Eating For Health

Many people hear that meat, especially red meat is bad for you.   Others avoid dairy for many reasons.   But the latest research has found that meat and dairy may actually help your immune system fight cancer.   Who knew?   What have scientists found out about meat and dairy? What is it about the composition of meat and dairy that may have some good health benefits? What is this newly discovered nutrient in meat and dairy that helps fight cancer? Researchers at the University of Chicago studied a nutrient found in beef, lamb and dairy products that helps our immune system fight cancer.   What is this nutrient?   I had not heard of it and you probably haven’t either.   It is actually found in the fat in meat and dairy and is called trans-vaccenic acid or TVA.   Research on nutrients like TVA highlights the link between diet and human health demonstrating how compounds from food can influence our immune responses and overall well-being. ...

This week my husband showed me an interesting article in TIME, Can Taurine Slow Aging?   Who isn’t interested in slowing down father time?   Then my husband asked me if I knew what taurine was.   I said, “sure, it is an amino acid in some proteins.”   So, what does taurine have to do with slowing aging?   What foods have taurine?   Are there ways to increase taurine levels in your body besides eating certain foods? .   What is taurine? As noted in my blog, How can you add some high-quality protein foods to your day? , proteins are made up of building blocks called amino acids.   Your body can make some amino acids but some you have to get from the foods you eat.   For babies taurine is an essential amino acid but adults can make the amino acid, taurine.      Taurine levels decline as you age. Although adults make taurine, the amount we make decreases substantially with age.   For example, in 60-year-old individual...

My sister said she heard on the news that a bite from tick can cause you to become allergic to red meat.   Then I picked up our local paper and there was a big article about it.   So what is the real story on this? Apparently this started a few years ago as doctors saw patients becoming allergic to red meat after being bitten by a tick.   It is now becoming more widespread as the tick is spreading from the Southwest and Eastern US to other parts of the country.   An allergist in Long Island, New York has seen 200 cases in his practice.   He notes, “Why would someone think they’re allergic to meat when they’ve been eating it all their lives?”   ( Tick bite and red meat )   So what kind of tick is this?   The Lone Star tick.   Although it is named for Texas, the tick has spread throughout the South and East of the US. Lone star tick bites are likely the cause of thousands of cases of severe red meat allergies that are plaguing patient...