The China Study II: Gender, mortality, and the mysterious factor X

WarpPLS and HealthCorrelator for Excel were used to do the analyses below. For other China Study analyses, many using WarpPLS as well as HealthCorrelator for Excel, click here. For the dataset used, visit the HealthCorrelator for Excel site and check under the sample datasets area. As always, I thank Dr. T. Colin Campbell and his collaborators for making the data publicly available for independent analyses.In my previous post I mentioned some odd results that led me to additional analyses. Below is a screen snapshot summarizing one such analysis, of the ordered associations between mortality in the 35-69 and 70-79 age ranges...

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Washing with an Ecoegg

Having had a week of half-term fun, it's time to channel the domestic goddess spirit and get back to the chores.   Can you sense my lack of enthusiasm?  Well I suppose a girl can't be off enjoying herself all of the time and before the excitement of Halloween kicks off, today's task is catching up with a huge pile of laundry!Anyone who's followed this blog for a while will know just how much I adore my relationship with the washing machine.  In fact this old post about washing with balls was as true then as it is now, except for the tiny detail about the balls.Don't get me wrong.  The Eco Balls have done a fabulous job,...

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The China Study II: Animal protein, wheat, and mortality … there is something odd here!

WarpPLS and HealthCorrelator for Excel were used in the analyses below. For other China Study analyses, many using WarpPLS and HealthCorrelator for Excel, click here. For the dataset used, visit the HealthCorrelator for Excel site and check under the sample datasets area. I thank Dr. T. Colin Campbell and his collaborators at the University of Oxford for making the data publicly available for independent analyses.The graph below shows the results of a multivariate linear WarpPLS analysis including the following variables: Wheat (wheat flour consumption in g/d), Aprot (animal protein consumption in g/d), Mor35_69 (number...

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Adding glamour to zero waste

Vivienne Westwood Skyscraper design Forget cardboard compactors.  These days jumping on your used pizza boxes in killer heels is the way to go to for adding extra sex appeal to recycling. Especially if you're wearing zero waste shoes.Okay, I jest. I know I like to entertain my friends but the only way these shoes would add such glamour to my recycling activities is in carrying my feet towards my kitchen bin!   Performing star jumps in high heels just to crush old boxes is a little far fetched, even for me.However, the zero waste aspect of these shoes isn't.  They're one of the latest designs to come out from Melissa, a Brazilian...

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Ornamental melons & food waste

(Photo credit: Bettnet on Flickr Creative Commons License)How I wish I had the patience to carve fruit like this.  The best I can do is to create an oddity of star-shaped slices from a hacked apple, a technique I learned a while back when trying to reinvigorate my children's interest in fruit.  They were going through that phase, turning up their noses at anything but grapes and for a while much of the produce that I used to cart home from the supermarket would end up in the compost bin.In short, our home was embellished with a weekly bowl of fruit whose purpose had become increasingly ornamental and it seemed I was the worst offender. ...

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Book review: Perfect Health Diet

Perfect Health Diet is a book that one should own. It is not the type of book that you can get from your local library and just do a quick read over (and, maybe, write a review about it). If you do that, you will probably miss several important ideas that form the foundation of this book, which is a deep foundation.The book is titled “Perfect Health Diet”, not “The Perfect Health Diet”. If you think that this is a mistake, consider that the most successful social networking web site of all time started as “The Facebook”, and then changed to simply “Facebook”; which was perceived later as a major improvement.Moreover, “Perfect Health Diet” makes...

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A rubbish hack to help sort out your waste

Amongst many things, the Dispatches documentary on Monday demonstrated how confused people still are over which packaging can be recycled in their local bins.Packaging information, especially in relation to plastics, is still inconsistent and even though the on-pack labelling is getting better, for many the uncertainty of what can be recycled locally still pervades like a bad smell.So if you're one of the hundreds of thousands who are still confused, here are my top tips. 1. Get the latest information from your councilBefore you do ANYTHING ELSE, yes,  even embarking on reading the rest of this post, get on the blower to your local council,...

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Certain mental disorders may have evolved as costs of attractive mental traits

I find costly traits fascinating, even though they pose a serious challenge to the notion that living as we evolved to live is a good thing. It is not that they always deny this notion; sometimes they do not, but add interesting and somewhat odd twists to it.Costly traits have evolved in many species (e.g., the male peacock’s train) because they maximize reproductive success, even though they are survival handicaps. Many of these traits have evolved through nature’s great venture capitalist – sexual selection.(Source: Vangoghart.org)Certain harmful mental disorders in humans, such as schizophrenia and manic–depression, are often seen as puzzles...

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Me being serious on TV: Dispatches, Britain's Rubbish, C4 8pm

Morland Sanders, investigates Britain's rubbish for C4 DispatchesI recently did some filming for the Dispatches documentary that's being broadcast tonight. It's called "Britain's Rubbish" and will be aired at 8pm on Channel 4. When I was asked to contribute, a huge part of me wanted to batten down the hatches, draw the curtains and say "Thanks but no thanks". I normally stay away from the heavy stuff and regular readers will know I don't normally campaign against issues, but instead promote ideas that help empower householders to reduce waste, even if it's just by a small amount. But as I was about to say "No thank you" to the documentary makers,...

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Karen meets Kevin at Grand Designs Live

Today I had the pleasure of meeting Kevin McCloud at the Grand Designs Live exhibition. Given that I'm a random blogger, I suppose it could have been any Kevin, so it was a real privilege to finally meet the man who, since the launch of Grand Designs on Channel 4, has left me and millions of others day-dreaming about designing our own homes.But I didn't trek all the way up to Birmingham to talk to him about that perfect self-build dream, nor to wax lyrical about my obsession with proper lighting, one of his other passions.  What really interested me on this occasion was Kevin's Green Heroes, the range of eco products that he has selected...

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Great evolution thinkers you should know about

If you follow a paleo diet, you follow a diet that aims to be consistent with evolution. This is a theory that has undergone major changes and additions since Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin proposed it in the 1800s. Wallace proposed it first, by the way, even though Darwin’s proposal was much more elaborate and supported by evidence. Darwin acknowledged Wallace's precedence, but received most of the credit for the theory anyway.(Alfred Russel Wallace; source: Wikipedia)What many people who describe themselves as paleo do not seem to know is how the theory found its footing. The original Wallace-Darwin theory (a.k.a. Darwin’s theory)...

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