They speak many languages including Mayan languages (Yucatec Quiche Kekchi and Mopan) Spanish and English. However the Maya are an indigenous group tied both to their distant past as well as to events of the last several hundred years writes Richard Leventhal Carlos Chan Espinosa and Cristina Coc in a recent edition
and death day and night sky and earth Sharer writes noting that oeas lord of the celestial realm Itzamnaaj was the Milky way
while agriculture and food gathering were a central part of daily life the Maya had sophisticated a economy capable of supporting specialists and a system of merchants and trade routes.
They also controlled some critical (non-local) commodities that included critical everyday resources each family needed like salt he said noting that over time Maya rulers managed ever-larger portions of the economy.
but lest you forget the charitable side of Christmas spirit they're flanked by images of people feeding
The family is surrounded by food drink dancers and snow-covered houses. Other mass-produced cards of the Victorian eraâ included more holiday images that would become familiar to Christmas revelers today:
Krampus dragging bad children to the underworld pine trees kissing Santa lighting a cigar off a Christmas tree anthropomorphic mice decorating trees and cats tossing snowballs.
That includes eating nutritious meals and exercising daily. But there are plenty of marketers out there would vehemently disagree
Acai berry green tea extract and capsaicin all had their time in the spotlight. But let's explore a supplement that has exploded on the weight loss scene more recently:
9 Meal Schedules: When to Eat to Lose weight Let's explore the research: 1998 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association:
One exception was a combination of garcinia cambogiaâ taken with another herb called gymnema sylvestre which showed a slight increase in weight loss results.
but surely more research needs to be done on the subject. 2005 study in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology:
Printing food seems more like an idea based in Star trek rather than in the average home.
With everything from printed metal airplane wings to replacement organs on the horizon could printed food be next?
In some ways we have oeprinted food for decades. Think of making a sundae using a self-dispensing ice-cream machine.
Building by extruding material through a nozzle is quite similar to how certain 3d printers called fused deposition modellers (FDM) work today.
While FDM is used primarily for prototyping plastics the technology has been applied in culinary arts for years. Researchers at Cornell pioneered some of this work adapting an open source extrusion printer called the Fab@Home Lab to work with food in 2007.
They ve gone so far as partnering with The french Culinary Institute in Manhattan to print personalised chocolate
and cheese cookies cubes of pureed turkey and celery paste and even tiny spaceships made of deep fried scallops.
Novelty food suppliers have become early adopters of similar technology. Various chocolate printers are on the market
and for Valentine s day in Japan this year you could order chocolate made from a 3d scan of your face.
Further examples include a Burritobot on Kickstarter last year and Google serving 3d printed pasta. Other 3d printing technologies have been investigated for use with food.
In 2007 Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories introduced the Candyfab 4000 a DIY printer based on a modified selective laser sintering technique.
The method utilised a focused heat source moving over a bed of sugar to fuse large 3d sugar sculptures.
And just a few months ago a team of students from the University of Waterloo was able to sinter chocolate using a custom built machine.
Established market players in Additive Manufacturing have taken notice as well. In September 3d Systems (NYSE: DDD) acquired The Sugar Lab a startup producing edible 3d sugar confections.
The Sugar Lab had adapted 3d Systems'Color Jet Printing (CJP) technology to print flavoured edible binders on a sugar bed to fabricate solid structures.
Beyond novelty printed food could provide serious medical benefits. The netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific research (TNO) announced they ll build printers to reassemble pureed food to look like the original think 3d printed broccoli florets from pureed broccoli.
TNO has targeted printers for nursing homes in order to help elderly people who have chewing and swallowing problems.
Beyond medical conditions TNO has proposed printing customised meals with varied levels of the basic food components like carbs protein and fat for everyone from seniors to athletes to expectant mothers.
And NASA sees 3d printed food as a revolutionary way to make personalised meals for astronauts.
They are funding development of a 3d printer that premixes basic food components before spraying the mix on baking tray.
Their ultimate goal would be to print a pizza. Beyond providing cosmic delivery food would also be tailored for astronauts'daily activities.
will printed food go beyond novelty value? Should it replace other foods or supplement the nutritional value of existing foods?
In this area one of the most interesting and perhaps controversial areas is the debate about printing meat.
Some suggest 3d printed meat could provide high quality protein for a growing global population without increasing stress on arable land
or continually depleting the oceans. It could also answer the problem of methane emissions from agriculture.
