Your cat has you wrapped around its little paw!

If you have a cat you already know that cats are very smart when it comes to getting what they want from you. They use their cuteness, meowing, and purrs to do so. Dave and I have commonly noticed this behavior in our cat. Well, there is now scientific evidence as published in the journal Current Biology, and reviewed in this Yahoo article.

Basically, when cats want things, such as your attention, they meow, but this can upset, aggravate, or annoy you. Cats also purr which is intended to convey their happiness. But there is a third noise cats make which is a combination of the two that these researchers call a purr-cry, which takes advantage of humans' sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing our own babies.

Karen McComb of the University of Sussex said that "... we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans."

Those are some smart animals! I am going to keep an ear out to if our cat, Tigris makes any of those sounds.

Anti-Cancer Beauty Products

When you first read the title of this blog entry I bet that you assumed that these beauty products would be for breast cancer. So would I, as there is no better anti-cancer marketing machine than those women fighting against breast cancer! They have been extremely successful in raising millions, if not billions by now, for breast cancer research. Prostate cancer is decades behind on this.

But when searching Sephora.com for the newest beauty trends and products, which is some thing I do weekly, I will admit, I saw this bottle...
I thought... wait a minute, I have a blue ribbon just like that on my lab coat... it is for prostate cancer! And the brand name is Anthony Logistics For Men... could this be?!?! Sure enough, when reading "Behind the Brand" (which is a cool section on Sephora.com which tells you more about the philosophy of the beauty line or about those who started the company) I learned that the profits from these men's products go to "multiple nonprofit organizations dedicated to eradicating the disease [of prostate cancer]." I am going to contact him, and see if he would want to work with the nonprofit group I work with, ZERO; the project to end prostate cancer. Wish me luck!

Vacation pics finally online!

Dave and I went to the Colorado Plateau for our 2 week vacation this summer. You might say, wow, 2 whole weeks!?!? But we deserved this vacation... we had not been on one since 2006, and we were celebrating being FINALLY done with college. This is quite a feat for Dave and I, whom some people might have said that we would never leave college. Well, after 11 years of being there, we are now DONE!!! =) So check out our photos of our road trip through Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. We had a wonderful time, and I would recommend this trip to any one!

Another win for whole foods

As a nutrition PhD I get asked a lot about what is healthy or good for you to eat. I always say the same thing: There is no such thing as a bad food for you, just bad amounts of food. Yet, some in the food industry are always telling the public that it is best to drink their product or take this expensive pill. My research in the Erdman lab at UIUC gave some evidence that the whole tomato was better than lycopene alone in slowing prostate tumor growth.

But this whole foods being better than supplements goes beyond cancer prevention... Live Science reports that "eating an unassuming bowl of any whole-grain cereal with milk is superior to chugging a designer sports drink after a workout to replenish muscle fuel and protein. The study, published last week in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, demonstrates how sports drinks are largely unnecessary for recreational athletes."

So eat your Wheaties, or any other low sugar and high fiber cereal with low fat milk, and you will be better off!

An odd ad...

... to say the least. And I am not sure how the marketing minds behind this ad thought that it would get me to buy water.

Reasons for a male to eat his veggies

To me, eating a healthy diet tastes good, but the fact that eating lots of fruits and veggies can also prevent cancer, well, I am totally sold! But then again, the main focus of my research over the past 7 years has been how eating more tomatoes and broccoli can decrease the risk and growth of prostate cancer.

I would think that men would want to do any thing they could to reduce the risk of a cancer which requires doctors to frequently examine and/or do surgery on a very personal space of their bodies. But alas, have you ever met one of those men who think that salads and vegetables are just "women" foods? I have! (Insert, me rolling my eyes at this stupidity.) So now there is a new reason for men to want to eat their fruits and vegetables!


According to Live Science, "A study published online recently in the journal Fertility and Sterility discovered that men who ate antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables have better rates of sperm movement, ejaculate volume, and sperm concentration than those who ate diets heavy in meat and full-fat dairy foods."

I might try this angle next time I am giving a nutrition lecture to a room full of men! This might just be the message they need to hear to make a dietary change. Wish me luck... ;)

Great, soon we can eat raw chicken!

Because there are researchers making a vaccine for the food borne illness, Salmonella! Food safety is a huge concern even in modern, Western countries like the US and those in Europe. The Institute for Food Research (TFR) in the UK is trying to develop a vaccine which prevents the salmonella bacteria from consuming glucose, which prevents it from growing and infecting the host... which would be you if you ate raw, or poorly cooked, chicken!