ConAgra Foods on Wednesday asked stores to stop selling pot pies linked to a salmonella outbreak, although the company and the Department of Agriculture defended their decision not to immediately recall the product.

ConAgra asked stores nationwide to pull the Banquet and generic brand chicken and turkey pot pies after two East Coast grocery chains made their own choice to remove the product from their shelves.

The pot pies made by ConAgra have been linked to at least 139 cases of salmonella in 30 states. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at least 20 people have been hospitalized, but so far no deaths have been linked to the pot pies. [More]

The vast majority of reported cases of foodborne illness occur as individual or sporadic cases. The origin of most sporadic cases is undetermined. In the United States, where people eat outside the home frequently, most outbreaks (58%) originate from commercial food facilities (2004 FoodNet data). An outbreak is defined as occurring when two or more people experience similar illness after consuming food from a common source.

Often, a combination of events contributes to an outbreak, for example, food might be left at room temperature for many hours, allowing bacteria to multiply which is compounded by inadequate cooking which results in a failure to kill the dangerously elevated bacterial levels. [More]

Labels: food, health

It's been a rough start to the fall for British farmers, with reports of sporadic cases of BSE (mad cow disease) and more cases of foot-and-mouth disease. And then on Friday, British public health officials officially pronounced an outbreak of bluetongue disease among the nation's cattle. So what makes British cattle so sickly?

Heathrow Airport. Agriculture experts say the outbreaks in the United Kingdom are the result of bad luck more than anything else. But the country does have the distinction of being Europe's primary landing spot for global travel, and that could put livestock at risk. Travelers from every continent pass through London Heathrow Airport (the busiest airport in the world for international traffic), and with them comes food waste from airplanes. Pathology researchers consider airline food waste, which is sometimes processed into food for livestock, the greatest danger to animal health in the world. Airline garbage that's contaminated with foreign diseases can end up in livestock troughs, or it goes to landfills where it might infect wild animals—who could then spread illness to domesticated livestock.

It's also possible that British cattle are simply the victims of bad publicity. Most European countries, as well as nations in Africa, Asia, and North America, have had confirmed cases of the three major livestock diseases—mad cow, foot and mouth, and bluetongue. But the United Kingdom happens to have one of the best systems in the world for reporting these outbreaks. Since the country was struck with a devastating BSE epidemic in 1968, British health officials have developed a surveillance network with a very high degree of transparency. This ensures that individual cases of diseases are immediately reported to the government, and appropriate action is taken. So the British cattle may not be any more sickly than those in other parts of the world; they might just be getting watched a bit more closely. [More possible reasons]

Labels: health, international, livestock

Labels: fun, health, science

After analyzing a year’s worth of sales data, Hannaford found that customers tended to buy leaner cuts of meat. Sales of ground beef with stars on their labels increased 7 percent, and sales of chicken that had a star rating rose 5 percent. Sales of ground beef labeled with no stars dropped by 5 percent, while sales of chicken that had a zero-star rating declined 3 percent.

Similarly, sales of whole milk, which received no stars, declined by 4 percent, while sales of fat-free milk (three stars) increased 1 percent.

Sales of fruits and vegetables, however, remained about the same as they did before the ratings were introduced. All fresh produce received stars. [More]

The measure, to be introduced in 2009, will see all expectant mothers given a one-off payment of around GBP120 (US$244) to spend on healthy food when they are seven months pregnant. Sure, some could argue that perhaps seven months is a bit late when trying to boost the nutrition a foetus gets in the womb. And, of course, while there is no compulsion to spend the cash on mangoes, melons or mushrooms, women may spend the money on alcohol and cigarettes instead.

In some quarters, the measure has been derided as a misguided policy from the “nanny state”. However, combined with intensifying health campaigns on the importance of a balanced diet – as well as the dangers of drinking and smoking during pregnancy – the cash may just be the carrot many mothers need to give their kids’ a healthier start in life. [More]

Labels: food, health

“I always expected to inherit some money because my parents have been reasonably well off for most of my life. Not rich, but comfortable and careful with money,” explains a sixty-two-year-old college professor. “But now, I doubt it. My father had Alzheimer’s and spent his last years, nine of them, in a nursing home. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t been through it really understands how terrible that is. I don’t mean just the financial burden, which, by the way, was over three-quarters of a million, but the human cost. Seeing someone you love turn into a thing, not a person, and there’s no way out, it’s just terrible, one of the worst experiences in life.”

