World hunger issues prompt GJ man to try monthlong diet of insects

Jeremy Connor sprinkles a measuring cup full of crickets over his rice and beans as he prepares a meal at his Grand Junction home. Connor and his wife, Naomi, are blogging about their #BugsEndHunger campaign to promote insects as a food source.

Jeremy Connor of Grand Junction is eating insects during the month of May to draw attention to bugs as a way to end malnutrition and hunger.

Breakfast: potatoes with crickets.

Dinner: black beans, rice and fresh salsa, whole roasted crickets and white corn tortillas.

Lunch: corn tortillas with refried beans, olives, crickets, lettuce and salsa.

Lunch: corn tortillas with refried beans, olives, crickets, lettuce and salsa.

By Staff Saturday, May 6, 2017

Jeremy Connor has a long history of picky eating.

Butter on his bread? No thanks. Dressing on his salad? Forget it. Avocados? Nope.

So you can imagine his breakfast Monday morning: potatoes cut homefries-style or in the style of a typical Central American meal and pan-fried until tender, tossed with a handful of crickets.

Yes, crickets. Those crickets, relatives of the stark black insects he saw clinging to the underside of a tarp in his yard when he lifted it a while back. He saw those several dozen bugs and thought, hmmm

Hed been pondering and researching for a while aquaponics, hydroponics, various methods of small-scale, sustainable agriculture that could not only supplement his familys diet, but help him contribute to combating malnutrition and hunger, worldwide problems that have long laid on his heart.

So, insects. Bugs. Creeping (or hopping) critters that some researchers think have the potential to end world hunger.

Ill be the first to admit its not easy, said Connor, 40, a Grand Junction father of four who has a background in ministry. That first time I just kind of breathed through it and once I ate it, it was like, oh, this is OK.

For the entire month of May, Connor is conducting an experiment in which his diet consists only of the insects and plant-based foods that can either be found locally in the four regions of the world with the highest concentration of people who endure chronic hunger, or brought in through food aid programs.

Working with various agriculturalists and producers of insect-based products around the country, he said the goal is not just to raise awareness of the benefits of incorporating insects into a balanced, omnivorous diet, but to produce a picture-based Farming Insects Guide that can be distributed and used around the world.

Via their Seeds of Action organization (seedsofaction.com) and #BugsEndHunger campaign, and in partnership with Little Herds (littleherds.org), Connor and his wife, Naomi, said they hope to be part of a dietary change not just in developing nations, but at home as well.

While Naomi and the children arent consuming insects to the degree Jeremy is, their 12-year-old son did request an insect-infused cake for his birthday Saturday.

Its all part, Jeremy said, of conquering the ick factor, making insects just another element of a balanced diet, rather than something to be eaten on a dare, and something that can be farmed worldwide to support families not just nutritionally but economically as well.

Its definitely fear of the unknown and this perception that bugs are gross, and all the negative connotations with them, explained Wendy Lu McGill, founder of Rocky Mountain Micro Ranch (rmmr.co) in Denver, at which she and her business partner, Kyle Conrad, farm crickets. Increasingly, you find more people who say things like, I know this is really important, I know this is sustainable, I know this is valuable nutritionally, but its not for me until I have to.

Even with attention increasingly being given to eating insects On Eating Insects, a book exploring the science, culture, ethics and gastronomy of it, was released Monday theres a revulsion toward insects in western culture that dates back millennia, said David George Gordon, a Seattle chef and author of The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook.

As soon as (western) culture got into agriculture, instead of hunting and gathering, insects became a pain in the neck, Gordon said. They ate the grain, they ruined crops. We fought them and our first instinct became to kill them. But my own perspective is we really need bugs to keep the planet functioning.

A 2013 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report (fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e.pdf) on entomophagy, or the practice of eating insects, cited insects as part of traditional diets for more than 2 billion people worldwide.

According to the report, insects provide food at low environmental cost, contribute positively to livelihoods, and play a fundamental role in nature. However, these benefits are largely unknown to the public. Contrary to popular belief, insects are not merely famine foods eaten in times of food scarcity or when purchasing and harvesting conventional foods becomes difficult; many people around the world eat insects out of choice, largely because of the palatability of the insects and their established place in local food cultures.

Many involved in entomophagy, including Gordon and McGill, acknowledge that the western diet including its bags of potato chips and its sugar-laden processed foods has to a degree become the aspirational diet worldwide, so in a lot of countries that traditionally have eaten insects, they think of that as bush food, or for old weirdos, Gordon said. Theyd rather be eating Colonel Sanders, so theres actually been a kind of die-off of traditional ways.

