Monday, June 24, 2013

Think they’ll Replace Paula Deen with a Vegan?

I posted that question on my “Eat Vegan on $4 a Day” Facebook page of 23,000 fans this week. The most popular response was “Keep dreaming!” And so I do. 
For those of you who don’t follow the Food Network, Paula Deen was a good ol’ Southern-cooking gal with a popular show who eventually disclosed that her constant reminders to cook everything deep fried with tons of butter gave her diabetes. Worse, she didn’t disclose this and then began promoting an anti-diabetes drug that made her even more money. When all of that became public a year later, many demanded she be taken off the air, to no avail.
 
But her recent disclosure that she had used the “n” word frequently in the past was her undoing and within days, The Food Network announced it was cancelling her show. As a former TV investigative reporter, I am still surprised at how people who have everything going for themselves can shoot themselves in the foot.
 
About a year ago, I sat next to a man who as it turned out, owned several network-affiliate broadcast stations. He had a wife who was vegan and claimed to know decisions makers at the Food Network. He asked what big city TV market I was closest to. He asked, and I submitted, a proposal for a half-hour show. He eventually got back and said his investors pushed back, fearing objections from meat and dairy advertisers. And so the story has always gone…as I say in my book, “No money in broccoli. No lobby, association, board or corporation that makes it.”
 
What I hope that some TV network will “get” is that the popularity of shows like Paula are what is killing us as a country. All of us pay for the uninsured who check into hospitals by the minute with preventable diseases of affluence: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure, and recently categorized for insurance purposes this week as a “disease,” obesity. We all pay for these diseases, whether is you, me, the government or insurance corporations.
 
 Ironically, this same week, popular, gifted actor James Gandolfini dropped dead of a heart attack, reportedly just after eating 2 servings of fried shrimp, faux gras and a pina colada. There has been much discussion about that too on social media, whether that’s what caused his death and whether it’s too soon after his death to talk about a suspected cause without an autopsy. One only has to look at current photos and read accounts of “how he did love his food,” (as if the rest of us don’t) to imagine that he probably wasn’t in the best of health, for whatever reasons. 
 
Whether or not an autopsy confirms suspicions, it’s time that people make say, enough is enough. I suspect that even though as I prepare for the National Senior Games in a month clocking a :08 50 meter dash, and briefly clocking a 5 minute-mile, at 60, even with 2 Emmys and 18 years TV news under my belt, I am not the next Paula Deen candidate. After all, at the end of my TV career, I was told by the station’s makeup consultant, “40 is never too young to have a facelift, and the more often you have them, the more effective they are long term. You just don’t get to be Barbara Walter’s age and look like that.” Since I knew someone who almost died from a facelift complication, I knew I would never get a facelift. The only magic bullets left were diet/exercise. 
 
And so, I gladly concede TV entertainment to the young, unless some angel out there thinks that a reasonably well-preserved, accomplished sprinter and endurance runner (very rare to do both), trained vegan cooking class instructor (2 times a day, 5 days week at the peak when the classes were free at the community center) has something to offer that was as important as Paula Deen. If so, well by golly, you know where to find me. Otherwise, I’m more than content running most days on our pristine beaches, fielding the barrage of great questions I get on my social media pages, doing YouTube videos and traveling on book tour at the request of my publisher and others. You can lead a horse to water, but you sure can’t make it drink. Gotta run!
 
Ellen Jaffe Jones is the author of “Eat Vegan on $4 a Day,” and just released, “Kitchen Divided-Vegan Dishes for Semi-Vegan Households.” She is a certified personal trainer/running coach and for availability, can be reached at www.vegcoach.com

Her call-in “Veg Vixen” radio show is Tuesdays, 10 a.m. on www.annamariaislandradio.com. Column from "The Anna Maria Island (FL) Sun" 06-23-13

Some Infertile Men Show Higher Cancer Risk

Men who are infertile because they produce no sperm may have a higher-than-average risk of developing cancer, a new study finds. 
 
Researchers found that of more than 2,000 men with fertility problems, those with no sperm production had an increased risk of developing cancer over the next six years.
 
The men were young going into the study (about age 36, on average), so few did develop cancer. Among men with no sperm -- what doctors call azoospermia -- just over 2 percent were diagnosed with cancer.
 
Still, their risk was three times higher than that of the average man their age.
 
"They have the cancer risk of a man about 10 years older," said lead researcher Dr. Michael Eisenberg, an assistant professor of urology at Stanford University School of Medicine.
 
About 15 percent of infertile men are azoospermic, according to the study, which was published June 20 in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
 
This isn‘t the first work to connect male infertility to cancer risk, but it suggests the link may be concentrated among men with the most severe type of infertility.
 
"This suggests that it‘s not male infertility in general, but azoospermia in particular," Eisenberg said.
 
That‘s an important piece of information, said a male-infertility expert not involved in the study. If the link between male infertility and cancer is real, you would expect that more severe infertility would be tied to a greater cancer risk, said Dr. Thomas Walsh, of the University of Washington in Seattle.
 
"This reinforces the idea that this is a real relationship," Walsh said.
 
He said he doubts anyone would say that infertility is causing cancer. But he and Eisenberg said it‘s possible that some common genetic factors contribute to both azoospermia and a greater vulnerability to cancer.
 
"When we see a man with azoospermia, we usually assume there‘s a genetic cause," Eisenberg said. There are certain gene mutations already tied to the condition, but a minority of azoospermic men turn out to have one of them when they are tested. That means there are likely other, as yet unknown, gene defects involved in azoospermia, Eisenberg said.
 
And some of those genetic flaws might be involved in cancer susceptibility, he said.
 
Another infertility expert was cautious about interpreting the findings because of the small numbers: only 10 cases of cancer among the 451 men with azoospermia, and 19 cases among nearly 1,800 men with other types of infertility.
 
The idea that genetic abnormalities might underlie both azoospermia and cancer risk has merit, said Dr. Frederick Licciardi of NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. But, he said, "while this is important reasoning and is based in basic science studies, I do not feel they have enough evidence in this paper to bolster this theory."
 
Another question is whether azoospermia is linked only to certain cancers. Past studies, including one Walsh worked on, have found that infertile men show a higher than average risk of testicular cancer -- a highly curable disease usually diagnosed in young men.
 
Of the 10 cancers in azoospermic men in this study, two were testicular tumors. The others included brain cancer, prostate cancer, lymphoma and melanoma.
 
Eisenberg said there were too few cases of each cancer to see whether men with azoospermia were at particular risk for any one type.
 
For now, he recommended that men with the condition "be aware of the possible risk, and pay attention to your health." That includes not only maintaining a healthy lifestyle, he said, but also doing what most younger men do not -- seeing your doctor for a regular check-up.
 
"It‘s too early to make any recommendations about cancer screening," he said. But a routine visit to your doctor for a physical exam -- which can detect testicular cancer, for example -- is wise, Eisenberg said.
 
Licciardi agreed. "Any man -- very low sperm count or not -- should have regular physical examinations."
 
Walsh said much more research is needed to dig into the connection between male infertility and cancer, including studies that follow men over a long period since cancer rates climb with age, as well as basic lab research to try to uncover the reasons for the link.