Good ol' rickets-preventing vitamin D turns out to be much more significant than once thought.  In fact, it influences over 200 genes and directly highlights links to major diseases:

The researchers found 2,776 binding sites for the vitamin D receptor along the length of the genome. These were unusually concentrated near a number of genes associated with susceptibility to autoimmune conditions such as MS, Crohn's disease, systemic lupus erythematosus (or 'lupus') and rheumatoid arthritis, and to cancers such as chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and colorectal cancer.

They also showed that vitamin D had a significant effect on the activity of 229 genes including IRF8, previously associated with MS, and PTPN2, associated with Crohn's disease and type 1 diabetes.

I take a quality vitamin D supplement every day.  I recommend Designs for Health's Vitamin D Supreme.  It's a top quality brand led and managed by some of the brightest folks in the field.

Salon's Andrew Leonard:

It's amazing the effect Wal-Mart can have on entire industries.  And headlines like this one, among many others, are why I will only eat fresh caught/wild salmon.  I won't touch the farmed stuff.

Dr. Jonny Bowden, one of my favorite authors on the subject of nutrition, provides another datapoint for something I’ve telling anyone who will listen:

A landmark research study by Dr. Michael Shechter of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine and the Heart Institute of Sheba Medical Center, with collaboration of the Endocrinology Institute, shows exactly how high carbohydrate foods increase the risk for heart problems. Researchers looked at four groups of volunteers who were given different breakfasts:

• cornflake mush mixed with milk- not unlike the typical American breakfast
• a pure sugar mixture
• bran flakes
• a placebo (water).

Over four weeks, Dr. Shechter applied a test that allows researchers to visualize how the arteries are functioning. It’s called “brachial reactive testing” and it uses a cuff on the arm, like those used to measure blood pressure, which can visualize arterial function in real time.

The results were dramatic. Before any of the patients ate, arterial function was essentially the same. After eating, except for the placebo group (who drank water), all had reduced functioning. Enormous peaks indicating arterial stress were found in the high glycemic index groups: the cornflakes and sugar group.

Nearly everything we eat originates from corn, but Corn Flakes is so heavily processed and denatured that - like the study shows - it’s literally like eating a bowl of sugar.  Don’t let the texture and ingredients fool you: from your metabolism’s perspective, you’re eating refined sugar.  And your resulting biochemistry proves it.

New research has yielded two metrics that allow doctors to more accurately predict heart attack risk for patients.  Hint: it isn’t cholesterol.  Instead, researchers from the Hanyang University in Seoul analyzed the red blood cells of their subject groups and then measured their levels of omega-3 fatty acids and trans-fatty acids.  The results turned out to be even more accurate than the standard Framingham risk scores most doctors use.

The current research-- published online on June 9, 2009 in the British Journal of Nutrition-- found that the new measures did even better than the Framingham measures in predicting heart attacks. Those who had the lowest levels of omega-3's in their blood had the greatest risk of heart attack as did those who had the highest levels of trans-fats.

Specifically, the omega-3 fatty acid index-- which is the sum of red blood cell EPA and DHA-- was significantly lower in heart attack patients compared with controls, while total trans-fatty acids were significantly higher. Those whose omega-3 fatty acid index was among the top third of participants had an amazing 92 percent lower risk of heart attack than those whose levels were in the lowest third.

Meanwhile, when it came to trans-fats, the exact opposite was true. For those whose total trans-fatty acids were in the top third, the risk of heart attack was a whopping 72.67 percent higher than subjects in the lowest third.

In semi-plain English, this means two things:

1. Avoid man-made trans-fats, period.  If you see anything on your food labels that says hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil, throw it away.  It’s garbage.
2. Keep your omega-3 levels up.  I take a high-quality fish oil supplement day and night, and I try to eat a lot of toxin-free, wild-caught cold water fish.  You can easily do the same.  (I think fish oil is one of the most important supplements a person can take.)

This is the movie I've been waiting for. As an avid fan of the works of Michael Pollan (The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto), Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Alice Waters (The Art of Simple Food), Dr. Mark Hyman (UltraPrevention, UltraMetabolism, UltraMind) and Marion Nestle (What to Eat), Food, Inc. is the movie that attempts to wrap up the main points from all these authors into a single documentary. I've had more than my share of people who guffaw at the notion that our food is making us sick, but the facts are in: as a nation, we're getting sicker and fatter quicker than ever before, despite the preponderance of "healthy foods" folded into every supermarket aisle at exactly the right shelf height. Kids are obese, we're all rapidly becoming pre-diabetic with metabolic syndrome, and heart disease is through the roof (and it's not because of butter). Kids and adults are on levels of prescription drugs never before seen in America, and we're intent on masking symptom after symptom. We're a mess. And the root cause isn't pretty. Every meme has a tipping point, and I can only hope that Food, Inc. helps accelerate the one that will help people realize that we're eating mainly biomass-based engineered food items instead of real food. Here's the movie trailer. Food, Inc. opens on June 12. (Via kottke)

I can't argue with a single thing Jack LaLanne says in this video. The coming trend is to eat natural foods, exercise vigorously, and live simply. I think we've lost our way, and no matter how affluent you may be, there is a movement afoot to get back to solid ground -- for our health, quality of life, and happiness. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEboAJf9UVc] [via BB]

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, offers a compelling interview with AlterNet's Amy Goodman on what we should be eating:

Goodman: Shouldn't people be concerned, for example, about cholesterol? Pollan: No. Cholesterol in the diet is actually only very mildly related to cholesterol in the blood. It was a -- that was a scientific error, basically. We were sold a bill of goods that we should really worry about the cholesterol in our food, basically because cholesterol is one of the few things we could measure that was linked to heart disease, so there was this kind of obsessive focus on cholesterol. But, you know, the egg has been rehabilitated. You know, the egg is very high in cholesterol, and now we're told it's actually a perfectly good, healthy food. So there's only a very tangential relationship between the cholesterol you eat and the cholesterol levels in your blood.

It's a long read, but a mini-education in 10 minutes. We'd all be better served heeding Pollan's advice. Link [via Lifehacker]

Serious Eats' Ed Levine posts his thoughts on food/culinary trends that are welcome to stay and those that could go off a cliff. I'm especially in favor of restaurants dressing down and continued efforts to promote local food sourcing and sustainable agriculture, but almost everything Levine likes is right up my alley (especially the idea of serious pizza joints opening up across the nation).

Interesting new class of drugs that target the mitochondria of our cells to help prevent cellular damage and oxidization. The rub is that many age-related diseases are thought to be mitochondrial in nature, so if we can keep the mitochondria healthy, we might dodge a great number of diseases we've heretofore been susceptible to.

The drugs target mitochondria, the cellular power generators that provide our bodies with chemical energy. Over time, mitochondria accumulate damage, causing cells and eventually tissues to malfunction and break down. Some scientists believe that such seemingly disparate diseases as cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes and heart disease -- all of which become more common with age -- share a mitochondrial root. Fix the mitochondria, and you might fix aging itself.

This begs the question that if we find a way to interrupt what is largely our mainline death mechanism, how will we die? Bioethics should be an interesting field in the decades to come.