The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

photo credit: The Rocketeer

Margaret Atwood must be proud - the disgusting meat products appearing in Oryx and Crake are just around the corner, if PETA has anything to do with it. Following the current trend of offering large bounties, as Google currently does with the X-Prize, PETA is offering a $1 million prize for what NPR summarizes as the “development of commercially-viable ‘test-tube meat’ - meat grown through a lab process, not from a live animal.” PETA’s website outlines the contest in further detail:

PETA is offering a $1 million prize to the contest participant able to make the first in vitro chicken meat and sell it to the public by June 30, 2012. The contestant must do both of the following:

• Produce an in vitro chicken-meat product that has a taste and texture indistinguishable from real chicken flesh to non-meat-eaters and meat-eaters alike.
• Manufacture the approved product in large enough quantities to be sold commercially, and successfully sell it at a competitive price in at least 10 states.

Judging of taste and texture will be performed by a panel of 10 PETA judges, who will sample the in vitro chicken prepared using a fried “chicken” recipe from VegCooking.com. The in vitro chicken must get a score of at least 80 when evaluated in order to win the prize.

In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce.

And I thought everything tasted like chicken… As long as the FDA mandates labeling test-tube SPAM, I don’t personally mind PETA and others throwing money at fake meat. Seriously though, can’t they spend the money on making tofu more appealing? And don’t members of the target audience, non-meat-eating people, already have non-meat alternatives? Does PETA really think they’re going to convert meat-eaters into vegetarians with fake SPAM?

At any rate, it’s all very interesting. It’s good to see PETA doing something that doesn’t involve bloody babies on a stick in front of McDonalds.

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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.

photo credit: kansasliberal

Eating Fabulous points to this Consumer Reports article on designing a heart-healthy diet. Advice offered includes recommended fruits and vegetables to load up on, designing a diet around the “Mediterranean eating plan,” and whether “heart-healthy supplements” actually promote heart health. Their supplement advice is particularly interesting, as they investigate three supplements currently marketed as heart-healthy, including B vitamins (like folic acid) and fish oils. For example, here’s what they have to say about vitamin E:

While considerable observational evidence has associated high intakes of vitamin E with protection against heart disease, several large-scale clinical trials have failed to find persuasive evidence that vitamin E supplements yield any benefit to the heart. In fact, some suggest the opposite.

Upshot: We feel that taking supplements of vitamin E to lower your risk of heart disease is a waste of time and money.

Consumer Reports also recommended eating a diet with enough “healthy fats” (as opposed to those nasty ones the USDA recently reported on) and various colors of fruits and veggies to ensure a wide variety of micronutrients. Personally, I’ve always thought consuming vitamins and nutrients naturally is probably much healthier than taking supplements. Of course, there’s so many chemicals in our food now, maybe it doesn’t matter.

photo credit: M J M

According to a recent article on Food Navigator, a USDA study found the increased rate of obesity in US adults is matched by an increased rate of fat and oil consumption. This follows the generic advice you find almost anywhere - cut fats and sugars, lose weight. The study identifies processed foods as the culprit for the fat consumption trend.

American consumption of added fats and oils has increased dramatically over the past 35 years, exceeding government recommendations and affording a need for healthier processed foods.
The findings form part of Dietary Assessment of Major Trends in the US Food Consumption, 1970-2005 - a report by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) that shows Americans are failing to meet the Federal dietary recommendations.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, two-thirds of US adults were either overweight or obese between 2003-2004, compared with 47 percent between 1976 and 1980.

The report shows this correlates with a swell in added fats consumption of 63 percent between 1970 and 2005 and a 19 percent increase in added sugar and sweeteners.

I wonder if anyone has conducted a study on the obesity trend of communities before and after fast-food restaurants move in? If not, they’ll have to act fast - I bet it’s getting hard to find one-horse towns without a McDonalds.

photo credit: Meriol Lehmann

Seriously? It’s not enough that I have to worry about lead in my child’s toys and e.coli in my beef, I now have to worry if there’s salmonella in my puffed wheat? From the FDA’s report:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced that at least 23 people in 14 states have been diagnosed with salmonellosis that was caused by the same strain of Salmonella that was found in the recently recalled unsweetened Puffed Rice and unsweetened Puffed Wheat Cereals produced by Malt-O-Meal.

The recalled products were distributed nationally under the Malt-O-Meal brand name as well as under private label brands including Acme, America’s Choice, Food Club, Giant, Hannaford, Jewel, Laura Lynn, Pathmark, Shaw’s, ShopRite, Tops and Weis Quality. The cereals have “Best If Used By” dates from April 8, 2008 (coded as “APR0808″) through March 18, 2009 (coded as “MAR1809″).

On April 5, 2008, Malt-O-Meal voluntarily recalled the cereals because the company’s routine testing found Salmonella in a product produced on March 24, 2008.

Good thing I stick to Cheerios.