Soluble Fiber Amounts In Food - Soluble Fiber And Health

Image : http://www.flickr.com

Fiber is an extremely important element for everybody's health. Fiber diets help in the smooth working of our digestive system. Similarly soluble fiber is also a very important element in the diet. The soluble fiber prevents from stomach disorder like constipation and diarrhea. The fiber in soluble form helps us in relief from stomach cramps meanwhile it also prevents from the bowel dysfunction of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It is worth noting that the soluble form of fiber transforms all the liquids present in the digestive tract to a jelly like structure; this jelly like structure provides us relief from stomach cramps. So in order to stay healthy it is strongly advisable to use soluble fibers in our diet.

Advantages of Soluble Fiber Amounts in Food:

Diabetes is a very serious problem and is a very common problem nowadays; it is caused by the malfunction of the human pancreas. The soluble form of fiber or soluble fiber is a very good cure for diabetes mellitus because the soluble fiber helps the pancreas in making its own insulin rather than getting from an external source. Thus there is no proper need of any medication. The soluble fiber also controls the amount of blood glucose and is anti-cholesterol. As the soluble fiber passes from the digestive tract it increases the level of bile acids which in turn removes the cholesterol from the body. So this proves that soluble fiber is also beneficial for heart patients. Due to this your body will not gain extra weight and you'll be smart and active.

As discussed earlier that by using the soluble fibers in our diet, we can easily lose our weigh as it removes the cholesterol from the body and it is the cholesterol which makes us heavier. The fibers contain less calories which also a big reason why we don't get overweight.

Source of Soluble Fiber Food:

Soluble fibers can be found in vegetables and fruits and are also found in oats, barley, dried beans, oat bran, brown rice, seeds and rye. The vegetable which contain good source of soluble fibers comprise peas, sweet potatoes, carrots, cauliflower. Certain fruits also contain fibers like apples, bananas, pears. Soluble fiber in fruits is present in the pectin where the fruit stores its water which in turn provides the fruit with texture and shape.

One of the most important forms of soluble fiber is known as psyllium, which provides laxative, this fiber is found mostly in India. This fiber acts as an anti fattening agent. This fiber doest not let the fatty substances get absorbed in the intestine. Thus this soluble fiber causes a decrease in the level of cholesterol in body.

It is researched and thus recommended that eating oat bran which is rich in soluble fiber prevents from coronary diseases. You can find a lot of information about soluble fibers online as well as there are a lot of best-selling books, which discuss the importance of soluble fibers in our diet.

Beer Brewing Ice Cream Maker Gift Basket

Molybdenum and Health

Image : http://www.flickr.com

Molybdenum, its known benefits and side effects, and our tips and recommendation on where to find its best sources will be the focus of this article.

Molybdenum, an essential mineral for both animals and humans alike, is most heavily concentrated in the liver, kidney, adrenal gland, and bones.

The nutrient, a component of many enzymes, including sulfide oxide, supports the metabolism of sulfur amino acids, xanthine oxide, oxidates, purines ,and pyramidenes, as well a the production of uric acid. The enzymes alldehyde oxidase and xanthin oxidase share a common molybdenum factor.

Molybdenum, found in legumes, cereal products, and leafy vegetables, is usually easily absorbed.

The nutrient can, however, be affected by particular food components.

Signs of Molybdenum Deficiency

Molybdenum deficiency is normally seen only in individuals with serious disorders, caused by the metabolic defects identified with the absence of three molybdenum enzymes.

Deficiency in metabolic disorders results in abnormal excretion of sulfur metabolites, hypothyroxine and xanthine, and low uric acid concentration.

The absence of sulfide oxidase in metabolic disorders, causing toxicity and auto-immune disorders, can lead to premature death. Molybdenum toxicity is more likely than its deficiency. Common in cattle grazing in pastures with molybdenum-rich soil, molybdenum toxicity may cause gout in those who take dosages of 10-15 milligrams daily.

We need this nutrient, however, to maintain our overall health, so it is essential we get the right amount in our dietary intake.

How to Select Molybdenum

Because nutritional supplement production, both in the U.S. and other countries is largely unregulated, both governmental and private studies have shown that consumers of nutritional supplements have only a 1 in 5 chance of purchasing a supplement contain the amount of ingredients stated on the product label, or worse yet, a supplement that is not contaminated with health-impairing toxins.

We therefore advise consumers to buy health supplements from pharmaceutical GMP compliant facilities, which adhere to the world's most exacting manufacturing standards. Doing as we suggest will ensure you of getting contaminant-free Molybdenum, in the full amount for which you have paid.

Beer Brewing Ice Cream Maker

Grains - Health Food Or Health Folly?

