US court knocks thimerosal scare on the head

VACCINES containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal can not cause autism on their own, the special US Court of Federal Claims ruled overnight, according to Reuters.

The ruling ended reimbursement demands of the family of an autistic boy who had filed a civil lawsuit in an Oregon state court against pharmaceutical companies claiming thimerosal, an additive in many pediatric vaccines, contributed to their son’s autism.

While the state court ruled William Mead’s autism was related to the vaccines he received, Special Master George Hastings ruled that the Meads did not present a "scientifically sound theory" linking the disease to the preservative, Reuters reported.

Special Master Hastings said the theory presented by the Meads and the experts who testified on their behalf “was biologically implausible and scientifically unsupported.”

In February 2009, the court ruled against three families who claimed vaccines caused their children’s autism, saying the families had been "misled by physicians who are guilty…of gross medical misjudgment,” Reuters reported.

The three families represented thousands of other families who had petitioned the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

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The Coca-Cola tax? New York mayor proposes 12 cents-a-can levy on sugary soft drinks

New Yorkers who enjoy sugary soft drinks face paying an extra tax after the city’s mayor proposed a levy of 12 cents per can. Michael Bloomberg says tax could raise $1billion of much-needed money for schools and health care. He suggested New York’s state legislature adopts a levy of 1 cent per fluid ounce (around 30ml) of sweetened soda such as Coca-Cola.

That would mean a can, which in the U.S. typically measure 12fl oz, would cost an extra 12 cents, or 8 pence. It is uncertain whether New York state sales taxes, which range between 7 and 8.875 per cent, will be calculated on the price of a can with or without the levy included.

Mr Bloomberg said the soda tax would promote good health by discouraging people from buying soft drinks that are loaded with sugar. Mr Bloomberg, a billionaire and former smoker, had already forced through a ban on smoking in bars in New York while the state also has a ban on unhealthy 'transfats' in food.

He said in his weekly radio address yesterday: ‘In these tough economic times, easy fixes to our problems are hard to come by. ‘But the soda tax is a fix that just makes sense. It would save lives. It would cut rising health care costs. ‘And it would keep thousands of teachers and nurses where they belong: in the classrooms and clinics.’

The city’s health commissioner, Dr Thomas Farley, and his predecessor, Dr Thomas Frieden, have advocated such a move. Last year, after state governor David Patterson proposed the idea, public anger over the plan meant that it was eventually dropped. At the time Mr Bloomberg said the idea was ‘just not one that we’re going to be pursuing’ after noting the ‘enormous outcry’.

But now the mayor is throwing his weight behind the controversial tax after calculating that public opinion has shifted due to New York’s dire public finances. The renewal of the plan also comes at a time when the governor has been weakened and distracted by scandal.

During testimony about the budget before the state legislature in January, Mr Bloomberg - whose history of using his office to tackle public health issues includes an anti-soda advertisement campaign and banning smoking in bars - called the proposal ‘far-sighted.’

Dr Richard Daines, the state health commissioner, said he had noticed a difference. ‘What I think you’re seeing is really a momentum shift in favor of doing it,’ he told the New York Times. Dr Daines added that the new tax differed from the one proposed last year in that it would be levied directly on soda producers and the estimated $1billion in annual revenue would be dedicated to the health care budget, rather than to the general fund.

Mr Bloomberg said the tax would also benefit education.

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Happiness may protect against heart disease

The most probable explanation for these findings is that healthier people are happier

People who are usually happy, enthusiastic and content are less likely than others to develop heart illness, according to a new study.

The scientists involved say the study, published in the European Heart Journal, is the first to show an independent relationship between positive emotions and coronary heart disease, the most common type of heart disease. Previous studies had linked happiness with long life, but the exact reasons for that association are uncertain.

Karina Davidson of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, who led the new study, said it suggests heart disease might be in some degree preventable through positive emotions. But it would be premature to make clinical recommendations without further study, she added.

"We desperately need rigorous clinical trials in this area. If the trials support our findings, then these results will be incredibly important in describing specifically what clinicians and/or patients could do to improve health," said Davidson, who directs Columbia's Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health.

Over 10 years, Davidson and colleagues tracked 1,739 healthy adults, split about evenly between men and women, participating in a study known as the 1995 Nova Scotia Health Survey. At the start, trained nurses assessed the participants' risk of heart disease and, with both selfreporting and clinical assessment, they measured symptoms of depression, hostility, anxiety and the degree of expression of positive emotions, which is known as "positive affect."

Positive affect is defined as the experience of pleasurable emotions such as joy, happiness, excitement, enthusiasm and contentment. These feelings can be transient, but they are usually stable and traitlike, particularly in adulthood, according to researchers. Positive affect is largely independent of negative affect, so that someone who is generally a happy, contented person can also be occasionally anxious, angry or depressed.

After taking account of age, sex, cardiovascular risk factors and negative emotions, the scientists found that increased positive affect predicted less risk of heart disease by 22 percent per point on a fivepoint scale measuring levels of positive affect expression. "We also found that if someone, who was usually positive, had some depressive symptoms at the time of the survey, this did not affect their overall lower risk of heart disease," Davidson said. "As far as we know, this is the first prospective study to examine the relationship between clinicallyassessed positive affect and heart disease."

