Category Archives: nutrition

healthy habits, nutrition, policy, politics

A public health policy disgrace…

A tale of public health advocates double-crossed by big food. Not for the first time, nor will it be the last…

In a sense, this is a battle between altruism and profit. Hardly a fair fight really?

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2014-03-30/5350092

Big food fight continues after Senator Fiona Nash controversy

Sunday 30 March 2014 8:05AM

 

The controversy surrounding a plan to put nutrition rating labels on processed foods has already claimed the job of the Assistant Minister for Health’s chief of staff. The stoush has revealed the deep links between ‘big food’ and the government, writes Ann Arnold.

Related story: RN Breakfast report (6 mins)

It sounds innocuous enough—a plan to have clear labelling about the health qualities of processed foods, so that consumers have a better sense of what they’re buying.

But a system that would see star ratings on the front of most edible items on supermarket shelves hit a spectacular hurdle in Parliament House last month.

In what became one of the biggest parliamentary stoushes so far this year, Senator Fiona Nash was forced to defend her chief of staff, Alastair Furnival, after he rang the Department of Health and ordered it to take down a new website that was to be part of the health star ratings system.

We put in a huge amount of time and effort, and did it in good faith, and dealt with this particular section of industry in good faith. Now we see a turning away from that and the use of that standard political tactic when you don’t want something to happen, of delay.

MICHAEL MOORE, AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION CEO

Alastair Furnival was quickly exposed as a lobbyist for the food industry who had not resigned as a director from his lobbying company, Australian Public Affairs, nor sold his half share in it, while he worked for the Assistant Minister for Health. He subsequently resigned from his job and Senator Nash was censured in the Senate by Labor and the Greens for misleading Parliament.

That whole episode, however, was just the tip of an iceberg. For two years there has been a battle fought out over front of pack labelling. It’s a tale of industry and political connections, expectations dashed and influence wielded.

In one camp are health and consumer advocates concerned about the fact that diet-related illness—or dietary risk—is now the leading cause of death in the world.

In the other camp are some sectors of the food industry: mainly the larger, multinational companies, or ‘big food’, who say the expense of changing their packaging is onerous and business should not have to bear the brunt of it.

The traditionally warring groups were brought together by the federal Labor government in 2012 to thrash out a new labelling system. It was a revolutionary move. Food enemies were sitting at the same table.

Michael Moore, chief executive officer of the Australian Public Health Association, recalls: ‘Actually at the start of the process I think there was quite a lot of trepidation. As the process went on through the first year, I think we all grew in confidence, a great deal of confidence, because we really were working hard to try and find a compromise that would work.

‘When we came up with the star labelling system, because it works on white goods, because it works on movies, because it works on hotels, it would be easy to understand. It would give an overview of the healthiness of the food. I think our optimism grew.’

Soon, his view would change. The Australian Food and Grocery Council, the powerful peak body for the manufactured food industry, had been involved in developing the scheme.

But around the middle of last year, the council started to publicly criticise it. Various anomalies were raised about how particular foods were rated—issues which Mr Moore said were being dealt with by the committees in which the council was represented.

The AFGC also wanted a cost benefit analysis, and ‘more work’ to be done.

Mr Moore told Background Briefing he felt betrayed. ‘We put in a huge amount of time and effort, and did it in good faith, and dealt with this particular section of industry in good faith. Now we see a turning away from that and the use of that standard political tactic when you don’t want something to happen, of delay.’

How does he feel about that whole process now? ‘Oh well, shafted of course.’

This article represents part of a larger Background Briefing investigation. Listen to Ann Arnold’s full report on Sunday at 8.05 am or use the podcast links above after broadcast

The apparent change of heart by the AFGC came after a meeting in June last year of the nation’s health ministers, which, by vote, approved the star rating system. Big business was spooked by the health ministers’ surprise decision to make the voluntary system mandatory within two years if not enough companies had taken it up.

In an interview recorded by ABC TV’s 7.30 in February, Gary Dawson, the AFGC’s CEO, said: ‘It’s a voluntary start up, but it’s a clear threat to force this on food companies from June next year. That’s written up in the decision and so the cost impact is real.’

Processed food is Australia’s largest manufacturing industry, and it’s growing. A Deloitte report released this week forecasts food processing as one of the future growth waves for Australia. Although hit at the moment by a strong Australian dollar, it is poised to make a big impact on the Asian market.

‘We know it [health star labelling] will cost individual companies millions of dollars and of course the industry; we’d estimate around $200 million industry-wide,’ Mr Dawson said.

‘So it’s a significant cost, particularly on an industry that’s in a financial squeeze at the moment. Profits are declining. Companies like SPC or Simplot can hardly afford spending millions of dollars on a scheme where the benefits are far from well understood or proven.’

The managing director of Simplot Australia is Terry O’Brien, who became the chair of the AFGC in February last year. He is a veteran of the Australian food industry, and was previously employed by Cadbury-Schweppes.

Simplot is an American-owned private company whose Australian brands include Edgell, Leggo’s and Chiko (as in Chiko Roll). Background Briefing sought an interview with Mr O’Brien, but he declined.

He was quoted in The Australian in December citing the cost of the new labelling to hiscompany at an estimated $2.5 million.

Simplot was at that stage faced with closing its factory at Bathurst, in NSW. The company has since announced nearly 300 jobs will be cut from Bathurst and another base at Devonport, Tasmania, over the next few years.

The Australian reported that late last year, the AFGC was actively lobbying National Party MPs about the star ratings system.

The former chief of staff to Senator Fiona Nash, Alastair Furnival, was well connected to the AFGC. He had previously worked with at least two companies—Cadbury and Mondelez—whose leaders are on the board of the council.

Gary Dawson, the council’s CEO, had been a senior member of John Howard’s staff.

‘So he would have dealt very regularly with many, many of the members of Parliament who were likely to be ministers, and who have become ministers,’ says Michael Moore.

Mr Dawson told the 7.30 program in February that he did phone Senator Nash’s office on the day the health star ratings website came down.

‘We’ve been in contact with them regularly over a considerable period … so on the day, yes, we expressed the view that it was premature…. we thought it was a sensible decision to take it down while the work is done.’

Mr Dawson said the website should never have gone up without the industry having prior notice. ‘This is a process that has been running for the best part of two years, and to launch the website without any notification of industry we thought was very odd,’ he said.

