///////////////Experts wonder about the surge in autism
By MIKE STOBBE
The Associated Press
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One of three brothers with Asperger’s, Ryan Massey, 11, at home in Dacula, Ga., is hyper and prone to angry outbursts.
ATLANTA A few decades ago, people probably would have said that children like Ryan Massey and Eddie Scheuplein were just odd. Or difficult.
Both boys are bright. But Ryan, 11, is hyper and prone to angry outbursts, and sometimes tries to strangle a classmate who annoys him. Eddie, 7, has a strange habit of sticking his shirt in his mouth and sucking on it.
Both were diagnosed with a form of autism. And it’s partly because of children like them that autism appears to be skyrocketing: In the latest estimate, as many as one in 150 children has some form of this disorder. Groups advocating more research money call autism “the fastest-growing developmental disability in the United States.”
Indeed, doctors are concerned that there are even more unrecognized cases out there. The American Academy of Pediatrics last week stressed the importance of screening every child — twice — for autism by age 2.
But many experts think that these unsociable behaviors were nearly as common 30 or 40 years ago. The recent explosion of cases appears to be mostly caused by a surge in special education services for autistic children, they say, and by a corresponding shift in what doctors call autism.
Autism has always been diagnosed by judging a child’s behavior. There are no blood or other physiological tests. For decades, the diagnosis was reserved for children with severe language and social impairments and unusual, repetitious behaviors.
Many children with severe autism hit themselves or others, don’t speak and don’t make eye contact.
In the 1990s, the autism umbrella expanded, and autism is now shorthand for a group of milder, related conditions, known as “autism spectrum disorders.”
The spectrum includes Asperger’s syndrome and something called PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified). Some support groups report more than half of their families fall into these categories, but there is no commonly accepted scientific breakdown.
Gradually, there have been changes in parents’ own perception of autism, the autism services schools provide and the care that insurers pay for, experts say.
Eddie, of Buford, Ga., was initially diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other conditions. But the services he got in school were not very helpful.
His mother, Michelle Scheuplein, said a diagnosis of autism brought occupational therapy and better services.
“I do have to admit, I almost like the idea of having the autistic label, at least over the other labels, because there’s more help out there for you,” she said.
“The truth is, there’s a powerful incentive for physicians and schools to classify children in a way that gets services,” said Edwin Trevathan of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even in the early 1980s, some parents were more comfortable with a diagnosis of mental retardation, Trevathan said.
Today, parents are more likely to cringe at a diagnosis of mental retardation, which is sometimes equated to a feeble-mindedness that may obscure a child’s potential.
And increasingly, professionals frown at the older term: The special education journal Mental Retardation this year changed its name to Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities.
The editor said that “mentally retarded” is becoming passe and demeaning, much like the terms “idiot”, “imbecile” and “moron” formerly used by doctors to describe varying degrees of mental retardation.
By MIKE STOBBE
The Associated Press
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One of three brothers with Asperger’s, Ryan Massey, 11, at home in Dacula, Ga., is hyper and prone to angry outbursts.
ATLANTA A few decades ago, people probably would have said that children like Ryan Massey and Eddie Scheuplein were just odd. Or difficult.
Both boys are bright. But Ryan, 11, is hyper and prone to angry outbursts, and sometimes tries to strangle a classmate who annoys him. Eddie, 7, has a strange habit of sticking his shirt in his mouth and sucking on it.
Both were diagnosed with a form of autism. And it’s partly because of children like them that autism appears to be skyrocketing: In the latest estimate, as many as one in 150 children has some form of this disorder. Groups advocating more research money call autism “the fastest-growing developmental disability in the United States.”
Indeed, doctors are concerned that there are even more unrecognized cases out there. The American Academy of Pediatrics last week stressed the importance of screening every child — twice — for autism by age 2.
But many experts think that these unsociable behaviors were nearly as common 30 or 40 years ago. The recent explosion of cases appears to be mostly caused by a surge in special education services for autistic children, they say, and by a corresponding shift in what doctors call autism.
Autism has always been diagnosed by judging a child’s behavior. There are no blood or other physiological tests. For decades, the diagnosis was reserved for children with severe language and social impairments and unusual, repetitious behaviors.
Many children with severe autism hit themselves or others, don’t speak and don’t make eye contact.
In the 1990s, the autism umbrella expanded, and autism is now shorthand for a group of milder, related conditions, known as “autism spectrum disorders.”
The spectrum includes Asperger’s syndrome and something called PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified). Some support groups report more than half of their families fall into these categories, but there is no commonly accepted scientific breakdown.
Gradually, there have been changes in parents’ own perception of autism, the autism services schools provide and the care that insurers pay for, experts say.
Eddie, of Buford, Ga., was initially diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other conditions. But the services he got in school were not very helpful.
His mother, Michelle Scheuplein, said a diagnosis of autism brought occupational therapy and better services.
“I do have to admit, I almost like the idea of having the autistic label, at least over the other labels, because there’s more help out there for you,” she said.
“The truth is, there’s a powerful incentive for physicians and schools to classify children in a way that gets services,” said Edwin Trevathan of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even in the early 1980s, some parents were more comfortable with a diagnosis of mental retardation, Trevathan said.
Today, parents are more likely to cringe at a diagnosis of mental retardation, which is sometimes equated to a feeble-mindedness that may obscure a child’s potential.
And increasingly, professionals frown at the older term: The special education journal Mental Retardation this year changed its name to Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities.
The editor said that “mentally retarded” is becoming passe and demeaning, much like the terms “idiot”, “imbecile” and “moron” formerly used by doctors to describe varying degrees of mental retardation.
/////////////////////////CREDIT CALORIE COUNTER=Fast Food Items Highest In Trans Fat - The 88 least healthy foods.
digg_url = 'http://www.aCalorieCounter.com/fast-food-trans-fat.php';
The absolute worst ingredient your food could possibly contain is trans fat. Maybe you've heard of it? If not, here's a quick run down of some of the horrible things that studies have shown may be caused by a diet high in trans fat:
Coronary Heart Disease (Raise bad cholesterol AND lower good cholesterol)
Stroke
Diabetes
There then exists some (albeit less) evidence that trans fat may also cause:
Cancer
Obesity
Liver Dysfunction
Infertility
Like I said, it's the worst ingredient your food could contain. And, guess what? Fast food is pretty much the most common place you'll find this evil type of fat. Fast food is also the place you'll find the highest amounts of it.
