Disease Proof : Disease Proof : Health & Nutrition News & Commentary : Dr. Joel Fuhrman

We all know that being overweight carries consequences—increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, etc.—but obesity during pregnancy prompts even more tangible complications. Annie Murphy Paul of The New York Times explains:

The challenges of caring for these patients begin early. “We perform an anatomical survey of the fetus, but in an extremely obese woman, the ultrasound signal often can’t penetrate through all the tissue,” Dr. Mark Chames, an obstetrician at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, says. He must use a vaginal probe instead. A thorough examination is especially important in obese women, Chames said, because they are at greater risk of having babies with neural-tube defects and other malformations.

Birth brings more difficulties. The fetuses of obese women are often too large to fit through the birth canal; their mothers are about twice as likely as normal-weight women to need a Caesarean section. Longer surgical instruments are required, as are extra-wide operating-room tables, reinforced to support hundreds of additional pounds.

To head off such problems, patients at the bariatric obstetric clinic at St. Louis University in Missouri are counseled not to put on any pounds at all during pregnancy, and are even encouraged to lose weight. Dr. Raul Artal, the chairman of the ob-gyn department and the clinic’s director, acknowledges that the notion of weight loss during pregnancy can be startling. “It goes against everything we were taught in medical school, everything we’ve always told our patients,” he says. Some scientists warn that we still know little about the potential dangers of this approach. Emerging evidence, however, suggests that obese women who maintain or lose weight during pregnancy experience significantly fewer complications and deliver healthier babies.

Getting fat and pregnant is a dangerous cliché. Clearly, an obese mom is not eating healthfully—bad idea! According to Dr. Fuhrman a pregnant mother’s diet is vitally important to a developing baby’s health. He explains:

We know that children have sensitive vulnerabilities that are quite distinct from adults. Their exposure to chemicals in our environment is more potentially damaging than the same exposure at a later age. It is important to realize that the diet a woman eats during her pregnancy and even before her pregnancy effects the adult health of her future offspring. For example, a recent study shows a strong association in children who develop brain tumors with the mother’s consumption of hotdogs during pregnancy.1 Scientific evidence suggests that cigarette smoking during pregnancy is associated with testicular cancer in sons thirty-five to fifty years later.2 We may get away with risky behaviors when we imbibe in our later years, but when we gamble with our children, the stakes are much higher and the damage more profound.

Maybe I’m going out on a dangerous limb here, but, if you’re pregnant and eating unhealthfully. You’re perpetrating a tremendous act of irresponsibility and selfishness. Am I wrong on this?
Continue Reading...

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According to a new study in Pediatrics, by researchers at Brown Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island, children with ADHD are more likely to become overweight. Reuters reports:

The results of prior research has suggested that the impulsivity and poor behavioral regulation that is common in children with ADHD may promote certain eating patterns that increase the risk of obesity, co-authors Molly E. Waring and Dr. Kate L. Lapane, from Brown Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island, note.

To investigate further, the researchers analyzed data from 62,887 children and adolescents included in the 2003-2004 National Survey of Children's Health.

Children with ADHD were identified based the response of the parent to the question: "Has a doctor or health professional ever told you that your child has attention-deficit disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, that is, ADD or ADHD?"

The prevalence of ADD or ADHD was 8.8 percent, the authors report in the journal Pediatrics, and approximately half the affected children were taking medication for the condition.

I think most mental disorders could lead to weight-gain. When I was depressed and self-loathing I was over 60 pounds heavier than I am now—food is a great crutch.

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Hack radio host Michael Alan Weiner—better known as Michael Savage—doesn’t believe autism is real. He thinks 99% of autistic children are brats who haven't been told to cut the act out. David Bauder of the Associated Press reports:

Savage offered no apology in a message posted Monday on his Web site. He said greedy doctors and drug companies were creating a "national panic" by overdiagnosing autism, a mental disorder that inhibits a person's ability to communicate.

