Recognition of deficient evidence when it suits

It is certainly deplorable that these things have not been tested properly but a few apparent adverse reactions out of billions of doses are unlikely to mean anything. This sounds more like an attack on the drug industry than any reasonable caution

Over-the-counter cough and cold medicines have not been proved to work, are potentially dangerous and should not be used in children ages 6 and younger, an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration decided Friday. The expert panel also voted to urge the FDA to require companies that make the popular products to conduct thorough research to finally determine whether they are effective in any group of children. "This one is really important because so many people are using it, there is so much money spent on it, there is no evidence that it works, and there is evidence of harm," said Dr. Jesse Joad, a UC Davis professor of pediatrics and pediatric lung specialist who served as a consultant on the committee. "Something really needs to be done about it."

The advisory panel's recommendations are not binding but, if adopted by the FDA, could lead to a major shift in the way these medicines are labeled, sold and used by parents. "We need to go back and review all these recommendations that we heard today and decide what the path forward might be," Dr. John Jenkins, director of the FDA's office of new drugs, said after the meeting. If the agency does adopt the committee's recommendations, it must undertake a rule-making process that can "take anywhere from one to many years," Jenkins said.

Manufacturers, who last week withdrew more than a dozen cold products labeled for use in infants and toddlers, said they would fight the new recommendations. "We believe these products will remain on the market," said Linda Suydam, president of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, an industry trade group.

There are about 800 pediatric cold products sold in the United States that use one or more of 39 drugs. Parents spend around $500 million every year buying nearly 95 million boxes containing 3.8 billion doses of medicine, according to Suydam. The products under review include common brand names including PediaCare, Robitussin and Triaminic, many of which are marketed for toddlers and other children younger than 6.

The FDA review was prompted by a petition from Baltimore's commissioner of health after the deaths of four children. Earlier this year, the FDA completed a review that found that between 1969 and 2006, there were 54 reported child deaths from decongestants and 69 from antihistamines. Most of the deaths occurred in children younger than 2. Joad said the 22-member committee looked at several types of cold medicine ingredients including pseudoephedrine, a decongestant, and antihistamines to combat runny noses and sneezing. She said products containing pseudoephedrine were linked to seizures, mostly in children younger than 2, and that the antihistamines caused sedation in children. In most cases, she said, the adverse reactions resulted from overdoses.

Speaking from her hotel room after the committee adjourned in Maryland, Joad said that while most pediatricians tell parents not to use the drugs, 80 percent to 90 percent of parents do anyway. "They really believe it works," she said. "But colds are diseases that get worse for a few days and then get better. You don't have to give them anything." Joad added, "Why would you give them something that might kill you, or cause a seizure or a cardiac event?"

Part of the problem, said Joad, is that the products' labels can be very confusing for consumers. She noted, for example, that while Tylenol used to be synonymous with acetaminophen, a non-aspirin pain and fever reliever, Tylenol-labeled products now may contain many other ingredients that have nothing to do with addressing pain or fever symptoms. Cold products for kids also vary dramatically in terms of the active ingredient concentrations, their dosing and dispensing instructions, she said. "We recommended there be standard concentrations and that everything should be measured in milliliters, not teaspoons," she said.

In addition, Joad said the committee wants the industry to stop depicting young children on packaging and to clearly state that the products have not been shown to be effective and have been linked to severe adverse effects. Pediatric cold medicines were approved in the early 1970s, despite almost no evidence that they worked, because regulators assumed that drugs that worked in adults would also be helpful in children. Physicians now know that is not necessarily true. The bottom line, Joad told the committee, "is that children are not little adults."

Source






Bishop too fat for surgery

In general, discrimination on the basis of weight sounds to me no different from discrimination because of skin colour. But I have to agree with the doctors here. The vast weight of the man would undoubtedly be a factor in why his knee has collapsed and leaving the weight as is could well make a replacement knee largely futile

A BISHOP who has dedicated his life to the church has been refused surgery by a Victorian hospital because he is too fat. Bishop R.J. Gow of St Mary's House of Prayer, at Elaine, west of Ballarat, is in desperate need of a left knee replacement. "It's my praying knee," the good humoured priest said. "I'm having a lot of trouble walking and standing at the altar."

Three months ago the clergyman, 66, was referred to an orthopedic surgeon. "The surgeon said the waiting list at Ballarat Hospital for that surgery was two years, but he was now doing surgery at Bacchus Marsh hospital so to go there," Bishop Gow said. "I made an appointment, but within five minutes of them seeing me they said "unless you lose weight you won't be having surgery here". Bishop Gow, who stands six feet tall, weighed 147kg (330 lb.). Since that first appointment he lost 15kg in 11 weeks and is now 132kg. "They told me to lose 17 kilos before I came back," he said. "But when I came back they told me I'd have to lose another five before I see the anaesthetist on October 26. "The only way I can do that is to starve myself."

Bishop Gow said he was annoyed at the level of discrimination towards overweight people. "This is a hospital discriminating against people who are overweight," he said. "They're excluding people and I'm not the only one. I heard them saying to the person in front of me that they would also have to lose weight before an operation. "I questioned her about it and she said it was hospital policy. She showed me a copy of minutes of a meeting where it was stated they would only operate on patients who had a BMI (body mass index) of below 40. "This is discriminatory. Obesity is a disease caused by pyschological or physical factors - people don't get fat because they want to. "But what really annoyed me was I had a look around the hospital and there were empty beds. What's happening with our health care?"

Bishop Gow, who has spent more than 20 years working with the poor, sick and disadvantaged, said his knee was deteriorating and he was in a lot of pain. "But I haven't private health insurance and the operation would cost thousands of dollars," he said. Bacchus Marsh Hospital's Acting CEO David Grace said the hospital had a policy on surgery for the obese "for patient safety. We use an objective BMI assessment. "If someone is higher than the cut-off point of 40 they're considered a high anaesthetic risk and we wouldn't allow treatment." He would not comment on a specific case, but said he didn't consider the practice discriminatory. "It's about patient safety," 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].

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

An unfree country: The USA

What do Marriott, McDonald’s and New York City have in common? They’re all moving to protect you from trans fats in your diet. The difference is the first two are voluntary initiatives aimed to create customer goodwill, while New York’s dictates your customer’s choice. While America weighed the pros and cons of the Iraq surge strategy, New York City banned so-called “trans fats” in all food service establishments effective July 1. This aggressive assault on hydrogenated vegetable oils has an almost-militaristic feel to it, as secondary fronts are also being opened in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois and Michigan, and “voluntary” trans fat phase-outs are popping up everywhere.

