Unity Farm Journal - Second Week of September 2016
Hurricane Hermine came and went, dropping only 2/10ths of an inch of rain on the drought parched soil of Eastern Massachusetts. Although we had 20 mph wind gusts, none of the stressed trees were knocked over.We ’re continuing to irrigate our crops using our 60 zones of drip irrigation, while trying to preserve the well. We ’re praying for rain.We ’re always learning at Unity Farm. This week ’s question - can a pig get cyanide toxicity from eating peach pits? Each week we receive the discarded fruit and vegetables from Tilly and Salvy ’s farmstand, feeding them to the pigs, poultry and...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - September 8, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Summer Fruit Cake
Labor Day weekend at the cottage with good friends. A bittersweet end to summer.
Lake swimming, hiking, biking, reading, stargazing.
Shunpiking* to discover gorgeous vistas, plump red sumac berries ripe for the picking (and drying for spice – I”ll post on that later) and the best garage sale ever.
Making Irene’s summer fruit cake to bring to an outdoor dinner party on an evening cool enough to end inside around a burning wood stove. (Thanks Rick for leaving the stove door open so we could see the fire.)
We left a day early, warned that the impending hurricane would make return to the coast near imposs...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - September 5, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Desserts Peach and plum cake Peach cake Stone fruit cake Summer fruit cake Source Type: blogs
Disappointment
When I stopped working where they brought cookies, bagels, and pastries in several times a week, when for runs to the bakery next door for snacks, and shared pizza, Chinese, or Thai lunches, I thought I would lose weight. I did lose some weight, maybe 10 lbs. Then I gained some of it back.Some how over the past ten years, besides getting older and developing a million health ailments, I have managed to put on more pounds than I can believe. I am thirty pounds over what I consider my fattest ever weight. I am not sure how that happened. And now, even though I go to the gym three times a week, I can ' t seem to lose any more...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - August 2, 2016 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: disappointment food shopping weight Source Type: blogs
Like detergent to your intestines
Emulsifying agents are commonly used in foods to keep them mixed. You will commonly find carageenan, for instance, in ice cream to keep dairy fat from separating from the water and proteins, especially after repeated melting and refreezing.
The capacity for a compound to emulsify a solution varies from minimal to dramatic. Even some natural compounds in whole, unprocessed foods can exert modest emulsifying effects, such as acacia (acacia seeds), pectin (apples, peaches), and lecithin (egg yolks). The most powerful emulsification effects occur with synthetic or semi-synthetic emulsifying agents, such as polysorbate-80, carb...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - June 6, 2016 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle bowel flora emulsifiers emulsifying health microbiota prebiotic probiotic Source Type: blogs
A Lie A Day: Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids Wrongly Accuses Tobacco Companies of Marketing Gummy Bear E-Cigarettes
In what is rapidly becoming a tragic farce, anti-nicotine groups are now lying at a rate of at least one per day in a deliberate attempt to demonize electronic cigarettes.Today's liar is the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which claimed in a press release that the tobacco companies are marketing gummy bear-flavored electronic cigarettes to youth. The Campaign asked: "Why in the world is Congress helping tobacco companies lure kids with gummy bear-flavored e-cigarettes?"The Rest of the StoryThe rest of the story is that, as I said yesterday, you simply cannot trust anything you hear from anti-nicotine groups these days abou...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - April 20, 2016 Category: Addiction Source Type: blogs
Mongo has a bone!
I was wandering around HEB today (I hate shopping without an appetite; it leads to a weird larder) and saw GARGANTUAN BONES for sale. There were weeny, teacup-Schnauzer sized bones (about twelve inches) and GOLIATH BONES (that was the name), so I bought a GOLIATH BONE.Mongo took it from me with mingled excitement and trepidation. He chewed it for about ten minutes on the back deck, then walked around the back yard, stepping very carefully, with his head on one side as he carried it off-center in his mouth. He made sure Rocky next door and Gracie two yards over saw it, and plumed his tale out when the boxer mixes on the oth...
Source: Head Nurse - March 15, 2016 Category: Nursing Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
The Meme-ifcation of Health Care
By YEVGENIY FEYMAN
Why can’t we have nice things? As a self-anointed health policy wonk, I find myself asking this question many times. It seems that every potentially transformative (to use a tired cliché) health care trend must eventually go through a process I’ll call “meme-ification.” And I’ll preface by saying that this applies across the political spectrum.
Take the hobby horse of many progressive reformers – single payer. If you’ve spent any time immersed in health care policy, you’ve probably heard it all: every other advanced country does it, insurance companies (and profits) are evil, health care...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 3, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: THCB Source Type: blogs
Georgia Judge Rejects Challenge to School Choice
Great news from the Peach State, where a superior court judge dismissed a constitutional challenge to Georgia’s scholarship tax credit (STC) law. The Institute for Justice intervened to defend the law on behalf of five tax-credit scholarship recipients. Currently, more than 13,000 Georgia students receive tax-credit scholarships to attend the schools of their choice.
