Nutrition Frenzy

Extra pounds as bad for health as lifetime of smoking, large study says

Being obese can take years off your life and in some cases may be as dangerous as smoking, a new study says.

British researchers at the University of Oxford analyzed 57 studies mostly in Europe and North America, following nearly one million people for an average of 10 to 15 years. During that time, about 100,000 of those people died.

The studies used Body Mass Index (BMI), a measurement that divides a person’s weight in kilograms by their height squared in meters to determine obesity. Researchers found that death rates were lowest in people who had a BMI of 23 to 24, on the high side of the normal range.

Health officials generally define overweight people as those with a BMI from 25 to 29, and obese people as those with a BMI above 30.

The study was published online Wednesday in the medical journal, Lancet. It was paid for by Britain’s Medical Research Council, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and others.

“If you are heading towards obesity, it may be a good idea to lose weight,” said Sir Richard Peto, the study’s main statistician and a professor at Oxford University.

He said that obese people were also two thirds more likely to die of a heart attack or stroke, and up to four times more likely to die of diabetes, kidney or liver problems. They were one sixth more likely to die of cancer.Previous studies have found that death rates increase both above and below a normal BMI score, and that people who are moderately overweight live longer than underweight or normal-weight people.

To mark St Patrick’s Day, Faith Central has compiled 10 celebratory tidbits, some myth, some fact, on the Patron Saint of the Irish.

1. The potato crop was traditionally planted in Ireland after March 17

2. Blue not green is the color originally associated with St Patrick. “St Patrick’s Blue” is used on Ireland’s Presidential Standard or flag, while the Irish Guards sport a plume of St Patrick’s blue in their bearskins. The emphasis on green is thought to be linked to “wearing the Green”, a symbol from the 18th century on, of sympathy with Irish independence.

3. St Patrick is patron of fishermen in the Loire, where a legend associates him with a blackthorn bush. The saint is said to have slept beneath it, and when he awoke the next day, Christmas, the bush flowered, and was said to have continued to do so every Christmas until its destruction during the First World War.

4. A regiment of the Mexican army in the 1846 -8 War between Mexico and America was named after St Patrick. Members of the Batellón de San Patricio included Afro-Americans freshly liberated from the slave plantations of the South, and the soldiers were granted Mexican citizenship afterwards.

. The first St Patrick’s Day parade took place in 1737 in Boston, followed in 1762 by New York. George Washington allowed his soldiers a holiday on March 17, 1780 as “an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence.”

6. Until the 1970’s, all pubs were shut in Ireland on St Patrick’s Day, and the sole venue selling drink the annual dog show. Lenten fasting – and the obligation to abstain from meat – were lifted on the day, which most families would begin with Mass.

7. St Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in Ireland and also in Monserrat “the Emerald Isle of the Carribean,” so called because it was settled in 1633 by Irish migrants from St Kitts.

8. According to legend, on the day of Judgement, while Christ judges all other nations, St Patrick will be the judge of the Irish.

9. Since 1962, tons of green dye are tipped on St Patrick’s Day into the Chicago river, although the quantity has reduced, for environmental reasons, from 100 to 40.

10. Should you wish to carry on celebrating St Patrick after March 17, in the United States, you might visit the four Shamrocks in the USA including Mount Gay-Shamrock, W.Va or the nine cities named Dublin, including Dublin, Ohio (the largest Dublin in the U.S.) and Dublin, Georgia.

iReporter Jason Dinant on a quest for six-pack abs has sweet tooth binge; Men’s Health model and fitness expert said falling off wagon is OK if temporary; Dinant reports that so far, his abs are looking more like a four-pack He eats 16 egg whites, 1¼ pounds of meat, 4 cups of veggies, potatoes, rice a day.

Midway through Jason Dinant’s fitness journey to get six-pack abs by June, the 27-year-old had a breakdown.

After months of eschewing junk food in favor of lean protein — egg whites, chicken breast and vegetables — he devoured pie. The slice came from Marie Callender’s, drizzled with caramel, loaded with candied apples and layered with cream cheese.

