What expanded your mind today?

[AtLast]

Using it.....

[Hollylane]

Color me impressed.

[Hollylane]

Are Quinoa, Chia Seeds, and Other "Superfoods" a Scam?
Sure, trendy ingredients work like magic—for industry's bottom line.

—By Tom Philpott



Some gorgeous red quinoa. blairingmedia/Wikimedia

They're widely vilified—including by me—but food industry marketers really do have a tough job. People can only eat so much, and in industrialized countries where food is plentiful, they don't tend to consume more of it as their incomes grow. Unlike sales of, say, personal computers in the 1990s or tablets in the 2010s, overall US food spending tends to be pretty flat—it rises roughly with the growth of population.

One way the industry responds to this stagnation is to roll out "new and improved" products—an endless grope for bigger pieces of a slow-growing pie. Junk food manufacturers are masters of this game: Smokin' Bacon Ranch Miracle Whip Dipping Sauce, anyone? But the natural-food industry does it, too—with superfoods such as açaí berries, goji berries, quinoa, and chia seeds. These pricey, often exotic ingredients cycle quickly in and out of the foodie spotlight. Açaí berries were barely known outside of Brazil a decade ago, but last year açaí-laced products grossed nearly $200 million in the United States. And while açaí sales have dropped recently as their novelty has worn thin, coconut oil—touted as a wonder fat—is picking up the slack with $62 million in 2012, double the previous year's level.

Some of the super claims are true: Açaí berries, native to the Amazon rainforest, and goji berries, produced mostly in northern China, are indeed loaded with phytochemicals, plant compounds that seem to protect us from heart disease, brain deterioration, and cancer. And quinoa, the seed of a spinachlike plant grown in the Andes, really does offer a complete, high-quality vegetarian protein. Other boasts are, well, less true: Açaí and goji berries are not really miracle cures for everything from obesity to sexual dysfunction. Indeed, in 2006, the Food and Drug Administration reprimanded two different goji product manufacturers for making unsubstantiated health claims in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

Nor do all superfoods come from the pristine places that their packaging would suggest. One prominent US goji supplier, Navitas, calls its berries a "Himalayan superfruit," but the company's website reveals they're a product of China, grown in the "lush, fertile valleys of the Ningxia Province." That's nowhere near Tibet—and, it turns out, most of the world's goji berries hail from industrial fields in this region.

Worse than superfoods' origin myths, though, are their effects on the people in their native regions. In 2009, at the height of the açaí berry hype, Bloomberg News reported that the fruit's wholesale price had jumped 60-fold since the early 2000s, pricing the Amazonian villagers who rely on it out of the market. In the Andes, where quinoa has been cultivated since the time of the Incas, price spikes have turned a one-time staple into a luxury, and quinoa monocrops are crowding out the more sustainable traditional methods.

If that doesn't faze you, perhaps this will: Quinoa may deliver a complete protein—all of the amino acids you require—in a compact package, but rice and beans together actually do better. And like goji berries, blueberries and strawberries are packed with phytochemicals. The only problem is that lacking an exotic back story, food marketers can't wring as exorbitant a markup from these staples: The domestic blueberry, for example, is periodically (and justifiably) marketed as a superfood, and in 2012, products featuring blueberries as a primary ingredient saw their sales nearly quadruple. But they only raked in $3.5 million—less than 2 percent of açaí-based product sales.

Yes, the food industry's hawkers have a tough job—and you can make it even tougher. The real superfoods are lurking exactly where marketers don't want you to look: in produce sections, bulk food aisles, and backyard gardens. Not quite as exotic as the Himalayas. But then again, neither are those industrial plots in China where goji berries actually come from.

[Hollylane]

Sheep, Goats, Octopuses and Toads have these rectangular shaped pupils. Typically classified as prey, these animals need to have a defense both day and night. But they don't have vertical slits due to their need to survey their surroundings more accurately. The narrower the pupil in relation to the horizon, the greater the accuracy of depth perception is in the peripheral vision of the animal. The perception of depth must be considered with these animals who spend their time evading predators in a rugged terrain.

[Hollylane]

Dogs Who Love to Lick Human Feet

By Myrna Milani, BS, DVM

(Originally written for DogWatch, a newsletter for the general public from the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine)

My dog, Frodo, loves to lick my feet. I think he does it because he likes me but my girlfriend says he does it because my feet smell. Which is it?

No scientific studies of canine foot fetishes exist, but what we know about canine behavior and the human-canine bond suggests that both answers may possess an element of truth. That, in turn, means we must examine both canine and human contributions to this display.

Previously we discussed pheromones, those incredibly powerful chemicals that animals as diverse as ants and wolves use to communicate. Not only do animals pack a tremendous amount of information into these chemicals, only those who possess the proper receptors can receive the message. Many species secrete pheromones from glands in their feet which they use to mark their territories as well as to find their way. When others zero in on such scents, they may lick the object and/or their noses to enhance the processing of this scent data.

Although social animals such as dogs don't depend as much on the foot-form of communication/marking like more solitary species such as cats, two foot-related domestic canine behaviors suggest that feet play or played an important role in the canine behavioral repertoire. First, the fact that many dogs resist others handling their paws indicates that dogs take a protective view toward this part of their anatomy. Admittedly, this might result because dogs depend on their feet for locomotion. However, many dogs who resist having their feet manipulated will readily permit handling of the rest of their legs. This would seem to imply that the feet themselves carry the behavioral charge.

Second, dogs who mark with urine or stool also may scratch the ground with their hind paws. Not only does this provide a visual mark, but the scent from the feet could alter the message communicated. Even though few studies of canine pheromone communication exist, we do know that the pheromones secreted by the cat's facial glands communicate a more positive "This is mine" message compared to the more combative "I'll fight you if I catch you here" notice given in the marking animal's urine. Perhaps dogs who scratch after they mark use this behavior the same way we might use a wink or threatening gesture following a blustery outburst: to soften or strengthen the original meaning of the message.

Turning to the human half of the equation, do humans communicate using pheromones? For a long time scientists and the general public believed that any odors humans emitted resulted from problems—such as disease or a failure to practice good hygiene—rather than constituted part of our normal physiology. Because we viewed "body" odor as wrong, the idea that we might produce odors that we couldn't smell that could affect our behavior struck most as totally unacceptable. Consequently, scientists denied that we produced pheromones and also that we possessed the necessary physical apparatus to detect them. However, recent research indicates that we both produce and can detect such substances, and that these substances can alter our physiology and behavior as dramatically as similar compounds alter that of animals. Alas for dog-lovers, most of the research focuses on pheromones that affect mood or reproductive cycles, with those we emit from our feet receiving little or no attention.

Still, even though science may pay little attention to human chemical footnotes, for sure many dogs do. Moreover, some dogs find the feet of some people more tantalizing, just as some of us find certain human feet smellier than others. Traditionally the conventional wisdom said that dogs chewed shoes because the leather elicited memories of a time in their wild past when they teethed on the hide remnants of their prey. However, sufficient numbers of dogs chew shoes, slippers, and socks with nary a whisper of leather (or any other natural product) about them: Could the scent message imparted to those objects by their owners' feet serve as the more likely canine attractant in those people's absence or in times of canine stress?

Whatever the message owners of foot-loving dogs unknowingly communicate, the blissful look on these animals' faces indicates that the dogs, at least,think it's a good one.

[Jesse]

This probably expanded my heart more than my mind, but I could not decide on any other place more suited to post this...

[SometimesSweet]

It is about time a poultry producer took this approach on this scale of production. Thanks for posting this Hollylane.

Originally Posted by Hollylane

Color me impressed.