Take Your Vitamin

Even with the best dietary intentions, we often fall short of meeting all our nutritional needs. One answer is a daily multivitamin, which is safe, effective, and can go a long way toward correcting any nutritional deficiencies. Of course, the ideal way to get your nutrients is still from food. Food not only supplies vitamins and minerals, but also gives us fiber and a host of other healthy compounds, like phytochemicals and antioxidants, that interact with each other in ways that supplements can’t. The scientific community used to believe that a varied, healthful diet would provide all the vitamins and minerals we need. But recent surveys show that most American diets fall short of satisfying the minimum daily requirements for several vitamins and minerals. Researchers have concluded that a single daily multivitamin/mineral pill may be the answer for achieving optimum health and preventing chronic diseases.

Approximately 40% of Americans take supplements, according to the third U.S. National Health Examination Survey. And the most popular supplement is the multivitamin. One important point: a daily multivitamin supplements your diet; it’s not intended to correct a bad diet. The benefit of a daily multi is that it can make up for minor deficiencies in your diet that could eventually help lead to chronic disease. In fact, a study published in the August 2003 Journal of Nutrition found that men and women who took multivitamins significantly reduced their risk for a first heart attack. The body needs roughly 40 vitamins and minerals each day for good health, and it’s not always easy to get all of those from food. Taking a daily multivitamin certainly won’t hurt, even if your diet is already chock full of vitamins and minerals. ~ Kathleen Zelman, MPH, RD, LD

A Tribute to the Bald Eagle

A musical montage celebrating America’s national bird. Magical.

Know Your Cuts of Meat

8 Primal Cuts of Beef (+ Shank)

• Chuck — common source for hamburger
• Rib — short ribs, rib eye steak.
• Short Loin — porterhouse steaks, filet mignon, the most tender cuts
• Sirloin — less tender than short loin, but more flavorful
• Round – lean cut, and is moderately tough
• Brisket — think barbeque beef brisket.
• Plate – flavorful, but tough, think fajitas
• Flank – think London Broil
• Shank — used primarily for stews and soups, toughest of the cuts

FDA Approves Non-Prescription Diet Pill

Washington Post: Dieters got a new tool Wednesday to help them take off the extra pounds _ the first government-approved nonprescription diet pill. The Food and Drug Administration said the fat-blocking weight-loss pill orlistat, which has been available by prescription, can be sold in a reduced-strength version over the counter. The drug is intended for people 18 and older to use along with a reduced-calorie, low-fat diet and exercise. “Using this drug alone is unlikely to be beneficial,” Ganley said at a telebriefing.

While some dietary supplements make weight-loss claims, Ganley said this is the first nonprescription drug approved by the agency for that purpose. Ganley said in trials, for every five pounds people lost through diet and exercise, those using orlistat lost an additional two to three pounds. When taken with meals, orlistat blocks the absorption of about one-quarter of any fat consumed. That fat _ about 150 to 200 calories worth _ is passed out of the body in stools, which can be loose as a result. About half of patients in trials experienced gastrointestinal side effects.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori)

Helicobacter pylori is a bacterium that infects the mucus lining of the stomach and duodenum. During my undergraduate research, our sister lab was working to characterize the flagella of this little guy. We discussed H. Pylori in my Cell Bio course last week, and given its importance, I thought this was an imporant bacteria for all to know about.

Distilled from Wikipedia and Lecture Notes: Found in up to 50% of the world’s population, making it the most common infectious disease worldwide, a main cause of peptic ulcers and stomach cancer. H. pylori is an unusual bacteria — the only known bacteria that can cause cancer and one of the only bacteria that can survive in the acidic environment of the stomach. The corkscrew-shaped bacteria drills itself into the stomach lining and, while nourishing itself, reduces the stomach’s ability to produce acid. This often leads to pepticulcers, non-Hodgkins lymphoma of the stomach and gastricadenocarcinoma. Now usually can be eradicated with a combination of proton pump inhibitors and antibiotics.

In their original paper, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall (Australians who studied the bug) contended that most stomach ulcers and gastritis were caused by colonization with this bacterium, not by stress or spicy food as had been assumed before. The medical community was slow to recognize the role of this bacterium in stomach ulcers and gastritis, believing that no bacterium could survive for long in the acidic environment of the stomach. The community began to come around after further studies were done, including one in which Marshall drank a Petri dish of H. pylori, developed gastritis, and the bacteria were recovered from his stomach lining, thereby satisfying three out of the four Koch’s postulates.

