My pledge for National Zero Waste Week: decluttering my kitchen, the final frontier!

Yes, you heard it here first!

I'm going in!

Venturing deep into my kitchen, where for the first time in nine years I am going to attempt to clear out all the cupboards, banish the clutter, get organised and prepare myself for the new school term!

And that is my pledge for National Zero Waste Week, which kicks off on Monday.

The theme this year is to encourage participants to do that "one more thing" to reduce waste.

When I thought about what I could do, I knew that as we already recycle all we can, the only thing left to tackle was food waste. We still have some, not an enormous amount, but some food waste all the same.  And with the wormery still out of action, it's the main thing that gets sent to landfill, along sweet wrappers and crisp packets.

I thought if I pledged to use up what we have in the fridge during National Zero Waste Week, and try not to go shopping until we'd done that, it would be easy.

Then I thought again.

That's like putting a sticking plaster on a broken leg.

The truth of the matter is I CAN'T STAND MY KITCHEN!
 
These days, I spend as little time in there as I can get away with and yet underneath I am a bloody good cook with a sense of adventure for creating good food.

But I need space to create.

I simply don't have it.

And it's all got on top of me.

Our kitchen is tiny and as the household has become busier and busier, the space has become more and more cluttered. My previously much-loved gadgets,such as the yoghurt maker in the photo above, have become unused and gather dust, supporting bowls that can't even be squeezed into cupboards for lack of room!

All too often, when I'm at my busiest, I take one glance at the kitchen, and sigh, before scooting the family off elsewhere.  Then follows the guilt of trying to rescue perishables in the fridge before they die a certain death. And it is here that I sometimes fail.

So I've decided that this vicious circle must stop!

I need to clear out the stuff that I will never use again, rehome it or recycle it and find some space in the cupboard so that I can clear the worktop.

I must also decide how much I really need those gadgets and cookbooks.  The breadmaker, juicer and yoghurt maker all sell the idea of such a lovely lifestyle, but if they clutter up the workspace and make me feel too disorganised to use them, is there any point in keeping them?

And as for the sound effects that add to the atmosphere, my washing machine and dishwasher have both started groaning like a poor elephant with a hernia.

It really doesn't create a relaxing environment, so I'm going to see if we can get them repaired.

Then maybe, if I make it safely back from my excursion into the unexplored corners of my freezer, I will finally have the quiet, uncluttered, well-organised kitchen I dream of...

... and the creative space I need to avoid food waste!

This National Zero Waste Week pledge may be my toughest challenge yet, but I'm rolling up my sleeves and going in and hopefully I will feel better for it. Admittedly, I may need some gin first to avoid the lemons going to waste!

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To keep up with National Zero Waste Week, follow @MyZeroWaste on Twitter.  Now in its fifth year, the awareness campaign is really gathering momentum with a whole host of industry leaders, politicians and celebrities making personal pledges, and even before the week starts, over 800 people have signed up on Facebook. So it would be great if you could join in and do that "one more thing" to help tackle the world's waste. Just one more thing!  And I doubt it will be as tough as my blimmin' kitchen.

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The 2012 Atherosclerosis egg study: Plaque decreased as LDL increased with consumption of 2.3 eggs per week or more

A new study by David Spence and colleagues, published online in July 2012 in the journal Atherosclerosis (), has been gaining increasing media attention (e.g., ). The article is titled: “Egg yolk consumption and carotid plaque”. As the title implies, the study focuses on egg yolk consumption and its association with carotid artery plaque buildup.

The study argues that “regular consumption of egg yolk should be avoided by persons at risk of cardiovascular disease”. It hints at egg yolks being unhealthy in general, possibly even more so than cigarettes. Solid critiques have already been posted on blogs by Mark Sisson, Chris Masterjohn, and Zoe Harcombe (, , ), among others.

These critiques present valid arguments for why the key findings of the study cannot be accepted, especially the finding that eggs are more dangerous to one’s health than cigarettes. This post is a bit different. It uses the data reported in the study to show that it (the data) suggests that egg consumption is actually health-promoting.