He stops talking, visibly moved, struggles to contain his emotions, then brightens. “My mother, bless her, is eighty-two and doing great. She moved into one of those assisted-living places a year or so ago, and before she was there a month, she was already practically running the place. It’s great; it keeps her busy. But it’s very expensive. Even with the money she got from selling their house, if she lives another eight to ten years, which right now seems likely, she’ll use up her money, and my sister and I will have to find a way to pay the bills.
“That’s a big twist, isn’t it? You go from knowing you’ll inherit money from your parents to wondering how you’re going to support them. I don’t begrudge her, don’t misunderstand me.” He hesitates, smiles, then in a voice that mimics an Old West cowboy twang, “Ah’m just tellin’ you the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” [More]

The average cost of long term care in nursing homes, assisted living facilities and in the home increased over the past year, with assisted living and in-home costs rising more sharply than nursing home care, according to Genworth Financial's annual "Cost of Care" survey. And, in the face of rising costs for all categories of long term care, Genworth found 65 percent of Americans surveyed in a new national poll admit to having made no long term care plans for themselves or a spouse.

The average annual cost for a private one-bedroom unit in an assisted living facility rose 7 percent from the 2005 survey, to $32,294, while the combined average hourly rate for a home health aide for in-home long term care spiked 13 percent to $25.32 per hour. The average annual cost for a private room in a nursing home rose modestly by 2 percent over last year to $70,912. [More]

Labels: culture, future, health, succession

The chemistry of dreams goes back to before biochemistry began.

Scrooge blamed his nocturnal ghosts on a "crumb of cheese", and I know what he meant. I find it almost impossible to get an undisturbed night's sleep after eating the stuff and - worse - after drinking red wine.

The effect is very real - the last time I tried a refreshing bottle of red late at night I ground my teeth so hard that I smashed a molar.

Now the substances behind such unwanted nightmares are being tracked down. Tyramine, the main culprit, is based on the carbon ring of Kekulé's dream, and is broken down by the same enzymes as those hard at work during paradoxical sleep.

Aged cheeses, like Stilton, and heavy red wines are most to blame, while soy sauce and smoked fish are both rich in the stuff. [More]

85% of females who ate Stilton had some of the most unusual dreams of the whole study. 65% of people eating Cheddar dreamt about celebrities, over 65% of participants eating Red Leicester revisited their schooldays, all female participants who ate British Brie had nice relaxing dreams whereas male participants had cryptic dreams, two thirds of all those who ate Lancashire had a dream about work and over half of Cheshire eaters had a dreamless sleep.

Commenting on the study, Neil Stanley, PhD Director of Sleep Research HPRU Medical Research Centre at the University of Surrey says: "The Cheese and Dreams study conducted by the British Cheese Board is the first study of its kind and suggests that eating cheese before you go to bed may actually aid a good night’s sleep.

What is particularly interesting is the reported effect different types of British cheese have on influencing the content of dreams. It seems that selecting the type of cheese you eat before bedtime may help determine the very nature of often colourful and vivid cheese induced dreams” [More]

This is all well and good for the Brits. But my question is will a Double Cheese Whopper make me dream about Carol Drinkwater and me surfing off Baja California?

It's all about science, ya know.

Labels: food, fun, health, science

Scientists have found a new way to identify a particularly deadly form of prostate cancer in a breakthrough that could save tens of thousands of men from undergoing unnecessary surgery each year.

In contrast to many cancers, only certain prostate tumors require treatment. Many are slow-growing and pose little threat to health. But separating the "tigers" from the "pussycats" -- as oncologists dub them -- is tricky.

Now that is set to change with new research showing how a genetic variation within tumour cells can signal if a patient has a potentially fatal form of the disease. [More]

Labels: health

Labels: fun, health

These results clearly suggest that yawning regulates the temperature inside your head, and that perhaps we yawn to cool our brains. What we don't have here is any biochemical cause-and-effect, but this is an incredibly interesting theory all the same.

The findings, if valid, draw a few unexpected conclusions about yawning. First of all, rather than stimulating sleep, a good yawn should fend off falling asleep. And secondly, far from being an indicator of boredom, yawning would appear to be a mechanism for maintaining attention.

So be sure and remember this for your next staff meeting -- it's an excellent excuse, and possibly even a valid one! [More]

Labels: fun, health, science

Drinking an eight ounce glass of pomegranate juice daily increased by nearly four times the period during which PSA levels in men treated for prostate cancer remained stable, a three-year UCLA study has found. The study involved 50 men who had undergone surgery or radiation but quickly experienced increases in prostate-specific antigen or PSA, a biomarker that indicates the presence of cancer. UCLA researchers measured "doubling time," how long it takes for PSA levels to double, a signal that the cancer is progressing, said Dr. Allan Pantuck, an associate professor of urology, a Jonsson Cancer Center researcher and lead author of the study. [More]

Labels: health

Ultimately, I think we are headed for a collision of cultural values. We prefer insulation to real insurance. We expect services to be readily available, without the supply limitations or waiting lists that exist in countries where government is responsible for more health care funding. And yet we are growing increasingly concerned over the expansion of health care spending that takes place in a system that lacks constraints on either supply or demand.