Yes, it was delicious, Dinant said.

Then he got home and had a Tootsie Roll. Then, he ate a Klondike ice cream bar.

The breakdown came late February after months of following a lean diet. It also came with consequences.

“When I woke up the next day, I had a horrible stomach ache,” Dinant said. “My trainer said once you’re on the diet, you can try to go back and have a day where you binge on bad food and it’s going to give you a stomach ache.”

Since January, CNNhealth has been following the progress of three iReport contributors as they strive to meet their New Year’s diet and fitness goals.

One of them is Dinant, a Las Vegas, Nevada resident, who wanted to get a six-pack by summer in time for his 10-year high school reunion. He also wants to show off a chiseled stomach on his blog called “Naked Boy News,” where he stands shirtless to give “the naked truth about today’s news.”

The junk food breakdown came after almost two months of staying on a lean diet. The self-described “candyaholic” often craved his favorite treats like York Peppermint patties, macaroons, Mounds bars and Coca Cola.

Food stamps, school lunch and other public nutrition programs do not contribute to an obesity epidemic affecting millions of children and adults, despite blame levied by critics, U.S. and academic officials said on Thursday.

The Agriculture Department programs will cost about $73 billion in fiscal 2009. They range from school milk to food stamps and the Women, Infants and Children food program.

The large price tag has prompted some critics to point to research blaming the programs as a factor in a global obesity crisis.

“USDA is not aware of any convincing evidence that school meals or other federal nutrition programs cause obesity and overweight. The evidence that does exist is mixed,” Thomas O’Connor, USDA’s acting deputy undersecretary for nutrition, told a House Appropriations subcommittee.

An estimated 61 million Americans are affected by the department’s nutrition programs. Recently, the recession has boosted demand for assistance. A record 31.8 million people received food stamps at the latest count and other programs are at or near record levels.

Kelly Brownell, a professor at Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, said he did not believe there was sufficient evidence to show USDA’s programs were leading to more obese Americans.

President Barack Obama has a goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015. He has proposed a $1-billion-a-year increase in funding for child nutrition that would be used in part to improve access to programs and improve the nutritional quality of school meals.

An estimated 32 percent of U.S. children fit the government’s definition of being overweight and 16 percent are considered obese, putting themselves at risk for serious health problems.

Great news for those losing weight! NO mental decline.

Men in their 70s who are carrying more fat on their frames have a sharper decline in mental function over time than their slimmer peers, according to a new study in the Archives of Neurology.

But for women, there was no link between excess fat and worsening cognitive function; in fact, there was a tendency for the heavier women to fare better, although it didn’t reach statistical significance, Dr. Alka M. Kanaya of the University of California-San Francisco and her colleagues found.

While obesity has been linked to dementia, the researchers note, many studies have used body mass index (BMI) to gauge overweight, which may not be as accurate a measurement of body fat in older people.

To get a better sense of how body composition might relate to mental function in older people without dementia, Kanaya and her team looked at 3,054 healthy men and women 70 to 79 years old. They used special imaging scans to check the study participants’ total fat mass, amount of belly fat under the skin and around the internal organs, and also measured body mass, waist circumference, and sagittal diameter — the distance from the back to the front of the body, which is another technique for measuring belly fat.

The study participants also completed a brief test of general cognitive function at the study’s outset and again 3, 5 and 8 years later.

Over the next 7 years, the researchers found, the men with the most body fat and the most subcutaneous fat in their abdominal area showed the greatest decline in mental function. Fat surrounding the abdominal organs, also known as visceral fat, was linked to mental decline, as was BMI, waist circumference, and sagittal diameter.

But for women, there was no significant relationship between any measures of body fat and mental decline.

The researchers accounted for several factors that could be related to both body fat and cognitive function, including diabetes, high blood pressure and levels of fat-secreted hormones, and the relationship remained strong.

Future studies should confirm the findings, the researchers conclude, and also look into the gender differences in the relationship between body fat and mental decline.

Which is better for your teeth — orange juice or tea?

