Pesticide Residue
Call me a skeptic, but I’m always just a little suspicious of what level is “safe” for ingesting the pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables and just who determined how much pesticide it’s okay to eat. Obviously nobody is testing each apple or each spinach leaf to make sure it complies with the “safe” levels. And what’s considered “safe”? If I don’t drop dead within two hours, then it’s fine?
The fact is that there IS pesticide residue on ALL fruits and vegetables that are grown in the conventional way. The conventional methods include the use of pesticides, fertilizers, and drugs. There’s more residue on some than on others, but there IS pesticide residue on all of it. The level of pesticide residue that is considered “safe” – or maybe the term should be “legal” – varies from chemical to chemical and from variety to variety. More residues is allowed on some fruits and vegetables than others.
If you do not buy organic fruit and vegetables, then at the very least, wash them and, when possible, peel them before you eat them. There are vegetable and fruit washes that are available on the market, but a mild detergent wash is just about as effective.
When you do buy organic fruits and vegetables, there shouldn’t be any pesticide residue on them if they were raised in the United States. The label will say “certified organic.” That “certified organic” label means that the fruits and vegetables were raised under strict standards and that there were no pesticides or chemical fertilizers used. Regulations vary from country to country. So if the fruits or vegetables are labeled “organic,” that means only that they were raised according to organic standards of other countries, and that those standards are not a strict as those in America.
Reduce Risk of Parkinson’s Disease by Drinking Coffee
Among the many benefits of coffee and especially healthy organic coffee is that apparently one can reduce risk of Parkinson’s disease by drinking coffee. According to a study of persons on Olmstead County, Minnesota, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of coffee that people drink and their chances of getting Parkinson’s disease. Nearly two hundred persons were followed for twenty years (1976-1995). Researchers noted the amount of coffee that people drank and whether or not they developed Parkinson’s disease. When other things that might affect the incidence of Parkinson’s disease, like smoking, were excluded, there was a clear association between higher coffee consumption and a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s Disease
Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. When cells in the brain in a mid-brain region called the substantia nigra die, patients develop shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty with walking and gait. Then in later years, thinking is affected and behavioral problems may occur. Dementia is a hallmark of the end stages of this disease. Parkinson’s disease is much more common after age fifty. Direct costs of this disease in the USA are over $20 Billion a year.
Health and Organic Coffee Antioxidants
Regular as well as organic coffee contains chemicals called antioxidants. Scientifically an antioxidant is a molecule that inhibits the cell damage and cell death in human cells caused by oxidative breakdown of other molecule in the cell. Oxidation is a factor in sickness and aging. Antioxidants help prevent the damage caused by excessive oxidation and to a degree inhibit the aging process. When an oxidative reaction brought on by disease gets going it produces free radicals that start chain reactions which in turn cause cell and tissue damage. The human body has or uses antioxidants to control this situation. Natural means of controlling oxidation include vitamins C and E as well as glutathione. It is low levels of antioxidants that can lead to a condition referred to as oxidative stress and resultant damage to cells in the body. Organic coffee antioxidants are in the same class of molecules that help reduce oxidation. There have been proven to be many health benefits from drinking coffee, many of which can be tracked back to antioxidants.
Less Diabetes and Less Cancer if You Drink Coffee
Researchers have found less diabetes with daily organic coffee. Although this effect holds true with regular coffee as well, the reduction in impurities with organic coffee is an added benefit. In addition, coffee consumption has been related to a lower incidence of prostate cancer, endometrial cancer, liver cancer, and colon cancer. If indeed, it is the presence of antioxidants in coffee that tends to reduce risk of Parkinson’s disease by drinking coffee, the affect is probably on the cells of the mid brain in the substantia nigra. Further research on how to reduce risk of Parkinson’s disease by drinking coffee has not been recently reported but the reported study from Minnesota seems to indicate that you can reduce risk of Parkinson’s disease by drinking coffee. Add that fact to the good taste and other health benefits of drinking organic coffee and enjoy your morning organic coffee.
