Heart Association Reduce Price for Fruits and Vegetables and Save 200 000 Lives

2:57 PM in 000, 200, and, Aqua, association, for, fruits, heart, lives, price, reduce, save, vegetables

For years, the American Heart Association (AHA) was identified with a campaign to reduce consumption of red meat.  In lieu of eating so many ribeyes or sirloins or fast-food hamburger, the AHA recommended that people obtain their protein from chicken, fish or beans.

The heart association is also recommending greater consumption of fruits and vegetables, which  the group says should be more affordable. At the AHAs Epidemiology meeting meeting in Phoenix this week, experts said a 30-percent reduction in the price of fruits and vegetable could save nearly 200,000 lives over 15 years. That is roughly the population of Des Moines, Iowa.

Heres what a report in National Public Radio said this week:
"Computer models suggest that making that produce more affordable may actually translate into lower death rates from heart disease and stroke. And, the researchers add, lower prices are more effective at saving lives than traditional campaigns designed to encourage consumption of fruits and vegetables, like 5 A Day. 

The conclusion is based in part on a tool developed by researchers at Tufts University and in Britain called the U.S. Impact Food Model that included projections of U.S. demographics and cardiovascular death rates to 2030. They then combined the data with current and projected fruit and vegetable intake figures. The model allowed the team to simulate the effects of different policies on eating habits.

"We were able to take a given change of price, and [determine] what that change in price does to consumption levels," lead researcher Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard, an academic clinical fellow at Imperial College in London, told NPR.

Read the full NPR article.

Read more

Rick Steves Christmas Fundraiser Brings More than 430 000 to Bread for the World

8:46 PM in 000, 430, Aqua, bread, brings, christmas, for, fundraiser, more, rick, steves, than, the, to, world

Image from OpenClipArt

1,659 

That figure represents the number of supporters of Rick Steves who answered his challenge to help raise funds for Bread for the World during the Christmas season in 2015. The travel writer matched donations dollar for dollar.  People who donated $100 received a gift from Steves: his European Christmas gift package or his Complete Collection 2000-2016 DVD Box Set (all 100 of my travel shows)."

Steves and ex-Sen. Tom Harkin at Bread 40th anniversary (2014)

In a Thank You letter to supporters, Steves said:

"Together, you contributed $218,000. And with my match, collectively, we raised over $430,000 to help power BFTWs work in explaining to Congress the needs of our nations poor, homeless, and hungry people.

 "We all want to get our fiscal house in order. And BFTW has been very effective in its advocacy work encouraging our government not to balance the budget by cutting vital services to our nations most needy." 

Thanks so much for making this a very expensive Christmas for me. Giving like this, in partnership with caring travelers like you, makes my work even more gratifying than it already is. Happy holidays and Merry Christmas to all.

Read more

Cooke to process 240 000 quarantined salmon in N B The Chronicle Herald

11:30 PM in 000, 240, Aqua, b, chronicle, cooke, herald, in, n, process, quarantined, salmon, the, to

Cooke to process 240,000 quarantined salmon in N.B. | The Chronicle Herald

LIVERPOOL — A New Brunswick company has begun transporting thousands of fish affected by an outbreak of infectious salmon anemia from a quarantined Nova Scotia aquaculture farm to a fish plant for processing.
Cooke Aquaculture says about 240,000 fish will be transported from its farm off Coffin Island near Liverpool to a fish plant in Blacks Harbour, N.B., over the next month. The processing started last week, it said. Read More

Read more