If you are what you eat, then what does it mean that the average American consumes 130 pounds of sugar a year? Sanjay Gupta reports on new research showing that beyond weight gain, sugar can take a serious toll on your health, worsening conditions ranging from heart disease to cancer. Some physicians go so far as to call sugar a toxin.

The following script is from “Sugar” which aired on April 1, 2012. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is the correspondent. Denise Schrier Cetta and Sumi Aggarwal, producers

The chances are good that sugar is a bigger part of your daily diet than you may realize which is why our story tonight is so important. New research coming out of some of America’s most respected institutions is starting to find that sugar, the way many people are eating it today, is a toxin and could be a driving force behind some of this country’s leading killers, including heart disease.

As a result of these findings, an anti-sugar campaign has sprung up, led by Dr. Robert Lustig, a California endocrinologist, who believes the consumption of added sugars has plunged America into a public health crisis.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Is sugar toxic?

Dr. Robert Lustig: I believe it is.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Do you ever worry that that’s– it just sounds a little bit over the top?

Dr. Robert Lustig: Sure. All the time. But it’s the truth.

Dr. Robert Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco and a pioneer in what is becoming a war against sugar.

Motivated by his own patients — too many sick and obese children – Dr. Lustig has concluded that sugar, more than any other substance, is to blame.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: What are all these various diseases that you say are linked to sugar?

Dr. Robert Lustig: Obesity, type II diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease itself.

Lustig says the American lifestyle is killing us.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: And most of it you say is preventable?

Dr. Robert Lustig: Seventy-five percent of it is preventable.

While Dr. Lustig has published a dozen scientific articles on the evils of sugar, it was his lecture on YouTube, called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” that brought his message to the masses.

By “bad food” Dr. Lustig means the obvious things such as table sugar, honey, syrup, sugary drinks and desserts, but also just about every processed food you can imagine, where sugar is often hidden: yogurts and sauces, bread, and even peanut butter. And what about the man-made, often vilified sweetener, high fructose corn syrup?

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Is it worse than just table sugar?

Dr. Robert Lustig: No. ‘Cause it’s the exact same. They are basically equivalent. The problem is they’re both bad. They’re both equally toxic.

Since the 1970s, sugar consumption has gone down nearly 40 percent, but high fructose corn syrup has more than made up the difference. Dr. Lustig says they are both toxic because they both contain fructose — that’s what makes them sweet and irresistible.

Dr. Robert Lustig: We love it. We go out of our way to find it. I think one of the reasons evolutionarily is because there is no food stuff on the planet that has fructose that is poisonous to you. It is all good. So when you taste something that’s sweet, it’s an evolutionary Darwinian signal that this is a safe food.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: We were born this way?

Dr. Robert Lustig: We were born this way.

Central to Dr. Lustig’s theory is that we used to get our fructose mostly in small amounts of fruit — which came loaded with fiber that slows absorption and consumption — after all, who can eat 10 oranges at a time? But as sugar and high fructose corn syrup became cheaper to refine and produce, we started gorging on them. Americans now consume 130 pounds per person a year — that’s a third of a pound every day.

Dr. Lustig believes those sweeteners are helping fuel an increase in the most deadly disease in America: heart disease. For years, he’s been a controversial voice.

But now, studies done by Kimber Stanhope, a nutritional biologist at the University of California, Davis are starting to back him up. She’s in the middle of a groundbreaking, five-year study which has already shown strong evidence linking excess high fructose corn syrup consumption to an increase in risk factors for heart disease and stroke. That suggests calories from added sugars are different than calories from other foods.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: The mantra that you hear from most nutritionists is that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie.

Kimber Stanhope: And I think the results of the study showed clearly that is not true.

Stanhope’s conclusions weren’t easy to come by. Nutrition studies are expensive and difficult. Stanhope has paid groups of research subjects to live in this hospital wing for weeks at a time, under a sort of 24-hour lockdown. They undergo scans and blood tests – every calorie they ingest, meticulously weighed and prepared.

Kimber Stanhope: They’re never out of our sight. So we do know that they are consuming exactly what we need them to consume.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: And they’re not sneaking any candy bars on the side.

Kimber Stanhope: Yeah, right, exactly.

