Coffee And Bad Breath

Did you know there is an organization named, "The International Society for Breath Odor Research." Neither did I. Their meetings must be really fun and exciting. Read on.

From Live Science:

An extract from coffee can inhibit the bacteria that lead to bad breath, scientists have discovered.
The extract prevents malodorous bacteria from making their presence felt — or smelt.
"Everybody thinks that coffee causes bad breath," said Tel Aviv University breath specialist Mel Rosenberg, "and it's often true, because coffee, which has a dehydrating effect in the mouth, becomes potent when mixed with milk, and can ferment into smelly substances."
But not always. Rosenberg and colleagues monitored the bacterial odor production of coffee in saliva.
"Contrary to our expectations, we found some components in coffee that actually inhibit bad breath," Rosenberg said...

Continue to read the whole article if you really care.

High Carb Foods And Heart Attacks

A very interesting new study's results were just released. From The Medical News:

It has been commonly known for a number of years that certain foods, such as white bread and corn flakes, are bad for cardiac health, but new research from Israeli scientists shows just how 'high carb' foods cause heart attacks. The researchers at Tel Aviv University have carried out a study which shows exactly how high carb foods increase the risk for heart problems - Dr Michael Shechter of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine and the Heart Institute of Sheba Medical Center working in collaboration with the Endocrinology Institute "looked inside" the arteries of students as they were eating a variety of foods...

...The results were apparently quite dramatic - before any of the patients ate, arterial function was essentially the same - but after eating, except for the placebo group, all had reduced functioning and enormous peaks indicating arterial stress were found in the high glycemic index groups: the cornflakes and sugar group.

Dr Shechter says though they already knew high glycemic foods were bad for the heart, they now have a mechanism that shows just how and foods such as cornflakes, white bread, french fries, and sweetened soda all put undue stress on the arteries.

He says they have explained for the first time how high glycemic carbs can affect the progression of heart disease because during the consumption of foods high in sugar, there appears to be a temporary and sudden dysfunction in the endothelial walls of the arteries.

Endothelial health can be traced back to almost every disorder and disease in the body and Dr Shechter says it is "the riskiest of the risk factors"...

Read the whole thing. You'll be glad you did.

Creole Pork Chops and Rice

Sunday night, I promised to share my Creole Pork Chops and Rice recipe. Well--here it is. It's a simple, almost one-pot meal that's perfect on a damp rainy night. Try it soon!

Coincidentally, the wine suggestions from my previously posted jerk pork chop recipe are equally suitable here--except if you're going for maximum bang for your buck and get a boxed wine, I'd do Bota Box Pinot Grigio instead of their Chardonnay with this one. Enjoy!

Do I Get To Decide What Constitutes Moderate Alcohol Intake?

From MedPage Today:

Moderate alcohol intake may be the single biggest contributor to the Mediterranean diet's longevity benefit, accounting for 23.5% of the effect in a prospective cohort study.

Surprisingly, the high ratio of monounsaturated-to-saturated fat in the olive oil-rich diet was a more modest contributor to the reduction in all-cause mortality, at 10.6%, according to Dimitrios Trichopoulos, MD, PhD, of Harvard, and colleagues...

Continue to read the article.

Antibiotics In Our Meat

Christopher Wanjek has a good article in Live Science today:

"The use of the powerful antibiotic streptomycin as a growth-promoting agent in turkeys also quickly promotes the growth of dangerous streptomycin-resistant coliform bacteria, according to researchers at University of California, Davis.

Perhaps such a finding should be cause for alarm, considering how agribusiness pumps more than 20 million pound of antibiotics into healthy livestock each year, constituting more than 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States.

Then again, the aforementioned study was published in 1951. Hundreds of similar studies have since been published. But no one seems to care..."

Continue reading the article.