"We have several possible explanations" for the effect, said Davidson. "First, those with positive affect may have longer periods of rest or relaxation physiologically," making their bodies better able to regulate blood pressure and heart rate. "Second, those with positive affect may recover more quickly from stressors, and may not spend as much time `reliving' them, which in turn seems to cause physiological damage. This is speculative, as we are just beginning to explore why positive emotions and happiness have positive health benefits."

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Women who use the Pill can expect to live longer, Royal College of GPs finds

Some rare realism in red below

Research involving 46,000 British women over nearly 40 years has confirmed that the Pill is not linked to long-term health risks from cancer or heart disease, according to the report in the British Medical Journal. While younger women are at slightly higher risk of suffering heart attack, stroke or breast and cervical cancers while taking the Pill, researchers say this effect is negligible, and outweighed by wider benefits.

Any adverse effects of the Pill disappear within ten years of stopping take it, and could easily be counteracted by regular checks and a healthy lifestyle, they said.

Philip Hannaford, a professor at the University of Aberdeen who led the study for the Royal College of GPs, said that over a lifetime, women who took the Pill at any stage were less likely to die from any cause than those who did not. “Our best estimate is that if you took a group of 100,000 women, and they used the pill for a year, on average you would have 52 fewer deaths in those women compared to those using other forms of contraception.”

Professor Hannaford said that the beneficial effects may only be true for women who have taken older-style pills — rather than those on newer drugs, which may have slightly different formulations. But he added that the lower risks were probably not a direct result of the Pill. “It might be that the characteristics of these women, that they are more likely to use health services, have blood checks or other monitoring means they are at reduced risk.”

The study, organised by the Royal College of GPs, began in 1968 when 23,000 women who used oral contraceptives for an average of four years, and a similar number who didn’t, were recruited from 1,400 surgeries across Britain. Early results had suggested that taking the Pill could increase the risk of death, mainly from heart or circulatory disease. The latest findings show that there were 20 more deaths per 100,000 among women younger than 30 who took the Pill, and four more deaths per 100,000 among those aged 30-39. But by the age of 50, the benefits outweighed these risks, with 14 fewer deaths per 100,000 among those aged 40-49, and an even greater effect among older women.

Professor Hannaford said yesterday that the risks were small for women under 45, and were mainly seen in those who smoked, had high blood pressure, or were otherwise at risk of heart disease. “We know that the Pill does cause changes in clotting factors and some of the factors in biochemistry, so the increased risk of heart disease and stroke is explainable,” he said. “The way to minimise the risk is that you don’t smoke, have your blood pressure measured regularly, attend the cervical screening programme and maintain a healthy diet and exercise. That will make your risk very low, and there are also benefits.”

He added that although the Pill was associated with a increased risk of breast or cervical cancer, it could reduce the chances of developing ovarian, bowel or endometrial cancer.

While women should not be complacent about taking any medication, he said: “Many women, especially those who used the first generation of oral contraceptives many years ago, are likely to be reassured by our results. “However, our findings might not reflect the experience of women using oral contraceptives today, if currently available preparations have a different risk than earlier products.”

Patricia Lohr, medical director at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said that the scale and length of the study was “unusual and very helpful”. “It’s reassuring to see that, over time, having used the Pill as a method of birth control is at least as safe as not having used the Pill at all,” she said.

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Hollywood Serves Up Food Elitism

Food, Inc. failed to win the best “documentary” Oscar on Sunday, but that likely won’t diminish its influence. If you’ve seen this one-sided hit piece on modern agriculture, you know that it’s a thinly veiled advocacy film for organic and local foods in true Michael Pollan style. That such a film draws so much attention is evidence of Hollywood’s fad fascination with organic foodie-ism.

As author and professor James McWilliams noted yesterday, though, foodie obsessions with a romantic, 19th century-style agriculture are nothing new or novel—people have had such yearnings for decades. And today we write in the pages of The Detroit News to take Tinseltown celebrities to task for their misguided activism that lacks much flavor:

For average Americans, bringing home the bacon gets a lot harder when you have to buy $29-per-pound artisanal cured pork belly. But that hasn't stopped Hollywood's out-of-touch food purists from trying to guilt-trip all of us into changing the way we eat.

Promoting a vegetarian lifestyle by focusing on health benefits may seem intuitive, but it shouldn't be. A 2006 Oxford University study found that vegetarians are just as likely as omnivores to die from strokes, and from colon, breast, and prostate cancer. And research has repeatedly shown that organic fruits and vegetables are no healthier than their conventionally grown counterparts….

When Food Rules writer Michael Pollan sat in the cushy guest seat on Oprah in January, the darling of the "slow food" scene smugly exhorted viewers: "We all can vote with our forks." I couldn't agree more – but I don't think Pollan will like the results.

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Sunscreens could damage your health, researcher warns

This is just computer modelling crap. Real people are too pesky, I guess. For once the bureaucrats get it right. See last sentence below

Nanoparticles used to make some sunscreens transparent may also be toxic, according to Australian research. A study by Amanda Barnard, of the CSIRO, found the nanoparticles that provided the best transparency and sun protection also had the highest risk of producing free radicals.

Using computer modelling, Dr Barnard analysed the properties of the man-made titanium dioxide nanoparticles found in some sunscreens, testing them in three areas: sun protection, transparency and potential for producing free radicals.

Studying various sizes of particles, she found that the smaller the nanoparticle, the better the sun protection and transparency. "Unfortunately the small ones also have a high surface-to-volume ratio and the surfaces are where the free radicals are produced through a photochemical, or light induced reaction."

