More information about recalled food products is available on the Food Safety and Inspection Service Web site at http://www.fsis.usda.gov/

Federal Food Safety and Inspection
The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is the public health agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for ensuring that the nation's commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.

Product Recall Specifics:  Call the Manufacturing  Company
Consumers with questions regarding recalled items should contact companies that issue recalls.

Testing Products for Safety
The Hygienic Laboratory in Iowa is one example of food testing to prevent outbreaks spreading. With techniques such as DNA fingerprinting, lab testing can identify specific contaminants, such as Salmonella.

The Hygienic Laboratory is the state of Iowa's environmental and public health laboratory, with facilities located at the University of Iowa's Research Campus in Iowa City and at the Iowa Lab Facilities in Ankeny, a Des Moines suburb. For more information about the laboratory and its programs and services, visit http://www.uhl.uiowa.edu.

Reduce Heart Disease, Stroke and Heart Attacks

Scientists writing in The New England Journal of Medicine conclude that lowering the amount of salt people eat by even a small amount could reduce cases of heart disease, stroke and heart attacks as much as reductions in smoking, obesity and cholesterol levels.

If Americans consumed half a teaspoon less salt per day, there would be between 54,000 - 99,000 fewer heart attacks each year and between 44,000 - 92,000 fewer deaths, according to the study, which was conducted by scientists at University of California San Francisco, Stanford University Medical Center and Columbia University Medical Center.

Processed Foods are the Key Source of Salt

Health authorities at federal, state and municipal levels are considering policies to mandate that food companies reduce salt in processed foods, which are considered to be the source of much of the salt Americans eat.

For 40 years in this country we've been trying to get individuals to reduce the amount of sodium we consume and it hasn't worked.

New York City announced an initiative to urge food manufacturers and restaurant chains to reduce salt in their products nationwide by 25 percent over the next five years.

California, according to an author of the study, Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at University of California, San Francisco, is considering setting salt limits on food the state purchase for schools, prisons and other public institutions.

The Institute of Medicine, the independent research arm of the National Academies of Science, will be issuing a report soon that will make recommendations about reducing salt intake, including actions government and manufacturers can take.

The Food and Drug Administration was considering whether to change the designation of salt from a food additive that is generally considered safe to a category that would require companies to give consumers more information alerting them to high levels of salt in food.

Greatest Benefit:  Blacks, Hypertension and Seniors

The researchers found that everyone would benefit from less salt, but people at higher risk for heart problems -- blacks, people with hypertension and people over 65 -- would benefit most.

While research isn't showing that individuals will be greatly affected by small changes in salt intake, "Small incremental changes in salt, such as lowering salt in tomato sauce or breads and cereals by a small amount, would achieve small changes in blood pressure that would have a measurable effect across the whole population," researchers said.

Huh?  Does YOUR salt intake affect MY health?   I understand public health concepts, but this seems a bit strained.  However, if what they mean is that people who eat way too much salt will take action and reduce their personal health... I can see that rationale. 

In the meantime, ask your medical adviser if you are overdoing the salt for your own good health!

Read More at NY Times

The aroma of foods could become a new weapon in the battle of the bulge by quenching the sensation of hunger. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Jon Sullivan

A real possibility exists for developing a new generation of foods that make people feel full by releasing anti-hunger aromas during chewing.

Scientists in the Netherlands are reporting  that foods could fight the global epidemic of obesity with aromas that quench hunger and prevent people from overeating. Their article appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry: "Retronasal Aroma Release and Satiation: A Review".

Rianne Ruijschop and colleagues note that scientists long have tried to develop tasty foods that trigger or boost the feeling of fullness. Until recently, that research focused on food's effects in stomach after people swallow it.

Efforts now have expanded to include foods that release hunger-quenching aromas during chewing. Molecules that make up a food's aroma apparently do so by activating areas of the brain that signal fullness.

Their analysis found that aroma release during chewing does contribute to the feeling of fullness and possibly to consumers' decisions to stop eating. The report cites several possible applications, including developing foods that release more aroma during chewing or developing aromas that have a more powerful effect in triggering feelings of fullness.

SOURCE:

"Retronasal Aroma Release and Satiation: A Review"
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Did You Know?