In fact all parties involved were notified at the same time—the day the website went up and came down. Background Briefing has seen the email from the Department of Health announcing that the new site was now live. Among the 81 addresses are Gary Dawson, Geoffrey Annison; the Food and Grocery Council’s deputy CEO, and others in the industry people who had been involved in the planning.

Mr Dawson, in a part of his recorded interview with 7.30 that was not broadcast, said too much fuss was made about Mr Furnival’s role in taking the website down.

‘Well I think that was a bit of confected outrage, to be honest. People move in and out of political jobs from all sorts of backgrounds. It was a political overreaction. It underlined to me how quickly commonsense can be lost in these food fights.’

The Australia Food and Grocery Council declined to speak to Background Briefing, because, a spokesman said, Gary Dawson is a member of the food labelling oversight committee, where there was agreement at a meeting several weeks ago to limit media debate on this issue.

Food labelling ‘more important than ever’

Honest, simple healthy food labelling is more important than ever, according to veteran nutritionist, educator and campaigner Rosemary Stanton.

‘Australians are not eating well at the moment,’ she said. ‘And whereas when I started working back in the 1960s we had between 600 and 800 foods available, the average supermarket now stocks something in the order of 30,000 different foods, including almost 2,000 snack foods.

‘So, whereas people used to be able to find out very easily what was in their food, and there wasn’t such a huge array to choose from; these days there are so many foods that nobody is going to be able to go around the supermarket and have the time to read the back of the pack.’

Senior South Australian health bureaucrat Kevin Buckett, the current chair of the labelling oversight committee, gave some examples of how foods would fare under the star rating system at a recent food policy forum organised in Sydney by NSW Health.

‘Amongst yoghurts and other cheeses, you’ve got low-fat yoghurt at five stars. And 98% fat-free yoghurt gets two stars, which tells you something about the sugar that is being added there.’

‘And one of the reasons that you do need this sort of system is to cut through some of the marketing hype that would indicate a food is healthy when perhaps it might not be as healthy as you think.’

Business, he says, should not feel threatened.

‘Because if your food is healthy you will get a star rating system with a highly credible government sanctioned label on it, which will be accepted and trusted by the consumer to indicate that the product actually is healthy. If it isn’t a healthy product, stop telling people it is.’

Ann Arnold

 

Transcript

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Credits

Reporter
Ann Arnold
Researcher
Anna Whitfeld
Supervising Producer
Linda McGinness
Sound Engineer
Leila Shunnar
Executive Producer
Chris Bullock
facts & data points, healthy habits, nutrition

Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

– weight loss
– postponement of dementia (eq. of 10 yrs)

http://www.nutritionaction.com/daily/diet-and-weight-loss/are-there-benefits-of-intermittent-fasting/

Are There Benefits of Intermittent Fasting?

Here is what researchers have discovered about fasting some days per week

 • March 24, 2014

“We’ve known for a long time that if you reduce the calorie intake of rats or mice, they live much longer,” says Mark Mattson, chief of the laboratory of neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) in Baltimore.

What happens in species closer to humans is more complicated. Rhesus monkeys fed 30 percent fewer calories lived longer in a study at the University of Wisconsin, but not in a study at the NIA.

Act now to download your FREE copy of Diet and Weight Loss: Trim Calories Per Bite to Trim Pounds without cost or obligation.

Why the different results? One possibility: The Wisconsin monkeys were fed fewer calories than monkeys fed as much high-sugar, high-fat food as they wanted. In contrast, the NIA monkeys were fed fewer calories than monkeys fed as much (low-sugar, low-fat) food as they needed to maintain their weight.

“One take-home message is that if you are an overweight monkey like those in Wisconsin, cutting back on calories will extend your lifespan,” says Mattson. “Whereas if you are eating a healthy diet and not overweight like the NIA monkeys, cutting back on calories may not extend your life, although you may experience some health benefits.”

What if you’re human? In the first good study in normal-weight or slightly overweight (but not obese) people, researchers asked roughly 150 men and women to consume 25 percent fewer calories at each meal than they needed to maintain their weight, and 75 similar people to follow their normal diet, for two years.

The calorie cutters managed to eat 12 percent fewer calories, and they lost 10 percent of their body weight. That may explain why their blood pressure was lower and their insulin worked better than those who ate their normal diets.

“They lowered their risk factors for heart attack, stroke, and diabetes,” says Eric Ravussin, director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The study hasn’t yet been published.

Why didn’t the calorie cutters cut more? “Eating less than you would like to every day is a struggle,” says Ravussin. “Some people can do it, but many cannot.”

But cutting calories only on some days may be easier.

Mon, Tues, Weds, Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun

“There’s the alternate-day modified fast,” says Ravussin. “Every other day you eat only one meal with maybe 30 percent of your normal daily calorie intake.”

And there’s the 5:2 diet, in which you eat a normal diet five days of the week, and only 30 percent of what you would normally eat on the other two days.

“Whichever it is, you have to make sure you don’t overeat on the normal days,” cautions Ravussin.

So far, intermittent fasting shows promise in both animals and people.

“Laboratory animals that get no food at all on alternate days live about 30 percent longer than animals that eat their regular diets every day,” says Mattson.

In humans, the 5:2 plan seems to hold an edge over fasting every day.

In two of the best studies, Mattson and colleagues divided 166 overweight middle-aged women into two groups. Both were told to cut calories by 25 percent—one by trimming the calories in each meal, the other by following a 5:2 plan.

In both studies, the women were told to eat a high-protein “Mediterranean-type” diet with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seafood, and olive oil, and only moderate amounts of dairy, poultry, eggs, and lean red meat.

On the two fasting days of the 5:2 diet, one study prescribed just four cups of low-fat milk, four servings of vegetables, and one serving of fruit. The other study prescribed about 9 oz. of lean protein, 3 servings of low-fat dairy, 4 servings of low-carb vegetables, and a low-carb fruit. Both also recommended low-calorie drinks and a multivitamin-and-mineral.

In each study, both calorie-cutting groups lost about the same weight. “But insulin resistance declined more in the 5:2 groups than in those who cut calories daily,” says Mattson. And in the three-month trial (the other trial lasted six months) the women on the 5:2 regimen lost more body fat.

