Hug A Vegetarian Day!

It's Sciencey Friday (MOIF) and Hug a Vegetarian Day so get ready for the science that supports eating a vegetarian diet.See how I combined them?  :-)

There are a number of ongoing debates with respect to whether eating meat is healthy. A growing number of medical experts have become vocal about the negative health consequences related to eating meat and the research overwhelmingly supports this. After reviewing a multitude of studies the American Dietetic Association and the Dietitians of Canada published an extensive report in 2003 regarding vegetarian diets. The report found that on average vegetarians have lower body mass indices, lower levels of prostate and colorectal cancers, healthier cholesterol levels, lower blood pressures, lower levels of type 2 diabetes, and lower death rates from heart disease. Other studies have revealed that people on vegetarian diets experience lower rates of osteoporosis, urinary diseases, diverticulosis, rheumatoid arthritis, fewer gallstones, and less dementia (Leitzmann 2005). In a twelve year mortality study of 6115 vegetarians and 5015 meat-eaters, vegetarians had a 40% lower mortality rate for cancer and were 20% less likely to die before the age of 65 than meat-eaters. (Thorogood et al. 1994; West 1994). According to the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research in a report Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective (1997), 25-50% of all cases of cancer can be prevented by a vegetarian diet. In three studies of approximately 11,000 subjects each done at the University of Oxford, death rates among vegetarians were significantly lower than the general population (Key et al. 2003). Research has also confirmed that vegetarians have higher levels of circulating antioxidants such as lutein, xanthins, carotenoids, and corresponding higher levels of glutathione and superoxide dismutase (Rauma 2003). 

References:
Key T, Appleby P, Davey G, Allen N, Spencer E, Travis R. Mortality in British vegetarians: review and preliminary results from EPIC-Oxford. Amer. Jour. Clin. Nutr. Suppl. 2003;78(3):  533S-538S.Leitzmann C. Vegetarian diets: what are the advantages? Forum Nutr. 2005;(57):147-56.Rauma A. Antioxidant status in vegetarians versus omnivores. Nutrition. 2003;16(2): 111-119.Thorogood M, Mann J, Appleby P, McPherson K. Risk of death from cancer and ischaemic heart disease in meat and non-meat eaters. BMJ. 1994 Jun 25;308(6945):1667-70.West R. Risk of death in meat and non-meat eaters. BMJ. 1994 Oct 8;309(6959):955.

Holy hummus wraps! I'm gonna live forever!! OK, not really. Just give me a hug anyway. 

The Results Are In

Other than Banu (who is not a food motivated cat any way) all the kitties like their new food. And even Banu ate a little bit and then walked away; I didn't get a picture of her. I must confess, the food smelled good to me too, not stinky like regular canned cat food.

Here are some pictures of the new experience:

Lupe tasting moist food for the first time.

Mmmmm.

Frosty took to it like a champ.

Chappu, who follows Frosty around the way she followed Calvin, watches Frosty chow down.

Although she is definitely a crunchy carb lover Chappu did eat the moist food. Maybe watching Frosty eat it made her feel better about it. No kidding, she often follows Frosty into the kitchen and if he eats, she eats. 

Tippy seems to like it too. She vomited a little bit two times but when I present her with the option of dry v.s. wet she chooses the wet. No more vomiting though.

What a long tongue for such a tiny cat!

Obi gorged himself on the food; I should have stopped him. These pics are from last night after he ate too much.

He and the others had to do a major clean up.

 A very satisfied customer.

Unfortunately Obi (and I, the one cleaning up) are paying the price today for his pig out session yesterday. He vomited twice and has had diarrhea today. Thankfully he is using his litter box faithfully and it's small quantities each time, but boy are we paying the price for me not introducing the food more slowly. I knew I should go slowly but it just warmed my heart so much to see him happily scarfing down that food. Sigh.... He's now on "gut rest" as Shirin calls it. I've been obsessed these last few days with doing the right thing and totally did the wrong thing, at least with Obi. Oh well, nobody's perfect. And I'm ready to start thinking of other things... like doing my laundry. Much less stressful!