Infection may be symptomatic or asymptomatic (without visible ill effects). It is estimated that up to 70% of infection is asymptomatic. The bacteria have been isolated from feces, saliva and dental plaque of infected patients, which suggests gastro-oral or fecal-oral as possible transmission routes. Infection rates vary from nation to nation – the West (Western Europe, North America, Australasia) having rates around 25% and much higher in the Third World. In the latter, it is common, probably due to poor sanitary conditions, to find infections in children. In the United States, infection is primarily in the older generations and the poorest. This is largely attributed to higher hygiene standards and widespread use of antibiotics. However, antibiotic resistance is appearing in H. pylori . It is widely believed that in the absence of treatment, H. pylori infection–once established in its gastric niche–persists for life.

Mono Lake

Props to Wooten for informing me of the existence of this amazing lake in California. The pH is so high that only small shrimp and algae can live in it and the surrounding trees and brush are bleached an amazing alkaline white. The lake turns seasonally from an radiant blue to a “pea soup” green.

Wikipedia – Mono Lake is likely the oldest lake in the US formed at least 760,000 years ago dating back to the Long Valley eruption. Sediments located below the ash layer hint that Mono Lake could be a remnant of a larger and older lake that once covered a large part of Nevada and Utah, making it among the oldest lakes in North America.

Mono lake is a terminal lake in a watershed fed from melting runoff with no outlet. Dissolved salts in the runoff thus remain in the lake and raise the pH and the salt concentration. The hypersalinity and high alkalinity of the lake, means that no fish are native to the lake. An attempt by the California Department of Fish and Game to stock the lake failed. The lake is famous for the Mono Lake brine shrimp, a tiny species of brine shrimp, no bigger than a thumbnail, that are found nowhere else on earth. During the warmer summer months, an estimated 4-6 trillion brine shrimp inhabit the lake. The brine shrimp feed on microscopic planktonic algae which reproduce rapidly during winter and early spring after winter runoff brings nutrients to the surface layer of water. By March the lake is “as green as pea soup” with photosynthesizing algae. Brine shrimp has no food value for humans, but is a staple for birds of the region. Also an important food source, alkali flies live along the shores of the lake and walk underwater encased in small air bubbles to graze and to lay eggs. The whole food chain of the lake is based on the high population of single-celled algae present in the warm shallow waters.

The early people of Mono Lake were called the Kutzadika’a who were the Yosemite-Mono Lake Paiutes. Mono Lake Paiutes cultivated alkali fly larvae called kutsavi in their language. Mono Lake was also referred to as Teniega Bah. The origin of the term “Mono Lake” is unknown. Apparently, “Mono” is a Yokut term for “fly eater”.

MapQuest Introduces New Gas Mapping Portal

 

Mobissimotravel – “MapQuest just got cooler with the addition of their new gas portal, just launched. It’s easy to use; just enter your zip code to get a list of service stations in your hood separated by price, distance or name. I found out that the cheapest gas around, $2.82 a gallon, is at a place I had never even known existed and the total price to fill my yellow Hummer up will be $90.24—WOOOHOOOO!!”

How Lenses are Made

 

Take a tour of the Canon lense factory to see how camera lenses are manufactured. I’ve never really looked through the Canon site, but it’s pretty neato that they have all this great information posted.

Unhappy Meals

NY Times: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I’m tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I’ll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat…

This is a pretty long essay (12 pages) but this is a subject we discuss quite a bit, so read on.

The Super Bowl Shuffle

The Colts and Bears will play in Super Bowl XLI this Sunday at 6:30pm.  Since the Bears are back in the big game, I thought a screening of the 1985 Grammy Nominated Hit “Super Bowl Shuffle” was in order. Please appreciate the fact that this was recorded prior to Super Bowl XX. The Bears would win the game, but talk about laying it out there.

Wikipedia – The Super Bowl Shuffle was a rap song recorded by members of the Chicago Bears football team prior to their appearance in Super Bowl XX. Known as Chicago Bears Shufflin’ Crew, the performers included “Sweetness” Walter Payton, “Punky QB” Jim McMahon, and “Samurai” Mike Singletary. Riding the wave of football mania that gripped Chicago in 1985, the “Super Bowl Shuffle” reached #41 on the Billboard charts, #75 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks, and earned a Grammy nomination for best Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance—Duo or Group, the first (and undoubtedly only ever) nomination for a sports team. (They lost to Prince and the Revolution’s “Kiss”). Although some found the lyrics boastful, profits from the song and its accompanying video were given to charity, backing Payton’s claim that the they “are not doing it because [they're] greedy, the Bears are doing it to feed the needy.” Rolling through the playoffs after a 15-1 regular season record, the 1985 Chicago Bears are one of the few teams who consistently challenge the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins for the unofficial title of the “Greatest NFL Team of All Time.”