Dr Barnard won the 2009 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for physical scientist of the year for her work on nanoparticles - tiny particles used in many products including sunscreens, cosmetics and paints. Her latest research, to appear in the journal Nature Nanotechnology next month, found only particles less than 13 nanometres in size minimised free radical production while retaining other desirable properties. The nanoparticles in sunscreens range from three to 200 nanometres.

The results add to questions about the safety of such sunscreens. The concern is whether the nanoparticles interact with sunlight to produce free radicals that damage tissues or DNA. "Currently it's a situation of 'Is it better to protect yourself from UV rays or hold off and see what happens?' But in the future it may be 'Is it better to protect yourself from UV rays or protect yourself from something else?"' she said.

A spokeswoman for the Therapeutic Goods Administration said "the findings are predicated on a number of assumptions that do not necessarily reflect real life situations or actual product formulations".

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NY food Fascists go totally mad

NY restaurants face total salt ban if politician gets his way



The nannying tendencies of New York's civic leaders have reached a new level with a proposal to fine restaurants that add salt to food. Bill A10129 would fine restaurateurs $1000 each time they were caught adding salt to food. Felix Ortiz, a New York assemblyman who proposed the bill, said it would allow diners to choose whether to do it themselves.

The administration of Michael Bloomberg, New York City's mayor, has already outlawed smoking from many public areas, banned unhealthy trans fats from prepared food and ordered many restaurants to list the calories in each item on the menu. He also favours a new tax on sweet fizzy drinks to help cut obesity.

An estimated 1.5 million New Yorkers suffer from high blood pressure and Mr Bloomberg is keen to encourage people to consume less sodium, which can exacerbate the problem. However, the mayor has stopped well short of proposing an outright ban on restaurants adding salt, instead campaigning for a voluntary cut of a quarter over five years.

Mr Ortiz claimed that reducing the sodium content of food could cut deaths in the city by as much as 100,000. My Food My Choice, a coalition of restaurateurs, chefs and consumers, described his proposal as "absurd".

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Breakthrough in fight against head lice

IVERMECTIM, a pill prescribed for the skin disease known as scabies, also gets rid of hair lice that are resistant to conventional lotions, a study published overnight says.

Lice affects over 100 million people worldwide each year, especially children of primary school age, according to the paper, appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine. The main treatments are diluted forms of an insecticide called permethrin and malathion, but since the 1990s lice have becoming more and more resistant to these chemicals. That has left parents with little choice other than to be, literally, nit-pickers -- to go through their children's hair with a fine comb to haul out the parasites.

Ivermectin is a promising alternative, say French researchers who led the study. They tested it in a trial involving 812 adults and children in 376 households in Britain, France, Ireland and Israel. Half of the patients were treated with malathion and half with ivermectin, which was administered twice, seven days apart, at a dose of 400 microgrammes per kilo (2.2 pounds). After two weeks, 95.2 percent of the ivermectin group were lice-free, compared with 85 percent in the malathion group.

"Ivermectin is more effective than the best anti-lice lotion, but it should be reserved for difficult, resistant cases," the study's coordinator, Olivier Chosidow of France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), told AFP. Over-using the drug could make it succumb to resistance, following the same path as the lotions, he said.

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Food allergy fascists make peanuts of us all

Be afraid, be very afraid. The food Nazis are on the hunt through suburban school lunch boxes. Food is no longer a private matter in our educational institutions; parents are quaking in their shoes, terrified that they will be judged on the efficacy of their social responsibility and parenting skills by the contents of the humble pail. The fallout of which means becoming social pariahs based on white bread, or the inclusion of a Tim Tam.

Teachers peer beneath the lids of the not so humble receptacles (very seldom now a simple plastic box – they’re now themed, decorated, iced, chilled, heated, layered, compartmentalised and sheathed) and “tut tut”, or shake their heads at a child’s humble peanut butter sandwich or limp carrot.

Quite often, a ‘parent helper’ is on duty in the classroom and will also investigate what a harried, working mum has flung together and encased in cling wrap, subsequently broadcasting to all and sundry (other competitive mothers) that ‘Little Susie’ came to school with the dregs of the pantry, or an anaphylaxis just waiting to happen.

Do you remember the simple days as a kid, when everyone sat around at lunchtime in the yard, poking despondently at the sad vegemite sandwich and sipping on tepid cordial? Those were the days, when food was simple and only vaguely nutritious, before the prevalence of food allergies and the litigious nature of society.

You were responsible for teaching your own children not to steal other’s lunches and to refrain from picking their noses without a hanky. Now it’s all about fear, the school live in fear of being sued by parents angry that ‘Little Angus’ in the class next door consumed a peanut butter sandwich fifty metres from their ‘Little Johnnie”, the poor mums live in fear of being judged a failure if they don’t whip up a three course meal and box it up everyday.

The poor kids live in fear that they will be made consume their midday repast whilst sitting on the special chair at the front of the class reserved for children who have dared to come to school with natural roasted almonds as a snack, quarantined in case a sliver of a ‘tree nut’ sprays on ‘Little Angus” who has a peanut allergy. If “Little Angus” at the age of 10, doesn’t know enough not to stuff a stray almond in his mouth which he found on the floor, then “Little Angus’s” parents have got a problem on their hands!