Cat Food Data Review

Although I didn't post a Sciencey Friday post yesterday I promise I was performing stupendous mental feats of scientific review of cat foods. Having had three cats die of cancer in four years has to make one think. In Calvin and Layli's cases one must wonder about a genetic component since they were litter mates. In Teddie's case? Who knows. Who knows what leads one cat (or one human for that matter) to get cancer and not another. Certainly environmental circumstances could be at play. Organisms are often subjected to or ingest substances that are harmful to them. With cats you wonder about their food and perhaps the dust in the litter in which they dig around. It shouldn't surprise you then that I, the woman who has tried to get everyone to read Dr. David Servan-Schreiber's book Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Life, am trying to adjust our cats' environment to make it a bit healthier.

There is an excellent website, catinfo.org, written by a very thoughtful veterinarian, Dr. Lisa Pierson, who graduated in 1984 from UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Although her area is equine medicine she loves, rescues, and has cats. How she came to be interested in feline nutrition and health is an enjoyable read. I have spent several days this week reading up on her advice regarding the best foods, litters, litter boxes, vaccines, etc. and have spent probably 48 hours seriously calculating which of the foods is the best that we can actually afford.

At one of our recent visits to our kitties' local vet, Dr. Ferguson said that although the vet community has been advising dry food for decades it appears that dry food is actually not at all healthy for cats and he has started suggesting to customers that even lower end canned cat food is probably better than dry. This is exactly what Dr. Pierson recommends as well.

Unlike dogs and humans, cats traditionally got all their liquids from the prey they ate and actually drank very little water. As obligate carnivores they eat primarily small mammals such as mice which are about 70% water. Dry foods have only about 10% water. No matter how much they drink from the water bowl the concern is that they are chronically dehydrated. They were never meant to eat grains either, and most dry foods are high in grain. Some canned foods also have grains (corn, rice, wheat, etc.) so you have to be careful. Cats ideally eat at least 50% of their calories from protein, no more than 40% from fat, and less than 10% from carbohydrates, ideally about 3 to 4 % carbs. The optimal diet then is a carefully concocted mixture of raw meat and bone and organs in the percentage makeup of a mouse body (you can't just feed them raw chicken from your grocery store because it's lacking in essential nutrients that the cat would normally get from the non-muscle parts of the body.) Sorry Chappu, no more cereal from Daddy's bowl.

Dr. Pierson makes her own raw cat food and although it's expensive you can order frozen raw cat food that's delivered to your house. Way too expensive for us. She says that the crappiest canned food is still better than the best dry food. So as I've been doing my research on cost (it'll make you cry) I've been repeating her mantra... any canned food is better than dry... any canned food is better than dry... any canned food is better than dry.

It's impossible to distill 48 hours of intense study into small soundbites but if I had to I'd say this:

• buy canned not dry
• no grains
• avoid beef and fish, choose poultry and rabbit
• avoid artificial colors, preservatives, and other non-food additives

So at the end of the day I presented my partner in crime and general keeper of the monies with a proposal to either feed our six remaining sweethearts the best of the horrible foods for $7 a day, or a really good canned food for $14 per day. We've selected the really good canned food, Wellness brand Chicken Recipe, and plan to cut back expenses in some other area of our lives. Looking at Obi's shabby coat it feels that time is of the essence.

I remember when I first started reading about what happens to factory farm animals who become the meat on our plates. Once I knew those things I couldn't choose eating meat any more. It's like choosing directions to get to work. If I know that driving on Main Street to get there means running over a dog, but choosing Oak Street to get there means NOT running over a dog... I choose Oak Street. Now that I know what I know about cat food I 'd have a very hard time choosing the low quality stuff. I suppose I would if I had to.

Now comes the hard part, maybe. Some cats have a hard time transitioning from one type of food to another. I know that Obi and Frosty like canned food but I'm not so sure about the others, so this will be science project #2. Wish me luck!

Goodbye Layli-joon

We had to put Layli to sleep tonight; stomach lymphoma. I miss her so much already. It seems so unreal I can't quite believe it. Too sad to write about her right now.

HPV - Holy Political Volatility, Batman!

This is Sciencey Friday (MOIF) but there is a bit of a political slant to it today. Seems like there's a bit of a political slant to everything these days...

The vaccine for HPV, human papilloma virus, has been controversial even before it was available. All vaccines seem to have controversy surrounding them but the HPV vaccine has the additional burden of being a vaccine to prevent diseases that come from having sex. [Insert: all this particular STD requires is skin to skin contact - no actual "sexual intercourse" necessary.] So instead of parents/clinicians/schools/governments/scientists being able to make intelligent decisions based on facts they have been asked to take a political stance on what should be a medical issue. If you've been following the news you'll know that Michele Bachmann made an issue of it in the recent republican debate and in the days following made statements linking the vaccine with mental retardation.

