Grow Your Own Vegetables and Live Longer

More than twenty years ago someone conducted a study that concluded that Mexican Americans were the fattest people in the United States. I don't think we win the prize anymore. I think just about everybody is tied for first place, except those who live in cities where people mostly walk or take public transportation.

If you are a woman and wear a size 18 on up, you have a good chance to develop diabetes or heart trouble when you reach middle age. Why is that? Because obesity has a strong correlation with these diseases. Why do we all wear such big size clothes? Because we eat the wrong things. We don't necessarily eat too much (nix on the people that say fat people are gluttons) - its what we eat....

There is much to say on this subject, but the first thing to think about is eating more fruits and vegetables. What a better way to do this than by making your own community garden?

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January 17, 2010 - New York Times

San Jose Journal

In Latino Gardens, Vegetables, Good Health and Savings Flourish

By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

SAN JOSE — At dawn, Maria Lupercio Alarcon wakens to the heady scent of onions and cilantro from her family’s first garden, outside her bedroom window.

The two-month-old vegetable garden, from which Mrs. Alarcon picks extravagant bursts of broccoli for breakfast with scrambled eggs, is both comforting and unfamiliar. It is one of 30 backyard vegetable gardens recently planted by a nonprofit group here called La Mesa Verde, or The Green Table, which makes house calls to help residents of the city’s low-income, predominantly Latino neighborhoods grow their own organic produce.

“People don’t eat vegetables unless they are close by, to be honest with you,” Mrs. Alarcon, a mother of three who grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico, said of the human tendency to eat whatever is at hand, especially if it is cheap. “If you have vegetables,” she said, pointing to luxuriant tangles of peas and other delights, “then you can come get them. To see them growing is a blessing.”

The fledgling effort to bring backyard vegetable beds to San Jose neighborhoods like the Washington-Guadalupe and Gardner districts — historic portals for immigrants — is part of a national movement, from West Oakland to Little Rock, Ark., to make healthy food readily accessible to marginalized urban neighborhoods...link to complete article

Red Meat, Cancer and Heart Disease

link to cartoon

While this NYT article says red meat is bad for you, continuing medical studies confirm that any type of animal product in our diet really hampers our quest for health.  See The China Study.

NYT:

"men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods."

"Paying a Price for Loving Red Meat," New York Times, April 29, 2009

Keeping Healthy: Looking for Salicylates

London Independent:

"Fruit and vegetables are known to have high levels of salicylates, which are also the active anti-inflammatory ingredient of aspirin. Vegetarians meanwhile are known to have low rates of cancer, as well as having higher levels of salicylates in their bodies."

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Anti-cancer benefits of fruit and veg are underlined
London Independent

By Chris Green

Friday, 27 March 2009

The salicylates in fruit and vegetables may in fact play a bigger role in protecting against cancer than the antioxidants on which research has focused until now

A diet high in fruit and vegetables, especially organically grown ones, may protect against cancer and heart disease and could be equivalent in this respect to taking a low dose of aspirin every day, scientists say.

Fruit and vegetables are known to have high levels of salicylates, which are also the active anti-inflammatory ingredient of aspirin. Vegetarians meanwhile are known to have low rates of cancer, as well as having higher levels of salicylates in their bodies.

The conventionally grown fruit and vegetables treated with pesticides that are found on many supermarket shelves have lower levels of salicylates than those grown organically.

A review of the possible link between cancer prevention and this substance found in aspirin, published in the medical journal The Lancet, says many herbs and spices are also especially rich in salicylates. This could explain international differences in cancer rates, the study said.

The salicylates in fruit and vegetables may in fact play a bigger role in protecting against cancer than the antioxidants on which research has focused until now, the researchers say... complete article