Your Gut Flora Affects Your Weight. Too Much Fruit? Another Side of Tilapia. What You Are Tasting! First Boston Marathon. Branch Davidians. OKC Bombing.

 

For “Foodie Friday”:

How Gut Bacteria Affects Your Weight, and Why CAFO Meats Promote Antibiotic-Resistant Disease

“New research suggests that as much as 20 percent of the substantial weight loss achieved from gastric bypass (weight loss surgery), is actually due to shifts in the balance of bacteria in your digestive tract

Previous research has found that daily intake of a specific form of lactic acid bacteria can help prevent obesity and reduce low-level inflammation. Gut bacteria have also been shown to impact weight in human babies, and may help mothers lose weight when taken from the first trimester through breastfeeding

Antibiotics are routinely fed to livestock not only to fight infection, but to promote weight gain. This can have a significant and long-term impact on your gut flora and overall health. It also drives the rise in antibiotic-resistant disease

Making cultured and fermented foods a regular part of your diet is an ideal strategy to optimize your body's good bacteria.”  Complete article at: http://www.nafwa.org/general/general-nutrition/alternative-nutrition/12985-how-gut-bacteria-affects-your-weight-and-why-cafo-meats-promote-antibiotic-resistant-disease.html

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Eating Too Much Fruit?

Question:  “I don't eat much processed food with added sugar, but I do enjoy eating a wide variety of fruit. Can eating a large amount of fruit be bad for my health?”
Answer: “Yes, it can. Mother Nature clearly intended creatures of the earth to eat fruit. Fruit is delicious and appealing to animals so that they can help plants spread their seeds. Fruit offers quick energy in the form of sugar, as well as vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidant pigments, and other phytocompounds that reduce risks of disease.

The main problem with fruit these days is that so little of it available to us is any good. The varieties in commercial production are much less nutritious than ancestral ones. Much fruit is picked before it is ripe, which is favorable to shippers and distributors but not to consumers. Then there is the problem of agrichemical residues.

I try to get organic fruit. If I can’t, I peel fruit when possible or wash it in a weak soap-and-water solution to remove what’s on the surface. However, with some crops, such as strawberries, systemic pesticides are used that permeate the flesh of the fruit and cannot be washed off.”  More at: http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA401266/Eating-Too-Much-Fruit.html 

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Another Side of Tilapia, the Perfect Factory Fish

“Americans ate 475 million pounds of tilapia last year, four times the amount a decade ago, making this once obscure African native the most popular farmed fish in the United States. Although wild fish predominate in most species, a vast majority of the tilapia consumed in the United States is “harvested” from pens or cages in Latin America and Asia.

Known in the food business as “aquatic chicken” because it breeds easily and tastes bland, tilapia is the perfect factory fish; it happily eats pellets made largely of corn and soy and gains weight rapidly, easily converting a diet that resembles cheap chicken feed into low-cost seafood.  But tilapia has both nutritional and environmental drawbacks.

Compared with other fish, farmed tilapia contains relatively small amounts of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, the fish oils that are the main reasons doctors recommend eating fish frequently; salmon has more than 10 times the amount of tilapia. Also, farmed tilapia contains a less healthful mix of fatty acids because the fish are fed corn and soy instead of lake plants and algae, the diet of wild tilapia.”   More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/science/earth/02tilapia.html?pagewanted=all

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How Cells from an Aborted Fetus are Used to Create Novel Flavor Enhancers

From: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/03/17/senomyx-flavor-enhancers.aspx?e_cid=20130321_WNL_art_4

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On This Day:

First Boston Marathon run, Apr 19, 1897:

“On April 19, 1897, the first Boston Marathon is run in Boston, Massachusetts. John J. McDermott of New York ran the 24.5-mile course of the all-male event in a winning time of 2:55:10.

