Fade To Darkness: The Age Of Alzheimer's (hour special)
From 90.9 WBUR - Boston's NPR News Station | 58:30
Alzheimer’s is the incurable disease that destroys memory, speech and function. Scientists say the number of Americans with Alzheimer's may triple by the year 2050. In this hour-long special report, we'll report on the latest efforts to find treatment, improve diagnosis and adequately fund research and caregiving for the millions yet to be afflicted.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, one in eight Americans over the age of sixty-five already has the disease; over the age of eighty-five, nearly one in two. As seventy-eight million baby boomers continue to age, the number of people with Alzheimer's may triple by 2050, and experts warn that without effective treatment, this explosion of cases could become the nation's greatest health care crisis.
This news-friendly hour-long program is enhanced by an extensive web presence including photo slideshows and video, extended interviews, extra feature pieces and Alzheimer's-related information and resources. That's all here, at our web site, WBUR.org
For more information on this and other programs from 90.9 WBUR Boston, please contact Namita Raina, National Program Administrator, 90.9 WBUR Boston. (617) 353-8160 e-mail: nraina@bu.edu
Antarctica: Life On The Ice
From Spectrum Radio | 59:00
Antarctica: Life On The Ice is a co-production of IEEE Spectrum Radio and The National Science Foundation.
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- Antarctica: Life On The Ice
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- Spectrum Radio
Antarctica: Life On The Ice is a co-production of IEEE Spectrum Radio and The National Science Foundation and features reporter Glenn Zorpette exploring the coldest region on the planet, it's inhabitants and the scientific research underway at the South Pole.
Food industry courts meat-eating vegetarians
From Harvest Public Media Group | 04:18
By most estimates, only about 2 or 3 percent of Americans are vegetarians. But more than forty percent of Americans aged eightenn to twenty-nine choose to eat meatless at least once a week. That's the market the food industry is going for with new vegetarian products that mimic the flavor… and the texture… of meat. Harvest Public Media’s Jeremy Bernfeld (“BURN-fell-d”) has the story.
LEDE: By most estimates, only about 2 or 3 percent of Americans are vegetarians. But more than forty percent of Americans aged eightenn to twenty-nine choose to eat meatless at least once a week. That's the market the food industry is going for with new vegetarian products that mimic the flavor… and the texture… of meat. Harvest Public Media’s Jeremy Bernfeld (“BURN-fell-d”) has the story.
Script:
**
Bob Sholar is a lot like most vegetarians, except for one big difference: sometimes he eats meat.
Sholar 918 (Thanksgiving) It’d just be Thanksgiving, Christmas, maybe a birthday, something like that thrown in – just the special meal times of the year. Other than that we don’t go out of our way to eat meat.
Sholar is part of a growing new trend the food industry is looking to tap into.
They’re called “Flexitarians” – health conscious, mostly young consumers who are cutting back on meat in their diets.
Sholar lives in Parkville, Missouri, outside Kansas City – legendary barbecue country and home of the North American World Series of Barbecue. We’re talking serious meat. But Sholar cut meat mostly out of his diet because he was worried about his cholesterol.
Sholar413 (Salad) You try not to eat salad every day. You look at what you can do with pasta, what you can do with certain casseroles, what you can do with beans and nuts and mixtures of things. Sometimes you’re looking to make something taste a bit like meat, a lot of times you’re not – you’re just realizing you just don’t eat meat.
Morgan (alternatives) “I would say that a lot of our customers tell us that they’re looking for some alternatives and they’re looking for new ways to think instead of this standard American diet that’s very animal protein focused.”
Sarah Morgan is a healthy eating specialist for the Whole Foods supermarket chain.
Morgan (comfort) “They say that there are a lot of ways and different foods out there that kind of allow them to eat in a way that they still get maybe those comfort foods .”
That’s the new holy grail for some food companies. Vegetarian foods that replicate the carnivore’s food experience so they don’t feel that they’re sacrificing while giving up meat.
