WORKER BEES’ DAILY BITES
Drug-Eluting Stents Elude Trouble…for Now
An FDA panel is not really concerned that drug-eluting stents might cause serious blood clots. There are two kinds of stents: those that elute and those that do not. The latter are simple metal devices used to prop open arteries that are gunked up. The former release drugs and are far more popular. In fact, drug-eluting stents make up 90% of stents sold, which means about $6 billion a year in profits for the medical device industry.
So, the news* that they might kill more than they should (remember, the FDA accepts a relative number of “oops” when approving a drug) is not making Big Pharma happy. Over at the Motley Fool, they’re surmising that the FDA will probably let it all slide. Poor Pfizer just lost torcetrapib, so maybe it’s a little bit of a pity party. At any rate, ateriosclerosis, which stents address, is almost entirely preventable with a good diet and daily exercise. Something to think about. Apples?
Will I Miss Out If I Never Eat a Kumquat?
Junior Apple Jessica B. wants to know if we need variety in our diets, after all. Good question, Jess (can we call you Jess?). That does seem to be one of the hallowed tenets of friendly nutritionists everywhere. It’s right up there with 8 glasses of water daily and flail-away-at-the-cardio-machine.
What we want to know is: what do we really know? For all of human history, people ate locally, seasonally, and their variety was often limited. Evidence indicates that cave-dudes and cave-ettes didn’t really struggle much with things like obesity and diabetes. As long as they weren’t wiped out by the latest glacier or wild boar attack, people were reasonably healthy on diets that centered around one or two fiber sources, some type of greens (anything from kelp in Japan to moss in Siberia), and a protein source or two (fish in New Zealand, reindeer in Finland). What do you all think about the variety debate? Get thee to the forum!
Technorati Tags: variety, drug-eluting stents, FDA, Pfizer, pharmaceuticals, pharmacology, torcetrapib, ateriosclerosis
* UPDATE MAY/24/07: news article updates latest drug-eluting stent issue. We’ve replaced the old article with the most up-to-date news.
Posted By: Worker Bee
My buddy, Dr. Joe Mercola, posted a handy news bite on his site recently about the most toxic produce. The “Dirty Dozen” fruits and vegetables are responsible for about 90% of our pesticide exposure. Yum.
The following are the dirtiest – don’t avoid them, but scrub well with soap and water. Yes, soap – because food is now laundry.
- Peaches
- Apples (we’re really offended by this)
- Sweet bell peppers
- Celery
- Strawberries
- Spinach
The Doc tells us these are some of the cleaner veggies and fruits available:
- Onions
- Avocados
- Pineapple
- Asparagus
- Broccoli
Here’s the clickativity.
Posted By: Mark Sisson
Well, a few dozen words, which apparently still can’t compete with the number of ingredients required to make cheese “food”. When a food producer has to state the obvious, I get concerned. I start thinking about lobbies, factories, manufacturing, chemicals, and processes – things that sounded fun on the Jetsons but have disturbing consequences in reality.
Maybe I’m easily entertained, but I get a real kick (more pain than humor, actually) from “foods” I see in the grocery store. Some days, I can’t even make it through the center aisles – it’s just too much. But even the dairy case can be a minefield of scientific stupefaction for which no chemistry refresher course could possibly prepare me. Case in point: cheese food.
When did the food supply become about food products instead of food? When did it become acceptable to label something meant for human ingestion as a “cheese food”? What’s next: milk food, beef food, and perhaps food food?
I grew up in Maine: lots of trees, animals, mountains, farms. I grew up with the knowledge that cheese was something that came from milk after some fairly simple processing. Something about Miss Moppet and curds and whey. These days, cheese “food” comes from a factory and includes things like “anhydrous milkfat”. Google at your own risk. And schools feed it to our kids, meanwhile, and feel good because there’s calcium in it!
It’s a mass-produced, centralized, chemical-laden world of cheese food we live in, Apples. I encourage you to be vigilant about eating only fresh foods that don’t need descriptions like “process” or “product” or, as if we should eat something that comes with a reminder, “food”.
Here’s some clickativity from a less-perplexed soul who took the time to explain exactly what goes into cheese “food”. Read at your discretion.
Technorati Tags: lobbies, factories, manufacturing, chemicals, processed food, mass production, cheese food, anhydrous milkfat, strange food ingredients, dairy
Posted By: Mark Sisson
Here’s Mark’s weekly health challenge, Apples:
This week, let’s go green. Eat something green – whether leafy or crunchy – at every meal, including breakfast. You’ll feel leaner by the end of the week (but not meaner).
Posted By: Worker Bee
SMART FUEL
Why eat “I’ll have diabetes with that” spuds when you can eat mellow, healthy butternut squash?
This delicately-flavored squash typically comes cubed in the produce section. It’s also a popular soup puree. And it sure beats other starchy vegetables in the nutrition department. One serving gives you half your daily vitamin C requirement and 450% of your vitamin A requirement! At 80 calories per cup (compared to 100 for a small potato), with little impact on your blood sugar, butternuts are just better! You can mash, bake, puree, slice, and dice to your heart’s content.
Technorati Tags: butternut squash, low-carb pasta, glycemic index
Posted By: Worker Bee
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