By Wendy M. HenrichsBoard Certified Chiropractic Pediatrician and Nutrition Counselor

Is your diet in need of a reboot before the holidays? Remember that your diet is how and what you eat, not something that you do for a short period of time to lose weight. There are several popular diet patterns today, including Keto, Paleo, Gluten Free, Low Carb, High Protein, Whole 30, and Mediterranean. The number one diet pattern in 2018 was Intermittent Fasting. This article will explore intermittent fasting and its benefits. If you are looking for ways to manage your weight, decrease inflammation and pain, lower your blood pressure, lower your total cholesterol, decrease your risk for heart disease and diabetes along with having more energy and longevity then intermittent fasting could be for you.

Fasting originated in ancient evolution and healing tradition across millennia. It has been shown to support overall metabolic health. It supports cellular cleanup which leads to cellular regeneration and an increase in circulating stem cells (i.e. younger cells). It impacts genetic markers associated with an increase in human longevity and health span.

Fasting is not a fad. In Obesity 2019, those practicing time-restricted eating within a six-hour period and fasting for 18 hours improved fat-burning and lowered levels of the hungry hormone ghrelin, as compared to those who ate exact same meals in 12-hour period. Eating only during limited hours can improve weight management, increase longevity, and improve our immune systems ability to fight disease. Mt. Sinai researchers published a study (Cell, Aug. 22, 2019) showing that fasting reduces inflammation and improves chronic inflammatory diseases without affecting the immune systems response to acute infections. Intermittent fasting is known to improve sensitivity to blood glucose, lower blood glucose, protect against fatty liver, and lower pancreatic fat.

There are several approaches to intermittent fasting but, in my opinion, a 12-16 hour fasting period that includes breakfast and eating your last meal before 6 p.m. is doable for the average person with a multitude of benefits. A study published in Nutrients 2019 compared the effects of eating a high fat, high sugar diet (the Standard American Diet-SAD) to a 12-16-hour intermittent fasting diet. Eating more than six meals and snacks daily while skipping breakfast, eating high fat and high sugar, and eating the last meal later at night with a reduced fasting period causes increased hunger, inflammation and total cholesterol, and a decrease in insulin sensitivity. Just skipping breakfast leads to increased LDLs, increased body fat, increased weight and an increased incidence of diabetes. Eating breakfast and eating your last meal before 6pm with a fasting period between 12-16 hours has many positive effects such as decreased hunger, decreased inflammation (leads to decreased pain), decreased total cholesterol and increased insulin sensitivity. There were also decreases in LDLs, blood pressure, body weight, body fat and a decreased risk of diabetes and heart disease. These are some very compelling reasons to consider intermittent fasting.

Some things to keep in mind if you are considering intermittent fasting: Eat Breakfast: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It ignites your metabolism and your brain. Breakfast should include protein, healthy fats (avocado, grass-fed organic butter, salmon, omega 3 eggs, nuts or seeds), fruit or vegetables. Skipping breakfast leads to increases in body weight, body fat, LDLs and risk of diabetes. Eat Dinner/Supper before 6 p.m. (if possible): Eating later at night leads to increases in fat deposition, blood pressure, cholesterol and increased risk of diabetes and heart disease. I suggest brushing your teeth after supper which helps prevent the evening noshing. Your dinner should include four ounces of lean protein (organic chicken, grass fed beef, wild game, wild caught fish, or legumes) paired with one to two cups of steamed vegetables and/or leafy greens. If you must have starch, limit it to a half-cup serving. Eat three meals a day with two small snacks (if needed) that include protein, good fats, veggies and/or fruits. Fast for 12-16 hours between supper and breakfast: This improves your ability to burn stored fat, which amps up your metabolism. Eat whole foods that do not come from boxes or packages. That is, eat mostly plant derived food like fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables plus lean protein sources such as eggs, organic chicken, grass fed beef, wild game, wild caught fish, legumes and nuts. Eat organic foods as much as possible. Visit http://www.ewg.org for the dirty dozen and clean 15 as a guide. Eat good fats from grass fed butter, olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil and grape seed oil. Drink half of your body weight in ounces of water daily. Try for eight ounces of water per hour throughout your waking hours. Avoid trans fats, hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils/fats.

Intermittent fasting was used by our ancestors, sometimes out of necessity. It is a way to lower your blood pressure, lower your cholesterol and LDLs, decrease your risk for diabetes and heart disease along with long term weight management while increasing energy and longevity. Consider intermittent fasting as a means to not only live longer but get more life out of your years.

