Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015
Rebekah Marcarelli, - Headlines and Global News
Stephan:
If you look at the label of almost any processed food you will notice that high fructose corn syrup is almost inevitably present. And, of course, the food processing companies -- following the example of the tobacco companies before them -- deny there is any connection between their processed food and the diabetes epidemic. Here's the latest research and it says something rather different, ""[At] an individual level, limiting consumption of foods and beverages that contain added sugars, particularly added fructose, may be one of the single most effective strategies for ensuring one's robust future health," the researchers conclude. "[At] an individual level, limiting consumption of foods and beverages that contain added sugars, particularly added fructose, may be one of the single most effective strategies for ensuring one's robust future health," the researchers conclude.
Added sugar is a major driver of diabetes development.
Credit : Wikimedia Commons
New research points to added sugars, especially fructose, as the main driver behind the development of diabetes and pre-diabetes.
Current dietary guidelines allow 25 percent of total calories to include added sugars, but these new findings suggest the need for a drastic reduction in added sugar consumption, Elsevier Health Sciences reported.
“At current levels, added-sugar consumption, and added-fructose consumption in particular, are fueling a worsening epidemic of type 2 diabetes,” said lead author James J. DiNicolantonio, a cardiovascular research scientist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo. “Approximately 40 (percent) of U.S. adults already have some degree of insulin resistance with projections that nearly the same percentage will eventually develop frank diabetes.”
The recent findings suggest consuming added fructose influences both overall metabolism and insuling resistance. Past studies have shown isocaloric exchange with fructose or sucrose leads to increases in fasting insulin, fasting glucose, and the insulin/glucose […]
No Comments
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015
Joseph Stiglitz, PhD, Nobel Laureate Economist - Reader Supported News
Stephan: Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman for the past 15 years have been notable for the accuracy and insight of the comments they make about our economy. When you think about Representative Paul Ryan on the right, and Stiglitz and Krugman on the social progressive side you realize that there is no real comparison to be made. Rightwing economic theory is nonsense and, wherever it is in force failure and crisis follow. Here is Stiglitz' latest.
Nobel Laureate Economist Joseph Stiglitz
In 2014, the world economy remained stuck in the same rut that it has been in since emerging from the 2008 global financial crisis. Despite seemingly strong government action in Europe and the United States, both economies suffered deep and prolonged downturns. The gap between where they are and where they most likely would have been had the crisis not erupted is huge. In Europe, it increased over the course of the year.
Developing countries fared better, but even there the news was grim. The most successful of these economies, having based their growth on exports, continued to expand in the wake of the financial crisis, even as their export markets struggled. But their performance, too, began to diminish significantly in 2014.
In 1992, Bill Clinton based his successful campaign for the US presidency on a simple slogan: “It’s the economy, stupid.” From today’s perspective, things then do not seem so bad; the typical American household’s income is now lower. But we can take inspiration from Clinton’s […]
No Comments
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015
Janet Allon , - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: As it happens both Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman have come out at the same time with an assessment of U.S. Rightist economic theory and the policies these theories lead to. Here is Krugman's take.
Nobel Laureate Economist Paul Krugman
Newly emboldened President Obama is calling for a significant increase in spending in his new 10-year budget, finally reversing years of harsh and ill-advised spending cuts that likely deepened and prolonged the recession. Paul Krugman applauds this move in the right direction in Monday’s column, writing, “Maybe Washington is starting to get over its narrow-minded, irresponsible obsession with long-run problems and will finally take on the hard issue of short-run gratification instead.”
He’s being flip, he admits, but his subject really is why the obsession with long-term deficits has, in fact, been the real cop out in recent years. It has provided an excuse not to deal with the country’s pressing problems of rising inequality, decaying infrastructure and punishing labor market. And it has probably damaged both the short and long run.
“Think about it,” Krugman says, “Faced with mass unemployment and the enormous waste it entails, for years the Beltway elite devoted almost all their energy not to promoting recovery, but to Bowles-Simpsonism — to devising […]
No Comments
Monday, February 2nd, 2015
Stephan: Surprise, surprise, expressing compassion makes you healthier. Good heavens, how thick we are that this has to be proven scientifically through studies, and not just recognized through experience.
It’s February. Are you sick? If you are, don’t fret. The Centers for Disease Control tells us that cold and flu season peaks in January and February, so statistically speaking, your sniffles are nothing special. And, believe me, I feel for you. I have a 4-year-old daughter who is the most thoroughgoing germ collector known to humankind. Every day she trots home from her language immersion preschool, an international clearinghouse for viruses. I’ve lost count of how many times she has walked in coughing and sniffling, a little pouty and with her arms outstretched, looking for a consolatory hug. Of course I toss caution aside like a gum wrapper because that little hug feels like the greatest damn thing ever. The irony here is that despite all that, and even though it’s February, I’m not sick. How does that work? Some new research from Carnegie Mellon University might give us some clues.
In 1991, CMU psychology professor Sheldon Cohen published a
landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing how stress can compromise our immune […]
No Comments
Monday, February 2nd, 2015
Cliff Weathers, - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: The corporate control of the U.S. Congress, and many state legislatures, may not be enough to protect the Fracking component of the carbon energy industry. Non-carbon energy and falling oil prices have combined to strongly and negatively impact this toxic and dangerous technology. I think this is very good news.
Crude oil pump on fracking well.
Credit: Tim Pleasant/Shutterstock
Two short years ago, industry analysts and television pundits were toasting North Dakota as the “Saudi Arabia of North America.” But the fracking rush that made the Peace Garden State the poster child of the U.S. energy boom has gone bust.
North Dakota’s numerous gas flares, even visible from the International Space Station, are flickering out as tens of thousands of energy workers are being given their pink slips. Small North Dakota towns recently bustling with workers and other fortune seekers are returning to the rural tranquility they once knew.
So why has fracking slipped into hibernation? Depends who you ask. Many industry analysts say fracking is a victim of its own success, helping to drive oil prices so low it was no longer affordable to frack new wells. Others point to the drop in global demand, spurred by a slowdown in the Chinese economy, alternative energies and an American public that’s not only driving more fuel-efficient […]
No Comments
