[Posted 7/5/2007 - from Confessions of a Fish Killer]
There's a misunderstanding that fish is actually health food, when it is not. Here are some
facts culled from the June 2007 McDougall newsletter:
[Posted 4/25/2007 - from You Want Fries With That?]
Citing studies in the "growing field of satiety"—the science of human satisfaction—Critser writes that people presented with larger portions will eat up to 30 percent more than they otherwise would. Human hunger is apparently quite elastic, which makes excellent evolutionary sense: it behooved our hunter-gatherer ancestors to feast whenever the opportunity presented itself, thereby storing reserves of fat against future famine. Researchers call this trait "the thrifty gene." The problem is that in an era of fast-food abundance, the opportunity for feasting now presents itself 24/7.
[Posted 4/25/2007 - from Six Rules For Eating Wisely]
Spend more, eat less. Americans are as addicted to cheap food as we are to cheap oil. We spend only 9.7% of our income on food, a smaller share than any other nation. Is it a coincidence we spend a larger percentage than any other on health care (16%)? All this "cheap food" is making us fat and sick. It's also bad for the health of the environment. The higher the quality of the food you eat, the more nutritious it is and the less of it you'll need to feel satisfied.
[Posted 4/25/2007 - from Find Articles]
Myth: Skim milk is fat free.
Fact: Although legally permitted to be marketed as "fat free," one cup of skim milk actually contains about 0.3 grams of saturated fat and 85 calories. That means skim milk furnishes about 3 percent of its total calories from saturated fat. That's low-but not fat free. And that excludes the much higher content of cholesterol, which is a form of fat.
If "fat free" skim milk has 3 percent saturated fat by calories, how much fat is in "2%" milk? Actually, the term "2%" refers to the amount of fat by weight. That makes it sound low in fat because most of the weight of milk is water, which supplies no calories. However, there are 2.9 grams of saturated fat and 120 calories in one cup of 2% milk, which translates into a whopping 22 percent of total calories from saturated fat.
[From Five reasons why Americans must stop eating animals - 4/6/2007]
Vegetarians are about forty percent less likely to develop cancer than meat eaters, and about ninety percent less likely to have a heart attack. Strokes, many degenerative diseases, and diabetes are all markedly lower in vegetarians than in meat eaters.
[From the NY Time Magazine article Unhappy Meals by Michael Pollan - 1/28/2007]
...a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, headed by
George McGovern, held hearings on the problem and prepared what by all rights should have been an
uncontroversial document called “Dietary Goals for the United States.” The committee learned that
while rates of coronary heart disease had soared in America since World War II, other cultures that
consumed traditional diets based largely on plants had strikingly low rates of chronic disease.
Epidemiologists also had observed that in America during the war years, when meat and dairy
products were strictly rationed, the rate of heart disease temporarily plummeted.
[From http://www.veganoutreach.org/articles/healthargument.html#overweight - 1/5/2007]
The main health concern for Americans (at least as related directly to diet) is their weight. Yet this obsession with being thin has not lead to any significant change for the better.
Percent of adults who were overweight in:
1980: 33%
2005: 60.5%
Percent who were obese in:
1980: 15%
2005: 23.9%
Number of states where obesity rates was greater than 15% in:
1991: 4
2005: 50 (lowest rate was 17.4%)
[From http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_3540.cfm - 12/10/2006] A report from the United Nations says that the world's rapidly-expanding livestock herds are responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gases. This makes cattle "emissions" more damaging to the planet than carbon dioxide from cars. This alarming figure takes into account the clearing of rainforest and vegetation for grazing, the petroleum needed to produce fertilizers for animal feed, the fuel needed to produce and transport meat, and the gases created by manure and flatulence.
[From http://www.theveggietable.com/articles/responses.html - 12/1/2006]
A recent United Nations report states that farmed animals are responsible for nearly one fifth of the pollution blamed for global warming, more than transports. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) note that 18% of the greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere come from livestock, deforestation to make grazing land, and the energy used in farming. Researchers reveal that livestock produces 35-40% of methane emissions and 65% of nitrous oxide, which has almost 300 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
[From Consumer Reports - January 2007]
Contaminated beef is also a serious problem. E. coli caused EIGHT recalls involving almost 182,000 pounds of ground beef in the first 10 months of 2006. Even turkeys can make us sick; studies have turned up campylobacter contamination in 14 to 35 percent of samples.
Chicken are contaminated by two disease-causing bacteria, salmonella and campylobacter. These two organisms made more than 3.4 million people sick and killed 700 in the most recent year for which the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compiled data. Campylobacter not only causes stomach problems, but can also lead to meningitis, arthritis, and Guillian-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder. Consumer Reports found big increases campylobacter contamination. The USDA has no standards, rules, or limits on campylobacter.
[From http://www.smallPlanetInstitute.org/blog/thoughts.html - 10/12/2006]
The killer E. coli strain in question did not exist before the 1980s when the concentrated feedlot system created the breeding grounds for it by loading cattle with corn diets for which they are not adapted. Furthermore, the increasing size of feedlots -- with the 10 largest companies’ lots averaging over 50,000 head -- creates manure cesspools so huge they inevitably contaminate waterways with the bacteria, which then infect fields.
Thus, both the origin of the contamination and its spread across country, as well as the inability to pin down the exact source point to one cause: an economy narrowly driven by highest, quickest return to existing wealth that leads to an ever-more centralized feedlot system undermining food safety. Spinach should not take the rap!
[From Disease-Proof Your Child by Dr. Joel Fuhrman]
[On protein consumption]
When in your life do you grow the most? In infancy we double our birth weight
in six months. Breast milk is only 3 percent protein.