Two fine chaps aid my path to EV

                                                                            I think I'm getting restless and I certainly confess to a huge element of eco envy, having recently spent time with a couple of chaps who are passionate about their electric cars....and...wait for...

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Transition Town opportunity for Bury St Edmunds

If you are interested in any element of sustainability, resource efficiency or community development in Bury St Edmunds, I suggest putting 15th May in your diary and heading along to the Fox Inn (pictured above), where you will find out more about how Bury can become a Transition Town.Transition Towns have been in place since 2006, founded by Rob Hopkins, who created the first community in Totnes, Devon. Now there are over 1000 similar initiatives in 34 countries, all seeking to develop a more sustainable and resilient society, which strengthens local skills and resources in order to become less dependant on a fossil-fuel based culture.Proposed...

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My fantasy landfill bin: please vote for it!

I'm afraid I could resist no longer.  Having admired the very pretty and funky designs that have been entered into Brabantia's 'Design your Bin' competition, I finally succumbed to submitting my own entry.My urge to 'tell it like it is' in the world of  pedal bin design led to a momentary lapse of 'what the hell' today and with a few flicks of the mousepad, my entry 'Off to Landfill' was live and kicking on the competition website, featuring a photo taken at Suffolk's Foxhall landfill site back in 2008.I admit it's not the prettiest of designs.  It's probably the most rubbish design you'd ever find on a bin, but then, literally...

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Hunger is your best friend: It makes natural foods taste delicious and promotes optimal nutrient partitioning

var citeN=0; One of the biggest problems with modern diets rich in industrial foods is that they promote unnatural hunger patterns. For example, hunger can be caused by hypoglycemic dips, coupled with force-storage of fat in adipocytes, after meals rich in refined carbohydrates. This is a double-edged post-meal pattern that is induced by, among other things, abnormally elevated insulin levels. The resulting hunger is a rather unnatural type of hunger. By the way, I often read here and there, mostly in blogs, that “insulin suppresses hunger”. I frankly don’t know where this idea comes from. What actually happens is that insulin is co-secreted...

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Hormonal reductionism is as myopic as biochemical reductionism

var citeN=0; Biochemistry-based arguments can be very misleading. Yet, biochemistry can be extremely useful in the elucidation of diet and lifestyle effects that are suggested by well-designed studies of humans. If you start with a biochemistry-based argument though, and ignore actual studies of humans, you can easily convince someone that glycogen-depleting exercise (e.g., weight training) is unhealthy, because many health markers change for the worse after that type of exercise. But it is the damage caused by glycogen-depleting exercise that leads to health improvements, via short- and long-term compensatory adaptations (citeN=citeN+1;document.write(Number(citeN))...

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If your NEAT is low, maybe you should chill

var citeN=0; I wrote most of this post a while ago, and then forgot about it. The recent blogosphere storm of comments regarding cold-induced thermogenesis caught me by surprise (citeN=citeN+1;document.write(Number(citeN)) 1), and provided a motivation to get this post out. Contrary to popular perception, I guess, cold-induced thermogenesis is an extensively researched topic. Some reasonably well cited references are linked here.Let us backtrack a bit. When people say that they want to lose weight, usually what they really want is to lose is body fat. However, they frequently do things that make them lose what they do not want – muscle glycogen,...

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Nestlé: An 'eggsample' of redesigning Easter packaging

It's that time of year when traditionally the confectionery industry comes under fire."Too much plastic," we cry, as we open those boxes that protect the chocolate egg and its other sweet contents, and despite the reduction of packaging in recent years, an article in last week's Guardian, revealed that there are manufacturers, particularly those associated with the luxury end of the market, that are still not doing enough to rid us of the plastic crud that comes with our chocolate egg,So it was interesting when Nestlé's press team got in touch last week, to see if I fancied checking out their latest packaging. If that saves me the embarrassment...

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The 2012 Arch Intern Med red meat-mortality study: Eating 234 g/d of red meat could reduce mortality by 23 percent

var citeN=0; As we have seen in an earlier post on the China Study data (citeN=citeN+1;document.write(Number(citeN)) 1), which explored relationships hinted at by Denise Minger’s previous and highly perceptive analysis (citeN=citeN+1;document.write(Number(citeN)) 2), one can use a multivariate analysis tool like WarpPLS (citeN=citeN+1;document.write(Number(citeN)) 3) to explore relationships based on data reported by others. This is true even when the dataset available is fairly small.So I entered the data reported in the most recent (published online in March 2012) study looking at the relationship between red meat consumption and mortality...

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