nutritionwonderland

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  • Is the Strawberry the Future of American Agriculture? (Day 1)

    Is the Strawberry the Future of American Agriculture? (Day 1)

    Nutrition Wonderland’s first stop of the journey is an exceptionally beautiful place called Oxnard, California. It anchors a rapidly growing area but more importantly, it is the principal city in the Oxnard Plain – one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world. Known as the Strawberry Capital of the World, Oxnard also grows cucumbers, peppers, herbs, oranges, lemons, tomatoes, lima beans – the list goes on. In short, this place is an agricultural mecca.

    The model?

    Still, this community is at a turning point. The same beauty that gives the region bumper crops also jeopardizes its agricultural future. As it turns out, a delicately crafted piece of legislation and high yield crops are all that stands between the region turning into a concrete jungle like formerly agricultural Orange County. We spoke with the California Strawberry Commission in the California Strawberry Festival’s Oxnard office this past week about some of the challenges and opportunities facing their industry – and more generally – agriculture.

    The Past into the Present

    Carolyn O’Donnell, the Communications Director for the California Strawberry Commission, introduced us to some of the background involved with Oxnard and its strawberries. The community gets its name from agriculture; its named after a pair of sugar beet processing brothers that came to the area back in the late 1800s. Today, the region is home to the majority of strawberry production in the United States, an intensive production of continuing harvests that occurs twice annually.

    One of the most interesting points in our discussion came from Sue Odgers, resident of the area for 50 years who has watched Oxnard transform from a 1970s population of 26,000 to well over 200,000 today. The region wasn’t always known for its strawberries as it is today, she told us. The community used to be known as the lima bean capital of the world, along with growing a sizable amount of sugar beets.

    Crops Growing in Oxnard

    Our tour of some of the farms in the area bear out Odgers observation. We saw many fields of red bell peppers ready for the picking, an incredibly sophisticated tomato hothouse and, of course, some early planting of strawberries. The common theme with all these crops? Higher selling prices at market. After all, strawberries are far more sexy than lima beans.

    Moving To High Dollar Crops

    The move from cheaper crops to high dollar produce mirrored the change in population. Strawberries specifically are a very high dollar crop, so each farm can extract more dollars-per-acre than with lima beans. The switch in crop cover, it turns out, was a vital move in maintaining the area’s agricultural base – and one that could easily be overlooked as other agricultural communities look to emulate Oxnard’s success.

    With all the extra strawberry coverage in Oxnard, we asked about pesticide usage, as berries in general regularly score highly in pesticide residues (.pdf link). O’Donnell pointed to continued growth in organics, now over 5% of the crop, and also mentioned that these harvests are inherently more sustainable than other crops simply because multiple harvests can come out of one field in the same year. The Commission is also making a push to replace methyl bromide by funding research into methods that can reduce dependence on the dangerous fumigant.

    Connecting to the Community

    Sue Odgers, a volunteer who sits on the California Strawberry Festival board, also plays a vital role in connecting the community to its signature crop by helping to organize an annual festival. Now in its 27th year, the two day California Strawberry Festival is a celebration of the food – and the region. Local arts and crafts creators stand shoulder to shoulder with growers, cooks and community leaders.

    A Picture of the Festival in Action, thanks to the CSC

    Attendance is strong and focused around enjoying a variety of strawberry products, the favorite of which is a build-your-own strawberry shortcake booth. Odgers also described the scholarship fund the festival has setup. Now over $1,000,000 strong, the scholarship goes directly to help the children of migrant farms workers afford higher education.

    Creating the connection between the farmers and residents of the cities on the Oxnard Plain is crucial so that residents see sprawl as taking away something meaningful from the communities. Such involvement helped the Ventura County region stay ahead of the development as we learned from Annika Forrester, the Food Safety and Grower Communications Specialist for the California Strawberry Commission.

    Ventura County’s Different Plan

    Oxnard’s complex farming past has evolved into legislation to stay ahead of the changes wrought by sprawl Forrester explained. Every 10 years, the state of California requires each county to publish its ‘General Plan’ for land use which, taken together, guide growth around the state. California tends to reinforce suburban style land uses which primarily convert agricultural land into tract home and strip mall development, according to sources inside the planning office we contacted.

    Image from the S.O.A.R. Intiative

    The first community to actively organize against this planned encroachment was Napa Valley back in 1990, whose voters passed the Measure J. Its legal success against developer’s challenges that went all the way to the California Supreme Court provided Ventura County – home to Oxnard and other agricultural communities – a blueprint for how to protect their lands.

    This culminated into the S.O.A.R initiative of Ventura County, an amendment to the General Plan passed back in 1998. The initiative locks in land uses primarily so agricultural lands stay that way. Ventura County went a step further and established an urban growth boundary, appropriately called CURB, that restricts all development outside said lines (Learn More Here). Only a simple majority vote can bend the CURB’s restrictions.

    All the members of Strawberry Commission referred to the impact this legislation has had on the region. Without it, it seems beyond likely that many more acres of prime farmland would have been lost to development.

    A Way Forward

    To get people to eat better and practice better nutritional habits, we as a nation must physically have the right foods available for people to eat. Strawberries, along with the myriad of other crops coming out of the Oxnard Plain, are part of that answer. We have all seen the studies associating produce consumption with a reduction in chronic disease [1, 2, 3] – but translating a health answer into development policies is complex and hard to understand at a distance.

    From what we saw, the Strawberry Commission is doing a good job of bridging that chasm between frenetic city life and more traditional agricultural farmers with their festival. While we would have hoped to see more than 5% of their total crop as organic, that percentage is surely growing – and its still more important that the crop continues to exist, organic or not. And that’s the real issue facing Oxnard and many other communities – how do we make development and agriculture work together?

    Communities will have to assign higher values to agriculture in general. Oxnard is fortunate in that sense. The community came together to draft aggressive legislation that aimed to keep the area’s agricultural history intact. Switching from lima beans to strawberries and other high value crops also helped by driving up the value of agricultural lands, giving local farmers some ammunition against soaring land prices. But not every community can be the strawberry capital of the world.

    Balancing population growth while still being able to grow the food for those new mouths will require delicate planning that may change from community to community. Oxnard, with a combination of legislation, community involvement and adoption of higher value crops, is a great example of how to make this work. However, development challenges will continue and forward thinking communities have to get out in front of the issues before land uses change forever.

    When we travel up the coast to Santa Cruz, we will explore the other side of this issue: conservation of undeveloped land. The big question we will be asking is how to transition conventional agriculture into a lower impact, sustainable land use that can co-exist with natural open spaces. We will be speaking with the Wild Farm Alliance, the Monterey Aquarium and the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Sustainable Agriculture school to find out how they think it can work.

    ——————
    This is the story from Day 1 of Nutrition Wonderland’s Tour of America.

  • Nutrition Wonderland’s Tour of America Begins in California

    Nutrition Wonderland’s 2009 Tour of America has begun! We are now in California, visiting with a host of organizations that are changing how agriculture and medicine are practiced. If you want to know more about our tour, check out an overview of our mission on this tour. See our stops in the interactive map below:


    View Nutrition Wonderland’s Tour of America – California in a larger map.

