Addictive Junk Food

Why is it that unhealthy food (aka junk food) taste so good and addictive? This article gave an excerpt from Michael Moss' book, "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooks Us", of the science of addiction. Very good reading.

Celiac-disease and gluten-free diet

Often time when I went to shop for grocery in organic shops, I often encounter food labeled as "wheat free" or "gluten" free. At first, I thought what is wrong with gluten, is it considered unhealthy? As someone who do not have celiac disease, I found out that there are quite numbers of people (mostly live in city of 1st world countries) have "wheat allergy" or "gluten sensitivity". This NYTimes article, "Who has the guts for gluten?", describe the reason why the occurrence happens higher in people who live in certain environment or lifestyle.

Some backlog articles

I have been pretty busy for the past few months and haven't update much, on the next few days I will post some of my backlog write-up. Here we go:

Health over look

I love the Dove Real Beauty campaign. I found that nowadays we are bombarded with unrealistic model of beauty. And that make some people diet to lose weight (as an attempt to achieve media stereotype of beauty) rather than to be healthy. The article "Eating for Health, not Weight" is best summarized why is it so.

Mislabeled food

Unless you are a seafood foodies, it is quite hard for most people on the street to know the differences of different fish. That is why numbers of food establishment have been cheating their customer. This reminds me of one point when I vacationing in Bali, we chose a live crab for our dinner. I know how to choose a good one. But when it come out on the table, it was not the one that I chose. I am absolutely sure because I recognized them by their claw.

How we die

Nice article at New England Journal of Medicine about burden of disease and change of task in medicine.

The dark-side of Yoga

Today NYT article point out the dark facts about Yoga and its relationship with Tantra that make this kind of "exercise" lead to a sexual debauchery. Frankly speaking, it's relationship with cult spirituality itself already made me so worry about this. If you want a good exercise for your well-being, try instead Pilates or Aerobics.

Regulation on Sugar

NY-Times carry another opinion article about regulating sugar in consumer food especially those that bought through food-stamp program. I agree that government should regulate food with excessive sugar additive just like they regulate alcohol.

Endocrine Disruptor

Last weekend I read an interesting book on boys development and ADHD from "Boys Adrift" by Dr. Leonard Sax. He listed five factors that drive the decline of boys:

1. Video games
2. School teaching method (he advocate single sex class/school)
3. Overuse of medication for ADHD
4. Endocrin disruptor found in our environment and food supply chain
5. Social devaluation of masculinity (see The Simpsons)

For this post, I'm interested to expound further on the point 4 about the "Endocrine disruptor".

Have you recently be shopping for water-bottle or even milk-bottle for baby? If yes, you might have seen that numbers of manufacturer 'proudly' declare their product to be BPA-free. Apparently it was found that BPA (Bisphenol A), which is primarily use to make polycarbonate plastic, exhibit endocrine disruption effect, specifically it elevate rates diabetes, mammary and prostate cancers, decreased sperm count, reproductive problems, early puberty, obesity, and neurological problems.

BPA on the plastic bottle could leach when it is stored in warm/hot temperature. One way to identify of plastic that contain BPA is to check the recycling code number. Most plastic with number 3 and 7 do contain BPA. If you prefer to be safe, always choose a glass bottle. Beware as well with can-food (i.e. can tuna) where most of the time the can lining contain BPA. Always prefer fresh food rather than processed food.

Also read NYTimes article on "How Chemical Affect Us"