My views are all over the spectrum now, so I don’t belong to any political party more nor have I found a party to join or “call home”, but do find myself taking the libertarian path more often. I still vote, but it’s torture in the big elections deciding how to cast my vote, or I cave and give the lesser of the two evils my vote.

You know, be careful what you wish for, you may get it…

My biggest problem with card-carrying liberals is their lack of tolerance. They preach tolerance and are willing to be tolerant toward almost anything except criticism of liberals. This can be seen anytime I write any kind of post that has the least anti-liberal slant.

I LOVE the fact that you speak your mind. I believe that the 1st amendment gaurantees this right to you…..at least for a little longer. We have very similar political views, btw. I find it so funny that you post one negative thing about liberals or democrats, and they swarm. I actually use this as a marketing tool on one of my blogs. I will bash a liberal political figure under my normal blogger identity, then under the guise of a “ghost writer”, post a somewhat positive blog entry. I have received huge spikes of traffic from the ever tolerant and oh-so loving liberals of this country. Just as a warning….don’t do a Carrie Prejean…..then you will REALLY be cut up and thrown into the bay. I would miss your blog and and insights, so I would be really sad.

I don’t set out to offend anyone. And I don’t try to muzzle myself either. As my childhood hero Popeye the Sailor says, I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam. Based on comments such as yours and others, I would guess that my readership is roughly 50-50 as to a conservative-liberal bias. But liberals are much more vocal. If I publish anything anti conservative, I don’t get much, if any, commentary. If I post something anti liberal, they come out of the woodwork.

And, BTW, I don’t consider myself conservative at all, at least not in the Republican sense of conservative. My political bent is libertarian.

I am new to your sight. My husband and I are following a low-carb way of eating based, primarily, on your book “Protein Power” that I read quite a while ago. So far, so good.

I was surprised to find political commentary on your blog. My husband and I recently left the Republican party, due to their lack of commitment to ‘common sense’ conservative values. We both fear greatly for our country. I find your blog not only informative for nutritional information, but now will view it even more for the political commentary.

You sound like a person of strong convictions. Please, keep your opinions coming. OUR COUNTRY DESPERATELY NEEDS YOUR VOICE!

Thank You!

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

So true about bumper stickers, Dr. Eades! I go to school in Durham, and cannot escape the in-your-face liberal Obamania that has taken hold here in the Research Triangle/my university campus! It’s enough to make one apolitical if you’re not as well spoken as yourself regarding political science and economics. It’s difficult to cram current events and op-ed columns into your brain alongside chemistry problem sets and biology life cycle charts for pre-med!

Please keep sharing your political commentary! I come here for the nutrition research analysis, but stay for your humor and wit that make for engaging writing. I am always sharing your posts with my friends/family, who I am slowly converting to the high fat, low carb, nutrient dense dietary approach. Of course the erythritol-sweetened low carb sweets I make seem to help with doing the convincing. Good food talks, apparently. I admire what you do and hope to have accomplished even half as much as you have in the medical/nutrition world some day!

Turns out the polyphenols in Chardonnay grape seeds may also help the body regulate its metabolism, even prevent obesity. In recent lab testing, scientists at the University of Montpellier wanted to see if grape seed extract could prevent weight gain in hamsters. Test subjects were divided into three groups:

1. Subjects fed a normal diet
2. Subjects fed a high-fat diet
3. Subjects fed a high-fat diet but supplemented with the grape seed extract

Not surprisingly, after 12 weeks the test subjects fed a normal diet maintained a healthy weight. Subjects on the high-fat diet gained abdominal fat. These hamsters also experienced spikes in blood sugar, triglycerides, insulin and insulin resistance.

And what about the grape seed group? Could they keep off the fat?

The grape seed group did keep off the fat! Despite receiving a high-fat diet, they did not increase their abdominal fat.

So, how did they eat more fat without gaining, you ask?

It appears that Chardonnay grape seeds somehow “turned off” the body’s “switch” to retain fat. In fact, the high-fat/grape seed hamsters had 61 percent more adiponectin in their blood than their high-fat alone counterparts. Adiponectin is inversely related to body fat. The more adiponectin your body produces, the less fat you collect.

Plus, the news just kept getting better for the grape seed group. They experienced improvements in several key markers of good health.