For the first few days, participants eat a diet low in added sugars, so baseline blood levels can be measured.

Then, 25 percent of their calories are replaced with sweetened drinks and Stanhope’s team starts drawing blood every 30 minutes around the clock. And those blood samples? They revealed something disturbing.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: And what are you starting to see?

Kimber Stanhope: We found that the subjects who consumed high fructose corn syrup had increased blood levels of LDL cholesterol and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: How quickly did these changes occur?

Kimber Stanhope: Within two weeks.

Kimber Stanhope’s study suggests that when a person consumes too much sweet stuff, the liver gets overloaded with fructose and converts some of it into fat. Some of that fat ends up in the bloodstream and helps generate a dangerous kind of cholesterol called small dense LDL. These particles are known to lodge in blood vessels, form plaque and are associated with heart attacks.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Did it surprise you when you first got these results back?

Kimber Stanhope: I would have to say I was surprised because when I saw our data, I started drinking and eating a whole lot less sugar. I would say our data surprised me.

So imagine, for these healthy young people, drinking a sweetened drink might be just as bad for their hearts as the fatty cheeseburgers we’ve all been warned about since the 1970s. That’s when a government commission mandated that we lower fat consumption to try and reduce heart disease.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So with the best of intentions, they say, “Time to reduce fat in the American diet?”

Dr. Robert Lustig: Exactly. And we did. And guess what? Heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and death are skyrocketing.

Dr. Lustig believes that’s primarily because we replaced a lot of that fat with added sugars.

Dr. Robert Lustig: Take the fat out of food, it tastes like cardboard. And the food industry knew that. So they replaced it with sugar.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: This idea that sugar increases this particularly bad LDL, the small dense particles that are associated with heart disease. Do most doctors– do they know this?

Dr. Robert Lustig: No, they do not know this. This is new.

And it turns out, sugar has become a major focus in cancer research too. Lewis Cantley, is looking at the connection.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: If you limit your sugar you decrease your chances of developing cancer?

Lewis Cantley: Absolutely.

Cantley, a Harvard professor and the head of the Beth Israel Deaconess Cancer Center, says when we eat or drink sugar, it causes a sudden spike in the hormone insulin, which can serve as a catalyst to fuel certain types of cancers.

Lewis Cantley: What we’re beginning to learn is that insulin can cause adverse effects in the various tissues. And of particular concern is cancer.

Why? Nearly a third of some common cancers — including breast and colon cancers — have something called insulin receptors on their surface. Insulin binds to these receptors and signals the tumor to start consuming glucose.

Lewis Cantley: This is your body…

Every cell in our body needs glucose to survive. But the trouble is, these cancer cells also use it to grow.

Lewis Cantley: So if you happen to have the tumor that has insulin receptors on it then it will get stimulated to take up the glucose that’s in the bloodstream rather than go into fat or muscle, the glucose goes into the tumor. And the tumor uses it to grow.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So you’ve just seen that tumor turn blue which is essentially reflective of glucose going into it.

Lewis Cantley: That’s right.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So these cancers, much in the same way that muscle will say, “Hey, I’d like some of that glucose, the fat says, “I would like some of that glucose,” the cancers have learned how to do this themselves as well?

Lewis Cantley: Yes. So they have evolved the ability to hijack that flow of glucose that’s going by in the bloodstream into the tumor itself.

Lewis Cantley’s research team is working on developing drugs that will cut off the glucose supply to cancer cells and keep them from growing. But until there’s a breakthrough, Cantley’s advice? Don’t eat sugar. And if you must, keep it to a minimum.

Lewis Cantley: In fact– I– you know, I live my life that way. I rarely eat sugar.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: When you see a sugary drink or if I were to offer you one, what– with all that you know, what’s going through your mind?

Lewis Cantley: I probably would turn it down and get a glass of water.

But for most of us, that’s easier said than done…

Eric Stice: It turns out sugar is much more addictive than I think we had sort of realized early on.

Eric Stice, a neuroscientist at the Oregon Research Institute, is using functional MRI scanners to learn how our brains respond to sweetness.

Eric Stice: Sugar activates our brain in a special way. That’s very reminiscent of, you know, drugs like cocaine.

