Exciting exhibition of paintings by Rebecca Howles at Organico Cafe in Bantry.
Rebecca is a Cork-born Aritist, singer and Jewellery designer. She will be exhibiting in Organico Cafe from June 24th until the end of August. The exhibition coincides with both the West Cork Music Festival and the West Cork Literary Festival – so come up and see it!
• Lunch Time Special – Main Course plus tea/coffee for €10.00
• We are developing Home Pizza Kit for those Friday nights when you need something quick but want to avoid the freezer section.
• Take Away Fresh Delicious Organic Soup €3.50
• Take Away Organic Fair Trade Coffee €1.50
• Monday’s Bread Offer 2 Wholemeal loaves €3.00
In the shop selected Pataks curry pastes are on offer at €1.99 instead of the normal Rsp of €2.83, and the Red and the Green Alpro Soya milks are on offer at €1.29 instead of our normal Rsp of €1.86! We also still have our ‘cost price rice’ offers of 5 kg of Organico Brown short/long grain for €10.00 and 5 kg of Fair Trade Organic brown Basmatti for €15.00.
Come in on Mondays and take advantage of our great wholemeal bread offer – 2 loaves for €3.00!
Stock up on Organic Soyamilk from Provamel at only €1.29 while stocks last
Buy 5 KG Organic Brown Long/short grain rice for only €10 – normal price approx €1.99 for 500g so our offer is half price!
Coming soon: Great value on bulk buying of Organic basmatti, Quinoa, Organic red Lentils, Organic Oats and much more….
All these available instore while stocks last. Unfortunately we can’t post these offers.
We are looking for enthusiastic, committed, outgoing peopel to join our team; people who have a knowledge and a passion for good food and freindly service. Communication skills and a good understanding of English are essential. Terms will include flexible hours and working Saturdays.
Please call in with a CV and have a chat with a member of staff. We prefer to accept CV’s in person rather than by email or post. Apologies in advance we will not be able to respond to every CV.
Well, from our years of both taking and recommending various vitamin and mineral supplements, we would, as Healthfood Shop owners, say ”No”. And certainly not under normal circumstances. Water, salt, aspirin, the sun… all these can kill, if you drink/eat/swallow/bathe too much. If a person attempted to live on vitamins alone, they would not live very long. That is why all vitamin supplements carry a warning that they are not to be used in place of a varied diet. But when they are used as ‘’supplements”, which they are sold as, and taken in the correct dosage, there is no risk to human life.
Recent news coverage would suggest otherwise. The most recent controversy surrounds a recent “study” led by Serbian scientist and “visiting researcher” at Copenhagen University Hospital, Goran Bjelakovic. His name is now synonymous with vitamin meta-analyses (studies of other studies) which appear to show that vitamin supplements either don’t work or end up increasing your risk of death. Two recent bursts of negative international headlines on vitamins supplements (1 October 2004 and 28 February 2007) followed releases of previous research papers (see asterisked articles in Reference list below).
So how did the researchers come to their conclusion, which was that anti-oxidents increase the risk of heart attacks? how did the Cochrane Library arrive at such a conclusion? According to http://www.laleva.org ”it’s easy: The researchers considered 452 studies on these vitamins, and they threw out the 405 studies where nobody died! That left just 47 studies where subjects died from various causes (one study was conducted on terminal heart patients, for example). From this hand-picked selection of studies, these researchers concluded that antioxidants increase mortality ”.
How does this kind of ‘’science” make it to the front pages, one might ask?
In the UK there is a groups called The Alliance for Natural Health. Their response to this study can be found on their home page.
I have taken several points of interest from their argument:
1. This is not a new study - it is a rehash of the very same data sets that led to the previous negative studies – and these methodologies tell us nothing about the way in which high quality combinations of nutrient supplements work. This is a re-analysis of studies that have been conducted and reported on previously, by a man at a computer. In this case a group of men with a known axe to grind, who have never produced a study favourable to supplements, which is itself statistically unlikely unless you have a bias.
2. This isn’t meaningful. When you select or reject studies on criteria that only mean something to statisticians, and ignore important things like duration, how long the study ran for — which ranged from 28 days to 14 years — your findings are immediately meaningless. Even the huge difference in dose of supplements between different studies — Vitamin E ranging from 10 to 5000 units daily, for instance — they didn’t deem important.
3. These studies apply only to synthetic forms of vitamins (as produced by the pharmaceutical industry). The authors of this latest Cochrane review state: “The present review does not assess antioxidant supplements for treatment of specific diseases (tertiary prevention), antioxidant supplements for patients with demonstrated specific needs of antioxidants, or the effects of antioxidants contained in fruits or vegetables.” This shows that the study has no relevance to natural sources of vitamins and minerals or antioxidants sourced from plants (e.g. flavanoids, anthocyanins, sulforaphanes, salvestrols/resveratrol, etc.), which are included in many of the leading-edge natural health supplements claiming potent antioxidant activity.
