Wash Your Produce; Find Bugs Early

One of the stranger things I've read recently:

BOSTON - Heidi Waite went to the store for grapes. She came home with a poisonous pet. Waite was feeding red seedless grapes to her 1 1/2-year-old daughter this weekend when her father stopped her cold. A black widow spider, the most dangerous type of spider in the United States, was nestled in the bunch of fruit.

Waite didn't panic. She put the arachnid into her children's bug jar, and has kept it there since.

"I couldn't come to terms with killing it," she said Tuesday.

Waite, of Boylston, purchased the California grapes last week at a Shaw's supermarket in Shrewsbury. She said she wanted to get the word out to ensure others are cautious with their grapes.

In response to venomous discoveries by Waite and another customer who bought grapes at a different store, Shaw's supermarkets, a unit of Britain's J Sainsbury PLC, said it would increase inspection of the fruit at its stores and sell the grapes loose, instead of in bags.

"As a result of the growers' efforts to reduce the use of pesticides in the industry, the possibility of finding an insect or spider exists," the West Bridgewater-based company said in a statement.

The current problem of black widow spiders is limited to red grapes because they are currently being harvested, Shaw's said.

The black widow spider's venom is not usually fatal to humans, because only a minute amount is transmitted. But the bite is extremely painful.

I hate spiders. I'd have freaked out. Are we sure Venemous Kate hasn't moved to Ohio recently because this woman actually dealt with the thing rationally.

hln

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Lions, Tigers, and Fat Bears, Oh My!

I couldn't help it. I had to blog it.

It's no secret that America's adults are getting fat and sedentary. Its children are becoming couch mini-potatoes. Even its pets are overweight.

Now the fast-food lifestyle is getting to the bears, too.

Yes, really.

A study of black bears in the Sierra Nevada has found that those animals that live in and around cities and towns are less active than those in wilderness, spending less of their time foraging for food and fewer days in their winter dens. These and other behavioral changes are making the bears heavier.

You know when I had this revelation? It was at McDonald's in Springfield. Brian and I stopped to get an afternoon snack (yeah, I ate a few fries - mmmm), and this well-dressed Bear, perhaps it was N.Z. Bear, ordered FIVE super-sized Big Mac meals. Five! I mean, that's a lot of soda for a bear, no? And I thought to myself -- perhaps bears are the next obese animal. N.Z. - hope you didn't have heartburn, dude.

But, back to the article, that states that garbage is the ultimate in bear-foraged food. This must mean that Americans are throwing away a portion of their super-sized meals? No...could it be? Or perhaps the Whopper wrappers are tasty to Smokey and his kin.

The researchers, who also are affiliated with the University of Nevada at Reno, attached radio collars to 59 bears and tracked them from week to week. They found that the animals fell into two camps: country bears, which spent almost all of their time in wild lands, and city bears, which lived in residential areas, often right under people's noses. Some city bears denned beneath homeowners' decks or elsewhere in backyards in towns like Incline Village and Stateline, Nev.

The researchers followed individual bears for 24 hours in the fall to study their foraging habits. In the case of the urban bears, Dr. Beckmann said, that often meant following them from parking lot to parking lot at night while they fished in Dumpsters and garbage cans for their dinner.

A black bear fattening up for the winter is a glutton, eating upward of 20,000 calories a day. In the study, country bears, forced to roam over wild lands searching for pine cones, troves of berry bushes or the occasional prey, spent more than 13 hours a day foraging. City bears, with all that rich garbage for the taking, spent much less time, an average of about 8.5 hours a day.

Do you remember that video game Rampage? Now I'm thinking of it in terms of bears (instead of more interesting critters like...monsters) ravaging cities for FOOD. And this amuses me. Rack up those points!

But I have to go to work, and a silly snark can only last so long. So here, you aspiring capitalists. Here's a product for you to tout and sell.

