Friday, April 15, 2011

Survival Of The Kindest - Social Scientists Show Kindness Is A Key To Species Success

Social scientists build case for 'survival of the kindest'

| 08 December 2009
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/12/08_survival_of_kindest.shtml

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

Adult and child hands(Photo illustration by Jonathan Payne)

In contrast to "every man for himself" interpretations of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of "Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life," and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits.

They call it "survival of the kindest."

"Because of our very vulnerable offspring, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of others," said Keltner, co-director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. "Human beings have survived as a species because we have evolved the capacities to care for those in need and to cooperate. As Darwin long ago surmised, sympathy is our strongest instinct.”

Empathy in our genes

Keltner's team is looking into how the human capacity to care and cooperate is wired into particular regions of the brain and nervous system. One recent study found compelling evidence that many of us are genetically predisposed to be empathetic.

The study, led by UC Berkeley graduate student Laura Saslow and Sarina Rodrigues of Oregon State University, found that people with a particular variation of the oxytocin gene receptor are more adept at reading the emotional state of others, and get less stressed out under tense circumstances.

Informally known as the "cuddle hormone,” oxytocin is secreted into the bloodstream and the brain, where it promotes social interaction, nurturing and romantic love, among other functions.

"The tendency to be more empathetic may be influenced by a single gene,” Rodrigues said.

The more you give, the more respect you get

While studies show that bonding and making social connections can make for a healthier, more meaningful life, the larger question some UC Berkeley researchers are asking is, "How do these traits ensure our survival and raise our status among our peers?"

Kindness crew passes out muffins to strangers(Photo illustration by Nick Stanger)
One answer, according to UC Berkeley social psychologist and sociologist Robb Willer is that the more generous we are, the more respect and influence we wield. In one recent study, Willer and his team gave participants each a modest amount of cash and directed them to play games of varying complexity that would benefit the "public good.” The results, published in the journal American Sociological Review, showed that participants who acted more generously received more gifts, respect and cooperation from their peers and wielded more influence over them.

"The findings suggest that anyone who acts only in his or her narrow self-interest will be shunned, disrespected, even hated,” Willer said. "But those who behave generously with others are held in high esteem by their peers and thus rise in status.”

"Given how much is to be gained through generosity, social scientists increasingly wonder less why people are ever generous and more why they are ever selfish,” he added.

Cultivating the greater good

Such results validate the findings of such "positive psychology” pioneers as Martin Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose research in the early 1990s shifted away from mental illness and dysfunction, delving instead into the mysteries of human resilience and optimism.

While much of the positive psychology being studied around the nation is focused on personal fulfillment and happiness, UC Berkeley researchers have narrowed their investigation into how it contributes to the greater societal good.

One outcome is the campus's Greater Good Science Center, a West Coast magnet for research on gratitude, compassion, altruism, awe and positive parenting, whose benefactors include the Metanexus Institute, Tom and Ruth Ann Hornaday and the Quality of Life Foundation.

Christine Carter, executive director of the Greater Good Science Center, is creator of the "Science for Raising Happy Kids” Web site, whose goal, among other things, is to assist in and promote the rearing of "emotionally literate” children. Carter translates rigorous research into practical parenting advice. She says many parents are turning away from materialistic or competitive activities, and rethinking what will bring their families true happiness and well-being.

"I've found that parents who start consciously cultivating gratitude and generosity in their children quickly see how much happier and more resilient their children become,” said Carter, author of "Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents” which will be in bookstores in February 2010. "What is often surprising to parents is how much happier they themselves also become."

The sympathetic touch

As for college-goers, UC Berkeley psychologist Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton has found that cross-racial and cross-ethnic friendships can improve the social and academic experience on campuses. In one set of findings, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, he found that the cortisol levels of both white and Latino students dropped as they got to know each over a series of one-on-one get-togethers. Cortisol is a hormone triggered by stress and anxiety.

Black and white kids hug(Photo illustration by Eva Rousse)
Meanwhile, in their investigation of the neurobiological roots of positive emotions, Keltner and his team are zeroing in on the aforementioned oxytocin as well as the vagus nerve, a uniquely mammalian system that connects to all the body's organs and regulates heart rate and breathing.

Both the vagus nerve and oxytocin play a role in communicating and calming. In one UC Berkeley study, for example, two people separated by a barrier took turns trying to communicate emotions to one another by touching one other through a hole in the barrier. For the most part, participants were able to successfully communicate sympathy, love and gratitude and even assuage major anxiety.

Researchers were able to see from activity in the threat response region of the brain that many of the female participants grew anxious as they waited to be touched. However, as soon as they felt a sympathetic touch, the vagus nerve was activated and oxytocin was released, calming them immediately.

"Sympathy is indeed wired into our brains and bodies; and it spreads from one person to another through touch,” Keltner said.

The same goes for smaller mammals. UC Berkeley psychologist Darlene Francis and Michael Meaney, a professor of biological psychiatry and neurology at McGill University, found that rat pups whose mothers licked, groomed and generally nurtured them showed reduced levels of stress hormones, including cortisol, and had generally more robust immune systems.

Overall, these and other findings at UC Berkeley challenge the assumption that nice guys finish last, and instead support the hypothesis that humans, if adequately nurtured and supported, tend to err on the side of compassion.

“This new science of altruism and the physiological underpinnings of compassion is finally catching up with Darwin's observations nearly 130 years ago, that sympathy is our strongest instinct,” Keltner said.

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Thursday, March 31, 2011

Dynamic Stretching

Stretching: The Truth

WHEN DUANE KNUDSON, a professor of kinesiology at California State University, Chico, looks around campus at athletes warming up before practice, he sees one dangerous mistake after another. “They’re stretching, touching their toes. . . . ” He sighs. “It’s discouraging.”

If you’re like most of us, you were taught the importance of warm-up exercises back in grade school, and you’ve likely continued with pretty much the same routine ever since. Science, however, has moved on. Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes’ warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds — known as static stretching — primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. In a recent study conducted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, athletes generated less force from their leg muscles after static stretching than they did after not stretching at all. Other studies have found that this stretching decreases muscle strength by as much as 30 percent. Also, stretching one leg’s muscles can reduce strength in the other leg as well, probably because the central nervous system rebels against the movements.

“There is a neuromuscular inhibitory response to static stretching,” says Malachy McHugh, the director of research at the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. The straining muscle becomes less responsive and stays weakened for up to 30 minutes after stretching, which is not how an athlete wants to begin a workout.

THE RIGHT WARM-UP should do two things: loosen muscles and tendons to increase the range of motion of various joints, and literally warm up the body. When you’re at rest, there’s less blood flow to muscles and tendons, and they stiffen. “You need to make tissues and tendons compliant before beginning exercise,” Knudson says.

A well-designed warm-up starts by increasing body heat and blood flow. Warm muscles and dilated blood vessels pull oxygen from the bloodstream more efficiently and use stored muscle fuel more effectively. They also withstand loads better. One significant if gruesome study found that the leg-muscle tissue of laboratory rabbits could be stretched farther before ripping if it had been electronically stimulated — that is, warmed up.

To raise the body’s temperature, a warm-up must begin with aerobic activity, usually light jogging. Most coaches and athletes have known this for years. That’s why tennis players run around the court four or five times before a match and marathoners stride in front of the starting line. But many athletes do this portion of their warm-up too intensely or too early. A 2002 study of collegiate volleyball players found that those who’d warmed up and then sat on the bench for 30 minutes had lower backs that were stiffer than they had been before the warm-up. And a number of recent studies have demonstrated that an overly vigorous aerobic warm-up simply makes you tired. Most experts advise starting your warm-up jog at about 40 percent of your maximum heart rate (a very easy pace) and progressing to about 60 percent. The aerobic warm-up should take only 5 to 10 minutes, with a 5-minute recovery. (Sprinters require longer warm-ups, because the loads exerted on their muscles are so extreme.) Then it’s time for the most important and unorthodox part of a proper warm-up regimen, the Spider-Man and its counterparts.