In 2011 Modern Meadow took up the challenge setting out to make ecological and economical leather and meat from bioprinters.
They cultured biopsied bovine cells to produce sheets of tissue eventually forming either meat or hide.
They predict cultured leather will be on the market in five years. Modern Meadow s CEO Andras Forgacs is a pioneer in the bioprinting field cofounding the tissue printing company Organovo (NYSE:
ONVO) with his father Gabor Forgacs. In 2011 Gabor the Chief Scientific Officer at Modern Meadow cooked
and ate cultured pork live at a TEDMED conference. Currently it is very expensive to produce tiny volumes of printed meat with estimates of thousands of dollars to make a pound of meat in the lab
. But could the process be scaled up and cell cultures made cheaper? Biopsies aren t the only sources for culture.
The process could potentially use stem cells. Industrial scale printing of meat could additionally use cells grown in an algae-based cell culture
and powered by novel processes such as photosynthesis-mimicking solar energy systems. For vegetarians printed meat somewhat circumvents concerns about harmful or destructive use of animals for food.
Live animals are used only to provide cells from which cell lines can be grown (though the blood of unborn cows is needed to culture most cells.
Ethical vegans may still object at the use of nonhuman animals for human purposes; while non-destructive it is still exploitative.
whether 3d printed meat is halal or kosher. There may not be an issue if there is no animal slaughter involved.
While we typically oeeat with our eyes and printed meat could be made in familiar shapes
That is if printed meat could be proven safe. Printed meat may result in a debate akin to that on GMO foods.
Certainly the public will want to know whether printed foods are safe for human consumption. Consumers will most likely demand adequate protections to ensure the development of printed foods does not limit their access to
or contaminate organic foods. It is reasonable to assume most will want to decide whether they eat oereal meat
or try printed meats so labelling regulation will be important. Farming communities and those in agricultural food production will also want a voice about
if when and how their industry will be transformed by industrialised printed meat. Early identification or those affected and extensive engagement with the range of community concerns about printed foods is warranted.
While no specific printed food exploration exists yet similar forms of community engagement have been developed in Australia through the Science and Technology Engagement Pathways framework (STEP.
They work with communities on a wide range of issues including synthetic biology and bionic implants.
STEP has supported researchers in the ethics program at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science who are identifying effective public engagement
and deliberative democratic processes for uncovering and articulating community concerns about emerging technologies. Other entities like Riaus an Australian nonprofit has been active in stimulating community debate specifically about synthetic meat.
With no slow down in 3d printing developments there will certainly be new advances in printed food.
Whether the technology can truly move from the novelty sector will most likely depend on the ability to process a wider range of foods requiring influence from both the kitchen and from printer developers.
It is also debatable whether 3d printed food can integrate in the global supply chain particularly
if printed meat can be made economically viable and if consumers will accept it. However the benefits of 3d printed food could be monumental.
Time will tell if the next fad will be the 3d printed diet. Until then the community should be involved in the discussion of printed food.
Dr. Robert Gorkin is a Strategic Development Officer at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES.
He receives funding from the ARC Susan Dodds receives funding from the Australian Research Council
and is a Chief Investigator and Ethics Program Director for the Australian Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES).
Cuckoo moms lay their eggs in the nests of other birds which raise them unwittingly.
She watches over her egg cocoon until her babies hatch at which point she starts regurgitating most of her meals to feed her offspring.
Once the babies are about a month old mommy spider rolls onto her back letting her babies climb aboard.
Before leaving the nest some of the ravenous babies cannibalize each other. 7. Bonobo wing-moms Unlike human males bonobo males hang out with mom
She will lay up to five eggs and once the tadpoles hatch she ferries each one on her back from the rain forest floor up to trees as tall as 100 feet (30 meters).
Mama frog then feeds her hatchlings some of her own unfertilized eggs over the next six to eight weeks of their development into frogs.
and the poisonous mercury is now slowly making its way toward the fruit and nut orchards and the rice fields of California s lush Central Valley America s food basket according to new research by a team
The area studied is called the Yuba Fan built up around the Yuba River that runs out of the Sierra nevada mountains north of Sacramento not far from California s verdant wine country. oethe Yuba fan is created totally artificial by humans said Singer
Mercury taint from the Gold Rush has been found in the food supply in the San francisco area
Two yearsâ ago scientists discovered that gold mining in the Amazon had contaminated already the food supply in the Madre de dios area of Peru in that case from burning off the mercury in the amalgam.
