Nutrition

October 16, 2013 — Men who ate at least one or two servings a week of white fish such as tilapia, cod, or halibut had improved sperm quality compared with those who ate none. Interestingly, eating two or three servings a week of fattier fish such as salmon and tuna was linked to a 34 percent higher sperm count —s o it may pay to eat a variety of fish, which, yes, will also protect a man’s heart.

Getting about an hour a day of exercise could lead to higher sperm counts and reduce infertility, new research suggests, and weight-lifting appears to be particularly helpful. On the dietary front, men may want to avoid hot dogs and eat more fish to improve their sperm quality. But they don’t need to worry too much about drinking caffeinated coffee or alcohol in moderation.

Those intriguing new findings were announced this week by Harvard School of Public Health researchers at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s annual meeting in Boston. They’re based on lifestyle surveys and sperm samples collected from about 150 men evaluated for infertility at the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center over the past six years; the exercise study was not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, which means we should give it a bit of extra scrutiny.

What’s more, the researchers could only make statistical associations and couldn’t prove that exercise or dietary habits directly affected sperm production.

That said, men struggling with infertility might want to consider trying some common sense lifestyle approaches to see whether they work to improve their sperm count and quality, said Jorge Chavarro, an assistant professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, who was a co-author on all of the new studies.

Many of these changes, he added, coincide with recommendations made by the American Heart Association to lower a man’s risk of heart disease.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe 

 

October 15, 2013 — As part of New York’s ongoing Nordic Food Festival, the Norwegian Seafood Council hosted a roundtable with journalists to help tackle some of the misconceptions surrounding farmed seafood. The panel of nutritionists, chefs and farmers assembled at Aquavit agreed on one thing; what is left out of the noise surrounding the debate about wild vs farmed, is that the risks of not eating seafood outweighs it all.

Chef and restaurateur Peter Hoffman pleaded with the audience to move beyond the simple and false dichotomy of wild caught seafood equals good, and farmed seafood equals bad. “It’s more complicated than that.” In his work with the Chef’s Collaborative he has been helping chefs look deeper into the issues and start examining how wild fish is caught, and what kind of farming practices are used.

“Why does seafood get all the negative environmental focus,” asked Dr Mozaffarian of Harvard University, “too much energy is spent on comparing wild to farmed fish.” The appropriate comparison, in terms of environmental and health impacts, are how seafood stacks up compared to other protein production systems. “With this focus in mind the answer to the question of wild vs. farmed salmon is probably to stop eating beef,” he joked.

According to the Norwegian Seafood Council salmon aquaculture is among the most resource-efficient methods of food production, as salmon are more than twice as efficient as pork and chicken, and 8-10 times as efficient as cattle, as converting feed to energy, and ultimately meat for human consumption.

Dr Mozaffarian also discussed the influence of people’s romantic view of fishing, as the last bastion of food from a wild source. The industry must get better at communicating a compelling story – from fjord to fork – that emphasis both the nutritional and environmental credentials of farmed fish.

Read the full story at The Fish Site

October 9, 2013 — Captain Ahab had Moby Dick. For Gorton’s, the Gloucester-based seafood company, the holy grail is the sustainable fish stick.

Fretting about supplies of Alaska pollock, tilapia, and salmon, Gorton’s turned to the New England Aquarium for help on how to promote sustainable fishing practices and responsible aquaculture. Gorton’s isn’t the first company to look to the New England Aquarium for advice. Since 2000, the aquarium has been advising the Stop & Shop supermarket chain on how to improve the sustainability of its seafood. Another consulting client of the aquarium’s: The corporate parent of the Red Lobster restaurant chain.

In fact, so many companies are seeking advice on such matters that the Boston-based aquarium now operates its Sustainable Seafood Advisory Services unit as a fee-for-service consultancy. The consultancy advises companies in the food industry on issues regarding environmentally responsible seafood and facilitates proactive changes along their supply chains to favor marine conservation.

In any case, Gorton’s and the Aquarium are marking the fifth anniversary of their collaboration with a Wednesday lunch that features such items as a fish sandwich fillet with siracha mayonnaise and grilled vegetable relish. (In the library of artisanal mayonnaises, siracha is presumably right up there.) Also on the menu: Parmesan dusted fish sticks with garlic dipping sauce. (Alas, the advance copy of the menu does not include a recommended wine pairing for the fish sticks entree.)

