Month: December 2013

Tech startups create virtual farmers markets

Sara Pasquinelli doesn’t shop at the grocery store much anymore. The busy mother of two young boys buys nearly all her food from a new online service that delivers to her front door _ but it doesn’t bring just any food.

The emerging tech startup specializes in dropping off items that Pasquinelli probably would only be able to find at her local farmers market.

Minutes after her weekly GoodEggs.com order arrived at her San Francisco home, Pasquinelli unpacked bags and boxes of finger limes, organic whole milk, kiwi fruit, beef short ribs, Dungeness crab and pastured eggs.

“I don’t even remember the last time I went to the store for anything other than bananas and string cheese,” said Pasquinelli, an attorney who started using the service about a year ago.

The San Francisco-based Good Eggs is among a new crop of startups using technology to bolster the market for locally produced foods that backers say are better for consumer health, farmworkers, livestock and the environment. These online marketplaces are beginning to change the way people buy groceries and create new markets for small farmers and food makers.

“It’s a new way of connecting producers with consumers,” said Claire Kremen, a conservation biology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “The more alternatives people have access to for buying food outside the industrial agricultural regime, the better it can be.”

The Good Eggs website features attractive photos of offerings such as Hachiya persimmons, chanterelle mushrooms, grass-fed beef steaks, pureed baby food and gluten-free poppy seed baguettes. It also has pictures and descriptions of the farmers and food makers. Prices are similar to what shoppers pay at a farmers market, and customers can pick up their orders at designated locations or have them delivered for $3.99 _ usually two days after they’re placed.

“There’s this wave of entrepreneurship and creativity happening in the food world, and Good Eggs is all about bringing that high-quality production right to your door,” said CEO Rob Spiro, who co-founded the startup after he sold his last company, a social search service called Aardvark, to Google Inc. for $50 million in 2010.

Good Eggs offers more varieties of fruits and vegetables than most supermarkets, but the selection is limited to what can be grown and made locally, so you can’t buy bananas in San Francisco in December.

The service started in the San Francisco Bay Area last year and recently launched in New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans. There are plans to expand into more markets next year.

The founders, Silicon Valley engineers, say they want to grow the market for local food that’s led to the proliferation of farmers markets and community-supported agriculture programs that deliver boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables.

“There are a lot of people out there who want to eat locally, who want to support their local community, who want to support the producers who are doing things right, but it’s just not very convenient,” said Chief Technology Officer Alon Salant, who ran a software consulting firm before starting Good Eggs with Spiro.

The company is entering an increasingly competitive market for online grocery delivery. Major retailers such as Walmart and Safeway deliver groceries and Amazon launched its AmazonFresh service in San Francisco this month. Another San Francisco startup called Instacart allows customers to order groceries from local supermarkets and delivers in as little as an hour.

Good Eggs currently sells food from about 400 local producers that meet the company’s standards for environmental sustainability, workplace conditions and transparent sourcing of ingredients. Produce is usually picked one or two days before it’s delivered.

The startup is helping farmers such as Ryan Casey, who runs a small organic farm that grows more than 50 types of fruits, vegetables and flowers. His Blue House Farm in Pescadero, about 45 miles south of San Francisco, mainly sells its produce at farmers markets and through community agriculture programs, but Good Eggs makes up a growing share of business.

“They’re really good at marketing and finding people and connecting people with the food, which leaves me more time to do the growing,” said Casey, standing in a field of leafy greens.

Good Eggs has attracted enthusiastic foodies like Shelley Mainzer, who does nearly all her grocery shopping on the website and often emails producers with questions and comments.

After her weekly order arrived at her downtown San Francisco office, she pulled out organic cauliflower and Romanesco broccoli she bought from Blue House Farm.

“I can’t eat store-bought food anymore because it just doesn’t taste the same,” said Mainzer, who works as an executive assistant at a small investment bank. “You basically remember what things are supposed to taste like when you eat these fresh vegetables and fruits.”

Source: Journal Times

Early start to weight gain tied to later heart risks

Kids who start rapidly gaining weight early in childhood are more likely to have higher blood pressure and other signs of future heart trouble as preteens, a new study suggests.

“There’s a natural tendency early in life for children to thin out as they grow taller and gain stature faster than they gain weight,” Dr. Mark D. DeBoer said.