Sophisticated diners debate the culinary merits of trans fats (do those fries really taste better?), but that’s not the issue. No one laments trans fats on health grounds, though they offer a marginal cost advantage in food production and preparation. But when we recall that trans fats (now tied to unhealthy high cholesterol) were introduced as a replacement for animal fats (tied to unhealthy high cholesterol), we realize the issue is not this food input or that, but whether we as consumers have the right to make informed choices, even choices that may not be “nutritionally correct.”

There are good arguments why we should avoid trans fats — or at least limit their intake. Still, anything can kill in the wrong dosage: take carrot juice (a gallon could cause a fatal, toxic Vitamin A overdose) or high fructose corn syrup (merely a cost-saver, and all too effective in helping our youth grow horizontally rather than vertically).

Fearing high cholesterol, New York City did what seems to come naturally to the city administration under Mayor Michael Bloomberg: It proscribed nasty trans fats from city businesses serving food, just like it dictated that its businesses may no longer allow their patrons to smoke. If the new law seems a logical extension of the smoking ban, it is still more worrisome. With smoking, at least there is the pretense (with some research backing) that one does not just forbid the smoker to harm himself or herself, but that smoking puts others — employees and patrons of the establishment — in harm’s way. A specious argument, but with superficial merit. Even with smoking, consumer choice should probably still rule (perhaps leavened by smoking-related health insurance for workers and superior ventilation), although there is residual resistance to laws regulating personal behavior that, hypothetically, can injure or offend others.

But with trans fats, there is pure victimless crime: The consumer can only injure himself (the cholesterol linkage implies higher risk of coronary disease). Good intentions notwithstanding, it is difficult to see how New York’s patronizing, paternalistic interference doesn’t exceed rational bounds the state should observe in prescribing what its citizens may or may not consume.

If the state, either out of benevolence or fears of a heightened burden on the health care system, wishes that its residents be healthy, aggressive information and labeling campaigns ought to do the trick. The problem is not that trans fats are being “outlawed,” but that elected officials presume a right (and power) to “help” their citizen with lifestyle choices far beyond the proper purview of government. An equally well-inspired city council might think it a great idea if its citizens were only allowed to purchase organic food, or forbidden to engage in a number of high-risk sexual activities. Both would fit right into the Zeitgeist of the modern liberal community — neopuritan liberalism, choice and personal freedom be damned.

Here in the nation’s capital, just before the city also banned smoking in restaurants and bars, Council Member Carol Schwartz copied the anti-smoking language and proposed to outlaw alcohol consumption in restaurants and bars. She was roundly criticized, but her crisp sarcasm made the point better than any speech could have. Presuming legislative omniscience (and a scientific certainty that doesn’t exist), we are framing a one-size-fits-all lifestyle unbefitting a country founded on principles of liberty, freedom and individual choice. One notes, ruefully, that the finely crafted Snickers bar is labeled as containing “partially hydrogenated soybean oil and/or hydrogenated palm kernel oil.” Better start stockpiling right now.

Source





An unfree country: The UK

The television chef Prue Leith has called for pupils to be barred from leaving school at lunchtime to prevent them buying junk food. Ms Leith, chairwoman of the School Food Trust, the Government's programme charged with improving school meals in England, argued that locking the school gates would ensure children ate healthier meals or packed lunches rather than burgers or chips. "If you can keep them inside, then you can begin to educate them about eating," she said. "It's a drastic measure but we are facing a drastic situation. We are denying children the real pleasure of eating and cooking good food. She added: "I agree that I am being rather nanny-ish but I think children need some nannying," she added.

She also advised parents to give pocket money to children in one go on a Saturday, rather than in instalments through the week so they would buy a long-lasting item such as a CD or baseball cap rather than snacks or chocolate.

Only 40 per cent of children eat school dinners. The majority opt for packed lunches or street food. Jamie Oliver's high-profile campaign to improve school nutrition during the Channel 4 series in which he exposed notoriously unhealthy Turkey Twizzlers, has not solved the problem. In many cases, hot meals have been replaced by packed lunches which, said Ms Leith, tended to be less healthy because their ingredients had been bought on supermarket shopping trips when parents were swayed by "pester power".

A new drive by the School Food Trust to encourage children to try the healthier meals and raise the number of pupil diners above 50 per cent got under way yesterday. The Million Meals campaign was launched by Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, at St Augustine's Secondary School in Kilburn, north-west London.

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].

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

Genes for overeating

Researchers say they've found a genetic explanation for why some people crave food more than others do. People who are driven to eat a lot may need more food than others do to get the same feeling of reward, the scientists claim.

The research, they said, found that people with genetically low levels of a brain chemical called dopamine find food to be more "reinforcing" than other people do. Dopamine, a neurotransmitteror substance that transmits nerve impulsesis associated with pleasure. Having less of it may prompt people to work harder to stimulate rewarding feelings, such as by eating, according to the scientists.

The findings, by investigators at the University at Buffalo, N.Y., appear in the October issue of research journal Behavioral Neuroscience. The lead researcher, Leonard Epstein, is also a consultant to comestibles giant Kraft Foods Inc. The team studied a gene variant carried by about half the population, called the Taq1 A1 allele. It leads to lower dopamine levels by producing lower amounts of a type of receptor, or molecular gateway, that allows dopamine transmission.

The researchers studied 29 obese and 45 nonobese adults, taking DNA samples and having them fill out questionnaires. They also asked the participants to rate various snack foodsbut this assignment was a sham. Actually, the investigators were examining how much participants ate when food was freely available.

Participants were also asked to perform a second task in which they could swivel between two computers. Pressing specified keys on one earned points to eat their favorite food; pressing keys on the other earned points to read a newspaper. The idea was for researchers to find out how hard the participants worked to obtain food, versus something else.

Both obesity and lowerdopamine gene variants predicted a significantly stronger response to food's reinforcing power, and more calorie consumption, the researchers found. Epstein differentiates reinforcing value, defined by how hard someone will work for food, from the "feel good" pleasure people get from food. "They often go together, but are not the same thing," he said.

