FOOD NEWS FLASHES /

To Lose Weight, Switch From Meat To Mushrooms
A new study by the John Hopkins Weight Management Center suggests that eating low-energy-density foods like mushrooms, instead of high-energy-density foods such as meats, offers a successful strategy for weight control. Study participants received either beef or mushroom entrées for four days and then switched. Interestingly, the participants eating the mushroom entrées didn’t feel the need to compensate for the lower calorie meal later in the day. The conclusion: Substituting a four-ounce grilled Portabella mushroom for a four-ounce grilled hamburger over the course of a year saves more than 18,000 calories and nearly 3,000 grams of fat, the equivalent of 30 sticks of butter. Waistlines will benefit - and the environment will, too.

Cutting Caffeine Helps Diabetes
Coffee and soft drinks are such common beverages in our society that we forget that they contain caffeine, a powerful drug that spells bad news for people with type 2 diabetes. Caffeinated drinks, say researchers at Duke University, increase blood-sugar levels in people who suffer from the disease. In the Duke study, patients took a daily capsule that contained caffeine equal to about four cups of coffee (or one Vente at Starbucks). The researchers then monitored the patients’ blood-glucose levels and found that their sugar levels went up 8 percent - and even more after meals, with 9 percent after breakfast, 15 percent after lunch, and 26 percent after dinner in comparison to the caffeine-free control group. It appears that caffeine interferes with the process that moves glucose from the blood and into muscles and other cells in the body. Caffeine may also trigger the release of adrenaline, the fight-or-flight hormone that increases blood-glucose levels. Although the exact mechanism is not yet clear, the higher sugar levels triggered by caffeinated beverages undermine efforts to keep the disease under control.

Raw Feta Cheese Combats Food Poisoning
American cheese makers tend to use pasteurized milk for cheeses to protect against food poisoning, but that approach may, in some cases, be exactly backward. It turns out that friendly lactic acid bacteria found in raw sheep’s milk - and raw feta cheese - naturally produce antibiotics that kill off dangerous food-poisoning bacteria like Listeria, one of the most dangerous bacterial strains, report scientists at the Society for General Microbiology. These findings have many positive implications. Not only is it healthy to eat raw sheep’s milk feta, but the friendly bacteria contained in the cheese could lead to ways of fighting food-borne pathogens without the use of artificial additives and synthetic preservatives. Raw cheese may be an ally in the ongoing battle against disease-causing bugs.