Scrapin' Up the Bits... Gut Bugs style

All the news that's fit to print! Or that I think is interesting but that I'm too lazy to write in detail about. Beginning with...

Gut Bugs, or, bacteria in yer' tummy and other parts of the GI system. There are a trillion bacteria in your tummy, and they are very important for your overall health. The kind of bacteria you have in your tummy, explains science writer/blogger Ed Yong, depends heavily on your diet.

Different cultures around the world have starkly contrasting diets and their gut bacteria are different too. As we grow older, we eat increasingly diverse foods, from the milk of infancy to the complex menus of adulthood. As our palate changes, so do our gut bacteria.

It's worth taking the time to read... and digest (ahem)... the whole thing. More on this subject from a recent New York Times article by Carl Zimmer. Again, I highly recommend reading this, if for nothing else than the first few paragraphs that describe an amazing medical procedure that saved a dying woman's life. Let's just call it a "fecal transplant."

What's next? Oh, yes...

Food labels! People who read them apparently are more likely to eat more ... healthily.

Significant differences in mean nutrient intake of total calories, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, dietary fiber, and sugars were observed between food label users and non-users with label users reporting healthier nutrient consumption. The greatest differences observed were for total calories and fat and for use of specific nutrient information on the food label. 

And the bags in cereal boxes, which apparently had some nasty chemicals in them.

Federal regulators, who are charged with ensuring the safety of food and consumer products, are in the dark about the suspected chemical, 2-methylnaphthalene. The Food and Drug Administration has no scientific data on its impact on human health. The Environmental Protection Agency also lacks basic health and safety data for 2-methylnaphthalene -- even though the EPA has been seeking that information from the chemical industry for 16 years. 

Comforting, no?

As is this, although not surprising: healthy, "nutrient-dense" food is increasing in price much faster than less healthy food.

Over the four-year period, they found that the supermarket price of the top 20 percent most nutrient-dense foods increased 29.2 percent, while those in the least nutrient-dense 20 percent rose by 16.1 percent.

These findings could mean there are added barriers for Americans when it comes to following dietary guidance, they said. And this could prove to be particularly significant at a time when many US consumers are dealing with lost or diminished incomes. 

Which leads in nicely to this story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

A thousand households in the Hill District will be the subject of a study that researchers say would be the first of its kind in the country to track a grocery store's impact on food-buying habits in a particular neighborhood over time.

Researchers from the Rand Corp., with a $2.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and help from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research, will begin tracking food-buying and eating histories this year in anticipation of the proposed 2011 opening of a Shop 'n Save on Centre Avenue near Dinwiddie Street.

I take for granted that I have 4 grocery stores within a 10-minute drive from my house. So if I forgot to buy a shallot for tonight's dinner or we're out of bananas, I can go get them in no time. Not to mention that we can easily do our regular grocery shopping. But places like Pittsburgh's Hill District are often referred to as "food deserts," because the only options for purchasing food are typically convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.

It will be curious to see the results of this study. There are still huge issues, because you're dealing with a relatively poor population that relies heavily on mass transport, both of which would seem to heavily influence the ability to do regular grocery shopping. It's all part of a much larger socioeconomic problem/conundrum, but hopefully having a grocery store in the Hill will do some good.

And, finally, on a lighter, if not somewhat tastier, note, the growing popularity of Mad Men strikes again, raising the all-important question: what's so wrong with a 3-martini lunch? Personally, I'd be toast after three martinis at lunch. One, though, every now and then, say, on a Thursday, around noon, with a turkey club and house-made chips, might not be too bad (cough... not that that's ever happened, boss!).

Scrapin' Up the Bits... "Mad Men" style

The third season of Mad Men returns to AMC this Sunday. Admittedly, season 2 was not as good as season 1, and season 3 almost never happened, so hopefully there was no rush to crank out less- than-stellar material. This show has gotten raves for its quality of course, its influence on fashion, and, now, its devotion to getting its cocktails right...

Liquor is not only an integral part of many plotlines (last season, it played a pivotal role in a car crash, a divorce, a rape and two career implosions), but often a telling sign of character. When it comes to choosing a character’s poison, Ms. Perello said, many people have input, starting with the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner: “Matt will say, ‘I want them to have a brown liquor.’ And I’ll go, ‘Let’s do a nonblended Scotch, because this is a person who would appreciate that.’ ”

The cocktail historian David Wondrich, 48, thinks an old-fashioned is a conservative choice for the young Draper, but considers his preference for Canadian Club “exactly right. We’d had years of destruction of the American whiskey industry up until then. So the Canadian stuff was viewed as being pretty good.”

Another month, another recall of hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef. I'm a little late to writing about this, but it certainly did not get the coverage previous recalls have. Guess people are just so used to it by now...

I'm more than happy to put in my fair share of time for delicious food, but several hours of serious prep time and two days in total just is beyond my limits, even for something as delicious sounding (and looking) as Sicilian style square pizza.

Finally, and happily, there is a chance that beer might once again be brewed in the hallowed tanks of the Penn Brewery. Tom Pastorius apparently did not like what was being done to the business, and the beer, he worked so hard to make a success.

Tom Pastorius, who founded the brewery in 1986 and sold most of it to Birchmere Capital in 2003, is working with a group of investors who have negotiated to buy back Birchmere's stock. They've applied for a $300,000 Urban Redevelopment Authority loan for working capital as part of a plan to fix up and return brewing to the building.