On his radio show last week, he said: "What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, `Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, you idiot."'

The government estimates about 1 in 150 children have some form of autism. But many experts believe these unsociable behaviors were just about as common 30 or 40 years ago and that the increase is mostly caused by a surge in special education services and a corresponding shift in diagnoses.

Wendy Fournier of the National Autism Association, a parents' advocacy group, said she was invited to speak Monday on Savage's three-hour program by Savage's boss, Mark Masters of Talk Radio Network, which syndicates the show across the country. A spokeswoman from Talk Radio Network did not immediately return a call for comment.

Fournier called Savage's comments "way, way, way over the line and cruel."

"I'm hoping to make him see the reality of what these kids are facing," she said. "You can't fix it by telling a kid to shut up. It's like telling a kid with cancer to stop being sick."

Savage is a dope—trying to be edgy, but too cowardly to stick to his guns. I agree that many doctors and drug companies are greedy, but to say autistic kids are just brats is staggeringly moronic.

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Dr. Peter Libby, M.D., professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, calls the push to medicate children with statins “an admission of colossal societal failure.” Via The New York Times:

But I think all that misses the crux of the issue. The very discussion of drug treatment to lower cholesterol in kids constitutes an admission of colossal societal failure. Although our genetic makeup has not changed in the last 20 years, our collective girth has skyrocketed, and the epidemic of childhood obesity is going global. We need to look to our environment for the root cause of this sudden change in the shape of the human species, which in evolutionary terms is occurring in an instant. Rather than “medicalizing” childhood obesity and heart risk, we need to repair our toxic surroundings.

Another recent study, the largest ever of children and physical activity, finds that American kids experience a remarkable drop in activity levels as they reach puberty. By age 15, the wide majority of kids are moving less than one hour each weekday.

As citizens, as parents, we must strive to reinforce physical education, nutrition curricula, and encourage limitation of high-sugar beverages in schools. In too many homes, glowing television screens, computer monitors, and video game screens have supplanted the bicycles and basketball hoops of yesteryear. Our kids’ meals should reflect sensible nutrition practices wherever they’re served. (Many such practices were noted in the academy’s report, while only one tentative paragraph discussed physical activity.) Urban planners must redouble efforts to provide the sidewalks and bike paths needed by children and adults alike for spontaneous recreation.

This should be a call to action for parents. Want your kid to be healthy, get involved! “Setting an example supported by both parents is the most important and most effective way for your children to develop a healthy attitude toward food,” explains Dr. Fuhrman. Same goes with exercise.

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• Hire somebody to grow you a garden? Kim Severson of The New York Times explains:

Eating locally raised food is a growing trend. But who has time to get to the farmer’s market, let alone plant a garden?

That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.

Call them the lazy locavores — city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. Mr. Paque is typical of a new breed of business owner serving their needs.

• The migraine medication, Topamax, main increase the risk of birth defects. From WebMD:

In a study published in the latest issue of the journal Neurology, taking Topamax (topiramate) during pregnancy was associated with a birth defect risk within the range of risk seen in other anti-epileptic drugs, researchers reported.


But the incidence of birth defects seen when Topamax was taken with other anti-epileptic drugs was higher than expected.

The study was small, but it is among the first to link Topamax to birth defects in humans, confirming what has been seen in previous animal studies.

"More research needs to be done to confirm these results, especially since it was a small study," researcher John Craig, MRCP, of the Royal Group of Hospitals in Belfast, Northern Ireland said in a news release.

• Here’s how to deal with treat giving grandparents. Via Tim Harford:

I am the mother of two young children, and extremely grateful to my own parents for looking after them for a few hours now and then. My problem is that they stuff the kids with chocolates, crisps and ice cream. This is not good for the children, their behavior and my own efforts to feed them something nutritious. Why do the grandparents have such a different philosophy, and can I do anything to change their thinking…


… Rather than reasoning with your parents, you must change their incentives. Unfortunately, this is not easy. You could try to bribe your parents, but threats will be useless because they are doing you a favor.