Why did the 5:2 dieters do better? They were more likely to stick to their plan. “And on the two days that they ate only 500 to 600 calories, their metabolism shifted to burning fat,” says Mattson.

Brain Diet?

Middle-aged rats, after being deprived of all food every other day for three months, lost 23 percent of their body weight and had better motor coordination and cognitive skills than similar rats who could eat all they wanted.

One possible reason: “Intermittent fasting increases brain levels of a protein that stimulates the growth of new brain cells and the connections between them,” says Mattson.

“We think what’s happening is that when you’re hungry, your brain cells are more active so you can figure out how to find food,” he explains. “During evolution, those who were able to figure out how to get food were the ones who survived.”

Today, our brain cells may respond in a similar way when we’re hungry.

Intermittent fasting also seems to postpone dementia, at least in animals. In mice bred to show signs of Alzheimer’s disease by middle age, eating only every other day delays the onset of dementia by the human equivalent of about 10 years.

“That’s a big effect,” says Mattson. “But we’re nowhere near being able to say the same about humans.”

The bottom line: Cutting calories may not prolong your life, but it may lower your blood pressure and make your insulin work better.

Sources: Science 325: 201, 2009; Nature 489: 318, 2012; Mech. Ageing Dev. 55: 69, 1990; Int. J. Obes. 35: 714, 2011; Br. J. Nutr. 110: 1534, 2013; Age 34: 917, 2012; Endocrinology 144: 2446, 2003; Neurobiol. Dis. 26: 212, 2007.

healthy habits, nutrition, policy

The Atlantic on Katz

 

They conclude that no diet is clearly best, but there are common elements across eating patterns that are proven to be beneficial to health. “A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.”

Katz, Meller/Annual Reviews

Science Compared Every Diet, and the Winner Is Real Food

Researchers asked if one diet could be crowned best in terms of health outcomes. If diet is a set of rigid principles, the answer is a decisive no. In terms of broader guidelines, it’s a decisive yes.
Ornamental cabbage and kale in Langley, Washington (Dean Fosdick/AP)

Flailing in the swell of bestselling diet books, infomercials for cleanses, and secret tips in glossy magazines, is the credibility of nutrition science. Watching thoroughly-credentialed medical experts tout the addition or subtraction of one nutrient as deliverance—only to change the channel and hear someone equally-thoroughly-credentialed touting the opposite—it can be tempting to write off nutrition advice altogether. This month we hear something is good, and next we almost expect to hear it’s bad. Why not assume the latest research will all eventually be nullified, and just close our eyes and eat whatever tastes best?

That notion is at once relatable and tragic, in that diet is inextricable from the amount of healthy time we spend on Earth. Improvements in diet are clearly associated with significant lengthening of lifespan and dramatic decreases in risk of most chronic diseases. Combining disease and longevity into the concept of healthspan, the number of healthy years of life—fundamentally more important but less readily quantifiable than lifespan—the data in favor of optimizing our diets are even more compelling. No one is arguing that diet is less than extremely important to health and well-being, but seemingly everyone is arguing as to what constitutes the best diet.

The voices that carry the farthest over the sea of diet recommendations are those of iconoclasts—those who promise the most for the least, and do so with certainty. Amid the clamor, Dr. David Katz is emerging as an iconoclast on the side of reason. At least, that’s how he describes himself. From his throne at Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, where he is a practicing physician and researcher, said sea of popular diet media is the institution against which he rebels. It’s not that nutrition science is corrupt, just that the empty promises of memetic, of-the-moment diet crazes are themselves junk food. To Katz they are more than annoying and confusing; they are dangerous injustice.

Scientific publisher Annual Reviews asked Katz to compare the medical evidence for and against every mainstream diet. He says they came to him because of his penchant for dispassionate appraisals. “I don’t have a dog in the fight,” he told me. “I don’t care which diet is best. I care about the truth.”

Katz and Yale colleague Stephanie Meller published their findings in the current issue of the journal in a paper titled, “Can We Say What Diet Is Best for Health?” In it, they compare the major diets of the day: Low carb, low fat, low glycemic, Mediterranean, mixed/balanced (DASH), Paleolithic, vegan, and elements of other diets. Despite the pervasiveness of these diets in culture and media, Katz and Meller write, “There have been no rigorous, long-term studies comparing contenders for best diet laurels using methodology that precludes bias and confounding. For many reasons, such studies are unlikely.” They conclude that no diet is clearly best, but there are common elements across eating patterns that are proven to be beneficial to health. “A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.”

Katz, Meller/Annual Reviews

Among the salient points of proven health benefits the researchers note, nutritionally-replete plant-based diets are supported by a wide array of favorable health outcomes, including fewer cancers and less heart disease. These diets ideally included not just fruits and vegetables, but whole grains, nuts, and seeds. Katz and Meller found “no decisive evidence” that low-fat diets are better than diets high in healthful fats, like the Mediterranean. Those fats include a lower ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids than the typical American diet.

The Mediterranean diet, which is additionally defined by high intake of fiber, moderate alcohol and meat intake, antioxidants, and polyphenols, does have favorable effects on heart disease, cancer risk, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and “is potentially associated with defense against neurodegenerative disease and preservation of cognitive function, reduced inflammation, and defense against asthma.”

They also found carbohydrate-selective diets to be better than categorically low-carbohydrate diets, in that incorporating whole grains is associated with lower risks for cancers and better control of body weight. Attention to glycemic load and index is “sensible at the least.” Eating foods that have high glycemic loads (which Katz says is much more relevant to health outcomes than glycemic index—in that some quality foods like carrots have very high indices, which could be misleading) is associated with greater risk of heart disease.

Finally, in a notable blow to some interpretations of the Paleo diet, Katz and Meller wrote, “if Paleolithic eating is loosely interpreted to mean a diet based mostly on meat, no meaningful interpretation of health effects is possible.” They note that the composition of most meat in today’s food supply is not similar to that of mammoth meat, and that most plants available during the Stone Age are today extinct. (Though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Paleo extremists are crowd-funding a Jurassic Park style experiment to bring them back.)

Just because Katz is not one to abandon his scientific compass under duress of passion does not mean he is without passion, or unmoved by it in his own ways. The subjects of media headlines and popular diet books are dark places for Katz. “It’s not just linguistic, I really at times feel like crying, when I think about that we’re paying for ignorance with human lives,” he told me. “At times, I hate the people with alphabet soup after their names who are promising the moon and the stars with certainty. I hate knowing that the next person is already rubbing his or her hands together with the next fad to make it on the bestseller list.”

