Is E. Coli on the Rise? Take Note.

Escherichia coli or E. Coli for short, the sickness causing specter that creeps on your raw cookie dough parade. The dark cloud of consequences built in to incorrectly preparing food. E. coli. is a well known bacteria group that can cause serious gastrointestinal illnesses if they end up in the wrong part of the body. E. Coli do serve a purpose within the human body, as well as the bodies of some animals. They contribute to the body of bacteria that maintains our intestinal health. However, the issue arises when something that should remain in one's bowls or be exerted from the body entirely somehow makes its way into the early stages of digestion. 

One of the ways in which E. Coli. enters the body is through contaminated food. In the case of meat, either the animal itself was contaminated or it was exposed to the bacteria during processing. The animal could also have eaten contaminated food creating a chain of contamination from its feed to our tables. In the case of, say, cookie dough, it is often the flour that is contaminated and this is a big reason why if you have a cookie dough addiction, you should always heat treat your flour before making it. You should also leave out the eggs if you know a batch of dough is going to see the inside of your stomach before the inside of an oven. 

The E. coli. Family includes some of the deadliest bacteria we can ingest. Some produce a toxin called Shiga which can cause anything from stomach cramps and diarrhea to death. You might also experience fever, general nausea, vomiting and basically all the symptoms we generally associate with food poisoning. Some people may not realize that depending on the strain, you can begin to show symptoms as long as 9 days after a contamination. If you begin to have symptoms that resemble E.Coli poisoning, you should contact your doctor as soon as possible. Not only is it the best way to protect yourself but if there is a wider spread of contamination, you might save others who are more vulnerable than yourself. Bacterial infections are most dangerous for the elderly and very young, so it’s important to take special care when preparing food for either. 

To reduce the risk of contamination at home, it is important to cook your food thoroughly and to wash your hands really well before preparing anything but especially raw food. As E. coli lives in the gut so not washing your hands well after using the bathroom can lead to your own personal outbreak of contamination. Also, make sure you clean up preparation areas after cooking raw foods, especially meat. If you suspect contamination, it is a good idea to take steps to sanitize anything that may have come into contact with the contaminated food. 

Just this week, we’ve had multistate contamination of ground beef (Check In the News for more information). It’s a good idea to follow https://www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls to keep abreast of food recalls and press releases concerning domestic outbreaks of E. coli and other contaminants!

Resources: 

USDA Food Recalls

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/16638-e-coli-infection

FDA Page including information of sanitization

Mayo clinic: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/e-coli/symptoms-causes/syc-20372058 

Cookie Dough E. Coli 

Happy New Year! Cheers?

New Years’ Eve is here and with it we round out the holiday season and prepare for an evening of cheer and toasting. However, with flu season and corona looming in the background, it might make sense to consider what the last party of the year might do to our precious, and possibly taxed, immune system. 

We’ve talked about eating well but let’s briefly dive into one of our favorite party guests, alcohol. Alcohol is undoubtedly popular and we all know it isn’t the most healthy thing to put into one’s body, but is it really all that bad? 

Beyond the impairment and dangers of functioning under the influence, alcohol itself carries a pretty heavy toll on our body’s immune system. Put simply, in any quantity, big or small, frequent or rare, it weakens us. Just one drink can suppress the immune system for as long as 24 hours. If you’ve ever had heavy drinkers in your family, you probably already know that chronic drinking carries a significant risk of several different forms of cancer. The risk of esophageal cancer, especially for those who do not process alcohol well due to an enzyme deficiency, is significantly increased by consuming alcohol, along with colorectal cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, and various cancers located in the head and neck. This increase in risk is measurable even when someone only has one drink a day or occasionally binge drinks. It’s also important to not that binge drinking here doesn’t mean getting blackout drunk. Binge drinking means having 4 or 5 drinks at one time and yes, a shot counts as a drink. 

Cancer may seem like it is just a scare word sometimes and almost everything you engage with can give you some form of cancer but that’s not all alcohol is tied to. It’s also tied to the degradation of your liver, kidneys, lungs, and heart. It impacts the brain as you might assume and most notably for this COVID plagued time, it significantly impacts the lungs. 

The immune system is suppressed by alcohol consumption and is more susceptible to infection by bacteria, virus and even physical injury. Injuries heal slower and alcohol especially stifles the healing of burns, hemorrhagic shock and traumatic brain injuries. It disrupts the microbiome in our gut which is involved in everything from breaking down our food to regulating our hormones. The system of organisms cohabitating in our gut also supports our immune system and just one serving of alcohol can throw that system into complete disarray. Frankly, the list of things not impacted in some way by that one ingredient would probably be shorter.

So, this New Year’s make sure you are considering all the risks and weighing them appropriately and keeping the very best of company before you partake of this literal bomb to the body’s homeostasis. Cheers!