What is happening, where did personal responsibility go and privacy for that matter, is food the new frontier of the Nanny State? I don’t advocate my children sharing food, and they are well aware of the dangers of food allergies – they live with a mother who could expire on a mouthful of mango, but this is ludicrous. The guilt, the oversight, the intrusion.

Today I will send my offspring to school with wholegrain wraps, filled with home baked Mediterranean chicken, mayonnaise, chives, home grown cherry tomatoes with a chaser of yoghurt dip and home made berry coulis. Tomorrow, I’m bloody well sending grated chocolate sandwiches on white bread and a chocolate Hershey bar. Take that Food Nazis – I will choose what I feed my kids and I’ll thank you to keep your noses out of my Tupperware – my kids’ impending malnutrition and/or constipation is our own business.

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Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of Fatty Foods

Trans fats may be bad for you, but government regulation is worse

States and municipalities across the country--from New York City to the State of California--have banned partially hydrogenated cooking oils, also known as "trans fats," in restaurants under their jurisdiction. This much is apparent: Trans fats are bad for you. But government regulation is bad for you, too. Seemingly innocuous and well-meaning interventions can lead to less innocuous, less benign interventions later. Should we trust the state to regulate what we do, even when it is for our own good? Further, if we're going to regulate, why should we stop at trans fats?

The case against trans fats is well documented, and I will in no way dispute the claim that a diet high in trans fats is bad for your health. But what about personal happiness and liberty? The history of bans on alcohol, tobacco, firearms and now trans fat shows us that much more than our health is at stake.

In the 1990s, people asked whether the prosecution of tobacco companies would lead to the prosecution of fast food restaurants. The government took down Joe Camel--would Ronald McDonald be next? "Don't be ridiculous," they were told. "This is about tobacco, and it's for the children. Besides, trying to regulate food choices would be an unconscionable infringement on personal liberties." But sure enough, here we are a few short years later discussing trans fats and fast food the same way we discussed tobacco.

There is also no such thing as a free "trans-fat-free" lunch. Restricting trans fat consumption requires resources. Police officers could instead use these resources to enforce laws against crimes like theft, property damage, rape and murder, and educators could use these resources in the classroom. Are educators using their time and resources wisely preventing illegal bake sales and making sure school fundraisers and functions sell only stuff that's on the "approved" list?

The concerned citizen-busybody has to ask whether treating adults as if they were children is a wise use of resources. And those who wish to control others' behavior have to ask what gives them the right to do so. Criminalizing voluntary trades with which we disagree--like, say, the decision to trade a few dollars for tasty, trans-fat-laden french fries--trivializes the concept of crime and undermines the legitimacy of the legal system.

A simple reductio ad absurdum shows that regulations aimed at protecting people from themselves are morally absurd. Why stop with trans fats? Why not activities that could pose more of a threat to our individual health and well-being? If we are going to try to control smoking and trans fats because they are dangerous, should we not also try to control risky sexual behavior? Giving the state discretion over what you do in your living room (smoke) made it much easier for them to regulate what you do in your kitchen (cook with or consume trans fats). Letting the authorities into your living room or your kitchen puts them only a few steps from your bedroom, and I for one won't be surprised when they try to invite themselves in.

You might harm yourself when you consume trans fats, but to borrow a phrase from Thomas Jefferson, you neither pick my pocket nor break my leg. Furthermore, it is naive to think that the state will stop at regulating and prohibiting only the things we don't like. When we cede power to the state, we give them the power to do evil as well as good. It's only a matter of time before they use it.

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Researchers back 'cancer-fighting' papaya

This is just another study in laboratory glassware. Such results are rarely replicated in double blind trials in humans

RESEARCHERS said overnight that papaya leaf extract and its tea have dramatic cancer-fighting properties against a broad range of tumours, backing a belief held in a number of folk traditions. University of Florida researcher Nam Dang and colleagues in Japan, in a report published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, documented papaya's anti-cancer effect against tumours of the cervix, breast, liver, lung and pancreas.

The researchers used an extract made from dried papaya leaves, and the effects were stronger when cells received larger doses of papaya leaf tea. Dr Dang and the other scientists showed that papaya leaf extract boosts the production of key signalling molecules called Th1-type cytokines, which help regulate the immune system.

This could lead to therapeutic treatments that use the immune system to fight cancers, they said in the February issue of the journal and released overnight by the university.

Papaya has been used as a folk remedy for a variety of ailments in many parts of the world, especially Asia. Dr Deng said the results are consistent with reports from indigenous populations in Australia and his native Vietnam. The researchers said papaya extract did not have any toxic effects on normal cells, avoiding a common side effect of many cancer treatments.

Researchers exposed 10 different types of cancer cell cultures to four strengths of papaya leaf extract and measured the effect after 24 hours. Papaya slowed the growth of tumours in all the cultures.

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Washington Is More Likely to Shrink Wallets than Waistlines

Washington continues to focus on health care, but more recently some prominent political figures have narrowed in on the health-care issue of obesity. While it may seem like the topic du jour, obesity has long been a national obsession. Weight-loss reality shows are hit programs on network and cable television. Trashy pop culture rags regularly feature pictures of pin thin actresses on their covers accompanying the hurtful headline “packing on the pounds.” Numerous infomercials tout miracle exercise routines and equipment and diet products crowd grocery store shelves, proving that Americans are already plenty concerned about fat. Now Washington is embracing the anti-fat obsession. Unfortunately, the solutions politicians are pushing are no more likely to work than are the diet pills sold on the back pages of magazines. Instead of shrinking waistlines, these efforts are more likely to shrink Americans’ wallets and grow government.

