Wholly Nutritious

I love it when I’m right!

There’s a serious problem, internationally, with bees — it’s called “colony collapse disorder,” where whole colonies of bees just die off. Since bees are the principal pollinators of a tremendous variety of important human foods, we would all be up the creek without a paddle if bees become truly scarce. This seems a credible threat to our food supply, and scientists are racing to identify its causes.

In March of last year, in a post entitled, “Food Variety, The Birds and the Bees,” I proposed that perhaps bees suffer from oxidative stress, when they are forced to live on only one or two kinds of food, just as humans do. (I’m no bee expert, I was just thinkin’ …)

A friend just recently sent me an article from the BBC news that reports on some work by French researchers that makes just this point. Bees had much lower oxidative stress, and much healthier immune systems, when fed 5 pollens than when fed just one.

Why do we care? Well, I mean, besides celebrating the awesome fact that it appears I called this one right on the money?

Well, two reasons. One is, most of the world’s important agricultural crops are pollinated by honeybees. Without them, we would be in a world of hurt. But if this theory points to an important cause of the mysterious death of honeybees, picture this: a simple solution might be to plant lovely flowering garden borders around orchards and other pollinated crops. Gorgeous, too!

Also, in a sense, we have the same need as the honeybees. We don’t eat many flowers (although nasturtiums are yummy, have you ever put nasturtium blossoms in your salad? — But I digress). Yet our bodies do require a wide variety of nutritious whole foods to keep us healthy and thriving.

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Here’s your word of the day: sarcopenia. It means, your muscles fading away as you age. It used to be thought to be an inevitable consequence of getting older.

Now we know it is simple to prevent!

Exercise. Every day.

Eat lots of fruits and veggies. Every day.

Here’s the latest in a very long line of articles on the benefits of fruits and veggies in keeping muscles present and accounted for.

I’ve got those fruits and veggies covered! Anybody want to be my exercise buddy?

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Some new information on folate has put a potential fly in the proverbial ointment.

The research on prevention of some severe birth defects, through the simple, inexpensive addition of folate (aka folic acid) to the diet, was compelling. So compelling that, since 1998, the US has mandated that all baked goods be enriched with folate. There has been at least a 25% drop in these birth defects since the change, as reported in a 2004 edition of the MMWR.

Which is interesting, because they thought it would cause a 50% drop.

It’s also interesting that, in absolute numbers, the best estimate is about 1,000 cases of spina bifida, nationally, did NOT happen because of this supplementation.

Diminished folate levels have also been associated with increased cardiovascular disease, higher homocysteine levels, and higher risks of several cancers.

Yet, it is very rare, maybe even nonexistent, that isolated supplements carry, risk free, benefits that equal those of eating whole fruits and vegetables.

Now, a reanalysis, combining two studies in Norway, which does not mandate folate supplementation of foods, appears to show that taking folate supplements leads to a small increase in lung cancer risk, as well as all-cause mortality.

Since such increases have not been detected in the US since the folate supplementation was introduced, I am still waiting for more data.

In the mean time, I will continue to enjoy my green leafy vegetables. The word “folate” comes from the Latin word for leaf, and dark green leafies are loaded with this powerful B vitamin.

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On Medscape, a recent featured article reviewed a study of the effectiveness of some commonly recommended vaccines. The subjects of the study were children with frequent earaches and runny noses. The study looked at whether those kids were protected after they were vaccinated — 4 times! — for H. flu B (HiB) and pneumococcus. (Pneumococcus is the most common cause of sinusitis and colds, and H flu B causes most of the rest.)

Only 13% of these kids were fully protected, and 40-55% were partially protected.

This article struck me very hard, because for me, and for my children in turn, colds, flus, sinusitis, bronchitis, and asthma were a common and miserable part of our lives for more years than I care to count. As a result, we were advised by our doctors to be sure to get flu vaccines every year. Which we did. And even so, we were sick many times every year. We always thought, “but we’d be sick even oftener if we didn’t get the vaccines!” We didn;t dae go without them, because we were so miserable.

Then, about 7 years ago, we started adding many, many fruits and vegetables to our diets, every single day. Colds and flus and sinusitis all pretty much disappeared from our lives. After a year or two, I dared to stop getting yearly flu vaccines. And never looked back.

I do believe in some vaccines — my mother had polio when she was 2! Luckily, she lived through it, but the rest of her life was very profoundly affected by the disease. I would never dream of letting my family avoid the Salk vaccine. I don’t care to go without tetanus vaccines or boosters either, thank you very much. And I was in one of the last cohorts to get smallpox vaccine, and I don’t regret that, either.

On the other hand, we all had pertussis vaccine at the recommended times, and my husband had whooping cough anyway when he was about 40 (before our fruit and veggie lifestyle change) and that was a very, very, very bad 2 months, believe me.