Organic Wine
Recent updates by the USDA say that “a wine made from organically grown grapes and without any added sulfites” is what constitutes a “certified organic” wine. That’s a problem. You see, wine that is made without any added sulfates is very unstable; the quality is unstable, the color is unstable, and the taste is really unstable.
What were once sold as “organic wines” are now sold as “wines made from organic grapes.” This means that the grapes used to make the wine were grown in an organic method. No artificial pesticides or fertilizers were used on the grapevines.
The wine makers are not happy campers, to say the least. These new guidelines mean that the wine industry is the only industry that cannot label its products “certified organic,” even though they at least 95% organic and in some cases as high as 99.99% organic.
Wine producers say that this undue attention given to “certified organic” wine doesn’t serve the public well. They say that it takes attention away from the important issues like soil conservation, soil depletion, soil erosion, water pollution, ecological impact, and pest resistance, and only serves to confuse consumers and merchants alike.
The result of the changes in the rules by the USDA that you will likely notice are wines that were once labeled “certified organic” are now labeled “made from organically grown grapes.” You’ll probably also notice a price increase.
Sometimes, it seems, the USDA trips over its own feet in its haste to make rules and regulations. Some of the rules and regulations do nothing more than add cost to products that we all buy everyday. They don’t enhance their safety, they don’t enhance their taste, and they do nothing to safeguard the environment – they simply add to the cost.
Drink Coffee to Avoid Gallstones
OK folks, here is one more benefit of drinking healthy coffee, and especially healthy organic coffee. It turns out that long term steady coffee consumption can reduce the risk of gallstones. What? Drink coffee to avoid gallstones? Well, you probably already like coffee or you would not be reading this so you do not need to drink coffee to avoid gallstones. You simply need to enjoy your coffee, not decaf, and get one more added benefit of coffee consumption. Where does this information come from? Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Heath set up a prospective study. This means that they set out to test whether or not something was true. In this case they compared coffee drinkers with non-coffee drinkers and two to three cups a day drinkers with four or more cup a day drinkers. They followed over forty thousand men for ten years. They recorded coffee consumption and consumption of other caffeinated drinks and whether or not these men ended up with symptomatic gall bladder disease and gall stones. The men in the study at the beginning ranged from forty to seventy-five years of age. The scientists only were interested in men who did not already have gall bladder disease.
So What Were the Results?
The researchers found that premise that you can drink coffee to avoid gallstones may well be true. Out of the forty thousand men in the study over a decade just over a thousand developed gall bladder disease, symptoms and stones. It turned out, all other factors being equal, that men who drank two to three cups of coffee a day had six tenths as many cases of gall bladder disease as men who did not drink coffee. Men who drank four cups or more a day had 55% the risk of getting gall bladder disease as non-coffee drinkers. This effect did not hold for decaf drinkers! The fact that you can apparently drink coffee to avoid gallstones held true for all brewing methods. Organic coffee was not tested versus regular coffee.
So What about Gall Bladder Disease?
Gall stones affect twenty million Americans and result in eight hundred thousand hospitalizations a year. The direct cost of this is two billion dollars in 1999 dollars (when the study was reported). If all adult Americans were to drink coffee to avoid gallstones it might make a lot of people less sick and potentially save sixty percent of two billion ($1.2 Billion) in direct costs.
How about Organic Coffee in This Story?
We know that regular and organic coffee antioxidants are good for you. They appear to be related to reduced risks of cancers of the prostate, endometrium, colon, and liver and have been associated with a huge decrease in the risk of Type II Diabetes. The special benefits to you of good organic coffee are that it is typically high quality coffee and that you avoid drinking well over a hundred impurities with your coffee. Now you can enjoy your great organic coffee and be comforted that you are nearly cutting the risk of getting gall stones in half!