If a policy issue could win the lotto, obesity just hit the jackpot. Named as a premier issue for the First Lady, it has risen to near the very top of the President’s agenda. Pretty impressive when it’s competing against the big boys like oh, you know…war, massive history-making levels of unemployment, wacky dictators with loose nukes, and continuing threats of terrorism. But that’s ok. How will we fight the enemy and get back to work if we’re all too fat to fit though the door frame? Priorities people…first things first!

And the White House isn’t wasting any time. Just last month, the President signed an executive order establishing a task force on childhood obesity. The task force—made up of four cabinet members, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and other high-level White House personnel—is charged with providing the President recommendations on the “development of legislative, budgetary, and policy proposals that can improve the health and well-being of children, their families, and communities.”

Why is it necessary to designate a special group of people to force this task? Isn’t there a really big building in the middle of Washington, DC with something like 64,000 employees and a budget of over $700 billion dedicated to health issues? Yes, there is! And it’s called the Department of Health and Human Services. Heck…the word “health” is even in the department’s title. Someone tell the President!

And that’s not all. There’s another medical official within the federal government dedicated to advising the President on health issues—the Surgeon General, who according to the office’s website, “serves as America's Doctor by providing Americans the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury.”

Hmmm….seems to me that childhood obesity might fit perfectly under the purview of that office. And you know what? The Surgeon General agrees. In fact, the current Surgeon General, Regina M. Benjamin, lists childhood obesity prominently on her website and offers tips to parents on how to improve a child’s health and eating habits.

But fine…ignore these qualified officials. Go ahead and set up a little task force to do what maybe a handful of those 64,000 employees at HHS or the Surgeon General’s office could easily do. After all, Washington loves a task force.

So, what exactly will this obesity task force do? What “recommendations” will it dream up and how much will it cost the average family? Drawing from the First Lady’s own comments on the issue, the recommendations will likely target a favorite food bogey-man—sugary drinks and unhealthy foods. Hiking the price of these foods, through sin taxes, is a solution the first lady believes might just work.

Sin taxes are a Washington favorite because they raise revenue but are popular with Democrats and forgivable with Republicans. The arguments for using them can be compelling--shouldn’t we tax smokers for creating higher health-care costs? Won't taxing sugary drinks and fatty foods encourage people to consume less and become healthier? But the fact is, sin taxes only succeed in one area--driving up the cost of food and other products and hurting the average consumer.

Take for instance taxes on sodas. This year, New York Governor David Paterson proposed a penny-an-ounce tax on soda in his state budget. This would amount to a 12 cent hike in the price of every soda and increase the cost of a 12-pack of soda from $2.99 to $5.87. The proposal also included a $38 tax on large bags of syrup sold to restaurants. For families on a strict budget and restaurants already dealing with a diminished customer base, that’s a significant increase. Not to mention, that we can all say a big goodbye to those popular free refills! But Governor Paterson’s proposal is relatively low compared to the taxes for which other politicians have called. Just this week, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter proposed a 2 cent per 12-ounce beverage tax, which is just outmatched by Chicago’s current sugary drink tax of 3 cents.

Unfortunately, the data suggests that these taxes aren't succeeding in driving down American’s weight. Of the top ten fattest states in the Union, three--West Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas—currently tax sodas and sugary drinks.

Some who are concerned about obesity may nod their heads and applaud measures that try to discourage soda consumption. They should ask themselves where the next sin tax will be imposed? Will juice drinks (which in many cases contain more sugar than sodas), energy drinks, coffee, wine or full-fat milk become the next target? What about chips and crackers and cookies and sugar cereals? Who is supposed to determine what is and isn’t healthy? How much higher can we drive food costs for families already struggling to make ends meet?

Americans' preoccupation with weight will continue as will Washington’s habit of meddling in very personal issues. Because Washington loves to meddle…almost as much as they like a task force.

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Calories on menus: do they work?

Calorie counts on menus and fast food: are they a weapon against obesity, or just more nannying from the Government? Comment from Britain:

I can afford the souvlaki — but can I afford the calories? Your lunch choice is about to become anxiety-inducing. Last summer, The Real Greek became the first restaurant chain in the country to include calorie counts of all dishes on its menus. Since then, Pret A Manger, Wimpy and the Camden Food Company have followed its lead. Pizza Hut, Harvester and several pub chains are considering making local trials national. Within two years, calories on menus could be the rule.

They are all trailblazers for an initiative from the Food Standards Agency (FSA), which believes that providing calories on menus will help us to make healthy eating choices. A national consultation ends this week and, if there is enough support from health bodies, consumers and restaurants, the FSA will push for a voluntary roll-out in all restaurants from this summer.

Yet some have raised voices of concern. Actually, say some experts, putting calories on menus makes no sense if you want to create a healthy attitude to food. “Giving people information like this doesn’t change their behaviour,” says Professor Andrew Hill, an eating psychologist. And those helping people with eating disorders worry that it may promote food anxiety. “There is a real feel of nannying about this,” says Emma Healey, of the Eating Disorders Association, now named Beat. “Calorie-counting is joyless.”