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

WASHINGTON — October 9, 2013 — The government shutdown is endangering what America eats, food safety experts said this week, as all inspections of domestic food except meat and poultry have halted and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recalled furloughed workers to handle a salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds of people in 18 states.

Offices are dark across the federal agencies charged with making sure that the fruit, vegetables, dairy products and a vast array of other domestically produced food are safe to consume. Inspectors, administrative staff, lab technicians, communications specialists and other support staff members have been sent home while lawmakers wrangle over government spending.

“This is a self-inflicted wound that is putting people’s health at risk,” said Representative Rosa L. DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, a longtime food safety advocate.

Because the shutdown comes on top of earlier budget cuts to the agencies, she said, “you’re creating the potential for a real public health crisis.”

At the same time, several crucial agriculture reports used by traders and farmers have been canceled because of the shutdown, seriously hampering decision making about planting and disrupting commodities markets. The highest-profile report canceled because of the shutdown is World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates, which supplies statistics on the worldwide production of crops from cotton to corn. It also provides data on other agricultural products, including meat and sugar.

“It leaves the commodities market in a bit of a fog,” said Christopher Narayan, an analyst with the bank Société Générale in New York, who said investors would face difficulties in obtaining accurate information.

Read the full story at The New York Times 

 

NEW BEDFORD, Mass., — October 9, 2013 — The following was released by The Ocean Explorium:

The Ocean Explorium will host its inaugural "Exploring Sustainable Seafood: The ART of Pairing" Gala Dinner and Auction at the Waterfront Grille on Tuesday, October 29, from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.

"We are pleased that Chefs John Bentley, Lisa Dirienzo, Mike Melo, Sally Myers and Stephen Worden will be joining us" said Development Officer Amanda DeGrace. "They are meeting to determine who will prepare which dish, and what wines will best complement the menu. We will share more about the various courses once the menu is finalized. One thing is absolutely certain: Sally Myers will be baking, so the dessert course is guaranteed to be wonderful!"

The Gala planning committee has already secured several original artworks and extraordinary experiences for the Auction. Proceeds of the Gala Dinner and Auction will support educational initiatives at the Ocean Explorium, including student field trips, teacher Professional Development courses and public programs.

Ms. DeGrace added "With this event we celebrate and support our local resources: foods and those who harvest them; wines and those who produce them; arts and those who create them. Through this event we support educational experiences for our students and life-long learners.

We invite friends who share a passion for food, wine and art to join us as we showcase the SouthCoast while supporting a great cause."

More information about "Exploring Sustainable Seafood: The ART of Pairing" Gala Dinner and Auction can be found on the Ocean Explorium website, oceanexplorium.org, or by calling 508.994.5400.

View a PDF version of the press release here

 

 

October 8, 2013 — Matt Baumann took a career leap from tax lawyer to fish smoker. Last December he and his brother, Ben, visited their parents in Michigan, and tested a new smoker with salmon and trout.

“We couldn’t believe how good it turned out,” says Baumann. On the long car ride back to Boston, Baumann devised a plan to start a wholesale fish smoking venture.“I always wanted to run my own business,” he says.

The budding entrepreneur overhauled a barn in Sudbury and launched Matt’s The Amazing Smokehouse, offering salmon fillets (4 ounces for $9) and smoked bluefish dip (8 ounces for $9).

Baumann brines wild Alaskan coho and sustainably harvested Canadian salmon, and smokes slabs with cedar and hickory woods.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe 

PRINCETON, N.J. — October 3, 2013 — Consumer confidence in the safety of foods and beverages sold in the U.S. has dropped over the past five years according to Multi-sponsor Surveys' Study of Clean Food & Beverage Labels. In this survey conducted in May/June 2013 among a national sample of 2,100 adults, one in six express a "great deal" of confidence in food safety. By comparison, in 2008 approximately one in four adults expressed a "great deal" of confidence.

The safety of imported foods is now the most pressing concern, followed by concerns about:

– Exposure to pesticides on foods
– Exposure to food-borne pathogens (e-coli, salmonella, etc.)
– Use of antibiotics or growth hormones in livestock

Efforts to consume fresh, unprocessed foods have increased over the same time span that confidence in food safety declined. Since 2008 the percentage of adults who strongly agree they "make a strong effort to consume fresh foods instead of processed foods" increased from 24% to 32%. Many are trying to eat both the cleanest and safest foods they can find.