"Food is a powerful reinforcer that can be as reinforcing as drugs of abuse," the scientists wrote. They added that the findings may help experts identify people at risk for obesity and develop treatments tailored to them. "Behavior and biology interact and influence each other," said Epstein. "The genotype [genetic makeup] does not cause obesity; it is one of many factors that may contribute to it," including learned habits.

Source





Aspirin against heart disease: just for men?

The feminists keep telling us that the only differences between men and women are the product of a "patriarchal" culture so this cannot be right

First it was an apple; now it's a small aspirin a day that may keep the doctor away. Aspirin has become standard for heart attack prevention. But new research suggests it may really be a man's drug.

Scientists have long puzzled over why aspirin's protective effects vary widely among clinical trials. Some studies find it has no special effect; others, that it cuts heart attack risk by over 50 percent.

A new study from researchers at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, Canada, highlights the influence of gender. Investigators examined 23 previously published clinical trials, involving more than 113,000 patients, and analysed how the proportion of men to women affected the the outcomes. "Trials that recruited predominantly men demonstrated the largest risk reduction in nonfatal heart attacks," said Don Sin, one of the authors.

"The trials that contained predominately women failed to demonstrate a significant risk reduction in these nonfatal events. We found that a lot of the variability in these trials seems to be due to the gender ratios, supporting the theory that women may be less responsive to aspirin than men for heart protection."

The reasons why are unclear, he said, though recent studies have shown that men and women have major differences in the heart's blood vessels. "We would caution clinicians on prescribing aspirin to women, especially for primary prevention of heart attacks," said Sin. "Whether or not other pharmaceutical products would be more effective for women is unclear; more sexspecific studies should now be conducted." The findings appeared Oct. 18 in the online research journal BMC Medicine.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last May recommended 75 to 81 milligrams of aspirin daily, taken in consultation with a physician, for longterm heart disease and stroke prevention

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].

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

Low-fat diet later may cut ovarian cancer risk (NOT)

The report below is essentially a fraud from beginning to end and totally misrepresents the actual findings of the study concerned. But for once I don't have to explain why. Sandy Szwarc explodes it all at length. It's just egregious data dredging. Please read Sandy's comments

Try fewer burgers and more veggies after menopause: Cutting dietary fat may offer a long-sought protection against deadly ovarian cancer -- if you stick with the diet long enough. Low-fat diets have long been promoted as a way to reduce the risk of different cancers, with decidedly mixed results when put to the test. But this week, researchers unveiled the first hard evidence that switching to a low-fat diet late in life can lower the odds of ovarian cancer, a malignancy with a particularly dismal survival rate.

The study tracked almost 40,000 women ages 50 to 79, some of whom were assigned to cut the total fat in their diets to 20 percent of calories -- from an average of 35 percent -- while others continued their usual diets. For the first four years, the menu changes didn't make a difference. But those who kept the fat low for eight years cut their chances of ovarian cancer by 40 percent, researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "This is really good news," said Dr. Jacques Rossouw of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the work. "But you have to stick with the diet."

Until now, the only known prescription against ovarian cancer -- aside from surgically removing the ovaries -- was for women of childbearing age to use birth control pills. Use for five years can lower the ovarian cancer risk by up to 60 percent, protection that lingers years after pill use ends. The new findings offer an option for postmenopausal women to try. It's arguably the most promising finding of the mammoth Women's Health Initiative dietary study, which enrolled tens of thousands of healthy women to track the effects of teaching them to cut fat and eat more fruits and vegetables.

So far, the diet has had seemingly little impact on rates of breast cancer, colorectal cancer and even, surprisingly, heart disease. There are a number of theories: Maybe the women started healthier eating too late; most were overweight, a major risk factor, and the diet wasn't designed to shed pounds. Nor did most women actually cut enough fat. Despite all those hurdles, a low-fat diet did appear protective against ovarian cancer -- and the women who started with the worst diets and cut fat the most, got the most benefit.

Ovarian cancer is fairly rare, affecting one in 60 women compared with the one in 9 who will get breast cancer. But it is particularly lethal because it usually is detected only after it has spread throughout the abdomen, making it much harder to treat. Only 45 percent of patients survive five years. The American Cancer Society estimates that 22,430 U.S. women will be learn that they have ovarian cancer this year; 15,280 women will die of it. Ovarian cancer can strike anytime in adulthood, but risk increases with age. Mutations in the so-called breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 also increase the risk of ovarian cancer -- and women in the new study have not yet been tested for those genes, to see if the low-fat diet proves more or less beneficial for them.

Why would diet affect ovaries? The theory is that fat intake increases the amount of estrogen circulating in the blood, which may in turn overstimulate sensitive ovaries. Indeed, blood tests showed study participants on the low-fat diet experienced a 15 percent reduction in estradiol, a key form of estrogen, while non-dieters experienced no change, said study co-author Dr. Ross Prentice of Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. "It's quite noteworthy," Prentice said of the ovarian protection. "We're really pleased to have something positive to say to American women -- that undertaking a low-fat diet likely reduces your risk of ovarian cancer and perhaps other cancers as well."

Estrogen plays a role in breast cancer, too. Yet when researchers last year checked women in this same study, they found only a 9 percent drop in breast cancer risk, not quite large enough to be sure it wasn't due to chance. Perhaps a bigger estrogen drop is required for breast cancer. Still, the women who cut the most fat fared better -- just like with the new ovarian cancer data.

Most of the dieters cut their fat intake to 24 percent of calories, not quite as much as recommended. And over time, the fat crept back: Eight years later, they were up to 29 percent -- still lower than the average American diet, noted Rossouw, of NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. "It's feasible," he said of the diet. "Once there is news that this does work, it may be easier to motivate people to do

Source





Obesity link to life loss: More Fraudulent "consensus" science

Once again we see a hope that majority votes will trump the facts. The facts are summarized here

OBESITY is more dangerous than smoking and will dramatically shorten the lives of millions, a landmark study has found. While smoking reduces life by an average of 10 years, the research says being seriously overweight can cut life expectancy by as much as 13 years. The Foresight report, written by 250 leading scientists, says the obesity crisis in some Western countries is so severe it would take at least 30 years to reverse. It warns modern life -- with the easy availability of cheap, unhealthy food and a sedentary lifestyle -- means it is almost impossible for many to avoid putting on weight.