Britain is looking to follow the lead of New York City, where in 2008 new laws compelled fast-food, sandwich and restaurant chains to put calorie information on their menus. Since then, similar laws have been introduced in other US cities. The British move came after FSA research suggested that consumers would like to see such information.

“Whether people are grabbing a snack, eating in a staff restaurant or out for a meal with their family, calorie labelling will enable them to see what choices are healthier,” says Tim Smith, the FSA chief executive. According to research, he claims, people shown a calorie count pick products that have, on average, 100 calories fewer than their normal purchase. His enthusiasm for the scheme has been reflected in the response of some of the 21 companies (450 food outlets in all) that piloted the scheme from June last year by displaying calorie information on menus, boards and shelf-edges. Liz Williams, managing director of The Real Greek, says that it has been “positively received” by customers, notably women on calorie-controlled diets. Clive Schlee, of Pret A Manger, says that his company rolled out the pilots nationwide “because we liked the idea so much”.

But research to back the idea has been less conclusive. The FSA has evaluated its pilots but measured only how easy it was for restaurants to implement calorie-count menus, not whether this led customers to choose healthier products.

A New York Department of Health study in 2008-09 found that customers bought food with fewer calories in nine of the 13 food chains that displayed calorie information, while a Stanford University study on calorie-posting in Starbucks reported a 6 per cent fall in average calories per transaction.

Most of the research is double-edged, though. The Starbucks study concluded that a calorie reduction of 6 per cent would have only modest effects on bodyweight, and that people may compensate by eating more at other meals. Indeed, that is what another study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found: diners given calorie information ate about 14 per cent fewer calories at dinner but made up for it later — and ended up eating just as many calories as uninformed diners.

In another study, 30 per cent of users of fast-food restaurants in New York said that having calories on menus had influenced their meal choice. But when researchers examined their receipts, they found that they were still eating the same number of calories as before.

Neither The Real Greek nor Pret A Manger is adopting the scheme because it believes that it will make people eat more healthily. “I think calorie counts will become the norm,” says Liz Williams of The Real Greek, “but we haven’t really seen any change in what people order.”

So why is the FSA pushing ahead so hard? Catherine Collins, chief dietitian at St George’s Hospital, London, says that giving everyone the same messages about which foods are “healthy” does not take into account the importance of variety in diet, or portion size, or how each food needs to be put in the context of others. “Calories aren’t everything,” she says, adding that the FSA should promote the idea of eating the right balance of starchy foods, fruit and veg, dairy, protein, fat and sugar, and not “demonise” calorific foods. “We are losing that feeling of comfort in food, so we are either eating junk meals or making a fetish of measuring calories.”

A 2008 Ofsted survey indicated that a third of ten-year-old girls were worried about their body shape. According to Emma Healey of Beat, eating disorders are caused by genetics, personality type and “a soup of other influences, such as magazine images”. Calories on menus may add to that confusing soup, she says. “We know that for people recovering from eating disorders, seeing information on the calorie content can throw them back into a world where they obsessively counted calories.”

The FSA will announce its final recommendations in the summer. So far, dieters, trendy chains and policy people love the idea; foodies and small restaurateurs (who see it as hard to implement) hate it; junk food chains will go along with it; and those most at risk of obesity don’t really care.

As a recovered anorexic, I have long since left behind those dark days when I recorded every calorific unit that entered my body. Part of getting better was learning how to eat healthily again.

My counsellor had far better advice than to keep eating until I reached the recommended 2,000 calories a day, then stop. She simply reminded me that for every meal my plate should be balanced, with something such as a third carbohydrate, a third fruit or vegetables, then the next third should have a good chunk of protein with a bit of fat thrown in there, too. This may not be a particularly scientific way of doing it, but it does ensure nutritional balance — unlike counting calories.

Splashing the calorie content of food all over menus will only encourage an unhealthy attitude to food. Eating fewer calories is not necessarily better for everyone. What’s in those calories is just as important. Broadly speaking, people know what food is good for them and what is not. Every day most of us choose to eat food that we know is not particularly good for us. Nobody going into a burger joint is looking for a healthy meal. Isn’t it somewhat pointless, then, to display the calorie counts in such places?

And let’s not forget the “live and let die” argument. I’m not advocating that we encourage obesity and an early grave. If people want dietary advice, it should be available — there is certainly plenty of it out there. The same goes for those who want to give up smoking. But if individuals weigh up the pros and cons and decide that they would rather not restrain their eating, taking the risk of shortening their life, then that should be their choice.

The tentacles of the state increasingly threaten individual choice. Alongside a myriad health and safety measures of the no-conkers-in-the-playground type, recent suggestions range from screening the contents of children’s packed lunches to the banning of butter. For goodness sake, let each of us decide how to feed ourselves!

If your jeans are feeling a bit tight and you want to lose a few pounds, by all means hold off on chocolate, take the stairs at work or get off the bus one stop earlier. Enjoy the freedom to decide for yourself how to approach the battle of the bulge . . . if you want to. In the meantime, let’s reserve the right to dine out free from calorific judgment.

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The newest chapter in the bizarre world of statin drug dangers

They REALLY don’t want you to think too much about this one. Both Reuters Health and HealthDay News ran nearly identical lead paragraphs in their reporting about a new study of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. The finding: Statin use increases risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

And along with that message, of course, they had to report that this risk is really a very small thing, hardly worth mentioning in light of the magnificence of the life-saving properties of the wonder drug…the Great Statin. It’s as if they’re delivering bad news to a grouchy king who LOVES statins and is likely to have a lowly reporter beheaded if he even suggests that the adored heart drug is less than perfect.