But eventually, all kids hit a point when they start gaining weight at a faster pace, and their body mass index (BMI) – a measure of weight in relation to height – begins to rise. That point is called the adiposity rebound.

The adiposity rebound typically happens around age four to six, DeBoer, who studies childhood obesity at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, told Reuters Health.

Some studies have suggested children who start to put on weight at a younger age are more likely to be obese later in life. The new report adds to those concerns.

“It helps I think give us a better understanding of what this might be impacting in addition to obesity,” Dr. Stephen Daniels said.

Daniels studies preventive cardiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, where he chairs the Pediatrics Department. Neither he nor DeBoer was involved in the new study.

Researchers led by Dr. Satomi Koyama of Dokkyo Medical University in Mibu, Tochigi, Japan, followed 271 children born in 1995 and 1996. Kids had their weight and height measured at least once every year through age 12 during infant health checks and then physical exams at school.

From looking at each child’s growth pattern, the researchers determined when children hit their lowest BMI, the age at adiposity rebound. After that, they got bigger every year.

Koyama’s team found the earlier both boys and girls reached that turning point, the heavier they were at age 12.

For instance, boys who started getting bigger around age three had an average BMI of 21 as preteens. That’s the equivalent of a five-foot-tall boy weighing 108 pounds.

Boys who didn’t start getting bigger until at least age seven had an average BMI of 17 – the equivalent of the same boy weighing 87 pounds.

Boys who had their adiposity rebound at a young age also had higher triglycerides and blood pressure at age 12. Although their numbers were still in the normal range, they could hint at signs of future heart problems, the researchers wrote Monday in Pediatrics.

For girls, the link between age at adiposity rebound and heart risks was smaller but still visible.

“Physicians should be tracking body mass index and should be checking for kids who are headed in the direction of being more obese,” Daniels said.

But, he told Reuters Health, parents and pediatricians won’t be able to tell exactly when children are at their adiposity rebound. And it’s not clear how to prevent it from happening early.

“There’s a strong possibility that these are children who inherited a genetic predisposition that made them more likely both to have early adiposity rebound and to have metabolic syndrome earlier in life,” DeBoer said.

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors, including high blood pressure, that are linked to heart disease.

“The message is probably still more general, in terms of families working with pediatricians and family physicians to make sure that families have a healthy diet (and) that they have healthy opportunities for activity,” Daniels said.

Source: Reuters

California family celebrates 3 heart transplants

A California family is celebrating this holiday season after the mother and two of her three sons all received life-saving heart transplants for an inherited cardiac condition.

Deanna Kremis and her sons, 17-year-old Matthew and 13-year-old Trevin, all suffer from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It’s a genetic condition that causes the heart muscle to thicken until the heart can’t pump blood properly.

Matthew and Trevin got their new hearts in 2007 within five weeks of each other. But as they got healthier, their mother – who was diagnosed as an adult – began to fail. She finally got a new heart in July and her sons are helping her adjust to her new life.

The transplants are not a cure: There is a constant threat of organ rejection and infection.

Source: Straits times

NYC pharmacy blends Eastern and Western medicine

Positioned on Manhattan’s Decreased East Facet, Stanley’s Pharmacy blends each Japanese and Western medication in an work to aid tackle customers’ requirements.

“I have drugs just like any other pharmacy would,” Stanley said. “And I also have this wellness bar wherever we have our personal blended teas. We have kombucha coming out of the soda fountain in this article, we make our own sodas from scratch and I can customize beverages primarily based on how you sense.”

Stanley’s signature “Drinks and Drugs,” menu presents fixes for typical ailments like a sore throat or PMS – or even a hangover.

It’s this style of personalised care that retains 36-12 months-aged Joe DiNoto coming back. As a runner, DiNoto stated Stanley has assisted him occur up with treatment options that enable him to continue to keep working out with out personal injury.

“I’ve found that my power level is additional dependable all through the day,” DiNoto said. “I also discover that my aches and pains have been lessened due to reduced swelling for the reason that of the tumeric tea. And, I do not know, (I’m) just overall much more satisfied.”

Stanley has been a pharmacist for 15 years and claimed his endeavours to combine pure medication into his 1-of-a-type pharmacy is a thing his consumers take pleasure in.