I used the numbers in Table 2 of the article to conduct a test that is rarely if ever conducted in health studies – a moderating effect test. I left out the “egg-yolk years” variable used by the authors, and focused on weekly egg consumption (see Chris’s critique). My analysis, using WarpPLS (), had to be done only visually, because using values from Table 2 meant that I had access only to data on a few variables organized in quintiles. That is, my analysis here using aggregate data is an N=5 analysis; a small sample indeed. The full-text article is not available publicly; Zoe was kind enough to include the data from Table 2 in her critique post.

Below is the model that I used for the moderating effect test. It allowed me to look into the effect that the variable EggsWk (number of eggs consumed per week) had on the association between LDL (LDL cholesterol) and Plaque (carotid plaque). This type of effect, namely a moderating effect, is confusing to many people, because it is essentially the effect that a variable has on the effect of another variable on a third. Still, being confusing does not mean being less important. I should note that this type of effect is similar to a type of conditional association tested via Bayesian statistics – if one eats more eggs, what is the association between having a high LDL cholesterol and plaque buildup?

You can see what is happening visually on the graph below. The plot on the left side is for low weekly egg consumption. In it, the association between LDL cholesterol and plaque is positive – eating fewer eggs, plaque and LDL increase together. The plot on the right side is for high weekly egg consumption. In this second plot, the association between LDL cholesterol and plaque is negative – eating more eggs, plaque decreases as LDL increases. And what is the turning point? It is about 2.3 eggs per week.

So the “evil” particle, the LDL, is playing tricks with us; but thankfully the wonderful eggs come to the rescue, right? Well, it looks a bit like it, but maybe other foods would have a similar effect. In part because of the moderating effect discussed above, the multivariate association between LDL cholesterol and plaque was overall negative. This multivariate association was estimated controlling for the moderating effect of weekly egg consumption. You can see this on the plot below.

The highest amount of plaque is at the far left of the plot. It is associated with the lowest LDL cholesterol quintile. (So much for eggs causing plaque via LDL cholesterol eh!?) What is happening here? Maybe egg consumption above a certain level shifts the size of the LDL particles from small to large, making the potentially atherogenic ones harmless. (Saturated fat consumption, in the context of a nutritious diet in lean individuals, seems to have a similar effect.) Maybe eggs contain nutrients that promote overall health, leading LDL particles to "behave" and do what they are supposed to do. Maybe it is a combination of these and other effects.

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Ancestral Health Symposium 2012: Evolutionarily sound diets and lifestyles may revolutionize health care

The Ancestral Health Symposium 2012 was very interesting on many levels. Aaron Blaisdell and the team of volunteers really did a superb job at organizing the Symposium. Boston is a great city with an excellent public transportation system, something that is always great for meetings, and a great choice for the Symposium. Needless to say, so was Harvard. Even though the program was packed there were plenty of opportunities to meet and talk with several people during the breaks.

We had our panel “New Technologies and New Opportunities”, which Paul Jaminet moderated. The panelists were Chris Keller, Chris Kresser, Dan Pardi, and myself. The first photo below, by Bobby Gill, shows Chris Keller speaking; I am on the far left looking at the screen. The second photo, by Beth Mazur, shows all the panelists. The third photo, also by Bobby Gill, shows a group of us talking to Stephan Guyenet after his presentation.

I talked a bit toward the end of the panel about the importance of taking nonlinearity into consideration in analyses of health data, but ended up being remembered later for saying that “men are women with a few design flaws”. I said that to highlight the strong protective effect of being female in terms of health, which was clear from the model I was discussing.

There is a good evolutionary reason for the protective effect of being female. Evolution is a population phenomenon. Genes do not evolve; neither do individuals. Populations evolve through the spread or disappearance of genotypes. A healthy population with 99 men and 1 woman will probably disappear quickly, and so will its gene pool. A healthy population with 99 women and 1 man will probably thrive, even with the drag of inbreeding depression. Under harsh environmental conditions, the rate of female-to-male births goes up, in some cases quite a lot.