Vegetarian options like Boca Burgers and Tofurky recently started touting their “flame grilled” taste and a new, juicier faux frankfurter.
And even in the heart of the meat and potatoes Midwest food scientists are all over the trend.
[Extruder Tour Ambi]
You hear that? That’s the sound of chicken being made. At least, vegetarian fake chicken.
I checked out the food science lab at the University of Missouri in Columbia that is run by Harold Huff, a research scientist, and Dr. Fu-Hung Hsieh, a professor there. The team recently developed a soy-based vegetarian product meant to mimic the taste, texture and look of real chicken.
Taste isn’t an issue – food companies have had meat flavorings down for years.
Huff (fiber): “The trick is the fine-ness of the fiber.”
The fiber, researcher Huff says, is what makes the texture just right.
Huff-winner: “The mouth-feel and appearance in a product is sometimes just as important as the taste. If it looks bad, people do not want to eat it. If you can make it look like something they’ve already accepted, you’ve got a winner.”
That’s what Ethan Brown is betting on. He’s the president and CEO of Maryland food production company Savage River Farms. His company is working with the University of Missouri and hopes to bring the veggie chicken product to market beginning next month.
Flexitarians won’t flock to rubbery meat forgeries.
Brown (replicating): “I think that’s why you’re seeing people focus on replicating meat.”
Humans have eaten meat for thousands of years, Brown says, there’s no reason to throw that accumulated knowledge out, even if you’re trying to be more of a vegetarian.
Brown (mimic): “Why not create something from plants that mimics the taste, texture and appearance of meat to allow us the terrific culture and recipes, etc., that we’ve so come to enjoy.”
Even with the product’s launch imminent, Brown is having trouble settling on a name for the veggie strips. On the one hand, he wants it made clear they are fully vegan. On the other, he wants to attract meat-eaters. For now, I’m splitting the difference and going with the oxymoronic ‘Veggie Chicken.’
[Cooking Ambi]
Standing in my kitchen, I’m about to satiate both my hunger and my curiosity. Some friends and I are going to throw the veggie chicken into some fajitas.
[Cooking Ambi]
The regular chicken fajitas we made were definitely better. But once you smothered the veggie strip in some sauce, it could probably pass for real chicken pretty well. That’s what the food companies are going for – giving consumers another option.
Bob Sholar, our flexitarian, says he’s skeptical that any vegetarian product can truly mimic the taste, feel and look of
meat.
But like any good Midwesterner, he wouldn’t mind if they kept trying.
Sholar 1755 Barbecue, you just can’t find a replacement for barbecue. You can put barbecue sauce on lots of things, but you haven’t replaced the barbecue, so that’s a tough one. If they can come up with a good barbecue sandwich then I think that’ll sell.
Half a slab of soy ribs? Maybe one day.
Antibiotics and the healthy cow equation
From Harvest Public Media Group | 04:54
For livestock producers, keeping animals healthy can make or break their business. But people have a lot of opinions and concerns these days about how they get the job done. So Harvest Public Media’s Jessica Naudziunas visited with beef and dairy farmers to ask how today’s scarlet A – antibiotics – fits into their healthy cow equation.
For livestock producers, keeping animals healthy can make or break their business. But people have a lot of opinions and concerns these days about how they get the job done. So Harvest Public Media’s Jessica Naudziunas visited with beef and dairy farmers to ask how today’s scarlet A – antibiotics – fits into their healthy cow equation.
Assessing the additives
From Harvest Public Media Group | 04:06
Now, a story about what’s in your food.
If you want a definitive answer on food industry claims, like ‘natural,’ or ‘fresh,’ you could pour over pages of advice from government agency or check out consumer advocate websites. Of course, you might start with the labels. But as Harvest Public Media’s Jessica (nah-JOON-es) Naudziunas reports from Columbia, Missouri, the ingredients – or additives -- sometimes can be difficult to interpret.
