Check Yo Chicken

A recent study by Consumer Reports shows that, of 382 whole raw chickens bought at over 100 stores in 22 states, 62% contain a harmful bacteria called campylobacter, 14% had salmonella, and 9% had both. This includes organic and all-natural chicken, too, though I think they fared a bit better in the testing.

Woah.

But no worries, I think, because apparently normal cooking kills off the bacteria? Still, kind of disconcerting to know that if you undercook a bit or don't clean off your cutting board well enough, you risk getting really sick. (Each year, about 500 Americans die from these bacteria and 25,000 are hospitalized).

Also, I think this says something about the state of our food industry: namely, this is a reflection of the unsanitary conditions that arise when you breed thousands of chickens in cramped quarters with unnatural food and no access to the outdoors.

Some quick facts about factory farmed chicken:

• Broilers are warehoused in long sheds, called “grower houses,” which typically confine up to 20,000 chickens at a density of approximately 130 square inches of space per bird...A chicken requires 138 square inches just to stretch a wing.
• Overcrowded confinement also results in the rapid deterioration of air quality within the grower sheds. As the weeks pass, chicken excrement accumulates on the floors. As bacteria break down the litter and droppings, the air becomes polluted with ammonia, dust, bacteria, and fungal spores. High ammonia levels cause painful skin and respiratory problems in the broilers, as well as pulmonary congestion, swelling, hemorrhage, and even blindness. Ammonia destroys the cilia that would otherwise prevent harmful bacteria from being inhaled. As a result, chickens “are inhaling harmful bacteria constantly..."
• In the 1950s, it took 84 days to raise a five-pound chicken. Due to selective breeding and growth-promoting drugs, it now takes an average of only 45 days...Broilers’ bone growth is outpaced by the growth of their muscles and fat. "We consider that birds might have been bred to grow so fast that they are on the verge of structural collapse.” ...90% of broilers have detectable leg problems...In one study of lame chickens, 20 percent had bacterial infection of the bone, 13 percent had visible leg deformities...At six weeks, broiler chickens have such difficulty supporting their abnormally heavy bodies that they spend 76 to 86 percent of their time lying down.

"Living in their own waste, the birds cannot escape the high levels of ammonia. As a result, their bodies are often scalded by the noxious chemical."

Well, how's all that for a picker-upper (no pun intended)?

"A medium popcorn and soda at the Regal movie theater chain has the calories of three McDonald's Quarter Pounders and 12 pats of butter, a U.S. food group says. ...The movie theater chain's medium popcorn and soda has 1,610 calories and three days' worth -- 60 grams -- of saturated fat."

Holy shit.

Chocolate is Good for Mental Health

Now this is the kind of nutrition I can get behind.

This article explains so much about why I am so chill all of the time :-P

That said, I've decided I need to cut a huge amount of sugar out of my diet. I've been letting my sweet tooth totally go and it's starting to show. Maybe a small bar of dark chocolate should become my daily sweets limit...

More on Fruit Loops

I just noticed that they're not even called Fruit Loops. It's Froot Loops. That's very appropriate, since I highly doubt they actually contain any fruit.

Anyway, some people at Yale just did a comprehensive nutritional study on breakfast cereal. They compared the nutritional value of our breakfast cereal to a UK rating system. Their findings are pretty sad but, of course, not at all surprising.

Some highlighted points for those who don't feel like reading through all the results:

• Child cereals contain 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber and 60% more sodium when compared to adult cereals. In fact, not one cereal that is marketed directly to children in the United States would be allowed to advertise to children on television in the United Kingdom (only cereals with an NPI of over 62 can market to kids in the UK; the vast majority of US child cereals rate under 50)...In addition, 42% contain potentially harmful artificial food dyes.
• Although General Mills and Kellogg have pledged that they will not advertise to preschoolers directly, the average 2- to 5-year-old viewed more than 500 television ads for child cereals in 2008, and 89% of them were from General Mills and Kellogg.
• Froot Loops scored lowest (under 40) on the rating system; kids would be better off eating Cocoa Crispies, Cookie Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, or Cap'n Crunch. 

If Froot Loops, with the lowest rating, are a "Smart Choice," what isn't? Coffee and cigarettes? (Though I'd honestly probably have that for breakfast before Froot Loops...but I really like coffee. And at least I'd know that my breakfast was not a smart choice. I mean, fine, eat your junk food, but at least acknowledge that it's junk.)

PS I know I keep ragging hardcore on the Froot Loops and other processed foods. But I really hate that stuff. I mean, to me it resembles flavored cardboard much more closely than anything I would actually want to consume. Plus the names ("Cocoa Crispies?") and the Smart Choices system and the hundreds of ads just make me think of Brave New World. It's total brainwashing and it weirds me out and makes me kind of depressed every time I see TV commercials. Anyways, please excuse my ranting. 