Image : http://www.flickr.com

Grains are often called the "staff of life," having a sort of credibility that is almost biblical in proportion. So prevalent is the perception that grains make for "good food" that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) - which is the United Nation's international agency for defeating hunger - uses a head of wheat as its emblem, with the Latin Fiat Panis or "Let There Be Bread" as its motto. Despite the rather lofty secular position a loaf of whole grain bread may hold in the international community, the biblical record actually shows that the first foods mentioned in the Bible were the Herbs and Fruit Trees (Genesis 1:29), and that by punishment for sin God gave man bread:

"...cursed is the ground for thy sake;...In the sweat of thy face shalt though eat bread, till though return unto the ground..." (Genesis 3:17,19).

The inherent wisdom of this biblical message has long been forgotten and today, according to the USDA Food Pyramid guidelines, grains should constitute the largest sector of our diet in the form of "bread, cereal, rice, and pasta." Many of us, whose hyper-agrarian taste buds and gastrointestinal tracs have never once gone a day without some grain-derived morsel of bread or cracker, find ourselves expressing our dependency on these foods in telling, half confessionary phrases like: "I'm starving for a piece of bread," or "that pizza is to die for," forgetting that among non-agrarian peoples, grains were universally considered a last resort, or, starvation food only.

In an agrarian society such as our own, we should expect our government to recommend the consumption of grains and our contemporaries to consume grains in plenty. After all, we are no longer hunting and gathering our food. Cereal grasses, in fact, are at the substrate of nearly all modern food production, from the breads we bake, to the milk we drink and to the meats we eat.* With 10% corn ethanol gasoline now a federal mandate, even our vehicles are forced to quench their thirst at the table of the almighty grain.

And yet despite all of this, economic pressures and cultural preferences can not delete the fact that our bodies did not evolve on a grain-based diet. Grain consumption, in fact, stretches back only 1-500 generations (20-10,000 years), depending on how far from the bread basket of civilization, i.e. the Fertile Crescent, one's ancestors happened to have wandered, or how fortunate they were in fending off invading agrarian societies, such as the Romans, whose moniker as the "Wheat Empire" was earned to it by the fact that that Roman forts were actually granaries, designed to hold a year supply of wheat in case of siege. Still today, the Irish, Scottish and Finns have some of the world's highest levels of celiac disease, as their resilient ancestors managed - for the most part - to fend off the Roman invaders, while at the same time preventing them from adapting adequately to the radically different fair of a grain based diet.

Historical examples like these provide an interesting window to peer through, but it is to prehistory, as inscribed so perfectly into the very flesh and bone of the human frame, and then even further down to our very DNA, that we must look if we are to perceive with any clarity how alien cereal grass seeds are to our metabolism.

The most obvious physiological representation of this fact is that we are monogastric mammals, and therefore are not equipped with the multitude of forestomachs found in the ruminant animals which enable them to break down these difficult to digest grasses. Even the ruminants have great difficulty with the "seed" form of the grasses, developing metabolic acidosis, infections and other "diseases of affluence" not dissimilar to those that afflict humans who consume grains heavily.

Seeds, after all, are the "babies" of these plants, and are invested with not only the entire hope for continuance of its species, but a vast armory of anti-nutrients to help it accomplish this task: toxic lectins, phytates and oxalates, alpha-amalyase and trypsin inhibitors, and endocrine disrupters. These not so appetizing phytochemicals enable plants to resist predation of their seeds, or at least preventing them from "going out without a punch."

We are monogastric mammals for a reason. Our gastrointestinal tracts have been intelligently constructed via millions of years of adaptation to environmental determinants, with diet first in order of importance. It is no longer a mystery why we are built the way we are. In fact decades of research in biology, evolution, anthropology and genetics have now brought to light the formative forces behind our present day metabolism and physiology.

We Are What We Once Ate Long Ago

A growing body of research has emerged which focuses on the relationship between agrarian or grain-based diets and diseases of affluence, and how increased susceptibility for obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes in agrarian societies can be linked to the absence of genetic adaptations to the consumption of grains in our species as a whole. These genetic aberrations can be further broken down, to varying degrees of intensity, in demographically distinct human populations who have had between 1 and 500 generations of biological time to adjust to their consumption. The greater the distance in space and time a human subgroup has spent from grain consumption, the less likely that group will have the genes necessary to handle the metabolism of grains effectively.

That we did not evolve eating cereal grasses was made perfectly clear in the published thesis: "Agrarian diet and disease of affluence - Do evolutionary novel dietary lectins cause leptin resistance?" where a group of European scientists** point out that:

"The grasses emerged between 65 and 55 million years ago. And since the last common ancestor of the humans emerged before this time, some 90 to 65 million years ago, it cannot have had a diet consisting of seeds from grass. Subsequent evolution of our primate ancestors up until 4-8 million years ago is thought to have taken place in the trees, where almost all potential plant food comes from dicotyledonous species and the monocotyledonous grasses are absent."

At some point 4-8 million years ago our arboreal ancestors descended from their trees taking up a radically different livelihood as ground level foragers, and later as nomadic hunters and gatherers.

