NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS LIVE LONGER

Not sure of the logic below. Have they REALLY ruled out the possibility that people who are brighter also tend to be healthier? Evidence that they are goes back to the 1920s -- with the studies by Terman & Oden. And there has been plenty of recent evidence to that effect as well. See for instance findings by Martin, Fitzmaurice, Kindlon & Buka in "The Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health" of 2004, vol. 58, pp. 674-679. The full report is here (PDF) and a summary is here. The reason for such findings would be obvious if it were not for politics: High IQ signifies good brain function but the brain is part of the body so good brain function tends to go with good body functioning generally. Note that I say TENDS. There are exceptions to every rule.

British researchers have found that winning a Nobel Prize can add nearly two years to your life because the award boosts social status. Scientists at Warwick University in central Britain studied the lifespans of 524 chemists and physicists who either won a Nobel Prize or had been nominated for the honour between 1901 and 1950. While nominees were found to live to an average age of 75.8 years, the 135 scientists who actually won a Nobel Prize survived for another 1.4 years on top of that.

The researchers found that the prize money won by Nobel laureates had no effect on how long they lived, suggesting that the extra years were solely due to boosted social status.

The research was part of an investigation into the way social position affects well being and lifespan. Economist Professor Andrew Oswald, who led the team, said: "Status seems to work a kind of health-giving magic. Once we do the statistical corrections, walking across that platform in Stockholm apparently adds about two years to a scientist's lifespan. How status does this, we just don't know."

Source





The truth about organic food



It’s not healthier or Greener, and it's incapable of feeding the world. So why is it back in fashion?

It’s not like David Miliband to say something sensible. New Labour’s greener-than-thou environment secretary and warm favourite to be next leader-but-one is usually in the front rank of eco-worriers when discussing climate change or recycling, recently suggesting that people are right to fear global warming and that he was afraid, too. So imagine the annoyance of organic food supporters this week at Miliband’s comments about whether organic food is healthier: ‘It’s a lifestyle choice that people can make. There isn’t any conclusive evidence either way. It’s only four per cent of total farm produce, not 40 per cent and I don’t want to say that 96 per cent of our farm produce is inferior because it’s not organic.’ (1)

Cue outrage. ‘It is not just a lifestyle choice,’ insisted Soil Association spokesman Robin Maynard, ‘In terms of the environment, organic is better. Mr Miliband’s own government has recognised in the past that organic food can be better for that. In fact, organic farmers get an extra payment due to this. (2)’

Miliband’s remarks were surprising because the superiority of organic food has been taken for granted in recent years. It is assumed that organic food is more ‘natural’ and therefore by definition healthier and better for the environment – an assumption backed up by government subsidies for inefficient organic farmers. But is it true?

A new book just published in the US, The Truth About Organic Foods provides a thorough examination of the evidence. The author, Alex Avery, shares Miliband’s conclusion that organic food is no healthier than ‘conventional’ food produced by industrial methods – and also argues that the claim of organic food to be better for the environment is suspect. As Avery, a trained plant physiologist and biologist now working for the Hudson Institute told me, nobody has been putting the other side of the story on organic: ‘The “organic utopian” myth has become a serious roadblock to agricultural progress and I knew that some of the organic food industry’s main claims were simply smoke and mirrors and religious dogma.’

Healthy scepticism

Champions of organic food claim that pesticides and other chemicals used in conventional farming have the potential to cause ill-health, either through immediately poisoning us or through causing cancer in the long term. Take this statement from the Soil Association:

‘Chemicals designed to kill: Along with chemical weapons, chemicals used in farming are the only substances that are deliberately released into the environment designed to kill living things. They pose unique hazards to human health and the environment.’

Elsewhere on the Soil Association’s website we read:

‘Around 31,000 tonnes of chemicals are used in farming in the UK each year to kill weeds, insects and other pests that attack crops. There is surprisingly little control over how these chemicals are used in the non-organic sector and in what quantities or combinations. What we do know is that 150 of the available 350 pesticides commonly used have been identified as potentially [my emphasis] causing cancer and many of us would have been exposed to these pesticides before we were born. (4)’

However, most of our food does not contain residues of these chemicals. Of the minority of food products that still contain traces of pesticide, Avery provides some perspective: ‘[T]he pesticide residue data are a testament to our technical prowess in detecting incredibly tiny traces of specific chemicals in foods. Note that the synthetic pesticide residues… are consumed in microgram quantities, or one-millionth of a gram.’ Given that we tend to buy fruit and veg by the kilo, he notes: ‘Remember, this is equivalent to one penny in $10 million, or one inch in 16,000 miles!’

A host of different chemicals can cause cancer in rodents when researchers feed them to the animals in very large quantities. But the minute quantities involved in pesticide residues mean the same chemicals are harmless in food. There is no evidence of anybody ever dying or falling seriously ill from eating food carrying traces of man-made pesticides.

The over-reaction to the dangers from manmade pesticides is in sharp contrast to the complete ignorance shown towards naturally-occurring poisons. Everyday foods are full of natural pesticides. That’s hardly a surprise, since we tend to choose as crops things that seem resistant to pests and disease. The world-famous biochemist Bruce Ames makes the point clear elsewhere on spiked: ‘The natural chemicals that are known rodent carcinogens in a single cup of coffee are about equal in weight to a year’s worth of ingested synthetic pesticide residues that are rodent carcinogens.’ (5) He is not arguing that coffee is dangerous – far from it. Rather, he’s pointing out that the tiny risk from manmade chemicals is actually smaller than other small risks we accept as a normal part of life.

As it happens, as Avery points out, organic produce is not entirely free from chemicals – it is simply that a much narrower range of such chemicals is allowed for food to qualify as ‘organic’, and they tend to be used less frequently. Given that some of the things that pesticides are designed to eliminate – like poisonous fungal growths – are pretty dangerous, that is not necessarily beneficial in any event.

Another assertion often made about organic food is that it is more nutritious. It is not clear, in principle, why this might be. However, some studies suggest it might be the case. Avery looks at these studies in detail and finds many of them deeply flawed. The best review of the evidence, a paper by Woese et al in 1997, concludes that it is very difficult to conclude anything at all. ‘Conventional’ foods contain more pesticide residues and more nitrates – hardly surprising given their greater use in conventional agriculture. But overall, the authors note:  ‘With regard to all other desirable nutritional values, it was either the case that no major differences were observed in physico-chemical analyses between the products from different production forms, or contradictory findings did not permit any clear statements. (6)’

In fact, not only do better quality studies in peer-reviewed journals show no consistent difference between the two types of food, Avery notes that even some organic advocates admit it. As William Lockeretz of Tufts University told an organic food conference in 1997: ‘I wish I could tell you that there is a clear, consistent nutritional difference between organic and conventional foods. Even better, I wish I could tell you that the difference is in favour of organic. Unfortunately, though, from my reading of the scientific literature, I do not believe such a claim can be responsibly made. (7)’

Even if there were nutritional differences between organic and conventional food, any benefit one way or the other is likely to be much smaller than variation based on the variety of a crop used, other growing conditions, freshness, cooking method - even which foods are consumed together.

