Category: Food, Drink & Health

“If you’re in the market for an antioxidant to keep your body young and healthy, new research suggests you’d be much better off with oranges than vitamin C tablets.”

Details from news @ nature.com.

Periodically NewMexiKen smacks the carafe from the coffee maker against the side of the sink while washing it and cracks the glass. I shop around for a replacement carafe, eventually get frustrated at the impossibility of a good match, and just buy a new coffee maker. This happens about every three years and it happened again a few weeks ago.

This time I decided I would get fancy. I would get a stainless steel carafe rather than a glass one. And I would get a coffee maker with a built-in grinder. And so I did. I mean if you can spend $3 or $4 on a foo-foo coffee drink at Starbucks, I can spend $100 for a coffee maker, right? (And I know some people have $300 coffee makers.)

Two mornings in, I must say the coffee is very good, even if there are more steps than Henry Ford had on his assembly line. (There are a lot of parts.) But, bottom line, you add the beans, add the water, add a filter, and turn the button. Voila! In four minutes some really good coffee.

I learned that you should buy the beans every two weeks or less. If you need to buy them less often, freeze the beans in airtight containers in one or two week portions. Once you take them out of the freezer, keep them in an airtight container at room temperature. Putting beans or ground coffee repeatedly into the freezer or refrigerator is not a good idea. Condensation that damages the beans results every time you remove the container.

The coffee I am drinking today is New Mexico Piñon Coffee. As Cabeza de Vaca, the first European ever in these parts said, “There are in that country, small pine trees and the cones are like small eggs, but the seeds are better than those of Castille.” (The piñon nuts are added to medium roast coffee.)

And there is this:

“Drinking caffeinated coffee was found to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by as much as 60% in a newly published study that included people at high risk for the disease.” (WebMD)

Tiny bits of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken.

Yahoo! News

Puts those dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets into a new perspective, doesn’t it?

This from an interesting profile of chef Gordon Ramsay in last week’s New Yorker.

That night, James Lloyd, one of Condes’s assistants, was serving the chef’s table, eight young men from a hedge-fund company, who ordered a thousand-dollar bottle of 1970 Latour (“Keep back a glass for us,” Ramsay whispered) and, midway through, were approaching the ten-thousand-dollar mark. (James kept Ramsay informed like someone reporting a sports score.) The next night, the chef’s table was reserved by Goldman Sachs: “budget not important,” I was told, possibly a fifty-thousand-dollar wine bill. (At Pétrus, a Ramsay restaurant in London, six bankers once spent sixty-three thousand dollars on dinner. Five of them were fired after they tried to expense it, a story that was reported in just about every paper in London. “It was a year before we saw another banker,” Ramsay said.)

A friend of mine told me many years ago that a teaspoon of sugar stops hiccups. This is the only remedy that has worked. It is immediate and can last for hours. Sugar packets are easy to carry, too.

The People’s Pharmacy

This remedy worked for NewMexiKen recently when everything else had failed.

New landmark research concludes that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study.

In research published Friday in The Lancet, Professor David Nutt of Britain’s Bristol University and colleagues proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society. Their ranking listed alcohol and tobacco among the top 10 most dangerous substances.

Nutt and colleagues used three factors to determine the harm associated with any drug: the physical harm to the user, the drug’s potential for addiction, and the impact on society of the drug’s use.

CBC News

Most of the price of a bottle of water goes for its bottling, packaging, shipping, marketing, retailing and profit. Transporting bottled water by boat, truck and train involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. More than 5 trillion gallons of bottled water is shipped internationally each year. Here in San Francisco, we can buy water from Fiji (5,455 miles away) or Norway (5,194 miles away) and many other faraway places to satisfy our demand for the chic and exotic. These are truly the Hummers of our bottled-water generation. As further proof that the bottle is worth more than the water in it, starting in 2007, the state of California will give 5 cents for recycling a small water bottle and 10 cents for a large one.

San Francisco Chronicle

This article convinces me. What a waste (in most locations).

Inhabitants of the New World had chili peppers and the makings of taco chips 6,100 years ago, according to new research that examined the bowl-scrapings of people sprinkled throughout Central America and the Amazon basin.

Upcoming questions on the research agenda — and this is not a joke — include: Did they have salsa? When did they get beer?

The findings described today in a 15-author report in the journal Science make the chili pepper the oldest spice in use in the Americas, and one of the oldest in the world.

The Washington Post

I’m thinking they also had to have had better half-time shows than we do.

Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us, that sweet Hallmark holiday when you can have anything your heart desires, so long as it’s red. Red roses, red nighties, red shoes and red socks. Red Oreo filling, red bagels, red lox.

As it happens, red is an exquisite ambassador for love, and in more ways than people may realize. Not only is red the color of the blood that flushes the face and swells the pelvis and that one swears one would spill to save the beloved’s prized hide. It is also a fine metaphoric mate for the complexity and contrariness of love. In red we see shades of life, death, fury, shame, courage, anguish, pride and the occasional overuse of exfoliants designed to combat signs of aging. Red is bright and bold and has a big lipsticked mouth, through which it happily speaks out of all sides at once. Yoo-hoo yodels red, come close, have a look. Stop right there, red amends, one false move and you’re dead.

Such visual semiotics are not limited to the human race. Red is the premier signaling color in the natural world, variously showcasing a fruitful bounty, warning of a fatal poison or boasting of a sturdy constitution and the genes to match. Red, in other words, is the poster child for the poster, for colors that have something important to say.