Perhaps your best bet is to try to arrange for longer bouts of childcare. Your parents will have a fresh perspective on the merits of carrots after trying to put a three-year-old to bed in the midst of a sugar high.

• Researchers believe cultural sensitivity may improve diabetes outcomes. Joene Hendry of Reuters reports:
  

"There is some evidence suggesting culturally tailored health education can improve some clinical outcomes in the short-term," co-author Dr. Yolanda Robles of Cardiff University the UK told Reuters Health. However, "further research is needed to assess long-term effects," Robles said.


Language and cultural barriers may hinder the delivery of quality diabetes health education to ethnic minorities, yet education is a vital aspect of diabetes care, Robles and colleagues report in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from The Cochrane Collaboration.

To assess the overall efficacy of culturally tailored diabetes education versus the "usual" care, the researchers combined findings from 11 published research articles that compared the two approaches among minority groups living in middle- or high-income countries. All of the 1,603 study participants were older than 16 years.

• U.S. inspectors believe a single jalapeño pepper may have caused salmonella outbreak. More from Lauran Neergaard of the Associated Press:

They found the same bacteria strain on a single Mexican-grown jalapeno pepper handled in Texas -- and issued a stronger warning for consumers to avoid fresh jalapenos.


But Monday's discovery, the equivalent of a fingerprint, doesn't solve the mystery: Authorities still don't know where the pepper became tainted -- on the farm, or in the McAllen, Texas, plant, or at some stop in between, such as a packing house.

Nor are they saying the tainted pepper exonerates tomatoes sold earlier in the spring that consumers until last week had been told were the prime suspect.

Still, "this genetic match is a very important break in the case," said Dr. David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's food safety chief.

• Scientists are trying to make a cancer vaccine from the tobacco plant. Sharon Begley of Newsweek is on it:
  

Fully aware of the irony here, biologist Ronald Levy of Stanford University and his team used tobacco plants to grow the vaccine, which would act against follicular B-cell lymphoma. This chronic, incurable form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma strikes some 16,000 people in the United States each year. For all its horrors, however, follicular B-cell lymphoma just may be tailor-made for a cancer vaccine: all of the malignant cells are the descendants of a single bad actor and have an identical molecule on their surface. But the molecular signature of one patient’s cancer cells is slightly different from every other patient’s; hence the need for potentially expensive personalized vaccines.


The scientists therefore spliced the DNA for the molecular sequences of the antibodies from each of the 16 patients into tobacco cells. The DNA triggered production of antibodies in the tobacco plants’ leaves which were tailor-made for each patient’s lymphoma cells. The scientists ground up the leaves and isolated the antibodies, injecting them into each patient.

The patients’ immune systems got cracking: 70 percent of the patients developed an immune response to the plant-produced vaccine, and 47 percent produced a response specific to the antigen.

• It seems women are more likely to suffer tattoo regret than men. Via Alan Mozes of HealthDay News:

"We saw that for women there is still some negative societal fallout to having tattoos", said study author Myrna L. Armstrong, a professor in the school of nursing at Texas Tech University's Health Sciences Center, in Lubbock, Texas. "This isn't a problem for men. Society supports men, because tattoos are related to a macho image, so we don't question it. But for women, having a tattoo seems to be a transgression of gender boundaries."


Armstrong and her colleagues outlined their observations in the July issue of the Archives of Dermatology.

The authors pointed out that about one-quarter of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 have a tattoo, and women constitute between 45 percent and 65 percent of the tattoo market.

Prior studies show that more than 80 percent of the inked crowd are pleased with their decision to get a tattoo. Among the fifth that are not, about 6 percent ultimately remove their marking.

• According to a new study obstetricians overlook alcohol consumption in pregnant women. From Blackwell Publishing:

Almost half of the obstetricians interviewed said they did not routinely ask about alcohol consumption in pregnancy.