Real health insurance may not be popular now. But when Americans see that the providers of insulation, including Medicare, have to turn to the rationing of health care services in order to meet budgetary constraints, real health insurance may start to look like a good alternative. [More]

Labels: economics, health, policy

The Rabbinical Assembly, which represents Conservative rabbis, has endorsed the idea of a hechsher tzedek ("certificate of justice"), a Jewish seal of approval that would go beyond the usual dietary rules to include the compensation and working conditions of people who produce kosher food. It's the brainchild of Minnesota rabbi Morris Allen, who was upset by reports that immigrant workers at a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa are poorly paid, receive meager health benefits, and get inadequate safety training. Not surprisingly, Orthodox rabbis, who have long dominated the business of certifying food as kosher, are not pleased with Morris' idea. [More]

Labels: economics, food, health

The American Farmland Trust estimates 1.2 million acres of cropland, pastureland, and rangeland are lost each year to development. Farms are increasingly being swallowed up by new houses, roads, and strip malls—86 percent of U.S. fruits and vegetables and 63 percent of dairy products currently come from areas in the path of urban sprawl. This loss of farmland combined with the shift during the past century toward industrialized agriculture has greatly extended the distance produce and meats travel. The average American meal today journeys more than 1,500 miles from where it’s grown or raised to where it’s bought—at a big cost. Green-house gases emitted during food transport contribute to climate change. Our produce is not as fresh as it would be if it were grown closer, which would improve its taste and, health experts say, possibly its nutritional value. And because our food is so heavily mass-produced and transported, the origins of outbreaks of E. coli, like those from last year’s much-reported batch of tainted spinach, cannot always be pinpointed in time to prevent human illness, sometimes even death. [More]

The American Farmland Trust estimates 1.2 million acres of cropland, pastureland, and rangeland are lost each year to development. [Wait - lost? Those acres have gone missing? Actually those acres simply have houses on them, and houses have to be somewhere. This familiar trope insinuates that the strong instinctive urge for permanent housing should be satisfied only for the affluent and that the need for food requires every acre. (See ethanol, etc.)] Farms are increasingly being swallowed up by new houses, roads, and strip malls—86 percent of U.S. fruits and vegetables and 63 percent of dairy products currently come from areas in the path of urban sprawl. [ Where exactly would you site a fruit/vegetable operation - New Mexico? Of course valuable crops like sod are grown on the outskirts of development. Transportation costs matter. Besides, if this land is developed those valuable crops will still be grown just outside urban areas. This statistic has not changed appreciably for decades, and should be recognized for what it is: an inversion of cause and effect. Farmland is valuable because it's close to people and and hence a candidate for high-value agriculture. People are the key - not land] This loss of farmland combined with the shift during the past century toward industrialized agriculture has greatly extended the distance produce and meats travel. The average American meal today journeys more than 1,500 miles from where it’s grown or raised to where it’s bought—at a big cost. [Oddly, the market will sort this out if you price in all costs.] Green-house gases emitted during food transport contribute to climate change. [Okey-doke, let's include this cost via a carbon tax] Our produce is not as fresh [Can you actually discern something 80% as fresh?] as it would be if it were grown closer, which would improve its taste and, health experts say, possibly [or possibly not] its nutritional value. And because our food is so heavily mass-produced and transported, the origins of outbreaks of E. coli, like those from last year’s much-reported batch of tainted spinach, cannot always be pinpointed in time to prevent human illness, sometimes even death. [But we did pinpoint it, thanks to industrial records/tracking. As for death, compare food contamination deaths now to truly agrarian times.]

Labels: farmland, food, health

Labels: health

A lack of serotonin is linked with depression in people.

The scientists say more work is now needed to determine if the bacterium Mycobacterium vaccae has antidepressant properties through activation of serotonin neurons.

Lead researcher Dr Chris Lowry said: "These studies help us understand how the body communicates with the brain and why a healthy immune system is important for maintaining mental health.

"They also leave us wondering if we shouldn't all spend more time playing in the dirt." [More]

Labels: health

Labels: food, health

After mosquitoes bite a host with malaria, the parasite that causes the disease proliferates in the insect, readying itself to infect the next human victim. It's no fun being infected, and one might think that mosquitoes would have developed a resistance to the malaria parasite over time. But several studies have suggested that mosquitoes engineered to build defenses against malaria are less fit than insects that chose to live with the parasites.