“The evidence that with knowledge already at our disposal, we could eliminate 80 percent of chronic disease is the basis for everything I do,” Katz said. Just as he was finishing his residency in internal medicine in 1993, influential research in the Journal of the American Medical Association (“Actual Causes of Death in the United States“) put diet on a short list of the lifestyle factors blamed for half of deaths in 1990. “Here we are more than 20 years later and we’ve made just about no progress.”

A nod to the fact that popular media is not totally lost, Katz borrows from the writer Michael Pollan, citing a seminal 2007 New York Times Magazine articleon “nutritionism” in concluding that the mantra, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” is sound. “That’s an excellent idea, and yet somehow it turns out to be extremely radical.”

Though Katz also says it isn’t nearly enough. “That doesn’t help you pick the most nutritious bread, or the best pasta sauce. A member of the foodie elite might say you shouldn’t eat anything from a bag, box, bottle, jar, or can.” That’s admittedly impractical. “We do need to look at all the details that populate the space between where we are and where we want to be.”

The current review is in pursuit of that, as is a system for determining the nutritional value of foods that Katz recently spent two years developing. It’s called NuVal, and it offers consumers a single numeric value to determine foods’ worth, as opposed to a complex nutritional panel. The number does things like differentiate intrinsic from added nutrients. “If you don’t do that, the best thing in the whole damn food supply is Total cereal. Total is basically a completely vapid flake delivery system for multivitamins. You could skip the cereal and take the multivitamin.”

“If you eat food direct from nature,” Katz added, “you don’t even need to think about this. You don’t have to worry about trans fat or saturated fat or salt—most of our salt comes from processed food, not the salt shaker. If you focus on real food, nutrients tend to take care of themselves.”

The ultimate point of this diet review, which is framed like a tournament, is that there is no winner. More than that, antagonistic talk in pursuit of marketing a certain diet, emphasizing mutual exclusivity—similar to arguments against bipartisan political rhetoric—is damaging to the entire system and conversation. Exaggerated emphasis on a single nutrient or food is inadvisable. The result, Katz and Meller write, is a mire of perpetual confusion and doubt. Public health could benefit on a grand scale from a unified front in health media: Endorsement of the basic theme of what we do know to be healthful eating and candid acknowledgement of the many details we do not know.

“I think Bertrand Russell nailed it,” Katz told me, “when he said that the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so sure, and wise people always have doubts. Something like that.”

data saving lives, entrepreneurship, healthcare, healthy habits, meaning, nutrition, policy, politics, quantified self, quotes & aphorisms, rapid learning health systems

Ornish on Digital Health

The limitations of high-tech medicine are becoming clearer—e.g., angioplasty, stents, and bypass surgery don’t prolong life or prevent heart attacks in stable patient; only one out of 49 men treated for prostate cancer benefit from the treatment, and the other 48 often become impotent, incontinent or both; and drug treatments of type 2 diabetes don’t work nearly as well as lifestyle changes in preventing the horrible complications.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnnosta/2014/03/17/the-stat-ten-dean-ornish-on-digital-health-wisdom-and-the-value-of-meaningful-connections/

3/17/2014 @ 11:09AM |1,095 views

The STAT Ten: Dean Ornish On Digital Health, Wisdom And The Value Of Meaningful Connections

STAT Ten is intended to give a voice to those in digital health. From those resonant voices in the headlines to quiet innovators and thinkers behind the scenes, it’s my intent to feature those individuals who are driving innovation–in both thought and deed. And while it’s not an exhaustive interview, STAT Ten asks 10 quick questions to give this individual a chance to be heard.  

Dean Ornish, MD is a fascinating and important leader in healthcare.  His vision has dared to question convention and look at health and wellness from a comprehensive and unique perspective.  He is a Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF Founder & President, nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute.

Dr. Ornish’s pioneering research was the first to prove that lifestyle changes may stop or even reverse the progression of heart disease and early-stage prostate cancer and even change gene expression, “turning on” disease-preventing genes and “turning off” genes that promote cancer, heart disease and premature aging. Recently, Medicare agreed to provide coverage for his program, the first time that Medicare has covered an integrative medicine program. He is the author of six bestselling books and was recently appointed by President Obama to the White House Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health. He is a member of the boards of directors of the San Francisco Food Bank and the J. Craig Venter Institute. The Ornish diet was rated #1 for heart health by U.S. News & World Report in 2011 and 2012. He was selected as one of the “TIME 100” in integrative medicine, honored as “one of the 125 most extraordinary University of Texas alumni in the past 125 years,” recognized by LIFE magazine as “one of the 50 most influential members of his generation” and by Forbes magazine as “one of the 7 most powerful teachers in the world.”

The lexicon of his career is filled with words that include innovator, teacher and game-changer.  And with this impressive career and his well-established ability to look at health and medicine in a new light, I thought i would be fun–and informative–to ask Dr. Ornish some questions about digital health.

Dean Ornish, MD

Dean Ornish, MD

 1. Digital health—many definitions and misconceptions.  How would describe this health movement in a sentence or two?

“Digital health” usually refers to the idea that having more quantitative information about your health from various devices will improve your health by changing your behaviors.  Information is important but it’s not usually sufficient to motivate most people to make meaningful and lasting changes in healthful behaviors.  If it were, no one would smoke cigarettes.

2. You’ve spoken of building deep and authentic connection among  patients as key element of your wellness programs.  Can digital health foster that connection or drive more “techno-disconnection”?

Both.  What matters most is the quality and meaning of the interaction, not whether it’s digital or analog (in person).  Study after study have shown that people who are lonely, depressed, and isolated are three to ten times more likely to get sick and die prematurely compared to those who have a strong sense of love and community.  Intimacy is healing.  In our support groups, we create a safe environment in which people can let down their emotional defenses and communicate openly and authentically about what’s really going on in their lives without fear they’ll be rejected, abandoned, or betrayed.  The quality and meaning of this sense of community is often life-transforming.  It can be done digitally, but it’s more effective in person.  A digital hug is not quite as fulfilling, but it’s much better than being alone and feeling lonely.

3. How can we connect clinical validation to the current pop culture trends of “fitness gadgets”?

Awareness is the first step in healing.  In that context, information can raise awareness, but it’s only the first step.