    Here is the latest list of who we are visiting out on the road during this first stretch of the journey and what we are doing there:

    • Hollywood Farmers Market – Hollywood/LA, CA: We will attend the largest farmers market in the Los Angeles metro area and speak with farmers about establishing a directory for all of their wares.
    • California Strawberry Association – Oxnard, CA: We will be discussing how Oxnard became the strawberry capital of the world, the renown festival and history of the areas.
    • USDA Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement Expansion Session – Monterey, CA: We will be attending the USDA’s meeting on expanding this food safety initiative, weighing the pros and cons.
    • Wild Farm Alliance – Watsonville, CA: We will be talking with leaders of the organization about how to make conservation and sustainable agriculture co-exist in a world with limited resources.
    • University of California, Santa Cruz: Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems – Santa Cruz, CA: We will be discussing many of the complex conservation agreements the University researchers are engaging farmers with.
    • Rainbow Light Vitamins – Santa Cruz, CA: We hope to learn about the secret sauce that makes food form vitamins more effective at nutrient absorption than their regular counterparts.
    • Farmsreach.com – San Francisco, CA: We will be speaking with the founders of this organization that are using technology to help overcome some of the market obstacles facing better local food distribution for regional restaurants.
    • All Edibles Landscapes – Oakland, CA: Leaders of this organization will be teaching us the virtues of building micro-agricultural systems in small homeowner’s gardens.
    • University of California, Davis: MIND Institute – Sacramento, CA: UC Davis researchers will be showing us the progress behind the MIND Institute’s groundbreaking Autism Phenome Project, the largest pro
    • Lundberg Farms – Richvale, CA: One of the original pioneers in sustainable farming, we will speak to the famous rice farmers in Northern California about why they began promoting this style of farming before so many others.

    We will post our pictures, stories and videos as we visit everyone. As you can see, we are already quite booked up but if you are interested in saying hello, drop us a line at mailto:[email protected]

  • When You Should Eat

    When You Should Eat

    More often than not, dieters focus exclusively on what’s going into their bodies. They cut out food groups, add food groups, count calories and create meal plans. But research has found out that while what you eat does matter, when you eat has a big impact, too. According to new research from Northwestern University published in the journal Obesity, eating at night can increase weight gain by more than 25%!

    The Background

    Watch the clock when you are eating, thanks Steven Depolo

    Our bodies have an innate timing system called the “Circadian Rhythm” or “Circadian Clock.” Hormones and chemical releases tend to tell us when we’re supposed to wake up, when to sleep, and a variety of other day-to-day activities. Some of these can be altered with consistent changes to daily patterns – getting up a few hours earlier, for example, can affect when your body decides it’s time to get up. But others are dependent on external influences and are much harder to shift. It’s been suggested for a long time that our bodies internal clock has a big effect on our weight loss or gain.

    Meals eaten in the morning, for example, have different hormonal effects than the same meals eaten in the afternoon. One of the major factors seems to be cortisol levels, which, after not eating all night long, are much lower in the AM.

    When dieting, we’re often warned not to eat late at night. This conventional wisdom, however, has generally had little support scientifically. No studies have shown whether the daily effects we see are absolute or simply due to current patterns. In other words, if a person were to change when they normally eat, it’s possible that the effects we see from morning v. afternoon meals would change, too. Specifically, if one were to eat at night, it’s suggested that the increased cortisol levels would negate the effects seen by other meal-timing studies.

    So where does the “don’t eat at night” wisdom come from? Well, mostly, scientists have shown that people tend to eat more when they snack later, thus increasing their overall calorie intake and subsequent weight gain.

    But Northwestern University researchers started to think there was more to it. They noticed that late-night shift workers who end up regularly eating at odd hours of the day tended to weigh more than their daytime shift counterparts. Were they really just eating more than the daytime shifts, or did the timing of their meals have an effect on their weight?

    Northwestern University researchers hypothesized that there was more going on. They wanted to know if our body’s daily rhythms have an impact on how food is processed. So, they designed a study with mice to determine if eating at night has an affect on weight gain.

    The Study

    Watch those midnight snacks, or fat mouse disease might strike.

    To determine how our circadian clock affects weight gain, the researchers took mice and fed them a high fat diet. They split the mice into two groups, allowing both groups of mice to eat as much as they wanted for 12 hours, and recorded how much they ate and their activity levels.

    The only difference between the groups was that one group was fed during the normal waking hours, the other, during the night. They gave each group the exact same food with the exact same nutritional values and fat content, to see if timing alone affected weight gain. After six weeks – plenty of time for their mice bodies to adjust to the patterns – the results were staggering.

    Both groups ate the same amount of food and had the same levels of activity. And, because they had such a high-fat diet, both groups gained weight. Those fed during the day increased their body mass by an average of 20%. But the nighttime fed mice gained a lot more than that, increasing their body mass by an average of 48%. That’s 28% more weight gain just by eating at night instead of during the day!

    The researchers are following up by looking into the molecular mechanisms behind this increased weight gain. Their hunch is that the few hormones that are on strict circadian clocks (ones that don’t change even when you stay up all night repeatedly, for example) might influence how fat is processed in the body.

    The Take Home Message

    Just like you have to think about your activity levels when working towards weight loss, you have to consider when you eat as much as what you eat. And not eating at night is just one facet of this: how many meals a day, what you eat at which meals, and when you eat those meals during the day also have impacts on the overall success of the diet. Cutting calories isn’t everything!

    Arble, D., Bass, J., Laposky, A., Vitaterna, M., & Turek, F. (2009). Circadian Timing of Food Intake Contributes to Weight Gain Obesity, 17 (11), 2100-2102 DOI: 10.1038/oby.2009.264

  • Plastic Troubles: Brominated Flame Retardants (PBDEs)

    Plastic Troubles: Brominated Flame Retardants (PBDEs)

    In general, we think of plastics as non-flammable. Sure, the pyromaniacs among us have put a lighter to picnic cutlery to see what happens, but for the most part we know they melt, not burn, and are not exactly the best source of tinder or firewood.

    But that’s not actually true. Almost all pure plastics are inherently flammable. When exposed to heat and flame, the polymers in plastics split into smaller, more volatile pieces. As oxygen reacts with these new compounds, more heat is produced, further ensuring a combustion reaction. This chain reaction continues until all of the plastic is broken down.

    Even with flame retardants, plastics can burn – Pic by tronics on flickr

    On top of the actual flame, burning of plastics can also be dangerous as it can create toxic gasses from the chemical components. Thus, as you can imagine, flammability is a huge problem for plastics used anywhere where heat might occur – near currents in electronics, in the kitchen, even furniture. The only thing that keeps most plastics from going up in smoke are the flame retardants mixed into the plastics themselves.