About 7.4 million Australians -- more than 50 per cent of the adult population -- are obese, says an Australian Bureau of Statistic report released this year.

Lead Foresight report author David King [Also famous as a champion of global warming] said: "We must fight the notion that the current obesity epidemic arises from individual over-indulgence or laziness alone. "We live in a consumer society which encourages us to eat. We have a sedentary lifestyle. It's an environment which means that if we just behave normally we will become obese." Professor King said. "We may only put on a bit of weight a day but there are 365 days in the year."

The report found that being obese, with a body mass index of more than 30, knocks nine years off a person's life, while men with a BMI of more than 45 face 13 years less life. It says the human body is biologically predisposed to put on weight because this was an advantage in our evolutionary past and the current high rate of obesity means it is becoming accepted as a societal norm.

Pointing out the design of many towns and cities was based around the needs of the car, it suggests more should be done to ensure that it is easier to walk and cycle to encourage residents to take more exercise. The availability of unhealthy food and drink should be controlled the report says, perhaps by restricting advertising or certain food ingredients such as trans fats.

Nutrition Australia's senior nutritionist, Aloysa Hourigan, said in some ways Australia was one step ahead in the obesity fight thanks to diet overhauls in school tuckshops and a push towards healthier eating. But it would still take about 30 years to overhaul the obesity rates, which were on par with the US and Britain among adults and among the highest in the world for children, Ms Hourigan said. "The current generation of kids are likely to be the first generation of Australians that don't outlive their parents because of health issues that arise from obesity so then you have got to take a whole another generation to expect that to change," she 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].

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

Secondhand smoke: More spurious "consensus" science and "the debate is over"

More than a year has passed since U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona said, "The debate is over. The science is clear: Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance, but a serious health hazard." At the time, Carmona released a seemingly impressive 727-page report on secondhand smoke, the introduction of which claims secondhand smoke killed approximately 50,000 nonsmoking adults and children in 2005. Carmona's report stated the new orthodoxy in the anti-smoking establishment: There is a "consensus" on the dangers of secondhand smoke. But did his report actually make the case?

Understanding Carmona's report requires familiarity with a different report--the Federal Judicial Center's 2000 "Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Second Edition," the official guide for judges to understand and rule on science introduced in courtrooms. According to the manual, nearly all the studies cited in Carmona's report wouldn't pass muster in a court of law because they are observational studies, the sample sizes are too small, or the effects they show are too negligible to be reliable.

For example, the Reference Manual states, "the threshold for concluding that an agent was more likely than not the cause of an individual's disease is a relative risk greater than 2.0." Few of the studies Carmona cites found relative risks this large, and most found risks in a range that included 1.0, which means exposure to secondhand smoke had no effect on the incidence of disease. In the world of real science, that's a knockout blow.

Most of the research Carmona cites was rejected by a federal judge in 1993, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first tried to classify secondhand smoke as a human carcinogen. The judge said EPA cherry-picked studies to support its position, misrepresented the most important findings, and failed to honor scientific standards. Carmona's report relies on the same studies and makes the same claims EPA did a decade ago.

Did Carmona and coauthors cherry-pick the data? Absolutely. They ignore the largest and most credible study ever conducted on spouses of smokers, by Enstrom and Kabat, published in the May 12, 2003 issue of the British Medical Journal. The authors found: "The results do not support a causal relationship between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco-related mortality. The association between tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed."

Carmona mentions the Enstrom study just once, in an appendix listing studies too recent to include in the report. But Enstrom's study was published four years ago, and Carmona cites more recent studies. In fact, Carmona's principal "findings" were taken from a 2005 report--not a scientific study, merely another report--from California's Clean Air Resources Board, mostly citing the very studies the federal judge rejected in 1993.

The Enstrom study isn't the odd exception among all the available studies on secondhand smoke. A 2002 analysis of 48 studies, also published in the British Medical Journal, found only seven showed a relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and lung cancer, while 41 did not. A 1998 World Health Organization (WHO) study covering seven countries over seven years actually showed a statistically significant reduced risk for children of smokers and no increase for spouses and coworkers of smokers.

No one is saying being around smokers is good for kids' health. The WHO study simply shows the largest and longest studies on secondhand smoke are most likely to find no effects. There is a reason for this. In an August 2005 essay in PloS Medicine, Tufts University epidemiologist John Ioannidis explains: "There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims. However, this should not be surprising. It can be proven that most claimed research findings are false."

Ioannidis writes that when tens of thousands of researchers are conducting thousands of small and short-term epidemiological studies, all of them seeking to find evidence of a small or nonexistent effect, and when academic journals are predisposed to publish studies claiming positive correlations (no matter how small) that support the conventional wisdom, the result is that "most published research findings are false."

Far from being the last word on the health effects of secondhand smoke, Carmona's report and its uncritical acceptance by frequent commentators on smoking raise questions about bias, error, and the deliberate orchestration of public opinion. The commentators who echo the Surgeon General's claim fall into one or more of five groups:

* Liberal advocacy groups such as the Center for Tobacco Free Kids, American Cancer Society, and American Legacy Foundation, which clearly profit from increased public attention to secondhand smoke.

* Government agencies, including the Office of the Surgeon General, the Department of Health and Human Services, and EPA, which exist largely for the purpose of discovering and publicizing health risks, even if they are backed by dubious research.

* Some corporations--notably Johnson & Johnson, which makes smoking-cessation aids--which give liberal advocacy groups hundreds of millions of dollars to demonize smoking and compel more consumers to use their products.

* The news media, which simply publish the news releases from the first three groups.

* Politicians, who read the newspaper stories and hear from the advocacy groups and rationally calculate their odds of being reelected improve if they proclaim deep concern over secondhand smoke and propose solutions that will cost taxpayers and consumers billions of dollars annually.

The idea that smokers and nonsmokers might solve this problem voluntarily is dismissed out of hand by those who claim secondhand-smoke exposure is a public health crisis. The "solutions" they want all require bigger government: higher taxes on cigarettes, bans on smoking in public, restrictions on advertising and health claims, etc. Oddly, these solutions all work to advance the self-interest and agendas of the five groups that repeat Carmona's claim of "consensus." What are the odds this correlation is coincidental?

