Showing posts with label green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green. Show all posts
Friday, July 5, 2013
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Top green vegetables for your health -- and St. Patrick's Day
There are many ways to go green for St. Patrick's Day. In addition to sporting your green socks and downing a green beer, how about putting some green on your plate?
Green vegetables top the list of best-for-you veggies: They're great sources of fiber and the antioxidant vitamins A, C and K, plus scads of other vitamins and minerals, and they are typically low in calories. Keep them in mind as you work toward the new dietary guidelines' recommendation to fill half your plate with vegetables at every meal.
I asked Alexandra Postman, editor in chief of Martha Stewart's Whole Living magazine and an editor of that publication's "Power Foods" cookbook, and Jim White, spokesman for the American Dietetic Association, for their top picks. I was surprised and pleased by how many familiar favorites they named. Here's their guide to the most nutritious choices in the field of green. (All recipes can be found at washingtonpost.com/recipes.)
Erin go broccoli
Postman and White agree that broccoli can't be beat. It is very high in fiber and delivers a potent package of Vitamin C - 135 percent of what you need in a day - plus potassium and iron, Postman says. White adds Vitamin K and folate to that list. Like other green cruciferous vegetables (such as Brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage and bok choy), it contains nitrogen compounds known as indoles, which, Postman says, have been shown to prevent stomach tumors. In fact, eating broccoli may help reduce the risk of other cancers, too, by virtue of its being rich in carotenoids, antioxidants that are thought to "sponge up free radicals that promote cancer," Postman explains. Broccoli is also"very high in calcium for a vegetable," she adds, "though some will quibble" that not all the calcium it contains is easily absorbed by the body.
Tip: For broccoli and other green vegetables, steaming is the best way to retain nutrients; boiling, microwaving or stir-frying may leach some away.
Recipe: Pasta With Broccoli and Garlic.
Per cup, raw:
31 calories,
2.4 grams of fiber
Popeye's favorite
Dark leafy greens such as spinach (along with dark romaine, collard greens and kale) are great sources of Vitamin K, which is "essential for blood clotting and bone healing," Postman says. A cup of spinach delivers nearly twice (181 percent) the Vitamin K you need daily. That nutrient also may help decrease inflammation in the body, Postman says; inflammation is thought to be at the root of many diseases, including cancers and cardiovascular disease. Although spinach is often touted for its iron content, Postman notes that the vegetable also contains oxalic acid, which limits the body's ability to absorb all that iron.
Tip: Spinach fresh from the garden is optimal; the stuff you buy in bags in the produce section may have lost nutrients during shipping and the time it sits on the shelf. Frozen spinach may be a better nutritional bet, Postman advises, as it's typically flash-frozen at its peak.
Recipe: Jumbled Greens.
Per cup, raw:
7 calories,
0.7 grams of fiber
Get artichoked up
These armadillo-looking items, members of the aster family, not only deliver loads of magnesium, folate and potassium, but also a dynamite dose of fiber. Postman's a big fan because artichokes help the liver produce bile, which helps your body process fatty foods, and because they promote muscle function. And get this: Postman says that artichokes may "stimulate sweet receptors. Eat some artichoke," she suggests, then drink water. "The water will taste sweet," she says.
Tip: Rather than canceling out steamed artichokes' nutrition by bathing the leaves in butter or hollandaise sauce, try dipping the leaves in heart-healthy olive oil or even broth.
Recipe: Baby Artichoke Salad.
Per medium 'choke: 60 calories, 6.9 grams of fiber
A spear that never hurts
This member of the lily family is bursting with folate: According to Postman, asparagus has moreof this nutrient than any vegetable (the majority of which contain some). Folate helps your body do away with homocysteine, an amino acid that contributes to cardiovascular disease. To that long-term benefit, add these two shorter-term effects that may make asparagus your favorite: White points out that asparagus can have "a mild laxative effect" and also serves as a diuretic, helping your body removed excess water and thus avoid bloating.
Tip: You can eat asparagus raw if you shave it thin with a vegetable peeler. Or enjoy it lightly steamed, grilled or roasted. According to "Power Foods," "Most of asparagus's nutrients are left intact, even after it is cooked."
Recipe: Asparagus With a Mushroom Ragout.