    Keeping the Flame at Bay

    Flame retardants act to stop the chain reaction that heat and flame cause, either slowing or preventing the spread of the fire all together. Almost all plastics that we come in contact with have added flame retardants in them to prevent ignition. One of the most popular types of compounds used in plastics are brominated flame retardants. As the name suggests, they all contain bromine. These are applied to 2.5 million tons of plastic polymers annually. One particular group, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PDBEs), are used so much that the world consumes 40,000 metric tons of it every year, with 34,000 or so of those being manufactured in North America.

    The variety of products that use brominated flame retardants is astounding. They’re in:

    • almost every piece of electronics you buy from TVs to computers
    • carpets
    • paints
    • kitchen appliances
    • upholstery
    • car parts
    • building materials

    They’re so well used by the industry because they work great. Not only do they prevent ignition, they slow the spread of fire, giving anyone near it precious extra seconds to escape.

    Of course, like the other compounds added to plastics, brominated flame retardants and PDBEs don’t all stay neatly wrapped up in the plastics they’re added to. They, like BPA and phthalates we covered earlier, tend to leech out into the environment, which is where the danger sets in.

    What Are PBDEs? And why are low levels potentially dangerous?

    PBDE, in its chemical glory

    With over 209 different compounds used, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PDBEs) are the largest group of brominated flame retardants used in plastics. They’re split into two types: “lower brominated,” or containing less than 5 bromines, or “high brominated,” with more than five. The big concern is with the more popular lower brominated PBDEs, as they are known to bioaccumulate.

    Most of the time, we worry about acute exposures. That’s when the body has a sudden, high dose of something bad for it, to the point that it can’t deal. For example, if you chug a 24 pack of Bud Light in less than an hour, you’ll probably get acute alcohol exposure and be rushed to the hospital. But, odds are that if you are treated fast enough and have your stomach pumped, you’ll be fine in a few days. Your body processes alcohol fairly quickly – though it might not seem like it when we’re horribly hungover. In that sense, most people don’t have to worry about PBDEs. While common, your daily exposure is pretty low, so unless you go chugging chemicals at a plastics plant you’re not likely to suffer from acute exposure to PBDEs.

    Bioaccumulation is Different

    Bioaccumulation refers to the amount of a substance, usually toxic, that occurs in an organism over a much greater period of time. It occurs when a substance is absorbed or stored at a faster rate than it is lost, causing it to ‘accumulate’ in the body. When bioaccumulation occurs, smaller environmental levels can have a much larger impact.

    Imagine if every time you had a drink, your body simply couldn’t get rid of the alcohol in the beer, and instead, it lingered in your tissues. You could have one drink a week, but still within a few weeks you’d be drunk all the time. That’s what happens with PBDEs – they sit in your body, and don’t go anywhere. Unlike BPA where you have to have a threshold daily dose for effects to occur, PBDEs can be toxic at extraordinary low daily doses – it just takes longer for the effects to show.

     

    If beer bioaccumulated like PBDEs, we’d all be in big trouble, thanks to flickr user tambako for the stunning shot

    PBDEs bioaccumulate in blood, breast milk, and fatty tissues. Because they’re so common, the average person is exposed to PDBEs from all kinds of places. You inhale them as they evaporate from building materials in your home and eat them when they leech from your tupperware. For that matter, it’s not just the plastics in your life you have to worry about.

    Humans aren’t the only species that PDBEs bioaccumulate in, and as they become more prevalent in the environment, they become more prevalent in our foods. Significant concentrations have been found in popular foods like salmon, ground beef, butter and cheese. The higher up an animal is on the food chain, the more of a bioaccumulating compound it’s likely to have. And that’s not good news for us people, who reside squarely at the top.

    There’s reason to fret about PBDEs – their close cousins have already been banned as health risks. You might have heard of them – polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. They, too, were used as flame retardants, as well as other things, starting in the early 20th century.

    More deformed fish will pop up unless we get rid of these chemicals

    It became clear, though, by the 1970s that PCBs were seriously dangerous organic pollutants, causing birth defects, impairing brain and memory functions, and increasing the risk of some forms of cancers. But that was not before General Electric released up to 1,300,000 lbs of PCBs into the Hudson River, prompting the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to ban all fishing in the upper Hudson due to unacceptably high health risks to anyone who consumed their catch. And, unfortunately, GE was not alone. The effects of PCB use still linger today, especially in aquatic animals. And PBDEs are already accumulating – research has shown that PBDEs are at least as prevalent as PCBs in Lake Michigan salmon, for example.

    Effects of PDBEs

     

    Like with all plastic chemicals, kids are at the highest risk (sukanto_debnath credit)

    In the United States, PBDE concentrations are rising, especially in children. Toddlers and preschoolers have 3 times higher blood concentrations of flame retardants than their mothers – an average of 62 parts per billion. And adults aren’t off the hook. A study in Spain in 2003 found that adult men there were chowing down 97 nanograms/day in their meals. No study has looked at the daily intake in the United States, although previous studies have shown that Americans rank among the highest in bodily concentrations of PBDEs. U.S. mothers, for example, had concentrations of PBDEs 75 times higher than the average levels in Europe. And no one, anywhere, has studied how much of what we ingest stays in our bodies, accumulating in our fatty tissues.

    While “parts per billion” and “nanograms” might sound like a very small amount, it’s still dangerous, especially for kids. Even a single, low dose given to developing mice caused permanent behavioral and neurological changes. Other studies have found that over time, PBDEs alter thyroid function, disrupt brain development, drive cells towards cancerous activity and even cause hyperactivity.

    Unfortunately, the study of PBDEs is still fairly new. It wasn’t until after the fiasco with PCBs that PBDEs were phased into use, and research has not had the time to fully study the long-term effects of these chemicals. What we have seen, however, isn’t looking good. Blood concentrations are quickly approaching the EPA’s magical “safety limit” for people, and research continues to show lower and lower doses having detrimental effects on animals.

    Where We Go From Here

    The good news is governments are taking notice of PBDE and the dangers involved. In the 1990s, the European Union began replacing brominated flame retardants, and levels in breast milk there have decreased in response. They one-upped themselves in 2006 by flat out banning the use of certain PBDEs in electronics. In the U.S., states like California, Hawaii, New York, Michigan and Maine have already passed PBDE banning legislation, and other states are following. But the federal government has yet to listen to the complaints against PBDEs or take any action against them.

    The bad news is, if you live where it isn’t banned, there’s not much you can do to avoid it. Even if you do live where it’s no longer added, older furniture and plastics will still contain PBDEs. The best you can do is support organizations like Greenpeace which seek to see PBDEs banned entirely or petition your local politicians to make it an issue. There are alternatives to brominated flame retardants, and new technology continues to find ways around using harsh chemicals to prevent fires. We should to our best to remind industrial companies that being cheaper doesn’t make a chemical better – we need to find new ways to make what we need without poisoning our children and environment in the process.

  • Plastic Troubles: Phthalates and Plasticizers

    Plastic Troubles: Phthalates and Plasticizers

    Plastic is a buzzword lately but mostly for the wrong reasons.  Medical studies have lined up against the ubiquitous substance and the seas have filled with the jetsam and flotsam of our plastic society.  Yet, if there was one compound responsible for this situation more than any other, phthalates might just wear the crown.

