Homeopathy

Don't watch this if you believe in homeopathy.

"I don't know, sometimes I think a trace solution of deadly nightshade or a statistically negligible quantity of arsenic just isn't enough."

________

Labeling of GE Foods Doesn't Look Promising

Obama made a campaign promise to make sure genetically engineered foods in this country are labeled.

With the appointment of Michael Taylor on Tuesday as senior advisor to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, I doubt this promise will be kept.

"Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto employee, [while working for the FDA, 1991-1994] was made responsible for developing FDA labeling policy for rBGH. With Taylor's help, the FDA declared that milk from cows treated with rBGH was just like regular milk."
- Martin Teitel in "Genetically Engineered Food: Changing the Nature of Nature"

The "just like regular milk" phrase above is an example of the FDA's "substantial equivalence" argument, an argument the FDA uses to defend their position of not requiring labels on GE foods, an argument that was developed during Michael Taylor's 91-94 stint at the FDA. It has been attributed, in part, to him.

The following is from the FDA's 1992 policy on GE foods (published while Michael Taylor served as FDA's Deputy Commissioner for Policy). It describes the "substantial equivalence" argument. The FDA continues to refer to it today.

Statement of Policy - Foods Derived from New Plant Varieties
FDA Federal Register
Volume 57 - 1992
Friday, May 29, 1992

"FDA has also been asked whether foods developed using techniques such as recombinant DNA techniques would be required to bear special labeling to reveal that fact to consumers. To date, FDA has not considered the methods used in the development of a new plant variety (such as hybridization, chemical or radiation-induced mutagenesis, protoplast fusion, embryo rescue, somaclonal variation, or any other method) to be material information within the meaning of section 201(n) of the act (21 U.S.C. 321(n)). As discussed above, FDA believes that the new techniques are extensions at the molecular level of traditional methods and will be used to achieve the same goals as pursued with traditional plant breeding. The agency is not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way, or that, as a class, foods developed by the new techniques present any different or greater safety concern than foods developed by traditional plant breeding. For this reason, the agency does not believe that the method of development of a new plant variety (including the use of new techniques including recombinant DNA techniques) is normally material information within the meaning of 21 U.S.C. 321(n) and would not usually be required to be disclosed in labeling for the food."

________

In Search Of The Mediterranean Diet

I'll be honest. I don't know what the "Mediterranean Diet" (MD) is. I know there's some olive oil in there, fresh fruit, wine (red?), vegetables, and a few bean dishes. But I couldn't come up with a weekly menu easily. What does it exclude? Do people who live in the Mediterranean region eat shredded wheat cereal? Soymilk? eggsbaconchipsandbeans? Blueberry muffins? Spaghetti and meatballs? Pumpkin pie? How much?

I imagine there's a lot of variability, with so many countries and cultures bordering the Mediterranean Sea, from Spain and Morocco, through France, Italy, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, and the rest of Northern Africa. Oh, and the Greek island Crete (I know Mediterranean Kiwi will say something if I don't). The benefits of the MD, if real (maybe it's the geographical location) probably depend on a combination of dietary factors, rather than any particular nutritional component.

This recent study in the British Medical Journal supports the existence of a dietary pattern, or at least it didn't refute it, "The results of our study do not refute the possibility of synergistic effects among foods and nutrients in the Mediterranean diet."

It investigated the relative importance of individual components of the MD:
Anatomy Of Health Effects Of Mediterranean Diet: Greek EPIC Prospective Cohort Study, BMJ, June 2009

Background:

• Participants were 23,349 men and women in the Greek segment of the 10-country-wide European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and nutrition (EPIC)
  
• Mean follow-up: 8.5 years
  
• Individuals were scored on "the nine widely accepted components of the Mediterranean diet:"
  • High intake of vegetables
    
  • High intake of fruits and nuts
    
  • High intake of legumes
    
  • High intake of fish and seafood
    
  • High intake of cereals
    
  • Low intake of meat and meat products
    
  • Low intake of dairy products
    
  • High ratio of monounsaturated to saturated lipids
    
  • Moderate intake of ethanol

(So, here is an outline of an MD - description and quantification was detailed in this and cited studies.)

Findings:

"Controlling for potential confounders, higher adherence to a Mediterranean diet was associated with a statistically significant reduction in total mortality."

The contributions of the individual components of the MD to this association (reduced mortality) were:

• 23.5% from moderate ethanol consumption
  
• 16.6% from a low consumption of meat and meat products
  
• 16.2% from a high vegetable consumption
  
• 11.2% from a high fruit and nut consumption
  
• 10.6% from a high monounsaturated to saturated fat ratio (indicates high olive oil consumption)
  
• 9.7% from a high legume consumption
  
  
• High cereal consumption had minimal beneficial effect. (6.1%)
  
• Low dairy consumption had minimal beneficial effect. (4.5%)
  
• High seafood consumption had a non-significant increase in mortality. (The authors state that their Greek population had too low a seafood intake for this finding to be meaningful, and that, although the positive association was unexpected, it was "probably owing to chance.")

________
In as much as foods consumed in Greece may reflect the Mediterranean diet, this investigation adds to accumulating evidence that a certain dietary pattern (i.e. high in fruits and vegetables while low in meat) rather than a certain dietary component, is responsible for longevity.

