Photo by Sami Keinänen/Wikimedia Commons

The picture of a healthful, colorful meal?

​If you like lots of dining options, Miami is your kinda place. Whether you crave International deliciousness or  vegan, low-fat or sugar-free fare, it's all right here. Or so it would seem. Because there's one option noticeably missing from this metro melting pot: gluten-free.

Even so, there are a growing number of eateries diversifying their menus with "gluten-free friendly" options-- foods deemed gluten-free, but prepared in the same environment as those containing the grain protein.

While the difference may seem negligible, it's anything but to someone diagnosed with celiac disease, a serious medical condition that mandates total gluten elimination. Diagnosed two years ago, Jen Diaz, a Miami customs and patent attorney who also blogs at glutenfreebeat.com, says that all-too-often while dining out she has experienced the side effects of "cross-contamination"-- unwittingly ingesting gluten.

"I felt like my stomach was going to explode," she groaned, before ticking off a number of distressing gastrointestinal symptoms that follow cross-contamination. In one instance, her reaction was so severe, she wound up in a car accident after leaving the offending restaurant. "I was so sick, I was running red lights trying to get home as fast as I could," she confessed.
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​​​​Kashi's GoLean cereal (made by Kellogg's) contains 100 percent genetically engineered soybeans. Whole Foods Market's 365 Corn Flakes is made from 57 percent GMO corn; in Barbara's Bakery's Puffins the GMO corn content is 55 percent.

USDA testing has found residues of organophosphate pesticides like chlorpyrifos and malathion on corn, soy, wheat flour, and oats -- all common ingredients in non-organic breakfast cereals (in the case of wheat flour, residues were found in more than 60 percent of the samples). Recent studies have linked organophosphate exposure to a wide range of developmental and behavioral disorders in children.

These are a few of the findings of a report released yesterday by the Cornucopia Institute, an organic industry watchdog group from Cornucopia, Wisconsin. The report, entitled Cereal Crimes: How "Natural" Claims Deceive Consumers and Undermine the Organic Label -- A Look Down the Cereal and Granola Aisle, concludes that some of the nation's major food manufacturers are using deceptive marketing practices to sell us "natural" breakfast cereals that are genetically engineered and/or contaminated with toxic agrichemicals.
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Photo by Alexandra Leon

Gator Grill 192's gator and pineapple kabobs.

Gator Grill's new owners Sal and Elsa DeVito have taken the grease out of the menu -- and off a few window panes as well.

At the end of June, the DeVito's took over the Homestead establishment after the Bronx-bred chef Nino took off. The couple changed the name of the restaurant to Gator Grill 192 and removed fried items from the menu to keep it healthier.

"We've cleaned it up and we're looking for our new clientele. I have great expectations for this," said Sal.

The restaurants windows and wood paneling were pressure cleaned to remove grease residue. "You couldn't see to the outside," Elsa added.

Yet, a look in health records shows that a July 14 inspection turned up 13 violations.
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Alexandra Leon

The first five contestants to show up.

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Camille Lamb

Francisco has energy for hours thanks to his gas station game plan.

​Gas prices are so high these days, many of us feel like beating up the pump when it's done tallying up our tabs. But we can't do much damage to those LCD screens with flappy, impotent little biceps and the pep of salted slugs.

Wanna pack a punch the bored gas station attendants will be talking about for days? You can! Everything you need to inflate your musculature and your energy level is here, right alongside the anti-freeze and grape Philly Blunts. Short Order visited local gas stations to find astounding health tonics and products, all for a few bucks a pop. Francisco Framil Ferran, creator of the Get Pumped! gas station fitness blast, tagged along to demonstrate some easy ways to tune up your body while you fill up your tank.
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Arcana Dea

Uh, that may not be such a good idea.

​Just when you thought it was safe to skip a cycle of your dog's costly Advantix treatments, the bubonic plague stages a comeback --- at least in New Mexico. On Friday, a Santa Fe man became the first person to be diagnosed with the plague in 2011.

Thought the disease died in the 16th century? Ask a New Mexican if that's true. The state has seen 262 cases of the bubonic plague since 1949, six in 2009 alone, one of them fatal.