Striking gold Fifteen years ago Anderson first showed it was possible to get mustard plants to suck up gold from chemically treated soil containing gold particles.
Find a fast-growing plant with a lot of aboveground leafy mass such as mustard sunflowers or tobacco. Plant the crop on soil that contains gold.
Many plants root deep into the Earth drawing up nutrients and minerals they need for life.
The pros and cons of GM food are not what s at issue here. For those interested in pros
#To Cut out Salt, Use a Knife To make food healthier don't just cut the salt.
(and healthier) foods taste like the saltier (less healthy) variety new research suggests. For instance cheese tastes saltier
This thing that we've ignored for so long the cutlery in fact does have an impact on the food we eat said study co-author Charles Spence a psychologist at the University of Oxford in the United kingdom. The findings could one day help scientists tweak utensils to help people eat healthier
for example by giving eaters the same salty sensation they get from processed foods but with reduced salt. 9 Snack foods:
The idea would be to use these cues to reduce the actual content of the unhealthy ingredients in a food by giving the psychological impression of saltiness
A growing body of research suggests that people's enjoyment of food is related to many factors beyond a meal's actual taste.
A 2011 study found that white plates make food seem tastier while another study found that hot chocolate tastes better in orange cups.
And other research has shown that everything from the price on a bottle of wine to the size of a bowl can affect people's experience of foods.
To see how cutlery affected taste Spence and his colleague Vanessa Harrar conducted three experiments In the first the researchers asked 35 participants to rate the expensiveness sweetness
The yogurt eaters rated food eaten from a lighter spoon as denser more expensive and more enjoyable than yogurt eaten from heavy spoons.
In the third experiment 30 participants rated the saltiness of cheddar cheese eaten using a fork a spoon a toothpick or a knife.
The cheese tasted saltiest when served on a knife. It's not clear exactly why these trends occur.
But the findings could have implications for chefs food scientists and cutlery makers hoping to subtly enhance the eating experience.
Several of the researchers'previous findings on cutlery and plates are being tested in cooking schools
and restaurants to see if they hold true outside the laboratory setting Spence said. Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+.
+Â Followâ Livescience@livescience Facebookâ & Google+.+Original article onâ Livescience. com i
#Toddler Meals Have Too much Salt: CDC Most ready-to-eat meals for toddlers have too much salt government researchers say.
Of the 1115 ready-to-eat toddlers'meals examined in a study by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention nearly three-quarters were high in salt the researchers said. Some of the meals contained as much as 630 milligrams of sodium per serving about 40 percent of the American Heart Association's recommended daily sodium intake for children (1500 mg.
The findings are concerning because high salt intake is known to increase the risk of high blood pressure even in children.
In addition studies suggest people develop a taste for salt earlier in life. Children are born not with a taste for salt said study researcher Joyce Maalouf of the CDC.
The less sodium children consume the less they will want it Maalouf said. The researchers examined nutrition labels on ready-to-eat meals for babies (less than 1 year old)
and toddlers (ages 1 to 3). Examples of toddler meals include macaroni and cheese pizza and pasta with chicken.
Meals that contained more than 210 milligrams of salt per serving about one-seventh of the daily recommendation were considered to be high in salt The researchers chose this cutoff
because it's estimated that kids eat about seven servings daily of grains protein and dairy.
The other food groups fruits and vegetables have minimal salt. The good news is that baby foods were relatively low in sodium.
Just one of the more than 600 baby meals and snacks tested contained more than 210 mg of sodium per serving.
The researchers noted they don't know how many people buy the products included in the study.
The CDC's recommendation for daily sodium intake for the general population is slightly higher than the AHA's:
See Americans Still Eat Too much Salt. To lower salt intake the CDC recommends children eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.
Parents should also read nutrition facts labels and choose foods with the lowest sodium. When preparing meals parents should choose low-sodium ingredients Maalouf said.
The study will be presented today (March 21) at the AHA meeting in New orleans. Pass it on: Nearly 75 percent of ready-to-eat meals for toddlers have too much salt.
