SEDATED BRITISH SHRIMP & RUSSIAN POT ROAST

 General, Healthcare  No Responses »
Oct 302010
 

A Portsmouth University study shows prawns found in contaminated English waters were under the influence of antidepressants which altered their marine behavior. This idea has some potential. If an animal with lots of fatty tissue in which to store chemicals were to be fed fat-soluble pharmaceuticals, then the meat from that animal would contain the chemicals. We know we are getting hormones from beef. What if we were able to get high from it? Feed food animals THC. They would probably not mind getting killed quite so much; their lives would seem longer; and I don’t think selling THC steaks is illegal.

It seems that to some extent this may already be happening. This from Muley’s World:

“Today comes a story out of Russia. Some farmers there were confronted with a bit of a problem. The nice field they use to graze their cows in during the winter, filled with nourishing sunflowers and maize, was secretly infiltrated by people using it to grow illegal drugs. Marijuana, to be specific.

“See, the drug guys came in and quietly seeded the peaceful pastures with marijuana seeds. By now, 40 tons of marijuana plants have grown up among the maize and sunflowers.

“The Russian authorities seized the field, of course, but they faced a problem. If they simply burned the field up to get rid of the marijuana, all of the maize and sunflowers that the cows normally eat during the winter months would burn up as well, and the cows would starve to death.

“So, the authorities have decided they’d rather have the cows eat a little wacky grass than starve. These
bovines will be filling all four stomachs with fresh, grade A marijuana.”

Note: Pixel 51 is vegetarian.

WORRYING ABOUT THE WRONG THINGS

 2010 election, Healthcare  No Responses »
Sep 082010
 

People tend to assess risk poorly. As an example, more people feel the need to be protected against homicide, whether by terrorists or domestic criminals, than to be protected against heart disease and cancer. There are a whole lot of folks up in arms about being forced to purchase health care (eventually). Most of those people would support strong anti-terrorist and anti-crime legislation.

Here are some statistics:

In the US in 2007 1,178,942 people died from heart disease or cancer.
In that same year, there were 18,361 deaths by homicide (2/3 of those by gunshot).

One of the reasons that there are so few homicides is our preoccupation with defending against it, but even in the rougher neighborhoods of the industrialized world, heart disease and cancer far exceed violence as a cause of death.

So don’t worry so much about getting shot, or blown up by a mad bomber. Maybe be a little more concerned about your cholesterol count and the pesticides in your food. You’ll live longer.

NU-VAL FOOD RATING SYSTEM A VERY GOOD IDEA

 Healthcare  No Responses »
Aug 162010
 

The main difficulty I face when shopping for healthy foods is the general trickiness of the food industry. I always used to think raisin bran, for instance, was a good thing. What could go wrong? Raisins are good. Bran is good. Not frosted. Good cereal to buy.

Not so. Turns out the sneaky bastards coat the raisins with sugar, instead of the flakes. Don’t know why. Raisins are naturally sweet, but that’s General Mills.

I never would have found this out had it not been for an episode of Entourage which caused me to research what went into raisin bran.

Turns out that if the food industry takes most of the fat out of someting, they tend to add more salt, or some other deleterious substance to compensate.

Hence the need for some sort of system to intelligently and quickly evaluate food in the supermarket. (One does not have all day to figure this stuff out.)

NU-VAL is a system that attempts to do that. It does not make judgements about types of food. It evaluates all foods, even red meats and dairy products, and compares them within their own categories.

The upshot of this is that, if one is shopping for ice cream, and wants to know, not if ice cream is good for you, but which ice cream is least harmful, you get that information in a numerical rating (1-100).

I really like this idea. Go to their website and check it out.

NU-VAL, NUTRITION BY NUMBERS