Turns out that OJ ranks right up there with soda in terms of its enamel-damaging potential. But tea’s effect on teeth is like water’s: It leaves enamel unscathed.

Guard Your Teeth
Think of enamel as armor for your teeth. Once that armor gets worn down or damaged, it can’t repair itself. That’s why acidic beverages — soda, citrus juice, sports drinks — are so bad for your pearly whites: They contain enamel-stripping acids (phosphoric, citric, malic, and tartaric acids, to name a few). But green and black teas don’t attack enamel, and they even have a bit of tooth-friendly fluoride to boot.

Drinks That Do No Wrong
Save wear and tear on your teeth with these other smart sipping strategies:

Use a straw with acidic beverages. This minimizes contact with your teeth. Or swish your mouth with water afterward.

Drink brewed tea — and drink it straight up. If you load it up with sugar and lemon, your teeth will feel it.

Snack on natural stain removers, like apples, celery, and carrots.

You might want to skip the milk, too. Here’s why:
Women in a study who drank black tea had improved cardiovascular function — but that protection vanished if they drank it with milk. Temper the taste of your black tea with lemons instead. Or sip it as the Chinese traditionally do: straight up.

Researchers are not sure why milk may blunt tea’s heart-healthy effects, but milk proteins called caseins are possible culprits.

Bottoms up.

Experts: Different people probably won’t react the same to any given nutrient

Being deficient in a nutrient such as vitamin D has harmful effects

But it’s not clear that excess vitamins will help the immune system

The immune system evolved about 250,000 years ago

We know that certain foods are bad for people with particular conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes. Advising a generally healthy person on foods that will prevent future disease, on the other hand, is far more complicated, and represents one of the challenges for scientists working in food science.

In the future, people should be able to tailor their diets and supplements to their particular biochemistry, said experts presenting at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science this week.

Right now the food industry is centered on products, said J. Bruce German, professor and food chemist at the University of California, Davis. That means profits depend on lowering the cost of production and making things cheaper.

“No one’s getting healthy in this model,” he said. “It’s clear we have to move toward a consumer-driven food supply.”

In a consumer-driven food world, the industry would focus its goals on improving all aspects of the consumer’s health, he said. People would receive dietary recommendations based on a very specific individualized health assessment, taking into account age, sex and medical history, he said.

The bottom line is that being deficient in a nutrient such as vitamin D has harmful effects, but once you achieve a certain level, it’s not clear that excess vitamins will help the immune system, Gershwin said.

Another direction that food science is taking is genomics. Researchers are looking at the genes of edible organisms to figure out what about them makes them beneficial to humans, knowledge that may enhance diets in the future.

For instance, scientists are looking into how human milk evolved. Curiously, one component of breast milk is something that infants cannot digest: oligosaccharides. Research in the last few years has shown that these oligosaccharides stimulate particular bacteria in the intestine, which is a beneficial process.

From CNN Health: Is decaffeinated green tea as healthy as regular green tea? Are plums as healthy as prunes? Are fresh cranberries as healthy as dried cranberries? The “buzz” in the media is that green tea, prunes and cranberries are all extremely healthy foods. But, what if the caffeinated green tea keeps you up all night and you’re not a fan of dried fruits?

This is an excellent question and brings up an important point. While it seems like every week there is a new “must eat” food or drink, there are lots of nutrient rich foods that can be incorporated into a healthy diet based on your food and drink preferences. In addition, getting a variety of healthy foods is even more important than consuming the latest products generating media “buzz.”

In general, I’m not a big fan of dried fruit either as dried fruit is much more calorically dense than fresh fruit because of its significantly lower water content. And with the obesity epidemic in this country, keeping calories under control is just as important as choosing healthier foods. Fresh fruit is just as healthy as dried fruit and you don’t have to worry about added sugar, fat or portion sizes, which must be more closely controlled when it comes to dried fruit. And if you don’t like cranberries, my colleague, Wendy Bazilian, who has a doctorate in Public Health and Nutrition, is a registered dietitian, and author of “The SuperFoods Rx Diet,” is quick to point out that for urinary tract health, blueberries may work just as well as cranberries. For heart health, all deeply colored berries, cherries and even grapes are rich in disease fighting phytonutrients and antioxidants.