Knowing this, I looked over the nutrition facts of literally every single item from the menus of McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, A&W, Arby's, Hardee's, In-N-Out Burger, Jack in the Box, Little Caesars, Papa John's, Pizza Hut, Domino's, Sonic, Subway, Taco Bell, Wendy's, White Castle, Popeyes, Del Taco, Carl's Jr., and Dairy Queen to put together a list of the 88 fast food items highest in trans fat.
Keeping in mind just how terrible trans fat is and all of the terrible things it can cause, I have given this the very catchy nickname of "The 88 Fast Food Items Most Likely To Kill You." When you look over this list with the understanding that you should be eating 0 grams of trans fat per day, you'll realize that my little nickname really isn't that much of an overstatement. So, without further ado...
The 88 Fast Food Items Most Likely To Kill You:
White Castle Homestyle Onion Rings - Sack Trans Fat: 30 grams
White Castle Fish Nibblers - Sack Trans Fat: 16 grams
KFC Chicken Pot Pie Trans Fat: 14 grams
Burger King Hash Browns - Large Trans Fat: 13 grams
White Castle Chicken Rings - 20 rings Trans Fat: 13 grams
Jack in the Box Fish & Chips - Large Trans Fat: 12 grams
Jack in the Box Bacon Cheddar Potato Wedges Trans Fat: 12 grams
White Castle Clam Strips - Sack Trans Fat: 12 grams
Dairy Queen Chicken Strip Basket 6-piece Trans Fat: 12 grams
White Castle French Fries - Sack Trans Fat: 11 grams
Jack in the Box Fish & Chips - Medium Trans Fat: 10 grams
Jack in the Box Natural Cut Fries - Large Trans Fat: 10 grams
Jack in the Box Onion Rings (8) Trans Fat: 10 grams
Jack in the Box Seasoned Curly Fries - Large Trans Fat: 10 grams
White Castle Onion Chips - Sack Trans Fat: 10 grams
Dairy Queen Chicken Strip Basket 4-piece Trans Fat: 10 grams
Burger King Hash Browns - Medium Trans Fat: 9 grams
Jack in the Box Fish & Chips - Small Trans Fat: 9 grams
Dairy Queen Large Onion Rings Trans Fat: 9 grams
McDonald's Large French Fries Trans Fat: 8 grams
Burger King French Fries King Size Trans Fat: 7 grams
Domino's Garlic Dipping Sauce Trans Fat: 7 grams
White Castle Onion Rings - Sack Trans Fat: 7 grams
Jack in the Box Natural Cut Fries - Medium Trans Fat: 7 grams
Jack in the Box Sampler Trio Trans Fat: 7 grams
Jack in the Box Spicy Chicken Bites (16) Trans Fat: 7 grams
Jack in the Box Seasoned Curly Fries - Medium Trans Fat: 7 grams
Jack in the Box Spicy Chicken Biscuit Trans Fat: 7 grams
Dairy Queen Regular Onion Rings Trans Fat: 7 grams
Boston Market Pastry Top Chicken Pot Pie Trans Fat: 7 grams
Arby's Apple Turnover Trans Fat: 6.5 grams
Burger King BK Chicken Fries 12pc Trans Fat: 6 grams
Burger King French Fries Large Trans Fat: 6 grams
Burger King Sausage, Egg, & Cheese Biscuit Trans Fat: 6 grams
Arby's Cherry Turnover Trans Fat: 6 grams
White Castle Chicken Rings - 9 rings Trans Fat: 6 grams
White Castle Clam Strips - Regular Trans Fat: 6 grams
White Castle Mozzarella Cheese Sticks (10 sticks) Trans Fat: 6 grams
Jack in the Box Chicken Biscuit Trans Fat: 6 grams
Jack in the Box Sausage, Egg & Cheese Biscuit Trans Fat: 6 grams
Dairy Queen Large Choc. Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard Trans Fat: 6 grams
A&W Large Fries Trans Fat: 5.5 grams
McDonald's Baked Apple Pie Trans Fat: 5 grams
Burger King Sausage Biscuit Trans Fat: 5 grams
McDonald's Medium French Fries Trans Fat: 5 grams
Burger King Ham, Egg, & Cheese Biscuit Trans Fat: 5 grams
Burger King Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit Trans Fat: 5 grams
Burger King Hash Browns - Small Trans Fat: 5 grams
White Castle Onion Chips - Regular Trans Fat: 5 grams
Jack in the Box Natural Cut Fries - Small Trans Fat: 5 grams
Jack in the Box Seasoned Curly Fries - Small Trans Fat: 5 grams
Jack in the Box Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit Trans Fat: 5 grams
Jack in the Box Original French Toast Sticks (4) Trans Fat: 5 grams
Jack in the Box Sausage Biscuit Trans Fat: 5 grams
Dairy Queen Large French Fries Trans Fat: 5 grams
Burger King BK Chicken Fries 9pc Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
McDonald's Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips (5 pc) Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Boston Market Chocolate Cake Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
KFC Chicken and Biscuit Bowl Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Burger King Onion Rings King Size Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Burger King French Fries Medium Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Sonic French Toast Sticks (4) Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Jack in the Box Sourdough Ultimate Cheeseburger Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Jack in the Box Stuffed Jalapenos (7) Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Jack in the Box Blueberry French Toast Sticks (4) Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
White Castle Fish Nibblers - Regular Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Dairy Queen Med. Choc. Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
A&W Onion Rings Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
A&W Crispy Chicken Sandwich Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Burger King Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich Trans Fat: 4 grams
McDonald's Hotcakes (2 pats margarine & syrup) Trans Fat: 4 grams
Burger King Onion Rings Large Trans Fat: 4 grams
Burger King Cini-minis Trans Fat: 4 grams
White Castle French Fries - Regular Trans Fat: 4 grams
White Castle Homestyle Onion Rings - Regular Trans Fat: 4 grams
White Castle Chicken Rings - 6 rings Trans Fat: 4 grams
White Castle Hot Chocolate Large Trans Fat: 4 grams
Arby's Cinnamon Twist Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Papa Burger Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Original Bacon Double Cheeseburger Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Original Double Cheeseburger Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Chili Cheese Fries Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Cheese Fries Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Chili Fries Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Kids Fries Trans Fat: 4 grams
Dairy Queen 1/2 lb. FlameThrower GrilllBurger Trans Fat: 4 grams
Jack in the Box Mozzarella Cheese Sticks (6) Trans Fat: 4 grams
Jack in the Box Sausage Croissant Trans Fat: 4 grams
*NOTE* The above list shows every fast food item that contained 4 or more grams of trans fat per serving. There were TONS of items that contained less than 4 grams (anywhere from 0.5 to 3.5) but I decided on 4 grams as the cut off point for the WORST 88 foods. 3.5 grams of trans fat is still terrible, but the above 88 are the worst of the worst.