That’s right. Cocaine.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Let’s give it a shot…

I climbed into the MRI scanner to see how my brain would respond. That’s a straw that’s been rigged to deliver a tiny sip of soda into my mouth.

Eric Stice: Stay as still as you can, ok?

Just as it hit my tongue, the scanner detected increased blood rushing to certain regions of my brain. In these images, the yellow areas show that my reward region is responding to the sweet taste. Dopamine – a chemical that controls the brain’s pleasure center – is being released, just as it would in response to drugs or alcohol.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So dopamine is released. That sort of makes me feel good. I’m experiencing some pleasure from having this Coke.

Eric Stice: Right, that euphoric effect.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So far be it for people to realize this ’cause sugar is everywhere, but you’re saying this is one of the most addictive substances possibly that we have?

Eric Stice: It certainly is very good at firing the reward regions in our brain.

Eric Stice says by scanning hundreds of volunteers, he’s learned that people who frequently drink sodas or eat ice cream or other sweet foods may be building up a tolerance, much like drug users do. As strange as it sounds, that means the more you eat, the less you feel the reward. The result: you eat more than ever.

Eric Stice: If you overeat these on a regular basis it causes changes in the brain that basically it blunts your reward region response to the food, so then you eat more and more to achieve the same satisfaction you felt originally.

With all this new science emerging, we wanted to hear from the sugar industry, so we visited Jim Simon, who’s on the board of the Sugar Association, at a sugar cane farm in Louisiana.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Would it surprise you that almost every scientist that we talked to in researching this story told us they are eliminating all added sugars. They’re getting rid of it because they’re concerned about the health impacts.

Jim Simon: To say that the American consuming public is going to completely omit, eliminate, sweeteners out of their diet I don’t think gets us there.

Simon cautions that eliminating sugar wrongly vilifies one food, rather than working towards the long-term solution of reducing calories and exercising.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: You know, a lot of people, Jim, are saying that sugar is different. That it is bad for your heart and is causing a lot of the problems we’re talking about. It is addictive and in some cases might even fuel cancers. What would you – I mean you’ve looked at this. You must have looked at some of these studies. What do you say about that?

Jim Simon: The science is not completely clear here.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: But some of that’s, but some of these studies exist. I mean, what is a consumer, what are they to make of all that?

Jim Simon: Well, I would say to them, that they’ve got to approach, their diet in balance.

Dr. Robert Lustig agrees — we need a balanced diet — but his idea of balance is a drastic reduction in sugar consumption. To that end he co-authored an American Heart Association report recommending men should consume no more than 150 calories of added sugars a day. And women, just 100 calories. That’s less than the amount in just one can of soda.

Dr. Robert Lustig: Ultimately this is a public health crisis. And when it’s a public health crisis, you have to do big things and you have to do them across the board. Tobacco and alcohol are perfect examples. We have made a conscious choice that we’re not going to get rid of them, but we are going to limit their consumption. I think sugar belongs in this exact same wastebasket.

Source: CBS News

THOSE brought up on Beatrix Potter, the author of “Squirrel Nutkin” and other long-loved nursery tales, may flinch; but Andrew Thornton, manager of the Budgens supermarket in the north London suburb of Crouch End, says sales of squirrel meat have soared since he started selling it in 2010.

The bushy-tailed tree-dwellers are just one category in a burgeoning market. Osgrow, a British-based firm, exports bison, crocodile (“ideal for barbecues”) and kudu meat (“juicy and low-fat”) to customers in countries where controls on wild meat are tighter. One such market is Germany, where hygiene laws forbid the eating of “cat and doglike flesh”. The German environment ministry confirms that this includes squirrel; the country’s media mock English rat-eaters. Australia sent quantities of kangaroo meat to Russia until an import ban in 2009, ostensibly on hygiene grounds (it is now being reconsidered).

Importing meat such as grouse can get around America’s fiddly laws on game farming. Zebra and wildebeest are popular too. Squirrel meat, though, is already an established delicacy in Ozark country and Tennessee; eating species farmed for fur (such as beaver) is also allowed.