How does this happen? Just like a half a millennium ago, fleas hop off wild rodents carrying the plague bacterium, Yersinia Pestis, and onto humans, where they sink in their parasitic jaws and transmit the disease. Even your cat or dog can give you the plague if it carries plague-infected fleas into your home, or if it contracts the disease itself by eating some mangy plague-ridden animal and then scratches or bites you.
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via Thrive

Treats at Thrive.

​A friend and I recently lunched at Thrive (1239 Alton Rd., Miami Beach). We split two entrées and a fresh juice. Our bill came to about $32. For $16, we each had half a portobello mushroom "pizza" topped with cashew nut cheese, a half portion of sweet potato and black bean stew with brown rice, a small side salad that comes with each entrée, and half a beet, carrot, and spirulina juice. Each of our meals totaled somewhere around 600 calories. That's a generous estimate. So if you do the math, that amounts to about 2.7 cents per calorie.

Compare that to a meal at Burger King (110 Fifth St., Miami Beach). A small Whopper Value Meal, consisting of the sandwich, a Coke, and fries, costs about $5.50 in Miami Beach and contains about 1,200 calories. That's .46 cents per calorie, which means that a calorie at Thrive costs about six times the price of a calorie at the Burger King seven blocks down the street.

Better deal? Maybe. But Whole Foods and many authorities on nutrition have recently looked to the Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI) to calculate the value of a calorie.
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Salmonella bacteria

​British soccer stadium Forest Green Rovers Football Club recently instituted a ban on burgers and sausages. Its vegan owner first barred the team's players from partaking in red meat for "health and performance reasons," and then extended the policy to patrons as well, reasoning that if the food wasn't good enough for the players, it wasn't good enough for fans either.

We think the Miami Dolphins' Sun Life Stadium take this a step further and just ban all meat from its menus, not for the sake of being green, but to avoid potential food borne illness and death. According to ESPN's Outside the Lines and the Palm Beach Post, the stadium was rated last year as one of the worst health code violators in pro sports.
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via Flickr mccheek

Angel's trumpet or Devil's saxophone?

​Miami is a dangerous landscape of poisonous fauna. Some of us know that "poisonous" translates to "trippy". So, when you read about people dying from eating poisonous mushrooms, flowers, plants, and so on, it simply means that they were amateurs. May they rest in peace.
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Nina Mathews on flickr

Eat me at your own risk.

​Last year it was peanut butter. Last month it was eggs. Who knows what food-borne illness outbreak will hit us this month. Seems like outbreaks are coming at us faster than New Jersey-based reality TV shows these days. But besides satisfying morbid curiosity by checking out what's cooking on the Center for Disease Controls Foodborne Illness website, is there anything you can do or learn that will help you avoid the cesspool of bacteria and viruses that are swimming around your food? Consider this a quick primer on what kind of crap (sometimes literally) makes us sick and how you can avoid it on when you can.

 
5) Campylobacter

There's nothing campy about campylobacter, bacteria found in the bellies of animals that finds its way onto raw poultry and in milk. The CDC says it's the number one bacterial cause for diarrhea. Eating undercooked chicken or just having raw chicken drip on other food are the most common ways to take in the bacteria. Make sure to keep things stored appropriately in freezers (chicken at bottom) and cook things thoroughly to avoid. Also drink pasteurized products.

Recent outbreaks.
Raw milk drinkers in Colorado (goat's milk) and Wisconsin were hit with campylobacter outbreaks last year. About 60 people were infected with no deaths resulting.

4) Botulism

Botulism is a muscle-paralyzing disease caused by the bacteria named Clostridium botulinum--that's right the same junk everybody is injecting into their faces. Most commonly found in tainted canned goods it will lead to a host of ugly symptoms (kind of like botox) including slurred speech, drooping eyelids and blurred vision. Extreme cases lead to paralysis of breathing muscles, and when you can't breathe you die. Always check your canned goods to make sure they are not dented or smell nasty.

Recent outbreaks
Botulism outbreaks from commercial canned products have reduced in recent years but there was one discovered in 2007 for Castleberry Food Company which makes a variety of chili sauce.

 

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