You’ve already heard about how curcumin, or turmeric, may help reduce your chances of getting Alzheimer’s, a disease that is virtually unheard of in India where this spice turns up in a lot of dishes.

Today’s news brings another reason to eat your turmeric-spiced curry: It may help reduce the size of your tummy. Researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University found that mice fed high fat diets that were supplemented with curcumin gained less weight than a control group that was fed a high fat diet without curcumin.

The scientists warn in a news release that they don’t know if the results can be replicated in humans. What they observed, however, was that the curcumin seemed to inhibit a process known  as “angiogenesis” that helps grow fat, which would appear to be applicable to larger (get it?) life forms as well.

Curcumin is a polyphenolic or “multi-phenol” meaning it is derived from plants, in this case, a root plant that belongs to the ginger family. This news, and the recent studies showing turmeric guards against Alzheimer’s, appear to place it among a growing list of plants that boast protective antioxidant qualities, such as grapes and garlic, sweet potatoes. broccoli and tomatoes, to name a few.

Green activists often advocate a ‘greener’ diet, high in fruits and veggies, because it carries a lower carbon footprint; the livestock industry being more resource-intensive.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which helped fund the curcumin study, recommends a diet high in high-fiber grains, plants and vegetables, though Its food pyramid, revised in 2005, has been criticized for having dumbed down the issue by trying to show the right food proportions visually and moving away from recommending specific serving amounts of each food group. It is due for another update in 2010.

The Centers for Disease Control hosts a webpage touting the benefits of fruits and veggies, where people can type in their basic demographics to get a recommendation for how much plant food they should be getting in a given day.

Mohsen Meydani, DVM, PhD, director of the Vascular Biology Laboratory at the USDA HNRCA, was the lead author of the curcumin/mice study, published in the Journal of Nutrition.

Meydani and colleagues studied mice fed high fat diets for 12 weeks. One group was received 500 mg of curcumin per every kilogram of food and the other other group was fed no curcumin. The mice ate about the same amount of food, indicating that curcumin did not affect their appetite.

But mice on the curcumin-supplemented diet did not gain as much weight as the control group.

“Curcumin appeared to be responsible for total lower body fat in the group that received supplementation,” said Meydani, who is also a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts, in a press release.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

A new coalition of animal rights, conservation and faith groups is asking for a philosophical change in how the federal government treats the nation’s diminishing wildlife, particularly of top predators, whose presence helps ensure healthy wild ecosystems.

The coalition sent a letter signed by 115 of its member groups to Agriculture Secretary nominee Tom Vilsack earlier this month asking him to end the federal government’s systematic killings of wildlife, such as wolves, coyotes, bears, cougars and prairie dogs.

The group contends that the killings are excessive and often cruel and that Wildlife Services, a department of the USDA that exterminated 2.4 million animals in 2007 should be reevaluated.

“The agency employs a host of cruel – and expensive and unnecessary – methods to kill coyotes, bears, cougars, wolves, and other wildlife. Animals are shot, poisoned, gassed in their dens, trapped, snared, clubbed, pursued by hounds, targeted from helicopters and planes, or lured to bait stations where they are shot. Other animals, even family dogs and cats, are unintentionally injured or killed by agency actions,” the petition stated.

Many people think of fish and game departments as the primary agents in the field taking action in wildlife incidents. But the USDA’s Wildlife Services is charged with protecting agricultural interests and human safety, and has long exercised wide authority to “control” animal populations around urban areas, businesses, farms and other agriculture operations and airports.

The vast majority of those animals, some 86 percent, that clash with human concerns or present safety issues (such as when birds congregate at airports or eat seeds planted for crops or intended for livestock) are dispersed, not killed, said Carol A. Bannerman, a spokeswoman for the agency.

“There is a heavy emphasis on dispersal, rather than removal,” she said.

The 2.4 million kill tally is accurate, she said, but it includes several scenarios in which lethal actions are justified. The agency, for instance, is killing the invading Gambian rat in Florida, because they are a non-native species that threatens tropical fruit operations. Similarly, millions of non-native European Starlings, which can cause intrusions at airports and also contaminate seeds intended for dairy cows, are killed.

The starlings accounted for the most killings last year, with 1.2 million being exterminated. Predators accounted for 120,000 of the total 2.4 million exterminations.

As for the shootings, poisoning and trapping of coyotes and other native predators, Bannerman says that livestock losses of 500,000 (mostly sheep and cattle) tell the story of why agents sometimes take lethal measures.

Vilsack, a former Iowa governor who is expected to be confirmed with little debate, has not responded to the coalition’s petition.

The coalition laments all intentional animal killings, but it particularly wants a reevaluation of animals like prairie dogs and coyotes, viewed in some corners as pests, and top predators, whose reputations can fuel a knee-jerk human response.

Dumpster diving as the perfect solution to a sustainable lifestyle?

It could be, according to a report from The Daily Show. Seems forest-living, oil-spurning electrical engineer Tod Kershaw has perfected the art. “My favorite dumpster is Trader Joe’s. It’s just so wonderful; it’s the nirvana of dumpsters. There’s great food, a lot of it is organic and very rarely do you find maggots in there.”

If you say so, Tod.

But kidding aside – and Kershaw isn’t – the fact he can feed his family on discarded grocery items is telling. Telling us that food waste in America is out of control.

Food scraps or leftovers, according to the EPA, comprise the single-largest component of waste by weight in the United States. Food tossed from restaurants during preparation and in uneaten portions, and from households, institutions and industrial sources.

Figures vary and are often dated, but all point to the problem’s massive scale:

• 96 billion pounds of food – or 27% of the 356 billion pounds of edible food available – is wasted each year in the U.S. according to the U.S, Department of Agriculture. On his Wasted Food blog, Jonathan Bloom places that figure at more than 150 billion pounds.

• The amount of food required to eliminate hunger in the U.S. is only 5 billion pounds annually, says charity Feeding America. If just 5 percent of food scraps were recovered, states the USDA, it would equal a day’s worth of food for 4 million people; recovery of 25 percent would feed 20 million.

• According to the U.N. World Food Programme, the total U.S. food surplus could satisfy “every empty stomach in Africa”.

• It costs the nation around $1 billion annually to dispose of all its food waste. (EPA)

This excessive waste not only eats at our pocketbooks to the tune of $130 billion plus a year, but at our ethical core: Some 49 million people could benefit from these discarded resources. The question then becomes, “How do we change?”

From the Farm . . . to the Market . . . to the Table . . . to the Dump

Analyzing where loss begins is critical to figuring out viable solutions. Back on the farm, Mother Nature wreaks havoc through ice storms, washouts and any number of weather-related events, along with pests and insects. Selective harvesting – choosing only blemish-free fruits and vegetables – also accounts for significant waste. A 2004 study by the University of Arizona found 40 to 50 percent of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten.

Then there’s loss in food storage, handling and transporting it an average 1,500 miles. When a food item reaches the grocer’s shelf, it contends with overstocking, improper rotation, damaged packaging, seasonality and a host of other factors. And once a perishable product reaches its “sell by” date, out it goes. The fact is, predicting demand can be tricky.

But the two major sources of food waste are food service establishments and consumers – that’s right, you and me. Household loss may come from shunned leftovers, spoiled fruits and veggies, over buying, spilled milk . . . it all adds up.

Timothy Jones, a PhD in Anthropology who headed the 2004 UA study, updated its findings for today’s higher Consumer Price Index. “I’ll give you some new figures readjusted to the government’s own CPI,” he said. “On the farm, the losses are about $38 billion annually; on the commercial or retail food side, it’s about $44 billion; and in households, it’s now up to $54 billion.”