    Chemistry

    Phthalates make plastic, well, plasticy. Many consumer goods are made up of very hard plastic compounds that do not allow finished products to move as required, like the PVC piping you find in many modern homes or the casing to your internet router.  And with a little phthalate magic added into the chemical mix, those PVC molecules that were once rigid in the pipes of your home are now free to form the flowing plastic carpet you often find beneath your feet.

    Phthalates keep Fish Oil Omega3’s in place – thanks to flickr user Deco Fernandes

    In fact, these molecules are so unique and helpful, they have found their way into almost everything we use.  Personal care products, mechanical lubricants, paints, modeling clay, shower curtains, food containers and wrappers, even children’s toys all have some phthalates mixed in.  Health care items like the coatings of prescription pills and supplements are also guilty.

    The magic of phthalates is that they allow the larger polymer plastic molecules to slide against one another more easily.  Phthalates move so well because they do not bond directly those large molecules, leaving them roam about in some cases.  Roaming phthalates leech away from their plastic motherships, leading to that new car smell, paint fumes and the heavy offgausing associated with new flooring.

    Health Risk Debate

    With the volume of phthalate in existence, our exposure to such materials is obviously high. Our main exposure is from what we eat but inhalation and absorption through the skin are also important factors.  Some scientists suggest that children are so regularly exposed to the plastic that they contain levels up to 20X what is known to be safe [1].  Part of the reason so little has been done about phthalates is that no one is perfectly sure what ‘safe’ really is.  So, the real debate with phthalates at this point has to do with quantity required to cause damage.

    Suggested exposures depend heavily on body weight and stage of life.  On study gave a rough estimate 5-20 micrograms of phthalates per kilogram of body weight, with higher exposures in younger populations [2].  Other studies suggest that we really aren’t quite sure what the exposure levels are, and consequently all of this needs more study [3].  We do know that phthalates have been shown to cross the placenta and transfer from mother to fetus and such exposure has been linked to risk factors and the inital stages of prostate cancer and to changes in emotional stability as adults, all things we could do without.

     

    Newborns are at the greatest risk, thanks to flickr user michelleannb

    Scientists classify phthalates as definite endocrine disruptors, a class of chemicals that throws off the body’s hormone signaling system.  Studies have shown high doses can cause birth defects in rats and even deformities in people.  Phthalates in particular are singled out from other plastics as a very possible epidemiological reason for the lower sperm counts seen across men in the Western world.

    Such bold claims come from correlations found between phthalate exposure and young boys with shortened “anogenital distance”, decreased penis size and improperly descended testicles [4], all major public health issues facing 21st century policy makers.  Prenatal exposure was also shown to negatively effect reproductive development in young boys.

    Youngest at the Greatest Risk

    But of any one study, Pediatrics really turned the heat up on phthalates back in early 2008 when they reported that 81% of all infants had significant phthalate exposure from simple household items like shampoos, lotions and powders [5].  Most troublesome was the way in which researchers deduced how young infants might have the highest exposure: by simply being kids.  From the study (-ed emphasis mine):

    Children have unique development and behavior that may predispose them to higher exposure susceptibility. When children are born, they immediately develop hand-to-mouth behaviors. They cannot move on their own and are therefore exposed predominantly to ambient air exposures, oral ingestion of breast milk/formula, and [skin] exposure to specific infant care products. As infants develop, they begin to move around, crawl, and have increased hand-to-mouth behaviors with the potential for increased exposure to phthalate sources in the environment.  But its not just children who have to worry, there is concern with adults too as phthalates have been linked to cancerous activity in adult cells.

    Since this publication, the EU and the state of California have effectively banned many phthalates from the consumer market, with California more conservatively banning them from toys and children’s products.  These bans have been especially contentious because unsafe exposure levels remain unknown and, more importantly, the size of the industry in question.

    The Political Dimension

    Despite growing concerns and widespread exposure, phthalate exposure continues almost completely unabated in the United States.  One of the cardinal organizations responsible for this is the American Chemistry Council (ACC).  This group’s name spoofs the largest and arguably most respected scientific organization in the world – the American Chemical Society (ACS) – but it obeys a very different master: corporations.

    The ACC represents all of the plastic companies and it obviously disagrees that phthalates cause problems.  They have been way out in front of this debate, publishing smears against phthalate detractors as recently as 2005 in prestigious medical journals.  They have even built a special website just for phthalates – http://www.americanchemistry.com/s_phthalate/ – and convened a “The Phthalate Esters Panel” to examine the facts through the warped lens of plastic manufacturers.

    The ACC does show that a wide range of products depend upon phthalates, from vinyl siding to medical devices and raincoats.  Other important uses like duct tape and protection films for food products have all benefited society.  But the ACC stance ignores scientific progress being made by their own members.

    Plastics without harmful phthalates have already been developed and deployed by major chemical companies like Dupont, with high customer satisfaction in some of the most demanding industrial environments.  Phthalate-free plastic welding is now also possible.  So it’s clear the innovations to move past phthalates are here today, giving manufacturers a bridge into the future of safer plastics from previous technologies like PVC.  What lacks are proper market forces or government regulation in the US to make the change occur.

    Steps To Take

    Here are some of the most basic steps you can take to protect yourself from this plastic:

    • -Let new carpeting/vinyl flooring off-gas while you are not present
    • -If painting, use proper ventilation to avoid excessive phthalate exposure
    • -Buy new electronic items that are RoHS compliant (a European standard that bans some phthalates)
    • -Buy consumer products in steel/glass when possible
    • -Purchase newer toys for kids, as many companies must comply with California’s ban on phthalates

    Small consumer purchases add up, so take account of what you are buying and try to avoid bendable plastics when you can.

  • Book Review: Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink

    Book Review: Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink

    pon searching for research for my last article about the social aspects of eating, I stumbled upon a book with a very intriguing title. It’s called “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think“, and is written by a nutritional scientist by the name of Brian Wansink. He studies the psychology of eating, and has spent his career trying to understand the hidden cues that determine what and how much we eat.

    Mindless Eating Quick Facts

    It seemed like an intriguing concept: studying the little changes that make us “mindlessly” eat. And at under 300 pages, it is a quick easy read. It promised to show “why you may nor realize how much you’re eating, what you’re eating – or why you’re even eating at all” – a tall order for a short, pop-psych book. I figured if it even half delivered on that promise, it would be an interesting read, so I sat down and dove in. Here’s my thoughts on the book.

    One Word: Whoa

    This book is simply great. Amazon.com readers have given it the stellar rating of 4 1/2 stars, and I agree. It’s easy to read, completely intelligible, yet delves into the hard science behind psychological nutrition studies. I’m extremely impressed with how fluidly the author explains the science and the meaning of it. You don’t have to have a PhD to understand the research that has been done and what it found. And that’s a good thing, considering how unique and mindblowing the research is that he talks about.

