If you’ve ever experienced a cupcake coma (you know, the period of extreme lethargy that follows a sugar high brought on by consumption of one or more cupcakes), you might not be surprised by some recent findings on the effects of processed sweeteners. A team of UCLA researchers has observed that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) makes rats more forgetful, while omega-3 fatty acids—chemical compounds that research has shown can protect the brain’s synapses—seem to have the opposite effect.

The researchers, whose paper will be published this week in the peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology, trained a group of rats to navigate a maze. Then, they randomly divided the rats into four groups, and for six weeks they fed each group a slightly different diet in addition to the usual rat chow: One group received HFCS in its water; another received omega-3 fatty acids. A third received both HFCS and omega-3s, and the fourth, a control group, received plain old rat chow. Continue reading →

Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The tomato, whose genome has just now been decoded, turns out to be one well-endowed vegetable, possessing 31,760 genes. This rich legacy, possibly a reflection of the disaster that killed off the dinosaurs, is some 7,000 more than that of a person, and presents a complex puzzle to scientists who hope to understand its secrets.
RSS Feed

A consortium of plant geneticists from 14 countries has spent nine years decoding the tomato genome in the hope of breeding better ones. The scientists sequenced the genomes of both Heinz 1706, a variety used to make ketchup, and the tomato’s closest wild relative, Solanum pimpinellifolium, which lives in the highlands of Peru, where the tomato’s ancestors originated. Their results were published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The tomato, though a fruit to botanists, has been decreed a vegetable by the United States Supreme Court. The verdict is not so unreasonable given that the tomato has a close cousin that is a vegetable, namely the potato. The genomes of the two plants have 92 percent of their DNA in common, the tomato researchers report. The main difference is that the potato is thought to have a handful of genes that direct the plant’s energy away from producing fruit and into the generation of tubers. But even with the genomes of the two plants deciphered, those genes have not yet been identified, said Daniel Zamir, a plant geneticist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the report’s two principal authors. Continue reading →

Are we digging our own graves with our teeth? Is the food that we eat every day slowly killing us? When I was growing up, I just assumed that everything in the grocery store was perfectly safe and perfectly healthy. I just assumed that the government and the big corporations were watching out for us and that they would never allow something harmful to be sold in the stores. Boy, was I wrong! Today, the average American diet is extremely unhealthy. Most of the foods that we all love to eat are absolutely packed with things that will damage our health.

Many of the ingredients that make our foods “taste good” such as fat, salt and sugar can be extremely damaging in large amounts. On top of that, most processed foods are absolutely loaded with chemicals and preservatives. The next time you go to the grocery store, just start turning over packages and read the “ingredients” that are being put into our food. If you have never done this before, you will be absolutely amazed. In many of our most common foods there are “ingredients” that I cannot even pronounce. Sadly, most Americans have no idea that eating a steady diet of these processed foods will likely leave them massively overweight, very sick and much closer to death.

Eating healthy takes more time, more effort and more money than eating poorly does. Continue reading →

Eating dietary trans fatty acids (dTFAs), typically referred to as unsaturated or trans fat is linked to bad behavior ranging from impatience to overt aggression, according to a new study.

Irritability and aggression can now be added to the long list of ill effects that have previously been linked to unsaturated fat consumption, like increased risk for coronary heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, liver dysfunction, infertility in women and major depressive disorder. Continue reading →

My Mom had been taking the full-stalk canned style asparagus that she pureed and she took 4 tablespoons in the morning and 4 tablespoons later in the day. She did this for over a month. She is on chemo pills for Stage 3 lung cancer in the pleural area and her cancer cell count went from 386 down to 125 as of this past week. Her oncologist said she does not need to see him for 3 months. (A Reader)

Several years ago, I had a man seeking asparagus for a friend who had cancer. He gave me a photocopied copy of an article,entitled, `Asparagus for cancer’ printed in Cancer News Journal, December 1979.

I will share it here, just as it was shared with me:

I am a biochemist,and have specialized in the relation of diet to health for over 50 years.. Several years ago, I learned of the discovery of Richard R. Vensal, D.D.S. that asparagus might cure cancer. Continue reading →

We are not in a position to vouch for the validity of the following, yet considering that lemons are of the Almighty’s creation – it could well prove to be true. This came to us as an email, hence the typical “email” type language n the earlier part of the post. (Ed.)

It’s about time someone speaks up and gives cancer patients a lease on life,,, Lemons are cheaper than surgeons… What can they loose?? God Bless the researchers who truly CARE!!!!!

This is something that we should all take seriously – just had a recent test myself that sent shivers up my spine – or near by. Even doctors are now saying that there is value in trying “LEMON”

So, a tablespoon of “real lemon” (the concentrate in a bottle) in a glass of water every morning. (Concentrate in a bottle?)

What can it hurt? Continue reading →

Pancreatic cancer warning over processed meat

Eating one sausage a day or two rashers of bacon raises the risk of pancreatic cancer by a fifth, according to research.

Scientists have found that even relatively small amounts of processed meat increase the chance of developing this deadly illness.

Pancreatic cancer is called ‘the silent killer’ because it often does not produce symptoms in early stages. Continue reading →

…rain gutters, of course! Suzanne Forsling has become somewhat of a celebrity for her ingenuity. Her resourcefulness finds a practical application for re-purposing rain gutters. Have a read:

I am from Iowa, so I have an inherent need to grow vegetables. Each winter, I dream up ways of trying to garden in Juneau’s environment which, so far, has really frustrated me.

Nothing I tried works very well. Like many homes in the Juneau area, our yard has its problems. We live near the glacier, so the soil is cold and has very little organic matter, there are lots of big trees shading it, and we have all the slugs and root maggots anyone could want, with porcupines, cats, bears and ravens meandering to boot.

There is only one side of our house that gets much sunshine, and, of course, that side of the house has the smallest yard. It is really just an alleyway between ours and the neighbors. I might eventually put in some cold frames, but can’t really afford that this year with all the extra money going to the high energy and food prices. Continue reading →

If you’re mulling ways to get more grains into your diet, think soup, writes Martha Rose Shulman in this week’s Recipes for Health.

Whole grains have higher fiber content than pasta and white rice, and because they’re slowly digested, they have less impact on blood levels of insulin than refined grains. Even light soups can be transformed into more of a main dish with the addition of whole grains.

Here are five ways to use grains like quinoa, barley, farro and bulgur in your soups. Continue reading →

~ Introduction ~
Up to the 19th-century, fat was relatively expensive and butter was a luxury. The poor lived mainly on potatoes and bread, which were cheap, supplemented whenever possible with whatever source of protein and fat they could afford. Not surprisingly, mortality was high amongst the poorer classes. To fill the gap in the market cheap substitutes for butter began to be produced in the last quarter of the Victorian era. Made from cheaper fats and coloured yellow to mimic the look, if not the taste of butter, they were called margarine. And this started, quite slowly at first, a radical change in the types of fat we, as a nation, ate. Continue reading →

With the inception of the original incarnation of this web-site, it had always been our desire to provide a ‘cookbook’ of sorts, Dr. Kelley’s Cookbook to be exact. With the exception of two posts, it never came to pass. What follows, was one of the aforementioned posts, and fittingly, excerpted from Dr. Kelley’s own personal experience in guiding people to Victory over Cancer over the past, nearly five decades. Funny how others are just now catching on to the concept of fresh, non-processed foods. (Ed.) Continue reading →