“TOWARDS THE end of my playing career, in about 2000, I started seeing some of the other guys out on the court doing these strange things before a match and thinking, What in the world is that?” says Mark Merklein, 36, once a highly ranked tennis player and now a national coach for the United States Tennis Association. The players were lunging, kicking and occasionally skittering, spider-like, along the sidelines. They were early adopters of a new approach to stretching.

While static stretching is still almost universally practiced among amateur athletes — watch your child’s soccer team next weekend — it doesn’t improve the muscles’ ability to perform with more power, physiologists now agree. “You may feel as if you’re able to stretch farther after holding a stretch for 30 seconds,” McHugh says, “so you think you’ve increased that muscle’s readiness.” But typically you’ve increased only your mental tolerance for the discomfort of the stretch. The muscle is actually weaker.

Stretching muscles while moving, on the other hand, a technique known as dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-ups, increases power, flexibility and range of motion. Muscles in motion don’t experience that insidious inhibitory response. They instead get what McHugh calls “an excitatory message” to perform.

Dynamic stretching is at its most effective when it’s relatively sports specific. “You need range-of-motion exercises that activate all of the joints and connective tissue that will be needed for the task ahead,” says Terrence Mahon, a coach with Team Running USA, home to the Olympic marathoners Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor. For runners, an ideal warm-up might include squats, lunges and “form drills” like kicking your buttocks with your heels. Athletes who need to move rapidly in different directions, like soccer, tennis or basketball players, should do dynamic stretches that involve many parts of the body. “Spider-Man” is a particularly good drill: drop onto all fours and crawl the width of the court, as if you were climbing a wall. (For other dynamic stretches, see the sidebar below.)

Even golfers, notoriously nonchalant about warming up (a recent survey of 304 recreational golfers found that two-thirds seldom or never bother), would benefit from exerting themselves a bit before teeing off. In one 2004 study, golfers who did dynamic warm- up exercises and practice swings increased their clubhead speed and were projected to have dropped their handicaps by seven strokes over seven weeks.

Controversy remains about the extent to which dynamic warm-ups prevent injury. But studies have been increasingly clear that static stretching alone before exercise does little or nothing to help. The largest study has been done on military recruits; results showed that an almost equal number of subjects developed lower-limb injuries (shin splints, stress fractures, etc.), regardless of whether they had performed static stretches before training sessions. A major study published earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control, on the other hand, found that knee injuries were cut nearly in half among female collegiate soccer players who followed a warm-up program that included both dynamic warm-up exercises and static stretching. (For a sample routine, visit www.aclprevent.com/pepprogram.htm.) And in golf, new research by Andrea Fradkin, an assistant professor of exercise science at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, suggests that those who warm up are nine times less likely to be injured.

“It was eye-opening,” says Fradkin, formerly a feckless golfer herself. “I used to not really warm up. I do now.”

You’re Getting Warmer: The Best Dynamic Stretches

These exercises- as taught by the United States Tennis Association’s player-development program – are good for many athletes, even golfers. Do them immediately after your aerobic warm-up and as soon as possible before your workout.

STRAIGHT-LEG MARCH

(for the hamstrings and gluteus muscles)

Kick one leg straight out in front of you, with your toes flexed toward the sky. Reach your opposite arm to the upturned toes. Drop the leg and repeat with the opposite limbs. Continue the sequence for at least six or seven repetitions.

SCORPION

(for the lower back, hip flexors and gluteus muscles)

Lie on your stomach, with your arms outstretched and your feet flexed so that only your toes are touching the ground. Kick your right foot toward your left arm, then kick your leftfoot toward your right arm. Since this is an advanced exercise, begin slowly, and repeat up to 12 times.
 

HANDWALKS

(for the shoulders, core muscles, and hamstrings)

Stand straight, with your legs together. Bend over until both hands are flat on the ground. “Walk” with your hands forward until your back is almost extended. Keeping your legs straight, inch your feet toward your hands, then walk your hands forward again. Repeat five or six times. G.R.
 

 

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BWN - Health v5

Stretching: The Truth

WHEN DUANE KNUDSON, a professor of kinesiology at California State University, Chico, looks around campus at athletes warming up before practice, he sees one dangerous mistake after another. “They’re stretching, touching their toes. . . . ” He sighs. “It’s discouraging.”

If you’re like most of us, you were taught the importance of warm-up exercises back in grade school, and you’ve likely continued with pretty much the same routine ever since. Science, however, has moved on. Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes’ warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds — known as static stretching — primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. In a recent study conducted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, athletes generated less force from their leg muscles after static stretching than they did after not stretching at all. Other studies have found that this stretching decreases muscle strength by as much as 30 percent. Also, stretching one leg’s muscles can reduce strength in the other leg as well, probably because the central nervous system rebels against the movements.

“There is a neuromuscular inhibitory response to static stretching,” says Malachy McHugh, the director of research at the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. The straining muscle becomes less responsive and stays weakened for up to 30 minutes after stretching, which is not how an athlete wants to begin a workout.

THE RIGHT WARM-UP should do two things: loosen muscles and tendons to increase the range of motion of various joints, and literally warm up the body. When you’re at rest, there’s less blood flow to muscles and tendons, and they stiffen. “You need to make tissues and tendons compliant before beginning exercise,” Knudson says.

A well-designed warm-up starts by increasing body heat and blood flow. Warm muscles and dilated blood vessels pull oxygen from the bloodstream more efficiently and use stored muscle fuel more effectively. They also withstand loads better. One significant if gruesome study found that the leg-muscle tissue of laboratory rabbits could be stretched farther before ripping if it had been electronically stimulated — that is, warmed up.

To raise the body’s temperature, a warm-up must begin with aerobic activity, usually light jogging. Most coaches and athletes have known this for years. That’s why tennis players run around the court four or five times before a match and marathoners stride in front of the starting line. But many athletes do this portion of their warm-up too intensely or too early. A 2002 study of collegiate volleyball players found that those who’d warmed up and then sat on the bench for 30 minutes had lower backs that were stiffer than they had been before the warm-up. And a number of recent studies have demonstrated that an overly vigorous aerobic warm-up simply makes you tired. Most experts advise starting your warm-up jog at about 40 percent of your maximum heart rate (a very easy pace) and progressing to about 60 percent. The aerobic warm-up should take only 5 to 10 minutes, with a 5-minute recovery. (Sprinters require longer warm-ups, because the loads exerted on their muscles are so extreme.) Then it’s time for the most important and unorthodox part of a proper warm-up regimen, the Spider-Man and its counterparts.

“TOWARDS THE end of my playing career, in about 2000, I started seeing some of the other guys out on the court doing these strange things before a match and thinking, What in the world is that?” says Mark Merklein, 36, once a highly ranked tennis player and now a national coach for the United States Tennis Association. The players were lunging, kicking and occasionally skittering, spider-like, along the sidelines. They were early adopters of a new approach to stretching.

While static stretching is still almost universally practiced among amateur athletes — watch your child’s soccer team next weekend — it doesn’t improve the muscles’ ability to perform with more power, physiologists now agree. “You may feel as if you’re able to stretch farther after holding a stretch for 30 seconds,” McHugh says, “so you think you’ve increased that muscle’s readiness.” But typically you’ve increased only your mental tolerance for the discomfort of the stretch. The muscle is actually weaker.