As the ANH states, it has to be asked what the Cochrane Collaboration is doing, allowing, endorsing and indeed promoting unscientific, invalid rehashes such as this. Cochrane were supposed to be the only guys you really could trust.
REFERENCES (from the ANH Article):
**Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Gluud LL, Simonetti RG, Gluud C. Mortality in randomized trials of antioxidant supplements for primary and secondary prevention: systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA. 2007 Feb 28; 297(8):842-57. Review.
Bjelakovic G, Nagorni A, Nikolova D, Simonetti RG, Bjelakovic M, Gluud C. Meta-analysis: antioxidant supplements for primary and secondary prevention of colorectal adenoma. Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2006 Jul 15;24(2):281-91. Review.
Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Simonetti RG, Gluud C. Antioxidant supplements for preventing gastrointestinal cancers. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2004 Oct 18;(4):CD004183. Review.
*Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Simonetti RG, Gluud C. Antioxidant supplements for prevention of gastrointestinal cancers: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet. 2004 Oct 2-8;364(9441):1219-28. Review.
** Paper on which latest Cochrane review is based; negative findings created wide media interest
* Paper which created extensive media interest and formed basis of Cochrane review published in the same month.
Please leave your responses below and I will publish them. Hannah Dare.
The following text is a summary of a letter circulated by my colleagues in the Irish Association of Healthfood Stores. It was written by an Osteopath called Mardi Jameson in the Brixton Center in London. I feel that this information should be made available to more than our mailing list. I first published it a couple of months ago, and the responses I recieved are very interesting. Please see the bottom of the article. I have published every response rreceived regardless of what sentiment they expressed.
Dear Friend /Colleague,
You may not be aware that last week the controllers of BBC Health www.bbc.co.uk, one of the most accessed health websites in the world, decided to remove all coverage of complementary medicine!
They used to have substantial coverage with over 40 pages on this subject covering all the major therapies, their pros and cons, evidence for their effectiveness, how to find a qualified practitioner, etc. However the site has in recent months been targeted by the self-appointed ‘Quackbusters’, (scientists and medics vehemently opposed to complementary therapies such as Prof David Colquhon et al) who sent a deluge of letters and emails claiming that complementary therapies such as homeopathy and cranial osteopathy were ‘unscientific’ and should be removed. As a result large chunks of this part of the site were simply removed overnight and now, following recent cutbacks, it was decided that, rather than update this part of the site, it should simply be removed altogether!
It may seem incredible that a public service site this prominent can deem complementary medicine so insignificant that it no longer warrants any coverage other than the odd news story. This is despite the fact that complementary medicine is used favourably by a significant proportion of the population (recent surveys have estimated that around 1 in 5 Britons use it at some point or other) and that increasing numbers of people are now seeking to train in these therapies. However, as the ‘quack busters’ become more organised and active, evidence of the backlash against complementary medicine is appearing all over the place – such as the removal of NHS Trust funding for homeopathy, the threatened closure of the homeopathic hospitals, many negative news stories in the press and so on. Rather than taking a reasoned view and considering the evidence from good research studies on complementary medicine these individuals seem simply hell bent on trying to ’stamp out’ complementary medicine in any way possible. The BBC removal of complementary medicine coverage (which has been in place for almost 15 years!) is one example.
If you care about complementary medicine and believe information pages on it should be returned to BBCi, please, please take just a minute to express your views using their online comment form at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/ to make your view known. As a public service company they to listen to your views so your email will make a difference. Apparently for all the many letters and emails that they received that were against complementary medicine they only received a handful in support…
Therefore if you are in support please let them know so they may revise their thinking on this subject.
Please act as soon as possible and pass on these details to anyone else you know who may also be willing to write in support of complementary medicine.
Thank you.
Blogged by Hannah Dare
Bantry Fair Trade group in support of fair trade fortnight is showing the documentary Black Gold on Thursday the 28th of Febuary in the Cinemax. Black Gold is a film by Nick and Marc Francis that highlights the plight of Ethiopian Coffee growers. The wedsite states: ‘As westerners revel in designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished Ethiopian coffee growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. In this eye-opening expose of the multi-billion dollar industry, Black Gold traces one man’s fight for a fair price’.
For more information please look at http://www.blackgoldmovie.com
The current exhibition in Organico Cafe is work by Anne Marie Mcinerney from Skibbereen, West Cork. Anne Maire’s work has a wide range of influences, from the wild seas and wide skies of West Cork to drousy Italian vinyards. Anne Marie studied fine art in the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork and then went on to Belfast to do a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art. This exhibition is titled ‘Skyscapes’. The canvasses are large, striking and well worth a viewing!
Come and view Anne Marie’s work in Organico Cafe during Febuary 2008 (we’re going to keep in for some of March if we can – we’re enjoying it that much!)