Forget Your Alzheimer’s and Drink Your Coffee
Research carried out at the University of South Florida implies that it may be time to forget your Alzheimer’s and drink your coffee. Alzheimer’s disease is the condition seen often in old age in which a person is unable to remember recent events. It is also the stuff of jokes about every time a person in mid-life or older forgets something. The scientists at South Florida studied a strain of mice that has been bred to get Alzheimer’s disease, or at least the mouse variety. These critters develop high levels of beta amyloid in their brain and then the plaques that inhibit nerve transmission, the same findings that researchers see in humans. Because mice live shorter lives than humans, old age comes sooner and scientists can see sooner if whatever they have been doing to the mice has had an effect. Now these folks have been having their little research subjects drink coffee. And, it appears that it is time to forget your Alzheimer’s and drink your coffee. Regular and healthy organic coffee both contain caffeine and a number of other useful ingredients, one or more of which appears to reduce levels of beta amyloid in the brain. A study that the South Florida researchers published in the Journal of Neuroscience shows that Caffeine protects Alzheimer’s mice against cognitive impairment and reduces brain beta-amyloid production. The coffee drinking mice kept their memories! In addition, researchers found that high coffee consumption in mice raised levels of granulocyte colony stimulating factor, a chemical that has reduced levels in Alzheimer’s patients. So how does this lead to the presumption that you should forget your Alzheimer’s and drink your coffee?
It Takes Time to Get Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease is not something that people are born with. The primary finding in the brains of people who die with this disease it that there are plaques of a protein called beta amyloid that gum up nerve junctions and inhibit nerve transmission. One of the approaches to preventing the disease is to try to reduce levels of beta amyloid protein and thus reduce the production of nerve-damaging plaques. An ideal treatment would be something that people do, eat, or drink every day that would reduce the incidence of or eliminate the disease. Coffee is a natural for this purpose. Caffeine and something else in coffee reliably reduce beta amyloid levels in the brain of mice. Regular and organic coffee antioxidants are already known to reduce the risk of Type II diabetes, prostate cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer and endometrial cancer. Now, with the possibility that long term coffee consumption may reduce beta amyloid plaque production, it may well be time to forget your Alzheimer’s and drink your coffee!
Don’t Forget to Drink Enough Coffee
Previous research had shown than drinking a cup of coffee a day was related to a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s than with non-coffee drinkers. Other caffeinated beverages do not convey this effect which is unique to coffee. More recent work shows that the reduction in the incidence of Alzheimer’s goes up with the number of cups of coffee that a person drinks each day. The great part of this research is that people drink coffee every day. We already know that higher levels of coffee consumption lead to lower risks of a number of diseases. So, forget your Alzheimer’s and drink your coffee. No matter what the precise mechanism is you can enjoy your coffee and enjoy its wide range of benefits.
Organic Snacks
Americans like to snack. We are a nation of nibblers. Have you noticed that every social occasion, no matter how casual, includes snacks? If you have coffee with a neighbor, there will be some cookies or cakes offered along with the coffee. If you go to a soccer game, there will be soft drinks and packaged snacks. If you gather for an evening of cards with friends…yep, more snacks.
Even if you try hard to eat organic meals and serve organic meals to your family all of those nonorganic snacks might be defeating your efforts. And, let’s face it, we can keep all of the organic fruits and vegetables in the house that we want, but there comes a time when you and your family just want something that is sweet – cookies, candy, etc. Don’t feel bad – it happens in the best and most organic of families.
The trick is to keep snacks available that meet your organic standards. And, yes, there really are organic cookies, candy, and even salty munchies available. They aren’t really readily available (yet – we’re working on it) but they can be found.
There are a great many websites that actually specialize in providing organic snacks that are healthy but that taste good and are free of chemicals, flavor enhancers, and preservatives. It’s true that we can’t go around preaching organic, but we can eat organic as much as we can and see to it that our families have organic snacks available.
We aren’t going to convert the world to organic food overnight – probably not over our lifetime – but we can serve organic snacks to our friends and families and we can send organic snacks as gifts. When others taste how good these foods are and even peek (with your encouragement) at the ingredients, the organic food movement will slowly gain strength and momentum – one organic cookie at a time.