Stretching muscles while moving, on the other hand, a technique known as dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-ups, increases power, flexibility and range of motion. Muscles in motion don’t experience that insidious inhibitory response. They instead get what McHugh calls “an excitatory message” to perform.

Dynamic stretching is at its most effective when it’s relatively sports specific. “You need range-of-motion exercises that activate all of the joints and connective tissue that will be needed for the task ahead,” says Terrence Mahon, a coach with Team Running USA, home to the Olympic marathoners Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor. For runners, an ideal warm-up might include squats, lunges and “form drills” like kicking your buttocks with your heels. Athletes who need to move rapidly in different directions, like soccer, tennis or basketball players, should do dynamic stretches that involve many parts of the body. “Spider-Man” is a particularly good drill: drop onto all fours and crawl the width of the court, as if you were climbing a wall. (For other dynamic stretches, see the sidebar below.)

Even golfers, notoriously nonchalant about warming up (a recent survey of 304 recreational golfers found that two-thirds seldom or never bother), would benefit from exerting themselves a bit before teeing off. In one 2004 study, golfers who did dynamic warm- up exercises and practice swings increased their clubhead speed and were projected to have dropped their handicaps by seven strokes over seven weeks.

Controversy remains about the extent to which dynamic warm-ups prevent injury. But studies have been increasingly clear that static stretching alone before exercise does little or nothing to help. The largest study has been done on military recruits; results showed that an almost equal number of subjects developed lower-limb injuries (shin splints, stress fractures, etc.), regardless of whether they had performed static stretches before training sessions. A major study published earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control, on the other hand, found that knee injuries were cut nearly in half among female collegiate soccer players who followed a warm-up program that included both dynamic warm-up exercises and static stretching. (For a sample routine, visit www.aclprevent.com/pepprogram.htm.) And in golf, new research by Andrea Fradkin, an assistant professor of exercise science at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, suggests that those who warm up are nine times less likely to be injured.

“It was eye-opening,” says Fradkin, formerly a feckless golfer herself. “I used to not really warm up. I do now.”

You’re Getting Warmer: The Best Dynamic Stretches

These exercises- as taught by the United States Tennis Association’s player-development program – are good for many athletes, even golfers. Do them immediately after your aerobic warm-up and as soon as possible before your workout.

STRAIGHT-LEG MARCH

(for the hamstrings and gluteus muscles)

Kick one leg straight out in front of you, with your toes flexed toward the sky. Reach your opposite arm to the upturned toes. Drop the leg and repeat with the opposite limbs. Continue the sequence for at least six or seven repetitions.

SCORPION

(for the lower back, hip flexors and gluteus muscles)

Lie on your stomach, with your arms outstretched and your feet flexed so that only your toes are touching the ground. Kick your right foot toward your left arm, then kick your leftfoot toward your right arm. Since this is an advanced exercise, begin slowly, and repeat up to 12 times.
 

HANDWALKS

(for the shoulders, core muscles, and hamstrings)

Stand straight, with your legs together. Bend over until both hands are flat on the ground. “Walk” with your hands forward until your back is almost extended. Keeping your legs straight, inch your feet toward your hands, then walk your hands forward again. Repeat five or six times. G.R.
 

 

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Thursday, March 10, 2011

US farmers fear the return of the Dust Bowl

"The Ogallala supply is going to run out and the Plains will become uneconomical to farm," says David Brauer of the Ogallala Research Service, part of the USDA. "That is beyond reasonable argument. Our goal now is to engineer a soft landing. That's all we can do." (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/83...)

prosperity before they were abandoned for lack of business.

run out of water for its farms.
harbinger of a potential Dust Bowl unseen in America since the Great Depression.

'It's the decline in the water level,' she says. 'In the 1950s a lot of wells were drilled, and the water went down. Now you can't farm the land.'

It does not replenish.

But Texas, true to its self-conscious style of 'rugged individualism', has no such legal controls.
'right to capture'.

'But with a bit of luck, we get eight to 10 inches a year, and we have learnt to capture it. I aim for half-and-half, half rainfall and half aquifer.' He can now grow crops using five acre-inches a year, rather than acre-feet. '

The Texas oil billionaire and corporate raider T Boone Pickens is after their water.

buying up Panhandle land with water rights over the Ogallala. He is now the largest individual water owner in America, with rights over enough of the aquifer to drain an estimated 200,000 acre-feet a year, at least until the land goes dry. That is 65 billion gallons a year, or, to put it another way, 124,000 gallons a minute. T

Pickens plans to pipe it 250 miles to Dallas

defied the attempts of their fellow farmers to protect water supplies for the benefit of all.

'In Kansas, the state owns the water – not so in Texas,' he says.
'We own it, and we don't see why we should give up our right to capture

To a man they loathe Pickens, while defending his 'right to capture'.

'We are drying up. People don't learn from history, and if we keep breaking the ground and run out of water, it'll happen again.'

He misses the life. 'I used to go out on the land before dawn
+++


US farmers fear the return of the Dust Bowl

For years the Ogallala Aquifer, the world’s largest underground body of fresh water, has irrigated thousands of square miles of American farmland. Now it is running dry

 
Image 1 of 5
The town of Happy, Texas, sits on top of the rapidly depleting Ogallala Aquifer. Its population is dwindling by 10 per cent a year. Photo: Misty Keasler

There is not much to be happy about these days in Happy, Texas. Main Street is shuttered but for the Happy National Bank, slowly but inexorably disappearing into a High Plains wind that turns all to dust. The old Picture House, the cinema, has closed. Tumbleweed rolls into the still corners behind the grain elevators, soaring prairie cathedrals that spoke of prosperity before they were abandoned for lack of business.

Happy's problem is that it has run out of water for its farms. Its population, dropping 10 per cent a year, is down to 595. The name, which brings a smile for miles around and plays in faded paint on the fronts of every shuttered business – Happy Grain Inc, Happy Game Room – has become irony tinged with bitterness. It goes back to the cowboy days of the 19th century. A cattle drive north through the Texas Panhandle to the rail heads beyond had been running out of water, steers dying on the hoof, when its cowboys stumbled on a watering hole. They named the spot Happy Draw, for the water. Now Happy is the harbinger of a potential Dust Bowl unseen in America since the Great Depression.

'It was a booming town when I grew up,' Judy Shipman, who manages the bank, says. 'We had three restaurants, a grocery, a plumber, an electrician, a building contractor, a doctor. We had so much fun, growing up.' Like all the townsfolk, she knows why the fun has gone. 'It's the decline in the water level,' she says. 'In the 1950s a lot of wells were drilled, and the water went down. Now you can't farm the land.'

Those wells were drilled into a geological phenomenon called the Ogallala Aquifer. It is an underground lake of pristine water formed between two and six million years ago, in the Pliocene age, when the tectonic shifts that pushed the Rocky Mountains skywards were still active. The water was trapped below the new surface crust that would become the semi-arid soil of the Plains, dry and dusty. It stretches all the way down the eastern slope of the Rockies from the badlands of South Dakota to the Texas Panhandle. It does not replenish.

Happy is the canary in the coalmine because the Ogallala is deepest in the north, as much as 300ft in the more fertile country of Nebraska and Kansas. In the south, through the panhandle and over the border to New Mexico, it is 50-100ft. And around Happy, 75 miles south of Amarillo, it is now 0-50ft. The farms have been handed over to the government's Conservation Reserve Programme (CRP) to lie fallow in exchange for grants: farmers' welfare, although they hate to think of it like that.

The first ranchers, and the Plains Indians before them, knew of water below the ground from the watering holes that sustained buffalo and then cattle far from any river. The white man learnt to drill, leaving primitive windmills on top of wooden derricks silhouetted against Wild West horizons.