Fast Food Restaurant Appearances On This List
For added fun, I figured I'd add up how many times each fast food restaurant appeared on the above list. Here are the results:
Jack in the Box: 24
Burger King: 16
White Castle: 16
A&W: 10
Dairy Queen: 8
McDonald's: 5
Arby's: 3
KFC: 2
Domino's: 1
Sonic: 1
In-N-Out Burger: 0
Subway: 0
Taco Bell: 0
Wendy's: 0
Pizza Hut: 0
Popeyes: 0
Little Caesars: 0
Papa John's: 0
Of the fast food restaurants that appeared 0 times on this list...
Wendy's did have items that contained up to 3.5 grams of trans fat.
Taco Bell did have items that contained up to 3 grams of trans fat.
Popeyes did have items that contained up to 3 grams of trans fat.
Pizza Hut did have items that contained up to 2 grams of trans fat.
Subway did have items that contained up to 2 grams of trans fat.
Little Caesars did have items that contained up to 1.5 grams of trans fat.
In-N-Out Burger did have items that contained up to 1 gram of trans fat.
Papa John's did not have any items that contained any trans fat. Every item had 0 grams.
The following fast food restaurants did not include trans fat content in the nutrition information provided on their web site. Every other nutrient was listed except trans fat. These restaurants were therefore not included in the above list.
Hardee's
Del Taco
Carl's Jr.
In addition, as far as I was able to tell, some fast food restaurants didn't provide any nutrition information on their web sites whatsoever. These restaurants were also obviously not included in the above list.
Nathans
Roy Rogers
Blimpie
Kenny Rogers Roasters
Quiznos
Trans Fat FAQ
How much trans fat are we supposed to eat per day?
The American Heart Association recommends a maximum of no more than 2 grams of trans fat per day. Not per meal or per food, but per day total. And, get this. They also say that there is enough naturally occurring trans fats in some meat and dairy products that most people already reach this maximum 2 grams without the additional consumption of the industrially manufactured trans fats contained in the foods on the above list. So, to sum up, if you care at all about your health and enjoy being alive, you should be eating 0 grams of trans fat per day.
So does this mean we should never eat fast food ever?
In a perfect world, pretty much. I mean, you know it's junk. Besides trans fat, there's the always fun stuff like saturated fat, calories, and sodium to also think about. It really is the type of food that should never be eaten... ever. Sure, there are some better choices you can be making at these types of restaurants. And, if you're going to eat this stuff, you should definitely be making those choices. For starters, avoiding the 88 foods on this list would be a fantastic idea.
Is this information all current? When was it put together and when was it last updated?
This list was originally created in October 2007, and last updated in November 2007. I'm thinking of updating the list once or twice a year to keep it all up to date. When I do update it, it will be mentioned right here.
Where did you get all of this nutrition information from?
All of the nutritional content (trans fat) used in creating the above list was taken directly from the official web site of each fast food restaurant.
digg_url = 'http://www.aCalorieCounter.com/fast-food-trans-fat.php';
The absolute worst ingredient your food could possibly contain is trans fat. Maybe you've heard of it? If not, here's a quick run down of some of the horrible things that studies have shown may be caused by a diet high in trans fat:
Coronary Heart Disease (Raise bad cholesterol AND lower good cholesterol)
Stroke
Diabetes
There then exists some (albeit less) evidence that trans fat may also cause:
Cancer
Obesity
Liver Dysfunction
Infertility
Like I said, it's the worst ingredient your food could contain. And, guess what? Fast food is pretty much the most common place you'll find this evil type of fat. Fast food is also the place you'll find the highest amounts of it.
Knowing this, I looked over the nutrition facts of literally every single item from the menus of McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, A&W, Arby's, Hardee's, In-N-Out Burger, Jack in the Box, Little Caesars, Papa John's, Pizza Hut, Domino's, Sonic, Subway, Taco Bell, Wendy's, White Castle, Popeyes, Del Taco, Carl's Jr., and Dairy Queen to put together a list of the 88 fast food items highest in trans fat.
Keeping in mind just how terrible trans fat is and all of the terrible things it can cause, I have given this the very catchy nickname of "The 88 Fast Food Items Most Likely To Kill You." When you look over this list with the understanding that you should be eating 0 grams of trans fat per day, you'll realize that my little nickname really isn't that much of an overstatement. So, without further ado...