The study went further though by assigning relative importance to components of that successful dietary pattern - with the top three contributors being, in order of benefit:

1. Moderate alcohol intake
   
2. Low consumption of meat
   
3. High consumption of vegetables

How you would describe the Mediterranean Diet? What foods would you say it includes? Excludes?
________Photo of a traditional Greek salad I found on Havabite Eatery. Mediterranean Kiwi, can you vouch for its authenticity? (What are those shiny green roll-ups?)

How Often Do You Eat Organic Produce?

You buy/eat organic (as opposed to conventional or non-organic) fruits and vegetables :

1. Exclusively
2. Most of the time
3. If it looks good & the price is right
4. Once in a while
5. Never
6. Not sure/Don't pay attention

There's a poll for this question on the sidebar. I've added this post for a place to comment.

________Photo of produce vendor at Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA, 1975, from Seattle Municipal Flickr stream.

Dairy Producer Underwrites Study: Finds Vegan Diets May Harm Bones

I'm not writing this as a defense of veganism as much as I am to point out what appears to be the undermining of research by business interests. (See my post, Corrupted Research.)

The following two studies were conducted by the same authors. They were published within 3 months of each other, but have different conclusions.

Veganism, Bone Mineral Density, And Body Composition: A Study In Buddhist Nuns, Osteoporosis International, April, 2009
Ho-Pham LT, Nguyen PL, Le TT, Doan TA, Tran NT, Le TA, Nguyen TV

Effect Of Vegetarian Diets On Bone Mineral Density: A Bayesian Meta-Analysis, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, July, 2009
Lan T Ho-Pham, Nguyen D Nguyen and Tuan V Nguyen

________
The first study, published in April of this year, compared the bone mineral density (BMD) of:

• 105 monastery-dwelling Buddhist nuns, vegans for ~33 years
  
• 105 monastery-dwelling women, omnivores

Findings:

• There was no significant difference between vegans and omnivores in BMD
  
• There was no significant difference between vegans and omnivores in lean body mass or fat mass
  
• There was no significant difference between vegans and omnivores in prevalence of osteoporosis
  
• Intake of dietary calcium was lower in vegans compared to omnivores (330 mg/day vs. 682) however, there was no significant correlation between dietary calcium and BMD.

Conclusion:

"Although vegans have much lower intakes of dietary calcium and protein than omnivores, veganism does not have adverse effect on bone mineral density and does not alter body composition."

________
The second study, published in July of this year, was not an original investigation, but a meta-analysis (a review of previously-conducted studies). It included 9 observational studies that addressed the association between vegetarianism and BMD.

Findings:

• Vegetarians' bones were ~5% less dense than meat-eaters.
  
• Vegans' bones were ~6% less dense than meat-eaters.

Conclusion:

"The results suggest that vegetarian diets, particularly vegan diets, are associated with lower BMD, but the magnitude of the association is clinically insignificant. ... [Such that] the effect size is unlikely to result in a clinically important increase in fracture risk."

________
Why, after conducting and publishing a more in-depth study on veganism and bone density, including a literature review, and discovering that life-long vegans have bones essentially identical in density to meat-eaters, did these researchers hastily assemble and publish a review (a meta-analysis, a type of study prone to bias since you can cherry pick which studies to include and which statistics to run) that, lo-and-behold, found a slight decrease in BMD in vegetarians?

And why did this second study, with less clinically significant results, get more attention in the media?

I don't know. But the second study was funded by Amber Alliance of Malaysia, which owns F&B Nutrition Sdn Bhd, "a dairy products producer and wholesaler." (See Update below.)

Update, July 8: It has been brought to my attention (thank you, Mr. Nguyen) that the grant provided this study from "the AMBeR alliance" may refer to the Australian Medical Bioinformatics Resource. However, the Australian Medical Bioinformatics Resource does not on their website refer to themselves as the "AMBeR alliance."

The Australian Medical Bioinformatics Resource is affiliated with the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, which is funded by "CRC for Innovative Dairy Products."
________

"The Most Comprehensive, Authoritative Report On US Global Climate Change" - White House

The Administration's US Global Change Research Program issued the following report on June 16, 2009:

Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States

Describing it as...

"The most comprehensive, authoritative report on Global Climate Change Impacts in the US. ... Presents, in plain language, the science and impacts of climate change, now and in the future."

The report is gorgeous. And informative. Its key findings:

1. Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.
   
2. Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow.
   
3. Widespread climate-related impacts are occurring now and are expected to increase.
   
4. Climate change will stress water resources.
   
5. Crop and livestock production will be increasingly challenged.
   
6. Coastal areas are at increasing risk from sea-level rise and storm surge.
   
7. Threats to human health will increase.
   
8. Climate change will interact with many social and environmental stresses.
   
9. Thresholds will be crossed, leading to large changes in climate and ecosystems.
   
10. Future climate change and its impacts depend on choices made today.

A few more graphics I picked up from the report:



I live in the Northeast, near Philadelphia. I don't know if it's a result of global warming, but we've just experienced the wettest Spring/Summer I can remember. As to that herbicide effectiveness claim ... I read that pests and weeds develop resistance to insecticides and herbicides over time anyway, even without increases in CO₂. Does this mean we'll be using more of them in the future? (With their attendant endocrine disruptors?)________Thanks to Melinda and Sustainablog.