"If women behave as prostitutes online, men are going to treat them like prostitutes in real life!"

"90 percent of a woman's eggs are gone by age 30!"

I didn't want to let that ostrich in the hen house, but the roosters insisted.

Mine!

Yes, I know some of these might be yours, but there are lots of humans out there, like me, who are hungry in the mornings. Okay?

8 food myths science has debunked

Larry Schwarz writes at AlterNet about 8 food myths science has now debunked.

1. Myth: Low-fat foods are good.
...Of course, if you have ever eaten a well-done hamburger or steak with all of the juices (fat) cooked out of it, you know that fat tastes good, and when you remove fat, you are left with something less than flavorful. Big Food, the main engine behind the low-fat industry, knows this, and it compensates for the lack of fat, and the accompanying flavor, by adding stuff to low-fat products. The stuff added is usually some variation of sugar or artificial sweetener. The results are predictable. A product may be low-fat and still be fattening. Added sugar is linked to obesity, diabetes and other life-shortening conditions. Not quite the goal behind going low-fat. And artificial sweeteners have been associated with all sorts of bad things, like metabolic syndrome, diabetes, depression, premature birth, and heart disease.

2. Myth: Saturated fat is bad.
In 2010, a half-century after the infamous Seven Countries study, a huge review was done of 21 different studies involving almost 350,000 people. The conclusion was that there is absolutely no link between saturated fat and heart disease. In fact, saturated fat actually raises the HDL (good cholesterol) level in the blood and alters LDL (bad cholesterol) into a benign blood factor.

3. Myth: Eggs are bad.
...Studies have now shown that the cholesterol in eggs actually raises the good HDL cholesterol in your bloodstream. As for being high in saturated fat, see myth #2 above. Eggs have actually been shown to help people lose weight compared to a typical bagel breakfast. This is because the high protein content of an egg breakfast more efficiently satisfies hunger, whereas a high carbohydrate bagel spikes blood sugar, which then crashes and results in renewed hunger a short time later.

4. Myth: Eat more carbohydrates than protein and fat.
For people who are overweight, have diabetes or metabolic syndrome, high-carb diets have consistently been shown to be inferior to low-carb diets. Low-carbohydrate diets have led to greater weight loss and reduced risk factors for heart disease and Type II diabetes.

5. Myth: Eat lots of small meals throughout the day.
Prehistoric humans were often hungry, and in fact, occasional fasting has been shown to be healthy. Other studies have indicated that the number of meals consumed during the day can be linked to the risk for colon cancer. Eating four or more meals a day increases that risk by up to 90% for men.

6. Myth: All vegetable oils are good for you.
...Polyunsaturated oils contain both omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Omega-3s have been shown to lower heart disease risk. The fatty acid has an anti-inflammatory effect and can lower the risk for many diseases related to inflammation. Omega-6s, on the other hand, have been shown to actually increase risk for coronary heart disease. The fatty acids in some of the most popular vegetable oils, like soybean, corn and sunflower oils, are omega-6s. Seed oils such as flaxseed and rapeseed oil tend to be higher in omega-3s.

7. Myth: Too much meat and cheese is bad for the bones and kidneys.
...High-protein diets are actually associated with good bone health and less fracture risk. Similarly, no link has ben established between high-protein diets and kidney health in persons without previous kidney problems. Additionally, a high-protein diet has been associated with a lower risk of diabetes and high blood pressure, both of which increase the chances of kidney dysfunction.

8. Myth: Whole grain breads are good for everybody.
...Grains are actually fairly low in nutritional content, compared to vegetables, fruit and meats. They also contain a lot of phytic acid, which causes some minerals to bind in the intestines and prevents them from being properly used by the body. The most popular grain consumed in the West is wheat, which contains a substance called gluten, the stuff that makes bread soft and chewy. While a small percentage of people have celiac disease, a sensitivity to gluten that causes the immune system to attack the small intestine, a much larger percentage of people without celiac also appear to be gluten-sensitive. Gluten sensitivity can cause intestinal damage, bloating, pain, and other problems. There has even been some association shown between schizophrenia and gluten.

Read more here.

Why are chicken prices going down, while egg prices are skyrocketing?

Dan Nosowitz reports in Modern Farmer that

restaurateurs interviewed by the Chicago Tribune said that the price of a case of 12 dozen eggs has doubled in the past few months. And yet the price of chicken meat is down as much as 33 percent over last year. What’s going on here?


...It’s all about avian flu. Avian flu is the pebble tossed into the pond, except the ripples that emanate are anything but symmetrical. Since December 2014, says the USDA, avian flu has been tracked all over the country, striking not just wild, migratory birds but also livestock birds, especially chickens, turkeys and ducks.

The reason Chicago chefs are feeling the biggest crunch is that the vast majority of avian flu cases have been in Iowa, Minnesota and Michigan, and while the tide of new cases seems to be ebbing—at the time of writing, Minnesota is celebrating 13 days without a new outbreak—it’s having lasting effects on the supply of eggs. In Iowa, 25 million egg-laying hens had to be euthanized due to avian flu, and it’s estimated that the U.S. will produce about 5.3 percent fewer eggs this year than last.

Here’s where it gets weird: Avian flu appears to disproportionately affect egg-laying hens, rather than the chickens raised for meat (commonly called broiler chickens). These two types of chickens are kept in completely separate facilities for completely separate amounts of time (an egg-laying hen in the agribusiness system usually lives for about a year, while a broiler goes to market in about six weeks). There are theories that the longer lifespan of the egg-laying chickens puts them more at risk for avian flu to develop than in broiler chickens, but nobody’s really sure.

Regardless, the supply of eggs is down, but the supply of broiler chickens, and thus chicken meat, is fairly constant. The reason chicken prices are going down is because the demand outside the country has plummeted. Other countries, most notably China and South Korea, have enacted total bans on all poultry products from the United States, even though broiler chickens are not really at risk. The same supply with less demand means cheaper chicken.

Maybe restaurateurs will have to start coming up with creative chicken-based breakfasts to replace their omelettes and pancakes.

Read more here.

"When Jesus came to life"

A little boy I met today was singing over and over, "It's Easter, It's Easter." I asked him, "What is Easter?"

He answered, "Candy and eggs and stuff." I thanked him, but then he added excitedly, "It's also when Jesus came to life!"

I gave him a big high five.