Per cup, raw: 27 calories, 2.8 grams of fiber
Celebrate with celery
Not exactly a dark-green vegetable, celery makes both Postman's and White's lists because it delivers at least its share of nutrients per calorie. White says celery serves up fiber, folate, Vitamin A and Vitamin C - "a lot of the same nutrients found in other green vegetables" but in easy-to-eat style. "It's a great snack to cut up and enjoy," he says. Postman agrees: "It's a great source of fiber, and it's a vehicle for healthy spreads."
Tip: Use celery as a "vehicle" for healthful toppings such as almond butter, peanut butter and raisins, or refried beans.
Recipe: Tangy Chicken Salad With Celery 3 Ways.
Per cup, raw: 16 calories 1.6 grams fiber
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Increasing efficiency of hydrogen production from green algae
New research results from Uppsala University, Sweden, instill hope of efficient hydrogen production with green algae being possible in the future, despite the prevailing scepticism based on previous research. The study, which is published today in the journal PNAS, changes the view on the ability of green algae. 
Provided by Uppsala University
The world must find a way of producing fuel from renewable energy sources to replace the fossil fuels. Hydrogen is today considered one of the most promising fuels for the future and if hydrogen can be produced directly from sunlight you have a renewable and environmentally friendly energy source.
One biological way of producing hydrogen from solar energy is using photosynthetic microorganisms. Photosynthesis splits water into hydrogen ions (H+) and electrons (e-). These can later be combined into hydrogen gas, (H2) with the use of special enzymes called hydrogenases. This occurs in cyanobacteria and green algae, which have the ability to use energy from the sun through photosynthesis and produce hydrogen through their own metabolism.
That green algae can produce hydrogen under certain conditions has been known and studied for about 15 years, but low efficiency has been a problem, i.e. the amount of energy absorbed by the algae that is transformed into hydrogen. One enzyme that has the ability to use sunlight to split water into electrons, hydrogen ions and oxygen is Photosystem II. Several studies have shown that some of the electrons from the enzyme are used to produce hydrogen gas under special conditions. But some have stated that most of the hydrogen gas gets its energy from other paths in the metabolism of the green algae. This would entail that it is not a matter of actual direct production of hydrogen from sunlight, and that green algae are no more efficient as energy crops than plants.
A group of researchers at Uppsala University, led by Senior Lecturer Fikret Mamedov and Professor Stenbjörn Styring, have now made a discovery that changes the view on hydrogen production from green algae. The researchers studied in detail how Photosystem II works in two different strains of the green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. By measuring exactly how the amount and activity of Photosystem II varies under different conditions, and thereby affects hydrogen production, they found that a considerable amount of the energy absorbed by Photosystem II goes directly into hydrogen production.
"As much as 80 per cent of the electrons that the hydrogen-producing hydrogenases need come from Photosystem II, which is much more than previously believed. This means that most of the hydrogen production is driven directly by solar energy. The discovery gives us hope that it in the future will be possible to control the green algae so that the efficiency becomes significantly higher than it is today", says Professor Stenbjörn Styring.
More information: Increased photosystem II stability promotes H2 production in sulfur-deprived Chlamydomonas reinhardtii , www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1220645110
Provided by Uppsala University Thursday, April 11, 2013
Air pollution scourge underestimated, green energy can help: U.N.
Artist Matt Hope adjusts the helmet linked to his air filtration bike in front of the China Central Television (CCTV) building on a hazy day in Beijing, March 26, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Petar KujundzicOSLO | Tue Apr 9, 2013 12:02pm EDT
OSLO (Reuters) - Air pollution is an underestimated scourge that kills far more people than AIDS and malaria and a shift to cleaner energy could easily halve the toll by 2030, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.
Investments in solar, wind or hydropower would benefit both human health and a drive by almost 200 nations to slow climate change, blamed mainly on a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from use of fossil fuels, they said.
"Air pollution is causing more deaths than HIV or malaria combined," Kandeh Yumkella, director general of the U.N. Industrial Development Organization, told a conference in Oslo trying to work out new U.N. development goals for 2030.
Most victims from indoor pollution, caused by wood fires and primitive stoves in developing nations, were women and children.
He suggested that new U.N. energy goals for 2030 should include halving the number of premature deaths caused by indoor and outdoor pollution.