The 88 Fast Food Items Most Likely To Kill You:
White Castle Homestyle Onion Rings - Sack Trans Fat: 30 grams
White Castle Fish Nibblers - Sack Trans Fat: 16 grams
KFC Chicken Pot Pie Trans Fat: 14 grams
Burger King Hash Browns - Large Trans Fat: 13 grams
White Castle Chicken Rings - 20 rings Trans Fat: 13 grams
Jack in the Box Fish & Chips - Large Trans Fat: 12 grams
Jack in the Box Bacon Cheddar Potato Wedges Trans Fat: 12 grams
White Castle Clam Strips - Sack Trans Fat: 12 grams
Dairy Queen Chicken Strip Basket 6-piece Trans Fat: 12 grams
White Castle French Fries - Sack Trans Fat: 11 grams
Jack in the Box Fish & Chips - Medium Trans Fat: 10 grams
Jack in the Box Natural Cut Fries - Large Trans Fat: 10 grams
Jack in the Box Onion Rings (8) Trans Fat: 10 grams
Jack in the Box Seasoned Curly Fries - Large Trans Fat: 10 grams
White Castle Onion Chips - Sack Trans Fat: 10 grams
Dairy Queen Chicken Strip Basket 4-piece Trans Fat: 10 grams
Burger King Hash Browns - Medium Trans Fat: 9 grams
Jack in the Box Fish & Chips - Small Trans Fat: 9 grams
Dairy Queen Large Onion Rings Trans Fat: 9 grams
McDonald's Large French Fries Trans Fat: 8 grams
Burger King French Fries King Size Trans Fat: 7 grams
Domino's Garlic Dipping Sauce Trans Fat: 7 grams
White Castle Onion Rings - Sack Trans Fat: 7 grams
Jack in the Box Natural Cut Fries - Medium Trans Fat: 7 grams
Jack in the Box Sampler Trio Trans Fat: 7 grams
Jack in the Box Spicy Chicken Bites (16) Trans Fat: 7 grams
Jack in the Box Seasoned Curly Fries - Medium Trans Fat: 7 grams
Jack in the Box Spicy Chicken Biscuit Trans Fat: 7 grams
Dairy Queen Regular Onion Rings Trans Fat: 7 grams
Boston Market Pastry Top Chicken Pot Pie Trans Fat: 7 grams
Arby's Apple Turnover Trans Fat: 6.5 grams
Burger King BK Chicken Fries 12pc Trans Fat: 6 grams
Burger King French Fries Large Trans Fat: 6 grams
Burger King Sausage, Egg, & Cheese Biscuit Trans Fat: 6 grams
Arby's Cherry Turnover Trans Fat: 6 grams
White Castle Chicken Rings - 9 rings Trans Fat: 6 grams
White Castle Clam Strips - Regular Trans Fat: 6 grams
White Castle Mozzarella Cheese Sticks (10 sticks) Trans Fat: 6 grams
Jack in the Box Chicken Biscuit Trans Fat: 6 grams
Jack in the Box Sausage, Egg & Cheese Biscuit Trans Fat: 6 grams
Dairy Queen Large Choc. Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard Trans Fat: 6 grams
A&W Large Fries Trans Fat: 5.5 grams
McDonald's Baked Apple Pie Trans Fat: 5 grams
Burger King Sausage Biscuit Trans Fat: 5 grams
McDonald's Medium French Fries Trans Fat: 5 grams
Burger King Ham, Egg, & Cheese Biscuit Trans Fat: 5 grams
Burger King Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit Trans Fat: 5 grams
Burger King Hash Browns - Small Trans Fat: 5 grams
White Castle Onion Chips - Regular Trans Fat: 5 grams
Jack in the Box Natural Cut Fries - Small Trans Fat: 5 grams
Jack in the Box Seasoned Curly Fries - Small Trans Fat: 5 grams
Jack in the Box Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit Trans Fat: 5 grams
Jack in the Box Original French Toast Sticks (4) Trans Fat: 5 grams
Jack in the Box Sausage Biscuit Trans Fat: 5 grams
Dairy Queen Large French Fries Trans Fat: 5 grams
Burger King BK Chicken Fries 9pc Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
McDonald's Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips (5 pc) Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Boston Market Chocolate Cake Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
KFC Chicken and Biscuit Bowl Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Burger King Onion Rings King Size Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Burger King French Fries Medium Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Sonic French Toast Sticks (4) Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Jack in the Box Sourdough Ultimate Cheeseburger Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Jack in the Box Stuffed Jalapenos (7) Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Jack in the Box Blueberry French Toast Sticks (4) Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
White Castle Fish Nibblers - Regular Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Dairy Queen Med. Choc. Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
A&W Onion Rings Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
A&W Crispy Chicken Sandwich Trans Fat: 4.5 grams
Burger King Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich Trans Fat: 4 grams
McDonald's Hotcakes (2 pats margarine & syrup) Trans Fat: 4 grams
Burger King Onion Rings Large Trans Fat: 4 grams
Burger King Cini-minis Trans Fat: 4 grams
White Castle French Fries - Regular Trans Fat: 4 grams
White Castle Homestyle Onion Rings - Regular Trans Fat: 4 grams
White Castle Chicken Rings - 6 rings Trans Fat: 4 grams
White Castle Hot Chocolate Large Trans Fat: 4 grams
Arby's Cinnamon Twist Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Papa Burger Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Original Bacon Double Cheeseburger Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Original Double Cheeseburger Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Chili Cheese Fries Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Cheese Fries Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Chili Fries Trans Fat: 4 grams
A&W Kids Fries Trans Fat: 4 grams
Dairy Queen 1/2 lb. FlameThrower GrilllBurger Trans Fat: 4 grams
Jack in the Box Mozzarella Cheese Sticks (6) Trans Fat: 4 grams
Jack in the Box Sausage Croissant Trans Fat: 4 grams
*NOTE* The above list shows every fast food item that contained 4 or more grams of trans fat per serving. There were TONS of items that contained less than 4 grams (anywhere from 0.5 to 3.5) but I decided on 4 grams as the cut off point for the WORST 88 foods. 3.5 grams of trans fat is still terrible, but the above 88 are the worst of the worst.
Fast Food Restaurant Appearances On This List
For added fun, I figured I'd add up how many times each fast food restaurant appeared on the above list. Here are the results:
Jack in the Box: 24
Burger King: 16
White Castle: 16
A&W: 10
Dairy Queen: 8
McDonald's: 5
Arby's: 3
KFC: 2
Domino's: 1
Sonic: 1
In-N-Out Burger: 0
Subway: 0
Taco Bell: 0
Wendy's: 0
Pizza Hut: 0
Popeyes: 0
Little Caesars: 0
Papa John's: 0
Of the fast food restaurants that appeared 0 times on this list...
Wendy's did have items that contained up to 3.5 grams of trans fat.
Taco Bell did have items that contained up to 3 grams of trans fat.
Popeyes did have items that contained up to 3 grams of trans fat.
Pizza Hut did have items that contained up to 2 grams of trans fat.
Subway did have items that contained up to 2 grams of trans fat.
Little Caesars did have items that contained up to 1.5 grams of trans fat.
In-N-Out Burger did have items that contained up to 1 gram of trans fat.
Papa John's did not have any items that contained any trans fat. Every item had 0 grams.
The following fast food restaurants did not include trans fat content in the nutrition information provided on their web site. Every other nutrient was listed except trans fat. These restaurants were therefore not included in the above list.
Hardee's
Del Taco
Carl's Jr.
In addition, as far as I was able to tell, some fast food restaurants didn't provide any nutrition information on their web sites whatsoever. These restaurants were also obviously not included in the above list.
Nathans
Roy Rogers
Blimpie
Kenny Rogers Roasters
Quiznos
Trans Fat FAQ
How much trans fat are we supposed to eat per day?
The American Heart Association recommends a maximum of no more than 2 grams of trans fat per day. Not per meal or per food, but per day total. And, get this. They also say that there is enough naturally occurring trans fats in some meat and dairy products that most people already reach this maximum 2 grams without the additional consumption of the industrially manufactured trans fats contained in the foods on the above list. So, to sum up, if you care at all about your health and enjoy being alive, you should be eating 0 grams of trans fat per day.