Source




Blood test may give Alzheimer's warning

A blood test has been developed that may be able to predict the onset of Alzheimer's disease up to six years in advance. It is said to be 90 per cent accurate and could have a major impact on the diagnosis and treatment of the most common form of dementia.

One disturbing feature of the disease is the difficulty in determining whether mild memory problems are the beginning of an inevitable mental decline. The test, developed by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, is a step toward giving people an answer two to six years in advance of the onset. It could provide a tool that will ensure sufferers can be treated sooner and also establish whether new treatments are having an effect.

The test, which could lead to the first non-invasive test for the disease, identifies changes in a handful of proteins in blood used by cells to convey messages to one another. "Just as a psychiatrist can conclude a lot of things by listening to the words of a patient, so by 'listening' to different proteins we are measuring whether something is going wrong in the cells," said Tony Wyss-Coray, the senior author of the study that was reported in the journal Nature Medicine yesterday. "I am quite excited. I really think it has enormous potential," said Prof Lennart Mucke, the director and senior investigator of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease at the University of California.

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].

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

Sperm count: More accepted "wisdom" crumbles

Men who suffer fertility problems because of low sperm quality may be able to improve their chances of fatherhood by having sex every day, research has suggested. While those trying for a baby are often told to refrain from ejaculating too often to protect their sperm count, Australian scientists have shown that this can be counterproductive and may lower male fertility.

Among men whose fertility problems stem from genetic damage to their sperm rather than a low sperm count, abstaining from sex can make their difficulties worse, research led by David Greening, of Sydney IVF, has shown. The pilot study of 42 men whose sperm showed significant DNA damage found that daily ejaculation reduced this by 12 per cent. While the results are preliminary and no direct effect on fertility has yet been measured, they suggest that certain men could benefit from having sex more often, or from abstaining less before providing semen for use in IVF.

Dr Greening, who presented his results at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in Washington yesterday, said: "I'm convinced that ejaculating more frequently, ie daily, improves sperm DNA damage in most men by a decent amount. "Prior to IVF, for example, men are abstaining a lot more than normal and perhaps sperm DNA increases more than usual. Men think if they abstain for longer times before, say, ovulation that their sperm will be better. [There may be] more volume and numbers but DNA damage may increase."

Abstaining from sex does increase the number of sperm that are ejaculated, and this has led to advice that couples trying for a baby should have sex every two to three days. Longer periods of abstinence, however, achieve little because while the quantity of sperm might increase, its quality declines. As sperm is produced, it is stored in the epididymis at the top of the testicle, but the longer it sits there the more damage it accumulates from exposure to free radicals. Regular ejaculation empties this sperm reservoir, making sure that newly produced sperm of higher genetic quality can get out.

Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said that clearing the reservoir was more important when sperm had high levels of genetic damage. "If you get above 30 to 40 per cent damaged DNA, a man is highly likely to be infertile," he said. "When you put people on a daily ejaculation regime, it reduces that figure for DNA damage. If you can go from 30 per cent down to 20 per cent that is quite a big shift, that should have implications for fertility. "There is a trade-off between genetic damage and quantity, so when a couple are first trying to get pregnant a wait of two to three days is probably advisable. But if you are a guy who has high DNA damage and a decent sperm count, it is probably in your interest to ejaculate every day. "I remember one couple in which the woman would only let the man ejaculate when she was in her fertile period, so the poor chap was going without for almost a month at a time. "Even leaving aside the frustration that must have caused, it would have had no benefits."

Source




The government cannot stop us from being overweight

Yesterday the outward problem of obesity got it with both barrels at the conference of the gold-standard organisation in the field, the National Obesity Forum. The chairman of the forum argued that "levels of childhood obesity will lead to the first cut in life expectancy for 200 years. These children are likely to die before their parents." Some have called for what I suppose would become known as a Lard Czar to coordinate the fight against flab.

I have to admit that, knowing what I know (and I know quite a lot about fat), I find this debate, as it is carried out in public, intensely irritating. The campaigners for change are always on the edge of exaggeration ("worse than climate change"), so fearful are they of inaction. This gives credence to the deniers who will invariably claim that the whole idea of obesity is a scare got up by the Government so as to deprive the public of its pleasures....

Lordy, though, how we do look for the quick fix. Every year for the past decade there have been several stories in which scientists have either discovered the part of the brain, or the chemicals, responsible for our gluttony, and therefore the route to the possible magic cure, which will miraculously deprive us of our appetites and cause us to turn away the offered nibbles or pass by the cake-shop door. This summer fatties-in-denial everywhere were cheered by the suggestion from Louisiana that a virus might be changing stem cells into fat cells, thus helping to cause obesity.

All that was needed was the remedy, and I have lost count of the number of times that this or that antidepressant has been touted as an appetite suppressor, or the claim that - within a few years - a spray or a pill will be marketed to save us from ourselves. And then disappointment attends the realisation that the only tangible result from that magic fat-replacement food substitute is something distressing called "anal leakage".

Yet we know the truth, just like Alice did: if you stick in more calories than you use up, you will get fatter; if you use up more calories than you consume you will get thinner. A fatter society tends to be one where people eat more high-density calorie foodstuffs and take less exercise. And that's it folks, there is no more. No cure. No magic.

Of course, at this point it all gets complicated, because changing highly engrained and destructive patterns of behaviour is the hard part. As an educated man I allowed my weight to rise to nearly 19 stone three years ago, committing slow suicide with the aid of Lindt chocolates, until packing myself off to an American reeducation institution to be told inescapably what I should already have known.

This amazing deliberate blindness doesn't deter the easy-answers brigade. Some blame the food industry, as if they forced us to consume pizzas against our will. "It is the Government," said the Lib Dem health spokesthing, Norman Lamb, at the weekend, "that must take responsibility for failing to do enough to halt the rise of this public health crisis." Mr Lamb demanded urgent, though unspecified, action by the Government "to encourage healthier eating". Something, perhaps, like the Indian Government's sterilisation campaign of the 1970s, with forcible stomach-clamping for the recalcitrant. Nor is the answer "more school sports". One part of the solution is certainly more exercise, and that could just as well be tap-dance as rounders. In fact tap-dance would be better.