An editorial by Professor Elizabeth Elliot from the University of Sydney titled "Alcohol and Pregnancy: the Pivotal Role of the Obstetrician", discusses the state of awareness about the adverse effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy and the obstetricians’ participation in educating against maternal drinking.

Only 16% of the obstetricians routinely provided information about the consequences of alcohol in pregnancy, while only 5% gave advice which were consistent with the latest guidelines of The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) - which states that, for pregnant women, ‘no drinking is the safest option’.

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A new study claims breast-feeding releases happy hormones into mothers making them feel content that their babies needs have been met. Reuters reports:

When a baby breast-feeds, it triggers a flood of the hormone oxytocin that releases milk from the mammary gland and a feeling of love and trust in the mother that ensures the baby's needs are met.

This reflex has long puzzled researchers because it requires large surges of oxytocin to pull off all of this. Using a special computer model, researchers from China, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom said on Thursday they now understand how it works.

Their study, reported in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, suggests that breast feeding not only taps the normal brain cells involved in secreting oxytocin.

It also recruits dendrites -- whose normal job is to create communication channels between brain cells -- into secreting the hormone.

Dr. Fuhrman is a huge advocate of breast-feeding. Just check out DiseaseProof’s healthy parenting category for more.

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When it comes to staying physically active, teenagers take a nosedive; 9-year olds get about 3 hours per day, while 15-year olds only get about 49 minutes during the week and even less on weekends. More from Tara Parker-Pope of The New York Times:

While researchers have long believed that childhood activity wanes as kids enter their teen years, the study is unique because it followed about 1,000 children from around the country over time and used activity monitors to carefully track moderate to vigorous physical activity at various ages. The findings show clearly that even the most active young children experience a precipitous drop in physical activity as they hit puberty.

"I was surprised by the degree of the drop – it’s a dramatic shift,” said Dr. Philip R. Nader, emeritus professor of pediatrics at the University of California-San Diego. "Younger children appear to be naturally active, but as kids get older, they find fewer opportunities to be active.”

The activity study was part of the ongoing Study of Early Childcare and Youth Development, a 15-year look at the health of American children funded by the National Institutes of Health. Unlike many childhood activity studies, the latest research didn’t rely on parents to report a child’s activity. Instead the children wore accelerometers – devices that measure movement – for a week at a time during the ages of 9, 11, 12 and 15.

Overall, boys were more active than girls, moving on average, 18 more minutes a day. The age of 13 appeared to be a particularly vulnerable time – that’s the point for both boys and girls that weekend activity dropped below the 60 minute mark.

I’m not a parent, but I think it starts with the parents. My mom has always exercised A LOT and it certainly rubbed off on me. As early as 7th grade I started developing workout routines.

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A Canadian study claims that food products marketed to children have poor nutritional content. Reuters reports:

The study, done by the University of Calgary, found that nine out of 10 food items provided poor nutritional value because of high levels of sugar, fat or sodium.

Just under 70 percent of the products - which excluded soft drinks, and confectionary and bakery items - derived a high proportion of their calories from sugar.

One in five had high fat levels, and 17 percent had high sodium levels.

Even so, 62 percent of the products with poor nutritional quality made positive claims on the front of the packaging, amid increasing concerns over childhood obesity.

"Parents may have questions about which packaged foods are good for their children," said lead researcher Charlene Elliott in a statement.

"Yet certain nutritional claims may add to the confusion, as they can mislead people into thinking the whole product is nutritious," she added.

Now, this may be true, but, isn’t it up to the parents to say, “No. I’m not buying that crap!”

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Dr. Fuhrman responds to The American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation to give young children cholesterol-fighting drugs.