Resources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4590612/pdf/arcr-37-2-153.pdf

https://adf.org.au/insights/alcohol-immune-system-covid-19/ 

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohols-effects-body

Crush Your Thirst, Not Your Health

The temperature is 92 °F. You’re sitting by the pool with your feet dangling over the edge. It’s mid-summer and the scent of honeysuckles perfumes the warm air. You reach into the cooler for something to drink and haul out a glass bottle of orange, fizzy liquid. You aren’t ten anymore but you’ve never lost the love of a cold bottle of pop to cut the summertime heat. Twisting off the top, you knock back a crisp 20 ounces of citrusy fizz, straight out of your childhood. The flavor is the same, the color, too. The brominated vegetable oil (BVO) holding it all together. Wait, what? Why is BVO in your drink? Oil in soda sounds gross and unlikely but there it is on the ingredients list. What’s that about?

Turns out, BVO is in a lot of citrusy drinks and it is, in fact, what keeps them together. It’s an emulsifier and helps prevent the oils in these drinks from separating from the carbonated water. Without it, a drink like Crush would divide into its parts and make up a very different overall experience. Ok, so BVO keeps orange soda and other artificial orange drinks, like the Orange Thirst Quencher Gatorade, looking good and delivering a unified, homogenous flavor profile. What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that BVO has been linked to memory loss, skin conditions (like swelling and boils), brain development issues, hormonal dysfunction, fertility complications, thyroid impairment and, you guessed it, cancer. This makes it an obvious addition to any country’s ban list and it is banned in over 100 countries. Not to make this a trend when combined with our last article, but once again, the U.S. is sadly behind. PepsiCo has stated that it plans to remove the ingredient from its products and has removed it from Gatorade as recently as last year. They’ve declined to comment on their motivation for doing so but we can only hope that this move will encourage movement towards a BVO-free USA.

For the time being, the FDA is holding to its opinion that BVO is “generally considered safe” for human consumption. There are a number of medical professionals that are pushing for a reconsideration of BVO and the global opinion definitely seems to support this perspective. In the meantime, it’s important to know what these chemicals are and what impact they may have on one’s health. BVO seems to be pretty bad for us. Even if you don’t have a large amount of it at one time, it is now thought to linger in the body, similar to heavy metals, building up over time. The global recommendation is to eliminate it entirely from one’s diet. Until the U.S. catches up with that standard, we can do what we need to, to protect ourselves and our families.

Resources:

https://perioimplants.us/blog/bvo-soft-drinks/

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/bvo/faq-20058236

https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/Food/11-foods-banned-us/story?id=19457237

Fermented & Healthy

We’ve talked in a previous article about the health benefits of probiotics and prebiotics. We know that staying healthy requires maintaining a healthy microbiome. We also know that you can get legitimate supplements to supply both but the best way is really through your balanced diet. One of the best sources of pre- and probiotics is fermented food. Anything like yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, or even beverages like kombucha or kefir will provide some level of probiotics! These are things that are regularly consumed around the world and now we are seeing the value beyond their unique flavors and umami filled tastes. In addition, it is also important to consume prebiotic foods! Some of these include garlic, honey, onions, chicory and resistant oligosaccharides. 

The benefits of fermented foods therefore track pretty closely with the benefit of a healthy biome with both probiotic and prebiotic support. There is a boost to cardiovascular health and the mitigation of high blood pressure. Diabetes, obesity and really anything inflammation based chronic illness benefit from the inclusion of fermented foods in one’s diet. Additionally, mental health and bone health also improve as the microbiome is supported. 

Check out this short video going over some easy to incorporate fermented foods!

Once You find a fermented food that you enjoy, getting the necessary pro-and prebiotics in you diet will be easy and natural and will be in a more absorbable form that simply taking a capsule.

RESOURCES:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8620815/

https://europepmc.org/article/MED/33838493 

https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/about-us/news/blogs/fermented-foods-the-latest-trend

Wheatgrass 101

Occasionally a food fad will sweep through in a summer and is gone before most of us truly understand what all the hype was about. Sometimes, though, when the “fad” seems to be a little more substantive, it graduates to a higher status in our minds, shared with other accepted parts of alternative or holistic medicine. Frequently, this tends to be the case when the remedy or practice is actually well-known and even commonplace in another part of the world but has only recently made its way into American culture. Such a path seems to be the case with the wheatgrass phenomenon. A few summers ago, wheatgrass seemed to explode into the smoothie and juicing market. Almost overnight, juice bars and health food stores nudged the charcoal over to make room for this bright green contender in the limelight. It’s been a few years and wheatgrass doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. So, what’s all the fuss about? 