Environmental concerns

The environmental case for organic mainly rests upon the pollution caused by producing agricultural chemicals and cleaning up after them. It is certainly true that producing fertilisers in particular uses energy and this inevitably means fossil fuels. But the production of chemicals is only one part of the energy used in putting food on our plates. As a recent article in the Economist notes, many of the assumptions made about what is the most ‘green’ way to supply food are simply wrong. It suggests that big supermarkets, with highly efficient logistics, are arguably ‘greener’ than trying to feed the nation through local farmers’ markets.

Citing research from the UK Department of Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the article says:  ‘[A] shift towards a local food system, and away from a supermarket-based food system with its central distribution depots, lean supply chains and big, full trucks, might actually increase the number of food-vehicle miles being travelled locally, because things would move around in a larger number of smaller, less efficiently packed vehicles. (8)’

To maintain the same overall level of food production using organic methods today would require far more land to be used for farming. In developed countries such as the UK, where the efficiency of industrial farming methods has left many small farms redundant, there might be space to indulge a small land-hungry organic sector. But if we truly pursued the idea of an organic-only economy, the effect on land usage would be dramatic. At a time when environmentalists complain about how wildernesses are being cleared to produce food, the need to clear more land is organic farming’s dirty little secret.

The other alternative is to grow less food. There is no way, using organic methods, that the world’s current population could be sustained on the 37 per cent of land currently used in agriculture. The solution for some, it would appear, is not more food but fewer people. In the words of one organic farmer quoted by Avery, ‘I want to argue that production is not the problem. The problem is the imbalance of humans relative to the millions of other species with whom we co-evolved. (9)’

Don’t mess with nature

The precise arguments of the Soil Association and other organic food groups are actually neither here nor there because no-one is really holding them to account - hence the shocked reaction to Miliband’s statement. The underlying temper of our times is that anything processed or industrialised can be seen as adulterated and harmful, while anything that appears to be natural or close to nature can be regarded as pure and uncorrupted. The precise facts about residues, nutrition or environmental impact are rarely discussed.

The ‘don’t mess with nature’ approach is illustrated by the organic movement’s attitude to genetic modification. Rather than embracing GM as opening up the possibility of greater control over the properties of plants, it is rejected as dangerous interference in nature with all sorts of unknown potential problems. GM crops have the potential to allow greater productivity, reduced use of pesticides and increased nutrition. The organic movement prefers to smear GM crops as the work of malevolent agribusiness trying to create monopolies.

Even if it is found that a particular GM crop did not live up to expectations or caused unexpected problems, that would not be a cause to dismiss the whole technology out of hand. Any process involving experimentation and new techniques will have problems along the way. The most logical approach would be to learn from our mistakes in order to continue improvements. If the entire world was well-fed and food was as cheap as it could be, the discussion might be academic. But when a large proportion of the world’s population is still undernourished, society must constantly explore ways to grow more, better, food.

The roots of organic

The rise of organic food has little to do with a cold assessment of its merits. As Avery notes, the scientific arguments in favour of organic are feeble. Instead, the organic movement began largely as a rejection of industrial society and materialism - one that continues today. As an editorial in the Independent noted, criticising Miliband, ‘The organic movement is flourishing because it is in tune with the zeitgeist, which favours the small and the local and hankers for alternatives to industrial-scale farming and what is an over-cosy relationship between big producers and supermarkets.’ (10) It is this suspicion of modern production methods (despite all the benefits they have brought), mixed with overblown health fears and tied closely to environmentalism, that has allowed organic ideas to become popular.

While the organic movement is often thought of as beginning with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the reaction to an agriculture based on man-made chemicals has existed almost as long as the fertilisers complained of. In his book The Origins of the Organic Movement Philip Conford makes the case for the 1920s, and 1926 in particular, as the moment the organic movement really began. During that year, the Chandos Group of predominantly Anglican thinkers first met in London in the wake of the failed General Strike. Conford argues that this group, who published the New English Weekly, were a driving force in popularising organic ideas, some 20 years before the formation of the Soil Association (11).

A number of other writers emerged in the 1920s promoting broadly similar ideas. Perhaps the most well-known, more for the schools he created than his ideas on agriculture, was Rudolf Steiner. His notion of ‘biodynamic’ farming sounds downright wacky today, and Avery takes great pleasure in quoting Steiner at length:

‘Have you ever thought why cows have horns, or why certain animals have antlers?… The cow has horns in order to send into itself the astral-ethereal formative powers, which, pressing inward, are meant to penetrate right into the digestive organism… Thus in the horn you have something well adapted by its inherent nature to ray back the living and astral properties into the inner life.’

So, horns and antlers are like nature’s satellite dish for cosmic forces. These forces are concentrated in the digestive system, according to Steiner, which explains the importance of manure: ‘What is farm-yard-manure?… [I]t has been inside the organism and has thus been permeated with an astral and ethereal content. In the dung, therefore, we have before us something ethereal and astral. For this reason it has a life-giving and also astralising influence upon the soil.’

If you want to improve the fertility of soil, therefore, you just need to get more ‘living forces’ into it by the simple method of filling a horn with manure and burying it in a field: ‘You see, by burying the horn with its filling of manure, we preserve in the horn the forces it was accustomed to exert within the cow itself… all the radiations that tend to etherealize and astralise are poured into the inner hollow of the horn.’

While Steiner was a first class space cadet, Avery notes that he has a surprising number of followers even today in the ‘biodynamic’ movement. After all, his ideas are hardly any more scientifically implausible than those of homeopathy where distilled water, somehow imprinted with the ‘memory’ of some active ingredient long since diluted out of it, can apparently cure all sorts of ailments.

However, while Steiner certainly had followers, his presentation was too esoteric for most. A more influential figure in the long term was Sir Albert Howard. He worked as an agricultural adviser in India in the 1920s but quickly concluded that he could learn more from the Indians than he could teach. He was impressed by the strapping good health of many of the tribes, particularly the Hunza, and concluded their rude fitness must be the product of their food and, by extension, their agriculture.