    Does food with a brand name taste better? Yes, actually. Does the size of your plate change how much you eat? Um, yeah, it does. Do you change how you eat based on how others eat? Yep. Do you presume that there’s no way you fall into the same silly traps as everyone else? Yes, and yet you do.

    The key point that Wansink makes, in my opinion, is that no matter how smart you are, how much you think about food, or how carefully you think you make your decisions – you, too, mindlessly eat. We might acknowledge that others could be tricked, but not us. That is what makes mindless eating so dangerous. We are almost never aware that it is happening to us,” Wansink writes. He’s done studies using students who have just taken a 90 minute class on the subject, intelligent groups of people, experts in a particular profession, and even the very scientists who do the research themselves! All of them mindlessly eat and drink. No one is immune to these small, pervasive influences.

    However, that’s no reason to get all upset. Sure, give us a short, wide glass and we’ll drink more than if given a tall skinny one. We’ll eat more from a big package than a little one. But that means you have a way of changing your diet and your eating and drinking habits – just get taller glasses and eat from smaller packages. Throughout the book he gives simple tips that, if followed, allow you to eat and drink 100 less calories a day. 100 calories. That’s it. While it seems slight, it’s what he calls the ‘mindless margin’ – the amount you won’t notice you’re not eating.

    Food For Thought

    The Cover

    As I’ve told you before, your body reacts strongly to what it thinks is starvation – aka a sudden drop in food intake. It doesn’t really matter if you were eating too much before anyhow, your body freaks out and fights against our attempts at weight loss. I’ve warned of the physiological side effects of serious calorie cutting and crash dieting. It’s no surprise that Wansink, too, berates this behavior. The key to successful weight maintenance, he claims, is instead to shed pounds slowly by seemingly not changing a thing. To mindlessly lose weight instead of mindlessly gain it.

    And it makes sense, too. If you cut 100-200 calories out a day you’ll be able to drop about a pound a month without even trying. You’ll get slimmer without feeling deprived or frustrated. He suggests picking 3 changes and trying them for one month, tracking daily how you do. You don’t have to be perfect, but the daily, written reminder will help you get on track and follow your goals. After all, it only takes a month to change a habit – 28 days, according to scientists. So if you can make it the first month you’re much more likely to be able to continue it past that.

    Just imagine how great you would feel if you do that and eat a little healthier, too.

    I think that just about everyone I know can benefit from reading this book. As Wansink writes:

    “We may not be able to outlaw every drive-through restaurant or tax every pint of ice cream in our community, but we can re-engineer our personal food environment to help us and our families eat better.” While we may not be able to change all of the ways we mindlessly eat, we can change a few of them, and that’s enough to have a marked impact on our day to day lives. And in doing that, “we turn the food in our life from being a temptation or a regret to something we guiltlessly enjoy.”

    After all, as Wansink concludes, “The best diet is the one you don’t know you’re on.” I agree.

  • Plastic Troubles: Bisphenol A

    Plastic Troubles: Bisphenol A

    It’s more than impressive to think about how pervasive plastic use has become. Despite only being around for the past century or so, plastics have become staple in every day life. From grocery bags to drinking bottles, IV bags to the teflon on non-stick pans, plastics really do make everything possible. They’re incredibly versatile: the final product can very in hardness, be shaped in almost any way imaginable, and is chemically inert, all for a bargain basement price. Really, it’s a magical substance.

    Its everywhere…

    Unfortunately, the very properties which make it so useful in so many industries are the same properties which make it one of the worst physical pollutant in the world. Despite recycling efforts, a large amount of plastic ends up in garbage cans (if we’re lucky) or littering the environment. Since the 1950s, one billion tons of plastic has been discarded by people. The ecological impact of all this plastic is devastating. Plastics make up at least 2/3 of marine litter, killing animals of all shapes and sizes. It takes over 450 years for a plastic bottle to degrade – that’s at least twice as long as it takes for an aluminum can to dissolve. And if that’s not bad enough, the forms of plastic that do degrade faster are even worse. Polystyrene – better know by the brand name “Styrofoam” – has been shown to degrade easily in seawater, but it leaves behind potentially damaging styrene molecules.

    But this isn’t an article about the ecological impact of plastics – there’s enough on that for an entire book. The key question isn’t how does it affect the environment, it’s how does it affect us.

    Plastic Chemistry 101

    Plastics are very complex compounds chemically. They are made from combining various carbon-based compounds, called “monomers,” to create long chains, called “polymers.” The most common forms of plastic used are polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene. Their names explain what compounds are used to create them – polyethylene is made from strings of elthylene, polypropylene from strings of propylene, and polystyrene from strings of styrene. Another well-known plastic is polyvinyl chloride, better known as PVC. Another kind of plastic, polycarbonate, is made from bisphenol A (BPA), and is used extensively in our households in items like bottles, plastic glasses, tupperwares, even DVDs and CDs. There are actually hundreds of different types of plastic, all made from different carbon-based monomers. The different compounds lead to different properties, including different levels of hardness, flexibility, and heat resistance.

    PVC Pipe, one of the most familiar forms of the common plastic

    But there’s a lot more that goes into plastics than just the monomers. Other compounds can be added to further change the textural properties of the plastic. PVC, for example, often has phthalaes added to it to make it less brittle. These compounds are referred to as “plasticizers,” as they add to the fluidity of plastics. Some plasticizers eventually evaporate from the plastics they’re put into – for example, the “new car smell” we associate with a brand new Mercedes is caused mostly by trimelliate plasticizers evaporating from the car’s interior. Others leech out of plastics as they degrade or are exposed to extreme conditions, like the heat in microwave ovens. Bisphenol A is added to certain PVC to make it harder, and other compounds, like brominated flame retardants, make plastics less vulnerable to heat.

    Luckily for us, most pure plastics that are free of such additives are fairly harmless. They are ecologically devastating because they take forever to degrade and ensnare marine and terrestrial animals, but as far as human use goes, they’re non-toxic. Unfortunately, most plastics we use aren’t pure. And even still, the compounds that make up pure plastics can be toxic, as the much more toxic, single monomers can be trapped in the plastic-making process only to be released later into our foods.

    So what’s the harm, exactly?

    What exactly do the chemicals in plastics do to the human body? A lot. And it depends on the compound. I’m going to dive into some of the big players and why you should know about them. First up is the one you’ve probably heard the most about: Bisphenol A, or BPA.

    Bisphenol A

    If you’ve paid attention to the news in the past year, you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about Bisphenol A. Like I mentioned before, it’s a monomer used to create polycarbonate plastics, labeled type 7, and also as a plasticizer in type 3 PVC plastics. It can leech out of either kind into food and water placed in contact with them.

    Plastic ‘resin’ code #7

    BPA is what is called an “endocrine disruptor“. Our endocrine system is the system of signals and hormones which constantly communicate information between cells. The problem with BPA is that it looks similar enough to estrogen that our bodies can’t really tell the difference. Because estrogen is such an important hormone in our bodies (in men as well as women, by the way), the potential affects of BPA on our bodies are severe and range widely.

