Cultured Beef

Vegan from PETA rejoice! Now you can eat beef without feeling guilty, because Maastricht University (funded by Sergey Brin of Google) have created cultured beef. The culture is grown from a cow's stem cell. The meat has been made into a burger patty, cooked and eaten. Anyone would like a $300,000 burger?

Microbes are your friend

Hannah Whitaker for The New York Times

Last week NYTimes article by Michael Pollan brought a fascinating research result from the frontier of Health Science. The gist of the article basically said that our rampant use of antibiotics, our diet of processed foods, environmental toxin and generally less "microbial pressure" (i.e. sterile environment) in everyday life affects the biodiversity of microbes in our gut. Because of this, we're more susceptible to condition like allergies, asthma and diabetes. Who is up for fecal transplant when sick?

What mother eat affect the breast-milk

Another sad case where a vegan-couple who didn't take Vit B12 and Vit A on their diet and have their baby fully breast-fed. The baby died malnourished. This is a strong case that while plant-based diet shown to be healthy, strict veganism is not!

What the world eats?

Time's article featured photos by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluision from their book "Hungry Planet". Their portraits feature pictures of each family with a week's worth of food purchases. We soon learn that diet is determined by largely uncontrollable forces like poverty, conflict and globalization, which can bring change with startling speed. Thus cultures can move, sometimes in a single jump, from traditional diets to the vexed plenty of global-food production. People have more to eat and, too often, eat more of nutritionally questionable food. And their health suffers.

Mexico

Britain

North Carolina, USA

Australia

Germany

California, USA

Italy

Canada

France

Japan

Texas, USA

China

Luxembourg

Poland

Kuwait

Mongolia

Turkey

Mali

India

Bhutan

Chad

Ecuador

Guatemala

Fight Obesity: Freakonomics way

For you who haven't read Freakonomics, it is a book by an economist that look at how the world works from different angle. Like how two decades after "row v wade" US have lower crime rate. Anyway, on their recent podcast, Steve Levitt (the economist) was hired by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to brainstorm of ways to fight childhood obesity. He got dozen participants to explore the biological, behavioral, political and economic angles of obesity.

The participants are: Peter Attia, a former surgeon who now runs a nonprofit focused on nutrition; Kelly Brownell from the Rudd Center For Food Policy & Obesity at Yale; Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children’s Zone; Bill Dietz, the former director of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity at the CDC; Chris Economos, who studies obesity and childhood nutrition at Tufts ; Steven Gortmaker of the Harvard School of Public Health; Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman; Harvard economist David Laibson; RWJF Health Group senior vice president Jim Marks; Brian Mullaney, co-founder of Smile Train and WonderWork; Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has written a book about obesity; and Mary Story from the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota.

And on this discussion, no idea is out of the table, even the outlandish one. Go check it out.

The irony of US Federal government

Seems like they don't put the dollar where their mouth is.

Coconut Milk

For my lunch today, I eat vegan Indian food. As you know, Indian cuisine often use coconut milk, just like Thai and Indonesian, in their cuisine. Many bodies around the world such as WHO, FDA and American Heart Association are recommend against consuming in significant amount due to its high level of saturated fat. However is coconut milk / oil really that  bad? Unrefined coconut milk contain large proportion of lauric acid, which is good in increasing your HDL. Not only that virgin coconut-oil is composed mainly of medium-chain triglycerides, which may not carry the same risks as other saturated fat.
So, how to solve this paradox? In this article, Ivy explain that the word unrefined and/or unprocessed are the key to answer this. Processed coconut oils contain hydrogenated oils (which contain trans fats) that are harmful to your health, not the unrefined coconut. Early studies on the health effects of coconut oil used partially hydrogenated coconut oil and not virgin coconut oil, which has a different health risk profile. While I am not suggesting you start eat lots of coconut meat or adding coconut oil by spoon full to every meal, unrefined coconut consumed in moderation is okay. However, when eating out, it is quite unlikely you will find eating places that will be using unrefined coconut milk or virgin coconut oil (since they spoil very fast), hence it is best to avoid food that use them (unless you it is explicitly mention that they use unrefined / unprocessed coconut milk).