But it was only in the 1940s, after the Dust Bowl (the result of a severe drought and excessive farming in the early 1930s), that the US Geological Survey worked out that the watering holes were clues to the Ogallala, now believed to be the world's largest body of fresh water. They were about to repeat the dreams of man from the days of Ancient Egypt and Judea to turn the desert green, only without the Nile or Jordan. With new technology the wells could reach the deepest water, and from the early 1950s the boom was on. Some of the descendants of Dust Bowl survivors became millionaire landowners.

'Since then,' says David Brauer of the US Agriculture Department agency, the Ogallala Research Service, 'we have drained enough water to half-fill Lake Erie of the Great Lakes.' Billions upon billions of gallons – or, as they prefer to measure it, acre-feet of water, each one equivalent to a football field flooded a foot deep – have been pumped. 'The problem,' he goes on, 'is that in a brief half-century we have drawn the Ogallala level down from an average of 240ft to about 80.'

Brauer's agency was set up in direct response to the Dust Bowl, with the brief of finding ways to make sure that the devastation never happens again. If it does, the impact on the world's food supply will be far greater. The irrigated Plains grow 20 per cent of American grain and corn (maize), and America's 'industrial' agriculture dominates international markets. A collapse of those markets would lead to starvation in Africa and anywhere else where a meal depends on cheap American exports. 'The Ogallala supply is going to run out and the Plains will become uneconomical to farm,' Brauer says. 'That is beyond reasonable argument. Our goal now is to engineer a soft landing. That's all we can do.'

Estimates vary, but with careful conservation, less wasteful irrigation and seeds for corn, cotton, wheat and sorghum genetically engineered for drought conditions, farming may yet go on for 60 years. That would be over the deepest stratum of the Ogallala. But the husbanding of water, soil, minerals or anything else has never been the Texan way, and without it the dust will start blowing in as few as 10 years.

Water – not oil – has always been the most valuable resource in the West. Wars have been fought over it, feuds maintained, and fortunes won or lost. Apart from the Ogallala, the main source remains the Colorado River, flowing west from the Rockies, its annual bounty of snow melt providing the drinking water for Las Vegas, irrigation for California's Central Valley, and the swimming-pools of Los Angeles. No one is surprised that the mighty Colorado now runs dry before it reaches the Pacific, nor that climate change, with falling rain and snow levels, spells potential disaster for the Sunshine States. There are at least public controls over most of this water, even if it is actually owned by corporations and very rich people with 'water rights'.

But Texas, true to its self-conscious style of 'rugged individualism', has no such legal controls. It maintains its Wild West-era laws of 'right to capture'. This means that if you have water under your land, or in a river running through it, you can take and use as much of it as you like. You can water the corn or the cows, or you can make a buck by selling it to the nearest thirsty suburb. If you want to drain your land into desert, you may.

With the American 'can-do' faith in technology, Brauer's own hopes are for the 60-odd years of reduced but viable farming. 'We don't want it to be a bust,' he says. 'We have to be optimistic.'

In Happy, that sounds more like wishful thinking. The early December sun sinks towards the winter solstice at a few minutes after six, leaving Main and its crossroads with the railway tracks in darkness but for a few street lights. A miniature suburban-style housing grid stretches between Main and the high school on the eastern edge of town. The football team is the Happy Cowboys, their cheerleaders the Happy Cowgirls. Old pick-up trucks in the car-park denote an away match, their drivers piled into yellow school buses for the trip. Most of the houses are still lived in, valued at about half the Texas average. Some are dilapidated, their gardens planted with rusting detritus, others spruce with the Stars and Stripes flapping in the breeze. Nowadays, the working population drives an hour or so north or south to small cities where they find employment.

The temperature drops below freezing. Kay Horner sits in My Happy Place, her diner on Highway 87, hoping for traffic and customers. She has moved back from Arkansas, snapping-up a Main Street store for only $10,000 to turn into her home. 'There used to be 50,000 head of cattle, now there's 1,000,' she says. 'Grazed them on wheat, but the feed lots took all the water so we can't grow wheat. Now the feed lots can't get local steers so they bring in cheap unwanted milking calves from California and turn them into burger if they can't make them veal. It doesn't make much sense. We're heading back to the Dust Bowl.'

Less than 20 miles south, towards Lubbock, the next town down Interstate 27, Barry Evans is still farming. His 2,200 acres came from his great-uncle Freeman, who watched it turn to dust in the 1930s. Evans's father, in his eighties, still works the farm next door. Evans has sunk new wells to make up supply as old ones dry from producing 1,000 gallons a minute to 100, but the aquifer is deeper here and they have enough Ogallala water left to pump and make a profit. They want to make it last, their eyes fixed on the future so that Barry's son, Eric, can take over for a fourth generation. He is in his last year at high school and is raising four pigs of his own for the 4H (young farmers) competition at the County Fair. It will not be easy, but at 48 Evans has taken himself to the cutting edge of farm technique and technology. If there is a future for Ogallala farming, it depends on men such as Evans.

'You have to see this as a business like any other,' he says. 'To earn a living, to stay on the land, you have to maintain the margin between cost and product value. Our water level is 10 per cent of what it was 30 years ago, and we have to make up for that by technique. That means looking for more yield from less water.'

Evans went to the local university for an agriculture degree, and stayed on to complete half a master's in business. He does not own a cowboy hat, and pulls on a winter coat bearing the logo of a seed company, a salesman's gift, as he sets out to tour his 'sections', fields of a square mile each. At ground level the rows look faintly curved, but from the air you can see that the fields are circles, and from passenger jets at 30,000ft they look like the crop circles of Salisbury Plain. They are ugly and alien on the wide-open land, but they have become the landscape of Ogallala agriculture because they are cut to fit the sweep of the enormous arm of a pivot irrigator, turning like the hand of a clock, a hand a half a mile long. They cost $180,000 each.

Evans stops by a well. There is no derrick, only a concrete block sprouting heavy pipes, because nowadays the pump is at the bottom of the well. Inside a steel box is a computer: it controls the pivoting arm to lay down an average of an inch in eight days. Every drop counts. On many farms you can see the effects of drought from the air as a quarter or a third of the land is left dry to burn brown in the sun. 'During the 90s, I really thought it would never rain again,' Evans says. 'But with a bit of luck, we get eight to 10 inches a year, and we have learnt to capture it. I aim for half-and-half, half rainfall and half aquifer.' He can now grow crops using five acre-inches a year, rather than acre-feet. 'That's a big difference,' he says.

He strides into the field along the line of the pivot arm, 12ft over his head. Every few yards a spray nozzle dangles on a hose, low enough to spray below the canopy of the crops. That is one way to minimize waste through evaporation. Next, he stoops to the soil to show the flattened stubble of last year's crop, and of the year's before that. He no longer ploughs – nothing dries the surface to turn the soil to dust like ploughing. Instead, the old stalks hold down the soil, keep the moisture in, and rot down to nutrients. The seeds, themselves 'engineered', are dropped below the surface by a machine that opens a narrow channel in front of the dispenser, and closes it behind them.

Then there is the choice of crops. Evans has switched from corn, wheat and cattle to cotton and sorghum, which makes oil and ethanol for fuel, alternating them around his circular fields. They use less water, and he has got rid of the cattle altogether. 'I don't want to drill more wells,' he says. 'Why would I want to own a desert?'

