Be An Informed Consumer

PediaSure supposedly can help fill nutritional gaps in children who are picky eaters.  The  website claims "#1 Pediatrician Recommended Brand" and "complete balanced nutrition."  The first 3 ingredients?  Water, sugar, corn maltodextrin.  Give me a break.  Go here for the rest of the ingredients, which also include health-detrimental, omega-6 heavy, inflammation-inducing, oxidative stress-raising safflower and corn oil.  The minerals and vitamins that are supposed to supplement your child's health are all in there, too.  How is this different than giving them the industrially processed food picky eaters love (which is also loaded with sugar, corn, and seed oils) and supplementing with a gummy one-a-day vitamin?

Have you seen the commercial where a mother says, "you are what you eat" as her friends' kids appear on the soccer field as french fries and doughnuts?  Why isn't her child shaped as sugar and vegetable oil?  What pediatricians are recommending this drink?


Reading nutrition labels can be tricky business, and many items on the ingredients list are unrecognizable.  As everyone probably knows, ingredients are listed in ascending order of weight. But one example of a tricky situation is when there are multiple kinds of sugar in a single product - corn syrup, sucrose, etc, etc.  Sugar might be far down in the ingredients list, but when there are multiple kinds, they can add up to a significant portion of what's in the food.  I've heard some rumors about new nutrition labels that will put ingredients into categories, so that you know how much of a product is actually "sugar" by lumping them all together.  For now, here is a great list of other names for sugar of which you might not be aware.  

Genetic Susceptibility to Disease

In the early days of DNA research, it was believed that your DNA sequence determined everything about you, from your eye color, to your personality, to your susceptibility to disease, etc.  From one angle, this is true.  You cannot change an adenine nucleotide to a guanine in an adult's entire genome (at least not yet), but genetic science has led us to the realization that how genes are expressed can be altered throughout a person's life and have effects on subsequent generations (1).

Now, I do not claim to be an expert on this at all.  I only know the basics - your DNA has specific nucleotide sequence sections called genes, which, when activated or "expressed" result in protein products that direct other cellular activities. (Disclaimer: This is a gross simplification. I am just learning this all myself.)    What I have been quite interested in lately and wanted to bring up in this post, however, is epigenetics: the study of how gene expression can be altered in ways that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence.

There are some interesting examples of this phenomenon.

Decreased birthweights in infants after maternal in utero exposure to the Dutch famine of 1944-1945 (2).  This study looked at females who were in utero during the Dutch famine from Nov 1944 to May 1945.  The babies who were exposed to famine during 1st and 2nd trimesters had lower birthweights than their non-famine controls.  This is not too surprising.  What is more interesting is that the children of these females who were exposed to famine in utero also had decreased birthweight, compared to the children of the controls.

Maternal and grandmaternal smoking patterns are associated with early childhood asthma (3). This study shows that children whose mothers smoked while pregnant were 1.6 times more likely to develop asthma than those who had non-smoking mothers.  Again, not too surprising.  But, this effect is magnified - grandchildren of the smoking, pregnant moms were 2.1 times more likely to develop asthma.  Clearly, something else is going on.

Today, it seems that every disease has some sort of genetic component: heart disease, obesity, cancer, you name it.  And the occurrences of these diseases are only on the rise.  Some statistics..... If they do indeed have such a strong genetic disposition, and gene expression can be changed by diet and lifestyle, then I would have to conclude that we are all screwing up our genes and it is only going to get worse with our children and grandchildren.

This is why I urge everyone to really think about his/her daily life, the acts that we do that may be influencing our gene expression.  Lifestyle, stress, exercise, and food all play an important role on how we feel, and probably how our bodies respond.  I would argue that food is of the utmost importance.  After all (I'll say it again!), you are what you eat.  A species can withstand famine or a crappy diet for quite some time, as human bodies are adept, efficient, and resourceful.  However, subsequent generations will suffer if the diet isn't fixed.

Take care of your genes.  I know that my food and health endeavors can seem crazy, but all I think is that people should make an effort to learn about what they are actually ingesting, and then make their own decisions.  I welcome debate - together maybe we can dig deeper and really discover the secret to a health that we can proudly pass down to our children and grandchildren.

References:
1. Cummings JA, Clemens LG, Nunez AA. Mother counts: how effects of environmental contaminants on maternal care could affect the offspring and future generations. Front Neuroendocrinol. 2010 Oct;31(4):440-51.
2. Lumey LH. Decreased birthweights in infants after maternal in utero exposure to the Dutch famine of 1944-1945. Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. 1992 Apr;6(2):240-53.
3. Li YF, Langholz B, Salam MT, Gilliland FD. Maternal and grandmaternal smoking patterns are associated with early childhood asthma. Chest. 2005 Apr;127(4):1232-41.

Homemade Yogurt from Raw Milk

My apologies for the recent lack of posts.  I was in NYC for research-related things, then in Sydney, Australia for a couple weeks for more research, then I went on vacation with my family in NC, and then I attended 3 weddings in 7 days.  Needless to say, I've been quite busy, but I will try to get back on track.
  
Ever since buying raw milk, we have been researching about using it to make other products, such as butter, yogurt, and whey.  We eat yogurt basically every day for breakfast, with almonds (my favorite are the Emerald cocoa roast almonds) and other nuts and berries, but we never really thought about making our own.  When we visited Scheffler Farm to buy our first gallon of raw milk, Eileen urged us to try making our own yogurt, claiming it was ridiculously easy.  She referred us to Get Foodie! (http://getfoodieshow.com/) and told us to watch Episode 11 to learn. 

To make yogurt, all you need is to warm up some milk, then cool it a bit, add a tad of yogurt to start the culture growing, and keep it warm for an extended period of time.  Since we already had the milk, next we had to choose our yogurt.  It’s depressing to me to see first-hand how afraid America is of fat, especially nutritional, satiating fat found in whole milk and yogurt.  Most of the yogurts we could find in the store were 0% fat, low-fat, fat-free... it was difficult to find any made from whole milk.  In addition, we couldn’t find organic, plain, Greek yogurt that wasn’t 0% fat.  Considering that many of the nutritional benefits from milk are contained in the fat portions (1), this boggles my mind.

Anyway, the idea of creating our own yogurt from raw milk was extremely appealing.  Turns out, the actual process is also extremely easy.

Supplies:
- 1 qt raw milk
- thermometer (must measure 100F-180F range at least)
- quart-sized mason jar
- 2 Tbsp already made yogurt (we used organic greek yogurt)
- large bowl that will fit mason jar
- water
- oven

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 250F
2. Pour milk in pan on stove
3. Heat to 180F, stirring constantly, then remove from heat and cool to 110F
4. Pour into mason jar
5. Add yogurt and stir
6. Fill bowl with warm/hot water
7. Seal mason jar and place in bowl with water
8. Put in oven
9. Turn off oven
10. Wait 8-18 hr

Here is us heating the yogurt:

Here is the jar in the bowl with water:

It turned out fantastic!  Its consistency was on the thin side, but it tasted delicious.  We might try letting it sit longer in the warmed oven next time.  Also, we are going to use this yogurt as the base for the next batch, so the results might turn out even better.

The best part about this?  A quart of organic, whole milk yogurt from Stonyfield is around $3.50, which comes out to $14.00 per gallon.  This yogurt was produced from raw milk, at $6.00 per gallon.  Not too shabby.