Clearly the medical profession and the drug companies form a coalition that economically monopolizes the health delivery to Americans. The effect is a health care system dependent on drugs, instead of encouragement of rationale lifestyle habits. When you consider that most antibiotics (which are highly toxic and already linked to later life cancers in scientific studies) prescribed to children are given for inappropriate reasons and viral illnesses in which they have no value, you could almost say that most pediatricians spend a large portion of their time delivering toxic medications to fragile children without justification. The harm they do may be much greater than anyone ever imagines. Now it gets even worse.

We have a nation of overweight parents, addicted to processed foods and convenience foods, who are poisoning themselves and creating a nation of overweight, diabetic and cancer-prone children, and the answer of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association is to recommend a more aggressive use of cholesterol-lowering drugs. Why don’t we just give all these kids gastric bypass surgery instead? Besides nobody knows the long-term risks of statins taken since childhood. This is just another example of the failure of health care in this country and that things will continue to worsen in the future as we continue to place drugs as the focal point of health care interventions.

I say—our health is tied to our country’s fertile soils with access to micronutrient rich produce never so available in recent human history; fresh fruits, vegetables, beans, seeds, nuts and other natural foods that are infinitely more effective than drugs. We have an unprecedented opportunity to be healthier than ever before and we can better use our resources educating and motivating our country to eat healthier and utilize less medical care and drugs, not more.

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Why bother teaching kids to eat right. Let them eat all the junk they want and then prescribe them meds just like their fat parents. Get this. The American Academy of Pediatrics is now recommending giving children as young as 8 cholesterol-fighting drugs. The Associated Press reports:

Several of these drugs are approved for use in children and data show that increasing numbers are using them.

"If we are more aggressive about this in childhood, I think we can have an impact on what happens later in life ... and avoid some of these heart attacks and strokes in adulthood," Daniels said. He has worked as a consultant to Abbott Laboratories and Merck & Co., but not on matters involving their cholesterol drugs.

Drug treatment would generally be targeted for kids at least 8 years old who have too much LDL, the "bad" cholesterol, along with other risky conditions, including obesity and high blood pressure.

For overweight children with too little HDL, the "good" cholesterol, the first course of action should be weight loss, more physical activity and nutritional counseling, the academy says.

Pediatricians should routinely check the cholesterol of children with a family history of inherited cholesterol disease or with parents or grandparents who developed heart disease at an early age, the recommendations say. Screening also is advised for kids whose family history isn't known and those who are overweight, obese or have other heart disease risk factors.

Well, if it wasn’t official before. It sure is now! American medicine has gone nucking futs! No doubt, drug companies have their hands in this—it reeks of their stink. Now, I also read about this on the Well blog. Check this out:

The guidelines give no guidance on how long a child should stay on drug treatment. But they do say the first goal should be to lower bad cholesterol levels to less than 160 milligrams or possibly as low as 110 milligrams in children with a strong family history of heart disease or other risk factors like obesity.


Because statins have been around since only the mid-1980s, there is no evidence to show whether giving statins to a child will lower the risk for heart attack in middle age.

Clearly there is plenty of merit behind this recommendation—give me a break!

UPDATE: More from Dr. Fuhrman: My Thoughts on Giving Children Cholesterol Drugs.

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Albuterol nebulization often used to treat acute asthma attacks has been shown to increase cardiac risks in children. Via Family Practice News:

The team speculated that myocardial injury may be due to excessive stimulation of β receptors, perhaps in combination with genetic predisposition to myocardial injury associated with that mechanism.

“We recommend that children receiving continuous albuterol nebulization (10–15 mg/hr or more) for more than 2 hours be closely monitored for evidence of myocardial injury and diastolic hypotension,” Dr. Fagbuyi Dr. Daniel Fagbuyi, a fellow in pediatric emergency medicine said during his oral presentation.

In response to questions from the audience, he acknowledged that much thought went into using the term “myocardial injury” to describe the effect of elevated ST segments or troponin elevations.

“We expected scientists would question whether our measurements reflected true myocardial injury, but our data clearly show that caution is appropriate when using continuous nebulized albuterol,” he said.