McGill said that because hunger is a multi-faced, multi-dimensional problem with causes, and thus solutions, that can vary from region to region, a facet of combating it might be the addition and normalization of insects in the western diet.

We arent culturally inclined to distinguish between good insects and bad insects, wrote anthropologist Krystal DCosta in a 2013 blog post for Scientific American. And I dont know that we care to make this distinction. Insects are different theyre like miniature monsters with their antennae and pincers and multiple appendages. By casting them all as bad, theyre easier to deal with.

Its the Fear Factor problem, Jeremy Connor said: People grow up daring each other to eat bugs. Its a horrifying, gag-inducing rite of passage. And even with increased efforts to normalize and promote insects as part of a balanced diet, theyre still a novelty item when they show up on menus, a bragging right and badge of honor when consumed.

But they could be just dinner. Or part of it, Connor said.

Consider his May 1 meals, the first of his monthlong experiment and focusing on the cuisine of regions in Central America and the Caribbean that consistently deal with food insecurity and hunger: Breakfast was potatoes with crickets. Lunch was mayi moulin ak paw, a Haitian dish with cornmeal, coconut milk and kidney beans, to which Connor added mealworm powder (mealworms being not actually worms, but beetle larva).

Dinner was black beans, rice and fresh salsa with 1/3 cup of whole roasted crickets, plus white corn tortillas.

The crickets in his breakfast alone provided him with 14 grams of protein, but its not just protein, he said. Insects can provide so many more nutrients than just protein, including iron, calcium, riboflavin and niacin.

He suggested that insect powders might provide the gateway for many people, something they can sprinkle in their smoothies and begin to normalize the idea of consuming insects for those who have not traditionally done so.

And for those who have, Connors goal is to create strategic relationships worldwide, offering people the support, education and means to safely and productively farm insects so that they can not only provide for their families, but sell the surplus and work toward economic independence.

He and Naomi are documenting his monthlong journey with a daily vlog on their website, and though Im doing it as a campaign this month, I feel like our family is transitioning as a lifestyle, he said. At the end, I feel like (eating insects) will be a part of our life.

It starts, then, one bug at a time.

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Link:
World hunger issues prompt GJ man to try monthlong diet of insects - Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

A diet high in fat is considered a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, as it can lead to weight gain, diabetes, and other harmful conditions. New research, however, suggests that it may be possible to offset some of this risk by incorporating cinnamon in the diet.

Researchers found that rats fed a high-fat diet supplemented with cinnamon for 12 weeks gained less weight and abdominal fat and had healthier blood levels of fat, sugar, and insulin, when compared with rodents fed a high-fat diet without cinnamon.

Study co-author Vijaya Juturu, Ph.D., of OmniActive Health Technologies Inc in Morrison, NJ, and colleagues recently presented their findings at the American Heart Association's Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology/Peripheral Vascular Disease 2017 Scientific Sessions, held in Minneapolis, MN.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is an umbrella term for conditions that affect the heart and blood vessels, including heart attack, stroke, and heart disease.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States, killing around 610,000 people every year.

Diet plays a major role in CVD. An unhealthful diet - such as one high in fat - can cause obesity, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and other conditions that raise the risk of poor cardiovascular health.

According to Juturu, research has shown that cinnamon - a spice derived from the bark of trees from the Cinnamomum genus - contains a polyphenol that has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, which may reduce some of the risk factors for CVD caused by poor diet.

For their study, the researchers set out to investigate whether cinnamon might help to reduce the harms associated with a high-fat diet.

For 12 weeks, the researchers fed rats a high-fat diet supplemented with cinnamon and compared them with rodents that were fed a high-fat diet without the spice (the controls).

The team found that rats whose diets were supplemented with cinnamon weighed less and developed less abdominal fat than those fed a high-fat diet without the spice. Rats fed a high-fat diet with cinnamon also had healthier blood glucose and insulin concentrations, as well as better lipid profiles, than the controls.

Additionally, the researchers found that rats that received cinnamon had fewer molecules associated with the storing of fat, as well as increased levels of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant molecules.

Antioxidants protect against oxidative stress, which is an imbalance of free radicals that has been associated with numerous health conditions, including heart attack and heart disease.

Based on their findings, Juturu and colleagues believe that cinnamon may decrease the damaging effects of a high-fat diet.

