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Thousands of U.S. locales where lead poisoning is worse than in Flint (Reuters)

Flint is famous for failing to keep lead out of its drinking water, but in December 2016, Reuters found nearly 3,000 areas with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint during the peak of that city’s contamination crisis. And more than 1,100 of these communities had a rate of elevated blood tests at least four times higher. http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-lead-testing/

Reuters attributed this to the decay of American water-delivery infrastructure.  Yet many of these lead hotspots are receiving little attention or funding.

No amount of lead is safe; tiny doses hurt your brain less, but they still hurt.  Whether you use bottled water, Brita filters, water distillers, or other means of purifying your water, make sure you keep your water pure somehow.

Is sugar or fat more dangerous to your diet?

Food for thought about the relative danger of sugar versus fat.

This doesn’t mean you should eat steak for every meal. Most of your diet should still be vegetables, with some fruit, too. Real fruit, with fiber, not fruit juice.

It does mean that most people don’t need to eat refined starches, such as bread, pasta, and rice, which quickly turn into sugar in your gastrointestinal tract.  Whole-grain products like whole-grain breads with lots of fiber are preferable because they smooth out that sugar spike, but you can safely skip those, too, if you want.

What’s the healthiest cooking oil?

Confused about which cooking oil is best to use? You’re not alone!

If you just want the short answer, scroll down.  Else keep reading.

Manufacturers will claim all sorts of things, but when you get right down to it, all cooking oils may be categorized as polyunsaturated (PUFA), monounsaturated (MUFA), and saturated fatty acids (SFA). You can think of a fatty acid as a snake:

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Eat Poop or Wash Your Hands

I took this photo while riding in a balloon in Cappadocia, Turkey
I took this photo while riding in a balloon in Cappadocia, Turkey

Years ago, we traveled through Turkey on a bus from Istanbul to Cappadocia (the Turkish equivalent to Yellowstone National Park).1 Along the way, the bus made lots of stops at the Turkish equivalent of truck stops and 7-11 convenience stores. The bathrooms were often short of warm water and soap and had faucet handles you needed to touch to use. I declined to wash my hands under such conditions and used alcohol wipes instead. Ann did wash her hands–with the dubious faucet handles and all. Later in the trip, she got the worst bout of diarrhea that she had ever experienced. For two days she had to stay within fifteen minutes of a toilet at all times and missed the balloon ride (above).

Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. But most people don’t wash their hands well enough. Normally, not washing your hands properly might only give you diarrhea or something you’ll probably survive, but occasionally you get stories about how people get tapeworms in the brain or hepatitis or norovirus. In any case, even if you “only” get a stomach virus, that’s more than enough incentive to wash your hands better. And as the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) puts it:

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The Green Smoothie is the Most Important Meal of the Day

How to automatically and quickly supercharge your diet every day.

Many people know that vegetables are great for their bodies, and they could afford to buy vegetables if they wanted to, but they don’t eat them anyway. Why?

Lack of time.

Think about how fast you could eat a cup of cookies. Then think about how much more time it would take you to chew through a cup of leafy greens.

Although you could cook vegetables to make them easier to chew and to digest, the act of cooking food (and cleaning up afterwards) takes time, too.

The obvious solution here is to pre-chew vegetables, and that means blending.

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