• About 76 million cases of food poisoning occur in the United States every year.
• Simply keeping cold foods cold and hot foods hot before serving can prevent many cases of food poisoning.
• Salmonella is better known, but another bacterium called Campylobacter (found on foods like raw chicken) is the No. 1 cause of food poisoning in the United States and the world.
• There are two main kinds of food poisoning. One results from toxins or poisons produced by microbes in food before consumption. The other results from microbes in food that infect the body and grow after consumption.
• Most cases of "24-hour flu," with its vomiting and diarrhea, actually are food poisoning.

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The Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Guide to Nutrient Requirements is sold only as a printed book; the PDF offered free of charge for download contains only the references.

Dietitians, community nutritionists, nutrition educators, nutritionists working in government agencies, and nutrition students at the postsecondary level, as well as other health professionals, will find Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Reference for Dietary Planning and Assessment an invaluable resource.

Widely regarded as the classic reference work for the nutrition, dietetic, and allied health professions since its introduction in 1943, Recommended Dietary Allowances has been the accepted source in nutrient allowances for healthy people. Responding to the expansion of scientific knowledge about the roles of nutrients in human health, the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, in partnership with Health Canada, has updated what used to be known as Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) and renamed their new approach to these guidelines Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs). Since 1998, the Institute of Medicine has issued eight exhaustive volumes of DRIs that offer quantitative estimates of nutrient intakes to be used for planning and assessing diets applicable to healthy individuals in the United States and Canada. Now, for the first time, all eight volumes are summarized in one easy-to-use reference volume, Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Reference for Dietary Planning and Assessment. Organized by nutrient for ready use, this popular reference volume reviews the function of each nutrient in the human body, food sources, usual dietary intakes, and effects of deficiencies and excessive intakes. For each nutrient of food component, information includes:

Estimated average requirement and its standard deviation by age and gender.

Recommended dietary allowance, based on the estimated average requirement and deviation.

Adequate intake level, where a recommended dietary allowance cannot be based on an estimated average requirement.

Tolerable upper intake levels above which risk of toxicity would increase. Along with dietary reference values for the intakes of nutrients by Americans and Canadians, this book presents recommendations for health maintenance and the reduction of chronic disease risk. Also included is a Summary Table of Dietary Reference Intakes, an updated practical summary of the recommendations. In addition, Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Reference for Dietary Planning and Assessment provides information about:

Guiding principles for nutrition labeling and fortification

Applications in dietary planning

Proposed definition of dietary fiber

A risk assessment model for establishing upper intake levels for nutrients

Proposed definition and plan for review of dietary antioxidants and related compounds

A free PDF download of an errata page to Dietary Reference Intakes: The Essential Guide to Nutrient Requirements is available from: http://books.nap.edu/html/11537/dri_errata.pdf.

Food can be mislabeled anywhere along a long supply chain. In the case of sushi, the labeling could happen on the fishing boat, at the docks, in the warehouse, in the retail store or the restaurant. It pays to be skeptical and check things out occasionally. Of course, it could be helpful to have a macrobiologist along with you :-), but we can all ask questions, read labels, and prepare food at home with locally grown ingredients whenever possible.

The changing face of American farming is feminine!

Women always played important roles on the family farm. They kept the books, milked the cows and fed the children, often juggling another part-time job while the men worked the fields. Sometimes, they ran the farm after their husbands or fathers died.

But increasingly, women such as Stinar are turning to farming on their own. According to the 2007 U.S. Census of Agriculture released this year, more than one in every 10 U.S. farms is run by a woman. In Maryland, the number of farms in which a woman is the principal operator jumped 16 percent between 2002 and 2007. In Virginia, female-run farms also grew by 16 percent. (Source: Washington Post)

A growing number of female-focused farming organizations have popped up in Vermont, Connecticut and Maine. In Pennsylvania, membership in the Women's Agricultural Network, which is affiliated with Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, grew from 100 members in 2005 to 1,000 in 2008.

While men tend to run larger farms focused on such commodity crops as soybeans and wheat, women tend to run smaller, more specialized enterprises selling heirloom tomatoes and grass-fed beef to well-heeled, eco-conscious consumers. These smaller enterprises have gotten a boost from the popularity of farmers markets and programs in which people pay in advance to receive weekly produce baskets, as well as renewed consumer interest in buying locally.

Programs designed for small farms and urban farms include programs such as The Farm to Plate (F2P) Initiative.  They  direct the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, working in collaboration with the Sustainable Agriculture Council and other stakeholder groups, to develop a 10-year strategic plan to strengthen Vermont's farm and food sector.