    The first problem is that, so far, we’re not really sure how much BPA it takes to have a negative effect on our bodies, especially over a lifetime. It’s clear that a high, acute dose is bad, but where the bottom threshold is for humans is unclear. It wasn’t until 1997 that low-dose effects on laboratory animals were reported, though since then a variety of studies have used animal models to warn of the dangers of BPA.

    In animals like mice and rate, doses as low as 0.025 µg/kg/day can causes permanent changes to the genital tract and predispose breast cells to cancerous activity. Between 1 and 30 µg/kg/day can lead to long-term reproductive changes like earlier puberty and longer periods, decline in testicular testosterone, and prostate cell changes indicative of cancer, as well as behavioral effects like decreased maternal instincts and even reversed sex roles. Basically, BPA exposure can affect almost every system in our bodies, particularly those impacted by reproductive hormones.

    Older polycarbonate bottles all contain BPA, thanks flickr user vitameatavegalynn

    Think of anything that makes you manly or womanly – the shape of your body, your muscle mass, neurological systems – all are vulnerable to BPA’s toxic effects. Over 100 studies have been published which reveal different toxic impacts of BPA. The question isn’t “is it harmful,” it’s how harmful, and more specifically, at what dose.

    After all, anything can be toxic when in excess. You can even die from drinking too much water. The big question now among scientists is what level of exposure to Bisphenol A is low enough that it won’t cause major, negative side effects in most people. They also are looking into how much BPA we get exposed to and from where. What they’ve found is that BPA exposure is particularly high in infants, when, of course, it has the most side effects. Developing people and animals are much more strongly affected by hormone levels and disruptors like BPA which mimic those hormones in our bodies. The younger the person, the more of an effect a lower dose of BPA has on them – which is bad news for pregnant moms and newborn infants. Levels that are safe for adults are likely to be unsafe for them. But, to date, no study has looked specifically at the effects of different doses of BPA on in-utero or newborn infant biology.

    Exposure and Effects Still a Mystery

    So what, you ask, is our daily exposure anyway? Well, we’re not entirely sure. Studies have found that infants can consume up to 13 µg/kg/day when fed formula from polycarbonate bottles. Remember – that’s a dose high enough to cause serious reproductive changes in animal models. Adults can get similar levels of BPA exposure from single servings of canned goods (they use a plastic lining to protect the metal) and some from plastic containers, particularly those that are warmed up in the microwave or run through the dishwasher. The EPA has said that 50 µg/kg/day is normal and safe, but recent studies in our closest relatives have shown that level causes adverse neurological effects, even in adults. And even worse, scientists have found that monkeys given 8 times that dose – 400 µg/kg/day – have blood concentrations lower than the average human being. It’s likely, therefore, that we’re getting a lot more BPA than we think, and its probably worse for us than we thought.

    The first study of BPA’s effects on humans wasn’t published until September 2008. It looked at urine BPA levels in around 1,500 people to see if they correlated with disease. The researchers found that increased BPA levels were significantly associated with heart disease, diabetes, and high levels of certain liver enzymes. They concluded that “higher BPA exposure, reflected in higher urinary concentrations of BPA, may be associated with avoidable morbidity in the community-dwelling adult population.”  Many researchers claim we have known about this problem for far longer:

    Despite the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of BPA, the FDA recently announced that it still deems the compound “safe.” This preliminary decision was attacked by scientists and consumer groups who said the FDA was being biased towards the industry and not taking into account the science and the safety of the American Public. Canadian officials have already banned BPA use in baby bottles, finding that levels were simply too close to unsafe for formula fed infants, a decision which lead to many leading companies like WalMart and Toys R Us to stop selling them in Canada and the U.S. In June 2009, the FDA decided to “reconsider” its assessment of BPA safety levels, though a new finding has yet to be announced.  Rumor has it that FDA’s next decision on BPA should come down the pipe in late November.

    What To Do:

    In the end, my recommendation is to steer clear of bisphenol A-containing plastics as much as possible, especially when it comes to your kids. Here is a list of easy ways you can avoid BPA:

    • Be wary of all plastics labeled type 7
    • Absolutely, positively, do not buy polycarbonate baby bottles
    • Keep baby from putting hard plastics (like toys) in their mouths
    • Replace older polycarbonate ‘Nalgene’-type water bottles with stainless steel bottles
    • Replace canned foods, especially acid rich tomatoes, with those bought in glass
    • Microwave your food in glass or ceramic containers instead of plastic ones like tupperware
    • Use metal colanders in place of harder plastic ones for straining boiling water
    • Hand-wash hard plastic kitchen cups and utensils in place of hot dishwasher cleaning

    Sadly, BPA is only one of many toxic chemicals that can leech out of plastics. Next, I’ll tell you all about brominated flame retardants, called PBDEs, which unlike BPA, are found in almost every form of plastic.

  • The Social Side of Eating

    The Social Side of Eating

    Much of nutrition focuses on the individual. You are responsible for picking the right foods, eating healthy, exercising, and doing what’s best for your body. Nutrition consultations are one-on-one, focused on the single person’s dietary needs and deficiencies. And that’s great – if you’re single, have no friends, and live and work by yourself. But the truth is most of us are a part of a larger network of people, whether it be because we’re married, work in a large office, or have a tight-knit group of friends. Who we eat with, as it turns out, has a big impact on what we eat. To ignore this influence when thinking about diets and food is a recipe for disaster.

    How who you eat with affects what you eat

    The idea of eating as a social activity is nothing new. Who you eat with has always been important in the social lives of humans, whether it be who eats first at a ritualistic feast or who gets invited to the dinner parties thrown by presidents or diplomats. Heck, even what you eat has social implications – if you can afford to indulge on the finest filet mignon or beluga caviar. Food and social interaction are deeply entwined in the human psyche, a fact which we tend to ignore in our daily lives.

    Of course, our bodies don’t ignore it. Without even realizing it we change how we eat based on the people around us. Women, for example, eat less calories when they’re eating with men than when they eat with women. Both men and women eat less in front of a stranger of the opposite sex, but women eat particularly less if the guy is attractive. In general, people eat about as much as they see other eating, and eat more when in larger groups of people or when we think other people have eaten more. Even more impressively, how much you like a food item can be influenced by seeing the like or dislike of that food by others.

    But the changes aren’t limited to just who is around in terms of number and gender – their relationship to us has a big impact as well. Guys eat more around their guy friends than male strangers. In fact, men eat more around their guy friends than any other pairing of people. Couples and females around strangers eat much, much less. Married couples eat healthier than single people do, and in turn live longer lives and have reduced risks of diseases like diabetes and heart disease according to national health data like that provided by UK’s Office of National Statistics. In the UK, for example, the mortality rate for single men between 30 and 59 is 2.5 times higher than their married counterparts. Other research has found that married elderly couples are more likely to eat breakfast.

    The Big Question: Why?