Here's a measure of the problem. The National Childhood Obesity Database, the largest database of its kind in the world, has found it difficult to garner accurate statistics because, it is thought, "heavier children" fail to turn up for weighing. Meanwhile, following Jamie Oliver's campaign on school meals, Ofsted has discovered that the numbers of children taking the improved school meals has fallen. Analyse that for a second: the meals are healthier so the kids turn away from them. Instead their parents furnish them with lunchboxes, comprising, according to Oliver, "a cold, half-eaten McDonald's, multiple packets of crisps and a can of Red Bull. We laugh and then want to cry."

It is obvious that the problem is what is going on at home. Public policy can take down the barriers to healthier living by doing something to promote, say, safe cycling and walking at the expense of the bloody all-conquering motor car. But the message about obesity and lifestyle has to be internalised, as it eventually was over cigarettes, in order to work. We are going to have to convince ourselves that overfeeding and underexercising the kids amounts to neglect.

Best of all is the power of example. I am not a model for virtue when it comes to food, and the battle - as my colleagues can attest - is continual. But when I started running in 2005 I had no idea what would happen. Two years on, out of a family of five, three of us run regularly, and a fourth is about to begin. No mystery, just one bloody foot in front of the other.

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].

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

Stupid computer panic

This is just anecdotal nonsense. In any case, neck and back pain from computer use may be a problem for some but it is one that should usually be fixable by mild exercise whenever it becomes evident. It is probably a lot safer than jogging, for instance, with jogging's toll of knee problems and heart attacks

COMPUTERS are causing back and neck problems in Australian children as young as five, a conference has in Western Australia has been told. Curtin University physiotherapy researcher Leon Straker warned muscular-skeletal problems in children, triggered by computer use, were becoming a major health issue. A study of 1600 West Australian five-year-olds found more than half used computers at least weekly and almost one per cent had complained of sore or tired muscles after watching television or using a computer.

Professor Straker said two out of three children reported discomfort related to computer use by the time they reached adolescence. Of those, a minority reported pain so severe they were consulting health professionals, taking medication, missing school or avoiding their usual physical activities as a consequence. "I'm getting reports from clinical physiotherapists who are saying they're seeing more children coming through with neck and back pain that is related to their amount of computer use," Professor Straker said, after addressing an Australian Physiotherapy Association conference in Cairns.

"This is the first generation of children who've really used computers from when they were very young. "I'm worried that as adults . . . these children are going to be experiencing much more severe pain and more disability related to computer use than adults do now. "If you walk into any office of any workplace and ask if they've had any back or neck pain associated with computer use in the past 12 months, two out of three will say they have. "That's about the same rate that high school children are reporting already. People often discount neck and back pain in children as being trivial but if . . . children are having to miss school, it's not trivial."

Professor Straker advised that children should not be allowed to stay on a computer for more than 30 minutes at a time. He said computer desks should be at elbow height, the top of the screen should be just below eye height and children should be able to plant their feet on a stable surface.

Source






Gardasil problems?

Making cause-effect linkages is the problem. Apparent adverse results in less than 1% of cases may not be of concern

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, yesterday released new documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing a total of as many as eleven deaths related to Merck's HPV vaccine Gardasil. Those deaths resulted between June 8, 2006 - when the vaccine received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - and August 2007 when the latest data was available.

The adverse reports coming from the HPV vaccine are increasing daily at an alarming rate. A LifeSiteNews.com report which scanned a publicly available database of adverse affects coming from the HPV vaccine found 3,137 adverse effects reported on September 28, 2007. Today the U.S. Government's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) lists 3,779 adverse effects. 52 of the cases were deemed "life threatening" and 119 required hospitalization.

In one case highlighted by Judicial Watch a 17 year old girl who was vaccinated in June 2007 died the very day she was vaccinated. According to the report, she "was vaccinated with a first dose of Gardasil.During the evening of the same day, the patient was found unconscious (lifeless) by the mother. Resuscitation was performed by the emergency physician but was unsuccessful. The patient subsequently died."

Other serious reported side effects associated with Gardasil include paralysis, Bells Palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and seizures. Says one report: "Initial and follow-up information has been received from a physician concerning an "otherwise healthy" 13 year old female who was vaccinated with her first and second doses of Gardasil. Subsequently, the patient experienced.paralysis from the chest down, lesions of the optic nerve.At the time of the report, the patient had not recovered."

"In light of this information, it is disturbing that state and local governments might mandate in any way this vaccine for young girls," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "These adverse reaction reports suggest the vaccine not only causes serious side effects, but might even be fatal."

The toll from the HPV vaccine may be greater still. Judicial Watch filed its request on August 20, 2007, and received the adverse event reports from the FDA on September 13, 2007, in what the agency described as a "partial response." On October 3, 2007, Judicial Watch filed a new lawsuit against the FDA for its failure to fully respond to Judicial Watch's FOIA request as required by law.

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.

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

British government still blaming everyone but themselves

It's so easy for a Leftist government to kick business as the cause of childhood obesity instead of blaming real causes -- such as the great reduction in exercise that kids now get at school due to "safety" paranoia. And if you are using totally discredited science about the importance of a low fat diet, who cares? And the identification of trans fats in particular as a cause of obesity is bizarre. Some medical research suggests that very high consumption of them may have a weak link to heart disease but linking them to obesity seems to be a completely unfounded invention of the British government themselves. But Britain's government is Leftist and what Leftist needs evidence for any of their assertions?

The food industry faces a government inquiry into its role in Britain's surging obesity and heart disease rates with ministers considering a ban on trans fats as the first decisive step. Trans fats, which are entirely artificial, have been shown to raise the risk of heart disease and might also have important roles in obesity and diabetes.

The inquiry, ordered by Alan Johnson, the health secretary, follows a series of warnings from successive health ministers that the food industry needed to improve the healthiness of its products - most of which have been ignored. Johnson said: "We know we must act. We cannot afford not to act. For the first time we are clear about the magnitude of the problem: we are facing a potential crisis on the scale of climate change and it is in everybody's interest to turn things around."

The proposed ban on trans fats is being seen as a warning shot to the food industry as well as an important measure in its own right. Trans fats are used widely by the food industry because they are up to 85% cheaper than natural fats such as butter, lard and palm oil. But researchers have repeatedly warned that they act as long-term toxins and have no benefit for consumers.