So does this mean we should never eat fast food ever?
In a perfect world, pretty much. I mean, you know it's junk. Besides trans fat, there's the always fun stuff like saturated fat, calories, and sodium to also think about. It really is the type of food that should never be eaten... ever. Sure, there are some better choices you can be making at these types of restaurants. And, if you're going to eat this stuff, you should definitely be making those choices. For starters, avoiding the 88 foods on this list would be a fantastic idea.
Is this information all current? When was it put together and when was it last updated?
This list was originally created in October 2007, and last updated in November 2007. I'm thinking of updating the list once or twice a year to keep it all up to date. When I do update it, it will be mentioned right here.
Where did you get all of this nutrition information from?
All of the nutritional content (trans fat) used in creating the above list was taken directly from the official web site of each fast food restaurant.
///////////////////////the tragedy and memeory of Captain Scott
//////////////////////'No Sun Link' to Climate Change (BBC News)
A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change. It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen. It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.
A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change. It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen. It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.
///////////////////////Kurt Vonnegut
Eight rules for writing fiction:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
-- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.Kurt Vonnegut
Eight rules for writing fiction:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
-- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.
Eight rules for writing fiction:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
-- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.Kurt Vonnegut
Eight rules for writing fiction:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
-- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.
///////////////////////////BAATIWALA MEYE=ENLIGHTENED LADY
SHAARE CHUATTOR-1953
////////////////////////EVO DEVO=
Genesis, take two
ANNE MCILROY
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
November 2, 2007 at 9:34 PM EST
The chicken egg has been prepped for surgery – a pea-size hole cut in the shell and covered with sticky tape. And now Hans Larsson, a McGill University researcher, removes it from the incubator, places it under a microscope and prepares to operate.
He gently peels off the tape and teases back the membranes that line the shell with tweezers. Through the eyepiece, he can see the tiny dot of a heart, steadily beating. He can also see the bud where he implants a milky bead doused in a protein. He hopes it will coax the embryo to grow a big tail. A dinosaur-like tail.
A paleontologist, Prof. Larsson spends a significant portion of his time doing traditional dinosaur hunting, digging fossils as far afield as the Arctic and Africa with jackhammers and pickaxes. But he has long been frustrated with the limitations of studying old bones and what they reveal about the mysteries of evolution.
It was by examining ancient skeletons that paleontologists learned that modern birds, including chickens, descended from dinosaurs and that their relatives include such fierce predators as Tyrannosaurus rex. What fossils don't reveal, though, is how exactly such dramatic anatomical changes first arose. How did teeth the size of bananas turn into beaks? Or mighty tails become wimpy, feathered stumps?
Enlarge Image
By manipulating genes and proteins in his lab, Hans Larsson is trying to grow T. rex-like tails in chicken embryos. (CHRISTINE MUSCHI/FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
For answers, Prof. Larsson has turned to the burgeoning field of evo-devo – or evolutionary developmental biology – a radical new approach to understanding the past.
It is based on the astonishing discovery that modern animals, including humans, share many of the same body-building genes and that some of these genes have been around for millions of years.
How these “master genes” are used during the development of an embryo, when they are switched on and in what combinations is what makes chickens look so different from their ancient relatives.
And if you play with this complex genetic choreography in the embryos of modern chickens, you should, theoretically, be able to resurrect dinosaur-like features.
All of which means that scientists such as Prof. Larson may actually be able to mimic what occurred millions of years ago inside dinosaur eggs.
This could offer answers to some of the big questions in evolution. For example, how did the first wing get built? How did dinosaurs turn into chickens? In the future, evo-devo may also reveal how the human body is formed, and what can go wrong.
But if scientists can make chickens look like dinosaurs, what other creatures might they build? What variations on the human form are possible? Along with ethical issues, evo-devo also raises humbling questions about what it means to be human and what we might look like in the future.
If we are all repositories for ancient genes, could we devolve in the same way we've evolved? Pressed by radical environmental change, say, could humans grow fur like the apes or sprout tails like the common primate ancestor we share with baboons? Could we go back to walking on all fours, or breathing underwater?
Evo-devo is often characterized as a revolution in evolution, or as a new science.
In fact, Aristotle noted that chicken embryos went through a stage in which they looked like worms. And by the 1800s, comparing the physiology of embryos was a well-established field.
Charles Darwin drew heavily on this work for evidence that modern animals, including humans, descended from a common ancestor. He noted that the embryos of many species are far more similar than the adults. He also argued that many animals show traces of their evolutionary ancestry in their early stages of development. Some kinds of snakes, for instance, grow tiny legs as embryos, hinting at forbears that walked instead of slithered.
After the publication of The Origin of the Species in 1859, embryos were all the rage among anatomists. Of special interest were creatures such as the lung fish, which can breathe air and was thought to be a link between animals that lived in water and those that walked on land.
But interest dwindled in the next century, as modern genetics came to the fore. Biologists shifted their focus to basic units of heredity – which turned out to be genes made up of DNA. What makes lobsters look like lobsters, their argument went, are lobster genes. What makes leopards look like leopards are leopard genes. Embryos are merely delivery vehicles for the genes that make each species, including humans, what it is.
“Almost everyone switched to genetics, and embryos got left behind,” says Brian Hall, a researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax who is a pioneer in evo-devo.
Then came shocking evidence of just how much genetic material species have in common. Humans share almost 99 per cent of their genes with chimpanzees and 85 per cent with mice. Even the barrel-shaped sea squirt shares 80 per cent of its genes with us.
Since the 1980s, scientists have also found that the same genes (or very similar ones) govern embryonic development in animals that are nothing alike. The construction of the human heart, it turns out, is directed by a gene that gives insects their primitive hearts. Our eyes are built with the help of the same gene that directs the formation of eyes in flies and frogs.
In many animals, the same family of genes – called the Hox family – determines which end is up, or which part of the embryo will be the head. Hox genes also tell cells in the embryo which kind of appendage they should grow – arms, legs, antennae or wings.
And the Hox genes date back half a billion years, evolutionary biologists say, to the ancestors of all the major animal groups now found on Earth.
Nature, it seems, doesn't like to upgrade construction equipment that is working well. Why invent a new way to build a leg or an eye when the old way has been working just fine for hundreds of millions of years?