OK, so this is anecdotal — where’s the science?

The Wall Street Journal (all places) recently had a nice article about why eating right is more effective at actually preventing viral illnesses, like the flu.

Here’s a fascinating quote from that article: “To create immune cells to fight off a specific infection, the body has to rapidly draw nutrients from the bloodstream, says Anuraj Shankar, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health. “If you don’t have an adequate intake of vitamins and minerals, you won’t be able to produce the number of immune cells you need, and the immune cells you do produce may be compromised,” Dr. Shankar says. That makes it impossible to mount an effective response to infection, he says.”

Of course, taking multivitamins doesn’t cut it, as numerous studies have shown. (For example, the WHI. You gotta eat those fruits and veggies!

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Dr. David Phillips, MD, Physician/Triathlete
Discusses
The Journey to a Healthy Existence
Dr. Phillips graduated from Harvard University where he earned academic honors and was an All-American swimmer. In 1989, Dr. Phillips received his Medical Degree at Wright State University School of Medicine where he was elected to the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. Before turning his interests to the field of Sports Medicine, he was a Board Certified Emergency Physician.

Having competed in triathlons at national and world levels, including the 2005 Ford Ironman World Championships and as a member of Team USA at the International Triathlon Union’s 2008 World Championships, Dr. Phillips has first-hand knowledge of the important role of nutrition in the athletic arena.

Dr. Phillips currently serves as Chief Medical Advisor for Athletic Training Services, LLC in Atlanta.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2009, 7:00 – 8:30 PM
(Doors Open at 6:45PM)

Crowne Plaza Hotel
Downtown/Convention Center
1441 NE 2nd Ave.
Portland, Or 97232
503-233-2401

RSVP to me!

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Last evening, I had a “wine and wellness” party with a theme: heart health. The party was lovely. But, unfortunately, alongside the goodies, I offered my guests a treacherous shipwreck.

I did serve sangria (white and red), loaded with lots of organic fruit, and sweetened with agave syrup. (If you want to try it, I used this recipe for the red sangria, except I put in blackberries instead of raspberries. For the white, I used the same recipe, and added peach slices as well as raspberries. Also, I used sparkling mineral water with just a whiff of lime essence in it, instead of club soda.)

I also served lots of heart-healthy appetizers. I had enjoyed surfing the net for ideas for an absolutely delicious menu that was also high in fiber, featured a rainbow of fresh, raw fruits and veggies, and was quite low in fat. (I have to say, the fresh fruit salad was to die for!) I also served small amounts of dark chocolate.

It was a great party, and we had some fascinating conversations. I also showed a couple of videos, including this 3-minute one from ABC news, which is a vivid illustration of what eating even one meal high in saturated fat does to our circulatory systems.

But, just like many another well-meaning hostess, I willfully shipwrecked us on the cook’s beach between the Scylla of comfort food and the Charybdis of keep-it-healthy, because the pear tree in the backyard is bearing a bumper crop this year. And when I see a good, tart, crunchy, Bosc pear, my mind and heart leap to “Pear and Ginger Pie.” The recipe is from a holiday cookbook my mom gave me years ago, and as you can imagine, every delicious recipe in that book is so loaded with simple fiber-free carbs and saturated fat, they all flunk any “heart healthy” criteria. Yet, yesterday afternoon, I picked a bowlful of pears and made my pie, with the heart-treason on my conscience countered by epicurean glee.

I did what I could with it. In the filling, I left the skin on the pear slices, used agave syrup instead of white sugar, and added no butter. For the crust, I replaced half the white flour with whole wheat flour. But then, then I succumbed. I used an entire stick – eight tablespoons – of butter in that pie crust. I have to tell you, that pie was really, really good! (And my daughter decorated the crust with oak leaves make of pie pastry, so it was very pretty, too!) It was very popular at the party.

And when we were luxuriating with the last two slices as breakfast this morning, I confessed to my husband about the pie crust. He said, “Wow! You might as well have deep-fried it!” Ouch.

So, do you know a good way to make a pie crust, or a pie-like confection, that is not loaded with fat? (And no, I do not consider vegetable shortening a good substitute!) If so, please do post it, or point us to the web site, and help out all us cooks who love the pleasures of tasty food, but don’t want to cause our own cardiovascular systems, or those of our guests, to suffer for the pleasure.

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This is the talk that I have offered up and down the West Coast, usually to capacity audiences and with great feedback afterward. Feel free to forward this invitation to any and all! June 15th at 6pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern, please adjust for your time zone.
I’m excited to share this information! — Beth

Take Control of Your Health and Your Genes

Join us for a Webinar on June 15

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now by clicking
here.