A recent report from the Food Standards Agency (FSA), which will carry out the new inquiry, said: "The trans fats found in food containing hydrogenated vegetable oil are harmful and have no known nutritional benefits. They raise the type of cholesterol in the blood that increases the risk of coronary heart disease. Some evidence suggests that the effects of these trans fats may be worse than saturated fats." However, even though such dangers have been known for nearly two decades, there is no obligation for food manufacturers to display the amount of trans fats on product labels. Johnson's decision to hold an inquiry follows cabinet discussions in which Gordon Brown made it clear that preventive healthcare was one of his top priorities. "There is high-level commitment across government," Johnson said. "We will provide the leadership, vision and sustained commitment required to help to start this cultural and societal shift."

His move follows surveys looking at the rising proportion of the population who are overweight. They show that the British tip the scales as Europe's fattest people, with 60% of adults and 30% of children overweight, defined as more than 25% of their body mass comprising fat tissue. Of these, 20% were obese, meaning their bodies were at least 30% fat. That proportion could reach 40% by 2025. Such changes could, ministers have been warned, threaten the viability of the National Health Service. It already spends between 10% and 20% of its hospital budget on obesity-related diseases such as diabetes.

Johnson's decision could mark a sea change in the government's dealings with the food industry. Until now ministers had accepted manufacturers' claims that the best approach was to educate consumers about sensible eating and let them make their own choices. Johnson seems to be moving towards the views put forward by health campaigners who say the government must take more responsibility for the nation's deteriorating dietary health. They say few people have the time or ability to read complex food labels and design healthy diets and that many such labels are misleading.

Similar changes are already afoot in America where New York last year banned the use of trans fats in city restaurants and the government compelled manufacturers to list trans fat contents on food labels. The British inquiry will consider further action on food advertising. There is already a ban on advertising foods such as crisps and chocolate during children's television programmes. This could be extended to commercial breaks in adult programmes such as The X Factor and Big Brother, which attract many younger viewers.

The Food and Drink Federation, which represents Britain's food manufacturers, accepted that Britons were eating too much saturated fat, but said the government should focus on people with the highest levels of fat intake rather than on regulating the industry. Johnson points out that the problem cannot be solved by government action alone. "There is no single solution for obesity," he said. "We will succeed only if the problem is recognised, owned and addressed at every level of society." His cabinet colleague Ed Balls, the schools secretary, will tomorrow announce measures to increase the amount of sport played by school pupils. Only 50% of schoolchildren do two hours or more of physical exercise or sport every week, well below targets set in 2004.

Source






More on British food follies

Information overload? Forget about it. According to a newly published survey, we can barely satisfy our hunger for the stuff - when we're out shopping, anyway. And to meet this demand, the eggheads in retail engineering have come up with the latest must-have consumer accessory - the `intelligent' supermarket trolley. Now we can find out how our food got made, what's in it, where it came from, and what it will do to us. Since when did buying groceries get so complicated?

"Shopping Choices: Attraction or Distraction?", released this week by the retail technology group EDS and the food and grocery information group IGD (1), is a mixture of opinion poll and focus group evidence that suggests that we are so disconnected from the food we eat, so mistrustful of what goes into it, and so terrified of what it might do to us, that we need a slim volume of nutritional, environmental and ethical information before we'll drop an item into our baskets. Thankfully, according to the report, the two pieces of information people want to know above all are the price and the `best before' date - we haven't gone completely doolally just yet.

Providing lots of information is easy enough on something reasonably large, like a loaf of bread or a family-size pizza. But it's a complete pain when you've got to pack it on to a small packet. That's where the intelligent trolley comes in. With a built-in barcode scanner and a screen, the trolley can tell you anything you want to know about the product before you commit to it. From the point of view of retailers, it will also handily highlight any special offers and discounts available on the aforementioned product and, if you swipe your loyalty card before you use it, the trolley could no doubt feed back lots of juicy data on your preferences. The intelligent trolley not only soothes our food fears, it helps retailers flog stuff, too. Smiles all round, then.

There's a lot of information to pack in. For example, the `traffic light' labelling system used by British food manufacturers details total fat, saturated fat, sugars, salt and calories. For each measure, there's a colour: green is `go ahead', amber is `proceed with caution', and red is `run a mile'. Then you need to be told if the stuff inside the package will set off an allergy. Is it tolerant of your intolerances?

According to the survey, we want ethical information, too: fairtrade, organic, rainforest-conserving, dolphin-friendly. Should we stick the `food miles' on there somewhere? And if we stick all this information on the packaging, will there be. too much packaging, causing more problems for the environment? It's a minefield. It's a wonder that shoppers aren't paralysed by indecision before they get past the fruit and veg.

Now that politics has been left on the shelf, it's the nitty-gritty of our individual experience that seems to feed our imaginations. What we eat has become the bread-and-butter of our personal-is-political lives. This is pretty perverse. The developed world has long since solved the problem of providing enough food to eat, and yet the question of food seems to have become even more central to political life - undeservedly so.

Food can be fuel; food can be an excuse for conversation and bonhomie; if you are so inclined, food can be a vehicle to geek out in just the same manner as people obsess about Star Trek. Thanks to the wide availability of interesting and exotic ingredients (a product, for most of the UK, of the expansion of supermarkets), we can use food to get all creative, too.

Yet today we also treat food with the same level of mistrust as an unexploded hand grenade. All that information on the packet is just to reassure that the contents of our shopping trolley aren't, in fact, a ticking timebomb of ill-health or environmental destruction. Over the last few years, the risks associated with food have become as important in assessing what we eat as the joy we might have in eating it. But food isn't a toxin. Food is highly unlikely to make your children hyperactive; there's no ADD in additives. Food won't make you sick - despite the non-stop hysteria about obesity. Food won't cost the Earth or save the planet. Placing so much importance on what we eat can only destroy the simple pleasure we experience when satisfying our hunger while tantalising our tastebuds.

We should just chill out at the chilled cabinets, feel free at the freezers and proceed at peace to the processed produce. If you want to be a food slob, or a food snob, that's your choice - or at least, it should be. Let's tell the government, the health `experts' and the green campaigners where they can shove their organic, fairtrade, five-a-day ideas. If we allow our pleasure to be ruined by their obsessions, we'll definitely be off our trolleys.

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.

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

Cleaning sprays cause asthma?