Continue reading How Do We See Red? Count the Ways from The New York Times.

First published here a year ago. I swear, I’m going to start wearing a face mask on airplanes.

From The Citizen Scientist:

Martin Hocking and Harold Foster of Canada’s University of Victoria have studied the problem of increased colds among airline passengers. In an article for the Journal of Environmental Health Research (“Common cold transmission in commercial aircraft: Industry and passenger implications,” 2004) , they reported that 20 percent of passengers who flew on a 2.5 hour flight developed colds within a week.

Depending on three different flight scenarios, Hocking and Foster found that airline passengers in three different scenarios were 5, 23, or 113 times more likely to catch a cold than if they had not flown at all!

The scientists also found that the threat of catching tuberculosis is substantially higher if an infected passenger is aboard a flight.

The most logical reason for infections would seem to be the limited amount of cabin air shared by the passengers. But Hocking, Foster and other scientists have found this is only one factor. The very low humidity in an airplane seems to be much more important.

There’s more.

Which is worse to apply — nasal spray or eye drops?

The “A” in Atlanta might as well stand for asthma, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

The nonprofit patient organization says that for asthma sufferers, Atlanta is the worst U.S. city to live in.

Seattle ranks best — or, in this case, least bad — on the group’s list of the 100 “most challenging places to live with asthma.”

The 10 worst asthma cities, according to the AAFA, are:

1. Atlanta (last year: 4th)
2. Philadelphia (last year: 3rd)
3. Raleigh, N.C.
4. Knoxville, Tenn.
5. Harrisburg, Pa.
6. Grand Rapids, Mich.
7. Milwaukee, Wis. (last year: 5th)
8. Greensboro, N.C. (last year: 7th)
9. Scranton, Pa. (last year: 1st)
10. Little Rock, Ark.

WebMD

The full 100. Albuquerque is 57th.

In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body’s nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians.

Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Dr. Michael Salter, a pain expert at the Hospital for Sick Children and one of the scientists. “Mice with diabetes suddenly didn’t have diabetes any more.”

The researchers caution they have yet to confirm their findings in people, but say they expect results from human studies within a year or so. Any treatment that may emerge to help at least some patients would likely be years away from hitting the market.

National Post

More: “They also conclude that there are far more similarities than previously thought between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, and that nerves likely play a role in other chronic inflammatory conditions, such as asthma and Crohn’s disease.”

Link via dangerousmeta!

CNN: Do most people know when they’re happy?

[Harvard psychology professor Daniel] Gilbert: We know people are very bad at remembering how happy they were. They’re very poor at predicting how happy they’ll be. They aren’t even good at saying how happy they are in general. One thing people can tell you is how happy they are at the moment you ask them that question.

CNN: Why are we so bad at predicting whether we’ll be happy in a certain situation?

Gilbert: We’re very poor at predicting our future happiness for two sets of reasons. The first is, we have a lot of bad theories about happiness. Our culture and our genes give us disinformation about the sources of happiness. Even if you try to set these aside, it turns out just using our imaginations to project ourselves into the future — close your eyes and say what would it be like to win a gold medal, to move to Cleveland, to be an architect — imagination fails us in some very predictable and systematic ways.

CNN: How do culture and genes lead us astray?

Gilbert: You know all human behaviors are the product of two things: Genes and culture. The interplay between these two, genes and culture, are both self-perpetuating systems. They are systems that want to survive, and the way they survive is getting us to do things for them. For example, our genes require that we reproduce. Our culture requires that we consume goods and services. So both our genes and culture conspire to lead us to believe that things like, oh, having children or getting rich will make us very happy. But the data from economics and psychology are abundantly clear. Having children tends to create a small negative effect on people’s happiness and having money has a very little relationship to people’s happiness, so both of these are bad theories about the kinds of things that will bring us happiness in the future.

There’s a little bit more at CNN.com.

Key point for the gift-giving season: “One mistake that people seem to make is if they invest in durable goods when some studies suggest they’d be happier if they invested money in experiences.”

People with ruptured disks in their lower backs usually recover whether or not they have surgery, researchers are reporting today. The study, a large trial, found that surgery appeared to relieve pain more quickly but that most people recovered eventually and that there was no harm in waiting.

The New York Times

NewMexiKen is glad to have reaffirmed what personal experience told me was the case. When the ruptured disk rubs against the sciatic nerve, the pain is disruptive, and surgery begins to sound necessary. But then, things move around in there, the rubbing stops, and the pain is dull and manageable. The trick is, of course, the proper exercise.

And not spending too many hours a day perched in front of this computer.

Better load up on the breath mints; a new study suggests eating lots of garlic and onions may help prevent cancer.

Italian researchers found that people whose diets are rich in onions, garlic, and other alliums have a much lower risk of several types of cancer than those who avoid the pungent herbs.

WebMD

Also helpful in preventing STDs.

If you’re a mouse.

Given that some athletes will take almost anything to gain a one percent edge in performance, what might they do for a 100 percent improvement? That temptation is made somewhat more real by a report today in a leading journal about a drug that doubles the physical endurance of mice running on treadmills. And it could only be more tempting, because the drug in question has also been reported to extend the lifespan of mice.

An ordinary lab mouse will run about one kilometer — five-eights of a mile — on a treadmill before collapsing from exhaustion. But mice given resveratrol, a minor component of red wine and other foods, run twice as far.

The New York Times

For all we know, the drug induces hallucinations and the poor mice are running out of fear.