The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

photo credit: Nutsboutnuttn (Allison)

Lately, I’ve been suffering from a sweet tooth - I can’t get enough chocolate to satisfy my “craving,” and grapes just aren’t cutting it. I know enough now to just keep it out of the house so I don’t have access to it, but it’s nice to know my “addiction” might be more based on biology and less on my lack of will-power. According to an article on Science Daily, scientists found the brain can sense caloric values of foods independent of taste mechanisms:

Their finding that the brain’s reward system is switched on by this “sixth sense” machinery could have implications for understanding the causes of obesity. For example, the findings suggest why high-fructose corn syrup, widely used as a sweetener in foods, might contribute to obesity.

In their experiments, the researchers genetically altered mice to make them “sweet-blind,” lacking a key component of taste receptor cells that enabled them to detect the sweet taste.

In analyzing the brains of the sweet-blind mice, the researchers showed that the animals’ reward circuitry was switched on by caloric intake, independent of the animals’ ability to taste. Those analyses showed that levels of the brain chemical dopamine, known to be central to activating the reward circuitry, increased with caloric intake. Also, electrophysiological studies showed that neurons in the food-reward region, called the nucleus accumbens, were activated by caloric intake, independent of taste.

Significantly, the researchers found that a preference for sucrose over sucralose developed only after ten minutes of a one-hour feeding session and that neurons in the reward region also responded with the same delay.

So I eat chocolate, my brain releases an amount of dopamine relative to the caloric value of the chocolate, and I inherently place a higher value on chocolate because of the pleasant feelings it invokes. It’s like someone designing our bodies knew we wouldn’t eat enough if there weren’t some biological prompting. Frankly, I don’t know if this is good news or not - it’s like I’m my body is biologically designed towards obesity! Or, at least, our current society, with all it’s abundant and ready access to high-calorie foods, warps our biological mechanisms.

At any rate, I just need to keep grapes in the house, and evict the chocolate.

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photo credit: thelifeledger

Childhood obesity is becoming such an epidemic that many schools are taking steps to increase the nutrition and exercise awareness of both their students and their students’ parents. Take, for example, this article covering changes recently instituted by five Philadelphia schools:

Five Philadelphia elementary schools replaced sodas with fruit juice. They scaled back snacks and banished candy. They handed out raffle tickets for wise food choices. They spent hours teaching kids, their parents and teachers about good nutrition.

As a result, “the number of kids who got fat during the two-year experiment was half the number of kids who got fat in schools that didn’t make those efforts.” Which is great, but of course not nearly enough. What we need is more education and awareness about what we feed our children. For instance, the cereal we feed them.

A recent article on Medical News Today about children’s cereal caught my eye. The article cites a recent study conducted by Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, which concluded that children’s cereals are higher in calories, sugar and salt than adult cereals, despite marketing claims to the contrary. The article goes on to summarize the study:

[Marlene] Schwartz and her colleagues examined 161 breakfast cereals from four leading manufacturers and compared nutritional values of children’s and nonchildren’s cereals to national guidelines. They found that when comparing nutrients per gram, children’s cereals were higher in calories, sodium, carbohydrate, and sugar, but significantly lower in fiber and protein. They also found that the majority of children’s cereals, 66 percent, failed to meet national recommended nutritional standards for foods sold in schools.

I couldn’t find a copy of the study itself, so I thought I’d conduct a spot-check myself. When selecting children’s cereal and adult cereal, I concentrated on marketing and shelf placement in the grocery store, as one Yale Rudd Center study points out that

Children are exposed to an estimated 10 000 advertisements for food per year, 95% of which are for fast foods, candy, sugared cereal and soft drinks (13). By pre-school, the child begins to have preferences for certain products and, according to McNeal, is a ‘consumer by influence’ (14). Advertisers place cereal boxes at child eye level because they know that toddlers can recognize brands of cereal and request them from their seat in the grocery cart.

Based on ads and shelf placement, I selected three cereals marketed as “healthy” children’s cereals and two “healthy” adult cereals, because let’s face it - comparing Trix to Allbran is just a tad unfair, and you shouldn’t be feeding your child that un-food anyway. Let’s see how they stack up.

Children’s Cereals

Cheerios

photo credit: Z(-_-)F

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 cup (28 grams)
Calories, without milk: 100
Sodium: 190mg
Sugar: 1g

Ingredients
Whole grain oats, modified corn starch, sugar, oat bran, salt, calcium carbonate, oat fiber, potassium phosphate, corn starch, wheat starch, vitamin E

Kix

photo credit: sajrow

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 1/4 cup (30 grams)
Calories, without milk: 110
Sodium: 210mg
Sugar: 3g

Ingredients
corn (whole grain corn, meal), whole grain oats, ugar, corn bran, modified corn starch, corn syrup, salt, calcium carbonate, trisodium phosphate, vitamin E, misc vitamins

Wheaties

photo credit: tape

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 3/4 cup (27 grams)
Calories, without milk: 100
Sodium: 190mg
Sugar: 4g

Ingredients
whole grain wheat, sugar, salt, corn syrup, trisodium phosphate, BHT, misc vitamins

Adult Cereals

All-bran

photo credit: davekellam

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1/2 cup (31 grams)
Calories, without milk: 80
Sodium: 80mg
Sugar: 6g

Ingredients
wheat bran, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, malt flavoring, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, salt, sodium ascorbate and ascorbic acid (vitamin c), misc vitamins

Special K

photo credit: Paul Cheek

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 cup (31 grams)
Calories, without milk: 120
Sodium: 220mg
Sugar: 4g

Ingredients
rice, wheat gluten, sugar, defatted wheat germ, salt, high fructose corn syrup, dried whey, malt flavoring, calcium caseinate, misc vitamins

The Comparison

I think visually, so I’ve created a table with what I think are the most important comparisons to draw between the five cereals. *I’ve changed the serving size to make the numbers directly comparable.

The takeaway I get? Eat fruit, not cereal. If you need to serve cereal, Cheerios looks like the least evil. The other takeaway? I need to find a new recipe for my bran muffins.

photo credit: ewanr

I have the great fortune to live near Hickory Nut Gap Farm, an ecologically-aware farm using rotational grazing that produces the best beef and chicken I have ever eaten. Not everyone has the fortune to live near a source for grass-fed livestock, so I’m glad Mark’s Daily Apple recently ran an article on selecting beef when your options are limited. The most interesting piece of information I gleaned, however, was that not all grass-fed beef is the same - some, in fact, may be just as unhealthy as corn-fed beef:

Meat that is labeled grass-fed isn’t necessarily “grass-finished.” Nearly all beef cattle eat grass at some point. Others, those usually labeled grass-fed, eat grass until the final few weeks before slaughter, when they’re switched to a grain diet. During this relatively brief window, the omega ratio reverses to pretty much that of mostly/entirely grain-fed cattle. Look for “grass-finished” or “100% grass-fed.”

Yet another disappointing fact about the agricultural industry. “Free ranging” chickens don’t necessarily range free, grass-fed cows don’t necessarily eat all grass - what’s next, “original” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not cloned? It’s no wonder the organic movement feels more like a fad and less like a description of what I’m eating.

As the article points out, many farms now sell and ship meats directly to customers. It appears Hickory Nut Gap does, and the article mentions a few additional links to similar sources. In my opinion, if you don’t have grass-fed beef available near you, it’s worth the extra cost and hassle to order it from a farm like Hickory Nut Gap. When you weigh it against the hidden health costs and money-saving shortcuts taken by slaughterhouses, especially in light of the recent massive beef recalls, it’s well worth the hit you take in the wallet.

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.

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?