No legal obstacle exists to eating the king of beasts, but roars of opposition prevented a restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, from selling lion flesh in tacos. The practicalities are daunting, too. Dave Arnold, an American campaigner, recommends braising it at 54° centigrade for fully 24 hours. The muscle content is so tough that the meat bunches up when it hits the pan; “Hold it down,” he advises.

Born Free USA, a lion-loving charity, decries the trade as a “cruel promotional gimmick”. Viva, a British animal-welfare group, believes that the squirrel-eating vogue represents a “wildlife massacre”.

Yet massacres are not always wrong. The “Save Our Squirrels” campaign urges diners to gobble the North American grey squirrel. Introduced into Britain in 1870, it has largely driven out the indigenous red squirrel (such as the fictional Nutkin). This “eat them to beat them” approach already helps keep down the population of lion fish, a rapacious stripy sea-beast which devours protected fish stocks off America’s west coast.

Wild meat is not always tasty. Mr Arnold says black bear is “bloody and a bit metallic”. Nor is it always healthy. Doctors in Kentucky say eating squirrel brains is linked to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (better known as mad-cow disease). Squirrels are now mainly sold headless. Some think those who eat them need their heads examined, too.

Source: The Economist

When the state of California added the compound 4-methylimidazole, also known as 4-MI or 4-MEI, to its list of known carcinogens in 2011, it created a problem for the soda industry.

The caramel color they used to give colas that distinctive, brown hue contained levels of 4-MI that would have warranted a cancer warning label on every can sold in the state.

And this wasn’t the industry’s only challenge. The Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban ammonia-sulfite caramel color. It’s a request the CSPI repeated this week after finding 4-MI in samples of Coke and Pepsi.

“This is nothing more than CSPI scare tactics, and their claims are outrageous,” writes the American Beverage Association in a statement released to the media.

“The science simply does not show that 4-MEI foods or beverages is a threat to human health,” the statement continues.

And the FDA seems to agree.

FDA spokesman Douglas Karas wrote in a statement that the FDA is currently reviewing the CSPI petition, but “it is important to understand that a consumer would have to consume well over a thousand cans of soda a day to reach the doses administered in the studies that have shown links to cancer in rodents.”

But in order to meet the requirements of California law — and avoid cancer warning labels on cans — soda manufacturers have come up with a solution: switch to a new, low 4-MI formulation of caramel coloring. Coca-Cola tells The Salt they’ve already begun the change.

“The company did make the decision to ask its caramel suppliers to make the necessary manufacturing process modifications to meet the requirement of the State of California,” Diana Garza Ciarlante, a Coca-Cola spokeswoman, wrote in an email.

Garza Ciarlante says caramel coloring in all Coke products has always been safe.

“The fact is that the body of science about 4-MEI in foods or beverages does not support the erroneous allegations that CSPI would like the public to believe,” she writes. Outside of California, no regulatory agency concerned with protecting the public’s health has stated that 4-MI is a human carcinogen.

“Caramel color is now — and has always been — safe and harmless” says Ted Nixon, CEO of D.D. Williamson, the world’s largest supplier of caramel color.

He explained that in order to modify the caramel color to reduce the levels of 4-MI, he sent his scientists back to the drawing board to change the manufacturing process.

“We did have to change these various inputs of temperature, pressure and the various ingredients we’re using in order to change [4-MI concentrations],” Nixon says.

And Nixon says he’ll be able to meet the demand of all of his soda clients, in rolling out this modified caramel color in products nationwide, and worldwide.

Coke says it will expand the use of the low-4-MI caramel color nationally, though Garza Ciarlante says it’s important to note that the modifications will not change Coca-Cola products.

Source: WBUR.org

*See Also: Coke, Pepsi make changes to avoid cancer warning (boston.com)

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.

The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

It Is Not Working!

These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process,a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.

The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.

Let me repeat that: The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine.

What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.

When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.

While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.

Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6′s are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3′s.

If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.

Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation- causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.

One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

Source: Signs of the Times

In all the uproar over Paula Deen cashing in on her diabetes with a drug deal, one ingredient has gotten unfairly trashed. Countless headline and opinion writers have been throwing around the word lard as if it were a bad thing. But kitchen cognoscenti these days understand what cooks and bakers did a century ago B.C. (Before Crisco): The other white fat is infinitely better than the product manufactured and marketed to replace it.