For a bear, weight is not unattractive, or unhealthy, as far as anyone knows. Rather, the problem with eating human food is that it brings bears into contact with humans, and the bears invariably lose. That kitchen-ransacking bear, for example, was destroyed. Many other urban bears are killed by motor vehicles. Nevada, Dr. Beckmann said, has only 300 black bears, and is losing about 10 a year to accidents.

The solution, he said, is to require or encourage businesses and homeowners to use bear-proof trash containers. In places where they are used, the bears go elsewhere.

Yes, I realize Bears in the cities/our backyards is a bad thing, but that headline had me from hello.

Oh, and remember. Only YOU can prevent Bear Obesity.

hln

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Avoid the Norwegian Fish Delicacy

Disturbing.

Fish in seas near a Norwegian Arctic city are getting an unexpectedly strong cocktail of caffeine and painkillers from local sewers, a scientist said on Monday.

SOME SAMPLES TAKEN very close to a sewer outlet near a psychiatric hospital also showed measurable amounts of anti-epileptic drugs and anti-depressants.

“We don’t know what effect this is having on the environment,” said Ole-Anders Braathen, head of department at the Norwegian Institute of Air Research which led the study of waters off the city of Tromsoe.

“The measurements showed surprisingly high doses, especially of caffeine,” he told Reuters, adding that caffeine and drugs flushed from city sewers may take longer to break down in icy Arctic waters than further south.

Can you imagine their behavior?

hln

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Atkins Watch

As I have long suspected there would be, negative articles about the Atkins diet are circulating through the news feeds.

My focus on this post is going to be on what isn't being said in this particlar article, though.

Jody Gorran was proud of his 32-inch waistline -- until a heart scan showed an artery had become almost entirely blocked during the two years he was on the Atkins diet.

Lisa Huskey was happy about being on a diet with her 16-year-old daughter, Rachel, until Rachel dropped dead from a heart arrhythmia in class.

Both say the high-fat, high-protein approach advocated by the Atkins diet was responsible.

"What I contend is that the Atkins diet gave me heart disease," Gorran said at a news conference sponsored by the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine. "I traded a 32-inch waist for heart disease."

The article later discusses both cases individually. I'm going to focus on Gorran.

Gorran said when he started the diet, his total cholesterol level was a very low 148. In May 2001 it had gone up to 230. Anything above 200 is considered unhealthy.

A scan of his arteries before he started the diet had shown no evidence of heart disease.

"Two and a half years later, after being on the Atkins diet for that length of time, I had heart disease," the 53-year-old Florida businessman said.

A new scan showed one artery was 90 percent blocked.

Three weeks ago, Gorran had an angioplasty -- a procedure to clear his clogged artery. A mesh tube called a stent was inserted to keep his artery clear.

Smoker? Non-smoker? Heart disease in his family? Previous scan ever conducted? We don't know. All possible factors/contributors/exacerbators.

For Huskey, we don't know what she weighed from this article, arrythmia can occur naturally and/or be caused by multiple factors, and, well, I just don't see much here. I believe three high school-aged kids at my school in the 80's died during athletic activities, usually because of hidden heart conditions.

In another article from November 20, 2003, CBS mentions Dr. Neal Barnard from the Physicians (sic) Committee for Responsible Medicine. Dr. Barnard is a raving vegetarian (no, those two words don't always go together), so you can guess he's not a meat-friendly chap. I also think he and his organization might carry a bit o' bias, you?

PCRM conducted an online survey - which the article and I must point out are not exactly strong scientific evidence. Still, it made the news. Dissent!

What I agree with?

Because fiber is found only in plant foods, and high-protein, high-fat, carbohydrate-restricted diets tend to be low in plant foods, these diets are also typically low in fiber. Low fiber intake is associated with increased risk of colon cancer and other malignancies, heart disease, diabetes and constipation.

Some high-protein, very-low-carbohydrate, weight-loss diets are designed to induce ketosis, a state that also occurs in uncontrolled diabetes mellitus and starvation.