Learn about :
The new Science of epigenetics
How food choices during pregnancy affect your baby’s health FOR LIFE.
How bad food creates a “snowball” effect of obesity and poor health.
How to create a healthier future for yourself and your family,
starting right now

Date:
Monday, June 15, 2009

Time:
9:00 PM – 10:00 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

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Recently, there’s been a spate of articles (for instance, this one) claiming that for some, the “obsession” with consuming healthy food has increased our anxiety, pushing some of our kids into eating disorders, and generally taking the fun out of life. While I don’t doubt that a few people use dietary information to make themselves and their family miserable, my guess is that those people would find something to obsess over in any case. So my feeling is that these articles mostly fall into the category of “shoot the messenger.”

I recently heard a speaker (I wish I could remember who) say that if “normal” is defined as what most people do, then these days, eating a healthy diet is abnormal behavior!

We’ve got an epidemic, no, a pandemic of obesity in this country. The latest datum: almost 1 in 5 American 4-year-olds now are obese – not just overweight, obese. The article on this statistic quoted an outside expert as saying, “Without interventions, the next generation “will be at very high risk” for heart disease, high blood pressure, cancers, joint diseases and other problems connected with obesity.”

In the face of this ongoing disaster, I think shooting the messenger is equivalent to blowing ourselves up. So to speak.

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I promised a bunch of people at a perinatal conference today that I would post the dates and locations of my next 3 talks on nutrition and epigenetics, so here they are:

In the Salt Lake City area, I will give the same talk three times:

* Tuesday, April 7, 7 pm – Life Clinic, 37 East Center Street, Suite 305, PROVO
* Wednesday, April 8, 7 pm – Dr. Blake Butler’s Office @ 1245 East 8600 South, SANDY
* Thursday, April 9, 7 pm – McKay Dee Hospital Center, East Auditorium – Education Wing, OGDEN

Please RSVP if you’re coming and let me know who is coming with you, so I can let my hosts know how many to expect. I’d love to see you there!

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A serious potential challenge to our food supply is the mysterious mass illness and death of not only bees, but bats and hummingbirds as well. Without these pollinators, many of our fruits and vegetables would have to be pollinated by hand, as is already done in certain regions of China, where bees have completely disappeared.

An article on this topic in Scientific American (April 2009), made a comment that struck me. Theories about “colony collapse disorder” have focused on three areas: pesticides, viral infections, and habitat destruction. The comment: “We and other experts also suspected that the bees’ natural defenses might be undermined by poor nutrition. Honeybees — and wild pollinators, too — no longer have the same number or variety of flowers available because we humans have tried to “neaten” our environments… crops without weedy, flower-filled borders or hedgerows… To bees and other pollinators, green lawns look like deserts.”

So, the diets of pollinators lack important nutrients, and “beekeepers have attempted to manage these concerns by developing protein supplements.” Wild variety, replaced by monotonous diets, (only one species in the commercial crop they are pollinating) and protein supplements.

To me, this sounds eerily like the human epidemic of illnesses caused by a lack of food variety. Our modern diet is marked by a concentration on the macronutrients: carbs, protein and fat. At the same time, most of us miss out on the bewildering variety of micronutrition, such as antioxidants, minerals, and enzymes, naturally available in the wide assortment of edible produce and whole grains.

The name — or one of the names — of this severe dietary deficiency of micronutrition is “oxidative stress.” This severe form of stress results from an unfortunate side effect of metabolism: whenever fuel is burned for energy in the presence of oxygen, toxic byproducts are formed (analogous to smoke and soot.) This is why we need a wide variety of antioxidants, to neutralize these toxins.

I actually know nothing about bees — I would love it if my more knowledgeable readers would comment, here! So, of course, I went out on the world-wide web (isn’t it wonderful!) to see what I could find on the question of whether bees require antioxidants.

Most of the sources on bee nutrition that I found commented simply on sugar and protein. But this article pointed out that honey is a concentrated source of certain phenols, an important class of antioxidants for humans. Since bees make honey not for us, but to serve as their winter food source, perhaps they require those phenols?

Indeed, bees do suffer from oxidative stress. This research, though done on bees, focused more on the benefits of antioxidants for humans than for bees (at least as popularly reported. I didn’t find the text of the original paper).

I found just two other articles on oxidative stress in bees. Only one specifically found that oxidative stress in bees was found to be a strong factor in viral illnesses, just as it is in humans. The other article suggested that the oxidative stress of fast growth and intensive activity may cause premature aging and death in honeybees, also just as it does in humans.

So, to sum up, and make another logical leap — perhaps monotonous diets are destructive in almost all species. It seems our maniacal focus on a very few foods. most of which we process into a further nutrient-deficient state, is harmful to many more species beside our own.

If we grew vastly more varieties of produce, and many more varieties of flowers (and weeds) perhaps we’d be saving not just our own health, but also the birds and the bees.

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