If your'e a chicken, don't smoke

Smoked fish.

If you were annoyed to learn recently that eggs are once again bad for you, relax.

A study looked at patients with an average age of 62, some of whom really loved eggs and some of whom really loved cigarettes. Researcher David Spence then measured the amount of plaque in their arteries.

The results? Both smoking and eating eggs were independently associated with plaque increases, and eggs were almost as bad as cigarettes. “The effect size of egg yolks appears to be approximately 2/3 that of smoking,” Spence wrote. “Probably egg yolks should be avoided by persons at risk of vascular disease.” 

The problem is that the conclusion is based on self-reported lifetime history of smoking and egg-eating  -- and only smoking and egg-eating.

While it’s entirely possible that people who ate a bunch of eggs filled the rest of their diets with kale and dust and steel-cut oats, it’s just as possible they were eating those eggs alongside bacon and sausage and Hollandaise sauce. In other words: Maybe eggs aren’t solely to blame here.

In fact, we have no way of telling, based on this study, what role eggs specifically played in the development of these arterial plaques.

Antonis Zampelos, a nutrition professor, told Canada’s CBC News that these results lack validity. “The results are not as strong as the statement that came out … I’m not saying that this is not an interesting study. I’m saying that you can’t really make such a strong statement about smoking.”

“This is very poor quality research that should not influence patient’s dietary choices,” Steven Nissen, chair of the department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, told ABC News. “It is extremely important to understand the differences between ‘association’ and ‘causation’.”

I told you there is a God

After years of waffling research on coffee and health, even some fear that java might raise the risk of heart disease, a big study finds the opposite: Coffee drinkers are a little more likely to live longer. Regular or decaf doesn’t matter.

The study of 400,000 people is the largest ever done on the issue, and the results should reassure any coffee lovers who think it’s a guilty pleasure that may do harm.

“Our study suggests that’s really not the case,” said lead researcher Neal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute. “There may actually be a modest benefit of coffee drinking.”

No one knows why. Uh, do you really care?

 Coffee contains a thousand things that can affect health, from helpful antioxidants to tiny amounts of substances linked to cancer. The most widely studied ingredient — caffeine — didn’t play a role in the new study’s results.

It’s not that earlier studies were wrong. 

There is evidence that coffee can raise LDL, or bad cholesterol, and blood pressure at least short-term, and those in turn can raise the risk of heart disease. 

Even in the new study, it first seemed that coffee drinkers were more likely to die at any given time. But they also tended to smoke, drink more alcohol, eat more red meat and exercise less than non-coffee-drinkers. 

Once researchers took those things into account, a clear pattern emerged: Each cup of coffee per day nudged up the chances of living longer.

Next week: why smoking, drinking, red meat and no exercise are good for you.

Have a cup

(Happy to Serve You via American Digest)

What's in that expresso?

A study of 20 commercial expresso coffees in Scotland reveals a 6-fold differences in caffeine levels, a 17-fold range of caffeoylquinic acid contents, and 4-fold differences in the caffeoylquinic acid : caffeine ratio.

Yikes! I had no idea that stuff was in there.

These variations reflect differences in batch-to-batch bean composition, possible blending of arabica with robusta beans, as well as roasting and grinding procedures, but the predominant factor is likely to be the amount of beans used in the coffee-making/barista processes. The most caffeine in a single espresso was 322 mg and a further three contained >200 mg, exceeding the 200 mg day upper limit recommended during pregnancy by the UK Food Standards Agency.

This snap-shot of high-street expresso coffees suggests the published assumption that a cup of strong coffee contains 50 mg caffeine may be misleading. Consumers at risk of toxicity, including pregnant women, children and those with liver disease, may unknowingly ingest excessive caffeine from a single cup of espresso coffee. As many coffee houses prepare larger volume coffees, such as Latte and Cappuccino, by dilution of a single or double shot of expresso, further study on these products is warranted.

Starbucks had the lowest amount of caffeine.

Toss those cookbooks

I've been going through the business throwing stuff away. Seems I've saved every telephone I've ever owned. There are three computer printers down there. And more books than the Library of Congress. What to keep?

An article in the New York Times has some advice, including this on books.

Keep them (with one exception). Yes, e-readers are amazing, and yes, they will probably become a more dominant reading platform over time, but consider this about a book: It has a terrific, high-resolution display. It is pretty durable; you could get it a little wet and all would not be lost. It has tremendous battery life. It is often inexpensive enough that, if you misplaced it, you would not be too upset. You can even borrow them free at sites called libraries. 

But there is one area where printed matter is going to give way to digital content: cookbooks. Martha Stewart Makes Cookies a $5 app for the iPad, is the wave of the future. Every recipe has a photo of the dish (something far too expensive for many printed cookbooks). 