When it comes to green tea, which is an excellent source of disease-fighting phytonutrients known as catechins, the decaffeinating process may reduce some, but not all of the health benefits. However, the negative health impact of sleep deprivation far outweighs the health benefits of green tea so I would certainly recommend sticking to decaffeinated green tea if caffeine impacts your sleep.

To get the heart-healthy benefits of drinking wine without getting tipsy, tipple some grape juice instead.

Research shows that your blood will get two important benefits: More antioxidants will be circulating in it, and bad LDL cholesterol may cause less trouble because it’s more stable.

Two for You
Having extra antioxidants in your blood is always a good thing: They help guard your cells against the kind of free-radical damage that provides a toehold for disease. And more stable LDL is incredibly desirable, too, because stable LDL is less likely to oxidize and stick to artery walls.

Juice It Up
Grape juice has fewer antioxidants than wine, so you may need to drink more to get the same benefit. Sip real juice, not fruit-flavored drinks — you’ll get more nutrients and less sugar. And keep tabs on your intake, since juice is not a calorie freebie.

Grapes contain chemical cousins — pterostilbene and resveratrol — that work as a cleanup crew, mopping up nasty free radicals in your body so they’re less likely to cause problems such as heart disease and cancer.

Protective Phenols
In a study of mice, pterostilbene and resveratrol — phenolic compounds found mainly in grape skins — had an antioxidant-like knack for knocking out breast cancer cell processes. It’s early news though; researchers still need to examine how the grape compounds affect human cancer cells.

Great Grape Nutrients
But we already know that the resveratrol in grapes has heart-protective properties, regardless of its effect on cancer. And grapes have lots of other good things going for them — like anthocyanins, which attack disease-fostering inflammation, and vitamin C. So don’t wait for further evidence before improving your health with a juicy bunch.

Obesity can be “caught” as easily as a common cold from other people’s coughs, sneezes and dirty hands.

The condition has been linked to a highly-infectious virus which causes sniffles and sore throats.

Nikhil Dhurandhar, an associate professor at The Pennington Biomedical Research Center, in Baton Rouge, La., said the virus, known as AD-36, infects the lungs then whisks around the body, forcing fat cells to multiply and also causing sore throats.

“When this virus goes to fat tissue it replicates, making more copies of itself and in the process increases the number of new fat cells, which may explain why the fat tissue expands and why people get fat when they are infected with this virus,” Dhurandhar said.

In one test, a third of obese people had the rare and highly contagious virus compared to just 11 percent of thinner people. Weight gain can last three months until the body has built up resistance to the bug.

New research supports earlier theories from studies on weight gain; evidence in tests on mice and chickens shows the bug could cause overweight people to gain weight.

“People could be fat for reasons other than viral infections, so it’s pointless for fat people to try to avoid infection,” said Dhurandhar.

The study also reveals research claiming dieters always feel hungry because humans have a “natural body weight” and they will always suffer hunger pangs.

The Pennington Biomedical Research Center, a campus of the Louisiana State University system, conducts both clinical and basic research. Its mission is to promote healthier lives through research and education in nutrition and preventive medicine.

Seven spices that give your health a boost.

Yesterday, the FDA confirmed that the source of the outbreak is peanut butter and peanut paste made by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) at its Blakely, Ga., processing plant.

PCA’s products aren’t sold to grocery stores. PCA only sells peanut butter to institutions and food manufacturers. Some food makers use PCA’s peanut butter or peanut paste to make products including crackers, cookies, cakes, cereal, candy, and ice cream.