Here’s the Reuters headline: “Cholesterol Drugs Raise Diabetes Risk, Just a Bit.” Do they have any idea how hilarious that is? You can imagine a Reuters reporter holding his thumb and forefinger really close together, up near his eyeball, and squinting when he says in a high squeaky voice, “Just a bit.” Just a teeny weenie bit, Your Highness.

HealthDay went one better, adding this quote from a news release about the study: “In view of the overwhelming benefit of statins for reduction of cardiovascular events…” Yes, the benefits are OVERWHELMING! Why, a reporter might swoon under a spell of the vapors just thinking about the wonderfully overwhelming benefits of statins.

So? Ready to be overwhelmed? Collateral damage, damage, and more damage

University of Glasgow researchers examined the results of 13 large statin trials that included more than 91,000 subjects. Results showed that for every 255 patients treated with statins for four years, one would develop type 2 diabetes. Well that doesn’t sound so bad. Just one little old diabetic for every 255 statin users? Since the benefits are grossly exaggerated (I’m sorry…I meant to say “overwhelming”) what difference do a few extra diabetics make?

A huge difference. About 20 million people take statins in the U.S. So, one case of type 2 diabetes for every 255 patients comes to well over 78,000 people who will develop or already have developed diabetes as a statin side effect. (You can forget about the “four years” business because statin users are users-for-life.)

But if you’re convinced statins are life-saving wonder drugs, then I guess thousands upon thousands of cases of diabetes are acceptable. Not to mention the untold cases of muscle damage, kidney damage, liver damage, and cognition damage.

One of the Glasgow researchers told Reuters Health that the results of their study should put a stop to statin overuse, and the drug will be given “when appropriate for the right reasons.”

Aw, that’s adorable! He must have missed the news that the FDA recently OK’d the use of the statin Crestor for people who don’t have high cholesterol. And that approval came in spite of a Crestor study that showed a link to — yep — increased risk of type 2 diabetes. The world of statins is a world gone mad (and not just a bit!).

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Sugary soft drinks lead to diabetes (?)

This is just the usual correlational nonsense. The poor are less healthy and also drink more sugary drinks. Correlation does not prove causation. The poor would be less healthy anyway

More people now drink soft, sport and fruit drinks daily, and the increase has led to thousands more diabetes and heart disease cases over the past decade, according to research presented to the American Heart Association's annual conference. The study estimates the increased consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks between 1990 and 2000 contributed to 130,000 new cases of diabetes, 14,000 new cases of coronary heart disease (CHD), and 50,000 additional life-years burdened by coronary heart disease in the US over the past decade. The drinks – excluding 100 per cent fruit juice – contain between 120 to 200 calories per drink and play a major role in the rising tide of obesity.

Now researchers are calling for a health tax on soft drinks to pay for the increase costs of treating victims of coronary disease and diabetes.

Dr Litsa Lambrakos, of the University of California, said: "We can demonstrate an association between daily consumption of sugared beverages and diabetes risk. We can then translate this information into estimates of the current diabetes and cardiovascular disease that can be attributed to the rise in consumption of these drinks."

Over the last decade, at least 6,000 excess deaths from any cause and 21,000 life-years lost can be attributed in the United States to the increase in sugar-sweetened drinks.

Health policy experts suggest curbing the consumption of sugared drinks through an excise tax of one cent per ounce of beverage, which would be expected to decrease consumption by 10 per cent. Professor Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, senior author of the study at the University of California, said: "If such a tax could curb the consumption of these drinks, the health benefits could be dramatic."

Dr Lambrakos said: "We want to make the general public more aware of the adverse health outcomes of consuming these drinks over time. "We want to help support disease prevention and curb consumption of these drinks that lead to poor health outcomes and increased health care costs for the average American."

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Humans found to have sixth taste: fat

AUSTRALIAN scientists have shown that humans can detect a sixth taste: fat. And it appears that those people who are highly sensitive to the taste of fat tend to eat less of it, and have significantly lower body mass indexes.

Using a series of taste-testing experiments, researchers from Deakin University have found that humans can identify the taste of fat by its chemical composition, rather than by its texture.

The findings could lead to new ways of treating obesity. The lead researcher, Russell Keast, said: "Fat has a very nice mouth feel to it [but it] appears that fat is activating something in the oral cavity independent of texture."

Dr Keast and his team had a group of people sample various types of fatty acids found in common foods, mixed in with non-fat milk to disguise the texture. Of the 33 people tested, all could detect the taste of fat to a varying degree, he said. Fat flavour can now be added to the other known tastes: sweet, salt, sour, bitter, and umami - a taste for protein-rich foods.

Just like the other tastes, Dr Keast said, the degree of sensitivity to fat differed between individuals. "I may be very sensitive to sweet tastes, while somebody else may be insensitive, this is common throughout the tastes, and it's exactly what we're finding with fat."

After the research group had established that humans could taste fat, they wanted to know if the ability to taste fat had any influence on what people ate. Study participants were divided into two groups, those who were hyper or very sensitive to the fat taste, and those who were not. "People who are very sensitive to fat can taste very low concentrations of it."

