Fact or Fiction? The ENGL 137H & 138T Blogging Experience

To all those wine-lovers above the legal drinking age: Is that glass of red wine you drink with dinner to wind down after a long day at work benefitting your health more than you think?

According to an article published by the Yale-New Haven Hospital, it probably is!  Red wines – particularly the dryer ones – contain those lovely little health boosters called flavonoids, also found in dark chocolate (my absolute favorite).  Flavonoids are known to have heart-healthy benefits, such as reducing the bad cholesterol levels and increasing the good.  Additionally, the skin of red grapes that are used to make wine contain an antioxidant called resveratrol, which may inhibit tumor development in some cancers.

This does not mean you should drink a bottle of wine per night.  Like most everything else, red wines are only good for you in moderation.  One to two 4-oz glasses of wine daily will do the trick for men, while women are better off consuming only one.  This also doesn’t mean that you should start drinking if you don’t already, especially if you have a history of alcoholism in your family or are at risk for hypertryglyceridemia, pancreatitis, liver disease, uncontrolled hypertension, depression, or congestive heart failure.

As this is the last passion blog I will be posting, I just wanted to thank whoever’s been reading them for actually reading them.  I wish you all the best in your future endeavors!

I’d always assumed that sea salt was just the fancier version of table salt.  It’s bigger and crunchier, more expensive, the only kind of salt Starbucks claims to use on their “salted” holiday drinks, and it comes from the ocean (super-fancy!).  Some claim sea salt has a better flavor than your standard table salt, others say it has added health benefits; but is any of this actually true?  Is it worth spending the couple extra cents (or in some cases-dollars) on the more “natural” option?

Nutritionally, sea salt and table salt contain the same amount of sodium.  If an individual consumers more than the recommended amount of sodium per day – 2,300 milligrams for the average adult – they increase their likelihood of suffering from high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and strokes.  Substituting sea salt for table salt (spoonful-for-spoonful) will not decrease your sodium intake.  However, some argue that sea salt packs a bigger punch in the flavor department, so you need to use less of it. In this case, using sea salt instead of table salt would decrease your sodium intake.

Some sea salt brands boast that they contain additional, healthy minerals due to the fact that they’re less processed than table salt.  While they are less processed, sea salts only contain trace amounts of the healthy minerals they brag about.  Also, most table salt has iodine added to its composition during processing, which is a nutrient that promotes a healthy thyroid.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether you use sea or table salt to flavor your foods.  They both have the same amount of sodium, so it usually comes down to personal preference.  If you prefer the particularly crunchy texture of sea salt, you’d be better off using that.  If not, then table salt should be your go-to.  Or, no salt at all!  Whatever you prefer.

Check out this article for additional information!

I’ve never really been interested in the natural sciences, so I’m not too familiar with radiation and chemical compounds and genes and all that stuff.  However, I am familiar with the idea that a pregnant woman should not stand in front of an operating microwave oven for fear of exposing the unborn child to harmful radiation.  I’ve never been too comfortable with the idea (if she shouldn’t stand in front of a microwave, I should probably get out of the way too), but I’ve never been able to understand well enough how radiation works to determine if this idea is fact or fiction.

Turns out, I still don’t!  After doing some online research through scholarly articles, I realized I would need hours to sift through some of the language used in lab reports and findings, so I searched for simpler articles on the effects of radiation from microwave ovens.  A lot of the sources that came up in my Google search seemed questionable (some even seemed like conspiracy theories), so I decided to just stick to the US Food and Drug Administration’s website.  According to the FDA, “microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation; that is, they are waves of electrical and magnetic energy moving together through space,” and the reason that microwave ovens utilize these waves is that they can be absorbed by foods and changed into heat energy (which allows you to warm up those leftovers in under 2 minutes).  Exposure to high-levels of these waves can cause a painful burn, cataracts, or temporary sterility; however, you wouldn’t be exposed to those levels while using a microwave oven, which has only a “5mW limit for microwave oven leakage.”  There has not been enough verifiable research conducted to determine the effects of low-level radiation on the human body.

So basically, what I think I’m getting out of this is that the microwaves that microwave ovens produce are so small that they cannot harm your body short-term, but there is no information about how they can affect you long term.  I’m probably really over-simplifying this, so if you know anything about radiation, microwaves, etc., that might help me better understand how it all works, let me know!!

2012 was the year of the gluten-free diet.  Supermarkets across the nation started stocking their shelves with gluten-free products after talk show hosts, celebrities, and some nutritionists attributed better skin, weight loss, and an increased sense of physical well-being to cutting gluten out of their diets.  But is this diet right for everyone?

Typically, physicians recommend gluten-free diets to those individuals who suffer from celiac disease, an “autoimmune disorder that can appear at any age and is caused by an intolerance to gluten” (CNN.com).  The symptoms of celiac disease are similar to those of lactose intolerance, and include, but are not limited to, abdominal bloating and pain, fatigue, and skin rashes, and if not treated, can result in hair loss, liver disease, and in rare cases, intestinal cancers.  It makes sense then, why someone who has celiac disease should cut gluten out of their diet, for it’s a simple (and usually essential) way to get rid of their symptoms and lessen their chance of suffering from negative consequences.

Gluten free diets are also recommended to people who suffer from a gluten intolerance or allergy, but who do not have celiac disease.  Individuals with this condition tend to have stomach irritability or fatigue after eating something containing gluten, and by cutting it out of their diet they are rid of those symptoms.

However, someone who doesn’t suffer from celiac disease or gluten intolerance and decides to go gluten-free is likely to see little (if any) improvement to their health.  In fact, some scientists argue that those individuals may be worse off, for in cutting out gluten (which, in most cases, means cutting out grains entirely), they may not consume the recommended amounts of vitamins and minerals needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

The effect of a gluten-free diet on patients with celiac disease has been studied extensively, and has been shown to drastically reduce negative symptoms like skin rashes and abdominal pain and bloating.  However, the effect of this diet on individuals who do not suffer from this illness (or an allergy) has yet to be conclusively determined, since it is a relatively new concept that has only been popularized within the past 10 years.  For this reason, I am deeming the concept that going gluten-free will improve your health fictitious, unless of course you suffer from celiac disease or a gluten allergy, which, in that case, it is extremely factual.