Alabama’s WIC Program Reaches Out To Storm Victims

found 16 May 2011 at medicalnewstoday.com

As a result of devastating tornadoes that recently struck the state, women, infants and children who were not previously eligible for WIC may now meet income guidelines to qualify due to the loss of businesses and employment.

WIC, also known as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, serves women who are pregnant, breast-feeding, or had a baby in the past six months; infants; and children to age 5. WIC provides nutrition support in the form of food instruments that may be cashed at authorized grocery stores for specific food items such as milk, cheese, whole grain breads and cereals, fresh fruits and vegetables, infant foods, and infant formula if mothers are not breast-feeding. In addition, WIC provides nutrition information, breast-feeding support and supplies including breast pumps, and referrals to other health services.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) requires women, infants and children to meet income guidelines in order to qualify for WIC benefits. WIC is ready to assist individuals who meet the guidelines for participation in the program.

WIC requires proof of identification, residency in Alabama, and income when applying for benefits. USDA is allowing exceptions to the requirements for providing this documentation if the information was lost due to the storms.

The Alabama WIC Program has offices in all county health departments. Call your local health department or the toll-free number 1-888-WIC-HOPE (1-888-942-4673) for more information or to make an appointment.

The Donald’s new gig: selling nutritional products

Digest It free bottle

In this May 15, 2009 file photo, Donald Trump watches the New York Yankees play the Minnesota Twins during the sixth inning of a baseball game in New York. The ubiquitous Trump is partnering with Ideal Health, a 12-year-old Massachusetts-based nutritional products company, and renaming it “The Trump Network,” though the partners won’t specify what their financial relationship is Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009.(AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

By TAMARA LUSH (AP) – Nov21 2009 found at google

MIAMI — Nutrition for us.  It’s like “The Apprentice” meets Amway.

Donald Trump is synonymous with luxury high-rises, his TV show and his distinctive hairstyle. Now he’s putting his name on a vitamin and health products business whose salespeople make money by recruiting more salespeople.

The ubiquitous Trump is partnering with Ideal Health, a 12-year-old Massachusetts-based nutritional products company, and renaming it “The Trump Network,” though the partners won’t specify what their financial relationship is.

The products will be sold via multilevel marketing — a method of selling products through a network of distributors. Marketers receive commissions for the products they sell, along with a cut from products sold by other salespeople they’ve recruited.

Critics of such programs say that most of the products are bought by the distributors themselves, and that few of the salespeople actually come out ahead in the end.

Trump, characteristically, is blustery in his bullishness. In an e-mail to the Associated Press, he called it a “rescue and recovery program” for people suffering through the recession, offering a shot at extra income. The company hopes the Trump name and image will help sell the products.

Trump swooped into Miami for the company’s glitzy launch last weekend, complete with gymnasts and jugglers, at a hotel in downtown Miami. Five thousand salespeople packed into the hotel to hear from The Donald himself.

That star power might mask how hard such businesses can be, said Daniel Howard, a professor of marketing at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business.

“People are more easily persuaded when they want to believe in something,” said Howard, who has studied multilevel marketing. “Someone comes along with a big name like Donald Trump and pitches riches, it captures peoples’ attention and interest. If he made so much money, they think, ‘I’m glad I’m on board.’

The reality?

“Multilevel marketing is a tough business, and most people don’t make much money,” said Howard.

The Trump Network will compete with well-established networks such as Amway and scores of retail brands such as Centrum. It’s unclear how many such companies are out there because most are privately held, but Trump Network co-founder Todd Stanwood says that there are about 200. Amway alone says it had $8.2 billion in revenue in 2008.

Joining the Trump Network costs $48. That buys a marketing kit and three months access to a personalized Web site to promote the products. However, new participants are often sold a $497 package that includes the marketing kit, products, CDs, sales tips and coupons.

The products include everything from custom nutrition tests to vitamins to blueberry pomegranate bars. A 30-day supply of a customized vitamin formula costs about $57. Marketers can sell back any unsold inventory.

The Web site does caution: “If any product purchase creates a financial hardship, do not make the purchase. Your financial health is as important to us as your personal health.”

It also states, in a footnote: “The Trump Network does not guarantee you will earn an income.”