Read the full story at RFD TV 

 

October 2, 2013 — The mild, flaky white fish is common in Europe, so tourists are delighted when they — rarely — find it here. But the goal for Cape fishermen and chefs is to get local folks asking for the spiny dogfish shark that is so plentiful regulators recently increased catch limits.

You can save a pretty penny buying fish and chips made with dogfish — rather than cod or haddock – at the Chatham Pier Fish Market, but you have to ask for it on a day when the market has it on hand.

The mild, flaky white fish is common in Europe, so tourists are delighted when they — rarely — find it here. But the goal for Cape fishermen and chefs is to get local folks asking for the spiny dogfish shark that is so plentiful regulators recently increased catch limits.

"The limit isn't the problem, the price is the problem," says John Tuttle of Chatham, owner and operator of the Cuda. Casting long lines with hooks from his 40-foot vessel, Tuttle brings in dogfish and earns 13 to 14 cents a pound — about 20 times less than the going price for cod.

Tuttle, a fisherman for 35 years, says, "In the past, I haven't really brought (dogfish) in because cod and haddock were more profitable. But in the past few years, 8 out of 10 of my hooks are dogfish."

"Dogfish fillets are very mild, but if you cook it with spices, it's very good. The texture stays together well. It's a nice white, flaky fish you can bake, stir-fry or deep fry," Tuttle says.

Last week, Lyric Restaurant chef Toby Hill cooked for Tuttle and about 75 others at a reception the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen's Alliance hosted to promote the use of dogfish and skate, another underutilized fish found in Cape waters.

Read the full story from the Cape Cod Times

WEST NEWTON, Mass., — October 1, 2013 — Alewives and the other unconventional seafood on the Lumiere menu are part of an “Eating With the Ecosystem” program from Rhode Island, aimed at educating diners about preserving marine ecosystems. Lumiere is among five local restaurants celebrating seafood from the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and Southern New England waters. Leviton’s menu will also include sake-poached monkfish liver and white hake.

Michael Leviton arranges fillets of golden alewives over a scoop of ramp remoulade, then drizzles ramp vinaigrette along the plate’s edge at Lumiere, his upscale restaurant recently ranked fifth for top food by Zagat Boston. The humble alewife, a fish so pedestrian it is used as lobster bait, has been elevated. It will be featured next week at a $60 per person dinner.

Until the turn of the last century, alewives were a diet staple in many coastal communities, and a measure of the ecological health of waterways. Today, alewives can be commercially fished only along the Eastern Seaboard in Maine.

Sarah Schumann, a fisherman and environmentalist from Warren, R.I., created “Eating With the Ecosystem” last year as a way to unite chefs, diners, fishermen, and scientists in nurturing biodiversity in marine waterways. Schumann says consumers can help this effort by “embracing what the ocean has to offer” and not just buying cod, flounder, and tuna. “The way ‘sustainable seafood’ is usually used, to refer to specific products, ignores the broader context affecting the ability of marine ecosystems to regenerate edible fish products for human consumption,” writes Schumann, who holds degrees in marine affairs and environmental policy, in an e-mail. That context, she says, includes the impact of climate change, pollution, coastal habitat degradation, and the need to make fishing viable for small-scale fishermen.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe 

 

September 29, 2013 — A set of six healthy habits, including eating more tomatoes and less processed red meat, helped men reduce their risk of dying from prostate cancer, a study found.

Researchers analyzed information gathered from almost 46,000 men for 25 years and found that those who adopted five or six of the habits had a 39 percent lower risk of developing lethal prostate cancer than those who adopted one or none of the habits, according to the results presented at the European Cancer Congress in Amsterdam yesterday. In another study involving more than 21,000 men, the risk reduction was 47 percent.

Each of the six habits, which also included not smoking, exercising, eating fatty fish and having a body-mass index of less than 30, has been linked with lowering prostate cancer risk, but their joint effect hasn’t been studied before, said Stacey Kenfield, a University of California, San Francisco, researcher who presented the results. The scientists are now studying which elements play the most important role in reducing cancer risk, she said.

“Encouraging men and counseling men to adopt these six factors will likely improve their overall health and hopefully also improve their prostate-cancer risk,” Kenfield said in the presentation. “Our data suggest that adopting these practices may prevent a large proportion of lethal prostate cancer.”

While one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, making it the most common type of tumor, most don’t die from it. There are 2.5 million men living in the U.S. with prostate cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

Read the full story at Bloomberg Businessweek