Dr Keast then compared the daily diets of both groups and found those people who were hypersensitive to fat ate less of it in their daily diet. They also had lower body mass indexes. "It appears [hypersensitive] people have a mechanism that is telling them to stop eating it, he said. The reverse was happening in people who were not sensitive to the taste, said Dr Keast. "They are over-consuming and this is creating an energy imbalance, which is leading to higher BMI or development of overweight or obesity."

Dr Keast is now looking into why some people are sensitive and others are not.

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Drink up girls: wine isn’t fattening

Hmmm... Self-reports are weak evidence but it's a straw in the wind

WOMEN who like a glass of wine after work can relax: they are likely to gain less weight than those who stick to mineral water. Moderate female drinkers also have a lower risk of obesity than teetotallers, according to new research. The findings, from a study of more than 19,000 women, is at odds with most dietary advice: that alcohol consumption leads to weight gain.

The research suggests that a calorie from alcohol has less impact on weight than a calorie from other foods and that the way the body deals with alcohol is more complex than realised. One theory is that in regular drinkers the liver develops a separate metabolic pathway to break down alcohol, with surplus energy turned mainly into heat, not fat.

In the study, Lu Wang, a medical instructor at Brigham and Women’s hospital, Boston, and colleagues asked 19,220 American women aged 39 or older with a healthy body weight to describe their drinking habits in a questionnaire. About 38% drank no alcohol.

Over the next 13 years the researchers found that all the women tended to gain weight but the non-drinkers gained the most. The women’s overall weight gain decreased as alcohol intake increased.

There was also a difference according to the type of alcohol: red wine was associated with the lowest weight gain; beer and spirits were linked to the highest weight gain.

The report, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, seems to confirm that there is no clear connection between alcohol consumption and weight gain.

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White House adviser: 'Heavier people' bad for economy

The U.S. economy would be in better shape if people weren't so heavy, according to Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the older brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a presidential health care adviser in his own right.

"I mean, we're all focused on health care, diabetes and heart disease," he said in a recent appearance on the New York Times "Freakonomics Radio" program. "But, there's all sorts of things like the simple that, you know – heavier people – transportation is more, so there's more spent on gasoline, more on jet fuel."

The White House is aggressively pressing for passage of the Democrats' trillion-dollar health-care reform plan while First Lady Michelle Obama has taken up the issue of childhood obesity.

Jeff Poor of the Business and Media Institute says Ezekiel Emanuel's perspective should be taken seriously. "In all the obesity hand-wringing some bizarre remarks from an important person were overlooked," the institute reported. Emanuel, the report said, confirmed that "this condition has a broader impact on our lives, specifically the economy."

"People have had to change, ah you know, the size of doorways, the size of chairs on airplanes and at sports stadiums," said Ezekiel Emanuel in the Feb. 25 appearance. "So there's a lot of hidden costs as well as to the increasing girth of Americans."

Emanuel, a bioethicist at the American National Institutes of Health, said people's size impacts both energy and infrastructure costs.

At the Freakonomics blog, author Stephen Dubner noted Ezekiel Emanuel advises the White House on health-care reform. He said Emanuel made "a strong case for government intervention in Americans' eating habits. When I asked, however, if it was time for a cheeseburger tax, he made clear his limitations. 'That's a political question,' he said. 'I think you got the wrong Emanuel brother.'"

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More on Vioxx

I wrote yesterday on the reasons why the anti-arthritis drug Vioxx has been withdrawn from sale: People taking it have a small (in absolute terms) extra risk of having a non-fatal heart attack.

A medical correspondent has emailed me with an interesting suggestion, however: The extra heart attacks might be a sign of the drug's success! If Vioxx is better at relieving arthritic pain it might make people taking it more likely to lead active lives -- having more sex, engaging in more outdoor activities etc. And since the extra heart attacks usually occur among people who are already frail or elderly, those extra activities might put enough strain on their hearts to bring on a heart attack in some instances. So the claim that the extra heart attacks are due to the drug itself may be quite wrong. It is just an assumption.





Secret to hangover-free drinking found (?)

This sounds highly unlikely. It would seem to rely on the oxygen being absorbed into the bloodstream from the gut but it seems to me that the oxygen is much more likely to be expelled the way other bodily gases are

THE dreaded morning-after feeling could be a thing of the past after scientists in South Korea came up with a technique that allows drinkers to avoid a hangover. A team of researchers added extra oxygen to drinks and found that the body was then able to metabolize the booze quicker and eliminate the alcohol quicker - cutting down the after affects, Sky News reported.

Healthy humans were given 240ml and 360ml drinks containing 19.5 percent alcohol by volume - all with different amounts of oxygen added. The results, documented in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, showed those who consumed the more highly oxygenated drinks recovered more quickly and saw their blood alcohol levels return to normal more speedily.

Researchers In-hwan Baek, Byung-yo Lee and Kwang-il Kwon of Chungnam National University's College of Pharmacy concluded: "Elevated dissolved oxygen concentrations in alcoholic drinks accelerate the metabolism and elimination of alcohol. "Thus, enhanced dissolved oxygen concentrations in alcohol may have a role to play in reducing alcohol-related side effects and accidents." The only downside the researchers found was that the process also reduced the amount of time drinkers were actually drunk for.

A Korean drinks company is now launching an oxygenated 'soju' drink called O2 Lin - a drink the company says "helps clarify your brain, energizes your body cells, and maintains healthy and resilient skin”. [Wow! is all one can say to that]

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