I'd like to ask a favor of anyone who sees this post in the next few days.

Would you visit this site: FoodSafety.gov ...

... and tell me if you think it easily answers any questions you, as a consumer, may have about food safety -- things like consumer alerts, current recalls, current food-related outbreaks, consumer guidance for same, etc. No big deal, just a quick scan.

Around the time Fred Thompson proclaimed, "I don’t think that it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat.", the USDA was issuing a press release describing changes it planned to make to its food assistance program WIC.

The photos below are from photographer Peter Menzel's 2005 book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.

Menzel traveled to 24 countries, visiting and photographing 30 families for the book. Each photo represents the weekly food intake for the families pictured. (Each family was asked to purchase, at Menzel's expense, a typical week's groceries. The book lists the food items in detail, broken down by food group and cost, along with how the food was raised and prepared.)

I came across Menzel's photos on Amber's Blog (on Gaia), her post from November 27, 2007. She has a few more there, and some interesting comments.

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide
Food expenditure for one week: $500.07

Talking about barley make me recall this Table I posted a while ago. It came from a paper written by Dr. Vinson in 1999, entitled:

The Functional Food Properties of Figs

I like figs.

Well, I just ran some numbers. According to the data in this Table, 2 tablespoons of dry barley has 37% more polyphenols than 1/2 cup blueberries ... and 3650% more polyphenols than an equal amount of wheat.1

Well, how about that. Mark Bittman has a blog. (Thank you, Melinda.)

Bitten: Mark Bittman on Food

It doesn't look like he posts often. Although he did make a few comments yesterday about his recent article that appeared in the New York Times, the one we discussed on my post, Got Vegetables?:

Eating Meat Is Only Human, Bitten, 5 Feb 2008

He lamented (I think he was lamenting), that he "got only two comments [on his original article]: one from a cattle rancher with some smart reasoning, and one from someone who was a little more emotional."

In my thinking-out-loud comment under RS and Colon Cancer, I spoke of the social pressure to eat a certain way.

Below is an example. It's a photo of the entrance foyer of a large food store where I shop. A mountainous display of some food item always occupies this space. This week a mountain of soft drinks was being erected. The last display was a mountain of chips, crackers, and dip. At the top of the display (they weren't done piling yet) is often a wide screen television showing people consuming the food in the display, interspersed with "fun" activities ... sports, parties. I can't imagine these are just props, that they don't include them in their inventory without the intention of selling them.

The American Heart Association (AHA) has an online tool called:
My Fats Translator"A calculator that translates our fat recommendations into daily limits just for you."The calculator returns:

• Daily calorie needs (including BMI, and where it falls on an underweight-overweight scale)
• Recommended range for total fats
• Limits for bad fats: saturated and trans

I tried it. Below were some recommendations. (The same examples were given for all my various entries.)

No, really. A comprehensive, online, free!, encyclopedia of every living thing on the planet. One page for each. Millions of pages. And it's a wiki - a collaborative, updatable effort from people all over the world. I can't think of a more ambitious project facing the internet.

And it went live on Tuesday (although it may be slow, it's getting over a million hits per hour):
Encyclopedia of Life (EOL)

Here's what the New York Times had to say:
The Encyclopedia of Life, No Bookshelf Required

Here's its official blog:
Encyclopedia of Life Blog

Here are some sample pages (clicking the image will take you to EOL's demo page):

Yeti Crab

Death Cap Mushroom

Until after the esophagogastroduodenocolonoscopy.1 Well, not all eating. This is tonight's dinner:

And tomorrow's breakfast too. Actually, just 4 Dulcolax. But the whole bottle, 14 complete servings of that MiraLax must be enlisted to perform the unsubtle function.

I had reservations posting this. But, well, what's a blog for? So, if you have any experience with this procedure, your comments are welcome!
________1 A combined esophagogastroduodenoscopy and colonoscopy.
Photo: Homegrown. I wish it wasn't.

Remember the FDA's historic Food Safety Teleconference for bloggers last November? The one where the FDA, in one of their most grassroots outreach moves, drew up a list of bloggers - average consumers talking about food safety - and invited them to listen in and ask questions about changes they were proposing via their new Food Protection Plan?

Well, pursuant to that call, Bill Marler (a food safety activist/attorney) thought it would be a good idea to set up a food safety conference. He envisioned inviting government, industry, science, and consumer representatives to discuss the present state of food safety, and to propose ways to improve it.

His conference came together. And it's about a month away!

The list of speakers is impressive. Here are a few:

The Mississippi House of Representatives has floated a bill (HB 282, below) that would make it illegal to serve obese patrons.

The gentlemen below are the Bill's authors. From left to right: W. T. Mayhall, Jr. (R), John Read (R) , Bobby Shows (D). It appears to be a bipartisan effort.

From the Government Accountability Office, February 2007:"USDA inspects manufacturers of packaged open-face meat or poultry sandwiches (e.g., those with one slice of bread), but FDA inspects manufacturers of packaged closed-face meat or poultry sandwiches (e.g., those with two slices of bread)."

I'm still wondering ... is cultured meat living?

A group of artists from the Tissue Culture and Art Project (TCA) in Australia grew this steak for their exhibition "Disembodied Cuisine".

Click to read captions, and to see some cultured meat up close.

A "Thank you." to RB who sent along this NPR interview with Michael Pollan.