 4. Can digital health help link mind and body wellness?

Yes.  Nicholas Christakis’ research found that if your friends are obese, your risk of obesity if 45% higher.  If your friends’ friends are obese, your risk of obesity if 25% higher.  If your friends’ friends’ friends are obese, your risk is 10% higher—even if you’ve never met them.  That’s how interconnected we are.  Their study also showed that social distance is more important than geographic distance.  Long distance is the next best thing to being there (and in some families, even better…).

5. Are there any particular area of medicine and wellness that might best fit in the context of digital health (diet, exercise, compliance, etc.)?

They all do.

6. There is much talk on the empowerment of the individual and the “democratization of data”.  From your perspective are patients becoming more engaged and involved in their care?

Patients are becoming more empowered in all areas of life, not just with their health care.  Having access to one’s clinical data can be useful, but even more empowering is access to tools and programs that enable people to use the experience of suffering as a catalyst and doorway for transforming their lives for the better.  That’s what our lifestyle program provides.

 7. Is digital health “sticking” in the medical community?  Or are advances being driven more by patients?

Electronic medical records are finally being embraced, in part due to financial incentives.  Also, telemedicine is about to take off, as it allows both health care professionals and patients to leverage their time and resources more efficiently and effectively.  But most doctors are not prescribing digital health devices for their patients.  Not yet.

 8. Do you personally use any devices?  Any success (or failure) stories?

I weigh myself every day, and I work out regularly using weight machines and a treadmill desk.  I feel overloaded by information much of the day, so I haven’t found devices such as FitBit, Nike Plus, and others to be useful.  These days, I find wisdom to be a more precious commodity than information.

 9. What are some of the exciting areas of digital health that you see on the horizon?

The capacity for intimacy using digital platforms is virtually unlimited, but, so far, we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible.  It’s a testimony to how primal our need is for love and intimacy that even the rather superficial intimacy of Facebook (or, before that, the chat rooms in AOL, or the lounges in Starbucks) created multi-billion-dollar businesses.

My wife, Anne, is a multidimensional genius who is developing ways of creating intimate and meaningful relationships using the interface of digital technologies and real-world healing environments.  She also designed our web site (www.ornish.com) and created and appears in the guided meditations there; Anne has a unique gift of making everyone and everything around her beautiful.

 10. Medicare is now covering Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease as a branded program–a landmark event–and you recently formed a partnership with Healthways to train health care professionals, hospitals, and clinics nationwide.  Why now?

We’re creating a new paradigm of health care—Lifestyle Medicine—instead of sick care, based on lifestyle changes astreatment, not just as prevention.  Lifestyle changes often work better than drugs and surgery at a fraction of the cost—and the only side-effects are good ones.  Like an electric car or an iPhone, this is a disruptive innovation.  After 37 years of doing work in this area, this is the right idea at the right time.

The limitations of high-tech medicine are becoming clearer—e.g., angioplasty, stents, and bypass surgery don’t prolong life or prevent heart attacks in stable patient; only one out of 49 men treated for prostate cancer benefit from the treatment, and the other 48 often become impotent, incontinent or both; and drug treatments of type 2 diabetes don’t work nearly as well as lifestyle changes in preventing the horrible complications.

At the same time, the power of comprehensive lifestyle changes is becoming more well-documented.  In our studies, we proved, for the first time, that intensive lifestyle changes can reverse the progression of coronary heart disease and slow, stop, or reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer.  Also, we found that changing your lifestyle changes your genes—turning on hundreds of good genes that protect you while downregulating hundreds of genes that promote heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases.  Our most recent research found that these lifestyle changes may begin to reverse aging at a cellular level by lengthening our telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live.

Finally, Obamacare turns economic incentives on their ear, so it becomes economically sustainable for physicians to offer training in comprehensive lifestyle changes to their patients, especially now that CMS is providing Medicare reimbursement and insurance companies such as WellPoint are also doing so.  Ben Leedle, CEO of Healthways, is a visionary leader who has the experience, resources, and infrastructure for us to quickly scale our program to those who most need it.  Recently, we trained UCLA, The Cleveland Clinic, and the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York in our program, and many more are on the way.

 

healthy habits, nutrition, policy, politics

Dream Food Label

Nice sounding food labelling system. As Bittman suggests, at least a decade away…

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/bittman-my-dream-food-label.html

My Dream Food Label
By 

Published: October 13, 2012

WHAT would an ideal food label look like? By “ideal,” I mean from the perspective of consumers, not marketers.

Multimedia
The Proposed Nutrition Label: A Quick Read, Out Front
 Right now, the labels required on food give us loads of information, much of it useful. What they don’t do is tell us whether something is really beneficial, in every sense of the word. With a different set of criteria and some clear graphics, food packages could tell us much more.

Even the simplest information — a red, yellow or green “traffic light,” for example — would encourage consumers to make healthier choices. That might help counter obesity, a problem all but the most cynical agree is closely related to the consumption of junk food.

Of course, labeling changes like this would bring cries of hysteria from the food producers who argue that all foods are fine, although some should be eaten in moderation. To them, a red traffic-light symbol on chips and soda might as well be a skull and crossbones. But traffic lights could work: indeed, in one study, sales of red-lighted soda fell by 16.5 percentin three months.

A mandate to improve compulsory food labels is unlikely any time soon. Front-of-package labeling is sacred to big food companies, a marketing tool of the highest order, a way to encourage purchasing decisions based not on the truth but on what manufacturers would have consumers believe.

So think of the creation of a new food label as an exercise. Even if some might call it a fantasy, the world is moving this way. Traffic-light labeling came close to passing in Britain, and our own Institute of Medicine is proposing something similar. The basic question is, how might we augment current food labeling (which, in its arcane detail, serves many uses, including alerting allergic people to every specific ingredient) to best serve not only consumers but all contributors to the food cycle?

As desirable as the traffic light might be, it’s merely a first step toward allowing consumers to make truly enlightened decisions about foods. Choices based on dietary guidelines are all well and good — our health is certainly an important consideration — but they don’t go nearly far enough. We need to consider the well-being of the earth (and all that that means, like climate, and soil, water and air quality), the people who grow and prepare our food, the animals we eat, the overall wholesomeness of the food — what you might call its “foodness” (once the word “natural” might have served, but that’s been completely co-opted), as opposed to its fakeness. (“Foodness” is a tricky, perhaps even silly word, but it expresses what it should. Think about the spectrum from fruit to Froot Loops or from chicken to Chicken McNuggets and you understand it.) These are considerations that even the organic label fails to take into account.