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Banana nutrition facts

Editors note The good anbout banana nutrition : This food is very low in Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C, Potassium and Manganese, and a very good source of Vitamin B6.

The bad: A large portion of the calories in this food come from sugars. This food is not recommended if you are suffering diabetics type 2

The following articles is quite funny, but I would neer recommend following a banana diet, een if i is a good food if you need some energy boost it is not recommended going on a solo banana diet from a nutritional point of view. Below the article some more banana nutrition facts.

David

Can the Banana Diet Peel the Weight Away and more banana nutrition facts?

more nutrition facts on banana Read More »

Obama’s Surgeon General Nominee Has Healthy Advice for Burger King

found at digitalcity.com 8/25/2009

With Americans getting heavier each year, even medical experts like Dr. Regina Benjamin, President Obama’s surgeon general nominee, are advising fast-food giants like Burger King on how to develop healthier menu options.

Annual obesity rates have been climbing steadily to an alarming level and 30% of children in the U.S. are overweight. If her advisory role is working with BURGER KING®nutrition, her relentless influence might steer national health and food policy to the fast track, and perhaps we can finally turn the tides against this serious health issue.

But will healthier fast food really fight obesity? Nutrition experts are not so sure. There has been health zoning laws banning fast-food joints from being built in certain low-income areas of Los Angeles, but that’s not nearly enough to prevent obesity. Other experts are also proposing a tax on fast food that’s akin to the cigarette ‘sin tax.’

Burger king nutrition tip: Perhaps a greater education outreach encouraging healthier diet choices might be the better option. In one health experiment, high school vending machines reduced the prices of low-fat snacks, and the sales almost doubled. In another study, cafeteria sales of fruit tripled when prices were slashed. This is a promising sign that folks do make better diet choices when they can afford to buy healthier food, so take less sausags and get some more fruit and salads.

Please find below the complete list of nutrition elements in the Burger King fast food chain:

Boulder’s Organic Center refutes study questioning organic-food nutritional value

Denver Business Journal – by Mark Harden found at  bizjournals.com 

read also : fresh health

The Organic Center, a Boulder-based food research organization, Wednesday refuted a widely publicized British study calling into question the nutritional value of organic foods, calling it “incomplete and flawed.”

Dr Alan Dangour, the scientist whose study concluded organic food was no healthier than other produce, has been bombarded with abusive messages. Photo / Wairarapa Times-Age

The center was responding to a research article entitled “Nutritional Quality of Organic Foods: A Systematic Review,” supported by Britain’s Food Standards Agency and published July 29 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The lead author was Alan Dangour of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine .

The Dangour article (see below this page)— based on an analysis of 55 previous studies of organic foods — concluded that “there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs.”

The article focused on 11 common “nutrient categories” including iron, calcium and vitamin C. It did not reach conclusions about other possible health-related differences between organic and conventional foods, such as the possible presence of pesticides and other chemicals in non-organic foods.

The article was widely covered in the news, medical and health media, with some of the reports using wording that went beyond the study’s findings.

“Study Finds No Benefit to Organic Foods,” said one website headline. “At last, the myth about organic food being better for us has been exploded,” a columnist for Britain’s The Observer wrote.

In a statement Wednesday, the Organic Center said its own March 2008 report “covering many of the same studies comparing nutrient levels in organic and conventional foods” determined that “organic foods were, on average, 25 percent higher across 11 key nutrients compared to conventional foods.”

The center also said that its later report, released in May 2009, showed that “exposure to pesticides during pregnancy and the first years of life increases the risk of obesity, neurological problems and diabetes.”

“We call upon government bodies, academic institutions, business leaders and consumers to join us in contesting this incomplete and flawed analysis of the benefits of organic food and farming,” the center’s statement said.

The Organic Center produces scientific information on organic farming and products. Its board includes executives of organic producers and food-store chains as well as academics and nonprofit officials.

Click here to access an abstract of  Dangour’s paper.

And click here for the Organic Center’s response

Organic food not nutritionally better than conventionally produced food
Systematic review of literature over 50 years finds no evidence for superior nutritional content of organic produce
There is no evidence that organically produced foods are nutritionally superior to conventionally produced foodstuffs, according to a study published today in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Consumers appear willing to pay higher prices for organic foods based on their perceived health and nutrition benefits, and the global organic food market was estimated in 2007 to be worth £29 billion (£2 billion in the UK alone). Some previous reviews have concluded that organically produced food has a superior nutrient composition to conventional food, but there has to-date been no systematic review of the available published literature.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have now completed the most extensive systematic review of the available published literature on nutrient content of organic food ever conducted. The review focussed on nutritional content and did not include a review of the content of contaminants or chemical residues in foods from different agricultural production regimens.