Central to the ideas that Howard was to promote in later years was the importance of compost. In fact, the Rule of Return – the idea that vital material from the soil must be returned through compost and manure – is a key idea of the organic movement. Howard advised and supervised the introduction of his Indore system of composting in many places both in the UK and America. His comments on the ruining of soil by modern methods could have been made by any modern environmentalist:

‘In allowing science to be used to wring the last ounce from the soil by new varieties of crops, cheaper and more stimulating manures, deeper and more thorough cultivating machines, hens which lay themselves to death, and cows which perish in an ocean of milk, something more than a want of judgment on the part of the organisation is involved. Agricultural research has been misused to make the farmer, not a better producer of food, but a more expert bandit… All goes well as long as the soil can be made to yield a crop. But soil fertility does not last forever; eventually the land is worn out; real farming dies.’

Howard’s predictions must have seemed prescient when American agriculture was doing its best to self-destruct during the years of the Dust Bowl, when a combination of inappropriate farming techniques, drought and depression created the conditions for strong winds to strip vast areas of topsoil. It is also the case that most farmers use manure and compost as means of improving soil quality. But Howard was ultimately wrong. Better understanding of the use of manmade fertilisers, selective breeding, and other techniques have greatly improved crop yields over the last few decades.

What is striking about the early organic pioneers is their rejection of modern society. In a world staggering out of one World War and towards another via economic and social turmoil, there were plenty of people who rejected capitalism. However, most in the organic movement rejected the communist and socialist alternatives, too, and recoiled from the class conflict embodied in the General Strike of 1926.

The social makeup of those prominent in the early organic movement suggests a group of people being squeezed out of modern society: disillusioned colonials from a declining and increasingly discredited empire, aristocrats seeking to preserve rural life as agricultural workers were replaced by machines, and churchmen trying to find a new setting for religious ideas.

Back to the future

So why are organic ideas that were based on disillusionment with modernity back in fashion today? Economically and politically, Western societies have stagnated over the last 30 years or so. The idea that tomorrow will look radically different from – and better than - today seems unrealistic to many. Both the traditional left and right are exhausted, their visions of the future bankrupt. Against this background those who hanker after an imaginary idyllic past, or are fearful of future change, can often exercise disproportionate influence over politics and culture. Alongside the aristocrats like Prince Charles we now have the disillusioned stockbrokers who give up the rat race to sell organic jam, the New Age religionists, and the middle-class hypochondriacs.

Books like Avery’s are important to underline the factual errors of those who campaign for organic food. However, the discussion of food also illustrates a broader need to remind ourselves just how much modern society has achieved in changing the lives of people for the better through the application of science, industry and reason. Perhaps then we will all be better able to see the ideas of the organic movement for the manure that they are.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

*********************

Vote for poverty: buy organic!

I took part in a debate on BBC Radio Shropshire yesterday with Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, Britain's main organic food lobbyists and certification body. What was interesting was just how candid he was about what a dramatic change in our lives his organic future would mean. Are organic consumers really aware of what they're signing up to?

He began by asserting that `it's very likely the whole of agriculture will have to switch to organic production methods, certified or otherwise, within the next 10 or 20 years' because of a rapid decline in energy resources. This seemed to be based on the gloomy assessment that we're about to hit, or have passed, the peak of oil production (and ignoring other sources of energy). According to Holden, `by 2025 or 2030, most of us will have to manage on an energy ration that's about 10 per cent of what we use today'.

The problem is that organic production is just much less efficient than `conventional' methods. The result will be a sharp decline in grain production and rising food prices. Holden admitted that `the affordability of food is a big issue. But you should remember that in the 1970s, the typical family spent 30 per cent of its total income on food but today that's down to 9.9 per cent, and of course we spend the balance on DVDs and foreign holidays and travel and all the rest of it.' So, cheap food has only allowed us to go and waste money fecklessly on luxuries instead. He never did answer the question about how the genuinely poor would survive in his rural idyll.

Another consequence is that meat produced using grain as feed would be much more expensive, too. `Chicken and pork would become a luxury again as it was in my boyhood and back in the fifties,' he said. His vision of the future would be to `buy fresh and local food that's had the minimum of transport and preferably from someone I know'. This will indeed be an attractive proposition for the 10million Londoners, and indeed the residents of every other large town in the UK, who may not actually know any farmers.

Next time you're in a supermarket or down at your local farmer's market and you buy organic, just remember that your purchase will be used to promote the idea that we should move away from the cheap food that has allowed us greater freedom in other areas of our lives, to a system where we have to buy whatever gets grown locally. And given that fertilisers, pesticides and grain for animal feed won't be available, that won't amount to a hill of beans.

Source




Cloned Bull

The bum rap on cloned food -- noting another strange contradiction in Leftist ideology: They say human stem cell research is OK but cloned animals are bad

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? People have puzzled over that question for at least 2,000 years. In the eternal cycle of natural reproduction, they saw no answer. But the cycle turns out not to be eternal. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration tentatively approved the use of cloned animals to make food. Natural reproduction is giving way to artificial reproduction. And with the new era comes a new question: Which came first, the steer or the steak?

Case in point: Elvis. He's a 19-month-old Angus calf. You can view him on the Web site of ViaGen, a cloning company. In a recent slide presentation from the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the caption below his photo reads, "Elvis was cloned from a side of Prime Yield Grade 1 beef." No joke: The calf came from the beef. And Elvis is no freak show. He's a business plan. "Some of your animals have more income potential than others," ViaGen reminds farmers. "Our services help you identify, preserve, and reproduce the genetics of those animals." If a steer is already dead, no problem. In fact, the best way to judge its steakworthiness is to cut it open and hang it on a hook. That's what happened to the original incarnation of Elvis. "Biopsy samples should be collected from your animal as soon as possible," ViaGen advises. If you like that side of beef and want another just like it, we can grow it for you. A steer from a steak from a steer. Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has re-entered the building.

The political fight over animal cloning is just beginning. It's a lot like the fight over human cloning, except that the roles are reversed. Right-wing groups and Republican senators fanned fear and ignorance about human cloning; left-wing groups and Democratic senators are fanning fear and ignorance about animal cloning. Moderates on both sides get trampled. So do principles. The same liberals who demand stem-cell research using human embryos and who blasted the FDA for delaying approval of emergency contraception now accuse the FDA of recklessly approving cloned food.

The left-wingers want the FDA, Congress, and President Bush to keep clones off the market. Their case, laid out in a petition to the FDA, is a mess of anecdotes, obsolete data, speculation, and ideology. Like right-wingers in the human cloning debate, they expect the government to honor even their "religious" objections. But their strongest argument is that cloned food is unsafe, since cloning, unlike fertilization, often fails to reprogram genes for normal embryonic development.

It's a sensible worry, but the facts don't bear it out. The FDA's review, based on exhaustive and fully disclosed analysis of scientific journal articles, health records, blood samples, and meat and milk composition, found no "food consumption risks or subtle hazards in healthy clones of cattle, swine, or goats." The agency concluded that "food from the sexually reproduced offspring of clones is as safe as food that we eat every day."

