Wood Pulp in Food: Makes It Cheap But Is It Safe to Eat?

Wood Pulp in Food: Makes It Cheap But Is It Safe to Eat? What’s in your food that’s also found in glue, asphalt, automotive brake pads and your pet’s litter? Wood? Yes. Or more specifically, cellulose or the wood pulp that is also used in cleaning detergents, welding electrodes, plastics, reinforcing compounds, construction materials, roof coating, emulsion paints and the other inedible items earlier listed.

In today’s fast-paced world of processed food, much of what we end up eating is loaded with factory-made additives like preservatives, artificial food colors and cellulose.

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Undercooked Liver Pate Food Poisoning: Campylobacter Infections Rise

Campylobacter Infection and Undercooked Liver Pate. Serving undercooked chicken or duck liver pâté or parfait has been a trend among both haute cuisine chefs and amateur foodies for some time now. But public health officials in the United Kingdom say this may cause hundreds of people to fall ill with food poisoning.

Eating undercooked poultry liver pâté or parfait at weddings and other functions in hotels, clubs, restaurants and other banquet venues has been identified as the cause of nearly all food poisoning cases across the UK this year.

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Health Benefits of Orange Juice: Good Anti-Fat Neutralizer?

Health Benefits of Orange Juice: Good Anti-Fat Neutralizer? Did you know that drinking orange juice is good for your health? Duh, of course everyone knows that already! Okay, did you know that orange juice can sort of “neutralize” the unhealthy food you’ve been stuffing yourself with every time you go to McDonalds? You didn’t, didn’t you?

Anyhoo, according to some researchers from the University of Buffalo, the “flavonoids in orange juice suppress oxidative stress from high-fat, high-carb meal”.

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Omega 3 Health Benefits: Healthy Gums and Teeth?

Omega 3 Health Benefits: Healthy Gums and Teeth? If you are eating foods that are rich in omega-3 such as salmon, mackerel and albacore tuna, you may have a lower risk of developing gum disease, a study suggests.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, found that those who consumed intermediate high amounts of DHA, a main fish-derived omega-3 fatty acid, were less likely to develop the disease. The researchers studied more than 9,000 adult participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2004, where eight percent of them had gum disease.

They found that the top third of patients in terms of DHA intake had a 22 percent reduction in their chance of developing gum disease, compared to those in the lowest third. Says senior researcher Dr. Kenneth J. Mukamal of Harvard Medical School on their research, “[A]nti-inflammatory treatment with omega-3’s seems to help experimental periodontitis in rabbits. Our hope was to extend that to humans.”

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Yakult + Activia & Actimel Probiotics: Effective Immune Boosters or Bad Health Hype?

In television advertisements, we are told that probiotic products help maintain our immune system and digestive health. However, the European Food Society Authority (EFSA) is questioning these claims saying that they are not supported by sound science.

According to the Guardian, an EFSA panel of independent scientists has concluded that the evidence submitted by manufacturers to support their claim that their probiotic products “could strengthen the body’s defences, improve immune function and reduce gut problems were either so general as to be inadmissable, or could not be shown to have the claimed effect”.

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DHA Fish Oil Supplement = Smarter Babies?

Is it true that taking fish oil supplement during your pregnancy will make your baby smarter? According to a recent research published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the answer is most probably “No”.

The New York Times reports:

… a large study published Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the DHA supplements taken by pregnant women show no clear cognitive benefit to their babies.

Some previous studies have suggested that DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid in fish oil, can aid in a baby’s brain development if taken during pregnancy. But many of those studies were small or observed women already taking fish oil, who might be more health-conscious. The new study, with more than 2,000 participants, was a clinical trial in which women received either fish oil with DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) or a placebo (vegetable oil).

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