A careful review of the literature contains sufficient evidence that those markers correlated with actual myocardial injury, even in children, he added.

The clinical relevance of the findings and their potential contributions to long-term sequelae remain under study in the pediatric population, Dr. Fagbuyi said.

For more asthma news, don’t forget about DiseaseProof’s asthma category.

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A new study on rats has determined that mothers who eat junk food while pregnant or breastfeeding have obesity-prone children. WebMD reports:

"The maternal diet seems to influence and trigger events early in the life of their offspring," study researcher Stephanie Bayol, PhD, tells WebMD. "We found that by the end of their adolescence, the offspring from the junk-food-fed animals had increased blood sugar, blood fat, and decreased insulin sensitivity — all of which are associated with overweight and diabetes."

Bayol and colleagues at London's Royal Veterinary College gave pregnant rats normal rat chow. But they also gave them free access to cookies, chocolate, doughnuts, muffins, potato chips, candy, and cheese.

In earlier studies, they showed that the offspring of these rats liked high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar foods better than other rats. But the new studies show that even when never fed junk food themselves, the rats whose mothers ate junk food during pregnancy grew up fatter than normal rats.

"Their fat cells were larger, which might make them more prone to obesity and might make it harder for them to lose weight," Bayol says. "So there were lasting effects from their mother's consumption of junk food, even if they were not fed junk food after weaning."

There’s been a lot of news about diet and pregnancy lately, especially when it comes to the baby’s long term health. Check it out:

• Pregnancy Weight Gain Yields Fat Kids...
• High-Fat Diet During Pregnancy, May Impact Daughter's Puberty
• Pregnant, Drinking, Lying?
• Mom's Diet, Baby's Gender

Seems like a good reason to ALWAYS eat healthy.

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• The World Health Organization wants more countries to ban smoking. Reuters reports:

The report by scientists at the WHO's International Agency for Cancer Research urged more countries to adopt smoking bans in public and at the workplace, saying there was enough evidence to prove they work, without hurting businesses such as restaurants and bars.

"Implementation of such policies can have a broader population effect of increasing smoke-free environments," the researchers wrote in the Lancet Oncology special report.

"Not only do these policies achieve their aim of protecting the health of non-smokers by decreasing exposure to second-hand smoke, they also have many effects on smoking behavior, which compound the health benefits."

• A South-African anesthesiologist finds drug ads annoying and misleading. From The Health Care Blog:

Watching television in America takes some getting used to. Apart from the accent, it is strange to hear companies marketing drugs directly to the consumer. Not only do they sell their own brand, but they actively name and shame their competitors' products. During a commercial break there may be two different brands of antihistamine telling you how bad the other is.


Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) is the promotion of prescription drugs through newspaper, magazine, television and internet marketing. Although the drug industry is mounting major campaigns to have DTCA allowed in Europe and Canada, the only two developed countries where it is currently legal are the U.S. and New Zealand.

Studies have shown that increases in DTCA have contributed to overall increases in spending on both the advertised drug itself and on other drugs that treat the same conditions. For example, one study of 64 drugs found a median increase in sales of $2.20 for every $1 spent on DTCA. It has been reported that 10 of the leading 12 brand-name drugs with DTCA campaigns have sales in excess of $1 billion annually.

• U.S. health officials plan to target “tweens” in the fight against obesity. Via Reuters:

The Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office on Women's Health launched BodyWorks in 2006 by training instructors in the hopes that they would bring the program home to their communities. All materials are provided free, but communities must find the resources to pay trainers and a place to offer the program.


"Throughout the years I've worked with nutritionists, I've worked with diet programs, and it's very frustrating," Dr. Monica Richter, a pediatrician on staff at the Children's Hospital Seattle and a BodyWorks instructor who coordinates fundraising to help support the program, told Reuters Health. "I'm hoping that this will be one of the answers to this growing problem."