Healthy Hedonism: Smoke Your Weed Through an Apple Bong

Almost entirely off-point: Our hearts pump 1,776 gallons of blood a day. Dear Jesus, imagine that for a second. That's insane! Bodies are so cool.

Anyways...

Tis the season for apples. Now, I never notice this season too much, because I think apples are pretty delicious year-round. But, it's something I keep in the back of my mind, mostly because I'm still holding out on my dream autumn day of apple-picking followed up by fresh homebaked apple pie and watching a movie cuddled under a blanket drinking apple cider.

Unfortunately, this has yet to happen. You know how it is with us kids and our grand plans that half the time don't come to fruition (pun intended); you're all pumped and driving to the orchard and then you see a billboard for the world's biggest burger off exit 67, just 12 miles ahead, and there is NO WAY you can pass that up. So, the apples wait another year.

Well, I still haven't gone apple-picking, unless you count plucking tart half-ripe apples from the orchards in NC and munching down while reading under the tree. Mmmm.

But I eat apples almost every day and had a fun time making experimental baked apples with JJ a couple nights ago (note: goat cheese and cayenne are really good in baked apples, especially together), so I decided to devote a post to them (specifically, to their health benefits).

Now, I don't know about you, but I never really think about the health benefits of apples. I mean, I don't think too much about the health benefits of any of the food I eat, beyond trying to make sure that there are some. But I still know that nuts are high in fiber and cranberries are supposed to contain antioxidants, etc etc. As for apples, I just love them because they're fast, filling, healthy and delicious. But I never knew how specifically they were healthy. Until now. And now you will, too.

• A medium-sized apple contains 15% of your daily fiber. Good to know. 
• They contain antioxidants (doesn't everything, though?)
• Eating half a medium-sized apple a day can help lower cholesterol (make a mental note, all those multitudes of overweight middle-aged men reading this right now)
• There is good evidence suggesting that apples help reduce the risk of colon and breast cancer
• Here's where it gets interesting: apples have a strong link to lung health. They significantly lower asthma risk and, here's what caught my attention: eating apples every day has been shown to reduce the risk for lung cancer in women. Furthermore, apples are the only fruit that have this beneficial relation to lung cancer. 

Well, if I didn't already eat apples every day, that would have convinced me. Now that you know why to eat apples, let me offer a suggestion for what apple to eat: the Pink Lady. They're yellow and pink and have this really interesting waxy texture that makes me feel like individual water droplets should stick to them. Also, they're freaking enormous. I'm talking the size of a softball. Pretty sweet and tangy. Basically, they're the crispiest and most delicious apples ever. If you're looking for a cheaper alternative, Jazz apples are pretty similar and I think $1 less per pound?

Okay, so here's what you've learned today: next time you're getting high and watching Fight Club or whatever, smoke out of an apple. It'll help cancel out some of the effects of all that smoke in yo lungs, AND as a bonus you can eat the apple when you're done and the munchies hit. 
 

Food for Thought (Literally)

You should care about omega-3s. I just learned a bit about them. Like: they make you smart. And keep you from having heart attacks.

Some interesting facts:

• Green plants and algae create these essentially fatty acids in their cells.
• We get these vicariously through the animals we eat. Or at least we used to, back before industrial agriculture perverted our food system so much that it barely resembles what nature intended it to be...(yes, I'm bitter)
  
• Factory-farmed animals are fed diets not of grass, which is what they evolved eating, but of a combination of corn, antibiotics and growth hormones, and the animal fat byproducts of slaughterhouses (yes, that steak you had for dinner last night ate cow fat back when it was still a cow...augh). No grass=no green plants=no omega-3s. 
• One of the reasons we consider fish to be one of the best sources of omega-3s is because a lot of our fish still eat more or less their natural diets. But, there's no telling how long this will last, as scientists are already in the process of teaching factory-farmed salmon to eat corn (or maybe they already have?). It fattens them up faster.
• Side note about corn: the carb content of corn (about 80% of the calories in corn come from carbs) that makes it so appealing as a diet for our beef cattle doesn't just 'work its magic' on our animals...through their meat, its effects continue within our bodies. So all of those taboos about eating too much red meat aren't really about the meat itself, as much as the unhealthy, fattening diet the meat once consumed.
  
• Omega-3s promote healthy neuron growth. But not in a vague this-is-somehow-good-I-guess kind of way. In a damn-are-you-serious kind of way. Consider:
  
• Pregnant women who get extra omega-3s have children with higher IQs
• Kids who don't get enough omega-3s have more learning and behavioral problems
• Puppies who get a lot of omega-3s are easier to train
• Low levels of omega-3s have been linked to depression in adults
  
• It's not just the amount of omega-3s that we consume that's important, it's also the ratio to another essential fatty acid, omega-6s. Omega-3s thin blood and omega-6s make it clot. Ideally, we should have equal parts each to keep everything in balance.
  