I was able to talk to, or at least meet briefly face-to-face with, many of the people that I have interacted with online on this blog and other blogs. Just to name a few: Miki Ben-Dor, Aaron Blaisdell, Emily Deans, Andreas Eenfeldt, Glenn Ellmers, Benjamin Gebhard, Stephan Guyenet, Dallas Hartwig, Melissa Hartwig, Paul Jaminet, Chris Keller, Chris Kresser, Mathieu Lalonde, Robert Lustig, Chris Masterjohn, Beth Mazur, Denise Minger, Jimmy Moore, Katherine Morrison, Richard Nikoley, Dan Pardi, Kamal Patel, David Pendergrass, Mark Sisson, Mary Beth Smrtic, J. Stanton, Carlos Andres Toro, and Grayson Wheatley.

It would have been nice to have Peter (from Hyperlipid) there, as I think a lot of the attendants are fans. I attended Jamie Scott’s very interesting talk, but ended up not being able to chat with him. This is a pity because we share some common experiences – e.g., I lived in New Zealand for a few years. I did have the opportunity to talk at some length with J. Stanton, who is an inspiration. It was also great to exchange some ideas with my panelists, Miki Ben-Dor, Emily Deans, Stephan Guyenet, Chris Masterjohn, Kamal Patel, and David Pendergrass. I wish I had more time to talk with Denise Minger, who is clearly a very nice person in addition to being very smart. Talking about a smart person, it was also nice chatting a bit with Richard Nikoley; a successful entrepreneur who is in the enviable position of doing what he feels like doing.

I could not help but notice a tendency among some participants (perhaps many, judging from online threads) to pay a lot of attention to how other people looked in a very judgmental way. That person is too fat, his/her face is too red, she/he looks too old etc. So was this supposed to be the Ancestral Health Pageant 2012? There is nothing wrong with looking good. But many people adopt an evolution-inspired lifestyle because they are quite unhealthy to start with. And this includes some of the presenters. It takes time to change one’s health, relapses occur, and no one is getting younger. Moreover, some of the presenters’ ideas and advice may have much more dramatic positive effects on people other than themselves, because of their own pre-existing conditions. The ideas and advice are still solid.

A message that I think this Symposium conveyed particularly well was that an evolutionarily sound diet and lifestyle can truly revolutionize our health care system. Robb Wolf’s talk in particular, based on his recent experience in Nevada with law enforcement officers, made this point very effectively. The title of the talk is “How Markets and Evolution Can Revolutionize Medicine”. One very interesting idea he put forth was that establishments like gyms could expand the range of support activities they offer their customers, officially becoming the beginning of the health care chain. There are already health insurance plans that offer premium reductions for those who go to gyms. Being part of the health care chain would be different and a significant step forward - diet and exercise are powerful "drugs".

One thing that caught me a bit off-guard was Robb’s strong advocacy of the use of a drug, namely metformin (a.k.a. glucophage); even preventively in some special cases, such as with sleep-deprived law enforcement officers. I have to listen to that talk again when it is up online, to make sure that I understood it correctly. It seems to me that changing the nature of shift work among law enforcement officers, at least partially, may be a better target; current practices appear not only to impair the officers’ health but also their effectiveness in law enforcement activities. Besides, I think we need to better understand the nature and functions of cortisol, which is viewed by many as a hormone that exists only to do us harm.

Sleep deprivation is associated with an elevation in cortisol production. Elevated cortisol levels lead over time to visceral fat accumulation, which promotes systemic inflammation. Systemic inflammation is possibly the root cause of most diseases of civilization. But cortisol itself has powerful anti-inflammatory properties, and visceral fat is generally easy to mobilize through intense exercise – probably one of the key reasons why we have visceral fat. I think we need to understand this situation a bit better before thinking about preventive uses of metformin, which nevertheless is a drug that seems to do wonders in the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

Beth Mazur was kind enough to put up a post with links to various Ancestral Health Symposium 2012 summary posts, as well as pictures. Paul Jaminet has a post with an insightful discussion of our panel at the Symposium.