Dr. Wendy Henrichs is a board certified chiropractor and nutrition counselor at Timber Land Chiropractic in Rhinelander. For a complimentary chiropractic, nutrition or lifestyle counseling consultation, visit TimberlandChiropractic.com, Facebook, or call 715-362-4852.

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The benefits of intermittent fasting - Starjournalnow

As far as meat alternatives are concerned, there are few people who have been in the business as long as Tim Finnigan.

He's been working at U.K.-based Quorn and its preceding corporate owners since 1995, and currently works as the chief scientific adviser. Almost 25 years ago, what is now a global meat alternative giant that claims to have served nearly 5 billion meals to consumers in 17 countries, was a project at British food company Rank HovasMcDougal. It dealt with turning mycoprotein, a fermented fungus culture, into food.Finnigan, a food scientist, expected work on the project to last maybe a year or two.

"I just found it a fascination, this whole idea ... was actually rooted back in the '60sand one man's vision, which is ... very inspiring," he said. "To kind of cut a long story short, that's where I've been ever since."

Tim Finnigan

Quorn first entered the U.K. marketplace in 1985, and started being distributed there in 1993. The company's products, which include meat-free burgers, fishless sticks, sausages, deli slices, roasts and cheese cutlets, made it to North American shelves in 2002.Quorn's sales in the U.S. grew 24% in the last year, according to Ben Sussna, the brand's U.S. director of marketing and innovation practice.

Through almost a quarter century at the company and in the meat alternative space Finnigan said he has seen it all. There have been times when consumers weren't necessarily interested in the segment. And now, meat alternatives are the hottest area in food. As the category becomes crowded with upstarts and new products, Quorn, currently owned by Philippines-based noodle powerhouse Monde Nissin, isn't standing still. Finnigan said the company is investing in improving its capacity, technology and knowledge.

The idea that became the company started in the 1960s when futurists projected the human race would run out of protein by the 1990s. J. Arthur Rank, a British industrialist, instructed scientists to work toward finding a non-animal solution to this potential problem. The fungus Fusarium venenatumwas discovered in soil in 1967, and scientists figured out a process to grow, ferment and assemble it into mycoprotein, which is then dried and processed to take on the characteristics of meat.

Mycoprotein is easily adaptable to different textures and tastes, which explains why Quorn has such a wide range of products. Finnigan said part of the reason Quorn has been able to succeed is the attention the company has paid to the variety and quality of its products.

"You quickly become irrelevant if your food doesn't excite and delight the consumer or intrigue chefs. I mean, those are the two must-have things for anybody who wants to win in this space," Finnigan said. "The quality of the food has to be number one."

Quorn's long history, he said, shows the product has endurance on the market. And he hopes the food can speak for itself.

Finnigan recalled an early meeting with a U.S. company he was hoping to do a commercial partnership with about 20 years ago. The people he was presenting to didn't really seem to understand what he was talking about.

"So I stopped the presentation, said, 'Look, let's just try some of the food.' And of course, then, the lights went on and these guys said, 'Yeah, these guys are from the U.K.They've got some kicka-- products.' And the rest was really easy because they thought the food was so amazing.

Tim Finnigan

Chief science officer, Quorn

"So I stopped the presentation, said, 'Look, let's just try some of the food,' " he said. "And of course, then, the lights went on and these guys said, 'Yeah, these guys are from the U.K.They've got some kicka-- products.' And the rest was really easy because they thought the food was so amazing."

While taste is paramount to keeping Quorn on the market, so are the product's sustainability and mycoprotein's health benefits. Finnigan said Quorn promotes its sustainability and health bona fides on a regular basis. After all, the company was founded with the goal of becoming a sustainable source of food for an uncertain future. Quorn puts out annual sustainability reportsto tout its low carbon footprint and water usage. According to the company, Quorn's carbon footprint is 10 times lower than beef and four times lower than chicken. It uses 20 times less water than beef and 6 times less water than chicken.

As for its health benefits, Quorn routinely funds and participates in industry studies. The ingredient itself, the company says, has all nine amino acids, no cholesterol, high fiber and is low fat.

"We can't just separate the impact of the choices we make in our diets from the impact on the health of our bodies and the health of the planet," Finnigan said. "Those two things have to be talked about together ... and I think that that's quite an important thing,as an industry, to start discussing."

Finnigan said younger generations are more ready to discuss this and take these aspects to heart. And as long as the company can show consumers that mycoprotein is good for them and the planet, consumers will be interested. He said many companies aspire to put back more than they take out when it comes to natural resources, and Quorn is trying to show its efforts to get there.