Why don't reprogramming errors taint your food? Because if they're serious, they kill the animal before it's old enough to be milked or eaten, or they cause defects that make the animal flunk federal food safety inspections. They don't carry over to a clone's offspring, since fertilization, like rebooting, cleans up programming errors. And the offspring are where the milk and meat will come from. ViaGen charges $15,000 to clone a steer. You don't butcher a $15,000 clone. You use it for breeding.

Critics say cloning often causes health problems for cloned animals and their surrogate mothers. That's true, but less so in some species, and the rate of complications is falling as the technology improves. Opponents of cloning also suggest we should ban it because it's unethical "to alter the essential nature of animals." Essential nature? We've been breeding animals for 15,000 years. We've been artificially inseminating them for nearly 700 years. Most apples, bananas, grapes, peaches, and potatoes are clones, and a lot of meat sold today was produced through in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, or embryo splitting.

The silliest rap on cloning is that it offers "no consumer benefits." That's insane. Cloning means total genome control. It bypasses the uncertainties of breeding. It also improves breeding, since five clones of your best bull or cow produce five times as much sperm or eggs. Theoretically, you can target any trait for cloning: more muscle, less fat, more omega-3 acids. You can even help the environment by cloning animals that eat grass instead of grain.

Yes, we're scared of cloned food. But according to the same polls, most of us have heard little about animal biotechnology, don't know biotech food is already in supermarkets, and, against all reason, are more afraid of cloning animals than of genetically engineering them. Don't be cowed. Question your fears. That's the difference between us and the animals.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

*********************

Cancer patients warned off soy-rich foods

This will upset the Tofu brigade

Cancer patients are being warned to avoid foods rich in soy because they can accelerate the growth of tumours. The Cancer Council NSW will issue guidelines today, warning about the dangers of high-soy diets and soy supplements for cancer patients and those people in remission from cancer. At particular risk are people suffering from hormone-dependent cancers, including breast and prostate cancer - the two most common types of cancer in Australia. Cancer survivors are also being urged to avoid high doses of soy, as they may be more vulnerable to a relapse.

Research has found high consumption of soy products can also limit the effectiveness of conventional medicines used to treat the disease. "There is evidence to suggest that women with existing breast cancer or past breast cancer should be cautious in consuming large quantities of soy foods or phyto-oestrogen supplements," a position statement from the Cancer Council says. "Women with current or past breast cancer should be aware of the risks of potential tumour growth when taking soy products. "The Cancer Council does not support the use of health claims on food labels that suggest soy foods or phyto-oestrogens protect against the development of cancer."

Health experts are particularly concerned that breast-cancer sufferers who take soy or phyto-oestrogen supplements could feed the disease and reduce the effectiveness of their treatment. Soy, which is present in soy beans, soy milk, tofu, tempeh and some breads, contains phyto-oestrogens that mimic the actions of hormones in the body. This means it may interfere with cancer drugs such as Tamoxifen, which works by suppressing the female hormone oestrogen.

Men with prostate cancer are also being warned against high soy consumption, as phyto-oestrogens may imitate the male hormone androgen. Although the Cancer Council has warned against soy supplements, it believes an occasional intake of soy food is still safe for cancer patients. Cancer Council nutritionist Kathy Chapman said soy supplements could contain dangerously high doses of phyto-oestrogens. "If you were a woman with breast cancer and thought, 'I'm going to radically change my diet and have very large portions of soy at every meal', it could be a problem," Ms Chapman said. "For someone who has tofu once or twice a week and drinks a bit of soya milk, it's not so much of a problem."

Soy has earned a reputation as a natural "superfood" that cuts the risk of breast or prostate cancer, and is commonly included in women's health supplements. This claim was based on findings that cancer rates were lower in Asia, where soy consumption is high. But soy would lower the risk of contracting cancer "only a little", according to the Cancer Council. "While they may have a protective effect, there is also some evidence that phyto-oestrogens may stimulate the growth of existing hormone-dependent cancers," the council's statement said. The risk of contracting other non-hormone-dependent cancers, including bowel cancer, would be unaffected by soy intake.

The Cancer Council was prompted to investigate the issue after being inundated with questions about the role of soy in cancer patients' diets. "We felt we were getting a lot of calls on our hotline about this topic," Ms Chapman said.

Source




The chewing gum that may aid slimming

An appetite-suppressing injection or even chewing gum could one day be used to tackle Britain's obesity problem. Scientists have been given funding to develop a treatment to help clinically obese patients to "feel full" and to eat less. The injection would contain a naturally occurring hormone that curbs appetite and is often lacking in overweight people. Within a decade the injection could provide the first effective treatment for obesity, which contributes to about 1,300 deaths a week in Britain, the scientists say.

The research, announced today, is among the first projects to benefit from a 91 million pound scheme by the Wellcome Trust to fund new medicines. It promises to be safer and more effective than present treatments, which culminate in drastic "stomach- stapling" operations. The hormone, pancreatic polypeptide (PP), is normally released from the small intestine as food is consumed, signalling to the brain that the body has had enough. In preliminary trials, an intravenous infusion that boosted levels of the hormone led to a big reduction in appetite among healthy volunteers.

Thirty-five healthy volunteers who were given the PP treatment consumed fewer calories, with the effect lasting for about 24 hours. Steve Bloom, who led the research at Imperial College and Hammersmith Hospital, London, said: "Even a 1 per cent reduction in appetite could lead to significant weight loss over a year." Professor Bloom has received a grant of 2.3 million pounds to develop the drug as a longer-lasting weekly injection. Other ways to administer the hormone could include a pump or even chewing gum, he said.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

*********************

DRUG-COMPANY HATRED AT WORK? Or a medical profession that does not like to admit that it has been wrong?

There is some very confused thinking in the article reproduced below. If you read the report carefully, all that the latest research shows is that "bad" cholesterol may not be so bad after all. People deficient in it seem to be at more risk of Parkinsons. So maybe we NEED that "bad" cholesterol. Pesky!!

The mention of "dangerous" drugs called statins is a red herring -- presumably motivated by hatred of drug companies -- and the idea that they are a risk is actually CONTRADICTED by the research findings!

Research suggesting a possible link between the statin heart drugs being taken by millions of people and Parkinson's disease has prompted scientists to launch an investigation involving tens of thousands of patients. Researchers in the United States have been sufficiently alarmed by the preliminary findings of a small study of 124 patients to plan a full trial with 16,000 participants to examine whether the world's best-selling drugs can heighten the risk of developing the condition.