Coffee Berry Borer Threatens Kona Coffee Crop
The Hawaiian coffee growers have appealed directly to a high placed native son for help as the coffee berry borer threatens the coffee crop in the islands. The Kona Coffee Farmers Association and the Hawaii Coffee Association have appealed to both President Barack Obama and Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack for more help in defeating an insect pest that has the potential to destroy the Hawaiian coffee crop. The beetle in question was first spotted in Hawaii in 2010 has multiplied into the billions. There are slightly more than 800, mostly small, coffee farms in the islands and they produce a crop valued at $35 million a year. Kona organic coffee is imperiled as well as the rest of the coffee crop.
Organic or Synthetic Approaches to Fighting a Beetle
Cotton farmers in the Southern United States learned to their dismay many years ago that spraying the heck out of the cotton crop to kill pests could backfire. The insecticide resistant cotton borer beetle destroyed crops because the farmers had removed its natural competitors. Although no one intentionally introduced the beetle into Hawaii the fact that regular coffee is often grown in crowded rows tends to encourage the spread of pests. Growing coffee and other crops out of their natural habitat also upsets the balance of nature. Shade grown organic coffee is grown where birds perch in the trees and are only too happy to help by snacking on insect pests. Let us hope that whatever solution the experts come up with relates to restoring the balance of nature and not adding one more insecticide to what can appear in our morning cup of coffee or kill the birds in the trees.
Trapping the Beetle
One of the approaches is to bait traps and catch the beetles as the coffee berry borer threatens the Kona coffee crop. This is an organic approach and for organic coffee production is preferable to spraying coffee plants with a fungicide which has been somewhat successful in reducing the prevalence of the pest in Latin America. Currently the coffee berry borer that threatens the Kona coffee crop is limited to the Big Island. Thus quarantine may help protect the crop on outlying islands of the Hawaiian chain. In the meantime we applaud the trappers and suggest a bounty on coffee berry borer beetles.
It Is a Smaller and Smaller World
The coffee berry borer that threatens the Kona coffee crop is not native to Hawaii. It got to the island somehow. Many want to restrict or ban the import of green coffee beans from elsewhere in the Hawaiian Islands. Even if all green coffee imports are banned the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. A quarantine of the Big Island makes more sense along with methods of control based on sustainable agricultural practices. For example, Yellow Fever was not eliminated from Panama where it caused so many deaths by hunting down every mosquito. Rather it was by selectively applying a thin layer or oil to sources of standing water. This killed the eggs the mosquitoes and greatly reduced the need for spraying. Learning more about the beetle and the habitats it likes could well lead to smart and safe methods of protection as the coffee berry borer threatens the Kona coffee crop. After all, our preference is for safe organic coffee.
Organic School Lunches
Lots and lots of kids eat their midday meal in the school cafeteria. Mostly because of public outcry, school lunches have gotten better over the years as far as nutrition goes, but just nutrition doesn’t go far enough. Serving apples rather than candy bars for dessert might be a slight improvement, but if the apples are covered with chemical residue, it’s kind of hard to see a whole lot of advantage.
The meat on the lunch might now be leaner, but if it’s loaded with antibiotics and growth hormones even at “acceptable” government standards, how is that a real improvement? The milk served today is lower in fat, but it still contains all sorts of drugs that were given to the cows to make them give more milk.
Public outcry helped to improve school lunches to the point they are today, and they are an improvement over the lunches that were once served, but they still aren’t good enough. Only public outcry will force the government to force the schools to use organically produced meats and vegetables in school lunches. Only government regulation will force schools to stop using prepackaged foods that are treated with flavor enhancers and preservatives with names that even the teachers can’t pronounce.
While we wait for the government and the school cafeterias to catch on to the fact that the food being given to kids in the cafeterias is loaded with toxins and drugs, about the only thing that we can do is to prepare school lunches at home for our kids.
Yes, organically raised food (vegetable and mineral) is more expensive that conventionally produced food. There is no doubt about it, but it’s more expensive because it’s worth it. There are lots of really cheap poisons, but we wouldn’t eat them because they are cheap. The same is true of choosing between an apple that was grown using conventional methods (chemical fertilizer and toxic pesticides) that has chemical residue on it, and an apple that was raised organically that doesn’t have chemical residue on it.