Wheatgrass is the young grass of the common wheat plant Triticum aestivum. It is very high in chlorophyll, flavonoids, and an assortment of vitamins and minerals. It’s also known for its iron, calcium and amino acid content. It can be frozen but it’s usually juiced and taken in smoothies or in “shots” of a few ounces at a time. It’s reputation for being anti-cancer and generally healing seems to come from its high chlorophyll content. Chlorophyll is thought to have antibiotic and anti-inflammatory properties. Fans suggest uses from drinking it to cleanse the liver to rinsing with it to eliminate a toothache. 

Some of the claims of wheatgrass users may be a bit of a stretch but what we do know is that drinking wheatgrass does seem to induce synergistic benefits to chemotherapy and might assist with the mitigation of chemo side effects. There is also evidence that the anti inflammatory properties may help with arthritis, diabetes, colitis and other inflammatory diseases. Also, while a shot of this might contain a lot of the nutrients you need from a diverse helping of veggies, it will not replace the phytochemicals and complete nutrient profiles you would get by eating a variety of veggies. There are also a few drawbacks. If you have a gluten allergy or are pregnant, it is recommended that you avoid wheatgrass. The first group for obvious reasons and the second group because this supplemental food is unregulated and you could be exposed to contaminants and unexpected toxins. 

At the end of the day, it looks like wheatgrass may be healthy and even helpful though not a replacement for a balanced diet. Some of the claims are not rooted in the facts but other benefits are pretty straightforward. If you decide to try wheatgrass as a way to improve an inflammatory disease,  remember that it is supplemental and not meant to be in place of regular care. As also, we do not intend the information here to be used in diagnosis for prescription purposes but only to inform as you make your own dietary decisions. Buy local (sometimes you can even grow this at home yourself) and if we can help you in your product research, don’t hesitate to reach out!

RESOURCES:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26156538/

https://thechalkboardmag.com/50-benefits-of-wheatgrass

https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-wheatgrass#2 

https://doi.org/10.1111/1750-3841.14224 

https://www.organicauthority.com/energetic-health/benefits-of-wheatgrass

Cut Carbs Some Slack!

You’re staring down at the leftover sweet potato casserole from Turkeyday and thinking about how many carbs that basically-a-pie entree probably carries. It’s so good but it’s so heavy! In fact, looking at the bread, stuffing and mac-and-cheese, you begin to wonder if you shouldn’t just skip carbs entirely for a while. Low carb diets are better anyway, right? Let’s take a look.  

Carbs are one of the most readily available forms of energy the body has access to. When you go to exert yourself in any way, carbs supply the fuel that lets you push. This is especially true in regards to physical workouts and exertion. Carbs are a big part of what are bodies’ run on. So then, are carbs good? Hmmmm, it’s a little more complex than that, though in this case complexity is a good thing 

Carbs can be classified in a couple different ways. The most common is probably by type. There are sugars, starches and fiber. Sugars include those naturally occurring in fruits and veggies or dairy products, as well as processed sugars like what you use to bake or what’s found in almost anything sweetened. Even things like high-fructose corn syrup and agave nectar fall into this category. Sucrose, fructose and even lactose are all, technically, carbs. 

Starches include grains like rice, beans, potatoes and even corn. Starch is a densely packed pod of energy that a plant forms to store what it collects from the sun. It is usually wrapped in an outer shell of some kind which in the case of grain consists of a bran and germ. This fibrous outer layer is filled with vitamins and minerals and is the reason whole grain foods are generally considered to be more balanced and nutritious than refined ones. 

Fiber, as we’ve discussed in a previous blog, is the indigestible part of foods like beans and legumes, fruit and veggies, whole grain foods and more, that mostly passes right through the body but has a big impact on digestion and gastrointestinal regulation. It allows you to absorb more nutrients from your food and to regularly pass what the body doesn’t need. Fiber is hugely important and also falls under carbohydrates. 

You can probably tell right away that the idea of totally cutting out carbs might not make as much sense as you may have been told. A lot of the healthiest and important foods we need are technically carbs. Fiber, for example, is crucial to digestion and adults in the US get only a small portion of what is recommended (which according to the American Diabetes Association is about 25 to 30 grams a day). Carbs aren’t always bread and potatoes. Sometimes they are split peas and corn or bananas and almonds. 

The amount of carbohydrates that each person needs is much more dependent on the individual than any blanket statement could cover. The pile of gooey marshmallows topping that sweet potato casserole might be something to consider when cleaning up Thanksgiving leftovers but keep in mind that not all carbs are created equally!