Quorn

While several newer companies are using fermentation to create protein products including Perfect Day, which makes dairy protein that way, and Future Meat Technologies, a manufacturer of fermented meat Quorn has been at it for decades. And while the process is rather complicated, the company has been proactive in educating consumers on how the products are made.

Finnigan has starred in videos taking consumers through the process while looking right at the fermenters where the product is born. And even though the process is a bit science heavy, it also adds to transparency, something that consumers are clamoring for.

"We have to have the good quality science that actually removes consumer uncertainty," he said.

"We can't just separate the impact of the choices we make in our diets from the impact on the health of our bodies and the health of the planet. Those two things have to be talked about together ... and I think that that's quite an important thing, as an industry, to start discussing."

Tim Finnigan

Chief science officer, Quorn

Although mycoprotein is created through a lengthy process, and is heavily processed in order to become a meat substitute, Quorn's products have a cleaner label than many competitors in the meat alternative space. This is one of its biggest differentiators, Finnigan said, and one that it may not play up enough.

"We're growing our tiny little member of the fungi family, and then we're simply cooking it and freezing it to create the texture," he said. "Whereas if you want to do something like [other popular meat-free alternatives] ... you can end up with a back-of-pack label that does look a bit like a chemistry set."

Quorn also has made efforts to be transparent with its labeling. In recent years, the brand has settled lawsuitsfrom U.S. consumers who said they were misled by package statements describing mycoprotein's origin. One lawsuit, settled last year,is a wrongful death case involving a child with a mold allergy who died of anaphylactic shock after eating a Quorn product. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has advocated to take mycoproten off of the FDA's GRAS list, claims there have been thousands of adverse reactions to the ingredient.

While the meat alternative movement is hot, Quorn is focusing on what's next. Finnigan said the company has a three-year innovation pipeline, and is always looking for new applications for mycoprotein.

Right now, there is some work being done to try to make a drinkable version, playing into the high-protein beverage trend. The company also has been talking to U.K. restaurants about some meat-free product launches.

Finnigan said he is interested in some of the work underway in the sector, including startups such as Sustainable Bioproducts that are producing similar fermented fungal protein items. He said while each company wants profits, the meat alternative segment is more about working together toward a common goal and less about cutthroat competition. The opportunities, he said, are enormous.

"We have to find a way of assuring a sustainable food future through the creation of healthy new proteins with the low environmental impacts. Because if you look at just business as usual with small adjustments, then it doesn't look very pretty," Finnigan said. "So it is important, I think, that the new entrants come. And they bring their energy, and if it's a great food and the consumers are delighted by that, then, you know, that's got in the long term to be a good thing. It might be difficult for some organizations, you know, that are toughing it out in the marketplace, but it's so important that we win, I think, as a sector."

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Quorn's secret to longevity in the meat alternative sector - Food Dive

Kiran Paudyal is an ecosystems services specialist at Forest Action Nepal. Chun Bahadur Gurung, is a development communication specialist and Ph.D. candidate at Tribhuvan University in Nepal.

Bamboo, which belongs to the grass family, is one of the fastest growing species of the plant kingdom. Its herculean attributes are not at first obvious when encountered in the forest. Although its hollow stems that bend in the wind may make it appear weak, its provision of a wide variety of ecosystem services defined as the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human well-being, makes this an invaluable plant.

Found in tropical and alpine climatic zones of Africa, Asia, Central and South America, scientists have so far recorded more than 1,600 bamboo species, which combined cover more than 31 million hectares of land.

With myriad potential uses, bamboo is an essential material for people living in poverty in developing countries. It is widely used as a raw material in industry, in handicrafts, its fibers are used to weave clothes and make paper, and its shoots and sprouts are used for food.

It may be no surprise then, that bamboo features heavily in cultural traditions. In Indonesia, it is used in ceremonies and in the construction of such instruments as the Balinese rindik. In China, its symbolism of modest character and longevity is heralded; in rural Nepal, babies sleep in beautiful bamboo cradles and the dead are buried in bamboo coffins.

From floods to good fortune in Nepal

Nepal a landlocked country is blessed with bamboo diversity. The country has more than 53 species covering an estimated area of 63,000 hectares of land.

Nepal has a tale to tell, a story of 70 households from Gauringar village, Chitwan, in the center of the country. In 2010, incessant rain caused flash floods. Homes and buildings near the Rui river in Gauringar were destroyed. When the river banks were washed away, tons of silt and sand flooded the land, rendering it infertile.