Not only does lard produce superior pie crusts, crispier fried chicken, and crunchier cookies than vegetable shortenings like Crisco, which was introduced by Procter & Gamble in 1911, but its fat is mostly monounsaturated, like olive oil’s. Sourced properly (ideally from a farmers’ market), or made from scratch, lard is the ultimate natural food.

And whatever the butter-guzzling Deen was peddling, lard did nothing to earn such scorn. If anything is to blame for the diabetes epidemic, it would not be an ingredient that fell so out of favor that NPR’s Planet Money recently devoted an episode to “Who killed lard?” Last time I looked, fast food and soda contained no lard.

As it turns out, that recent report of its death was premature. Lard has gone through decades of shame thanks to heavy marketing of the unnatural alternative and also to what I call nutrition nuttiness—in the fat-fearing ’90s even olive oil came under siege. But now this time-proven ingredient is on the ascendancy in a nose-to-tail world, where every part of the heritage pig has value. More and more restaurants and bakeries are not just using lard but bragging about it, and more home cooks are coming around, too. In April they will even have a fresh cookbook to try: Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient from the editors of Grit magazine, has recipes for everything from predictable pie to potato chips and brownies.

Steven Gedra, chef and co-owner of Bistro Europa in Buffalo, actually serves house-rendered lard instead of butter with his bread basket. He learned to make it in Italy from the Tuscan celebrity butcher Dario Cecchini, seasoning it with lemon zest, red wine vinegar, salt, and black pepper, and dubbing it “burro del Chianti” after Cecchini’s version. Gedra admits, “We kind of force it on our clientele,” but adds: “It’s like with kids—they think they don’t like it and then they try it. You gotta educate ’em.” Gedra’s wife and co-owner, Ellen, has an easier job using lard in her bread and pie doughs. Like more and more restaurants, theirs brings in a pig every other week and makes the most of it, even selling the roasted head.

Paul Fehribach, executive chef and co-owner of Big Jones in Chicago, says he’s built a following for his flaky biscuits and pies made with lard. At first he was only rendering lard in-house “to be true in our whole-animal commitment,” he says, but now he has to buy extra to meet the demand. Asked how his diners deal, he shrugs: “I’ve been very outspoken about both the culinary and health benefits of lard in particular and whole-hog cooking in general, so I think our core client base has been relatively enthusiastic.”

Gwin Grimes, owner of Artisan Baking Co. in Fort Worth, Texas, also uses lard that she renders herself, and many customers now actually ask to be certain they’re getting pies with lard-based crusts rather than those made with butter or vegan shortening.

Nathan Sears, chef du cuisine of Vie in Chicago—and another proponent of whole-animal cookery—renders lard to cook vegetables with instead of butter, which, he notes, has more saturated fat. And at Americano in Cleveland, co-owner Cole Davis says the deep-fryer is filled with lard because “we believe it is the healthiest and most durable” fat for frites.

Lard is still saddled with a debased name (although when you add one extra letter it sounds more seductive—lardo is everywhere thanks to the salumi craze). No wonder some chefs say it sells better as “pork fat.”

But when I jokingly Tweeted “Lard: What is it good for?” the other day, the responses were surprisingly nearly all positive, with only one crack about grandparents cooking with it and living to tell the tale. Whoever is monitoring D’Artagnan’s account picked up on the music reference and responded: “Absolutely everything.” From food and nonfood followers came such raves as this one from Los Angeles restaurant critic Jonathan Gold: “Biscuits, pie crusts, tamales, French fries, confit, goulash, bizcochos, and dim sum.” Lori Ferro, of Cafe Aroma in Idyllwild, California, put it succinctly: “Lard beats Crisco any day, no matter what ‘The Help’ says,” alluding to a controversial scene in the movie in which one of the characters rhapsodizes about shortening for more than just frying chicken.

There’s lard and then there’s lard, though. What’s sold in supermarkets, often labeled with the Spanish name, manteca, is almost as bad as shortening was before the trans fats were eliminated, because it’s been processed in the same way—hydrogenated so that it will stay solid at room temperature and need no refrigeration. (Note: This is the kind used in Pillsbury roll-and-fill pie crusts.) The real deal can be found mostly at farmers’ markets or some butcher shops, especially by special order. As is the case with restaurants, butchers who specialize in whole animals are likely to have lard or at least fat to render for it.