While previous work has suggested that taking statins, which lower levels of LDL or "bad" cholesterol, might be a risk factor for Parkinson's, there has never been firm evidence of a link, and previous efforts to test it have failed to find one. A study at the University of North Carolina, however, has shown that patients with low levels of LDL cholesterol are more than three and a half times as likely to develop the disease as those with higher LDL levels. Xuemei Huang, who led the research, said that she was very concerned by the finding. Another large-scale trial investigating a cholesterol link with Parkinson's risk is under way at Harvard University.

Millions of people around the world are taking statins. They have relatively few serious side effects, and there is evidence that they reduce deaths from heart disease. They are considered to be so safe that one, simvastatin, is available without prescription in Britain.

David Dexter, senior lecturer in neuropharmacology at Imperial College, London, said: "With the evidence we have at the moment, I would say there is not much cause for concern that statin use may cause Parkinson's disease. Previous studies have demonstrated that statins can increase brain dopamine concentration, the chemical transmitter deficient in Parkinson's. "Also one of the secondary symptoms some patients with Parkinson's experience is dementia, similar to Alzheimer's disease, which may result from vascular changes in the brain. Statins would be expected to protect the brain against such vascular changes."

The apparent link found between lower LDL levels and Parkinson's was worrying, he acknowledged, but the study had been carried out on a small number of subjects and needed confirming. "Lower LDL cholesterol levels may also be a consequence of Parkinson's and not a cause," he said.

Patricia Limousin, consultant neurologist at the Institute of Neurology in London, said: "There is absolutely no evidence that statin drugs cause Parkinson's disease. In fact these drugs were related to a lower occurrence of Parkinson's disease in Huang's study, raising the possibility of a protective effect that warrants further investigations."

Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said: "We are concerned that any suggestion of a link between statins and Parkinson's disease would unnecessarily scare the millions of people benefiting from statins in the UK. There is overwhelming evidence that statins save lives by preventing heart attacks and strokes. "Nobody should stop taking statins on the basis of this report. If they do, they will be putting themselves at increased risk of heart attack or stroke."

Kieran Breen, director of research and development for the Parkinson's Disease Society, said: "We should wary of drawing any firm conclusions from this research."

Source




The other drug war

A comment from Australia



The scourge of drugs in our schools is one of the big fears facing all parents as their children grow up. But increasingly concern is turning to the cocktail of mind-altering substances being fed to youngsters before they leave home in the mornings. Tens of thousands of children are being prescribed drugs for a series of mood and behaviour disorders ranging from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to depression. "There is a medical civil war going on and the victims caught in the crossfire are the kids who have no say in it," says Dr George Halasz, a Melbourne-based psychiatrist.

Lined up on one side are the GPs, child psychiatrists and other specialists who believe medication is a safe, simple and effective way of relieving the suffering of children and adolescents, and controlling symptoms that cause them to struggle at school and socially.

On the other side are colleagues who criticise what they see as massive over-diagnosis and unnecessary use of potentially dangerous drugs that have a largely unknown long-term effect on developing brains. No anti-depressant has been approved in Australia for the treatment of depression in anyone aged under 19, but they are still prescribed.

Federal figures for 2003 show 250,000 prescriptions for Prozac and similar drugs - selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) - were issued to children and adolescents. That was 30,000 more than the previous year. Three-quarters of them went to people aged 15 to 18, with about 15,000 going to children under 10. The figures do not indicate how young the children on anti-depressants are, but a 2004 study that tracked more than 5000 mothers and their children found that "it is common for children as young as five to be perceived to manifest a variety of symptoms of depression and/or anxiety".

Black Dog Institute chief Professor Gordon Parker has prescribed Prozac to an eight-year-old boy, reluctantly and only after consulting with two other child psychiatrists. "His mother, who also had a very bad depression, had several children and they were all happy except this one boy who would come home from school and say, 'I want to be dead.' " After about three weeks on Prozac, the boy was "wonderful". Several attempts were made to take him off the medication but within three or four weeks his condition deteriorated each time. The use of anti-depressant drugs for children under 12 "should be done rarely and by specialists and with great care", cautions Prof Parker.

A study by Professor Jon Jureidini of the Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital concluded children and adolescents should not be placed on anti-depressants. "The drugs do not work and there is a possibility they may be dangerous for a small group," he says.

In 2004, the UK banned the use of all SSRI anti-depressants except Prozac for young people and the US Federal Drugs Agency asked manufacturers to include warning labels after experts found a link between anti-depressants and increased risk of suicide in children and teenagers. The danger was said to be greatest at the start of treatment, when there was a change in dosage or if it was suddenly withdrawn. Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration gave a similar warning and reiterated that the drug companies advise against the use of the medications to treat people under 18 for depression.

The Australian Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee recommended that where anti-depressants were prescribed for children and adolescents it should be carefully monitored and done only as a part of "comprehensive" patient management, preferably with cognitive behaviour therapy. ADRAC documents show that since close monitoring of prescriptions to children began in 2005, more than 1600 adverse reactions had been notified. Of these, 827 related to children aged under 10 and the drugs had been linked to two suicides and a death from heart failure. Another 833 adverse reactions were logged for youths aged 10 to 19, including links to three deaths.

Dr Brett McDermott, director of the Mater Child and Youth Mental Health Service in Brisbane and spokesman for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, says: "I think Australia has got it right. There are very safe anti-depressants and we are not prescribing them lightly. "Depression is a severe condition and I don't think you can withhold treatment because a small amount have side effects." Dr McDermott said GPs were competent to prescribe to adolescents but the younger the child, the more important it was they saw a child psychiatrist. "I would be very reluctant to prescribe anti-depressants to kids in primary school," he said.

Dr Halasz and others fear the use of drugs to treat depression could follow the explosion in ADHD medication. "The US, Canada and Australia are the world gold, silver and bronze medal-holders in terms of prescribing drugs to children," he said. Prescriptions in Australia for the most common medication - dex-amphetamines- rose from 96,000 a year to 232,000 between 1994 and 2004. In August 2005, the other popular ADHD drug Ritalin was added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, reducing the cost from $49 to as little as $4.70 for concession card-holders. Over the next six months, the number of Ritalin scripts issued soared from 523 a month to more than 5800, with no apparent decrease in other medications. Queensland prescription numbers have grown at a rate second only to that in Western Australia.

A world authority on ADHD, Professor David Hay from Curtin University in Perth, says one possible reason for the high number of cases is that GPs are allowed to diagnose ADHD in those two states. Elsewhere, it can be done only by child psychologists or psychiatrists. ADHD is "extraordinarily complex", with a high risk of mis-diagnosis, says Prof Hay. "We have to make sure we are measuring a problem in the child and not the parent's perceptions. I don't think it's done well enough."

A Federal Government study found 11 per cent of parents reported their children had symptoms consistent with ADHD. Dr Halasz says the true figure is more like 1 per cent and that many are being wrongly diagnosed. "Parents are between a rock and a hard place. They always want to do the best for their children," he said.