Author Comes To Natural Food's 'Defense'

Oh. A trend!

A few weeks ago I posted a report by the UK's Government Office for Science which said:"The obesity epidemic cannot be prevented by individual action alone and demands a societal approach."
...
"The people of the UK are inexorably becoming heavier simply by living in the Britain of today. This process has been coined 'passive obesity'."I lamented that government agencies in the US still frame America's weight problem as the creature of an individual's nefarious choices. "Eat less refined corn and soy products!" they say, as if our weight problem is our fault.

It's incomprehensible to me that those same agencies, backed by Congress, turn around and fund the production of those very corn and soy products they tell us not to eat - making them cheaper, more accessible, and, well, downright popular.

Talk about polarizing issues. While campaigning in South Carolina yesterday, presidential candidate Fred Thompson said:"I don’t think that it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat."Thompson: Don't Let The Government Tell You What To Eat

Something is pushing my blood sugars down and I think it's short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), at least in part.

Short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) are produced in the large intestine by the action (fermentation) of bacteria on undigested carbohydrates. SCFAs are absorbed through the colon wall. Those little fatty acids are in fact responsible for providing us with a few more calories from the food we eat. Just a few. Maybe accounting for about 10% of our total caloric intake 1, 2

What Type of Carbohydrates Produce SCFAs?

Famed for its wine. Wikipedia has Burgenland inhabited since the Stone Age. How many years ago that was, I can't tell. I wonder if Burgenlanders enjoyed wine back then.

Below is Willi Wetschka (right) and his friend in the barn of Wetschka's winery, 2007.

Click to enlarge.________

Would it were that cancer in the real world could be so readily switched off.

Here's another study. On rats. After administering a carcinogen (aflatoxin), researchers fed rats a high-protein diet. The rats' cancer grew. Researchers switched to a low-protein diet, the rat's cancer regressed. Researchers switched back to the high-protein diet. The rats' cancer came back, with a vengeance.

In light of the "more than 28 million pounds" (see below for quote source) of possibly tainted food removed from circulation in 2007 alone, I was prompted to take a look at the current sponsors of the Safe Food Act 2007. Since my last look, two more House members have added their names.

The complete list of sponsors of the Safe Food Act 2007 today is:

Along with the Senate sponsor of the bill, Senator Richard Durbin [IL], there are 3 Senate cosponsors:Senator [State] - Date of Cosponsorship
Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY] - 2/15/2007
Sen Casey, Robert P., Jr. [PA] - 3/21/2007

Just for the fun of it, and because I've been reading studies like my previous post, I looked to see how much casein is in typical dairy foods.

Modification of Bovine β-Casein to Improve the Characteristics and Manufacturing Properties of Cow's Milk

A former White House Administration official wants to Nix The Farm Bill: 1"I’ve got a way to reduce global poverty, decrease the number of workers crossing our borders illegally, save American taxpayers money, and cut your supermarket bill -- in one fell swoop. How? Get rid of US farm subsidies and tariffs."

For the rest, see former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich's latest blog post: Nix The Farm Bill.

I've been meaning to post this for months and now is a good time, given my previous post about deaths linked to an intensive diabetes drug regimen. This study shows that diet, and diet alone, can affect a change in glycemic measures, e.g. HbA1c, that rivals what can be had with drug therapy.

It's one of the studies Melinda mentioned in comments. I like it because it's a diet study, not a nutrient study. Diet studies are harder to conduct than nutrient interventions. But to me they're more real. They're about foods and what people eat, and how that day-to-day behavior can affect health.

The UK Department of Health released its "Health Profile of England 2007". They noticed a trend:

The UK Government Office for Science projected that trend 40 years into the future and determined that a "bold whole system approach is critical":

On Wednesday, November 14, 2007, the FDA engaged in a historic event: its first teleconference with bloggers. I felt honored to have been invited.

In attendance were FDA Commissioner, Andrew von Eschenbach (center in the photo), and FDA Assistant Commissioner for Food Protection, David Acheson (right in the photo). (HHS Deputy Secretary Tevi Troy is shown on the left.)

And ...

• Fish raises insulin more than popcorn.
• Cheese raises insulin more than white pasta.

This is not news. These findings appeared 11 years ago:

An Insulin Index Of Foods: The Insulin Demand Generated By 1000-kj Portions Of Common Foods, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1997

Among the foods tested, breakfast cereals as a group (Cornflakes, Special K, Honeysmacks, Sustain, All-Bran, muesli, oatmeal porridge) produced a lower insulin score* than protein-rich foods as a group (beef, white fish, cheese, eggs, lentils, baked beans). Foods of equal caloric content were compared.

* Insulin score was calculated as the area under the 120-minute insulin response curve for 1000 kJ of test food, relative to a reference food (white bread). (1000 kJ is about 240 calories.)

A strong insulin response is not always desirable.

Lavender Blue sent me this article from Newsweek:

Junk Food County: Why many rural Americans can't get nutritious foods. The unhealthy truth about country living.

I can't stop thinking about it. It's troubling, on a number of levels.

An excerpt:

Prior to the 1980s it was thought that most starch we ate was digested and absorbed, and that those processes occurred in the small intestine. Subsequent experiments showed that portions of some starches were resistant to hydrolysis (breakdown) by our digestive enzymes. The term resistant starch (RS) was coined to describe these starches.

Up to 75% of the starch in red kidney beans may be resistant to digestion.