At the Ogallala Research Service's experimental farm just west of Amarillo, soil scientist Steve Evett nods his approval and says, 'The smart, educated farmer survives: the ones that fall behind do not.' He is out in his half-sized 'pivot' field, showing off the next generation of irrigation systems. This one is fully automated and, with a bit of luck, may save another drop or two. It starts with a new nozzle, a 'sock', which drips the water right on to the ground by each root. Between each dangling pipe is a cable with a sensor at one end, and a computer relay at the other. It measures the amount of moisture in the canopy, and takes a light-spectrum scan of each plant to determine its health, just as the gardener judges the colour of his leaves. This information goes back to the computer mounted at the well-head for even finer metering.

In another field, there is what might become the last resort: a system buried underground, watering only individual roots, with evaporation limited to any that might reach the surface. 'We are already seeing much less water used,' Evett says, 'and there is going to be less and less to use. Things will get harder and harder, but we can use technology to offset the drying for as long as we can.'

All may come to nought in the face of a threat that has nothing to do with corn or beef, but everything to do with the American devotion to making money at any cost. The Texas oil billionaire and corporate raider T Boone Pickens is after their water. He is proving to be the ultimate test of their free market gospel of the 'right to capture'.

Ten years ago Pickens concluded that the prophets of climate-change may well be right, and if they were, that water would become more valuable than the oil that had made his fortune. He formed a company called Mesa Water, and began buying up Panhandle land with water rights over the Ogallala. He is now the largest individual water owner in America, with rights over enough of the aquifer to drain an estimated 200,000 acre-feet a year, at least until the land goes dry. That is 65 billion gallons a year, or, to put it another way, 124,000 gallons a minute. The plan? Ninety-five per cent of Ogallala water is now used for agriculture, but Pickens plans to pipe it 250 miles to Dallas, expected to triple in size in 30 years, with a demand for water far exceeding supply. Pickens is making the hottest of climate-change bets: that water's value will rocket as it runs dry. One man's thirst is another man's fortune. Irrigation farming would simply follow gold mining, open-range ranching and oil drilling in the traditional cycle of boom and bust. 'There are people who will buy the water when they need it. And the people who have the water want to sell it,' Pickens has said. 'That's the blood, guts, and feathers of the thing.'

'Obviously it would be a disaster for the Panhandle,' Steve Walthour, manager of the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District, says. 'But if there are no limits, he can take all he wants. That's the law of capture.'

Texas conservatives, at the core of America's faith-and-business culture, root for Pickens. Brent Connett, a policy analyst for the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute, pushes the view that trading farming for selling water is a 'right' upheld by 100 years of Texan law, and can only bring new prosperity. 'The water business, if allowed to bloom,' he believes, 'can be the advent of another multi-billion-dollar business that will tremendously benefit all Texans, especially those who hold the rights to the water in the Panhandle.'

Connett does not offer a count of winners versus losers. But a group of landowners in the far north of the Panhandle could certainly be winners. Taking advantage of another quirk of Texas law, they have voted against joining Walthour's Conservation District. That was their democratic right even as it defied the attempts of their fellow farmers to protect water supplies for the benefit of all. The other Ogallala states all have some form of government controls metering water use. Texas has the Conservation Districts instead, with the local farmers voting their own restrictions. The problem is that these are voluntary. 'The idea,' Walthour says, 'is to balance individual water rights with the common interest. It's the best thing to do. Otherwise the biggest pump wins – and everyone goes dry.'

Will Allen, among the 'opt-out' owners with a 'spread' close to the Oklahoma border, does not see it that way. 'In Kansas, the state owns the water – not so in Texas,' he says. 'We own it, and we don't see why we should give up our right to capture. We would be giving away property that belongs to us.' His family settled here in 1905 and he holds to their belief that the aquifer is less of a lake than a series of 'pockets', private to the land immediately above. Only the prospect of Pickens draining the water from underneath him seems to dent Allen's stand-alone verities. Would he chase him out of town? He chuckles, a little uncertainly. 'Well, I wouldn't want him as a neighbour,' he says. 'But if he takes out water he owns, that is his right.'

There is an air of fatality hanging over the farmers of the Panhandle. At the Elk Junction Restaurant in Stratford, a crossroads village 70 miles north of Happy at the heart of the 'opt-out' district, a group of half a dozen farmers has gathered to gossip over pies and coffee. Most are retired, or planning to quit, handing over to their sons if they want the land. Not all do. These men are mostly losing the struggle for water and the slender margins of profit that can keep them on the land. They have worked long and hard through often brutal weather, farming vast tracts with a couple of sons until they quit for college or city jobs. The land they have hung on to is worth a pension, as long as there is still some water for irrigation, but their real reward is their pride. To a man they loathe Pickens, while defending his 'right to capture'. This is Texas, and they are Texan.

The water boards would like to stop him but they know that state government would not dare challenge individual rights to ownership. Their only real chance is to persuade the county authorities to stall on 'zoning' permits when he starts to build his pipeline, and that is an outside chance.

'The heart of the Dust Bowl was here, you know,' says Wayne Plunk, whose great-great-grandfather came over from Germany. He is big and round, strong as an ox in his day, but now he looks a good 10 years older than his 69 years. 'When I was six I was asking my dad for a $1 umbrella against the sun for the tractor I drove all day. He said no, and bought me a 25-cent hat instead.' He has not stopped working since. He went to college to train as a teacher, and for 25 years taught at local schools while farming in the remaining hours. 'We are drying up. People don't learn from history, and if we keep breaking the ground and run out of water, it'll happen again.'

Plunk believes that one way or the other, farming the High Plains will have to end. Like the farmers of Happy, he has handed his land to the CRP to let it return to the Plains that nature intended. He misses the life. 'I used to go out on the land before dawn when I worked at school,' he says, 'and I would always plough to the east. I ploughed into the rising sun, and I knew there was a God.' He pushes back his cap, and stares into the distance.
===






(NaturalNews) It's the largest underground freshwater supply in the world, stretching from South Dakota all the way to Texas. It's underneath most of Nebraska's farmlands, and it provides crucial water resources for farming in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and even New Mexico. It's called the Ogallala Aquifer, and it is being pumped dry.

See the map of this aquifer here: http://www.naturalnews.com/images/O...

Without the Ogallala Aquifer, America's heartland food production collapses. No water means no irrigation for the corn, wheat, alfalfa and other crops grown across these states to feed people and animals. And each year, the Ogallala Aquifer drops another few inches as it is literally being sucked dry by the tens of thousands of agricultural wells that tap into it across the heartland of America.

This problem with all this is that the Ogallala Aquifer isn't being recharged in any significant way from rainfall or rivers. This is so-called "fossil water" because once you use it, it's gone. And it's disappearing now faster than ever.

In some regions along the aquifer, the water level has dropped so far that it has effectively disappeared -- places like Happy, Texas, where a once-booming agricultural town has collapsed to a population of just 595. All the wells drilled there in the 1950's tapped into the Ogallala Aquifer and seemed to provide abundant water at the time. But today the wells have all run dry.

Happy, Texas has become a place of despair. Dead cattle. Wilted crops. Once-moist soils turned to dust. And Happy is just the beginning of this story because this same agricultural tragedy will be repeated across Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas and parts of Colorado in the next few decades. That's a hydrologic fact. Water doesn't magically reappear in the Ogallala. Once it's used up, it's gone.

"There used to be 50,000 head of cattle, now there's 1,000," says Kay Horner in a Telegraph report (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/83...). "Grazed them on wheat, but the feed lots took all the water so we can't grow wheat. Now the feed lots can't get local steers so they bring in cheap unwanted milking calves from California and turn them into burger if they can't make them veal. It doesn't make much sense. We're heading back to the Dust Bowl."

The end of cheap food in America?