Here are a few of the women's agriculture resources scattered across the US:

California farming organizations for women include:
California Women for Agriculture
www.cawomen4ag.com/

California Women for Agriculture Salinas Valley
Serving Monterey County regarding agricultural issues in the state and county, and helping with agriculture education and scholarships.
www.salinascwa.org/

Women on U.S. Farms Research Initiative
http://agwomen.aers.psu.edu
These vivid maps and reports make it easier to interpret the ways that American women are involved in farming.

Women and Sustainable Agriculture: Interviews with 14 Agents of Change
By Anna Anderson, 2004, McFarland Publishers
Farmers, researchers, and farm advocates--all the women in this book have dedicated their lives to improving the American food system.

Herstory: Women in Organic Agriculture
Summer 2002 CCOF Newsletter of California's certified organic farmers
www.ccof.org/archives.php

Changing the Way America Farms: Knowledge and Community in the Sustainable Agriculture Movement
By Neva Hassanein, 1999, University of Nebraska Press
Focusing on Wisconsin, this book explores the function and importance of social networks in the sustainable agriculture movement.

MaryJanes Farm
100 Wild Iris Lane, Moscow, ID 83843
888-750-6004;
www.maryjanesfarm.org
Talk about enterprising: here's a stylish magazine that combines home, garden, and farm tips with a catalog of organic farm products.

Women in Winegrowing Calendar
811 Jefferson Street, Napa, CA 94559
707-944-8311, www.napagrowers.org
The Napa Valley Grapegrowers have created a calendar that features 21 community and sustainable farming leaders.

Vermont Women's Agricultural Network
617 Comstock Road, Suite 5
Berlin, VT 05602
802-223-2389
www.uvm.edu/wagn

Maine Women's Agricultural Network
University of Maine Co-op Extension
24 Main Street
Lisbon Falls, Maine 04252
207-353-5550 or 1-800-287-1458
www.umaine.edu/umext/wagn

Pennsylvania Women's Agricultural Network
Pennsylvania State University
302 Armsby Building
University Park, PA 16802
http://wagn.cas.psu.edu

North Carolina State University has been in the forefront of sustainable agriculture at U.S. colleges.
Nancy Creamer, PhD, is director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS), a 2,000-acre farm near Goldsboro. The research farm is a joint project of NCSU, NC, A&T University, the NC Department of Agriculture, the NC Farm Stewardship Association, and other organizations, farmers, and citizens.

Kristin Reynolds is a research assistant at the University of California Small Farm Center and one of the writers of Outstanding in Their Fields: California's Women Farmers

ATTRA is funded through the USDA Rural Business-Cooperative Service and is a project of the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT),

"Most of the world's food is grown, collected and harvested by over 2.5 billion small-scale farmers, pastoralists, forest dwellers and fisherfolk - more than half of whom are women." states LEISA Magazine (Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture).

Women play a significant and critical role in food production, food security, and health that is based on proper nutrition.

Not that men don''t!  But around the world, we still have a very traditional human split of duties, and food expertise and production often falls to women.  Even when women work outside the home in non-food related jobs, much of their income is dedicated to food security for the household.

Research in Africa, Asia and Latin America has found that improvements in household food security and nutrition are associated with women's access to income and their role in household decisions on expenditure as women tend to spend a significantly higher proportion of their income than men on food for the family.

Women's wage income from farm and non-farm employment and from other income-generating opportunities is of particular importance for landless and near-landless rural households.

Women's purchasing power may not only be used to buy food and other basic assets for themselves and their families, but also to pay for the inputs used in food production. Since food crops are consumed, the inputs for these have to be provided from income earned in other agricultural enterprises or non-farm income-generating activities.

Specific policy measures are required to address the constraints facing women farmers and to give special consideration to the needs of female heads of households. FAO has recommended that such measures aim to:

• ensure that women have the same opportunities as men to own land;
• facilitate women's access to agricultural services tailoring such services to their needs;
• encourage the production of food crops through the use of incentives;
• promote the adoption of appropriate inputs and technology to free up women's time for income-producing activities;
• improve the nutritional status of women and children;
• provide better employment and income-earning opportunities;
• promote women's organizations;
• review and re-orient government policies to ensure that the problems that constrain the role of women in food security are addressed.

SOURCE:  FAO