Complicated procedures can be explained by an embedded video. When something needs to be timed, there’s a digital timer built right into the recipe. You can e-mail yourself the ingredients list to take to the grocery store. The app does what cookbooks cannot, providing a better version of everything that came before it. 

Now all Martha has to do is make a decorative splashguard for a tablet and you will be all set.

Exciting new ways to eat

Don't wanna get on her bad side.

The departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services have issued new Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Health writer Jane Brody sums them up:

• Eat lots more vegetables and fruits, filling half your plate with them.
• Choose lean meats and poultry, and replace some of them with seafood.
• Consume mainly nonfat or low-fat milk and other dairy products.
• Choose low-sodium products and use less salt and salty ingredients in food preparation.
• Eat more fiber-rich foods; replace most refined grains and grain-based foods with whole-grain versions.
• Use vegetable oils like olive and canola oil instead of solid fats like butter and margarine, but remember that all fats have lots of calories.
• Eat out less; cook at home more often.
• Drink water, calorie-free beverages like coffee and tea, and 100 percent fruit juice instead of regular sodas, fruit drinks and energy drinks; limit alcoholic drinks to one a day for women, two for men.
• Eat less and exercise more to achieve a better balance of caloric intake and output. 

She also offers some practical advice for getting there.

Are those local farmers' markets a good thing?

We've got a farmer's market in town. It sets up shop once a week, and I've been there once. This idea has become something of a fad everywhere. I guess the idea is that you get very fresh produce, and you also get to pretend that you're saving the plant by buying broccoli not trucked from California.

Well ...

According to The New York Times: A surprising investigation by the local NBC affiliate in Los Angeles discovered several examples of false claims at various Southern California farmers’ markets, including a vendor who purchased boxes of produce from wholesale produce warehouses, including items grown on big commercial farms as far away as Mexico.

So how do you know?

Operators of farmers markets we spoke to suggest shoppers get to know vendors they buy from, and ask them a lot of questions. Ask for the exact location of the farm where the produce is grown. If they claim their produce is “pesticide free,” ask them what methods they use to control pests on their crops. Ask exactly when the produce was picked. If the farmer can’t give you specific answers, or seems unwilling to answer your questions, market operators say you should walk away.

The Wall Street Journal weighs in with another perspective on the local markets: Patronizing local farmers who produce in small batches tends to cost more. You may find some peak-season bargains at the farmers' market, but there's no such thing as a free locavore lunch. Virginia Postrel writes:

The locavore ideal is a world without trade, not only beyond national borders but even from the next state: no Florida oranges in Colorado or California grapes in New Mexico, no Vidalia onions in New York or summer spinach in Georgia.

Fully realized, that ideal would eliminate one of the great culinary advances of the past half century. Unripe peaches notwithstanding, today's supermarket produce departments are modern marvels. American grocery shoppers have choices that would have been unimaginable only a few decades ago. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the only way to get fresh spinach or leaf lettuce was to plant a garden. Avocados were an exotic treat, asparagus came in a can, and pomegranates existed only in books.

Now my neighborhood supermarket sells five types of lettuce, plus spinach, endive, escarole, radicchio, frisée, rapini, three kinds of chard, mustard greens, dandelion greens and kale. That's not including all the cabbages—or, of course, the prewashed salads in a bag that have particularly boosted fresh-spinach purchases. In this ordinary produce department, you can buy not only avocados, asparagus and pomegranates, but everything from purple baby cauliflowers to spiky kiwano melons that look like some kind of scary deep-sea creature. Need portobello mushrooms, Japanese eggplant or organic ginger at 2 a.m.? The store is open 24/7.

 The most important thing, in my opinion, is how close to the door you can park.

What you eat: broccoli, tea, cranberries, grapes

Bottled tea may be all the rage among health-conscious people, but it may not have as many health benefits as you think. Bottled tea is billed as being healthful because it contains polyphenols, antioxidants that may help ward off a range of diseases, including cancer. But scientists say they’ve found that many of the popular bottled tea drinks contain fewer polyphenols than a single cup of home-brewed green or black tea. And some contain such small amounts that a person would have to drink 20 bottles to get the same polyphenol benefit in a single cup of tea.

Scientists report that within eight hours of drinking cranberry juice, the juice could help prevent bacteria from developing into an infection in the urinary tract.

Fibers from broccoli and plantain plants may block a key stage in the development of Crohn’s disease, a new study finds.

Crohn’s is an inflammatory bowel disorder that affects about seven of every 100,000 people in North America.

The plant extract resveratrol, found in the skin of red grapes, appears to suppress inflammation and may fight aging in humans, according to a new study. Common food sources of resveratrol include grapes, wine, peanuts, blueberries, and cranberries.

Low-carbohydrate weight loss diets have an edge over low-fat diets for improving HDL cholesterol levels long term, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health.