When carbohydrate intake or utilization is insufficient to provide glucose to the cells that rely on it as an energy source, ketone bodies are formed from fatty acids. An increase in circulating ketones can disturb the body's acid-base balance, causing metabolic acidosis. Even mild acidosis can have potentially deleterious consequences over the long run.

For these reasons, high-protein, high-fat, low-fiber and carbohydrate-restricted diets, such as the Atkins Diet, especially when used for prolonged periods, are expected to increase the risk of multiple chronic diseases and other health problems, despite the weight loss that may accompany their use, Barnard says.

I say this just about every time I write about it - Atkins may cause you to drop weight, but what you may be trading...we don't really know yet. Common sense from nutrition knowledge - what we already know - would agree with these statements.

hln

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KFC for Your Health

Uh, did you folks at Foote, Cone & Belding rent Crazy People and then twist the results a bit?

Reuters (and everyone else, really) has the scoop.

- Regulators at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission are examining the validity of health claims made in advertisements for KFC's fried chicken, advertisements that the chain plans to pull on Friday.

An FTC spokesman confirmed on Wednesday that the agency has begun looking into a complaint by health advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest that calls the KFC ads deceptive and misleading.

It is the latest blow to a fast-food chain trying to fix disappointing sales and marketing messages that have failed to strike a chord with consumers. KFC's sales have fallen in 13 of the last 16 months and the company's management was recently overhauled.

The KFC television ads, which were touted in a press release last month titled "KFC sets the record straight," try to position fried chicken as a component of a balanced diet and as a healthier alternative to Burger King's Whopper sandwich.

"Healthier alternative?" SCOFF! Here's how you make fried chicken at KFC, ladies and gentlemen.

You have a big tub of flour with herbs and spices in it. You have a bunch of chicken. You double-bread the chicken using the "method" (which I'll not divulge), and then you "rack" the chicken on a round basket to go into the Collectramatic. The chicken is immersed in oil (mostly likely trans fatty acids; the shortening was in liquid format as recent as 1994 - the last I can attest) for 14 to 17 minutes, depending on the number of chix in da cooker. Then, the chicken comes "up," and you open the pressure fryer (slowly, please, gently releasing pressure), lift the chicken up with a special hook, and place the hook in a position for the chicken to drain. Drain for a few minutes - preferably more than one. Voila - fried chicken.

Veritable picture of health, no? But let's look at that...healthier. Living...healthier than dead. Emphysema? Probably healthier than cancer-ridden. Gangrene? Healthier to have it in one toe rather than three. Healthier.

"Our ads simply set the record straight by providing consumers accurate information and facts about KFC's Original Recipe fried chicken and how it can be part of a balanced diet," said KFC spokeswoman Bonnie Warschauer. "However, we're not in a position to comment on FTC affairs."

Positioning KFC as a tradition or a picnic food - sure. "Balanced diet?" Come on, lady - look at the existing food pyramid. See that fats and oils section? Sparse...it says something like that, no? KFC is a treat. KFC for life...uh, no.

One of the two ads at issue features a couple affirming their dedication to eating better--as the woman sets down a bucket of fried chicken. The ad notes that two pieces of its chicken breasts have less fat than a Whopper.

The second ad focuses on chicken as a low-carbohydrate, high-protein food fit for dieters trying to cut down on carbs.

Other fast-food chains, like McDonald's Corp., have had success by developing new, healthier options like salads.

Okay. I read this twice. Laughter ensued. "Dedication to EATING BETTER?" Huh? Were there mounds of Whopper wrappers rotting in the background? And two chicken breasts have less fat than a Whopper? So?

The low-carb option cracks me up, too. Is there some fun small print mentioning that the "double-breaded chicken" probably isn't the best low carb fare in restaurant America? I'll bet there are instructions to remove the skin and all of the KFCness that makes KFC, well, KFC.

And the last sentence is the kicker - the part that adds maniacal to the laughter. Salad...fried chicken.

Nice comparison. And, hmm, I actually agree with the CSPI. Hard not to on this one.

hln

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