Monica Stewart, another shopper at Stanley’s Pharmacy, reported she’s now a significant admirer of hoping normal treatments in conjunction with conventional drugs.

“I by no means understood about any of that stuff before…It’s truly opened up my eyes to unique therapeutic methods,” Stewart explained.

Source: USA News

A girl dies in Ireland after pharmacy refuses to give her EpiPen

A teenage girl has died outside a pharmacy in Ireland after a staff member refused to give her family an EpiPen to inject her for a nut allergy because she didn’t have a prescription.

Emma Sloan, 14, was out for dinner in Dublin with her family when she accidentally ingested a sauce containing nuts that she mistook for curry, the Irish Herald reported.

The teenager suffered a severe allergic reaction but was not carrying an EpiPen, which delivers a shot of adrenaline that can reverse the effects of a severe, fast-acting reaction known as anaphylactic shock.

The family went to a nearby pharmacy and pleaded for an EpiPen but Emma’s mother, Caroline Sloan, said a male staff member refused to give them one without a prescription.

“He told me I couldn’t get it without a prescription. He told me to bring her to an A&E,” she told the newspaper.
Mrs Sloan said she tried to take Emma to Temple Street Hospital, but her daughter collapsed and died on the way.
“She died on the footpath. A doctor was passing and tried to help and put her into the recovery position. Ambulance and fire brigade men worked on her. But she was gone,” Mrs Sloan told the Herald.

“My daughter died on a street corner with a crowd around her. “I’m so angry I was not given the EpiPen to inject her. I was told to bring Emma to an A&E department. Emma was allergic to nuts and was very careful. How could a peanut kill my child?
“I want to appeal to parents of children with nut allergies to make sure their child always carries an EpiPen with them.”

Regulations prohibit the dispensing of EpiPen injections without a prescription, the Irish Herald reported.
Mrs Sloan said she had gone to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet with Emma and her two other daughters on Wednesday evening for a family meal.

While Emma was usually extremely careful about what she ate, on this occasion she overlooked a sign that warned a sauce contained nuts, Mrs Sloan said.

“Emma has always been very careful and would check the ingredients of every chocolate bar and other foods to be sure they didn’t contain nuts,” she told the newspaper.

“She had a satay sauce. She thought it was curry sauce because it looked like curry sauce and smelled like curry. I’m not blaming the restaurant because there was a sign reading ‘nuts contained’ but it wasn’t noticed. After a while, Emma began to say, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’.”

Police and the pharmacy regulatory body, the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland, have launched an investigation into the girl’s death.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Being overweight may affect men’s semen quality

Overweight and obese men in a new study showed diminished quantity and quality of semen, suggesting that a weight problem might also affect fertility, researchers say.

“The heavier the men, the higher the chances of a low sperm count,” urologist Dr. Keith Jarvi told Reuters Health. “I don’t think that this message is well known or appreciated by men in general,” said Jarvi, who was not involved in the new study.

Dr. Michael Eisenberg, of Stanford University School of Medicine in California, and his colleagues recruited 468 couples in Texas and Michigan who were planning to conceive a child and tested several aspects of the men’s semen.

They also weighed the men and measured their waists and found that greater waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) – a measure of weight relative to height – were both linked to lower ejaculate volume.

“All aspects of semen quality are important,” Eisenberg said. “Ejaculate has several chemicals that provide a safer environment for sperm. As such, if the volume is low it may be a problem.”

Sperm count, another important metric, was lower among men with bigger waists.

“The sperm count is just that: the number of sperm in each cc of semen,” said Jarvi, director of the Murray Koffler Urologic Wellness Centre and Head of Urology at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada.

Higher semen volume, within the optimal range between 2 and 5 milliliters, will overall have more sperm, Jarvi said. A volume under 1.5 mLs may cause infertility, he said, but too much is not good either.

In the study, a typical man in the normal BMI range had an ejaculate volume of 3.3 mL, compared to 2.8 mL for men in the highest BMI category, severely obese.

Men with the largest waists, over 40 inches, had about 22 percent lower total sperm count compared to men with waist measurements under 37 inches.

There appeared to be no link to semen concentration, motility, vitality or physical appearance, according to the results published in the journal Human Reproduction.

About half of the men had already fathered children when the study took place and none of the couples were seeking help with infertility when they were recruited.

The researchers also did not follow up to see whether the men succeeded in having children later.

