Say Good-Bye To ‘COOL’

COOL, also known as, Country Of Origin Labels, lets you know what country your meat is coming from. But, a recent repeal of COOL by Congress, has taken away your right to know, again. The decision to repeal COOL comes on the heels of a ruling from the World Trade Organization that found the labels discriminate against meat raised and slaughtered in countries other than the U.S. Earlier this month, the WTO allowed Mexico and Canada—America’s top ag partners—to impose more than $1 billion in tariffs on U.S. goods in retaliation if the labels were not removed. Obama’s signature is also on it. With mad cow disease showing up as recent as last year in Brazil, this meat could be headed to your plate in the US.

12 Minutes of Yoga for Better Bone Health

In 2005, Dr. Fishman began a small pilot study of yoga moves that turned up some encouraging results. Eleven practitioners had increased bone density in their spine and hips, he reported in 2009, compared with seven controls who did not practice yoga. There are many drugs out there for bone-loss, but those medications can produce adverse side effects like gastrointestinal distress and fractures of the femur. On the other hand, yoga’s “side effects,” Dr. Fishman and colleagues wrote recently, “include better posture, improved balance, enhanced coordination, greater range of motion, higher strength, reduced levels of anxiety and better gait.”

No, Bacon Isn’t Better for the Environment Than Lettuce

A study out of Carnegie Mellon University garnered a lot attention this week when one of its authors made a counter-intuitive claim: Eating lettuce was worse for the environment, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, than eating bacon. Brent Kim, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the problem with the bacon-lettuce comparison is that it was done by calorie, and the foods differ greatly in how calorie-dense they are. Consider a three-ounce serving of pork. It would be unlikely for someone to attempt to eat enough lettuce to replace the calories they would have gotten from that pork. In fact, according to Kim, to equal the amount of calories from three ounces of pork, a person would need to eat more than two heads of lettuce, or 24 cups.