The first modern marathon was held at the 1896 Olympics in Athens. The 24.8-mile course was based on the distance run by Greek soldier Pheidippides from the plains of Marathon to Athens, where he carried the news of the Greek army’s victory over Persia. Following the inaugural Olympic marathon, John Graham, the manager for the U.S.’s first Olympic marathon squad, was inspired to establish the Boston Marathon, with assistance from businessman Herbert Holton. The 24.5-mile route started at Metcalf’s Mill in Ashland, Massachusetts, and ended at Boston’s Irvington Street Oval near Copley Square. Fifteen men participated in the inaugural race, known at the time as the American Marathon. It was held on April 19, Patriots’ Day, a holiday celebrated in Massachusetts and Maine in honor of the start of the Revolutionary War. In 1969, Patriots’ Day was officially moved to the third Monday of every April and the Boston Marathon has been run on that day ever since.

In 1970, the Boston Marathon introduced qualifying standards and participants had to submit proof they could run the race within a designated time. In 1972, Nina Kuscsik became the Boston Marathon’s first female winner, following the Amateur Athletics Union’s decision the year before to allow women to compete in long-distance road races. Kuscsik, who finished with a time of 3:10:26, was one of eight women who ran the race that year. In 1975, Boston became the first major marathon to include a wheelchair division. In 1986, prize money was awarded to Boston Marathon winners for the first time. John A. Kelley, who ran his first Boston Marathon in 1928, holds the record for most races started (61) and most completed (58). Kelley won Boston in 1935 and 1945 and participated in his last race in 1992 at age 84.

Today, the Boston Marathon, considered one of the world’s most prestigious road races, attracts professional and amateur runners from around the world. The event’s centennial running, on April 15, 1986, had 38,708 entrants and 35,868 finishers.”

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Branch Davidian compound burns, Apr 19, 1993:

“At Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launches a tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound, ending a tense 51-day standoff between the federal government and an armed religious cult. By the end of the day, the compound was burned to the ground, and some 80 Branch Davidians, including 22 children, had perished in the inferno.”

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Truck bomb explodes in Oklahoma City, Apr 19, 1995:

“Just after 9 a.m., a massive truck bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The blast collapsed the north face of the nine-story building, instantly killing more than 100 people and trapping dozens more in the rubble. Emergency crews raced to Oklahoma City from across the country, and when the rescue effort finally ended two weeks later the death toll stood at 168 people killed, including 19 young children who were in the building's day-care center at the time of the blast.

The August 1992 shoot-out between federal agents and survivalist Randy Weaver at his cabin in Idaho, in which Weaver's wife and son were killed, followed by the April 19, 1993, inferno near Waco, Texas, that killed some 80 Branch Davidians, deeply radicalized McVeigh, Nichols, and their associates. In early 1995, Nichols and McVeigh planned an attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, which housed, among other federal agencies, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)--the agency that had launched the initial raid on the Branch Davidian compound in 1993.

On April 19, 1995, the two-year anniversary of the disastrous end to the Waco standoff, McVeigh parked a Ryder rental truck loaded with a diesel-fuel-fertilizer bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and fled. Minutes later, the massive bomb exploded, killing 168 people.

On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy, and on August 14, under the unanimous recommendation of the jury, was sentenced to die by lethal injection. Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about McVeigh's bombing plans. Terry Nichols was found guilty on one count of conspiracy and eight counts of involuntary manslaughter, and was sentenced to life in prison.  On June 11, 2001, McVeigh, 33, died of lethal injection at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was the first federal prisoner to be put to death since 1963.”

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Yesterday:

In the morning, my Live Writer and Blogger weren’t talking. After a lot of cajoling, pushing, pulling and clicking, I got them to ‘play nice’ again.

After I had given Mikey his meds, I went on down the street and picked up Lil-Miss to be groomed.  Lil-Miss belongs to Jim, the mechanic down the street, so it seems like we just swap money for each other’s services.

Jay came here on his ATV, and shampooed the carpets for me, while I groomed Lil-Miss.  Then it started to rain.  Jay didn’t want to ride his ATV home in the rain, so I dropped him off after I had taken Lil-Miss home.  Jay is always worried about his hair-do!

In the evening, when I went to give Mikey his meds, I let Sam do it.  Of course Mikey spat them out, but he got them down him eventually. They were leaving early on a trip so I left the meds with Sam, I hope all goes well.

The rain turned it into a ‘heater-running’ cold day.