Follow Rachael Rettner@Rachaelrettner. Follow Myhealthnewsdaily@Myhealth mhnd Facebook & Google+G
#Tomatoes, Summer's Last Sigh (Op-Ed) Katherine Tallmadge M. A r. D. is registered a dietitian author of Diet Simple:
195 Mental Tricks Substitutions Habits & Inspirations (Lifeline Press 2011) and a frequent national commentator on nutrition topics.
This article is adapted from one that first appeared on the Georgetown Dish. Tallmadge contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
Op-Ed & Insights. Don't say goodbye to summer yet. There is still plenty of summer's most lovely seasonal produce particularly heirloom tomatoes my favorite to entertain with.
I recently created a presentation for the hotel's health club members called Four Steps For Strengthening Muscles Some Surprising News. For the presentation hotel executive chef Douglas Anderson uniquely
and beautifully interpreted Greek salad with heirloom tomatoes (see recipe below) and other recipes from my book Diet Simple.
Every vegetable in the recipe the tomatoes cucumbers peppers sweet onions and garlic can be found at local farmers markets.
The possibilities are endless. This is a naturally vegetarian recipe but for the meat lovers it's great with grilled chicken
or seafood on the side Tomatoes are one of the superfoods in nature. In a recent study men who consumed 10
or more servings of tomato products a week had a 35-percent decrease in risk of prostate cancer relative to those who consumed 1. 5 servings or fewer per week.
That outcome is attributed largely to lycopene in the tomatoes which is also in other red fruits such as watermelon pink grapefruit and guava.
You must eat the tomato as you need the whole food to receive the benefits!
Many studies have shown that lycopene-rich foods reduce the risk of prostate cancer but the mechanism behind the reduction was understood not well until now.
The American Institute for Cancer Research recommends that men take advantage of lycopene's cancer-preventing effects and fill tehir diets with foods such as tomatoes watermelon and guava.
Greek Salad with Heirloom Tomatoes as interpreted by Four Seasons Hotel Executive Chef Douglas Anderson Greek Salad with Heirloom Tomatoes From Diet Simple Farm to Table Recipes:
50 New Reasons to Cook in Season! 8 servings Ingredients: Vinaigrette: 2 Tablespoons Freshly Harvested Extra Virgin Olive oil 2 Tablespoons Freshly Squeezed Lemon juice (1 Lemon) 1 Tablespoon Chopped Fresh Oregano
or Basil (or 1 tsp dried) 1 Clove Garlic Minced (optional) Salt and Pepper to Taste (Salt is not necessary with the cheese and olives) Vegetables:
2 cucumbers peeled seeded and sliced into a half-moon shape 1 onion peeled and chopped coarsely 1 medium yellow purple
or green bell pepper cored seeded chopped into large bite-size pieces 1 cup pitted Kalamata
or Goat cheese broken into small bits Instructions: Combine the vinaigrette ingredients in a large salad bowl and whisk until blended.
Add the cucumbers onion pepper and olives and toss into vinaigrette. Let sit for twenty minutes to marinate.
Add the heirloom tomatoes and cheese when ready to serve. Tallmadge's most recent Op-Ed was
What and When to Eat to Build Muscleand her additional contributions are available on her profile page.
Her latest book is Diet Simple Farm to Table Recipes: 50 New Reasons to Cook In Season.
You can follow Tallmadge on Facebook Twitter@KETALLMADGEAND on Youtube. The views expressed are those of the author
While deer pee can be a valuable source of nitrogen a rare and necessary nutrient for plants some deeryards are now too rich for the hemlocks to grow.
One is by eating plants and the other is by excreting nutrients said Bryan Murray an ecologist and doctoral student at Michigan Tech University.
Urine can be a really high nitrogen resource and hemlock can be competed out by other species in really high nitrogen environments.
#Top Foods Children Choke On For kids the food most likely to go down the wrong pipe
and cause choking is hard candy a new study finds. Between 2001 and 2009 more than 16100 children ages 14 and younger visited the emergency room
because they were choking on hard candy the study found. Â Overall nearly 112000 children visited the emergency department for nonfatal choking related to food during the eight-year study about 12400 per year.
That means that about 15 percent of all child emergency room visits related to choking on food were due to hard candy.
