24 March 2012 Last updated at 22:10 ET By Kate McGeown BBC News, Manila

Nestled at the back of a small courtyard in the north of Manila, there is a little restaurant with an unusual name and an even more unusual concept.

It is called Van Gogh is Bipolar, in homage to the Dutch painter who is believed to have had a life-long battle with mental illness, much like the restaurant's owner, Jetro Rafael.

Mr Rafael believes that certain foods can make you happy, and everything on the menu has been created with this in mind.

Ingredients such as salmon, honey, turkey and cabbage - all of which are thought to have mood-enhancing properties - have been worked into the dishes to create what Mr Rafael refers to as his "bipolar diet".

This is a very personal project. Mr Rafael said he developed his recipes after years of struggling with mood swings and depression.

"I started to look in books to learn how to manage my condition, and I found out about the properties of different foods. And now I want to share that knowledge," he said.

It is not just people with mental illnesses whom Mr Rafael aims to serve.

He also says his food can help those who just want to be a bit happier and calmer - perhaps they have had a stressful day at work, argued with their partner, got caught in Manila's terrible traffic or just feel a bit down.

"I see people come here who are tired and stressed, and when they leave I can see the difference," he said.

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Eating your way to happiness in the Philippines

For more than a decade, overweight Americans have been looking for a drug what some health professionals sarcastically call "the magic pill" to help in the never-ending battle with the scale.

The federal government next month may give a diet drug that it once rejected for its side effects a shot at becoming that magic pill.

But whether the new drug, called Qnexa, can perform weight loss wizardry depends on your definition of the word "magic."

Is the pill the missing ingredient for people who desperately want to shed weight as much as 10 percent of their body weight but lack the will or ability to lose excess pounds and keep them off? Or is it a temporary and potentially dangerous solution to a problem that really requires a lifestyle change?

One thing is clear: The nearly 30 percent of adults in Pennsylvania and about 36 percent nationwide who are considered obese need something to help them shed the extra pounds that threaten their health.

Linda Shumberger has been struggling with her weight all her life and is enthusiastic about the thought of a drug that could help her lose pounds.

The 48-year-old Center Valley woman's weight went up and stayed up 22 years ago after the birth of her son. She tried everything the Atkins diet, Nutrisystem, grapefruit. "You name the diet, I tried it," she said.

But then she started to lose control of her diabetes. That's when she knew she had to do something about the extra pounds.

"I wanted the band surgery," she said, referring to a procedure in which the stomach is constricted, limiting the amount of food a person can consume and making them feel full sooner. "But my diabetes was out of control."

She took another route. Working with Lehigh Valley Hospital weight loss specialist Harpreet Singh, Shumberger began taking phentermine, a drug that curbs appetite, and following a low-calorie, high-protein diet. She lost about 50 pounds, she said, and would like to lose more.

Originally posted here:
First new diet pill in 13 years nears FDA approval

Washington, Mar 24 (ANI): Salt beef, sea biscuits and the occasional weevil - the food endured by sailors during the Napoleonic wars is rarely considered to be tempting.

Now a new chemical analysis technique has allowed archaeologists to find out just how dour the diet of Georgian sailors really was.

The team's findings, also reveal how little had changed for sailors in the 200 years between the Elizabethan and Georgian eras.

The research, led by Professor Mark Pollard from the University of Oxford, focused on bones from 80 sailors who served from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries and were buried in Royal Naval Hospital cemeteries in Plymouth and Portsmouth.

"An isotopic analysis of bone collagen from the recovered skeletons allowed us to reconstruct average dietary consumption," said Dr Pollard.

"By comparing these findings to primary documentary evidence we can build a more accurate picture of life in Nelson's navy."

In the late 18th century the Royal Navy employed 70,000 seamen and marines.

Feeding so many men was a huge logistical challenge requiring strictly controlled diets including flour, oatmeal, suet, cheese, dried pork, beer, salted cod and ships biscuits when at sea.

The team's analysis shows that the diet of the sailors was consistent with contemporary documentary records such as manifests and captain's logs.

As well as validating the historical interpretation of sailors' diets, this finding has implications for the amount of marine protein, which can be isotopically detected in human diets.

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Diet of Nelson's Navy remained 'virtually unchanged for 200 yrs'

University of Illinois research reports that swine producers can feed distiller's dried grain with solubles (DDGS) to their pigs without concern for sulfur content.

"When you buy DDGS, you don't have to be concerned about the level of sulfur it contains because there doesn't appear to be any impact on pig performance," said U of I animal sciences professor Hans Stein.

According to the researcher, DDGS, a co-product of the ethanol industry, is used as a feed ingredient in diets fed to swine.

To maintain a stable pH in fermentation vats, ethanol producers use sulfuric acid, which results in a sulfur content in the DDGS that varies according to how much sulfuric acid was used.

Until now, the effect of low levels of sulfur in the diet on growth performance in pigs fed DDGS had not been determined, he said.

"Sulfur is toxic to cattle.

"If there is 0.4 percent sulfur in the diet, cattle start getting sick," Stein said.

"Because there hasn't been any work on sulfur toxicity with swine, we wanted to determine how sulfur affects palatability and performance in pigs."