Over 50,000 papers were searched, and a total of 162 relevant articles were identified that were published over a fifty-year period up to 29 February 2008 and compared the nutrient content of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. To ensure methodological rigour the quality of each article was assessed. To be graded as satisfactory quality, the studies had to provide information on the organic certification scheme from which the foodstuffs were derived, the cultivar of crop or breed of livestock analysed, the nutrient or other nutritionally relevant substance assessed, the laboratory analytical methods used, and the methods used for statistical analysis. 55 of the identified papers were of satisfactory quality, and analysis was conducted comparing the content in organically and conventionally produced foods of the 13 most commonly reported nutrient categories.

The researchers found organically and conventionally produced foods to be comparable in their nutrient content. For 10 out of the 13 nutrient categories analysed, there were no significant differences between production methods in nutrient content. Differences that were detected were most likely to be due to differences in fertilizer use (nitrogen, phosphorus), and ripeness at harvest (acidity), and it is unlikely that consuming these nutrients at the levels reported in organic foods would provide any health benefit.

Alan Dangour, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Nutrition and Public Health Intervention Research Unit, and one of the report’s authors, comments: ‘A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance. Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority. Research in this area would benefit from greater scientific rigour and a better understanding of the various factors that determine the nutrient content of foodstuffs’.

###

For further information, or to interview any of the report’s authors, please contact Gemma Howe in the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Press Office
Gemma.howe@lshtm.ac.uk
+44 (0) 207 927 2802 / 07828 617 901

Julia Child Brought Us Both the Art and the Soul of French Cooking

By Jennifer LaRue Huget Tuesday, August 4, 2009 found at washingtonpost.com

Much as I love food, I’ve never had much interest in exploring the iconic cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck. Just the thought of it hardened my arteries.

But the release this week of the film “Julie & Julia,” which is in part about Julie Powell, who devoted a year to cooking her way through the daunting first volume of the 1961 classic, inspired me to look closer. As a nutrition writer, I wondered whether Child’s approach to cooking was all that bad for you, after all.

My first impressions were mixed. The demonstrations of various ways of cutting vegetables are instructive and might apply equally to healthful crudites or to cream-laden vegetable casseroles. The sauce vinaigrette recipe makes the simplest of salad dressings, a useful tool in any cook’s kit. Ditto for the omelet, which Child constructs with just eggs, salt and pepper, a bit of butter in a pan, and a fork; cheese and sauce are optional.

Beyond that, though, I found little that I would actually want to cook — or eat. So accustomed am I to grilling lean meat and fish, serving vegetables raw or lightly stir-fried, and shunning rich sauces that most of the book’s recipes strike me as kind of gross, frankly. Bifteck Hache a la Lyonnaise (ground beef with onions and herbs) sounds benign, but it calls for adding butter, beef suet, beef marrow or fresh pork fat to the meat mixture and for topping the cooked meat off with a butter sauce. Child’s signature Gigot de Pre-Sale Roti (roast leg of lamb) has one brush the lamb with rendered fresh pork or beef fat before roasting.

Of the first volume’s 684 pages, 115 are devoted to vegetables — and 18 of those to potatoes, rice and, oddly, chestnuts. (Red meat gets 128 pages, while desserts get just 88.) Preparations, alas, are much as I expected: Almost all involve butter, and most also feature cream or cheese. Even the cucumber isn’t spared: In Julia Child’s world, cukes are baked in casserole dishes with Mornay sauce, butter and Swiss cheese.

And though the introduction to that chapter pledges that the “French objective is to produce a cooked green vegetable so green, fresh-tasting, and full of flavor that it really can be served as a separate course,” the recipe for Epinards en Surprise, or Spinach Hidden Under a Giant Crepe, seems to belie that respect. The dish is described as “an amusing presentation; the spinach is heaped in a serving dish and a large French pancake is spread over it, hiding it completely.” But not before Swiss cheese and cream are added.

