ABC New’s Good Morning America takes a look at a new report that back up the benefits of the Mediterranean Diet.
As the authors note, that the analysis “indicates that the dominant components of the Mediterranean diet score as a predictor of lower mortality are moderate consumption of [alcohol], low consumption of meat and meat products, and high consumption of vegetables, fruits and nuts, olive oil, and legumes.”
The Environmental Leader reports that the American Medical Association has approved a new policy that supports a healthy and sustainable food chain within healthcare systems at a recent AMA meeting in Chicago.
The AMA also plans to work with healthcare and public health organizations to educate their community and the public about the importance of healthy and ecologically sustainable food systems.
The AMA’s new Sustainable Food policy builds on a report from its Council on Science and Public Health, which indicates that locally produced and organic foods “reduce the use of fuel, decrease the need for packaging and resultant waste disposal, preserve farmland … [and] the related reduced fuel emissions contribute to cleaner air and in turn, lower the incidence of asthma attacks and other respiratory problems.”
The study also notes that industrial food production is a significant contributor to increased antibiotic resistance, climate change, and air and water pollution.
In addition to providing fresh, nutritious food choices, healthcare food services across the country are implementing new initiatives such as sourcing organic food and meat produced without the use of antibiotics, buying locally produced foods, and sponsoring farmers markets and food boxes for staff, according to the Healthcare Without Harm coalition.
More than 240 hospitals have signed the HCWH Healthy Food in Healthcare Pledge, which promote sustainable food systems in their facilities.
NIH Healthday reports that:
If you eat a healthy diet, you’re likely to live longer.
It might be trite advice, but a new study offers proof that it can make a difference in your longevity.
Those with the best diets reduced their risk of death by up to 25 percent over a 10-year follow-up, said study author Ashima Kant, a professor of nutrition at Queens College of the City University of New York.
Kant and her colleagues extracted information from a National Institutes of Health/AARP database including more than 350,000 men and women, evaluating the link between dietary habits and their risk of death during the follow-up period. They divided the participants into five groups, depending on how closely they followed the 2005 USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
“If you had the highest fifth of these scores, your risk of dying over the follow-up period was 20 to 25 percent lower,” Kant said. She found gender differences, with women eating the healthiest reducing their risk of death by 25 percent and men reducing it by 20 percent.
“We have been advocating these kinds of behaviors for a while,” she said. Other studies have found a survival benefit but have tended to look only at individual foods, she said. “This gets at looking at all these dietary features in a collective way,” she said.
Kant’s team asked the participants about six components of a healthy diet, including intake of fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy, whole grains, lean meat and poultry, and fat.
People didn’t have to eat perfectly to get a top score, she said. For instance, “if a person had five or six servings of vegetables a week, that would get them the top score [for that question],” she said.
“It’s not that you have to do everything [recommended under the dietary guidelines] to have any health benefits,” she said, noting that participants in the groups with lower (but not the lowest) scores also tended to live longer. For instance, women who were in the second-from-the-highest group on dietary scores were 20 percent less likely to die and men in that group were 17 percent less likely.
The study is published in the July issue of The Journal of Nutrition.
NY Times reporter William Neumann in the article “Discounts have restaurants eating own lunch” writes that informal, sit-down restaurant chains that blanket the nation are fighting their most intense price war in years.
Voting is underway in the Local Harvest “Love your farmers market” contest and the number one farmers market in the nation in this voting is in Durham, NC.
The Durham Farmers Market has 326 votes, 99 ahead of the next closest. Number five is the Carrboro Farmers Market.
The North Asheville Tailgate Market in Asheville is number 68. The State Farmers Market in Raleigh is number 80. The Center City Green Market in Charlotte is 84.
You can find the top 100 vote getters here.
Triangle Business Journal talks with Chip Vaughn of Chapel Hill restaurant Bonne Soiree in “Local Dining Scene just keeps getting better.”
The bill to create a sustainable local food economy and policy for NC is currently held up in the NC House because of concerns raised by the agribusiness council and pork council.
Supporters of Senate bill 1067/House bill 1163 should take action today alerting lawmakers of their support and the need to free the measure for legislative action in the NC House. Call or e-mail your House member now to let them know that you support a state Council whose job will be to promote sustainable, local foods in NC.
Here’s some background on the measure:
Food Policy Councils bring together a diverse array of people involved in the food system to set the course for food and agriculture policy into the future. S 1067, filed by Senator Charlie Albertson, would create a NC Sustainable Local Food Policy Council whose purpose is to “contribute to building a local food economy” that protects the environment and increases food security and access to locally-grown fresh foods for everyone in our state.
The Council’s 24 members are a mix of citizens, government officials and community groups intended to provide representation from all components of the food system: consumers, farmers, grocers, chefs, food processors, distributors, hunger advocates, educators, government, researchers, waste stream managers, and more. The legislation directs the Council to consider and develop policies regarding health and wellness; hunger and food access; economic development; and preservation of farmlands and water resources, and to report its recommendations annually to the General Assembly, the Governor, and the Commissioner of Agriculture.
New US Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack says he favors “establishing state food policy councils, nonpartisan advisory boards that would represent a diverse array of food interests.” He created a state council in 2000 in Iowa, which was instrumental in implementing improvements in nutritional benefits for seniors, expanding farmers’ markets and increasing the number of people receiving food stamps,” among other things.
Salisbury Post reporter Emily Ford in the article “NC Research Campus could land federal research center” writes that Congressman Kisell is working to fund a nutrition research center for Kannapolis.
In our latest box from Vollmers CSA we got four ears of corn. It made me think for just a minute about years ago when I lived in Beaufort, SC and worked at a radio station that did live broadcast at the Beaufort Water Festival. (I had to go back to the late 1970s to find a Commodore I remembered) One of the highlights of the week for me was the Lowcountry Supper where thousands were served Frogmore Stew.
With Frogmore, SC just a few miles down the road at St. Helena Island, this Frogmore Stew was the real thing.
For Frogmore Stew, you start with some sausage that’s been cut to bite size, browning it in the bottom of a deep boiling pot. Once you get juices from the sausage, you dice an onion and heat it til transparent. I use red potatoes and cut them into chunks on top of the sausage and onion. Then cover it with water and cook the potatoes til they are beginning to get soft.
I cut an ear of corn into three parts and use about four or five ears on top of the potatoes, sausage and onion to fill the top of the boiling pot and put more water in to cover the corn. Cook til the corn is done. Then add shrimp that have been headed and cleaned to the point you want. When they turn pink, serve up your Frogmore Stew.
Some folks just cover the table with butcher paper and pour the whole stew out on the table. You will find its a pretty hands on experience with the shrimp and corn.
Garden and Gun has their take on Frogmore Stew in this month’s edition. One look at the photo and you’ll understand why this is such good eatin’.
Garden and Gun magazine has a photo layout that features Ed Mitchell of the Pit, Raleigh’s downtown BBQ restaurant. Take a look at these photos.