Insulinemia (abnormally high insulin in the blood) decreased by 16.5 percent in the high-fat/grape seed group. Leptinemia (a marker for diabetes) decreased by 45 percent. The researchers also noted lowered glycemia and insulin resistance values among the high-fat/grape seed group.

Lastly, the high-fat/grape seed group experienced significant drops in two measures of oxidative stress. (Oxidative stress contributes directly to the formation of free radicals in the body.) But as an antioxidant, the grape seed extract seems to counteract oxidative stress in the test subjects. Production of NAD(P)H dropped by 30 percent and superoxide anion dropped by a whopping 74 percent. This is good news, as unchecked oxidative stress has been linked to everything from premature aging to cancer to Alzheimer’s disease.

If this is like most of these studies, the amount of extract is huge. And I doubt that humans would respond the same, anyway. And if so, would be unlikely to take the dosages required.

It should be noted that both mortgages and rents in California are astronomically high, perhaps because the state is a desirable one in which to live for many people. If they don’t go for Hollywood then they go for the redwoods. It’s possible that rent control plays a role with rental properties but that doesn’t explain the mortgages. Las Vegas is an expensive place to live for the same reason. It also doesn’t help that both regions are dry and must have water imported from elsewhere. That drives up the price of everything else.

Regressive taxes are called regressive precisely because they make everyone pay the same percentage right down to people who can’t afford to pay for anything at all. A flat tax above a certain income threshold would be more progressive than a flat sales tax that is slapped on everybody. I used to live in Tennessee and when I left, the state sales tax BASE was nine percent. That’s not counting anything the local governments pile on top. Guess who suffered more from the tax and who suffered less. And they didn’t have exemptions for food, either. (Man, that hurt!)

I don’t know what it’s like to run a business and have to deal with any extra taxes from that, but I’m perpetually surprised that business owners whine that much about them. Wouldn’t they simply be termed a cost of business? As such, if a business is profiting on top of those costs, what’s the problem? You have to pay for supplies, rent or mortgage on a building if your business has one, wages for employees, etc. You’re going to have to pay taxes either way you look at it, high or low. And businesses may create jobs but in some cases they also place a strain on the state’s resources and if they don’t pay their share of taxes then state residents who might have nothing to do with that business at all are going to have to foot the bill. If it’s a bad idea to pay for welfare or food stamps, why should Joe Blow Citizen have to pay for a toxic spill cleanup? But they always do. It’s a shame.

You wrote:

Also, if a vendor decides to raise prices on me, I can start looking for another vendor with better prices. If the State of California decides to raise taxes on me, I’m screwed. Unless, of course, I move. Which many businesses have done.

http://health.yahoo.com/experts/eatthis/26542/americas-unhealthiest-restaurants

It will never stop with the lipophobes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8

I’ve seen it. I think I even posted on a couple of years ago.

Bicycles . . .

They pull that overbooking scam at the hospitals here (UK), I am losing count of the number of people whose three monthly/six monthly appointment has been put out another nine months, and sometimes more than once. I suspect whenever they do that you are taken off the waiting list and put onto a new waiting list, so it’s a good way of keeping waiting lists short without improving patient care.

“Our Father Which art in Washington, give us this day our daily calcium propionate, sodium diacetate monoglyceride, potassium bromate, calcium phosphate, monobasic chloramine T, aluminium potassiumsulphate, sodium benzoate, butylated hydroxyanisole, mono-iso-propyl citrate, axerophthol and calciferol. Include with it a little flour and salt. Amen.”

That was John Brunner, The Sheep Look Up written in 1972

A friend recently posted a food label that was about twice that long. Never eat food with small print.

My teeth are infinitely better on low carb, except for the one that exploded the other day when I chewed down on a handful of nuts. Total mechanical breakdown but still very little plaque.

ADA information on low carbing is hidden away in a locked filing cabinet in the basement past the notice saying BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/53/9/2375

they funded this themselves but don’t like to talk about it, except the most recent Position Statements say perhaps low carbing might work only it has never been tested in long term trials so DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!!

Politics? Whoever you vote for the government always gets in. And that doesn’t change the guys who actually run things. Our local culture is predominantly small businesses dealing with other small businesses, no-one creaming off the profits and taking them elsewhere so I reckon we are more likely to survive the recession than most. Though you will have your work cut out since the Bushites have asset stripped your country. They’ve done what the Islamic Terrorists failed to do.