Reduce Incidence of Liver Cancer by Drinking Coffee
The list of health benefits of healthy organic coffee just keeps growing. Previously we have reported that Drinking Organic Coffee Reduces Prostate Cancer Risk, More Organic Coffee Can Lead to Less Colon Cancer, More Organic Coffee Can Lead to Less Diabetes, and that drinking coffee reduces the risk of depression. Now we see in the scientific news that you apparently can reduce incidence of liver cancer by drinking coffee. This last report, like the ones before, is based on analysis of patient histories. It turns out that daily coffee consumption, typically in the three cup a day range, is related to a lower incidence of several cancers, less depression, and a fifty percent reduction in the incidence of diabetes type II. The evidence that you can reduce incidence of liver cancer by drinking coffee comes what is called a Meta study. Researches took data from several small studies and combined the data. After appropriate statistical analysis, the researchers found an inverse relationship between coffee consumption and liver cancer. This translates to more coffee leads to less liver cancer.
The general consensus of the scientific world is that antioxidants are a main reason if not the main reason for the beneficial health effects of coffee. Organic coffee is not only free of many of the impurities found in regular coffee but contains things that are beneficial to your health. These things include antioxidants. Scientifically an antioxidant is a molecule that inhibits the cell damage and cell death in human cells caused by oxidative breakdown of other molecule in the cell. Oxidation is a factor in sickness and aging. Antioxidants help prevent the damage caused by excessive oxidation and to a degree inhibit the aging process. When an oxidative reaction brought on by disease gets going it produces free radicals that start chain reactions which in turn cause cell and tissue damage. The human body has or uses antioxidants to control this situation. Natural means of controlling oxidation include vitamins C and E as well as glutathione. It is low levels of antioxidants that can lead to a condition referred to as oxidative stress and resultant damage to cells in the body. Organic coffee antioxidants are in the same class of molecules that help reduce oxidation. The fact that one apparently can reduce incidence of liver cancer by drinking coffee is tied to antioxidants in coffee.
How Much Is Enough?
Depending on the study a cup or two of coffee day can produce long term health benefits. However, a recurring theme in the scientific research is that more coffee is better. Drinking four cups of coffee a day instead of one cup commonly is associated with a greater reduction in cancers and diabetes than a single cup a day. The studies that we currently have are retrospective. That means that researchers asked questions of people who came in for yearly checkups. They kept track of illnesses, etc. In the end they compared the data of habits such as drinking coffee, eating meat, exercising daily, smoking, and more with health outcomes. What will come next will be prospective studies. People will be put into groups of high coffee consumption or a pill containing antioxidants one side and no coffee or specific antioxidants on the other. Then, after a number of years the researchers will analyze the data again. In the meantime enjoy your coffee and remember that in all likelihood you can reduce incidence of liver cancer by drinking coffee.
Organic Restaurants
Because the food industry is beginning to understand the importance of organic food to consumers, it is getting easier to find restaurants that serve organic food. Finally, the prepared food industry is “getting it” that genetically altered food, and all of the additives and hormones and other chemicals in the food they serve to their customers are adding to the problems of disease, unhealthy old age, and poor nutrition. More and more people are demanding healthy organic food options even when they eat out. It’s about time!
Even fast food restaurants have began offering lower- calorie or lower-carbohydrate options on their menus. Now these choices are not organic, don’t misunderstand me, but they are at least a step in the right direction and, who knows, if we keep on keeping on, maybe we’ll even convince McDonald’s to go organic. Well, okay – probably not in this lifetime, but maybe someday.
Organic restaurants are still not plentiful, and they aren’t all that easy to find. You’re not likely to find them on the interstate highways, but they are out there. There are now organic restaurants in most large cities in all states. Each restaurant is an independent business. So far there is no national chain of organic restaurants – but that can’t be too far down the road. As more and more people are demanding healthy organic food choices when they eat out in restaurants, there will be more and more such restaurants, and even those that do offer a completely organic menu are beginning to offer organic choices.
The thing is, it is just as easy to prepare food that was raised without toxic fertilizers and toxic pesticides and drugs than food that was raised with those noxious chemicals. There is no reason why restaurants could not offer organic food choices on the same menu as nonorganic choices. They will – more and more are already doing that.