    Why do we change what and how we eat around other people? There are a number of reasons. The first has to do with cultural attitudes towards eating. In general, people associate eating less with being feminine and more attractive. So, for women, eating less in front of people they want to impress makes sense. Similarly, men around their guy friends might want to seem more macho or masculine by consuming more. One study found that this effect is even more pronounced when participants are shown images of attractive members of their own gender first. Women are trying to conform to a societal expectation to be small and skinny, while men try to prove themselves by being bigger and better.

    Men and women eating less than in front of their same-sex friends. (Thanks flickr user alex_kuruz)

    But even still that only explains some of the effects. Why are married couples so much healthier than the rest of us, for example? You’d think that a single man or woman, in a constant effort to impress members of the opposite sex, would be in peak condition, while their married counterparts, having at least, in part, secured a mate, would begin to eat poorer. This is especially true when you factor in kids. After all, with kids come the tempting snacks that are left over from kid-oriented meals. And scientists have found that parents eat more than other married couples. But even still, in many developed nations like the UK, married women with children are the healthiest group of people, followed closely by married men. If they’re not trying to constantly impress others, why are they eating so well?

    For one, you have to blame the women. Women eat less and healthier than men do on a day to day basis, period. For example, women eat more fruits and vegetables than men, a difference attributed to increased knowledge about nutrition by women. When men marry women, it’s like having a personal nutritionist there 24/7. This is shown by the fact that marriage, while beneficial to both partners, is far more beneficial to a man’s health than a woman’s. When men lose their partner, either due to divorce or death, their health plummets. Wives also take their husbands away from the constant influence of their male peers, who they tend to eat much poorer around. Part of this, of course, is society’s fault. Maintenance of a family’s nutrition and health are seen as a women’s role, whether women like it or not. Perhaps, as society changes and gender roles become more balanced, the marked increase in health for married men compared to married women will disappear.

    Wife keeping her and her husband healthy by cooking the right food at home. (Thanks flickr user stevendepolo)

    Though, of course, it’s important to note that women get health benefits from marriage, too. It’s possible that, by getting married and having kids, women choose the role of a family’s nurturer and eat better for themselves and, in turn, force their families to do the same. But that’s not the whole story. One of the most likely reasons for healthier married women is simple – they’re happier. When we’re happier, we eat healthier, drink less, and exercise more. Of course, another big benefit for couples is shared eating. Couples are much less likely to eat out than single men and women. Mostly, this is attributed to motivation – single men and women simply have less motivation to cook when they’re cooking for one. Cooking at home leads to healthier meals (because you know what actually goes into it) as well as smaller portions. Basically, by getting married, women tend to end up doing those simple dietary changes that are so heavily recommended by nutritionists – eat the right amount of healthy food at home.

    How Do You Use This Knowledge?

    Well, for one, you can get married. I’m just kidding! The key is to act like you’re married, whether you are or not. For example, cook your own meals. Eat regular meals, as if you had to rely on feeding someone else. Or make yourself feed someone else – maybe instead of cooking for one you can arrange packed lunches with your friends, where each of you takes turns bringing in lunch for a small group at work. That way you’re not relying on take out or prepared meals, and you have the motivation to actually cook something. Or cook big meals and freeze them – it’s easier to convince ourselves to cook in big portions, and if you freeze it, it’ll last you as long as you need.

    Whether single or married, be aware of what you order when you’re in a large group when you’re eating out, and pay attention to how much you eat at office parties or other buffet-style meals when you eat in. If possible, do your best to take a moment and really think about what you’re going to eat so that you’re not swept up in the social aspects of the meal. Is someone ordering appetizers? Maybe you should get a smaller meal, knowing that you’ll munch on the chips and salsa first. As hard as it may be, ignore your mom when she tells you what to eat at family gatherings and make decisions for yourself. When people think about what they’re eating, they tend to eat better – so don’t just mindlessly munch! After all, while you may be influenced by the world around you, you’re also able to rise above those influences and control your own behaviors.

    References

    1. Young, M., Mizzau, M., Mai, N., Sirisegaram, A., & Wilson, M. (2009). Food for thought. What you eat depends on your sex and eating companions Appetite, 53 (2), 268-271 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.07.021
    2. Mori D, Chaiken S, & Pliner P (1987). “Eating lightly” and the self-presentation of femininity. Journal of personality and social psychology, 53 (4), 693-702 PMID: 3681647
    3. Herman CP, Roth DA, & Polivy J (2003). Effects of the presence of others on food intake: a normative interpretation. Psychological bulletin, 129 (6), 873-86 PMID: 14599286
    4. SALVY, S., JARRIN, D., PALUCH, R., IRFAN, N., & PLINER, P. (2007). Effects of social influence on eating in couples, friends and strangers Appetite, 49 (1), 92-99 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2006.12.004
    5. Bock, B., & Kanarek, R. (1995). Women and men are what they eat: The effects of gender and reported meal size on perceived characteristics Sex Roles, 33 (1-2), 109-119 DOI: 10.1007/BF01547938
    6. Harrison, K., Taylor, L., & Marske, A. (2006). Women’s and Men’s Eating Behavior Following Exposure to Ideal-Body Images and Text Communication Research, 33 (6), 507-529 DOI: 10.1177/0093650206293247
    7. Eng, P. (2005). Effects of marital transitions on changes in dietary and other health behaviours in US male health professionals Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 59 (1), 56-62 DOI: 10.1136/jech.2004.020073
    8. Welch, N., Hunter, W., Butera, K., Willis, K., Cleland, V., Crawford, D., & Ball, K. (2009). Women’s work. Maintaining a healthy body weight Appetite, 53 (1), 9-15 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.04.221
    9. Welch, N., Hunter, W., Butera, K., Willis, K., Cleland, V., Crawford, D., & Ball, K. (2009). Women’s work. Maintaining a healthy body weight Appetite, 53 (1), 9-15 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.04.221

  • Nutrition Wonderland’s 2009 Tour of America

    Nutrition Wonderland is taking to the road this Fall to cover the newest developments in the worlds of integrative medicine, nutrition and sustainable agriculture. Below is the official Google Map of our journey – it is an interactive map so feel free to zoom in and check out the whole path.


    View Nutrition Wonderland’s Tour of America – 2009 in a larger map

    We are beginning our survey out in Los Angeles on the West Coast in late September and continue across the United States’ desert southwest into Texas by early October, up through America’s breadbasket in the Great Plains in time for Halloween, examine the hotbed of organic agriculture in the upper Midwest and then head back towards the East Coast and Washington, DC by mid-late November. We should cover roughly 4,000 miles (6K/km) and talk with numerous people and organizations at the forefront of the radical changes going on in medicine and agriculture. If you follow our coverage the whole way, you will begin to see the synergies between the fields and the new way forward they are lighting.

    From Two, Comes One

    One factor in deciding to chronicle where ‘things‘ are with these fields at this particular time has to do with a recent evolution in the approach opinion leaders and policy makers are starting to adopt. Sustainable agriculture blog Civil Eats recently advocated for health care reform while The Integrative Medicine Foundation suggests implementing a sustainable agriculture component as a necessary part of establishing better health care in sub-Saharan Africa. These are not isolated incidents. Many of our stories have been outlining a similar vision, as we have described efforts to reform health care into a proactive system and the ways in which nutrients and diet impact diseases like autism.

