sutton023

This is old news for those of us in the nut business; but nuts are HEALTHY- and that message is being very solidly delivered to the public by study after study. The most recent one comes from two of the most highly respected long term health tracking studies in the world, the "Nurses Health Study" and the "Health Professionals Follow-up Study" - which together track ~119,000 men and women, over some 30 years.  It's in the NEJM  and is also reported on here in plain English, in  The New York Times .  And Carl Albers recently emailed me this article , which refers to the same NEJM study (thanks, Carl!)  And we covered the previous "big new!" article on this topic, from March 2012, right here . Cutting to the chase- the more nuts people eat; the better for them; in every way they can measure; including such things as death from cancer and heart disease. The scientists and doctors are mostly bickering about which causal factors are most important at this  ...

Managed to stop in on my way back from the New York Nut Growers summer meeting; and was truly delighted to find the substantial research and demonstration planting of Badgersett hazel germplasm just outside the Oberlin Lewis Center for Environmental Studies - more than thriving.  Please note- these plants were installed only 2.5 years ago ; all as standard tubelings, with about 8 clonal divisions for reference plants, including the G-029-N tissue culture clone. To my additional delight, they're running a chicken tractor in the hazels, with about 15 Lace Wyandottes providing a little nitrogen and soil service.  The folks here, left to right, are Griff Radulsksi, Sean Hayes (Lewis Center Manager), and John Bergen. These plants were tubelings- just 2 and a half years ago.  The tallest stems here have put on about 4 feet of new growth- so far- this year; Sean is 6 feet tall +.  Many of the tubelings are putting on catkins for next year, now; usually an indication t...

  The past few days saw the publication of a major piece of diet / medical research, in the New England Journal Of Medicine.   The NEJM is one of the top peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, highly respected.   The study, basically, measured the effects of a traditional "Mediterranean diet" - in a large group of people (over 7,000) over a long period of time (median of 4.8 years); in Spain (where access to the correct foods is good.)   In the world of medical research, this is an extraordinary achievement; it's incredibly hard to follow so many people, for such a long period; but they did it.   The major reason this hit the news now- the study was shut down .  By the "medical ethics" watchdogs.  Because the results were so very clear, that to continue would be causing unnecessary deaths and illness- in the control group.  They knew it.   Most of the world media picked this up as another "yes indeed, olive oil is good for you!" story; ...