In the US, it is not uncommon for schools to insist parents medicate their children to modify their behaviour as a condition of remaining at the school. Youth Affairs Network of Queensland director Siyavash Doostkhah says it also happens regularly here - even though it is illegal. Denise, a Brisbane northside mother, says that happened to her son John who was branded a "bad" child all through pre-school. "This came to a head when he had only been in Grade 1 for approximately four months when the principal came to me and told me I either put my son on medication or he would be expelled."

Queensland University of Technology education PhD student Linda Graham recently completed a study of school responses and concluded that children who do not fit the "norm" are made scapegoats. "Parents of children who can be described as 'hyperactive' or 'distractable' are under pressure to medicate their children so they can fit into an overwrought, under-funded public education system," she said. "The load is lessened when difficult kids are diagnosed with something that qualifies for support funding or when parents oblige the school by shifting the problem to their local pediatrician."

She backed claims by child psychiatrists to The Sunday Mail of parents being pressured by schools to get diagnoses of conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder. Students with ASD qualify for teacher-aide support funding while those with ADHD do not. Proponents of ADHD medication point to the fact that it has helped thousands of children to control their impulsive or hyperactive behaviour, to focus and concentrate better, to improve their school performance and to increase their social skills.

Dr Halasz agrees it would be unethical to withhold the drugs from the very small group of children who really require them but argues that just because a child functions better after taking them is not proof that the child was ever "ill". And he warns there have not yet been any long-term follow-up studies of the effects. "There could be a sleeper effect. In 20 years we could have a whole generation acting differently."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

*********************

US woman dies of water intoxication

Ban water!

A 28-year-old woman has died of water intoxication after taking part in a Californian radio station's water drinking contest. She was in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" competition trying to win a Nintendo Wii video game system. Assistant Sacramento County Coroner Ed Smith said a preliminary investigation found evidence "consistent with a water intoxication death".

Jennifer Strange's mother found her daughter's body at her home on Friday in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova, California, after Strange called her supervisor at her job to say she was heading home in terrible pain. "She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad," said Laura Rios, one of Strange's co-workers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento. "She was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her."

Earlier Friday, Strange took part in a contest at radio station KDND 107.9 in which participants competed to see how much water they could drink without going to the toilet. Initially, contestants were handed 220mL bottles of water to drink every 15 minutes. "They were small little half-pint bottles, so we thought it was going to be easy," said fellow contestant James Ybarra of Woodland, California. "They told us if you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk."

Ybarra said he quit after drinking five bottles. "My bladder couldn't handle it anymore," he added. After he quit, he said, the remaining contestants, including Strange, were given even bigger bottles to drink. "I was talking to her and she was a nice lady," Ybarra said. "She was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for kids."

John Geary, vice president and marketing manager for Entercom Sacramento, the station's owner, said station personnel were stunned when they heard of Strange's death. "We are awaiting information that will help explain how this tragic event occurred," he said.

Source




Flesh-destroying ulcer infection reaches NSW

The first case of a flesh-eating ulcer infection in New South Wales has been reported, prompting warnings for doctors to watch out for the disease. The Bairnsdale ulcer, which kills human skin cells, fat and blood vessels, was first diagnosed in Australia in 1948, on the Victorian coast. Infection rates in the state have more than doubled in the past three years, with 61 people diagnosed in 2006, and cases have also been declared in Queensland and the Northern Territory. Now NSW has recorded its first case - a 42-year-old man who developed the condition after sea-kayaking near the town of Eden in the state's far south.

The ulcer is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium ulcerans, which is found naturally in the environment. It is not known how humans become infected with the disease, which is common in Africa, but it is believed to be transmitted by mosquitoes. A scab on the kayaker's ankle developed into a gaping wound which grew over five months before he was admitted to a Melbourne hospital last January to have the lesion excised.

Officially declaring the case in the latest Medical Journal of Australia, infectious diseases experts said it was the "first strong evidence" the disease had spread into NSW. "Australian primary care clinicians need to be aware that the ulcer may occur in NSW to ensure early diagnosis and treatment," wrote Paul Johnson from Austin Health in Melbourne.

The finding came as Australian plastic surgeons, GPs, physicians and public health experts set down new guidelines recommending people use insect repellent and wear protective clothing while in disease hotspots. Professor Johnson and his team also advised colleagues confronted with large ulcers to use both antibiotics and surgery. Other new research published in the journal suggests that in a quarter of cases the disease will still spread after surgery if antibiotics aren't used.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter? It is just about pure fat. Surely it should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

*********************

NOW EVEN PEOPLE OF NORMAL WEIGHT CAN BE OBESE!

They'll get us all eventually. First they came for the obese ....

The journal abstract below reports an Italian study based on just 20 women. No double blind controls or any of that nonsense, of course:

Normal-weight obese syndrome: early inflammation?

Antonino De Lorenzo et al.

Background: In obese subjects, the adipose mass represents an important source of proinflammatory cytokines. We have identified a new syndrome-the normal-weight obese (NWO) syndrome-in women with normal weight and body mass index but whose fat mass is >30% of their total body weight and whose risk of developing obesity-related diseases is likely increased.

Objective: The aim of the present study was to verify the hypothesis that NWO women are characterized by early inflammation, related to body fat mass, and that their plasma proinflammatory cytokine concentrations are greater than those of nonobese women.

Design: Twenty NWO, 20 preobese-obese, and 20 healthy (nonobese), age-matched white Italian women were studied. Anthropometric variables and plasma concentrations of proinflammatory cytokines and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors were measured and compared between groups.

Results: Plasma values and body-composition measures were significantly different between the preobese-obese and nonobese women. No significant differences in body weight, laboratory values, or CVD risk factors were found between the NWO and nonobese groups. Compared with concentrations in the NWO women, plasma concentrations of interleukin (IL)-1alpha were significantly lower in the nonobese group and were significantly greater in the preobese-obese group. IL-6 and alpha concentrations were related to fat mass distribution in the NWO women.

Conclusions: The proinflammatory cytokines could be regarded as significant prognostic indicators of the risk of obesity, CVD, and the metabolic syndrome in NWO women.





A VITAMIN TO STOP YOU GOING DEAF?

Journal abstract below:

Effects of Folic Acid Supplementation on Hearing in Older Adults

Background: Age-related hearing loss is a common chronic condition of elderly persons. Low folate status has been associated with poor hearing.

Objective: To determine whether folic acid supplementation slows age-related hearing loss.

Design: Double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial conducted from September 2000 to December 2004.

Setting: The Netherlands.