Beyond honest and accurate nutrition and ingredient information, it would serve us well to know at a glance whether food contains trans fats; residues from hormones, antibiotics,pesticides or other chemicals; genetically modified ingredients; or indeed any ingredients not naturally occurring in the food. It would also be nice to be able to quickly discern how the production of the food affected the welfare of the workers and the animals involved and the environment. Even better, it could tell us about its carbon footprint and its origins.

A little of this is covered by the label required for organic food. Some information is voluntarily being provided by producers — though they’re most often small ones — and retailers like Whole Foods. But only when this kind of information is required will consumers be able to express preferences for health, sustainability and fairness through our buying patterns.

Still, one can hardly propose covering the front of packages with 500-word treatises about the product’s provenance. On the other hand, allowing junk food to be marketed as healthy is unacceptable, or at least would be in a society that valued the rights of consumers over those of the corporation. (The “low-fat” claim is the most egregious — plenty of high-calorie, nutritionally worthless foods are in fact fat-free — but it’s not alone.)

All of this may sound like it’s asking a lot from a label, but creating a model wasn’t that difficult. Over the last few months, I’ve worked with Werner Design Werks of St. Paul to devise a food label that, at perhaps little more than a glance (certainly in less than 10 seconds), can tell a story about three key elements of any packaged food and can provide an overall traffic-light-style recommendation or warning.

How such a labeling system could be improved, which agency would administer it (it’s now the domain of the F.D.A.), which producers would be required to use it, whether foods should carry quick-response codes that let your phone read the package and link to a Web site — all of those questions can be debated freely. Suffice it to say we went through numerous iterations to arrive at the label we are proposing. We put it out here not as an end but as a beginning.

Every packaged food label would feature a color-coded bar with a 15-point scale so that almost instantly the consumer could determine whether the product’s overall rating fell between 11 and 15 (green), 6 and 10 (yellow) or 0 and 5 (red). This alone could be enough for a fair snap decision. (We’ve also got a box to indicate the presence or absence of G.M.O.’s.)

We arrive at the score by rating three key factors, each of which comprises numerous subfactors. The first is the obvious “Nutrition,” about which little needs to be said. High sugar, trans fats, the presence of micronutrients and fiber, and so on would all be taken into account. Thus soda would rate a zero and frozen broccoli might rate a five. (It’s hard to imagine labeling fresh vegetables.)

The second is “Foodness.” This assesses just how close the product is to real food. White bread made with bleached flour, yeast conditioners and preservatives would get a zero or one; so would soda; a candy bar high in sugar but made with real ingredients would presumably score low on nutrition but could get a higher score on “foodness”; here, frozen broccoli would rate a four.

The third is the broadest (and trickiest); we’re calling it “Welfare.” This would include the treatment of workers, animals and the earth. Are workers treated like animals? Are animals produced like widgets? Is environmental damage significant? If the answer to those three questions is “yes” — as it might be, for example, with industrially produced chickens — then the score would be zero, or close to it. If the labor force is treated fairly and animals well, and waste is insignificant or recycled, the score would be higher.

These are not simple calculations, but neither can one honestly say that they’re impossible to perform. It may well be that there are wiser ways to sort through this information and get it across. The main point here is: let’s get started.

<nyt_correction_bottom>

<nyt_update_bottom>

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on October 14, 2012, on page SR6 of the New York edition with the headline: My Dream Food Label.

 

Published: October 13, 2012

The Proposed Nutrition Label: A Quick Read, Out Front

MAMA C’S ORGANIC TOMATO SAUCE This contains organic tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, and fresh herbs; it’s even refrigerated, so it contains no preservatives.

 

Since Mama C runs an organic operation with a full-time labor force receiving benefits, the score here is superhigh all around, and the label is green.

0-5

6-10

11-15 points

CHOCOLATE FROSTED SUPER KRISPY KRUNCHIES Fifty percent sugar; almost all nutrients come from additives. But it does contain 10 percent of the daily allowance of fiber.

 

It’s barely recognizable as food in any near-natural form, and it’s made from hyper-processed commodity crops. However, workers in the plant are full time and receive benefits (and no animals are harmed), so a couple of points there (environmentally, however, the welfare is negative, so these points are mitigated): 2. Thus, red.

 

healthy habits, nutrition, policy, politics

With US food labeling, the times, they are a changing…

Impressive changes in US food labeling.

Introducing the label, Mrs. Obama said, “Our guiding principle here is very simple: that you as a parent and a consumer should be able to walk into your local grocery store, pick up an item off the shelf, and be able to tell whether it’s good for your family.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/opinion/bittman-some-progress-on-eating-and-health.html

The Opinion Pages|CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER

Some Progress on Eating and Health

For those concerned about eating and health, the glass was more than half full last week; some activists were actually exuberant. First, there wasevidence that obesity rates among pre-school children had fallen significantly. Then Michelle Obama announced plans to further reduce junk food marketing in public schools. Finally, she unveiled the Food and Drug Administration’s proposed revision of the nutrition label that appears on (literally, incredibly) something like 700,000 packaged foods (many of which only pretend to be foods); the new label will include a line for “added sugars” and makes other important changes, too.

If the 43 percent plunge in obesity in young children holds true, it’s fantastic news, a tribute to the improved Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which encourages the consumption of fruits and vegetables; to improved nutrition guidelines; to a slight reduction in the marketing of junk to children; and probably to the encouragement of breast-feeding. Practically everyone in this country who speaks English or Spanish has heard or read the message that junk food is bad for you, and that patterns set in childhood mostly determine eating habits for a lifetime.

None of this happened by accident, and the lesson is that policy works.

The further limitations on marketing junk are more complicated. Essentially, producers won’t be able to promote what they already can’t sell (per new Department of Agriculture regulations), meaning that vending machines or scoreboards cannot encourage the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. (Promotion of increasingly beleaguered diet sodas would be allowed.)

Mrs. Obama’s tendency to see the reformulation of packaged foods as an important goal is on display here: Snacks sold in schools (both in vending machines and out) will have to meet one of four requirements, like containing at least 50 percent whole grain or a quarter-cup of fruits or vegetables.