In other words, while no one has sequenced dinosaur DNA, it is highly likely that the same genes that directed the embryonic development of T. rex do the job in the modern chicken. And if all animals – ancient and modern – share the same body-building genes, it should be possible to get a chicken embryo to grow a monster tail.
CAN EVOLUTION BE REVERSED?
This may also explain the occasional blast from the past we see in modern humans: the rare cases of babies born with hairy faces, extra nipples, short tails or webbed fingers and toes – ancestral traits called atavisms.
According to reports in the medical literature, human tails are sometimes made up of fatty tissue. But in other cases they have extra vertebrae and muscle and can move. Most are removed after birth.
Geneticists who have studied this kind of abnormal development say the genes involved are the same ones that direct the process of laying down the vertebral column in all animals with spines. But this process stops earlier in us than in vertebrates with tails – or than they once did in our ancestors – except in rare cases where the timing is somehow thrown off.
A Mexican family offers another example of how ancient traits can resurface, Dalhousie's Prof. Hall says. He wrote a paper about them for the British journal Nature in 1995 that was accompanied by a picture showing a six-year-old boy whose entire face, other than his eyes and lips, is covered with black hair so dense it looks like fur.
The boy is part of a large family and over five generations 19 of his relatives were born with excessive body hair, especially on their upper torsos and faces.
Prof. Hall says it is likely that the mutation geneticists found on one of their chromosomes triggers an ancestral distribution and density of body hair.
Atavisms have been well documented in other species too. Whales, which descended from terrestrial mammals, are sometimes found with tiny bones that look like hind limbs. Horses are sometimes born with three toes, like their ancestors.
These throwbacks used to be an embarrassment to evolutionary biologists, Prof. Hall says. How could evolution move backward?
Now, however, they are seen as potent evidence of how much genetic potential we retain. Snakes may have lost their legs and humans may have lost their tails, but that doesn't mean the ability to make these structures has disappeared.
And in the distant future, says Prof. Hall, who has published dozens of papers about evo-devo and what is considered the seminal text in the field, humans may once again be furry or grow tails if environmental conditions favour those developments and the traits get passed down for many generations.
This would not happen at the pace of Hollywood movies though. In the futuristic Kevin Costner thriller Waterworld, mutant humans develop fins and gills in time to cope with the melting ice caps.
In the real world, Prof. Hall says, “it would take a long time.”
RECIPE FOR A DINOSAUR TAIL
In Prof. Larsson's laboratory, meanwhile, experiments with atavisms take about five days of incubation.
He soaks small beads in a yellowish liquid containing a protein produced by one of the genes involved in building animal embryos. Then he implants them in about two dozen eggs.
He suspects that dinosaurs – with their huge tails – used far more of this protein than modern chickens and that this affected other genes. He hopes that by tinkering with chicken embryos he may mimic, however briefly, the process that gave T. rex its mighty appendage.
Like a small but growing number of paleontologists, Prof. Larsson was attracted to evo-devo because it opens up just this door to recreating the past. So although the 36-year-old – who studied at McGill and the University of Chicago – learned the techniques of traditional paleontology and how to describe ancient life, he has also mastered the tools of molecular biology and embryology.
It was a coup for McGill to lure him back from the United States, where top paleontologists are far better funded than in Canada. And Prof. Larsson, born in Alberta and raised in Ontario, is happy to be back. He loves that his job combines the thrill of the hunt with the challenges of experimental science.
“A few of us are realizing that paleontology can be so much more,” he says.
But figuring out how to get a chicken to grow a dinosaur-like tail isn't easy. It is a bit like a novice baker trying to make bread with no instructions and knowing only a fraction of the basic ingredients, say water and salt. What would you do first?
If you had a recipe, it would tell you to mix the yeast with warm water and a bit of sugar, then add it to the flour and salt. Next, knead the dough and let it rise in a warm place.
Without instructions, you might guess that you need yeast, but throw it in at the last minute. Or use a cup of sugar instead of a few teaspoons. What if you used a bucket of flour? Or something that looks like flour but isn't edible, such as plaster of Paris? Or several cups of salt? You could end up with anything from biscotti to bricks.
The basic ingredients for assembling a dinosaur tail are the proteins produced by the common body-building genes, but like the novice baker Prof. Larsson has only a few of them on his grocery list. He is trying to figure out the rest and get the timing and combinations for the recipe right.
Luckily, it is relatively easy to play with proteins. “It is amazing, in a crude scale, the kinds of things we are doing, manipulating timing of expression of proteins, turning them up or turning them down,” he says. “You turn this dial to get these ancestral patterns.”
POSSIBILITY AND PRINCIPLE
At this stage, Prof. Larsson is waiting for clear signs of what exactly his chicks will become.
The tray of embryos in his laboratory fridge – operated on earlier – look pink and otherworldly. And their tails appear to be significantly longer than in normal embryos. But they are clearly still too stumpy to qualify as dinosaurian. Chicken tails typically have four to five free vertebrae, while dinosaur tails involve 40 to 60.
Still, if Prof. Larsson succeeds with the tails, he will work on getting the embryos to grow dinosaur-like hands, feet and skulls. And while his work is confined to embryos right now – they are all killed before they hatch – if he can create chickens that look like dinosaurs, he says, he will want to let them grow unhindered, at least once.
He knows, however, that some tough ethical questions will have to be answered first. “Should this organism be allowed to live? Should we even be doing this to an embryo with the intent of letting it live? Those questions have not been brought in the public eye yet,” he says.
To put his work in context, biologists have been creating grotesque and troubling mutants for decades as they attempted to understand how embryos develop. The researchers figuring out the details of the Hox genes, for example, ended up with fruit flies that had feet where their mouths should have been.
And while ethical questions hang in the air, Prof. Larsson's contemporaries continue to explore the frontier between the past and the present, trying to produce evolutionary throwbacks in their labs.
Last year, researchers at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Manchester coaxed chicken embryos to briefly develop alligator-like baby teeth. Eventually, the field may move into manipulating developmental genes in human embryos.
“It is probably not going to be done for many, many decades,” Prof. Larsson says, “but we certainly have the potential to make a human with 60 back vertebrae [almost twice as many as we now have] or six limbs.”
Other evo-devo scientists are probing how turtles first grew shells, or why storks have such big beaks and sparrows such little ones. Their work involves comparing the genes that are at work during various stages of embryonic development in different, but related species.