Girls 9 to 13 years old who are overweight or obese are referred to BodyWorks through their pediatrician, or by word of mouth. Parents and caregivers attend 10 weekly 90-minute sessions, and girls are expected to show up for at least three. The goal is to give parents and caregivers "hands-on tools to make small behavior changes to prevent obesity and help maintain a healthier weight," according to the BodyWorks Web site (http://www.womenshealth.gov/bodyworks/).

• Nutrition labeling for trans-fat is about to get tricky. E.J. Mundell of HealthDay News is on it:

However, a new study suggests that the Nutrition Facts panel found on the side of grocery store products does a poor job of getting that message across to consumers.


"It's very misleading to just throw a number out there," contends study author Elizabeth Howlett, a professor of marketing at the University of Arkansas, in Little Rock.

Her team found that the average health-conscious consumer is often misled by trans fat information found on the Nutrition Facts panel.

The main problem is that because no amount of trans fat is good for you, it makes no sense to post a percentage of the "recommended daily value" -- as is done with other ingredients such as sugar, or total or saturated fats. So consumers are just left with a number -- such as 2, 3 or 4 grams of trans fat per serving -- and no way of interpreting how unhealthy that might be.

• Presenting, the Mona Lisa in rice. Nice catch Slashfood:

What surprises me most about it is that the parking lot next to the field is not full. I would think people would be lined up to climb up on that roof and get a good look at the art from above.

• Sports bras, could they power your iPod? More from Adrienne So of Slate:

Even a bra that perfectly maximized motion (without sacrificing support and comfort) would be useful to me only if there were a way to turn that motion into energy. For a primer on how to do that, I turned to Professor Zhong Lin Wang of Georgia Tech, who is currently working to develop fabric made from nanowires that will capture energy from motion. Wang's wires are about 1/1,000th the width of a human hair. When woven together in a fabric, these nanowires rub up against one another and convert the mechanical energy from the friction into an electric charge. According to Wang, the fabric is cheap to produce and surprisingly efficient; his team hopes to use it to create energy-generating T-shirts and other articles of clothing. A square meter of fiber produces about 80 milliwatts of power, which is enough to run a small device like a cell phone. Wang expects to have a shirt available for purchase within five years.


Many bra patterns call for about a meter of fabric, which would probably mean that a regular bra would have enough energy to power an iPod. But the fabric could also be layered, doubling or even tripling the amount of energy produced. I asked Wang whether his fabric could be used to make a bra. "Bras would be ideal," he said. "There is a lot of friction and movement in that general area. And the fabric would be thick."

• One parent is not assumed by the “sneaking healthy food” approach children’s diets. From The Los Angeles Times:

Parents secretly putting things (even if it's broccoli) into their children's food without their knowing it? When they grow up, I wonder what they'll think of that?


Seems a trust is broken here, and I'm not sure it won't affect food issues these children may have down the line.

Delicious is key where food and children are concerned. If a parent wants to get a child to eat fruit, he or she can wash, chop and freeze fresh strawberries, then take a blender and pour in one cup of fat-free milk. Add three packages of artificial sweetener. Add four or five frozen strawberries, and blend. Keep adding strawberries until you have a thick, luscious strawberry milkshake that could stand toe-to-toe with any fast-food shake you've ever had.

• Gardiner Harris of The New York Times digs deeper into the vaccine-autism connection. Check it out:

Condition worsened
The girl grew increasingly weak and feverish and "became more limp, appears sleepy, acts as if drunk," the report said. She was hospitalized and underwent surgery and was finally withdrawn from life support. She died April 5, according to the report.


The 9- and 6-year-olds suffered from mitochondrial disorders, a spectrum of genetic diseases that has received almost no attention from federal health officials. The 9-year-old, Hannah Poling, was 19 months old and developing normally in 2000 when she received five shots against nine infectious diseases. Two days later, she developed a fever, cried inconsolably and refused to walk. In the next seven months, she spiraled downward, and in 2001, she was diagnosed with autism.

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