Participants: 728 older men and women recruited from municipal and blood bank registries with plasma total homocysteine concentrations 13 æmol/L or greater serum and vitamin B12 concentrations 200 pmol/L or greater at screening, and no middle ear dysfunction, unilateral hearing loss, or pathologic ear conditions unrelated to aging.

Intervention: Daily oral folic acid (800 æg) or placebo supplementation for 3 years.

Measurements: 3-year change in hearing thresholds, assessed as the average of the pure-tone air conduction thresholds of both ears of the low (0.5-kHz, 1-kHz, and 2-kHz) and high (4-kHz, 6-kHz, and 8-kHz) frequencies.

Results: Initial median hearing thresholds were 11.7 dB (interquartile range, 7.5 to 17.5 dB) for low frequencies and 34.2 dB (interquartile range, 22.5 to 50.0 dB) for high frequencies. Sixteen participants (2%) were lost to follow-up. After 3 years, thresholds of the low frequencies increased by 1.0 dB (95% CI, 0.6 to 1.4 dB) in the folic acid group and by 1.7 dB (CI, 1.3 to 2.1 dB) in the placebo group (difference, -0.7 dB [CI, -1.2 to -0.1 dB]; P = 0.020). Folic acid supplementation did not affect the decline in hearing high frequencies.

Limitations: The strict criterion for participation on the basis of serum homocysteine concentrations limits extrapolation to the general population. Folic acid fortification of food was prohibited in the Netherlands during the study, so baseline folate levels in participants were about half of those found in the U.S. population.

Conclusions: Folic acid supplementation slowed the decline in hearing of the speech frequencies associated with aging in a population from a country without folic acid fortification of food. The effect requires confirmation, especially in populations from countries with folic acid fortification programs.

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter? It is just about pure fat. Surely it should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

*********************

FATTIES SURVIVE HEART ATTACKS BETTER

It's a well-known paradox that had little evidence to support it, until now. Doctors from UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine have, for the first time, successfully demonstrated that obese patients actually fare better and have better chances of survival when hospitalised for acute heart failure than their leaner counterparts.

In the first-ever large scale study to assess the relationship between Body Mass Index and survival in patients hospitalised with acute heart failure, doctors have found the obesity paradox - BMI being inversely associated with long-term mortality in chronic heart failure - to be real. The study has found that by weight category, in-hospital mortality rate was 6.3% for underweight, 4.6% for healthy weight, 3.4% for overweight and 2.4% for obese patients. Researchers also found that for every five-unit increase in body mass, the odds of risk-adjusted mortality fell 10%, irrespective of the patients age, sex, blood urea nitrogen, blood pressure and additional prognostic factors.

Speaking to TOI, Gregg Fonarow, the school's director and lead author of this study, said, "The study suggests overweight, obese patients may have a greater metabolic reserve to call upon during an acute heart failure, which may lessen in-hospital mortality risk. Prior studies in outpatients with chronic heart failure had shown overweight patients had better chances of survival compared to patients who were normal weight, the so called obesity paradox."

Fonarow said the study was initiated in October 2001 and involved 263 hospitals in the US. Researchers utilised data of over 100,000 patients with acute heart failure patients from the Acute Decompensated Heart Failure National Registry from October 2001 through December 2004. "Further study is required but the finding suggests that nutritional/metabolic support may have therapeutic benefit in specific patients hospitalised with heart failure. Obesity is a known risk factor for developing heart disease and heart failure and every effort should be made to avoid it, but once heart failure has manifested, this paradox seems to occur," Fonarow added.

According to cardiologist Dr K K Agarwal of Moolchand Hospital, obesity paradox is also called reverse epidemiology. "Such a paradox has been found in obese patients undergoing dialysis or suffering from advanced cancer and renal failure. Elderly patients who have better BMI have better chance of pulling through such severe health complications."

Source





BOTTLED WATER?

Panic: `Health warning over safety of bottled water', says the UK Independent, among others, following a report by the food and farming campaign Sustain. The report argues that consumers often buy bottled water because they believe it is healthier than tap water. However, the bottled variety can contain sodium, contaminants (like the benzene found in Perrier in 1989), and the heavy metal antimony. The report notes that the French Senate has recommended switching brands regularly to reduce the risk of harmful effects.

Don't panic: The real aim of the report seems to be to emphasise that bottled water is less environmentally efficient than tap water - so why create a health panic about the bottled stuff?

The authors make a perfectly reasonable defence of tap water. They rightly point out that there are no particular health benefits from bottled water, and nor do we need to drink `eight glasses per day' as is routinely cited. Tap water is now produced to very high standards - 99.96 per cent of UK mains supply now meets national standards. Tap water is generally purer and fresher than the bottled variety, and also much cheaper.

However, some of the other claims in the report are dubious. The risks of sodium in the diet are overhyped anyway, but there is at least 25 times more sodium in a single slice of bread than to be found in a regular 500ml bottle of water. To reach the recommended sodium intake for a day from water would require drinking about 200 such bottles.

As for the claim about antimony, the report cites research from Germany which actually states `all the water tested contained antimony below the guidelines recommended for drinking water'. In other words, as far as anyone can tell, it is safe. While dismissing health fears about tap water, the report prefers to stoke fears about bottled water using innuendo rather than evidence.

Bottled water is convenient and usually preferable to the saccharin-sweet fizzy drinks that are the only alternative when you need to quench your thirst while out and about - even if it is sometimes ridiculously expensive. Claiming that it is potentially bad for your health is cynical, however. If Sustain think the world would be a better place if we only drank tap water, or at least recycled the plastic mineral water bottles, then they should make the case without promoting a different set of anxieties instead.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter? It is just about pure fat. Surely it should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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STUPID FOOD FASCIST WANTS TO BAN COCA COLA

No doubt he wants to ban coffee too. That's FULL of the evil caffeine and lots of people drink it with that ghastly, fattening MILK and SUGAR!

Governments have been urged to consider banning the sale of caffeinated soft drinks to children following Australian research showing caffeine only increases addictiveness. A Melbourne study, published in the most recent issue of international research journal Appetite found caffeine added to cola-based drinks did not enhance flavour, but did increase their addictiveness, adding to childhood obesity problems. Study co-author, Deakin University's Russell Keast yesterday said his findings were "absolutely conclusive" that people could not detect the caffeine flavour added to cola-based drinks. But he said children might find themselves becoming addicted to the caffeine, without realising it. "It's a problem for children," he said. "We're talking about children, who don't have the cognitive ability to understand why they're getting more irritable, more moody."

Dr Keast said there was a "very strong cause and effect" between soft drink consumption and obesity, with previous research showing a person's chance of obesity rose 60 per cent with each extra can of soft drink they consumed. "Soft drinks have been linked to childhood obesity and caffeine has been linked to increased consumption," he said. "So I think overall that the picture is while caffeine adds no flavour activity to these soft drinks, it is potentially an issue the government perhaps should look at regulating, certainly in schools, to see if maybe caffeinated soft drinks and maybe soft drinks overall shouldn't be marketed to school children."