For example, Prof. Hall is trying to figure out how some kinds of fish traded a set of fins for powerful suckers that allow them to hang onto rocks in strong currents and even climb waterfalls.
So when should we start the conversation about this type of work and where it may lead? Some might say it is already too late, that the proverbial genie is out of the bottle. Prof. Larsson argues that it is better to wait until we know what is possible.
The goal of evo-devo, he says, is not to create bizarre hybrids of ancient and modern creatures. It is to produce the complete book of life, one that would explain where modern animals come from and how our different bodies took shape. It would chart, in exquisite detail, how a single-cell organism developed into what Darwin described in the final passage of his most famous book as “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful.”
“That's the holy grail,” Prof. Larsson says.
Anne McIlroy is The Globe and Mail's science reporter.
New Feature: Recommend this article to other Globe readers
Genesis, take two
ANNE MCILROY
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
November 2, 2007 at 9:34 PM EST
The chicken egg has been prepped for surgery – a pea-size hole cut in the shell and covered with sticky tape. And now Hans Larsson, a McGill University researcher, removes it from the incubator, places it under a microscope and prepares to operate.
He gently peels off the tape and teases back the membranes that line the shell with tweezers. Through the eyepiece, he can see the tiny dot of a heart, steadily beating. He can also see the bud where he implants a milky bead doused in a protein. He hopes it will coax the embryo to grow a big tail. A dinosaur-like tail.
A paleontologist, Prof. Larsson spends a significant portion of his time doing traditional dinosaur hunting, digging fossils as far afield as the Arctic and Africa with jackhammers and pickaxes. But he has long been frustrated with the limitations of studying old bones and what they reveal about the mysteries of evolution.
It was by examining ancient skeletons that paleontologists learned that modern birds, including chickens, descended from dinosaurs and that their relatives include such fierce predators as Tyrannosaurus rex. What fossils don't reveal, though, is how exactly such dramatic anatomical changes first arose. How did teeth the size of bananas turn into beaks? Or mighty tails become wimpy, feathered stumps?
Enlarge Image
By manipulating genes and proteins in his lab, Hans Larsson is trying to grow T. rex-like tails in chicken embryos. (CHRISTINE MUSCHI/FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
For answers, Prof. Larsson has turned to the burgeoning field of evo-devo – or evolutionary developmental biology – a radical new approach to understanding the past.
It is based on the astonishing discovery that modern animals, including humans, share many of the same body-building genes and that some of these genes have been around for millions of years.
How these “master genes” are used during the development of an embryo, when they are switched on and in what combinations is what makes chickens look so different from their ancient relatives.
And if you play with this complex genetic choreography in the embryos of modern chickens, you should, theoretically, be able to resurrect dinosaur-like features.
All of which means that scientists such as Prof. Larson may actually be able to mimic what occurred millions of years ago inside dinosaur eggs.
This could offer answers to some of the big questions in evolution. For example, how did the first wing get built? How did dinosaurs turn into chickens? In the future, evo-devo may also reveal how the human body is formed, and what can go wrong.
But if scientists can make chickens look like dinosaurs, what other creatures might they build? What variations on the human form are possible? Along with ethical issues, evo-devo also raises humbling questions about what it means to be human and what we might look like in the future.
If we are all repositories for ancient genes, could we devolve in the same way we've evolved? Pressed by radical environmental change, say, could humans grow fur like the apes or sprout tails like the common primate ancestor we share with baboons? Could we go back to walking on all fours, or breathing underwater?
Evo-devo is often characterized as a revolution in evolution, or as a new science.
In fact, Aristotle noted that chicken embryos went through a stage in which they looked like worms. And by the 1800s, comparing the physiology of embryos was a well-established field.
Charles Darwin drew heavily on this work for evidence that modern animals, including humans, descended from a common ancestor. He noted that the embryos of many species are far more similar than the adults. He also argued that many animals show traces of their evolutionary ancestry in their early stages of development. Some kinds of snakes, for instance, grow tiny legs as embryos, hinting at forbears that walked instead of slithered.
After the publication of The Origin of the Species in 1859, embryos were all the rage among anatomists. Of special interest were creatures such as the lung fish, which can breathe air and was thought to be a link between animals that lived in water and those that walked on land.
But interest dwindled in the next century, as modern genetics came to the fore. Biologists shifted their focus to basic units of heredity – which turned out to be genes made up of DNA. What makes lobsters look like lobsters, their argument went, are lobster genes. What makes leopards look like leopards are leopard genes. Embryos are merely delivery vehicles for the genes that make each species, including humans, what it is.
“Almost everyone switched to genetics, and embryos got left behind,” says Brian Hall, a researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax who is a pioneer in evo-devo.
Then came shocking evidence of just how much genetic material species have in common. Humans share almost 99 per cent of their genes with chimpanzees and 85 per cent with mice. Even the barrel-shaped sea squirt shares 80 per cent of its genes with us.
Since the 1980s, scientists have also found that the same genes (or very similar ones) govern embryonic development in animals that are nothing alike. The construction of the human heart, it turns out, is directed by a gene that gives insects their primitive hearts. Our eyes are built with the help of the same gene that directs the formation of eyes in flies and frogs.
In many animals, the same family of genes – called the Hox family – determines which end is up, or which part of the embryo will be the head. Hox genes also tell cells in the embryo which kind of appendage they should grow – arms, legs, antennae or wings.
And the Hox genes date back half a billion years, evolutionary biologists say, to the ancestors of all the major animal groups now found on Earth.
Nature, it seems, doesn't like to upgrade construction equipment that is working well. Why invent a new way to build a leg or an eye when the old way has been working just fine for hundreds of millions of years?
In other words, while no one has sequenced dinosaur DNA, it is highly likely that the same genes that directed the embryonic development of T. rex do the job in the modern chicken. And if all animals – ancient and modern – share the same body-building genes, it should be possible to get a chicken embryo to grow a monster tail.
CAN EVOLUTION BE REVERSED?
This may also explain the occasional blast from the past we see in modern humans: the rare cases of babies born with hairy faces, extra nipples, short tails or webbed fingers and toes – ancestral traits called atavisms.
According to reports in the medical literature, human tails are sometimes made up of fatty tissue. But in other cases they have extra vertebrae and muscle and can move. Most are removed after birth.
Geneticists who have studied this kind of abnormal development say the genes involved are the same ones that direct the process of laying down the vertebral column in all animals with spines. But this process stops earlier in us than in vertebrates with tails – or than they once did in our ancestors – except in rare cases where the timing is somehow thrown off.