In a recent study, Stein's research team compared a low-sulfur (0.3% sulfur) DDGS diet with a high-sulfur (0.9% sulfur) DDGS diet. The same DDGS was used in both groups.

The researchers compared palatability and growth performance of the pigs fed the low-sulfur and high-sulfur diets.

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Jaya Bhumitra is the Los Angeles campaigns director of the group Compassion Over Killing, which promotes vegetarianism and veganism. (Steve McCrank / Staff Photographer)

Jaya Bhumitra stopped eating meat when she was a young girl.

She was inspired by the sight of her family's pet chickens, which she realized felt fear and pain just like dog and cats - and people.

Today, the 30-year-old Torrance resident, who has a business degree, works as campaigns director for Compassion Over Killing, a national group that promotes vegan and vegetarian eating and encourages restaurants to include such diets in their menus.

What does your job entail?

I have two functions. The first one is to oversee the outreach department. We have two staff members, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast. They do outreach and education. I help them plan events and how to educate people on the ways and means of vegetarian eating.

What's the difference between vegetarians and vegans?

Vegetarians avoid meat products and vegans avoid any products that have any animal origin. Vegans also avoid any products like cleaning products that were tested on animals. We want to do the least harm and minimize the suffering. We don't wear leather or fur.

What's your second function?

The second thing I do is campaign work. We do corporate campaigns. For example, we have a campaign called WeLoveSubway.com. We're trying to get them to add a vegan option such as tofurky (a vegetarian turkey replacement).

Originally posted here:
At Work: Directing campaigns on behalf of vegan and vegetarian eating

Feature Article of Friday, 23 March 2012

Columnist: Tamakloe Kojo

Kojo Tamakloe

It has been about two years since Nana Dankwa Akuffo Addo was unveiled with a lot of fun fare as the Presidential candidate, known as flag bearer of the opposition NPP. That is a lot of time for him to have been able to develop a vision and policy frame work accompanied by the strategies to be used to accomplish them . That would ,after he and his team have sat down and diagnosed the ailments that afflict Ghana as a developing country and therefore the most likely cures to get it moving to become whatever vision he would have spelled out for the country.

Nkrumah our first leader had a vision to make us a proud African people and nation . In that light he sought a United States of Africa summed up in the Independence day statement The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked with the total liberation of the continent He therefore put programs into place that will achieve the status and at a rapid pace. As we were mostly illiterate , and without capital he introduced mass education and fee free education to produce educated people and the requisite manpower he needed for rapid development. In this science and mathematics were subjects that were encouraged and so produced the local doctors, engineers, architects, etc. No field was left untouched .He went on to quick start as many as 200 new industries that would in the first instance serve as job avenues for the citizenry while creating a middle class for a future take off. Africa was to be the ultimate market place for the manufactured products which was why he pursued the African Unity concept.

Construction work was all over the place , with well structured neighborhoods. Ghana national Construction Corporation was formed to absorb the engineers and artisans to construct the many works while gaining experience for the future Agricultural units , Commercial farms and dams were started to ensure food security but later abandoned by the UP/PP/NPP

Today we are supposed to rejoice about fee free education in SHS , which in the first place is Not an original idea but a re harsh of what the UGCC/UP/PP declared white elephant and a socialist or communist idea and hail Nana Addo for it . Should you ask questions ,then the NPP s supporters do what they do best, insult you or label you a tribalist or a foreigner . The question remains what is the over all vision of the fee free SHS scheme ?

When NPP left power there was a huge debt and up to today children are still going to school under trees. A lot of the schools are seriously under resourced and teachers poorly paid and trained . The whole education system lacks direction and focus . What should the JSS be doing and so what will the SHS be doing ?In the light of this we argue about the length of the SHS 3 or 4 years as we point out the quality is below par . Why allocate so much of the scarce resources to a scheme that will not generate an immediate income ? Where or how are we going to get the funds from when we are aware our Western donors to whom we have turned our independence to are suffering financially and are borrowing themselves . The British PM just met with the USA president and the theme was on how to balance the budget.

Mr Flagbearer , the time has come to start a new agricultural revolution so Ghana and Africa becomes food sufficient and food secure. That money can be used to train the JSS dropouts in agricultural science or other trade skills and given start up capital . That money can be used to subsidize fertilizer and tractors to increase agricultural output. That money can be channeled into poultry farms to give us protein in our diets. That money can be used to develop cattle production and fish farming .That money can be used to help the fishing communities improve the fishing gear to get better catch of fish. That money can be used for dams and building silos for extended food production and food storage . We do not need kenkey politics because there was insufficient rainfall. With that we save a lot of foreign exchange that can be used to import CAPITAL goods to add value to our raw materials

Mr Flag bearer , you went round the country on a Listening tour . Did they not tell you about housing shortage? Can you not use that money even if it were in the form of loans to alleviate the 2 million housing shortfall ? You did economics so you know supply and demand . Ghanas population is increasing and the populace instead of living in slums like Sodom & Gomorrah, need descent homes. Those children from Sodom & Gomorrah and its likes will not benefit a twit from the Fee free education, because they are hungry and because of the home environment . Their parents need jobs so they can afford to make choices for their children to get out of the ghetto

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NPP Flag Bearer, Nana Akuffo Addo What is he up to?