Most farmers just sell the fat, although some have it rendered in a container ready to pop open and bake with, like Flying Pigs Farm does for its stall at New York City’s Union Square Greenmarket. Local Harvest, a Web site devoted to connecting shoppers with organic foods close to their homes, has an exceptional list of lard sources all over the country. There’s also a whole support group called Lard Lovers online for devotees.

Leaf lard, from the fat around the pig’s kidneys, is the best, especially for baking. As Rich Tilyou, of T-Meadow Farm, near Buffalo, points out, it’s very dense, with smaller crystals; it’s creamy and uniform and snow-white. But lard can also be rendered from fatback, which is much easier to find. With either, you cut the fat in small bits and cook it slowly, with or without a little water, in the oven or on the stovetop. Jennifer McLagan, whose cookbook Fat is a superb source of recipes and basic information, has an excellent tutorial on her blog.

Lard usually has no perceptible flavor, which makes it perfect for baking, but if it’s allowed to brown during rendering it will acquire a decidedly porky taste—just what you want in refried beans or with root vegetable. Make it yourself and you can tailor it to the purpose.

Before Crisco, every cook would have known how to do this. It says it all that one of my brothers-in-law emailed me recently with a question about an 1870s recipe for Georgia corn bread that called for half a cup of “grease.”

“The only grease I have in the house is in the garage and used for my lawn mower’s ball bearings. What is this grease and/or can I use butter or margarine?”

And that may be the one word less savory than lard.

Source: Gourmet

The EU will spend three million Euros to research ‘the potential of insects as an alternative source of protein.’

Research projects will be selected this year.

Food experts agree that insects would probably have to be disguised for European audiences, so the insect ‘food’ could be used as an additive in burgers and other fast food.

The UN’s Food Standards Authority says of the research: ‘While insects have not traditionally been used for food in the UK or elsewhere in the European Union, it is estimated that about 2.5 billion people across the world have diets that routinely include insects.

‘While many insects are regarded as pests, the UN’s Food and Agriculture authority is interested in promoting edible insects as a highly sustainable source of nutrition.’

Some worms contain three times as much protein as beef per ounce, while four crickets have as much calcium as a glass of milk.

‘Food producers will probably get away with describing it as animal based proteins. Not many people will buy a locust burger.’

Website Treehugger said: ‘It is not hard to imagine the development of an insect-based food additive that enriches burger and nugget protein levels.

‘Burgers with processed insect meal could be sold by chains under claims such as “higher in protein”, “healthier fats”, and “eco-burger”‘.

Eighty per cent of countries on Earth already eat insects, and more than 1,000 insect species are often eaten by human beings.

Unlike conventional livestock, insects and bugs need little space and can be bred in sealed buildings under natural light where they live off waste, paper and algae.

The idea has previously been backed by the UN and EU as a way to tackle food shortages.

Some academics believe that the expense and environmental cost of raising livestock means that insect-eating will be inevitable – and it has been claimed that by the end of this decade, insect-eating will be widespread.

Prof Marcel Dicke of Wageningen University in the Netherlands said: ‘The most important thing is getting people prepared, getting used to the idea. Because from 2020 onwards, there won’t be much of a choice for us.’

Source: Daily Mail

Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming! To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds – a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism. People, animals, crops and machines play a supporting role in the logistic of this system which provides our society’s standard of living. OUR DAILY BREAD is a wide-screen tableau of a feast which isn’t always easy to digest – and in which we all take part. A pure, meticulous and high-end film experience that enables the audience to form their own ideas.

Watch our Daily Bread.

U.S. health regulators detained three shipments of Brazilian orange juice and six from Canada that tested positive for the fungicide carbendazim, which is illegal in the United States.

Two other Brazilian juice shipments tested positive for the fungicide, but the companies decided not to import the juice into the country, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday.

Orange juice futures climbed almost 3 percent in reaction to the FDA testing results, which had been widely expected.