Resources: 

American Diabetes Association

Role of polysaccharides in food, digestion, 

https://exceednutrition.com/all-about-carbohydrates/and health

Chocolate, Health & Healthy Chocolate

You’ve probably seen the jokes floating around that go something like, “I want a salad…but a salad that is mostly tomatoes and cheese, no lettuce, on a really, really big crouton. A pizza…I want a pizza.” Or, “chocolate comes from cocoa, which grows on trees so it’s basically a fruit. Chocolate is a fruit salad.” While these memes might stretch the truth a little bit, chocolate at least should not be relegated to the junk food pile just yet. 

Chocolate or more specifically the cocoa chocolate is made from, is linked to a reduction in heart disease and lower blood pressure. It contains many bioactive components like vitamins, minerals, polyphenols and fatty acids. It is also supportive of mental health and has been documented to improve the mental state of expecting mothers. One article stated that because there is a high level of flavanols in chocolate, it has antiallergic, anti-viral, anti inflammatory and anticancer properties. It even reduces the chance of a woman developing type 2 diabetes by reducing their insulin resistance. It would seem that the benefit of chocolate is more significant for people assigned female at birth, possibly because of their hormonal makeup or maybe some other feature we don‘t totally understand yet. 

Historically, chocolate was used in many cultures for its medicinal purposes and was even referred to as the “food of the gods”. With Nestle and the introduction of ingredients like condensed powdered milk and large amounts of sugar, chocolate’s common usage as a medicine started to see a significant decline. 

Polyphenols could have a discussion all their own but the presence of their flavanols subset in chocolate pushes chocolate into an almost superfood tier when it comes to cognitive function. In fact, one study made their entire purpose to figure out if chocolate consumption in a country resulted in a higher cognitive function on average for that country! They did this by taking the chocolate consumption for the country and examining it with regard to how many Nobel laureates there were in each country. The results supported the hypothesis that chocolate consumption enhances intelligence. 

As you might imagine, milk chocolate yields less of these beneficial characteristics and white chocolate isn’t really chocolate in the strictest sense. The addition of milk and sugar undercuts a lot of the benefits so if you are eating chocolate for your health as well as your enjoyment, dark chocolate, minimally processed, is the way to go.

Listen to this article:

Got Milk...Problems?

Got Milk…Problems? 

Whether you are a 13-year-old pug taking the world by storm or a young, human athlete trying to build a solid physiological foundation for success, everyone wants strong bones. If you grew up in the 90s, milk was touted to be the best way to strengthen bones as it contained high amounts of calcium. The iconic “Got Milk?” commercials were in their prime, presenting a spectrum of unlikely events hinging on the need and lack of milk! Many probably remember the fateful commercial where a mom in her two kids witness their older neighbor who never drinks milk comically losing both arms while lifting a heavy wheelbarrow. It was “common knowledge” that milk supported bone health and was necessary for healthy kids! Even now there are a number of experts that still believe milk is the fastest way to get a spectrum of nutrients, including calcium, quickly and easily. When research came out discussing how milk leaches some calcium from your bones, the pro-milk group claimed that while milk leaches some calcium from the body, it also adds significantly more, having an overall positive impact.  So, what does the research actually show about the consumption of milk?

Research shows that while excellent for baby cows, cow's milk is not particularly healthy or necessary for growing humans. It is, in fact, linked to vascular congestion and weight gain. Additionally, while human breast milk is an important part of human nutrition, cow’s milk is instead an integral part of the development of gastrointestinal issues. More than half of the global population is thought to have some level of lactose intolerance. It’s also been tied to several different types of acne and other types of dermatitis. 

What about bone health? Well, for one notable group, older women, research shows that there is no real link between milk and protection against osteoporosis. Additionally, in another study, drinking milk increased the frequency of broken bones (brittleness) in men by 9%! The research as a whole seems to agree that limiting milk is best for bone health. Even if one cup a day doesn’t hurt your bones significantly, more is shown to be measurably detrimental. Besides that, higher dairy consumption has been linked to several forms of cancer, including ovarian cancer, and is thought to be a possible trigger for Type 1 diabetes. It’s also known to raise cholesterol and increase a population's risk of multiple sclerosis. 

What about all that calcium? Not only does milk leach calcium from your bones but it isn’t the best form of calcium for the human body to absorb! There are many other better sources of calcium that don’t carry as many deleterious side effects. Leafy greens, tofu, plant-based milk or even a clean supplement might be a better source of the calcium you need. Additionally, as far as strong bones go, the research also found that more than taking calcium or drinking it, exercise is the best way to support strong bones! So maybe give that 2% a break and instead eat well and keep moving! 

Resources: 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190408-should-we-drink-milk-to-strengthen-bones

https://www.pcrm.org/news/blog/white-lies-five-myths-debunked

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/08/christopher-gardner-busts-myths-about-milk.html

Milk intake and risk of hip fracture in men and women: a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20949604/

Milk consumption during teenage years and risk of hip fractures in older adults https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24247817/

Got milk commercials https://youtu.be/0PAj5X4oYro