Most men exercised less than once per week, so the authors couldn’t really examine what effects more exercise might have on sperm.

“The big question is what does reduction in body weight do to the sperm counts in men starting with a low sperm count?” Jarvi said. “This is the question that my overweight patients ask.”

Source: Reuters

Pregnant woman kept on life support against husband’s wishes

A man reportedly is fighting a Texas law to get his pregnant wife removed from life support, which he says were her wishes before she was declared brain dead.

Texas man Erick Munoz found his wife Marlise unconscious on their living room floor at 2:00 a.m. on Nov. 26, WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth reports. Munoz, a paramedic, began CPR and called 911, and his wife — also a paramedic — was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. She apparently experienced a pulmonary embolism, a potentially fatal blood clot.

“You just never think it’s going to be you,” he told the station.

Marlise was 14 weeks pregnant at the time, so doctors told the family they would provide all life-saving measures to her in order to comply with a rule under the Texas Health and Safety Code.

That rule states, “a person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient.”

But, Erick says he and his wife had discussed and mutually agreed upon “do not resuscitate” (DNR) orders, though one was never signed. She has not shown brain activity since, and doctors are unsure how long the fetus was without oxygen and nutrients, so it’s unknown whether the fetus is even viable.

“I don’t agree with this law… I don’t,” he said, adding, he doesn’t expect many people to side with him on this.

A hospital spokesperson told CBS News that the facility follows state law.

“Our responsibility at JPS Health Network is to be a good corporate citizen while also providing quality care for our patients,” J.R. Labbe said in an email. “In all cases, JPS will follow the law as it applies to healthcare in the state of Texas. And this specific state law says life-sustaining treatment cannot be withheld or withdrawn from a pregnant patient.”

One bioethicist not involved in the case considers the Texas law both unethical and unconstitutional, arguing it violates individual liberties.

Source: bossip

59 test positive for TB after Las Vegas outbreak

Las Vegas public health officials say dozens of people linked to a tuberculosis outbreak at a neonatal unit have tested positive for the disease.

The Southern Nevada Health District reported on Monday that of the 977 people tested, 59 showed indications of the disease, though all but two of the cases are latent — meaning patients don’t show symptoms and aren’t contagious.

Dr. Joe Iser, chief medical officer at the health district, said the report demonstrates the importance of catching tuberculosis early.

“We want physicians to really think about making the diagnosis and quarantining, and then calling us,” he said. “This has been very expensive for us in terms of time and effort and dollars.”

A state report released last month found that Summerlin Hospital Medical Center failed to recognize and take precautions to diagnose the infected woman’s contagious lung disease when she gave birth in May to premature twin daughters, and allowed the woman to continue visiting her babies after she was discharged.

One of 25-year-old Vanessa White’s babies died in June. White died in July at a Los Angeles hospital and was diagnosed with tuberculosis through an autopsy. Her other baby died of tuberculosis on Aug. 1 at Summerlin Hospital.

Iser said officials cannot know for sure that all 59 cases are directly linked to the Las Vegas hospital. Several of those tested are immigrants from countries where tuberculosis is more prevalent, and could have been exposed earlier in their lives, he said.

The health district is encouraging all 59 people to accept treatment.

TB is spread through the air when a sick person coughs, sneezes or speaks. Symptoms include coughing, chest pain, fever and fatigue. The disease usually attacks the lungs, but can affect other organs and can be fatal if not properly treated.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counted 569 TB deaths in the U.S. in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available. The number of U.S. TB cases has been on a steady decline since a resurgence in 1992, and in 2012, reached the lowest level since national reporting began in 1953.

The Nevada Bureau of Health Care Quality and Compliance investigated the case, and determined that the Las Vegas hospital wasn’t taking proper precautions to contain infections.

In November, eight employees, former patients and visitors filed a negligence lawsuit seeking damages from the hospital. Family members of the young mother who died of the illness have said they also plan to sue.

In the fall, investigators found that 26 people, including the mother’s family members and hospital staff, had been infected.

Health officials then tested hundreds of babies, family members and staff who had passed through the neonatal intensive care unit. They contacted the parents of about 140 babies who were at the unit between mid-May and mid-August, and set up a temporary clinic to test them.

Health officials are expected to release a final report next summer.