To date there is no research that supports a link between the HPV vaccine and mental retardation (or any other significant adverse health effect from any of the usual vaccines other than anaphylaxis which can occur in response to any allergen) concludes the Institute of Medicine in their August report.  The American Academy of Pediatrics also states that there is "absolutely no scientific validity" to Bachmann's claims. On NPR this morning I heard someone offer one thousand dollars to anyone who can produce a documented case of mental retardation resulting from the HPV vaccine.

This all makes me very happy. People, especially people with access to a microphone and a mass audience, should not make sloppy claims for personal gain. If Bachmann is right she'll be exonerated. If she is proven wrong I hope the value of truth in science will receive some attention. It is time for science to regain the respect it deserves and of which it is so recently (think global warming) deprived.

** On a side note, Scientific American has written articles about the lack of scientific evidence linking vaccines to autism and what happens to public health when parents refuse to vaccinate their children.

The Answer To Why The Chicken Crossed The Road

If only I'd had my camera to document this comical yet nail-biting vision...

I was sitting at a red light with four cars in front of me. The yard to my left has chickens, gorgeous hens with shiny feathers of black and rusty orange. Every day on my way to and from work I look for those beautiful birds who are often in the yard pecking away. Being the animal lunatic that I am I always worry that someone will snatch one of them for their soup pot. 

Back to my story. As I sat at the light I observed a glossy black hen dashing and lunging, dashing and lunging, dashing and lunging after a tasty hopping morsel – a cricket, a grasshopper, a little frog??? The little creature kept ahead of each lunge so I watched as this pursuit led the hen across the street and between two of the cars in front of me. EEEEK! Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic in the other lane but since I didn’t see the hen come out the other side it became clear to me that she had finally caught her breakfast and was eating it right there between the two cars which would surely want to move forward when the light turned green. EEEEK! I held my breath. Did they see her? Surely the car right behind her did, right? RIGHT? 

Whew, I let out my breath when I saw her calmly walk back across the other lane back into her yard… and the light turned green. Now we know why the chicken crossed the road. Too much stress for me.

Of Gods And Men

We saw this last night. It's very moving, very meaningful, very powerful. I get goosebumps just watching the trailer.

So What's All This About Gluten?

Sciencey Friday  MOIF

Well I don't know about you but I've hearing so much about gluten in the last year or so and it seems to be getting louder. Everywhere I go packages now say "Gluten-Free!" So is gluten a bad thing? Only for a very few (about 1%) of the population diagnosed with a hereditary condition call celiac disease.

Gluten is a protein that can be found in wheat, barley, and rye, three very healthy grains. But for those with celiac disease the body will treat gluten as a toxin, triggering an immune response which means antibody production and inflammation. In severe cases the intestinal tract can become damaged putting a person at risk of inadequate nutrition (leading to anemia, osteoporosis, etc.) due to malabsorption of vitamins and nutrients. Other non-gastrointestinal symptoms can also occur like skin rash, fatigue, and mental fuzziness. The cure for celiac disease is to avoid gluten; the gut can heal itself over time.

So don't fall for those fancy detox schemes that suggest detoxifying your system with a gluten-free diet. For most of us, especially we vegetarians who use gluten as an excellent plant-source of protein, pass the barley soup, rye bread sandwiches and wheat flour muffins please!

9-10-11 Addendum:
Since posting this I've learned that actually one third of us carry one of two versions of the gene for the disease. So something triggers it - infection, surgery, drugs, or something else. This means you can, at any age, develop celiac disease. I also learned that you can have gluten sensitivity and so not tolerate it well (mainly diarrhea) but not get the full blown disease. There's also 'celiac lite' which is some worse than a sensitivity but also not true celiac.

Proud To Be A (Former) Cellist

Gabriel forwarded me this video. Wow. We never got to play cool stuff like this. Then again, I'm sure they didn't learn this in Orchestra 101 with Mr. Svoboda.

There Is Now A Fifth Taste

Sciencey Friday - MOIF
I learn something new every day and today is Friday, time for my "Sciencey Friday" post. I just read that there are now five basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. Umami comes from the Japanese meaning pleasant, savory taste. Next time we eat together don't be surprised if I say, "Mmmm, that tastes umami!" Here are some examples of foods that have this quality. Click on image to enlarge.

If you want to learn more click here.