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- Assessing the additives
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- Harvest Public Media Group
If you want a definitive answer on food industry claims, like ‘natural,’ or ‘fresh,’ you could pour over pages of advice from government agency or check out consumer advocate websites. Of course, you might start with the labels. But as Harvest Public Media’s Jessica (nah-JOON-es) Naudziunas reports from Columbia, Missouri, the ingredients – or additives -- sometimes can be difficult to interpret.
SCRIPT: Pick up a box of your favorite packaged food, now read the ingredient list. Think about how many of those recipe elements you can identify as good for you. Some of those puzzling words maybe be what are called food additives, and because they’re in so much of our food today, they’re tough to avoid. Some have a purpose. Anti-caking agents assist powdery substances from turning into a giant lump, acids help food stay fresher, longer.
[refrigerator hum and opening door ambi throughout]
“The ingredients are water, organic whole wheat flour, organic unbleached wheat flour and sea salt.”
Jill Lucht reads the back of a local company’s sourdough wheat bread package. She knows a lot about food. At The University of Missouri’s agriculture department she helps beginning farmers get on their feet, and in her spare time she volunteers at a local goat farm.
“I feel pretty good about eating this.”
Most of the food in her big black refrigerator contains snacks near to their original form, like the homemade kimchi chilling on her middle shelf. But there are a few things Lucht says she hasn’t considered until this moment: like her whole grain tortillas:
“Vegetable shortening, which is palm oil and monoglycirides, that’s kind of disturbing.”
This type of oil keeps the product shelf stable for longer than, say regular vegetable oil, and the ingredient is generally recognized as safe by the Food and Drug Administration. But, that doesn’t mean it’s good for you. In 2009-- the US Department of Agriculture researched palm oil and found it was not a healthy substitute for much maligned trans fats.
“Fumaric Acid, Mono-Di Glycerides, Calcium Propionate (Preservative), Dough Conditioner (Sodium Metabisulfite), [wooo]... laughing. So, yeah maybe I might give these up. I don’t know what they are. It’s scary because I don’t know what they are.”
A University of Michigan study found that when foods are more difficult to pronounce, there’s a perception that there’s a higher risk involved. They asked people to rate safety for fake additives with names that were easy and confusing. On average, the tricky names were perceived as 29 percent riskier to health. Recently, some very simple sounding additives have caused real trouble.
“One of the categories of food additives that’s long been of concern is food dyes, chemicals that have the names red 40, yellow 5, you’ll find in thousands of packages in grocery stores.”
Michael Jacobson is the Executive Director of consumer health advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest. You might know him from the phrases he’s helped coin over the years like the pervasive “junk food” or “empty calories.”
“There have been questions about the dyes safety in many regards. There’s been the most publicity attention to the notion that food dyes may effect children’s behavior.”
That attention swelled with a food industry vs. safety cliffhanger last March when Jacobson’s team petitioned the FDA to consider a rule that would ban all food dyes.
“The Food and Drug Administration for the first time acknowledged that food dyes affect the behavior of a subgroup of kids, kids who have hyperactivity...food dyes can trigger that behavior.”
So, the FDA gathered experts to evaluate if food dyes would do the same thing to all kids. They found there wasn’t enough evidence to support this idea. That’s where the issue has been stayed frozen in time. In other countries, there’s the opposite. The UK and Europe banned synthetic food dyes over three years ago using some of the same evidence the Center for Science in the Public Interest brought the FDA.
“What we do, in the United States, is we want to provide customers with the information they need to make decisions about their lives.”
Doug Karas is with the FDA.
“So, if you want do avoid color additives, then they are listed in the ingredients on the label, so it’s just a matter of looking down at the label and seeing if there are color additives and seeing if you want to avoid that.”
Putting responsibility into the consumer’s hands. That is, if you have the know-how and the time to translate. There are tools around today that can help. If you’re looking for an independent source, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has “Chemical Cuisine,” a smart phone app with safety ratings. If it’s official word from the government you’re after, then settle in for the long haul. Doug Karas says the FDA still has to collect more research on dyes like red 40 and yellow 5 before the agency can give a possible green light to food dye warnings. SOQ.