• Back when we were hunter-gatherers, we had an equal balance of both fatty acids. Now that we eat so much meat (and corn-fed meat, at that), the ratio is more like 10:1. This is bad. This is very bad. Such a high ratio severely increases the risk of heart disease. Again, so many of the health problems attributed to red meat can be traced back to the corn. 

All of this is courtesy of The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I'm currently reading. I really like the book, despite it being depressing as hell. I like it because I find all this info on food and nutrition fascinating. I find it depressing because all this info just paints an ever bleaker picture of the state of our agriculture here, and it seems the only way to really eat healthy anymore is to grow all my own food or buy it from farms. And that is just such an inconvenient truth.

But anyways, now you see the significance of these random little things called omega-3s. They make you smart and happy, and they keep your heart from stopping. Very good things. Unfortunately, very good things that we get very little of because of industrial agriculture's need for faster output (i.e. cows that get very fat very fast).

Tis the Sneeze-on

So sick. Oy. It's been one of those days when your nose won't stop running and your ears are plugged so you can't hear well, and your voice keeps getting caught in your throat, and you're kind of just wandering through the day in a haze. It's 11:30 now and I'm thinking I might just crash, though going to bed this early seems outrageous to me; then again, I did only sleep 4 hours last night. Damn English papers.

Currently fighting the urge to go smoke a cigarette on the front porch. That can't possibly be good for my sore throat. Instead, I've been drinking hot green tea like nobody's business. Which brings me to my point: everyone seems to be getting sick lately, and I've been wondering what foods are supposed to help us all feel better.

Here's a few I've discovered:

1) Hot soup (obvious). Hot liquids soothe the throat, but apparently the salt in soup also makes you less likely to dehydrate from a fever. Go figure, and all this time I thought salt was supposed to dry things out...

It's best to choose broths over creamy soups. Also, apparently there is actually some scientific evidence backing the whole chicken soup remedy.

2) Vitamin C (also nothing new). There's evidence that this can cut the length of your cold in half. Obvious sources are oranges and OJ, but it's also plentiful in sweet potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, broccoli and red peppers.

3) Speaking of peppers: Hot peppers. You know how when you're sick and stuffed up and you eat something spicy, your nose immediately starts running and clears up for a while? That's due to capsaicin, a natural compound in hot peppers.

4) Lean meat. Iron helps the immune system. Go for red meat, chicken and fish.

5) Garlic. This can actually make your cold disappear sooner because it contains antioxidants, as well as a compound called allicin, which helps clear up a stuffy nose. Use it fresh or dried. So this is why my dad would eat a clove of garlic with breakfast every morning...

6) Oh Honey, you such a sweet thang. We all know this one, I'm sure. It coats your throat, helping a sore throat go away, at least for a little while. Try swallowing 1/2-1 t, especially before bed. It's incredible.

7) Green tea. Already kind of mentioned this one. It contains anti-oxidants that help the immune system. Also, if it's warm-hot, it soothes your throat. And I like to put my face over the mug and let the steam wash over me for a couple minutes. It relaxes my muscles, which helps my headache, and it clears up my sinuses a bit.

8) Toddy. This is a combination of whiskey, lemon juice, and hot water. The alcohol can help bring down a fever, the heat (as I mentioned) clears sinuses, and bitter citrus flavors are supposed to be especially good for you. Finally, a semi-valid rationalization for Thirsty Thursday...

9) Eat less. I know, it sounds backwards. Apparently when you fast, the balance of two immune system-regulating chemicals in your body shifts, which can make your cold go away faster. If you try this, make sure the food you do eat is really nutritious.

10) Echinacea. Yeah, I've never heard of it either. It's a Chinese herb that Asians have been using for centuries and swear by. Endorsed by the World Health Organization.

11) Hot water & salt. My parents always made me gargle hot water with some salt in it when I was little. The salt water kills the bacteria, which can shorten the length of the sore throat and of the cold.

12) Another Russian remedy: Gogol Mogol. This is what my Russian teacher used to call the concoction of warm milk, a raw egg, and honey that she'd try to force down my throat every time I coughed in Russian class. Needless to say, I tried my damndest never to cough. (I have to admit, though, that when I couldn't hold them in any longer, this drink actually did soothe my throat.)

12) Last but never least, H20. Obviously water is good for us no matter what, but especially when we're sick because it helps reduce headaches and soothe a sore throat. Also, flush out your body.

(Thanks to The Seattle Times, How to be Fit, and some traditional Russian wisdom for the info)

So far, I've been sticking with green tea, honey and water. Day 3 since I started sneezing, and symptoms have only gotten worse so far. Hopefully my current state is as bad as it's going to get. Dare I say...swine flu?!

Anyone else got any remedies?