Hard to miss this top news story from last night:
USDA Orders Recall Of 143 Million Pounds Of Beef

I was watching this story since early February, when the undercover video appeared on YouTube. I opted not to post it because it's difficult to watch. I changed my mind.

Here's the original footage of animal treatment at a California slaughterhouse (Hallmark Meatpacking Company), taken over a six week period by the Humane Society (5:46 minutes):

Here's an Associated Press clip (1:48 minutes), based on the above footage, that summarized the situation a week after the video above went viral. It includes a statement by Hallmark/Westland President Steve Mendell:

The USDA has jurisdiction over meat, poultry, and eggs. The FDA has jurisdiction over just about all other food products. The FDA does not currently have recall authority, but they are in the process of asking Congress for it.

In my previous post I said I did not know whether the USDA had recall authority. The article below suggests they do not have recall authority, nor do they want it:

This is a follow-up to my post, Dietary Fat Raises Insulin Levels.

Warren asked:"I am curious whether there is any detail provided in these studies regarding the types of fat, or is all fat, i.e., saturated, unsaturated, etc. lumped together?"The type of fat matters. The more saturated the fat, the more often it's associated with reductions in insulin sensitivity. The following study is often cited:

Substituting Dietary Saturated For Monounsaturated Fat Impairs Insulin Sensitivity In Healthy Men And Women: The KANWU Study, Diabetologia, 2001

rondo (rahn'-do) verb. 1. To smoothly move between large objects with dexterity and purpose. 2. To remove an object quickly without being detected. 3. To create a distraction followed by a swift change of direction.

Usage example: I just rondo'd some potato chips off my co-worker's desk. I'm such a Ninja.

Word history: The word was created by the folks at Reebok for their new viral marketing campaign featuring [SHOCK ALERT!!] the Boston Celtics' Rajon Rondo. And without further ado, here are the videos (note the brilliant cameos by Dee Brown and Jo Jo White):

Do visit a Calorie Counter.

It also counts protein, fat, carbohydrate, fiber, and lots of other nutrients the USDA has tucked away in their data base. Uncluttered, fast, informative - government agencies in charge of food could learn from a site like this. :)

The owner of the site also has a blog. His last entry on November 6th points to a spectacular table he just created that compares basic nutrition facts for some popular foods from over 20 fast food restaurants:

Fast Food Restaurants & Nutrition Facts Compared

Mark Bittman, author of the popular How To Cook Everything , New York Times' food writer, and host of the YouTube video that accompanied my post New York Times' No Knead Bread (probably the most-visited post in my entire blog archive) has a new NYTs article out. From yesterday's paper:

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.

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.

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

The latest interview from the "Working Writer" Project is Dawn Dekeyser:

See more at aworkingwriter.com.

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

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."

Coincidentally, Tara over at the New York Times' Well Blog just posted this:
Low-Fat Diet May Cut Prostate Cancer Risk, NYTs Well Blog, May 16 2008.

It's based on this study:
Effect of Low-Fat Diet on Development of Prostate Cancer and Akt Phosphorylation in the Hi-Myc Transgenic Mouse Model, Cancer Research, April 2008

Where mice were fed:

• High-fat diet (HF: 42% of calories from fat)

There was a full moon last night. It will be visible tonight too, and according to NASA, it will be the brightest full moon you'll see for the next 16 years:"That's because it's the highest-riding full moon until the year 2023."