 Other top foods that sent kids to the emergency room include the following: Other candy:
13324 visits (12.8 percent) Meat other than hot dogs: 12671 visits (12.2 percent) Bone: 12496 visits (12 percent) Fruits and vegetables:
10075 visits (9. 7 percent) Formula milk or breast milk: 6985 visits (6. 7 percent) Seeds nuts or shells:
6771 visits (6. 5 percent) Chips pretzels or popcorn: 4826 visits (4. 6 percent) Biscuits cookies or crackers:
3189 visits (3. 1 percent) Hot dogs: 2660 visits (2. 6 percent) Bread or pastries: 2385 visits (2. 3 percent) French fries:
874 visits (0. 8 percent) The majority of children who came to the emergency room because they were choking on food were treated
and released but about 10 percent needed to be hospitalized. Kids who choked on hot dogs or seeds nuts or shells were more likely to require hospitalization than those who choked on other foods.
The average age of kids treated for nonlethal food choking was about 4. 5 years old
and more than half were boys. The researchers from Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus Ohio analyzed information from a national database of emergency-department visits focusing on choking visits involving food that did not result in death.
Young children may lack the teeth necessary to properly grind food they still may be learning how to chew
and they may have a high activity level which may make them more likely to choke on food the researchers said.
Foods that may pose a greater choking risk to children include those that are similar in shape to the child's airway (such as hot dogs) those that are difficult to chew (raw fruits
and vegetables) or those that are consumed by the handful (such as seeds and nuts) which may be too much for a child to chew the researchers said.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children ages 5 and younger should not be given hard candies
or gum and that raw fruits and vegetables be cut into small pieces when they are fed to young children.
Children should be supervised while eating and should never run walk play or lie down with food in their mouth the AAP says.
Parents and caregivers should be familiar with techniques to rescue their children if choking does occur.
The AAP also recommends that the Food and Drug Administration take action to label foods that may pose a choking risk to children.
The study is published today (July 29) in the journal Pediatrics. Follow Rachael Rettner@Rachaelrettner. Followlivescience@livescience Facebook & Google+.
+Original article on Livescience. com e
#Tracking Leaf-Out: A Good Cause Takes Root: Op-Ed Jake Weltzin is an ecologist with the U s. Geological Surveyand executive director of the USA National Phenology Network.
 He contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The first days of spring are upon us:
some birds produce additional clutches of eggs; and many insects (including pests such as bark beetles in the West
The recent but long overdue decision by the U s. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban trans fats made
Foods that eliminated cholesterol would be safe to eat and would prevent heart disease. Educated homemakers like my mother rapidly accepted this advice.
To protect our family mom replaced butter with margarine. Not just any but she was told that Fleischmann's was the best choice.
Of course there is no cholesterol in margarine as cholesterol is produced only by living animals. There is no cholesterol in pretzels either.
Yet the breakdown product glucose can be transported to the liver producing fat and cholesterol. Thus a significant component of our cholesterol level is produced internally not eaten.
Ignorance to those simple details has had broad implications helping to accelerate ridiculous myths that may be partially responsible for Americans'obesity and the diabetes epidemic.
When society vilified cholesterol we sent the message that consumption of foods that avoided fat
When fat was consumed the consensus opinion said vegetable oils even those artificially hardened were safer for our susceptible coronary arteries.
Margarine touted as heart safe even featured at medical conventions is extremely detrimental. So how could so many well-intentioned individuals have gotten it so wrong?
Avoid butter buy margarine. Pretzels breads sweets were fine as they did not contain cholesterol.
You may gain weight but as long as there was no cholesterol in it you could not get those ugly yellow plaques that caused blockages in the heart.
Vendors were touting cholesterol-free foods. Manufacturers believed they could make foods people enjoy healthier by replacing animal products with hydrogenated vegetable oils
thus avoiding the evil villain. The recent decision by the FDA and the 30 years of data demonstrating the damage of trans fats are clear evidence that the medical community's artificial efforts were not successful.
They eat foods that grow in the ground or lean meats and low-fat dairy products.
They exercise regularly avoid cigarettes and use alcohol in moderation. People keep trying to make unnatural things healthier
The solution to the obesity epidemic begins with eating more fresh fruits and vegetables not re-engineering processed foods.
Instead of searching for another magic formula whose negative impact may not be known for years people need to remember the basics.
If your grandmother would not recognize it as food don't eat it. Roslin's most recent Op-Ed was The Sad Truth About Boy scouts and Childhood Obesity.
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