Skip to main content

Food Confusion

THE definition of “food” nowadays can pose some difficulty when almost anything can be put into the mouth and ingested. Our age has already defined food beyond the staples, the fruits, the vegetables, or the meats of old.

Even the term “food supplement” adds to the confusion since fruits and vegetables provide the vita-minerals they contain. Supplements, too, are presented as “processed” foods. So the demarcation has faded. A piece of mango can be presented as “food supplement” as the capsule popped into your mouth.

What is food then? We have to go back to basics. Food must be anything you can eat or drink, and must provide nutritional support to your body without any therapeutic effects. Even this definition has problems. It is a fact of medical science that... [Read more.]


This article is available in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 24 November 2010.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Deadly X-Gene Mutants

A RECENT study on macrophages (i.e. defensive cells in our body that engulf threatening substances inside our body) introduced me to a lethal, genetic disease that targets the male population. This disease is called Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), named after the French neurologist Guillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne, who described it in 1861. While it has an incidence of one in 3,500 newborn males, health experts consider this as the most common lethal disease of childhood around the world. Mutation in the male (X) chromosome [dystrophin gene, locus Xp21] causes a rapid degeneration of the muscles, leading into an eventual loss of walking ability and then death. While females do not exhibit symptoms, they can be carriers of these defective genes, especially if the father had this condition or the mother is also a carrier. Symptoms usually appear before age five; at times visible in early infancy. These symptoms involve... ( Read more .)  This article appears in Sun-Star Ce...
Post a Comment
Read more

Death By Heat Stroke in the Philippines

The hotter and earlier-onset El Niño phenomenon this year 2010 poses a threat to the Filipino lives. How much life it took? See incidence that reached the news. UPDATE  On 19 May 2010, candidate army soldier Ericson Pascua (22) came on his first day of training in Isabela when he collapsed after a series of strenous exercise. Although rushed to the hospital immediately, he died shortly afterwards (around 11 a.m.) due to heat stroke. That day Isabela peaked at 38.2 degrees Celsius. Sixteen others were rushed to the hospital for dehydration and heat exhaustion. (Check report ) On 28 April 2010, a veteran Cavite cop, PO3 Florencio Gamana Alivio (48),  succumbed to cardiac arrest as a result to heatstroke while having tae bo with his colleagues at the Cavite Police Provincial Office (CPPO) grounds in Camp General Pantaleon. He reached the Imus MEdical Center but pronounced dead at 5:15 PM. (Check report ) In Batangas, former governor Amando Sanchez (57)di...
1 comment
Read more