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This Week in Health

This Week in Health
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Health News Recap of week of April 7-13, 2013

1.Salmonella in nuts

Trophy Brand Nut Mix was recalled this week for containing salmonella. The brand was mostly sold in the western provinces and no illnesses have been reported.

Once upon a time salmonella was only found in fish or chicken and, if cooked to the proper temperature, posed no risk of illness. Lately, we have seen an increase in foods like nuts and produce that are consumed raw. The bacteria can come from the soil and or processing systems and can live for up to a year on nuts.

The risk to most healthy people is minimal but to the very young or very old, they can be quite deadly.

The only way to protect yourself is to make sure that your are healthy enough to ride out any illnesses and avoid these foods if you are in the immune challenged categories.

Here is a link to the Health Canada notice.

There is new information coming out of England that the post work drink with colleagues could be more dangerous to the waistline than we thought. This study showed that out that the "relaxation" of those 2 drinks may lower your resistance to the fatty foods that often come with the drinks.

The math adds up to a lot of weight gain. Two hundred or 300 extra calories in your beverage plus 400 extra calories in fatty foods represent a whole meal. The problem is that you don't really register it as a meal and then continue on to have dinner.

3.GMO Hay, No Way!

Protests this week were spurred by the specter of government approval of genetically modified alfalfa in Canada. Banned in the EU but approved in the US, this crop is normally grown for cattle and dairy feed. The concern is that the GMO crop will cross pollinate with non GMO thereby making some Canadian produce unsellable in Europe.

Reports on the pro side include that GMO produces higher yields and may require less pesticide. There are 20 years of research saying that these crops are perfectly safe. Is that long enough to make a decision?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/04/10/f-gmo-genetically-modified-foods-consumers.html?cmp=rss

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