Now there's reason to take heart. Several years ago, a group of medical entomologists at Johns Hopkins University created a strain of Anopheles stephensi (a mosquito that bites rodents) equipped with a gene called SM1 that makes the mosquitoes resistant to infection with Plasmodium berghei, a rodent malaria parasite. In the new study, published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group carried out a series of experiments in which 250 of these insects were put in a cage together with 250 wild-type counterparts and allowed to feed on malaria-infected mice. The resistant insects lived longer and produced more eggs than did those not resistant to the parasite, and after nine generations, some 70% of the population was resistant. The researchers speculate that carrying SM1 is a less costly strategy than whatever defenses malaria-resistant mosquitoes develop in the wild. [More]

GM mosquitoes that interfered with development of the malaria parasite would make it more difficult for the organism to become re-established after it had been eradicated from a target area, they said.

Malaria, spread by the single-celled parasite Plasmodium, is endemic in parts of Asia, Africa, and central and south America.

The organism is passed to humans through the bite of the Anopheles mosquito. Each year it makes 300 million people ill and causes a million deaths worldwide.

Some 90% of cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, where a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds. [More]

Labels: GM, health, science, technology

Forget mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. When somebody collapses in cardiac arrest, experts now say, bystanders should not bother breathing into his or her mouth, once considered a key component of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

"Rescue breathing is an oxymoron," says Gordon Ewy of the University of Arizona College of Medicine. "We've been doing it wrong for 40 years." [More]

Labels: health

Labels: fun, health

But these statistics do not relate to anything as mundane as prices. Rather, they are about the more gruesome topic of death. Specifically, Blake is predicting how long our children, and children's children, will live - and his conclusions are striking: over the past century, life expectancy in the western world has not only risen, but the rate of increase has accelerated. While someone in the 1840s lived, on average, to 40, today's generation can expect to hit 80, "and for our grandchildren, it could be 160," says Blake, stabbing a pale green corner of his fan chart. Until recently, such morbid number-crunching was of interest only to actuaries, the pensions industry, scientists and doctors. After all, death is not a topic that many of us want to discuss - except in the most abstract terms. And the pensions world was such a slow- moving, sleepy backwater that it rarely attracted the interest of high-flying bankers. [More]

Number of deaths for leading causes of death

Heart disease: 654,092

Cancer: 550,270

Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,147

Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 123,884

Accidents (unintentional injuries): 108,694

Diabetes: 72,815

Alzheimer's disease: 65,829

Influenza/Pneumonia: 61,472

Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 42,762

Septicemia: 33,464

Labels: culture, death, health

The spider on marijuana drifted off before finishing the job. The spider on benzedrine, an upper, worked energetically but without much planning. The spider dosed with chloral hydrate, a sedative, soon fell asleep.

To the surprise of Dr. Noever et al, caffeine did the most damage of all the substances tested. The spider dosed with it proved incapable of creating even a single organized cell, and its web showed no sign of the “hub and spokes” pattern fundamental to conventional web design.

What does the web of a caffeinated spider (which can hardly be accustomed to the jolt of a morning latte) have to do with human behavior? Unlikely as it sounds, it may be the most vivid illustration of caffeine’s disorienting effect on caffeine-sensitive people, many of whom may be misdiagnosed as mentally ill.

Labels: fun, health

1. Providing all the medical care we now have to everybody.
2. Including the growing number of "uninsurables" (thanks to rapidly improving screening such as genetic testing) outside groups or self-employed.

Labels: economics, health, insurance

Your mother probably told you, as her mother told her: sit up straight. Whether at table, in class or at work we have always been told that sitting stiff-backed and upright is good for our bones, our posture, our digestion, our alertness and our general air of looking as if we are plugged into the world.

Now research suggests that we would be far better off slouching and slumping. Today’s advice is to let go and recline. Using a new form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a team of radiologists have found that sitting up straight puts unnecessary strain on the spine and could cause chronic back pain because of trapped nerves or slipped discs. [More]

Labels: fun, health

Gaining natural immunity involves considerable risk. Diseases that otherwise are vaccine-preventable can kill or cause permanent disability, such as paralysis from polio, deafness from meningitis, liver damage from hepatitis B, or brain damage (encephalitis) from measles. Immunity from a vaccine offers protection similar to that acquired by natural infection. At the same time, vaccines rarely put individuals at risk of the serious complications of infection.

Some people believe that many of those affected during a disease outbreak are in fact the ones who were previously vaccinated. And they argue that immunity from vaccines isn't effective. It's true that vaccines aren't 100 percent protective. Most childhood vaccines are effective for 85 percent to 95 percent of recipients. During a disease outbreak, a number of vaccinated people will indeed catch the disease. However, those who were immunized usually have a less serious illness, while those not vaccinated are in the greatest danger. [More]

Labels: health