Of course, “Mastering the Art” doesn’t care what I think of it. Whether people actually use it much anymore or not, its place in American culinary history remains solid. Child was, of course, the first to make classic French cuisine accessible to ordinary Americans, demystifying it and showing how it might work in our own kitchens. Her introduction to the book clearly says it’s aimed at cooks “who can be unconcerned on occasion with . . . waistlines.”

Kirk Bachmann is vice president of academic affairs for the North American branches of the famed Cordon Bleu cooking school, at whose original Paris branch Child studied. He insists that while Child’s approach to cooking may appear to focus on fat, in fact it’s all about technique. As she learned at Le Cordon Bleu, Child concentrates on teaching culinary techniques and the fundamental skills of French cooking. “People get hung up on the recipes: ‘Is there butter? Are there eggs?’ ” Bachmann notes. But the basic techniques explained in those recipes, he says, “can apply to any cuisine in the world.”

Cutting carrots into a julienne, for instance, produces slim, uniform pieces that look attractive and cook evenly. Whether you then douse them in sauce is up to you.

The technique is in keeping with French cooking’s emphasis on “eating with the eyes,” Bachmann says. “We teach how to cook a julienned carrot so it can be the main vegetable on a plate. It’s important that they look consistent, they look good and they’re all the same. They have the same flavor profile, the same feel when they enter your mouth.”

Similarly, braising meat is a way of coaxing the richest, deepest taste out of a cut of meat that doesn’t have much fat to flavor it. “Mastering the Art” shows how to sear the meat to add color to its exterior and then to simmer it for a long time, allowing flavor to develop. “It doesn’t need butter or heavy ingredients,” Bachmann says, noting that mastering the technique allows a cook to shop for leaner, and thus more healthful, meats.

Yes, “butter is an easy way to get flavor into a dish,” Bachmann allows. But if a cook sticks to Child’s basic cooking techniques, it’s okay to substitute yogurt in a cream sauce or olive oil when braising beef, although other seasonings may need to be tweaked to accommodate the substitution.

French cooking has in many ways moved beyond the approach represented in Child’s book. In “cuisine classique,” Bachmann explains, “heavy sauces were created to mask foods that were going bad. The sauce was the focus of the plate.” Through the centuries, French cuisine has moved from those heavy, rot-covering sauces to dishes based on roux (flour-and-butter sauces) and, later, reductions (thickened meat stock) to a strong focus on locally grown foods and on the main ingredient itself: the salmon, not the sauce. “The heavy sauces of yesteryear have become a bit passe,” Bachmann says.

Whether those heavy sauces in fact pose much of a health risk remains uncertain. The “French paradox,” in which it was observed in the early 1990s that French people stayed slimmer and were less likely to die of heart disease than Americans, despite the former’s high intake of fat, has not turned out to be much of a mystery, Bachmann says. Instead, it’s now believed that the French consume fewer calories overall than we do and burn more through greater physical activity such as walking, both of which contribute to their better cardiovascular health. We’ve also learned that consuming dietary cholesterol (as in egg yolks) in moderation doesn’t necessarily elevate levels of “bad” cholesterol in the blood (though saturated fat, as in cream, cheese and many cuts of red meat, clearly does). And many nutrition experts now say that eating small quantities of really satisfying, lightly processed foods (even if that means more fat and calories per bite) may be better for us than pigging out on processed and packaged foods. (Think: a few slices of full-fat cheese instead of a jar of Cheez Whiz.)

So what to make of “Mastering the Art”? Well, there’s this: At the end of her year-long experiment, Julie Powell noted that she’d gained some weight, but she wasn’t willing to attribute that solely to Julia Child’s cuisine — especially since her skinny husband remained skinny throughout, despite eating his wife’s French food.

As for Julia Child herself, nobody would accuse her of having been skinny (not that she was fat, either). But she lived to within a whisker of her 92nd birthday. And, by all accounts, she enjoyed just about every minute.

Bon appétit, indeed.

Check out Tuesday’s Checkup blog post, in which Jennifer attempts to chop an onion, Julia Child-style. Subscribe to the Lean & Fit newsletter by going to http://www.washingtonpost.com and searching for “newsletters.”

Welcome to Nutrition for us, enjoy the content, if any questions contact David Norden