The advent of Homo Sapiens 200,000 years ago saw animal foods become increasingly important. As our ancestors moved away from equatorial zones, where vegetarian sources of food were available year round, carnivorous behavior sustained our migrations to less hospitable latitudes.

Carbon isotopic signature analysis of hominin remains from the Upper Paleolithic (28-29K years ago) reveal that these ancient hunters and gatherers were consuming animal protein year-round at a higher trophic level than the arctic fox.**

This is not surprising information, considering that thorough analyses of the data gleaned from the world's historically studied hunters and gatherers show that 73% of them obtained 50% or more of their subsistence from hunted and fished animal foods.**

Perhaps the strongest case can be made for a grain free diet by looking a certain genetic defects all humans share in their genotype.

1. Humans share several distinctive genetic traits with felines: a) enlarged brain size and reduced gut size, in response to an animal based diet. b) the inability to synthesize taurine, an amino acid found in high levels in animal foods c) the inability to convert 18 carbon omega 3 fatty acids found in grains and seeds, e.g. alpha linolenic acid, into the metabolically essential 20 and 22 carbon fatty acids like EPA/DHA found in animal flesh, e.g. wild fish.

2. Humans are incapable of deactivating the leptin-blocking lectin found in grains, which makes them prone to obesity. The exact gene sequence that deactivates this lectin is found in genetically diverse species such as rodents and birds; a homology, no doubt, which exists because both species have had many thousands of years more time than humans to adjust to grain consumption.

Moreover, different human populations have differing degrees of grain adaptation.

1. Scientists have identified an incomplete Angiotensin Converting Enzyme gene, and an incomplete alipoprotein B gene in groups of humans who have very high rates of cardiovascular disease, and have had little time to adapt to an agrarian diet.

2. Celiac disease afflicts, in greatest number, exactly those human populations that have had the greatest separation in time and space from the agrarian modality.

The story of our intolerance to grains is complex, and involves too many factors to address in this short article. We will briefly list the most dominant problems, which we hope to cover in future analyses:

1. High anti-nutrient content: enzyme inhibitors, mineral binding phytates and oxalates,

2. toxic lectins which increase gut permeability, aggravate distant cell types and organ systems in the body, and stimulate the production of autoantigens.

3. Unbalanced amino acid profiles: low in the essential amino acid lysine, and extremely high in the excitoxic amino acids aspartic and gluamtic acid,

4. DNA sequences in grains, e.g. gliadin in wheat, exhibit similar, if not identical patterns with certain pathogens and human tissue, e.g. pertactin (the immunodominant sequence form pertussis - the pathogen that causes whooping cough) shares the same sequence as the wheat protein known as gliadin. This 'molecular mimicry' can cause autoimmune reactions and disease.

5. Certain grains have opiate-like activity in the brain e.g. wheat contains gliadimorphin which activates the endogenous opiate receptors.

6. Grains once processed and cooked have high glycemic ratings, causing the endocrine rollercoaster that can lead to both forms of diabetes.

*70% of the industrial world's grain production goes to feeding livestock, poultry and fish.

** Plio-Pleistocene Hominin Diets for Modern Humans, pg. 367

Beer Brewing Ice Cream Maker

Buy Omega 3 Capsules For Your Long-Term Health

Firstly, omega 3 is an extremely fragile compound that will degrade if exposed to heat and light. If it does get exposed, the molecules become rancid and are no longer effective. There has been an attempt made by many of the producers to reduce the chances of breaking down the molecules in the production process, for example, cold pressing. It is for this reason that research into the process of the different brands should be completed beforehand to ensure you get a product that has intact ingredients.

There are also several different sources of omega 3 available. The most popular is made primarily from fish oil. The others include such ingredients as flax seed oil or seal oil. The flax seed oil is the best choice if you have concern over the mercury content of the oil that is extracted from sea creatures. If you choose flax seed, be sure to get a cold pressed version that is contained in a dark bottle and keep it in the refrigerator after it is opened.

Mercury content in fish oils have been a concern that has been getting some media attention. More than 95% of the capsules on the market, however, have less than the maximum allowable mercury content as deemed by the Food and Drug Administration. The ones that have too much were all made in China and only contain slightly more than the recommended amount.

In addition, it is a good idea to get a capsule that does not contain omega 6. By nature of the typical North American diet, omega 3 is almost nonexistent and omega 6 is in abundance. The two fatty acids need to be in balance to receive the health benefits so adding more omega 6 will not be of help.

Several recent foods are marketing themselves as containing omega 3 including eggs, margarine, and cereal bars. The amounts contained in these foods however, are trace and no where near the recommended daily intake. The preparation of these food products may also effect the amount of omega 3 contained in the food, as the frying process causes the omega 3 to go rancid.

Omega 3 supplements are therefore a great addition to your daily routine in order to attain maximum health. Natural sourced nutrients in food are always preferred but the nature of our culture makes this very close to impossible.

Ice Cream Maker Beer Brewing