It's a sobering thought, really: That "America's breadbasket" is on a collision course with the inevitable. A large percentage of the food produced in the United States is, of course, grown on farmlands irrigated from the Ogallala. For hundreds of years, it has been a source of "cheap water," making farming economically feasible and keeping food prices down. Combined with the available of cheap fossil fuels over the last century (necessary to drive the tractors that work the fields), food production has skyrocketed in North America. This has led to a population explosion, too. Where food is cheap and plentiful, populations readily expand.

It only follows that when food becomes scarce or expensive (putting it out of reach of average income earners), populations will fall. There's only so much food to go around, after all. And after the Ogallala runs dry, America's food production will plummet. Starvation will become the new American landscape for those who cannot afford the sky-high prices for food.

Aquifer depletion is a global problem

It's not a problem that's unique to America, by the way. The very same problem is facing India, where fossil water is already running dry in many parts of the country. It's the same story in China, too, where water conservation has never been a top priority. Even the Middle East is facing its own water crisis (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/...). This has caused food prices to skyrocket, leading directly to the civil unrest, the riots and even the revolutions we've seen taking place there over the last few months.

The problem is called aquifer depletion (http://www.eoearth.org/article/Aqui...), and it's a problem that spans the globe. It means that today's cheap, easy food -- grown on cheap fossil water -- simply isn't sustainable. Once that water is gone, the croplands that depend on it dry up. Following that, erosion kicks in, and the winds blow away the dry soils in a "Dust Bowl" type of scenario.

A few years after that, what was once a thriving agricultural operation is transformed into a dry, soilless death pit where nothing lives.

"The Ogallala supply is going to run out and the Plains will become uneconomical to farm," says David Brauer of the Ogallala Research Service, part of the USDA. "That is beyond reasonable argument. Our goal now is to engineer a soft landing. That's all we can do." (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/83...)

Such is the legacy of conventional agriculture, which is based almost entirely on non-sustainable practices. Its insane reliance on fossil water, petroleum fertilizers, toxic pesticides and GMOs will only lead our world to agricultural disaster.

Be prepared and be safe

I want all NaturalNews readers to be prepared, informed and safe when facing our uncertain future. We know that trouble is stirring around the world, and much of it is either caused by or will lead to food shortages.

The GMO companies, of course, will exploit this situation to their advantage, claiming that only GMOs can grow enough food to feed the world. This is a lie. GMOs and patented seeds only enslave the world population and lead to great social injustice. The days of food slavery are fast approaching for those who do not have the means to grow at least a portion of their own food.

As part of our effort to help people become more self-reliant -- with greater food security -- throughout 2011 and 2012 I plan to bring you more articles, videos and webcast events that focus on home food production, self-reliance, family preparedness and sustainable living. Recently we announced a live webcast event on financial preparedness but the available seats at that event sold out in a matter of days (http://www.naturalnews.com/Economic...).

Based on the huge demand for this event, we have decided to roll out a second preparedness event in April, focused on food preparedness and security. Watch for an announcement on that soon.

In the mean time, I am personally working on growing more of my own food and will be creating a new series of videos and articles based on some of what I learn along the way. From living in South America and producing quite a large amount of food there, I have a fair amount of experience on home food production, but of course there's always more to learn, right?

My gut feeling on all this is that learning to grow and store some portion of your own food is going to become a crucial survival skill over the next few years. And that means understanding water, soil, open-pollinated seeds, organic fertilizers, soil probiotics, insect pollination, growing with the seasons, sprouting, food harvesting, food drying, canning, storage and much more. It's a whole set of skills that have faded away in America in just two generations, leaving very few people who now know how to live off their own land.

What's becoming increasingly obvious from events such as the drying up of aquifers is that home food production is going to become a critical survival skill. I want NaturalNews readers to know and practice these skills as much as possible so that you can experience the comforts (and freedoms!) of genuine food security.

Watch for more stories about preparedness, home food production and self-reliant living here on NaturalNews.

Sources for this story include:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/83...


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Monday, February 14, 2011

Brazil Considers Adding 'Happiness' To Constitution

constitutional amendment
to protect the pursuit of happiness

make the search for happiness an inalienable right

the Happier Movement, a non-governmental organization backing the legislation

Both Japan and South Korea include the right to happiness in their constitutions

Bhutan pioneered the idea of maintaining a "happiness index." W
1776 U.S. Declaration of Independence made its often-noted stand for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
"

"pursuit of happiness" into Article 6 of the constitution, which states that education, health, food, work, housing, leisure and security – among other issues – are the social rights of all citizens.

holding to account a government that has long been accused of not providing basic services to the poor.

"This great proposal would establish tools that would permit, in the pursuit of happiness, the rescue of social rights,"
change expectations.

Brazil Considers Adding 'Happiness' To Constitution

Brazil Senate

MARCO SIBAJA   02/ 2/11 07:20 AM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/02/brazil-happiness-constitution_n_817397.html

BRASILIA, Brazil — In a nation known for its jubilant spirit, massive parties and seemingly intrinsic ability to celebrate anything under the sun, is a constitutional amendment really required to protect the pursuit of happiness?

Several lawmakers think so, and a bill to amend Brazil's Constitution to make the search for happiness an inalienable right is widely expected to be approved soon by the Senate, which reconvened Tuesday. The bill would then go to the lower house.

The debate comes a month before Brazil's Carnival, a raucous festival replete with tens of thousands half-naked men and women that Rio officials call the largest party on Earth. But supporters say the happiness bill is a serious undertaking despite the revelry, meant to address Brazil's stark economic and social inequalities.

"In Brazil, we've had economic growth without the social growth hoped for," said Mauro Motoryn, the director of the Happier Movement, a non-governmental organization backing the legislation. "With the constitutional amendment, we want to provoke discussion, to seek approval for the creation of conditions in which social rights are upheld."

Similar explorations of officially finding happiness have been pushed by other governments. Both Japan and South Korea include the right to happiness in their constitutions, and earlier this month, the British government detailed plans to begin a $3 million project to measure citizens' well being.

In the early 1970s, the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan pioneered the idea of maintaining a "happiness index." Well before that, the 1776 U.S. Declaration of Independence made its often-noted stand for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The bill before Brazil's Congress would insert the phrase "pursuit of happiness" into Article 6 of the constitution, which states that education, health, food, work, housing, leisure and security – among other issues – are the social rights of all citizens.

Cristovam Buarque, a senator and former minister of education who is the bill's sponsor in the Senate, said adding the "pursuit of happiness" was essential to helping ordinary people begin holding to account a government that has long been accused of not providing basic services to the poor.

While Brazil is on track to becoming the world's fifth largest economy by the time its hosts the 2016 Olympics, it's lagging public education system, poor roads and railways and crime-ridden slums threaten further advances.

Cristiano Paixao, a constitutional law expert and professor at the University of Brasilia, said he thought the proposed amendment was pointless tinkering that would end up being "legal folklore" as Brazil's democracy has moved beyond the need for such gimmicks since the end of the 1964-85 military dictatorship.

"It would make sense if we were in the moment of redemocratization, of the movement for direct elections," he said. "Now, it just won't be of use."

At a Senate hearing before the bill was passed by a committee last November, Daniel Seidel of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops criticized the "pursuit of happiness" movement as little more than a marketing campaign that didn't propose solutions to Brazil's social woes.

"Wouldn't it be better to speak clearly about social welfare, about the reduction of inequality?" he asked senators.

But Luciano Borges, president of the National Association of Public Defenders, said the movement could breathe life into a legal push for stronger social rights.

"This great proposal would establish tools that would permit, in the pursuit of happiness, the rescue of social rights," he said.

Motoryn, of the Happier Movement, said he is simply hoping society will take a serious look at the proposed amendment, and perhaps change their expectations.