These proposed rules are better than nothing but filled with loopholes. Manufacturers will quickly figure out how to meet the new standards, and the improvements, though not insignificant, will not go far in teaching kids that the best snack is an apple or a handful of nuts. (One way to really clobber junk food would be to prevent companies from taking tax deductions on the marketing of unhealthy foods, a move that’s in a bill sponsored by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.)

Still. It beats calling ketchup a vegetable.

The label change is huge. Yes: It could be huge-er. Yes: It’s long overdue. Yes: It may be fought by industry and won’t be in place for a long time. And yes: The real key is to be eating whole foods that don’t need to be labeled.

But by including “added sugars” on the label, the F.D.A. is siding with those who recognize that science shows that added sugars are dangerous. “This is an acknowledgment by the agency that sugar is a big problem,” says the former F.D.A. commissioner David Kessler, who presided over the development of the last label change, 20 years ago. “It will allow the next generation to grow up with far more awareness.”

Big Food has long maintained that it doesn’t matter where sugar or indeed calories come from — that they’re all the same. But “added sugars” declares the industry’s strategy of pumping up the volume on “palatability,” making ketchup, yogurt and granola bars, for example, as sweet and high-calorie as jam, ice cream and Snickers. Added sugar turns sparkling water into soda and food-like objects into candy. Added sugar, if you can forgive the hyperbole, is the enemy. This is not to say you shouldn’t eat a granola bar, but if you know what’s in it you’re less likely to think of it as “health food.”

There are a couple of other significant changes, including more realistic “serving sizes” (a serving of ice cream will now be a more realistic cup instead of a half-cup, for example), the deletion of the “calories from fat” line, which recognizes that not all fats are “bad,” and some changes in daily recommended values for various nutrients.

Mrs. Obama, who is sometimes seen (by me among many others) as overly industry-friendly, was behind the push for these changes, or at least highly supportive of them. And she deserves credit: It’s a victory, and no one on the progressive side of this struggle should see it as otherwise.

The label is hardly messianic. In fact, the F.D.A. tacitly acknowledges this by offering an alternative, stronger label, which approaches the kind of “traffic light” labeling I’ve advocated for, and which there’s evidence to support. The alternative has four sections, including “Avoid Too Much” and “Get Enough”; the first includes added sugars and trans fat, for example, and the second, fiber and vitamin D.

Michael Taylor, the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine — and the guy who supervised the new label’s development — told me that the alternative label is essentially a way to further “stimulate comments.” It may be that it’s also a demonstration of the agency’s will, designed to show industry how threatening things could get so Big Food will swallow the primary label without much complaint.

Although the ultimate decision is the F.D.A.’s, the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association statement last week said in part, “It is critical that any changes are based on the most current and reliable science.” These are, and marketers are going to have a tough time claiming otherwise. In other words, we’re going to see some form of new and stronger label, period.

Introducing the label, Mrs. Obama said, “Our guiding principle here is very simple: that you as a parent and a consumer should be able to walk into your local grocery store, pick up an item off the shelf, and be able to tell whether it’s good for your family.”

This label moves in that direction, but it could be much more powerful. Kessler would like to see a pie chart on the front of the package: “That would help people know what’s real food and what’s not.” Michael Pollan also suggests front-of-the-box labeling: “I think the U.K. has the right idea withtheir stoplight panel on the front of packages; only a small percentage of shoppers get to the nutritional panel on the back.” And the N.Y.U. nutrition professor Marion Nestle (who called this label change “courageous”) says that “A recommended upper limit for added sugars would help put them in context; I’d like to see that set at 10 percent of calories or 50 grams (200 calories) in a 2,000-calorie diet.” (I wrote about my own dream label, which includes categories that probably won’t be considered for another 10 years — if ever — back in 2012.)

What else is wrong? The label covers a lot of food, but it has no effect on restaurant food, takeout, most prepared food sold in bulk (do you have any idea what’s in that fried chicken at the supermarket deli counter, for example?) or alcohol.

The Obama administration and the F.D.A. have made a couple of moves here that might be categorized as bold, but they could have done so three or four years ago; these are regulations that can be built upon, and do not require Congressional approval. But by the time they’re in effect it may be too late for this administration to take them to the next level.

In short, it’s not a case of too-little-too-late but one of “it could’ve been more and happened sooner.”

But that’s looking backward instead of forward. If we see a decline in obesity rates, more curbs on food marketing and greater transparency in packaged food, that’s progress. Let’s be thankful for it, then get back to work pushing for more.

healthy habits, nutrition, policy, politics

Reformulation and marketing restrictions to prevent childhood obesity

 

 

http://www.foodnavigator.com/Product-Categories/Sweeteners-intense-bulk-polyols/EU-eyes-reformulation-and-marketing-restrictions-to-cut-childhood-obesity/

EU eyes reformulation and marketing restrictions to cut childhood obesity

By Caroline Scott-Thomas+

03-Mar-2014

The plan includes tougher limits on all marketing to children - not just television advertising

The plan includes tougher limits on all marketing to children – not just television advertising

Related tags: EU Action Plan, Childhood obesity, Marketing to children

Related topics: Sugar, salt and fat reduction, Marketing, Legislation, Carbohydrates and fibres (sugar, starches), Food safety and labelling, Sweeteners (intense, bulk, polyols)

Restricting marketing to children and continuing to cut salt, fats and added sugar in processed foods are among initiatives put forward in a plan to tackle childhood obesity, agreed by EU member states in Greece last week.

RELATED NEWS:

WHO decries ‘deadly’ promotion of cheap, convenient food
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Healthy snacking trend boosts sugar-free fruit ingredients
EU programme aims to boost kids’ fruit and milk consumption

The action plan was agreed by the High Level Group on Nutrition and Physical Activity at a conference in Athens, and includes a range of voluntary initiatives intended to promote healthy environments and balanced diets, encourage physical activity, restrict advertising to children, and support ongoing efforts to slash levels of salt, fats and added sugar.

Childhood obesity is on the rise in Europe, the European Commission said, adding that about one in three children aged six to nine was overweight or obese in the region in 2010 versus one in four children in 2008. It said member states spent an estimated 7% of their healthcare budgets on treating weight-related problems.