The team concludes:

"These results suggest CNM [cinnamon] supplementation reduces hyperlipidemia, inflammation, and oxidative stress through activating transcription factors (SREBP-1c, LXR-, NF-B, and Nrf2) and anti-oxidative defense signaling pathway."

Learn how cinnamon could boost the ability to learn.

Original post:
Cinnamon may reduce the harms of a high-fat diet - Medical News Today

The mayor of Seattle has altered the rules of his proposed soda tax whichwould fund education for minoritiesto include diet drinks because affluent white people tend toconsume them more.

Mayor Ed Murray of the staunchly liberal Seattle cityoriginally proposed the soda tax during hisstate of the city address in February.Under hisinitial plan, distributors of sugarydrinks would have to pay 2 cents per ounce.

It would cover sodas such as Coke and Pepsi, energy drinks like Red Bull, fruit drinks, sweetened teas and bottled coffees such as those sold by Starbucks.

The Mayorclaimed the tax would bring $16 million in revenue thatwould be spent on education programs aimed at reducing disparities between the citys white students and students of color.

But the mayor has updated the plan after the staff of the mayors office told him that the tax would actually disproportionatelyfall on poor minorities, who have higher rates of soda consumption than white residents.

Murray changed the bill, lowering the levy to 1.75 cents per ounce and included diet drinks because they are by favored by affluent white city residents, despite the fact that most diet drinks have no calories and therefore dont contribute to obesity.

According to Reason, taxing diet drinks has become an issue of equality to the mayor because they more likely to be consumed by upper middle class white people and therefore must be taxed as a way to fightwhite privileged institutionalized racism.

The white privilege tax may be a distraction for Murray, whos facing accusations from four men that he paid for sex and sexually abused them in the 1980s when they were teen boys. A high profile lawsuit from one of the men filed last month claims thatMurray raped and molested him over several years, beginning in 1986 when the man was a 15-year-old high-school dropout.Murray has denied the accusations.

Read the original here:
Seattle Mayor Adds Diet Drinks to His Soda Tax 'To Tackle White Privilege' - Heat Street

Gluten-free diets do not lower your risk for heart disease and may even lead to some health concerns, a new studypublished in BMJ reports.

Gluten is a natural protein found in wheat, rye, and barley. In recent years, many people have cut the substance out of their diet because they believe it leads to better health.However, no long-term studies had looked at how that change affects the risk of chronic conditions.

In the recent research, a team of U.S.-based scientists found that cutting out gluten tends to lower a persons intake of whole grains. As those grains are linked to numerous health benefits including a lower risk for heart disease losing them can lead to problems.

As a result, the team states that, unless a person has celiac disease, they should not shy away from gluten. It can be reduced in some cases, but for the most part, people should balance non-gluten foods with ones that contain whole grains.

Researchers reached this conclusion by analyzing data from a study of more than 110,000 U.S. health professionals. All of the subjects periodically answered questions over a 26-year period about the different foods they consumed. This allowed the team to estimate how much gluten each patient had in their diet, as well as see whether or not they experienced a heart attack during the study.

After dividing the subjects into five groups, the researchers found that those who ate the most gluten did not have a higher risk for heart attack than those who ate the least. In fact, the data showed that gluten initially appeared to be linked with a lower risk of heart attack. However, this connection is not tied to gluten consumption, but rather the intake of whole grains.

These findings do not support the promotion of a gluten-restricted diet with a goal of reducing coronary heart disease risk, the researchers wrote in their study, according toLive Science.

This study is purely observational, which means no concrete conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. However, the scientists believe there is enough evidence in the data to show that the reduction of gluten may lead to specific heart-related health problems and that people should make sure to keep whole grains in their usual diet.

Any time you eliminate whole categories of food youve been used to eating, you run the risk of nutritional deficiencies, said co-author Peter H.R. Green, director of Columbia Universitys Celiac Disease Center, according to Newsweek. Unless people are very careful, a gluten-free diet can lack vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

Joseph Scalise is an experienced writer who has worked for many different online websites across many different mediums. While his background is mainly rooted in sports writing, he has also written and edited guides, ebooks, short stories and screenplays. In addition, he performs and writes poetry, and has won numerous contests. Joseph is a dedicated writer, sports lover and avid reader who covers all different topics, ranging from space exploration to his personal favorite science, microbiology.

See the rest here:
Gluten-free diet may come with health complications, study reports - Science Recorder