"Happiness isn't a game, people confuse it with something that is superfluous and it isn't," he said. "We need quality health care, which we don't have. We need quality education, which we don't have.

"It's about creating conditions for people to pursue happiness, but with training, with knowledge, preparing us to be a more advanced society in the future."



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Saturday, February 12, 2011

Acrylamide - Causes Cancer, Nerve Damage, Kidney Damage, Muscle Control, Alzheimers

Toasting bread increases acrylamides significantly - doubling, even over 5 times in this white bread:
Pepperidge Farm Original White Bread
(not toasted) 36
Pepperidge Farm Original White Bread (toasted) 216

Acrylamide is a well-established carcinogen and neurotoxin
the typical American diet contains rather large amounts of acrylamide
even more prevalent in diets that contain a lot of fried foods.

diets low in fried starchy foods contain very low levels of acrylamide.

fried, deep fried or oven-baked during production or preparation are not considered to contain any appreciable levels of acrylamide.
No levels could be detected in any of the raw foodstuffs or foods cooked by boiling, including potatoes, rice, pasta, and flour.
3 

the best thing, of course, is to eat NO fried foods at all.
avoid burning food during frying, deep-frying, broiling and grilling, and to especially not eat burned food, period! 3 

N-acetyl-cysteine and lipoic acid have been shown to be protective against acrylamides toxicity

rats and mice that were given acrylamide over a period of seven days developed tumors

acrylamide's neurotoxicity was due to a dramatic reduction in glucose metabolism in nerve cells

eat lots of fruits and veggies, and protect yourself with a good antioxidant.

limit the amount of fried foods in your diet, as they contain both acrylamide and other damaging chemicals formed by the heating and oxidation of oil
---


Acrylamide
present in certain foods cooked at high temperatures

a
crylamide can cause nerve damage in humans, such as loss of feeling, loss muscle control and tingling.

acrylamide levels
starch-based foods, such as potato chips, french fries, cookies, cereals and bread
Tortilla chips, breakfast cereals, breads, cookies, crackers, and other bakery products contain
significant amounts of acrylamide.

They do not form when food is cooked in water,

higher the cooking temperature, the more acrylamide is formed.

AGEs may also cause cancers, aging of tissues, and arteriosclerosis by raising cholesterol and causing clotting and are associated with loss of kidney function, Alzheimer's disease, thinning and wrinkling of skin and cataracts.

Cooking with water prevents sugars from binding to proteins to form these poisonous chemicals.




ACRYLAMIDE

Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

http://www.drmirkin.com/nutrition/1220.html

Research in four countries is suggesting that French fries and potato chips may be a leading cause of cancer in the Western world. Scientists at the meeting of the World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization are very concerned about the very high levels of acrylamide in the food supply. Acrylamide is a chemical used in the manufacture of plastics. It was first discovered to be present in certain foods cooked at high temperatures as the result of work announced in Sweden in April 2002.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have concluded that acrylamide causes cancer in laboratory animals, but there are no studies of the relationship between acrylamide and cancer in humans. However, solid research shows that acrylamide can cause nerve damage in humans, such as loss of feeling, loss muscle control and tingling.

The Swedish research and subsequent studies in Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, have found that acrylamide levels in certain starch-based foods, such as potato chips, french fries, cookies, cereals and bread, were well above the level given in the World Health Organization's Guideline Values for Drinking Water Quality. Potato chips contain 500 times the maximum allowable amounts of acrylamide, and French fries sold in fast food chains contain more than 100 times the maximal allowable amounts. Tortilla chips, breakfast cereals, breads, cookies, crackers, and other bakery products contain smaller but significant amounts of acrylamide.

Acrylamide belongs to a class of chemicals that form advanced glycation end products, also known by their first letters as AGEs. They are a group of molecules that are formed when sugar attaches on protein when starchy foods such as potatoes and grains are cooked in the absence of water at very high temperatures. They do not form when food is cooked in water, and the higher the cooking temperature, the more acrylamide is formed.

Diabetics form advanced glycation products in their bodies because high blood sugar levels cause sugar to stick on the protein in cell membranes to form AGES, and it is these AGEs that cause the horrible side effects of diabetes, such as blindness, deafness, heart attacks, strokes and kidney damage. AGEs can damage every tissue in the body. HBA1C, the blood test doctors use to measure control of diabetes, actually measures this sugar bound to the protein on a person's cells. AGEs may also cause cancers, aging of tissues, and arteriosclerosis by raising cholesterol and causing clotting and are associated with loss of kidney function, Alzheimer's disease, thinning and wrinkling of skin and cataracts.

Exciting research from the University of Reading in England may eventually allow us to eat French fires and potato chips without being harmed by acrylamides (4). Deep frying at high temperature causes sugar in potatoes to stick to protein to form acrylamides. Donald Mottram showed that asparagine, only one of the 21 amino acids that form protein in humans, sticks to sugar. If this is true, it may be relatively simple to finding and use strains of potato with a low asparagine content, or genetically engineer potatoes or wheat that lacks asparagine. Then foods could be made from them that did not have asparagine available to form acrylamide.

Cooking with water prevents sugars from binding to proteins to form these poisonous chemicals. Since steamed and boiled vegetables, whole grains, beans and fruits are cooked with water, they do not contain significant amounts of advanced glycation products. This is another reason that you should eat your fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans -- raw or cooked with water. We no longer recommend eating potato chips or French fries as a source of salt when you exercise, and we will avoid eating them ourselves.

=====


Acrylamide: The Food Toxin That Could Cause Cancer

http://www.smart-publications.com/articles/view/acrylamide-the-food-toxin-that-could-cause-cancer/#fn-333-5

Acrylamide is a well-established carcinogen and neurotoxin (causes nerve damage). According to Lois Gold, director of the Carcinogenic Potency Project at the University of California, Berkeley, "You get more acrylamide from smoking than you do from food." But based on a newly released Swedish report that indicates acrylamide is a by-product of fried foods, there is definite room for concern-not panic.

The study was based on the original findings that adduct levels (products of acrylamide that react with blood hemoglobin) were found in people who hadn't been exposed to it. Because the amount is considered a cancer risk, it was deemed important to identify acrylamide's origin. A scientific group at the University of Stockholm, headed by Professor Margareta Törnqvist, found that acrylamide is formed during the heating of starch-rich foods to high temperatures. 1 

The same thing was shown in a previous Swedish study, done two years ago, in which rats were fed fried animal feed for one or two months. 2 

What's your risk? The bad news is, the typical American diet contains rather large amounts of acrylamide, and it's even more prevalent in diets that contain a lot of fried foods.

The good news is that diets low in fried starchy foods contain very low levels of acrylamide. Also, the amount of acrylamide needed to cause cancer in humans is still unknown.

What foods contain acrylamide? Acrylamide is probably formed in many types of food, many of which have not yet been analyzed. But among the foods that have been analyzed, potato chips and French fries generally contained the highest levels. The average content in potato chips is approximately 1000 micrograms/kg and in French fries approximately 500 micrograms/kg. Other food groups which may contain low as well as high levels of acrylamide are fried bread products-such as doughnuts-breakfast cereals, fried potato products, biscuits, cookies and snacks, such as tortilla chips and popcorn. 3 

Foods that are not fried, deep fried or oven-baked during production or preparation are not considered to contain any appreciable levels of acrylamide.
No levels could be detected in any of the raw foodstuffs or foods cooked by boiling, including potatoes, rice, pasta, and flour.
3 

How much acrylamide do you ingest on a daily basis? The Swedish National Food Administration's 1997-98 survey3 of 1200 individuals, aged 17 to 70, found that an average intake of approximately 25 micrograms per day (maximum intake is approximately six times higher) of acrylamide is obtained, based on the food groups shown below. The remaining food groups are estimated to account for approximately 10-15 micrograms of acrylamide; in total an average intake of 35-40 micrograms. The percentage contribution based on an intake of 40 micrograms acrylamide per day results in:

  • potato products: 36 % (French fries 16 %, fried potatoes 10 %, potato chips 10 %)
  • bread: 16 %
  • biscuits, cookies and wafers: 5 %
  • breakfast cereals: 3 %
  • remaining foodstuffs groups, basically not investigated yet: 40 %

What does that mean?