The new strategy includes encouraging industry to make commitments in areas such as marketing, food reformulation, food distribution, catering and physical activity, with a specific focus on children, young people and the most deprived.

Referring to marketing restrictions in particular, it said limits on advertising to children should extend beyond television advertising to include all marketing, “including in-store environments, promotional actions, internet presence and social media activities”.

Taxation, subsidies and pricing

The plan also refers to making “the healthy option the easier option” – a strategy that could include taxation and subsidies for particular foods, or encouraging manufacturers to price reformulated foods at a lower level than standard versions.

Proposals included “encouraging reformulation of less healthy food options and taking nutritional objectives into consideration when defining taxation, subsidies or social support policies”.

In response to the plan, trade body FoodDrinkEurope said it hoped to continue a partnership approach to tackling childhood obesity in Europe.

“European food and drink manufacturers reaffirm their commitment to fight childhood obesity by means of ongoing and possibly new actions and initiatives targeted at children and parents through the established platforms for action at European and national level,” it said in a statement.

healthy habits, nutrition

Frying/grilling may be linked to diabetes and dementia

 

The results are tentative, but if confirmed by other studies, the work could transform hopes for tackling two major diseases that have reached epidemic proportions in the developed world.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/25/fried-grilled-meat-risk-diabetes-dementia-glycotoxins

Fried and grilled meat may raise risk of diabetes and dementia

Study suggests changes in cooking habits might reduce levels of glycotoxins and help prevent diabetes and dementia

, science correspondent

theguardian.com, 

Full English breakfast

Glycotoxins are found in fried or grilled meat, fried eggs and toasted bread. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

Toxic chemicals found at high concentrations in fried and grilled meats may raise the risk of diabetes and dementia, researchers say.

 

US scientists found that rodents raised on a Western-style diet rich in compounds called glycotoxins showed early signs of diabetes, along with brain changes and symptoms that are seen in Alzheimer’s disease.

 

The findings matched what the researchers saw in a small number of older people, where those with higher levels of glycotoxins in their circulation had memory and other cognitive problems, and signs of insulin resistance, which precedes diabetes.

 

The results are tentative, but if confirmed by other studies, the work could transform hopes for tackling two major diseases that have reached epidemic proportions in the developed world.

 

The study suggests that changes in cooking practices might lower the risk of both diabetes and dementia, while a greater understanding of the biological mechanisms could lead to drugs that delay their onset.

 

“The findings are very promising, but the question that needs to be answered is whether cutting down on glycotoxins can prevent or reverse dementia,” said Helen Vlassara, who led the study at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

 

Vlassara raised groups of mice on diets that differed in their levels of a type of glycotoxin called advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. Animals that ate a Westernised diet rich in AGEs experienced a build-up of protein called amyloid in their brains, and developed cognitive and movement problems typical of dementia. The same changes were not seen in mice raised on a low-AGEs diet.

 

The researchers then turned to 93 healthy humans aged over 60. Over nine months of the study, they found that those with higher levels of AGEs in their bloodstream experienced greater levels of cogntive decline and insulin resistance. Details are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

Glycotoxins are widespread in animal products, including meat and dairy produce, and levels increase when food is fried, grilled, pasteurised or smoked, making them abundant in Western diets.

 

The sheer ubiquity of glycotoxins means dietary changes might not be easy or effective as public health interventions, but Vlassara said that cooking foods differently might help. Levels of glycotoxins rise when food is cooked dry at high temperature, but moisture prevents this.

 

“People will grill bacon and fry eggs for breakfast, or have a toasted bagel or muffin. But they could boil or poach the eggs, and have fresh bread. With meat, we recommend stewing and boiling, making sauces instead of exposing meat to very high dry heat,” she said.

For some scientists, the most exciting part of the study is the potential explanation of how diabetes and dementia might be linked. Diabetes is one of the few concrete risk factors for dementia, and doubles the risk of a person developing the disease, but how the two are connected has remained a mystery. Vlassara found that rodents and humans on a high glycotoxin diet had low levels of SIRT1 in the body, a protein that is thought to protect the brain from neurodegeneration.

Simon Lovestone, a neuroscientist and leader of the dementia translational research collaboration at Oxford University and King’s College London, said the finding was “fantastically interesting” but added that further studies were needed in people to see if reducing dietary glycotoxins staved off dementia.

Doug Brown, director of research and development at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “We are often told that burgers or fried chicken are bad for us and this study is not the first to link the chemicals in some cooked foods to Alzheimer’s. However, this research adds to our understanding of how they might work and makes a strong case for further research.

“Diets with low levels of the compounds show promising effects in mice and should be further explored as a way to prevent dementia through changes in diet,” he added. “Of course, we must not forget that the majority of research was conducted in mice and the human element of this study is too small to draw any conclusions.

“Evidence suggests that the best way to reduce your risk of developing dementia is regular exercise, not smoking, and following a healthy diet.”

Derek Hill at University College London said the results were compelling and should encourage more work. “It is notoriously difficult to do experiments on mice that properly mimic Alzheimer’s disease in humans,” he said. “But it is grounds for optimism. This paper adds to the body of evidence suggesting that using preventative strategies might reduce the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias in society. And that could have a very positive impact on us all.”

Tom Dening, professor of dementia research at Nottingham University, said: “Foods high in protein and fat, such as meat, cheese, and egg yolk, are rich in AGEs, and cooking at high temperatures, for example frying and barbecues, increases AGEs. Dietary restriction of AGEs can bring about significant reductions. What isn’t yet clear is how much these effects contribute to Alzheimer’s disease compared to other factors, and we don’t know whether dietary restriction of AGEs would be helpful in prevention.”

complex adaptive systems, healthy habits, nutrition, policy, politics

In defense of sugar

Interesting, detailed, slick presentation on the biochemistry and epidemiology of fructose on health

He discloses significant industry engagements (coca cola, dr pepper etc.)

Does present the view (shared by Katz) that it shouldn’t be about single nutrients, but diet and activity overall.

This seems to be industry-backed smoke to confuse the discussion.

http://media.soph.uab.edu/PresenterPlus/norc-sievenpiper-20140214/main.htm#

Title: Sugars and cardiometabolic health: A story lost in translation?
Presenter: John L. Sievenpiper, MD, PhD
Date: February 11, 2014
Description: NORC Seminar
SugarsOK