A Mexican family offers another example of how ancient traits can resurface, Dalhousie's Prof. Hall says. He wrote a paper about them for the British journal Nature in 1995 that was accompanied by a picture showing a six-year-old boy whose entire face, other than his eyes and lips, is covered with black hair so dense it looks like fur.
The boy is part of a large family and over five generations 19 of his relatives were born with excessive body hair, especially on their upper torsos and faces.
Prof. Hall says it is likely that the mutation geneticists found on one of their chromosomes triggers an ancestral distribution and density of body hair.
Atavisms have been well documented in other species too. Whales, which descended from terrestrial mammals, are sometimes found with tiny bones that look like hind limbs. Horses are sometimes born with three toes, like their ancestors.
These throwbacks used to be an embarrassment to evolutionary biologists, Prof. Hall says. How could evolution move backward?
Now, however, they are seen as potent evidence of how much genetic potential we retain. Snakes may have lost their legs and humans may have lost their tails, but that doesn't mean the ability to make these structures has disappeared.
And in the distant future, says Prof. Hall, who has published dozens of papers about evo-devo and what is considered the seminal text in the field, humans may once again be furry or grow tails if environmental conditions favour those developments and the traits get passed down for many generations.
This would not happen at the pace of Hollywood movies though. In the futuristic Kevin Costner thriller Waterworld, mutant humans develop fins and gills in time to cope with the melting ice caps.
In the real world, Prof. Hall says, “it would take a long time.”
RECIPE FOR A DINOSAUR TAIL
In Prof. Larsson's laboratory, meanwhile, experiments with atavisms take about five days of incubation.
He soaks small beads in a yellowish liquid containing a protein produced by one of the genes involved in building animal embryos. Then he implants them in about two dozen eggs.
He suspects that dinosaurs – with their huge tails – used far more of this protein than modern chickens and that this affected other genes. He hopes that by tinkering with chicken embryos he may mimic, however briefly, the process that gave T. rex its mighty appendage.
Like a small but growing number of paleontologists, Prof. Larsson was attracted to evo-devo because it opens up just this door to recreating the past. So although the 36-year-old – who studied at McGill and the University of Chicago – learned the techniques of traditional paleontology and how to describe ancient life, he has also mastered the tools of molecular biology and embryology.
It was a coup for McGill to lure him back from the United States, where top paleontologists are far better funded than in Canada. And Prof. Larsson, born in Alberta and raised in Ontario, is happy to be back. He loves that his job combines the thrill of the hunt with the challenges of experimental science.
“A few of us are realizing that paleontology can be so much more,” he says.
But figuring out how to get a chicken to grow a dinosaur-like tail isn't easy. It is a bit like a novice baker trying to make bread with no instructions and knowing only a fraction of the basic ingredients, say water and salt. What would you do first?
If you had a recipe, it would tell you to mix the yeast with warm water and a bit of sugar, then add it to the flour and salt. Next, knead the dough and let it rise in a warm place.
Without instructions, you might guess that you need yeast, but throw it in at the last minute. Or use a cup of sugar instead of a few teaspoons. What if you used a bucket of flour? Or something that looks like flour but isn't edible, such as plaster of Paris? Or several cups of salt? You could end up with anything from biscotti to bricks.
The basic ingredients for assembling a dinosaur tail are the proteins produced by the common body-building genes, but like the novice baker Prof. Larsson has only a few of them on his grocery list. He is trying to figure out the rest and get the timing and combinations for the recipe right.
Luckily, it is relatively easy to play with proteins. “It is amazing, in a crude scale, the kinds of things we are doing, manipulating timing of expression of proteins, turning them up or turning them down,” he says. “You turn this dial to get these ancestral patterns.”
POSSIBILITY AND PRINCIPLE
At this stage, Prof. Larsson is waiting for clear signs of what exactly his chicks will become.
The tray of embryos in his laboratory fridge – operated on earlier – look pink and otherworldly. And their tails appear to be significantly longer than in normal embryos. But they are clearly still too stumpy to qualify as dinosaurian. Chicken tails typically have four to five free vertebrae, while dinosaur tails involve 40 to 60.
Still, if Prof. Larsson succeeds with the tails, he will work on getting the embryos to grow dinosaur-like hands, feet and skulls. And while his work is confined to embryos right now – they are all killed before they hatch – if he can create chickens that look like dinosaurs, he says, he will want to let them grow unhindered, at least once.
He knows, however, that some tough ethical questions will have to be answered first. “Should this organism be allowed to live? Should we even be doing this to an embryo with the intent of letting it live? Those questions have not been brought in the public eye yet,” he says.
To put his work in context, biologists have been creating grotesque and troubling mutants for decades as they attempted to understand how embryos develop. The researchers figuring out the details of the Hox genes, for example, ended up with fruit flies that had feet where their mouths should have been.
And while ethical questions hang in the air, Prof. Larsson's contemporaries continue to explore the frontier between the past and the present, trying to produce evolutionary throwbacks in their labs.
Last year, researchers at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Manchester coaxed chicken embryos to briefly develop alligator-like baby teeth. Eventually, the field may move into manipulating developmental genes in human embryos.
“It is probably not going to be done for many, many decades,” Prof. Larsson says, “but we certainly have the potential to make a human with 60 back vertebrae [almost twice as many as we now have] or six limbs.”
Other evo-devo scientists are probing how turtles first grew shells, or why storks have such big beaks and sparrows such little ones. Their work involves comparing the genes that are at work during various stages of embryonic development in different, but related species.
For example, Prof. Hall is trying to figure out how some kinds of fish traded a set of fins for powerful suckers that allow them to hang onto rocks in strong currents and even climb waterfalls.
So when should we start the conversation about this type of work and where it may lead? Some might say it is already too late, that the proverbial genie is out of the bottle. Prof. Larsson argues that it is better to wait until we know what is possible.
The goal of evo-devo, he says, is not to create bizarre hybrids of ancient and modern creatures. It is to produce the complete book of life, one that would explain where modern animals come from and how our different bodies took shape. It would chart, in exquisite detail, how a single-cell organism developed into what Darwin described in the final passage of his most famous book as “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful.”
“That's the holy grail,” Prof. Larsson says.
Anne McIlroy is The Globe and Mail's science reporter.
New Feature: Recommend this article to other Globe readers
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