It's still too soon to know exactly how much acrylamide is considered dangerous to humans.

What can you do to counteract the bad effects of acrylamide? If you have a lot of will power, the best thing, of course, is to eat NO fried foods at all. The Swedish National Food Administration advises people to stop smoking, and to avoid burning food during frying, deep-frying, broiling and grilling, and to especially not eat burned food, period! 3 

Have your cake and eat it, too. If you must have your fries and chips, and want to counteract the bad effects of acrylamide, there are a couple of nutritional supplements that are believed to offer protection against acrylamide's toxicity.

N-acetyl-cysteine and lipoic acid have been shown to be protective against acrylamides toxicity and offer a dietary means of counteracting acrylamide's bad effects.

One study showed that rats and mice that were given acrylamide over a period of seven days developed tumors. When they were also treated with N-acetyl- L-cysteine, the incidence of tumors was inhibited. 4 

Another study showed that acrylamide's neurotoxicity was due to a dramatic reduction in glucose metabolism in nerve cells, and that lipoic acid could help prevent this negative effect and help restore normal metabolism and prevent damage. 5

Is acrylamide risk new?

Probably not, according to the Swedish National Food Administration. "We have probably been exposed to acrylamide in food for generations." Other sources than foodstuffs (estimated average intake of 35-40 microgram/day), e.g. cosmetics, drinking water, and a possible endogenous formation in the body of acrylamide, could, to a lower extent, contribute to a background level. "The new, emerging knowledge may make it possible to reduce the risks that we have so far accepted. This is a very positive development." 6 

In the meantime, eat lots of fruits and veggies, and protect yourself with a good antioxidant. And it wouldn't hurt if you limit the amount of fried foods in your diet, as they contain both acrylamide and other damaging chemicals formed by the heating and oxidation of oil 

References

  1. Tareke E, Rydberg P, Karlsson P, Eriksson S, Tornqvist M. Analysis of acrylamide, a carcinogen formed in heated foodstuffs.J Agric Food Chem, 2002 Aug 14;50(17):4998-5006. 

  2. Tareke E, Rydberg P, Karlsson P, Eriksson S, Tornqvist M. Acrylamide: a cooking carcinogen? Chem Res Toxicol 2000 Jun;13(6):517-22 

  3.  http://www.slv.se/

  4. Park J, Kamendulis LM, Friedman MA, Klaunig JE Acrylamide-induced cellular transformation. Toxicol Sci 2002 Feb;65(2):177-83 

  5. Anuradha B, Varalakshmi P. Activities of glucose-metabolizing enzymes in experimental neurotoxic models with lipoate as an alleviator. J Appl Toxicol 1999 Nov-Dec;19(6):405-9 

  6. http://www.slv.se/

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A good study on bread including acrylamides in backed bread and other baked and fried products:
http://www.joyfulaging.com/Bread.htm

Modern white bread is bad for your longevity, health and happiness – It should be avoided, ESPECIALLY by adults and by everyone who is overweight or has high blood sugar.

headaches, vascular damage, strokes, heart attacks, degenerative nerve disease, dementia, memory loss, vision problems, depression, lethargy, poor job performance, personality changes, poor judgment, slow reaction time, deadly accidents, stomachaches, liver damage, breast cancer (and other forms of cancer), poor digestion and improper metabolism. The measurable nerve and liver damage associated with internal yeast fermentation is seldom as rapid as with ingested alcohol, but the long-term net brain, vascular and liver damage is essentially the same.

 
When you eat a diet that is high in refined carbohydrates (sugar, flour, fructose, corn syrup, etc.), your intestinal flora and fauna (like Candida Albicons yeast germs) can proliferate exponentially, along with various forms of harmful bacteria, molds and fungi. Increased numbers of yeast and harmful bacteria generate well-known cell-killing toxins,

Too much iron stored in our tissues can do severe damage to our cells, tissues and internal organs. For the many men over 40 and post-menopausal women with high iron storage, the iron supplements in almost all commercial flour and bread products can accelerating aging and do serious damage,

“Asparagine” is a naturally-occurring amino acid found in carbohydrate foods that, when heated with sugars such as glucose, forms the acrylamide carcinogen. Many natural uncooked foods contain enzymes – proteins made up of amino acids that act as a catalyst and aid in the metabolism of the food, so the body can use it effectively. The higher the temperature used to prepare a starchy food and the longer it is cooked, the more likely that the three dimensional chemical structure of its enzymes will denature (break down) and become inactive, ineffective, or worse yet, a toxic, cancer-causing mutagen like acrylamide.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration made determining how to lower acrylamide levels in food “one of its highest research priorities,” according to an aggressive plan that FDA officials presented to consumer advocacy groups and food manufacturers on September 30, 2002.

Canada's government previously discovered the acrylamide / asparagine chemical reaction and quickly ordered food manufacturers to look for ways to alter it and lower acrylamide levels in foods.


Wasa Original Crispbread Fiber Rye

504

Sara Lee Plain Mini Bagels (toasted)

343

Herr's Extra Thin Pretzels

309

Dare Breton Thin Wheat Crackers

300

Pepperidge Farm Original White Bread (toasted)

216

Streit's Lightly Salted Matzos

182

Gerber Finger Foods Biter Biscuits

130

Keebler Town House Crackers Reduced Fat

130

Indian flat bread (from local restaurant)

125

Nabisco Arrowroot Biscuit (baby food)

113

Stella D'Oro Anisette Toast Cookies

107

Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

97

Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats

78

Utz Unsalted Sourdough Specials

70

General Mills Cinnamon Toast Crunch

61

Gerber Graduates for Toddlers
Animal Crackers

60

Pepperidge Farm Natural Whole Grain
Whole Wheat (toasted)

59

Sara Lee Plain Mini Bagels (not toasted)

58

Sara Lee Honey Wheat Bagels (toasted)

57

Pepperidge Farm Cheddar Goldfish

57

Maruchan Instant Lunch Ramen Noodles
with Vegetables Chicken Flavor

52

Super G Bread Crumbs Regular Style

42

Super G Unsalted Tops Crackers

41

Contadina Bread Crumbs Three Cheese

39

Pepperidge Farm Original White Bread
(not toasted)

36

Pepperidge Farm Dark Pump Pumpernickel (not toasted)

34

Lipton Asian Side Dishes Teriyaki Noodles

34

Boboli Italian Pizza Crust (not baked)

33

Sara Lee Honey Wheat Bagels (not toasted)

27

Red Oval Farms Mini Stoned Wheat Thins

26

Shoppers Food Warehouse Cake Doughnut

24

Boboli Italian Pizza Crust (baked)

24

Nabisco Zwieback Toast (baby food)

20

La Banderita Flour Tortillas (fried)

15

Shoppers Food Warehouse Plain Doughnut

14

Super G Macaroni & Cheese Dinner

12

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner

11

 

Bottom Line Summary: If you want to live a long, happy, healthy life,

AVOID: HIGH BLOOD SUGAR, ALL SOURCES OF ACRYLAMIDES and
TRANS FATS, INCLUDING BREAD. INCREASE INTAKE OF ANTIOXIDANTS.

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