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Did you hear that I went to THE OLYMPICS? You have now!

There are very few moments when this blogger is speechless, but as I'm sat here watching the Olympics on TV, all I want to do is cry with happiness and  pride over the achievements of our athletes.  Since the opening ceremony last Friday, there has been so much to celebrate.

And yesterday evening I was there, in the Olympic Stadium on 'Super Saturday', where I witnessed one of the greatest sporting events in history, the night that Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah all achieved gold medals for Great Britain, helping to celebrate the most successful day in British athletics for over 100 years.

My husband and I were guests of London 2012 sponsors Coca-Cola, a thank-you gift for launching and judging the recent Sustainable Games blogging competition, the results of which I was pleased to announce on the company's website a couple of weeks ago.

Along with our corporate hosts, we were accompanied by competition winner Lucy along with winner-in-reserve, Laura, who received the news of her ticket as a last-minute surprise, when one of the other finalists had to pull out at short notice. Here we are, in high-spirits with our men-folk, in the stadium taking in the excitement of the athletics!

As well as the once-in-a-lifetime chance to watch some amazing sport, it presented a great opportunity to finally witness the background recycling infrastructure that Coca-Cola has helped to create, including the fabulous bins about which I've waxed lyrical for what now feels like months!  As we waited to go into the stadium, I couldn't resist the chance to familiarise myself properly with these colourful beauties, which are there to help visitors easily pre-sort paper, plastic packaging, food waste - and even ponchos - from non-recyclable materials.

And to make it even easier for Olympic supporters to work out which receptacle to use, and to minimise contamination levels, the packaging was colour-coded to show its intended destination.

But as I think back to the atmosphere in the Olympic Stadium last night, I don't want to just talk about rubbish!

Goodness no! And I know many of you will now fall off your chairs to such news, but surely you won't be that surprised!  This was the Olympics and no way was I going to hang around the bins all evening!

All I really want to do now, is what I have been doing all day, and that's to relive the astounding evening that resulted in athletes' dreams being turned into a reality.

An amazing evening that distinctly made British sports history!

And the evening when I realised that I was most definitely one of the luckiest women alive.

I have had many exhilarating moments since I started The Rubbish Diet, and last night's Thank You present was most definitely the highlight of my time as a blogger.  Frankly, it's going to be a tough one to beat!

The atmosphere in the stadium was electric and highly charged wth emotion.

And sat in the thirteenth row, just behind the discus net, I could no longer hold back the tears of overwhelm and national pride as I watched Jessica Ennis complete the 800m stage of her gold medal Heptathlon.

With every stride she took, she was met by the tremendous cheer from thousands of spectators who knew the gold medal was already hers, a cheer that simply grew louder and louder as she closed in on the finishing line.

It was one of the greatest moments in sporting history, which left me feeling very humble at such amazing talent, yet proud to be amongst the 80,000 spectators that witnessed such an achievement, a victorious feeling for the athletes and country.

And the night just got better, with the news that Greg Rutherford had achieved another gold for Team GB in the Long Jump. The music and cheer just kept the beat of Olympic success pulsing throughout the stadium.

That pulse then became faster and faster as we watched Mo Farah put his strength and stamina to the test in the 10,000 metres!

With only three laps to go the commentator urged us to build the cheer and shout for Mo, but we didn't need encouraging at all.

We were already on our feet, waving the flags to the sound of  tremendous roars of support, straining our necks to watch the progress on the large screens when the leading athletes were out of our range of sight and applauding with all our might as Mo Farah sped towards the finishing line!

