Watch College Carbs to Avoid the Freshman 15 -  Our daughter just finished the first week of her sophomore year in college. She tries to eat a relatively low-carb diet, but finds that it's pretty challenging, as everywhere she looks there are bagels, muffins, pizza, and sweets. To make matters worse, her college, in its efforts to provide "healthy" fare, have a lot of low-fat and fat-free offerings in the cafeteria, and as we all know, low-fat pretty much equals high-carb. There's sugar in the salad dressing instead of oil, more starch and less fat in the cafeteria line, and less satisfying meals so that students are reaching for that bag of chips a couple of hours later.
One way to avoid the "Freshman 15" (which is not limited to freshman!) is to learn some strategies for avoiding the College Carb Trap. Check out my Low Carb College Guide for lots of tips.
Photo of College Salad Bar: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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Does Red Meat Cause Colon Cancer? -  It's pretty common to hear certain statements about health repeated so many times that it begins to gather a kind of "truthiness" - where the statement feels true, whether or not it is a fact. One of these is the "well-known fact" that red meat causes colon cancer. It's been studied quite a lot, and we hear it a lot, but what does the science tell us?
Unfortunately, the science isn't always clear. In this case, many studies have been done on this - but the results are very mixed. You can point to studies that show a small correlation between colon/rectal cancer and red meat - and others which don't. Some studies have one type of flaw, and others have different flaws (there are very few "perfect studies".) So what are we to do in a case like this?
Read Full Post Does Red Meat Cause Colon Cancer? originally appeared on About.com Low Carb Diets on Sunday, August 29th, 2010 at 21:59:38. Permalink | Comment | Email this
Laura's Low-Carb Diet Blog Highlights -
 Did you miss my commentary on the Oprah show on Compulsive Overeating, or how Alton Brown lost 50 pounds on his 4 List Plan? How about the big study about saturated fat and the other one showing the success of low-carb diets in lowering blood pressure?
I've archived the "Best of my Low-Carb Blog" to make them easier to find. I've divided them into the science-y ones and the more general ones.
Photo © Steve Woods
Breakfast Recall: More Brands of Contaminated Eggs Recalled - 
Update: Sunday, August 22 - Still more brands have been added to the list, including Alta Dena and Driftwood. The Egg Safety Center is keeping a list, and there is a photo at the bottom of the page showing how to find the correct numbers on your egg cartons. All of the eggs affected by the recall were from the Iowa distributors.
Saturday, August 21: A new egg recall brings the total to over HALF A BILLION of recalled eggs it's up to almost 2 eggs for every person in this country! This is truly mind-boggling.
The latest company to recall its eggs due to salmonella contamination is Hillandale Farms of Iowa. According to the FDA, affected brands are "Hillandale Farms, Sunny Farms, and Sunny Meadow in 6-egg cartons, dozen-egg cartons, 18-egg cartons, 30-egg package, and 5-dozen cases. Loose eggs are packaged under the following brand names: Wholesome Farms and West Creek in 15 and 30-dozen tray packs. The loose eggs may also be repackaged by customers."
If you have eggs by these companies, check the packages for these numbers, again according to the FDA:
"The only eggs effected by this recall have plant numbers P1860 or P1663 and Julian dates as follows:
- P1860 - Julian dates ranging from 099 to 230
- P1663 - Julian dates ranging from 137 to 230"
Of course, this is in addition to the recalled eggs from a few days ago.
This is another example of how large agribusiness leaves us vulnerable. Shop local whenever you can. Cage-free eggs are less likely to be contaminated, and better yet are free-range and (best) pastured eggs, where the hens are actually running around eating what hens are supposed to eat. And those eggs are better for us, as well!
Photo © Kostas Konstantopoulos
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Notes on Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes -
 If you are interested in how we came to believe that dietary fat is bad, and carbs are good, you probably already know about Gary Taube's excellent book Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health. (For those of you who found it a bit heavy on the history and science, you'll be glad to know that a more user-friendly version is due out in a few months!) Now, for a limited time, someone (I know not who) has put their notes on the book on the Web. Check it out here.
Interested in the book Good Calories, Bad Calories? 
Image Courtsey of Pricegrabber
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Massive Egg Recall in United States -  32 million cartons of eggs (380 million eggs total) have been recalled due to a salmonella outbreak which has sickened hundreds of people. The eggs are distributed nationwide by Wright County Egg of Galt, Iowa, under the following brands:
Albertson's
Boomsma's
Dutch Farms
Farm Fresh
Hillandale
Kemps
Lucerne
Lund
Mountain Dairy
Ralph's
Shoreland
Sunshine
Trafficanda
These eggs have been sold in many stores, including Safeway, Ralophs, Walgreens, Foodsco, and Food 4 Less.
Dates and Numbers: The eggs being recalled have dates between May 16 and August 13, and product codes P-1026, P-1413, and P-1946
Advice: The CDC advises people not to eat these eggs - either return them to the store for a refund, or throw them away. If you believe you have eaten any of these eggs and have symptoms of salmonella (fever, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea beginning 12 to 72 hours after consumption of the contaminated food), consult your doctor.
Note:
The Humane Society is pointing out that cage-free and free-range eggs carry less danger from salmonella.
Photo: Dimitri Vervitsiotis/Getty Images
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New Study: Low-Carb vs Low-Fat Diets - 
I can often tell when a diet study has hit the news in a big way, because floods of people suddenly come to my site, A couple of weeks ago (during my vacation, so I was late getting to this), there was a diet study in the news - one of the "low-fat vs low-carb" studies. This one was somewhat unusual because it followed the participants for two years, but in other ways it was similar to many other studies, and most of the results were predictable (although the ways in which they varied from the norm were telling).
Capsule Summary: People were randomly assigned to a low-carb group, which was supposed to be similar to the Atkins Diet, and a low-calorie group which was low in fat. After two years, they had both maintained a similar weight loss (about 15 pounds). Other factors, including bone density, were not significantly different, except that the low-carb group had higher "good" cholesterol (HDL), which is one good indicator of heart health.
Problems with the Study and the Report:
Compliance: When looking at diet studies, it's always important to differentiate how much the study was looking at the effects of the different diets, vs the extent to which the people actually followed the diet. Read Full Post New Study: Low-Carb vs Low-Fat Diets originally appeared on About.com Low Carb Diets on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 11:59:37. Permalink | Comment | Email this
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