A 2012 World Health Organization (WHO) study found that 3.5 million people die early annually from indoor air pollution and 3.3 million from outdoor air pollution. Toxic particles shorten lives by causing diseases such as pneumonia or cancer.
"The problem has been underestimated in the past," Maria Neira, the WHO's director of public health and environment, told Reuters. Smog is an acute problem from Beijing to Mexico City.
The data, published as part of a global review of causes of death in December 2012, were an upwards revision of previous figures of 1.9 million premature deaths caused by household pollution a year and 1.3 million outdoors, she said.
The revision reflects better measurements and changes in methods, such as including heart problems linked to pollutants, she said. The numbers cannot be added together because they include perhaps 500,000 from overlapping causes.
SIX MILLION
"Still, it means more than 6 million deaths every year caused by air pollution," she said. "The horrible thing is that this will be growing" because of rising use of fossil fuels.
By comparison, U.N. reports show there were about 1.7 million AIDS-related deaths in 2011 and malaria killed about 660,000 people in 2010.
Solutions were affordable, the experts said.
"If we increase access to clean energy ... the health benefits will be enormous. Maybe the health argument was not used enough" in debate on encouraging a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies, she said.
Almost 200 governments have agreed to work out by the end of 2015 a deal to combat climate change. But negotiations have stalled, partly because of economic slowdown and divisions between nations about how to share out the burden of cuts.
Yumkella also urged the world to build 400,000 clinics and medical units in developing nations by 2030 as part of U.N. energy and health goals. Vaccines, for instance, are often useless without refrigeration, which depends on electricity.
The United Nations has previously urged 2030 targets for universal access to energy, doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency and doubling the share of renewable energy in global consumption.
(Reporting by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent; Editing by Jon Hemming)
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
First mobile app for green chemistry fosters sustainable manufacturing of medicines
Mention mobile applications, or mobile apps, and people think of games, email, news, weather, productivity and other software for Apple, Android and other smart phones and tablet computers. But an app with broader impact—the first mobile application to foster wider use of the environmentally friendly and sustainable principles of green chemistry—is the topic of a report in the American Chemical Society's new journal, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.
Sean Ekins, Alex M. Clark and Antony Williams point out that the companies that manufacture medicines, electronics components and hundreds of other consumer products have a commitment to work in a sustainable fashion without damaging the environment. That's the heart of "green chemistry," often defined as "the utilization of a set of principles that reduces or eliminates the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products."
Their article describes a guide on doing so for solvents, key ingredients in processes for making medicines. Some traditional processes generate 25-100 times more waste than the chemical they are making (e.g., pharmaceuticals). The solvents guide was developed by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute's Pharmaceutical Roundtable, a group of 14 pharmaceutical companies. The Green Solvents mobile app version of the guide for Apple devices covers 60 different solvents and is available online at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/green-solvents/id446670983?mt=8, and the Lab Solvents app for Android devices is available online at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mmi.android.labsolvents.
More information: "Incorporating Green Chemistry Concepts into Mobile Chemistry Applications and Their Potential Uses", ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng., 2013, 1 (1), pp 8–13. DOI: 10.1021/sc3000509
Abstract
Green Chemistry related information is generally proprietary, and papers on the topic are commonly behind pay walls that limit their accessibility. Several new mobile applications (apps) have been recently released for the Apple iOS platform, which incorporate green chemistry concepts. Because of the large number of people who now own a mobile device across all demographics, this population represents a highly novel way to communicate green chemistry, which has not previously been appreciated. We have made the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute (ACS GCI) Pharmaceutical Roundtable Solvent Selection Guide more accessible and have increased its visibility by creating a free mobile app for the Apple iOS platform called Green Solvents. We have also used this content for molecular similarity calculations using additional solvents to predict potential environmental and health categories, which could help in solvent selection. This approach predicted the correct waste or health class for over 60% of solvents when the Tanimoto similarity was >0.5. Additional mobile apps that incorporate green chemistry content or concepts are also described including Open Drug Discovery Teams and Yield101. Making green chemistry information freely available or at very low cost via such apps is a paradigm shift that could be exploited by content providers and scientists to expose their green chemistry ideas to a larger audience.
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