School choice opponents alleged that the STC violated the state constitution’s historically anti-Catholic Blaine Amendment, which prohibits the state from publicly funding religious schools, among other provisions. However, citing precedent from the U.S. ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 9, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Jason Bedrick Source Type: blogs
4 Tips for Managing Carbs on Wheat Belly
There is NOT a lot of counting on the Wheat Belly lifestyle, but keeping an eye on your carb intake is among the keys to success. This is especially true when you are just starting out, including starting out on your Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox when you need to reverse the metabolism/insulin/blood sugar/inflammation effects of years of wheat/grain consumption.
While we do not count calories or fat grams, we count carbs because 1) the majority of people begin this process with diabetes, pre-diabetes, high blood sugars and insulin resistance that all have to be reversed to regain control over health and weight, and 2) man...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - November 30, 2015 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle blood sugar carbs glucose gluten glycemic grains insulin net Weight Loss Source Type: blogs
Maybe medical school applications should come with a warning label
I did some pretty crazy things to get into medical school (don’t worry Mom, nothing illegal). For several years before applying I became a medicine groupie. I read books about being a doctor, watched documentaries about medicine, shadowed physicians for hours on end so I could imagine what it might be like. I watched many a friend go off to med school and graduate … and I waited, I hoped. I did research (which involved a little too much rat killing for my liking), I worked in a peach orchard to demonstrate my dedication to migrant farm worker health. I became an EMT; I got three master’s degrees. I got as close to me...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 13, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Fiona Scott, MPH Tags: Education Medical school Psychiatry Source Type: blogs
“In the words of @nytfood: “@brunopizzanyc serves a pie...
"In the words of @nytfood: "@brunopizzanyc serves a pie @Instagram loves." The chefs at the new #pizzeria in Manhattan's East Village mill their flour in the basement using whole New York State wheat berries. Then, they ferment it slowly with a sourdough starter. In this photo by @danielkrieger, blots of soft raw-milk cheese punctuate this #pizza topped with country ham and sliced peaches. Follow @nytfood to see more photos of #🍕 and other late-night snack options. #regram #pizzatime" By nytimes on Instagram. Posted on infosnack. (Source: Kidney Notes)
Source: Kidney Notes - October 22, 2015 Category: Urology & Nephrology Authors: Joshua Schwimmer Source Type: blogs
A Solution in Search of a Problem
Last week, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal’s Education Reform Commission released its draft recommendations for improving and expanding the state’s school choice programs. While some of the commission’s proposed changes are meritorious, the commission failed to recommend expanding the state’s highly popular, nearly universal scholarship tax credit (STC), instead proposing that the state create a new STC that is highly regulated and much more limited in scope.
The commission’s two proposed changes to the existing STC (having the Department of Revenue count actual contributions against the tax credit cap rather than m...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 25, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Jason Bedrick Source Type: blogs
Human Ingenuity and the Future of Food
A recent article in Business Insider showing what the ancestors of modern fruits and vegetables looked like painted a bleak picture. A carrot was indistinguishable from any skinny brown root yanked up from the earth at random. Corn looked nearly as thin and insubstantial as a blade of grass. Peaches were once tiny berries with more pit than flesh. Bananas were the least recognizable of all, lacking the best features associated with their modern counterparts: the convenient peel and the seedless interior. How did these barely edible plants transform into the appetizing fruits and vegetables we know today? The answer is huma...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 8, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Chelsea German Source Type: blogs
Foods that Nourish, Replenish and Repair
The food we eat serves many purposes. It satisfies a primal need to fuel our bodies and quell hunger. It connects us to family and friends in lovely ways, during the holidays, in social situations and at the nightly dinner table. It encourages us to be creative, to try new things, explore different cultures, and savor interesting tastes. And it comforts us, at least temporarily, when we are lonely, sad, anxious or otherwise spent.
Food has another very important purpose: it cleanses, repairs, replenishes our body at the most basic cellular level. In fact, the latest research from the field of nutrigenomics[1], reve...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - August 25, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Nutrition Source Type: blogs
No Markets, Then No Water. California's Avoidable Crisis
This is what happens in a world without markets for water, as Eli Saslow reports in the Washington Post:
Their two peach trees had turned brittle in the heat, their neighborhood pond had vanished into cracked dirt and now their stainless-steel faucet was spitting out hot air. “That’s it. We’re dry,” Miguel Gamboa said during the second week of July, and so he went off to look for water….
For a few days now, they had been without running water in the fifth year of a California drought that had finally come to them. First it had devastated the orchards where Gamboa and his wife had once picked grapes. Then it drain...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 21, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