And forgive me as the tears roll down my cheeks again at that all encompassing memory of being in the right place at the right time to celebrate yet another proud moment for one of Great Britain's athletes, achieving his dream and making another moment of Olympic history!

When I first entered the Olympic Park yesterday, I could not even have guessed at the excitement that would come and the feelings of pride, hope and cheer of simply being there!

London 2012, Team GB and sponsors Coca-Cola have created an amazing experience that is really out of this world.  Every element of yesterday's sporting extravaganza went like clockwork, from the efforts of the athletes, the helpfulness and humour of the Gamesmaker volunteers and the organisation of London's transport facilities.

And the international spirit was alive and kicking too, as illustrated by this group of Belgian supporters who distracted me to record a message of support for one of their own athletes, a hockey player... delivered in French, to tell him he was king of his sport! 

 

Well, I hope that's what the message said and that they didn't take advantage of my good humour....!  Despite their wigs, they look innocent enough...er... don't they?  Then again, those cheeky smiles may prove otherwise and somewhere on YouTube there could now be a bizarre video of me repeating a potential Belgian double-entendre in my very best Anglo-French accent!

The photo of these strangers typified the atmosphere yesterday, with smiling faces everywhere I turned.

But the photograph that I love the best, is this one, which demonstrates that  it’s not just my geeky interest that prevails when it comes to recycling, it’s rather the olympic spirit of other visitors that were putting the facilities to good use. And this chap was such a good sport for letting me take this picture!

I hope LOCOG achieves its aims of processing at least 70% of its waste through recycling, composting and reuse. Through streamlining its packaging, material choices and provision of the relevant recycling processes Coca-Cola has set some solid foundations that can be replicated elsewhere. As soon as the waste data streams are available, I can’t wait to find out the relevant statistics.

But most of all, at this moment in time, I’m looking forward to more fabulous outcomes from the wonderful athletes and enjoying such great memories for many decades to come.

To witness Jessica Ennis receive her gold medal last night was a tremendous experience that I will never ever forget, and it can only be matched by watching the victory ceremonies for Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah on TV tonight and reliving the events of last night as I typed up this blogpost.

If there is one thing that I took from the experience, it is the appreciation that nurturing a passion, talent and an individual's determination with the right amount of support, coaching and direction, it really is possible to achieve something incredible.

As a mother whose real passion is to create a foundation that helps her children to achieve their own dreams, whatever they may be, it is already evident that the London 2012 Olympics will inspire them in many ways.

And as a 'rubbish blogger', I am now more determined than ever to aim as high as my own abilities will stretch, to encourage more goal-enthused innovators to push towards that ultimate goal of zero waste.

The tears of emotion have stopped now, temporarily.

And as for being speechless, I think I'm now over that!

Clearly!

Good luck Team GB for the rest of the Games!

I know I will remember London 2012 for many decades to come!

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National Zero Waste Week 2012: Coming soon!

Coming soon to a household near you - PREFERABLY YOURS - National Zero Waste Week is back!

And this year, it is encouraging you to recycle ONE MORE THING!  It's so easy to get involved, either on your own, at home, or at your place of work!  You can find out much more information over at My Zero Waste, where the fabulous Mrs Green is leading the way once more.

As ever I will be supporting National Zero Waste Week from my corner of Suffolk and will be back soon with more exciting news on what's happening locally. 

In the meantime, for a trip down memory lane, here's what happened on the Rubbish Diet last year, along with a glimpse at 2010, a retro peek at 2009 and a real delve into the archives of 2008 when My Zero Waste launched their very first Zero Waste Week! 

So which one more thing are you going to recycle this year? 

Have you decided yet?

For inspiration, visit www,myzerowaste.com, pop along to www.recyclenow.com, and if you happen to live in Suffolk, you really should take a look at the fantastic resource for Suffolk Recycling!

So remember, National Zero Waste Week takes place on 3-9 September!  But please don't contain your excitement until then.  Check out the NZWW 2012 page on the My Zero Waste website and please help spread the news on Twitter and Facebook.

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