    It would appear that the worlds of sustainable agriculture and integrative medicine have started, ever so slowly, to merge.

    The driving force behind this synergy has been the growing awareness that we have a severely broken food system in the United States – and it is a major reason our health care system costs dwarf that of any other industrialized nation on earth. Recent movies like Food Inc and King Corn have exposed the public to the underbelly of industrial agriculture but the connections between compromised growing methods and obesity rates or pesticides and birth defects are just now emerging amongst the public.

    Many proponents of one field inevitably come to see the other as advocating a similar role call of changes. Reductions in harmful agricultural chemicals that effect reproductive health, reform of agricultural and health care insurance incentive structures, limiting large corporate agribusiness and pharmaceutical interests and developing more localized farmers and practitioners networks underscore the overlap between these fields.

    And this development is a logical, even necessary trend. Traditional fields of agriculture and medicine are evolving to better address growing populations that continue to exist on a planet of finite resources. With time, these cutting edge developments will be folded into the mainstream. For now though, these developments are very much new and represent a still premature movement. How they evolve is unknown but we hope to give you a much clearer insight into how they will increasingly combine to represent a new approach to how we live on the planet.

    What We Are Doing

    Our journey aims to survey some of the newest developments in both fields, highlighting how the advancement of both sustainable agriculture and integrative medicine will bring all of us closer to the goal of healthier people on a healthier planet. Below is a list of organizations, locations and people we are in the process of organizing for our trip:

    • Leafy Greens Marketing Association – Sacramento, CA
    • Farms Reach – San Francisco, CA
    • Frank Ford, founder of Arrowhead Mills – Irvine, CA
    • Desert Agriculture – Blythe, CA
    • University of Arizona – Integrative Medicine Center – Tuscon, AZ
    • Gallup Indian Medical Center – Gallup, NM
    • Sunstone Herb Farm – Albuquerque, NM
    • Santa Fe Tree Farm – Santa Fe, NM
    • Plano Community Garden – Plano, TX
    • Food Democracy Now – Clear Lake, IA
    • Iowa State University Sustainable Agriculture Program – Ames, IA
    • Organic Valley Foods – LaFarge, WI
    • Growing Power – Chicago, IL
    • Rodale Institute – Kutztwon, PA

    This is just the preliminary list and it will constantly be updated so check back in regularly. If you are involved in any of these fields and find yourself geographically close to the path we are blazing, drop us a line at [email protected] and we will do our best to drop in to see you and learn about what you are doing.

  • New Study Connects Leptin to Dopamine

    New Study Connects Leptin to Dopamine

    As I’ve been writing the “Understanding Our Bodies: The Physiology of Nutrition” series, I’ve tried to explain how the various chemical systems in our bodies relate to how and what we eat. For example, two of the biggest hormones that affect our eating habits – Leptin, the fullness hormone, and Dopamine, the brain’s reward hormone – seem to have very different and unrelated effects on our bodies. But every day science is discovering just how interwoven and related our bodies different systems are.

    Just this week, for example, after explaining everything I could find about how dopamine relates to eating, scientists from the University of Michigan have discovered a new way that leptin regulates dopamine levels. The study, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, reveals for the first time that the brain’s lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) has neurons which receive signals from leptin and in turn directly feed into the central dopamine system in another area of the brain, the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Because of this, the amount of fat in our bodies (and everything I talked about in the Leptin article) has a direct influence on the amount of dopamine circulating in our brains.

    What did the researchers do?

    Leptin is high when you are full, low when you are hungry

    Most studies that look at leptin focus on one area of the brain: the arcuate nucleus. This is the area that is largely affected by leptin levels and the subsequent effect on appetite. Remember, when leptin levels are relatively high, we aren’t hungry, and when they drop, we want to eat. But this area of the brain isn’t the only one with leptin-responsive neurons, called “LepRb” neurons.

    The researchers found that the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) also contains these LepRb neurons. Other studies have found that a related area, the ventral tegmental area (VTA) also contained a few of these LepRb neurons, and that leptin stimulation there had an effect on dopamine. Other researchers have found that, in general, the LHA has a strong affect on the VTA. But no one had ever looked at how the LHA related to leptin or the VTA’s dopamine. So, the scientists decided to probe a little deeper.

    They took rats and injected leptin directly into the LHA portion of their brains. What they found was that these rats ate less and lost weight. In turn, by sampling brain tissue from the rats, they found that leptin in the LHA caused a 40% increase in dopamine in the VTA as well as a 2.5-fold increase in gene transcription related to dopamine. Simply put, leptin in this area of the brain caused a strong increase in dopamine that was previously unknown to science.

    What does this mean?

    The fact that leptin has a direct affect on dopamine levels means that its controlling more that just our appetites in terms of the food we feel a need to eat, it’s controlling what we want to eat. It’s affecting both our needs and our desires. This increase in brain dopamine likely influences our abilities to avoid tempting foods like sugars and carbs when our bodies don’t actually need them. So if you’re leptin-deficient because of crash dieting or leptin-insensitive because of obesity, you likely feel stronger and harder to resist urges for these foods, making staying healthy or losing weight even more difficult.

    The body’s systems are linked in ways we are only beginning to understand

    It makes sense that leptin would have an effect on the brain’s reward systems. After all, we know that a decrease in dopamine can lead to cravings for food even though our bodies doesn’t need it. If a hormone is to properly control appetite, it would have to have some affect on the dopamine system to prevent unnecessary overeating. Way back when, when humans were evolving, overeating could be costly. When food is scarce, using up what little food is available could mean starvation. So there would be a strong selective pressure to prevent the body from eating too much when it doesn’t need it nutritionally.

    The good news is, these results suggest that our bodies do some of the hard work for us. If we can get our bodies to a healthy weight with good nutrition, the natural leptin levels will help control our desires for bad foods, making it easier to stick to the good we’ve done. On the downside, it means that upsets to our leptin system like crash dieting or obesity have an even more marked impact because they throw off our dopamine levels, too. The scientists in this study note that exactly what happens to dopamine when the leptin system is off is a key area of study for the future.

    As always, this study is yet another reminder that there is a cost to eating poorly and a much bigger benefit to eating healthy and being fit. It’s not just about weight. Dopamine controls our overall needs and desires, feelings of self gratification, and overall happiness. Eating right is about not only how good we look but how good we feel. You’d be surprised at how strong an effect nutrition has on our emotions.

    Reference: Leinninger, G., Jo, Y., Leshan, R., Louis, G., Yang, H., Barrera, J., Wilson, H., Opland, D., Faouzi, M., & Gong, Y. (2009). Leptin Acts via Leptin Receptor-Expressing Lateral Hypothalamic Neurons to Modulate the Mesolimbic Dopamine System and Suppress Feeding Cell Metabolism, 10 (2), 89-98 DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2009.06.011