"health" news and stories

Move over Outback Steakhouse bacon and ranch cheese fries - the Baskin Robbins large chocolate Oreo shake is the new Worst Food in America, according to Men's Health. This diabetes-bomb has 2,600 calories, 135 grams of fat (59 of them saturated), 263 grams of sugar and 1,700 mgs of sodium.

Check out the link to see a full list of "worst" sandwiches, "worst" Mexican foods, "worst" pizzas, etc. The "worst" burger, Chili's Smokehouse Bacon Triple-The Cheese Big Mouth Burger with Jalapeno Ranch, has more than 150 grams of fat, the equivalent of eight 6-ounce steaks. While anyone can probably guess that massive milkshakes and burgers with more than more than three adjectives in their names are probably not great for you, Men's Health also uncovers a few presumably healthy foods that are actually not much better than sucking down melted margarine with a straw. The "worst" salad is T.G.I. Friday's Pecan Crusted Chicken Salad, which has 1,370 calories (more than half most people's daily need) and an undetermined amount of fat - T.G.I. Friday's refuses to disclose full nutritional information for their foods.

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You better think twice next time you bite into what appears to be a nutritious Luna bar. The Los Angeles Times recently had an article stating that Clif Bar and Co. announced a recall of Clif and Luna brand bars that contain peanut butter. The decision was based on the FDA's announcement that traces of Salmonella Typhimurium contamination have been found in a plant owned by Peanut Corp. of America. The plant which manufactures peanut butter and peanut paste supplies companies nationwide. To find out what other food products have been affected, you can view an online list put together by the FDA.

While food shopping yesterday, I noticed a shelf full of Luna bars. I can't help but to feel mildly skeptical of the FDA. Just how seriously should we take this Salmonella scare? After doing some online research yesterday, I found out that there are approximately 40,000 cases of Salmonella infection reported every year in the U.S. In the summer of 2008, there was a Salmonella outbreak that seemed to have been caused by fresh jalapeño and serrano peppers from Mexico, raw tomatoes, and fresh cilantro. The highest amount of cases occured in Texas and New Mexico.

Originally, I thought that Salmonella was only present in raw meat, in particular poultry. In turns out that any foods that have been in contact with raw meat could also contain the bacteria. I'm just perplexed as to how it could have ended up in this peanut butter plant. Does it say something about the sanitary conditions of the plant or could it have happened anywhere?

In Sunday's Pittsburgh Tribune Review, dietitian Betsy Klein states that fad diets, such as low-carb regimens, seem to be disappearing. She explains that they are declining because people are less obsessed with weight-loss and more concerned with what they're actually consuming. This change in eating can be traced as far back as the '70s culinary revolution in Berkeley initiated by chefs like Alice Waters. It looks like the trend is spreading to the rest of the country.

This past September, the New York Times printed an article about people starting to eat to enjoy food rather than solely to lose weight. Chefs are preparing healthful well-balanced meals that do not necessarily follow any extreme forms of dieting. I wonder whether people are eating to enjoy the culinary sensations on their palate or if they're eating to experience the food's medicinal properties. For example, some people consume honey because they believe it relieves a sore throat. In other words, some people eat with the objective to have food activate or shut down corporal pains and desires.

Even if we're eating for reasons both gastronomical and pharmaceutic, which culinary purpose dominates? How will our culinary perception evolve in 2009?

Ok, so wine has numerous health benefits. It cures everything from cold sores to cancer. (Note: the above is not intended as medical device.) I tout wine's health benefits as much as anyone, but deep down inside, the truth is that I kind of like my wine as a vice. It's the only vice I have, really (though I'm sure my husband would say otherwise). I don't drink it because of its health benefits, but for the sheer pleasure of the taste, the bouquet, the way it enhances the food I cook and relaxes me after a stressful day at work or with the kids. The fact that it won't kill me in small quantities is simply a bonus.

What I don't want is a wine that's turned into a drug. An Australian doctor has pumped up a wine with resveratrol, the antioxidant that makes wine so good for you, with 100 times the normal amount. Phillip Norie, the winemaker and an M.D. expert on the link between wine and health, calls it a preventative medicine and a vascular pipe-cleaner. Taste-testers say they can't taste the difference between this wine and normal wine.

Perhaps the discovery will launch a new generation of health-concious wine-drinkers, but I hope if that's the case, they'll move beyond imbibing strictly for health and begin to enjoy the wine for the beautiful drink it is.

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The other shoe has dropped: it turns out wine doesn't solve every health problem from A to Z. Researchers in England have found that red and white wines from most European nations carry potentially dangerous levels of at least seven different heavy metals.

To put the danger in context, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a measure called THQ (Target Hazard Quotients) that establishes safe levels of frequent, long-term exposure to various chemicals. A THQ over 1 indicates a health risk, and in the recent news, seafood THQs between 1 and 5 have raised serious concerns.
The wines studied from Europe, the Middle East, and South America, have THQs ranging from 50 to 200 per glass, with some going as high as 300.

The top offenders were Hungary, Slovakia, France, Austria, Spain, Germany, Portugal, and Greece. Safe wines came from Argentina, Brazil, and Italy. But don't lead the cry for "buy American" just yet: U.S. wines weren't studied because there's no source for data on heavy metals in U.S. wines.

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