They will continue to test the infants who passed through the hospital in the coming months, to ensure the babies don’t develop any signs of the disease.

“I try to think, what if it was my son or daughter, my newborn infant, what would I want to be done?” Iser said.

Source: Miami Herald

Why you should be especially careful when handling raw chicken

Think the meat you buy at the grocery is safe? You might want to think again. Consumer Reports researchers found potentially harmful bacteria in 97 percent of the raw chicken breasts they bought nationwide.

Urvashi Rangan, the magazine’s director of consumer safety and sustainability, told the “CBS This Morning” co-hosts the researchers went to 26 different states and shopped for 316 raw chicken breasts. The chicken was then tested for six different bacteria, all of which can be potentially harmful, she said.

“We did find 97 percent of one of the six bacteria that we looked for,” Rangan said.

Even more worrisome, she said, was that many of the bacteria samples turned out to be resistant “to three or more antibiotic classes, making them multiple-drug resistant.”

Rangan said that in terms of food-borne illness, “chicken is a big culprit.”

The report really underscores that “people should be really careful when they’re out there buying their chicken,” she said.

Shoppers want to make sure their chicken is packaged in a plastic bag, Rangan said.

She said that consumers may buy organic chicken thinking it’s safer, but that’s not necessarily so.

“Things like organic, other welfare labels do provide value, but what people don’t really realize is that the natural label actually means nothing” about possible contaminants.

Rangan explained that to protect against spreading harmful bacteria, consumers want to be very “vigilant about how you handle that chicken.”

“You want to use really careful practices in the kitchen. You don’t want to put your chicken in the sink and pour (water from) the faucet on it. You want to use a dedicated cutting board and put that right in the dishwasher” after cutting chicken on it, she said.

“All the way through from when you buy it in the store to you serve it on your plate, you want to exercise really good hygiene.”

She stressed that it’s also important to make sure poultry is cooked thoroughly. The study found that a majority of people think the cook their chicken long enough and at the proper temperature, but only 37 percent own a meat thermometer.

“You can’t know unless you have a thermometer,” she said.

Source: Cbs news

Eating nuts during pregnancy may lower child’s chance of peanut allergy

Pregnant peanut lovers can celebrate, perhaps with a PB&J snack: A study out Monday shows an association between pregnant women who ate the most peanuts and tree nuts and children with a decreased risk of allergy.

Women had been advised to avoid peanuts and tree nuts, as well as other highly allergic foods, during pregnancy and until the child turned 3, as a way to try to reduce the chances of an allergy. But those recommendations were rescinded after researchers found that the effort didn’t work.

In the current study — from Boston Children’s Hospital and published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Pediatrics – found that women who ate nuts more than five times a month had the lowest incidence of allergic children.

“By linking maternal peanut consumption to reduced allergy risk, we are providing new data to support the hypothesis that early allergen exposure increases tolerance and reduces risk of childhood food allergy,” Dr. Michael Young, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

Current guidelines recommend that mothers should not restrict their diets during pregnancy, but this recommendation remains a widely debated topic among food allergy experts,” Dr. Ruchi Gupta wrote in an opinion piece accompanying the study. Further research is needed, Gupta wrote, to determine why one in 13 U.S. children has a food allergy of some kind.

Despite recommendations to avoid allergens, more children were found to be allergic to nuts and other foods, with the rate tripling from 1997 to 2007. Peanut allergies affect 1% to 3% of people in most Western countries. In the U.S., it’s at 4%, the study said. The reasons are not known.

“No one can say for sure if the avoidance recommendation for peanuts was related to the rising number of peanut allergies seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but one thing is certain: It did not stop the increase,” Young said.

The researchers looked at data from 8,205 children, whose parents were part of the Nurses Study, a long-term health study. They found 140 cases of peanut or tree nut allergy among the children born between Jan. 1, 1990, and Dec. 31, 1994.

Animal studies have shown a protective effect of maternal exposure to allergens in foods. The human data, Young said, are not strong enough to conclude a cause and effect relationship. He said more research is needed.

Tree nuts are walnuts, almonds, pistachios, cashews, pecans, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts and Brazil nuts. Peanuts, Gupta noted, are a good source of protein, and they provide folic acid, which has the potential to prevent neural tube defects.

Of course, the researchers said, women who are themselves allergic should not eat peanuts or tree nuts.
Source: La times