The resilient residents worked hard to reverse their fortunes: in their efforts, they planted 10,000 native bamboo seedlings. In less than a decade, the flood-ravaged land turned into a beautiful bamboo forest. Some 700 hectares of land were rehabilitated, allowing local communities to enjoy bamboo shoots for food and all of the benefits the bamboo forest provides. The new forest has even become instrumental in mitigating human-wildlife conflict, as Gauringar sits in the buffer zone of Chitwan National Park, home to the rhino, sloth bear, tiger, elephant, wild boar and leopard.

Bamboo for water and energy in Indonesia

Across the Indonesian archipelago, bamboo can be found in 30 provinces, covering 2.1 million hectares of land. By selling bamboo shoots, a farmer on Java can earn $420700 per hectare, while others have recognized it for its incredible restoration properties. Scientist Yusuf Samsudin at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) reports how payments for environmental services (PES) have been awarded to communities living up-stream of Mount Batur and its lake in Bali, where the main water source for coastal communities flows. While many trees store around 35 to 40 percent of rainfall, bamboo can store up to 90 percent of rainfall.

Bamboo can provide sustainable supplies of biomass for energy productionwithout compromising food security or unduly affecting the wider landscape. One of CIFORs partners Clean Power Indonesia successfully developed a community-based power plant that uses biomass from bamboo in rural Indonesia. CIFOR Senior Scientist Himlal Baral says that CIFOR and partners are currently looking for opportunities to scale this up in several locations in Indonesia.

Untapped green good in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, two main bamboo species (Arundinaria alpine and Oxytenanthera abyssinica) grow naturally in six regions on a million hectares of land, making up 8.2 percent of the total forest area of the country.

However, bamboo was close to extinction in natural forests due to agriculture-related deforestation and forest degradation, and demand for fuelwood and timber in the villages. In the 1990s, more than 100 innovative smallholders planted savanna bamboo within agroforestry systems using a rhizome offset method from the natural forest, developing bamboo forests in the villages for multiple benefits.

Although bamboo coverage has been high in Ethiopia in recent years, uses have been traditional, and its full export market potential has yet to be realized.

Because bamboo is a fast-growing species and adapts to harsh environments, people in Ethiopia are likely to pay more attention to it for rehabilitating degraded areas.

The missing link an ecosystem services framework built from bamboo

According to Sisay Nune et al. (2013) the capacity to provide regulating services such as soil conservation, environmental rehabilitation and carbon sequestration of forestland and other forest types, were assumed to be 99 and 93 percent respectively as compared with bare land. Thanks to a complex network of rhizome-root systems underground.

A recent study has shown that the ecosystem services a bambooforest can provide support natural, plantations, grasslands, and farmlands. Additionally, bamboo forests have proven more effective in slope stabilization and soil erosion control compared to other land use practices such as forests and grasslands.

It has an incredible ability to restore land, making it an important contributor in reaching such global restoration agreements as the Bonn Challenge and the New York Declaration on Forests. Experts engaged in bamboo research agree that a good framework is key to improve assessment of bamboo ecosystem services and to further strengthen bamboo forests for landscape restoration globally. During this research, the experts agreed that the lack of an appropriate framework, tools and methods means that the true ecosystem services of bamboo forests have not been properly assessed.

The best ecosystem service assessment framework accounts for the significance of bamboo forests to people and policymakers. Recently, Kiran Paudyal et al. (2019) designed a framework and tested it in Nepal, Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Contributions received from local communities and government further refined it, which facilitates limited resources while offering new opportunities to connect bamboo forests with ecosystem service markets from local to global scales such as PES including payment for carbon through REDD+ programs. The recently developed framework can now be replicated in other parts of the world.

Scientists are deeply concerned that the benefits of bamboo often go unnoticed. In view of the plants important but under-appreciated benefits, Paudyal, a bamboo expert said: Bamboo recharges groundwater and it significantly absorbs carbon, but it is hardly acknowledged.

An ecosystem framework can help significantly in the promotion of bamboo forests through effective management. Case studies conducted in three countries with different contexts confirmed that bamboo forests become increasingly important, and the study also validates that bamboos benefits have been found quite common globally.

Bamboo forests in different countries and context, have proven to be the best option for both landscape restoration and the supply of various ecosystem services. These forests supply more ecosystem services than any other type of planted forests. Restoration of degraded and abandoned land with bamboo could be an effective solution to cope with poverty, hunger and climate change in many parts of the world especially in developing countries.

This research was funded by CIFOR as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry and the International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR), China.

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What bamboo forests do for nature and human well-being - Forests News, Center for International Forestry Research