill, cows by chaining them to forklifts when they were not capable of walking. Most articles like this one concentrated on the animal cruelty angle, but there’s more to it - sick cows are more likely to harbor contamination, since their immune system is obviously impaired and they wallow in feces (which, by the way, is how E.coli spreads in slaugterhouses - feces from the cow’s stomach or skin).

I have bought local beef, chicken and pork for a couple of years now, and can definitely taste a difference. Now I have a new reason for buying local and carefully selecting what I eat at restaurants.

I know properly cooking and preparing beef destroys E.coli contamination, but I don’t control the preparation of my food when I consume pre-cooked or restaurant food - with so many people now eating in restaurants, this seems like a pretty serious problem. Or am I over-reacting? What do you think?

Mind Over Matter: SH2B1 In The Brain Regulates Obesity (@sciencedaily)

An interesting article at ScienceDaily claims the following:

Obesity is one of the main risk factors for developing type II diabetes. Previous studies have shown that mice lacking a protein known as SH2B1 throughout their body are obese and develop diabetes.

 

However, researchers from the University of Michigan have now shown that replacing SH2B1 only in the brain of these mice rescues them from obesity, indicating that targeting SH2B1 in the brain might be a new avenue of research for the development of treatments for obesity and type II diabetes.

 

In the study, which appears online on January 18 in advance of publication in the February print issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Liangyou Rui and colleagues show that SH2B1 is expressed in many tissues related to obesity, including the brain, liver, pancreas, and fat tissue.

 

Replacing SH2B1 in only the brain of mice lacking SH2B1 prevented the mice from becoming obese. It also prevented the mice from developing obesity after being fed a high-fat diet, indicating that SH2B1 in the brain is required to regulate body weight and fat content.

 

This study therefore implicates SH2B1 in the brain as a potential target for the treatment of obesity and type II diabetes, two of the most pressing health problems in the developed world today.

It’ll be interesting to see if this inspires any new medication aimed at diabetes and obesity.  It appears SH2B1 interracts with both insulin and leptin, a hormone that regulates chemicals in the brain which signal satiety or hunger.

Interestingly enough, processed corn (not the kind we pick from the stalk or buy at the grocery stores) also interracts with leptin, supressing the release of the hormone.  I’m doing some research on processed corn, and am absolutely astonished at what I’m finding.  As a teaser, trans fats are child’s play compared to how badly it appears processed corn affects our bodies.  One more reason to stay away from processed foods.  Stay tuned for more on corn.