The FDA’s web site has a list of recalls related to the salmonella outbreak:

Partial list, click link to see full list

List of Company Recalls
General Mills Issues Voluntary Recall of LÄRABAR and JamFrakas Peanut Butter Snack Bars (January 19) New!
Whole Foods Market Recalls “Whole Foods Carob Energee Nuggets” (January 23) New!
Amway Global Initiates Nationwide Recall of NUTRILITE Energy Bars Because of Possible Health Risk (January 23)
Brent and Sam’s Announces Nation Wide Recall of Two Varieties of Archer Farms Brand Cookies (January 23)
Brent and Sam’s Announces a Nationwide Recall of One Variety of Sam’s Choice Brand Cookies (January 23)
Trader Joe’s Announces Voluntary Recall of Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola Bars, Nutty Chocolate Chewy Coated & Drizzled Granola Bars and Sutter’s Formula Cookies Due to Possible Health Risk (January 22)
Parker Products, Inc. Announces Nationwide Voluntary Recall of Certain Peanut Butter Products (January 22)
Arbonne International Voluntarily Recalls Figure 8 Peanut Butter Chews Due To Possible Health Risk (January 22)
Jimmy’s Cookies Issues Nationwide Recall of Various Peanut Butter Cookies Due to Possible Health Risk (January 22)
Perry’s Ice Cream Company Adds Two Products to Voluntary Recall of Select Peanut Butter Ice Cream Products (January 22)
Kroger Recalls Additional Select Ice Cream Product Due to Possible Health Risk (January 20)
General Nutrition Centers, Inc. Announces Nationwide Voluntary Recall of Certain Lots of GNC Triflex Peanut Butter Soft Chews (January 22)

Tuesday January 20th
Watch President-elect Barack Obama become the next President of the United States on CNN.com Live. Update your own Facebook status and see status updates from your friends and other Facebook users on CNN.com Live.

Don’t miss out!

Add me on Facebook, Brick ONeil, as we watch this historic day when our Nation Inaugurates our first African American/Black President! What a proud day for the United States, and indeed, the World.

Remember where you were when America’s first chosen African American President was sworn in to bring America back! The entire world waits in eager anticipation, seeing President Elect Obama as the one person who can bring everyone together. What will his first actions, as President, be? How will world leaders welcome him? TIme will tell.

Enjoy history in the making.

Apologies for no new posts the past two days, the 451 Press Servers were offline due to a glitch. The little hamsters that power the wheels took a rest and are now fully charged and ready to go.

This time has given me pause to thank all my readers during 2008 and promise to continue to post quality information each day. Bringing you quality information has been a pleasure and will continue to be. There is a dearth of great information out in the great world wide web and it is my pleasure to bring it to you. I try to bring you information I think that is relevant to you and that you can use in your everyday lives. During this time, and ongoing, I hope you will search the archives for timely information that will help you.

Let me know what areas you would like to see covered here, either in the comments or by shooting me an email. Any posts you like and would love to see again or more? Any posts that outraged you or thought irrelevant? Would you like to see this site on a social network, like facebook, twitter, linkedin, digg, and/or newsvine?

Thank you again, for sticking with me during 2008 and 2009 promises to be even better.

Study suggests these healthful foods may lower harmful estrogen levels

Certain breast cancer survivors who load up on fruits and vegetables, eating far more than current U.S. guidelines, can slash their risk the tumors will come back by nearly a third, according to a U.S. study released on Monday.

The finding only held for women who did not have hot flashes after their cancer therapy, the researchers said — a finding that suggests fruits and vegetables act on estrogen.

Their analysis suggests an explanation for why some studies have shown that eating more fruits and vegetables lowers the risk that breast cancer will come back, while others do not. It may depend on the individual patient, they report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

“Women with early stage breast cancer who have hot flashes have better survival and lower recurrence rates than women who don’t,” said Ellen Gold of the University of California Davis, who helped lead the study.

Several studies have shown this. And this study showed that women who had hot flashes after treatment for breast cancer had lower estrogen levels than women who did not.

As estrogen drives the most common type of breast cancer, this suggests that eating extra servings of fruits and vegetables — above and beyond the five servings a day recommended by the U.S. government — may lower harmful estrogen levels in cancer survivors, the researchers said.