But the futures remained below a record high hit on Monday, after traders fretted that regulators may ban all orange juice from top grower Brazil, which supplies half of U.S. imports.

The FDA said 29 of the 80 orange juice samples it had taken since testing began on January 4 were safe, including two from Brazil and seven from Canada.

Canada does not grow its own oranges, but may process juice from other countries. The nation makes up less than 1 percent of U.S. imports.

The fungicide scare flared two weeks ago after the FDA announced that a company – later identified as Coca-Cola Co – had reported finding carbendazim in juice samples from Brazil.

Growers in Brazil widely use carbendazim to combat blossom blights and black spot, a mold that grows on orange trees.

The fungicide is illegal on citrus in the United States, although it does not pose a safety risk, the FDA said.

The FDA said it would begin testing imports for the fungicide and reject shipments that were above the legal limit.

Shipments that have more than 10 parts per billion (ppb) of the fungicide will be detained, and the importers will have 90 days to export or destroy the product, the agency said.

The FDA said it would test all shipments twice, and detain any that tested positive for carbendazim at least once.

Of the six shipments detained from Canada, none had levels of fungicide higher than 31 ppb, and most were below 20 ppb. The Brazilian shipments that tested positive had carbendazim levels between 20 ppb and 52 ppb.

All the levels of carbendazim found so far have been below the legal limit in the European Union, which allows juice imports with up to 200 ppb.

In the United States, trace amounts of the fungicide are still allowed in 31 food types including grains, nuts and some non-citrus fruits. It has been banned from U.S. citrus juice since 2009.

Source: Reuters

They say there is mounting research that it is the type of oil used, and whether or not it has been used before, that really matters.

The Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) has warned the FDA that plans for salt restriction pose a health threat to Americans of all ages, in comments submitted to the agency yesterday.

The Weston A. Price Foundation is a non-profit nutrition education foundation dedicated to accurate scientific information about diet and health.

WAPF noted that by entitling their document “Approaches to Reducing Sodium Consumption,” the FDA has signaled that it has already decided that Americans’ sodium consumption should be reduced. But neither history nor the scientific evidence support this approach.

“A study from 1991 indicates that people need about one and one-half teaspoons of salt per day,” says Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. “Anything less triggers a cascade of hormones to recuperate sodium from the waste stream, hormones that make people vulnerable to heart disease and kidney problems. This is proven biochemistry. Yet, FDA as well as USDA want to mandate drastically restricted sodium consumption at about one-half teaspoon per day.”

WAPF testimony noted that salt plays a critical role in body physiology and brain function. In the elderly, lack of salt is associated with increased hip fractures and cognitive decline; low salt diets in growing children predisposes to poor neurological development.

Proposals to restrict salt cite benefits to hypertension. But only 30 percent of the population experiences a slight reduction in blood pressure on a salt restricted diet, while 70 percent show no benefit.

“These statistics don’t justify a population-wide policy of salt reduction,” says Fallon Morell

Recent studies show a correlation of salt restriction with increased heart failure and with insulin resistance leading to diabetes. Studies show that even modest reductions in salt cause an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Higher incidence of inflammatory markers and altered lipoproteins are also found by researchers evaluating those on salt reduced diets. These factors are precursors to metabolic syndrome, which predicts heart problems and diabetes.

Both sodium and chloride, the components of salt, are needed for digestion. These elements form the basis of cellular metabolism and our only source of adequate intake is salt.

The Foundation also cautions the FDA that salt reductions will increase food safety risks. Salt is a traditional food preservation medium with an excellent track record. Artisan cheeses, preserved meats like salami and traditional pickled foods like sauerkraut require salt to prevent contamination by pathogens.

“Our biggest concern is that with FDA dictates against salt, manufacturers will add imitation salt flavors like Senomyx to processed foods,” says Fallon Morell. ”Marketed as a food, so it does not require testing, and added in amounts so small that is does not need to be labeled, this neurotropic compound can interfere with our natural taste for salt, leading to severe deficiencies. Or, people will become obese as they eat more and more, trying to satisfy the body’s need for salt.”

The Weston A. Price Foundation fully referenced commentary is posted  at http://www.westonaprice.org/images/pdfs/wapf-comments-fda-salt.pdf.

Source: www.westonaprice.org