Asthma can be triggered by many things so it is not suprising to find that some household sprays may trigger it in some people. The claim that one in seven asthma cases could be accounted for by cleaner use is however an excessive extrapolation. Many of the asthma sufferers concerned presumably did lots of other things as well as clean their houses so how can we know that it was their use of cleaning products that was the critical factor? And maybe big users of cleaners are obsessional or neurotic personalities who do other crazy and unhealthy things and it is those things that cause the problem. Neurotic personalities certainly report more illnesses generally. Or maybe people who are already aware of a susceptibility to asthma (for familial or other reasons) use more cleaning products! One would in any case think that anyone who had an adverse reaction to a particular spray would stop using it! The effect must be very weak indeed if people are unaware of it: Asthma is a very conspicuous and distressing ailment with rapid onset. This would appear to be another data-dredged relationship with causal inferences made purely on faith. Abstract here

Using cleaning sprays and air fresheners while doing housework could account for up to one in seven cases of asthma in adults, a study has found. The modern penchant for using labour-saving cleaning sprays and air fresheners has been found to raise significantly the risk of symptoms. Just spraying a cleaner once a week can trigger an attack, according to the research. The risk rose the more that the sprays were used. "Frequent use of household cleaning sprays may be an important risk factor for adult asthma," said Jan-Paul Zock, of the Municipal Institute of Medical Research, in Barcelona. "The relative risk rates of developing adult asthma in relation to exposure to cleaning products could account for as much as 15 per cent, or one in seven, of adult asthma cases."

Furniture sprays, glass-cleaners and air freshener sprays were associated with the highest risk of a person developing asthma after doing the housework. No link was identified between the onset of asthma and the use of cleaning products that were not sprayed. Cleaning sprays have previously been found to be associated with an increased incidence of asthma among people who clean for a living but it is thought to be the first time the link has been made to everyday use.

Howard Stoate, a GP, MP and chairman of the asthma all-party parliamentary group, said that a link between chemicals and asthma has long been suspected. He hoped that it might explain why countries such as New Zealand, which have low air pollution levels, have increases in asthma levels. "There are a lot of gaps in our knowledge about asthma. Anything that fills those has to welcomed. Although asthma is on the increase worldwide no one can say why," he said.

Asthma UK, a charity dedicated to helping the 5.2 million asthma patients in Britain, said that it was particularly interested in the finding that people without asthma go on to develop it after using the sprays. "This report . . . highlights significant findings regarding the link between asthma and the use of spray cleaning products in the home," Victoria King, of Asthma UK, said. "Although further research is needed, we do already know that air fresheners and bleach trigger symptoms in people who already have asthma."

The international study involved 3,503 people aged 20 to 44 in ten European countries who used cleaning and air freshener sprays. Their details were first logged, on average, nine years before they were interviewed by the study team. Two-thirds were women but only 9 per cent were, at the end of the survey period, looking after the home full time. It was found that 6 per cent of the subjects had developed asthma symptoms and that there was a link between the disease and using sprays in the home at least once a week. Analysis revealed that using the sprays at least once a week, as 42 per cent of the study group did, increased the risk of asthma symptoms by 30 to 50 per cent.

The study team reported: "Consistently positive associations for most asthma definitions were observed for cleaning sprays in general, and glass-cleaning, furniture and air-refreshing sprays in particular." Cleaning sprays and air fresheners contain chemicals such as ammonia, chlorine-releasing agents and sodium hydroxide. Researchers suggested that the chemicals being released into the air in spray form significantly increased their exposure to people.

The results of the study were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, by the American Thoracic Society. The researchers used data from the European Community Respiratory Health Survey, one of the largest epidemiologic studies of airway disease in the world. A spokesman for the UK Cleaning Products Industry Association said: "The safety of consumers is the highest priority of our industries and the safety of our products is regularly checked and subject to rigorous controls, as well as stringent European legislation."

Source




Getting a cold while pregnant causes your baby to be schizophrenic or autistic??

It's a wonder there is anybody normal. I think the report below is another reason why we should be skeptical of mouse studies and their generalizability

A mother's flu could hold the key to whether her child is born with schizophrenia or autism, a team of Caltech biologists announced Tuesday. Working with mice that carry the genes for a schizophrenia-like condition, the researchers found that the health of newborn mice depended on whether or not their mothers had an immune response to illness during pregnancy. Baby mice born to mothers who had become ill, the scientists showed, had the behavioral and brain abnormalities of a schizophrenic or autistic human. Those from mothers whose immune response to the flu had been blocked did not.

The experiments were based on previous studies that showed schizophrenia is more common among people born in the winter or spring or after influenza epidemics. Some research suggests that even one respiratory infection in a mother's third trimester can multiply her child's risk of schizophrenia three to seven times. "The work is extremely solid and very interesting," Dan Geschwind, a UCLA neurogeneticist, said Tuesday of the Caltech team's work. "There are some things that are very unexpected."

The schizophrenia-causing culprit was a protein in pregnant mice's immune response known as interleukin-6, or IL-6, the Caltech researchers found. "In the mouse model, if you block the protein IL-6, you completely normalize the behaviors of the offspring," said Paul Patterson, a Caltech biologist. "On the converse experiment, if you just inject IL-6 into the mother, that will give rise to offspring with abnormal behaviors. "It doesn't mean there wouldn't be other proteins that would be involved, but it does mean that this one is really critical," he said.

That a single injection of IL-6 during the middle of gestation would cause behavioral deficits was "amazing," Geschwind said. "Nobody's ever shown that this can happen," he said. As in people with autism and schizophrenia, the affected mice had problems with social interaction, anxiety and attention span, Patterson said.

Finding the link between a pregnant mouse's immune response and her newborn's mental health is the first step, Geschwind said, to understanding whether there could be a similar biological connection in humans. The scientists still don't know what it is about the IL-6 protein that could be wrecking havoc in the newborns' brains, but they have some theories. "Now we're trying to find where this protein acts," Patterson said. "Does it act on the placenta or does it act on the fetal brain itself?" The protein could be limiting the passage of oxygen or nutrients through the placenta, he said. Alternately, it could affect the production or movement of new brain cells or cause inflammation in the fetus' brain. "We tend to think of the cold or the flu as a minor annoyance, but for pregnant Women it's really not," Patterson said. "I think not just our work, but the previous work, emphasizes the importance of infection in pregnancy."

However, he added, a genetic predisposition to the mental disorders was required for the protein to have its dire effect. "That would explain why everybody who gets an infection doesn't have schizophrenic offspring," 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.

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