Just when you thought it was safe to feed salmon fillets to your pet mouse, along comes a study entitled, "Chronic Consumption of Farmed Salmon Containing Persistent Organic Pollutants Causes Insulin Resistance and Obesity in Mice." You have to wonder how many mice are chronically dining on salmon, farmed or wild. It's more likely that if a mouse fell in the water, a salmon would eat it. That would be a better meal than most farm-raised salmon ever get. It's hard to imagine the mouse winning … [Read more...]
Quick takes: farm subsidies and fork sizes
At Salon, David Sirota examines Why Americans can't afford to eat healthy. He argues that "healthy food could easily be more affordable for everyone right now, if not for those ultimate elitists: agribusiness CEOs, their lobbyists and the politicians they own." Sirota has a point. Something ain't right here, folks. The federal government with its "Food Plate" is urging Americans to eat more vegetables and fruits, less sugar and less refined grains. It promotes whole foods over junk foods. … [Read more...]
Exploring the HuffPo: Sugar, Paleo and Plaque
Man does not live by steak-and-eggs alone. Woman either, from what I can see. Having consumed plenty of editorial red-meat in recent days, I decided to venture beyond the low-carb blogosphere this weekend to see who else was writing about diet and health. There was bound to be somebody. I ended up at the Huffington Post. All Internet roads seem to lead there. The HuffPo (as we insiders call it) is the New York Times of the Digital Age, except that apparently the HuffPo doesn't pay its … [Read more...]
Make mine water
Since going low-carb, I’ve mostly avoided drinking diet pop or making recipes that include artificial sweeteners. Over the past four months, I’ve downed three bottles of Diet Coke and used three small packets of Stevia (a sugar substitute). I’ve also bought and consumed a four-pack of an Atkins chocolate milk-shake product that contained an artificial sweetener, the only packaged low-carb treat that I've tried. Otherwise, except for berries, I have forgone sweet flavors. It could be I’m … [Read more...]
Snack-filled diet dangerous for rats — and us
Rodent health has never been a major concern of mine, but it seems to worry scientists a lot. For example, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill published a study in the journal Obesity that examines what happens to rats who are fed a snack-filled diet similar to that consumed by millions of Americans. The study makes an important point about modeling human metabolic syndrome in lab rats, but it suggests even more. The snack or "cafeteria" diet consisted … [Read more...]