Dr Keast said banning the drinks' sale to children under the age of 18, in the same way alcohol was banned, could be one approach for governments to explore. "I think if that's a regulatory approach, that sort of thing should maybe be considered. I don't know what the best options are, how you would go about such things." Dr Keast last week emailed his report to federal Health Minister Tony Abbott and Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike.

Mr Abbott last year slammed soft drinks as being "very, very harmful" for children except as an occasional treat, but stopped short of promising tougher laws.

Dr Keast said yesterday that research into the effects of caffeinated soft drinks would continue, with funding being sought to do similar studies in Thailand, where childhood obesity was also a growing problem. The six-month Melbourne study, conducted jointly with Lynnette Riddell, repeatedly tested 30 people aged in their 20s to see if they could detect the caffeine flavour in cola-based drinks.

Source




BAN KIDS!

Adults living with young children eat significantly more fat than grown-ups with no kids at home, a new study shows. Adults with kids consumed nearly 5 more grams of fat and 1.7 more grams of saturated fat every day, the equivalent of an individual pepperoni pizza a week, Dr. Helena Laroche of the University of Iowa in Iowa City and her colleagues found. Adults living with children younger than 17 also ate more salty snacks, cheese, beef, ice cream, cakes and cookies, pizza, and processed meats like bacon.

Busy schedules and time constraints may be forcing parents to choose more high-fat convenience foods, Laroche and her team suggest in their article in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. Adults with children may also be more likely to keep these foods around the house because they think kids like them. "We need to approach nutrition as good for the whole family," Laroche told Reuters Health. "Everybody should be eating the same nutritious food."

She and her colleagues analyzed data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a nationally representative sample that included 6,660 men and women aged 17 to 65. Households with children younger than 17 didn't consume more calories, but they did eat more fat, Laroche and her colleagues found.

"These findings suggest that food advertising aimed at children may influence not only the child's diet but also indirectly affect parents' diets," they note in their report. The authors suggest switching kids to lower-fat milk after age 2, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association, as well as limiting snack food, cheese products, and pizza.

Source

Jonah Goldberg comments:

I'm growing increasingly annoyed with the idea that kids like fatty, sweet and all around yummy foods because of some sort of social construction of reality. I remember reading somewhere that Dr. Spock (no, the other one) said dessert shouldn't be withheld as a punishment because it emphasizes the wrong food and makes sweets seem like the most "valuable" meal. For a long time, this made total sense to me because I never had to think about it. Now that I'm a parent, I recognize that it is almost a total crock. Kids like ice cream because it tastes really frick'n good. Telling a kid, "clean up your room or no spinach for you" would be brilliant if it weren't so scandalously stupid (note: if yours is the one kid in a million who likes spinach more than ice cream, congrats. But we ain't building social policy around your example). I keep seeing these segments on TV or reading snippets in the paper about how if you just raise kids to like apples more than cookies, they'll like apples more than cookies. Maybe that's possible, but only if you never let your kids eat really good cookies so they never learn what they're missing.

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter? It is just about pure fat. Surely it should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

*********************

HEY! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET?

Or the Japanese diet, for that matter? Countries that seem especially healthy in one way or another often have their characteristic diet promoted as the secret to a long life. On the figures below, I expect the Australian diet will now be similarly promoted -- a diet heavy in big Macs, KFC, chips (French fries), fried food generally, Coca cola and everything that the food faddists deplore. When will the world discover the health-giving wonders of fat-heavy meat pies and Vegemite sandwiches -- to say nothing of Lamingtons and Iced VoVos? Pardon me while I duck out for a nice sausage roll -- encased in flaky pastry that's greasy with fat! You can get them anywhere in Australia



Figures recently released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that Australians are among the longest-living people in the world, with an average lifespan of 78.5 years for males and 83.3 years for females born "Down Under."

But the figures drop by around 17 years for indigenous Australians, whose average life expectancy in 2001 was 59.4 years for males and 64.8 for females. Several factors, including poverty, discrimination, substance abuse [including pervasive alcohol abuse] and poor access to health, are believed to affect the lifespan of these original Australians.

For the rest of the nation, the capital Canberra -- often derided as boring and soulless -- is statistically the best place to sustain a long life. The lakeside city's 325,000 people enjoy the longest average lifespan, with women living to 84 years and most men to 79.9. Built to resolve a bitter 1908 dispute between Sydney and Melbourne over which should be capital, modern Canberra has the wealthiest and best-educated population in Australia. The city's unemployment rate hovers at barely 2.8 percent, while weekly wages are well above the Australian average at A$1,208 (US$941), backed by a booming information technology industry and government salaries.

At the other end of the scale is the sparsely populated outback Northern Territory, cinematic home to "Crocodile Dundee." The territory accounts for only 1 percent of Australia's 20 million population. Men there live to 72.5 years on average, while women live to 78.2. More than a quarter of the population are aboriginal Australians, who often live on remote communities with poor access to jobs, health and education services and have one of the lowest life expectancies.

Australia's nationwide average life expectancy for males is exceeded only by Iceland and Hong Kong while the female life expectancy is exceeded by Japan and Hong Kong.

Source





Natural remedies seen as stab in the dark

Reaching for the aloe vera next time you are sunburnt may be a waste of time, according to the consumer magazine Choice. In its latest issue, the magazine reviewed international medical journal articles on the effectiveness of aloe vera and other natural healing products such as tea-tree oil, St John's Wort, lavender oil and honey. It found that despite generations of folklore promoting their benefits, many natural remedies were yet to be scientifically proven as effective first-aid treatments. "There is such a wide variety of so-called natural remedies out there, we thought it would be timely just to see how the body of scientific evidence was stacking up in or against their favour," said a Choice spokeswoman, Indira Naidoo. "There is a lot of information out there but a lot of it is reaching the conclusion that it is too early to prove [or that] there needs to be more research."

Of the eight natural remedies examined, all have been said to protect the body against infection, while four have been promoted for their ability to heal wounds.

Professor Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist, said that while some natural remedies, such as tea-tree oil, could help clear minor skin infections, it could prompt some to use them on serious infections, with unknown results. "We need to be careful we don't rush in with too much enthusiasm for something that doesn't have enough data to show it works . and secondly that it doesn't cause toxicity that we're not aware of." Professor Collignon and Choice called for more research into natural remedies. The president of the National Herbalists Association, John Baxter, said there was plenty of clinical research to prove they worked as a first-aid treatment.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter? It is just about pure fat. Surely it should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

*********************