Monthly Archives: January 2014

cool, data saving lives, quantified self

iPhone supported ambulatory PulseOx, Heart and BP monitoring

Some pretty cool kit launched at CES

iHealth Launches New Wristworn Pulse Oximeter, Ambulatory Heart and Blood Pressure Monitors at CES 2014

Posted By Gaurav Krishnamurthy On January 13, 2014 @ 1:30 pm

iHealth pulse oximeter iHealth Launches New Wristworn Pulse Oximeter, Ambulatory Heart and Blood Pressure Monitors at CES 2014iHealth (Mountain View,CA), a subsidiary of China-based Andon Health, launched a new wristworn pulse oximeter, an ambulatory heart monitor, and an ambulatory blood pressure monitor at CES 2014. The pulse oximeter continuously measures blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) and pulse rate at the finger tip, and is connected to a wrist strap that has an LED display showing the readings. The device also syncs via Bluetooth to the iHealth iOS app to display and track blood oxygen levels over time. Like other pulse oximeters, the device works by projecting two light beams, one red and the other infrared, onto the blood vessels in the finger. Oxygenated blood absorbs more infrared light and allows more red light to pass through, whereas deoxygenated blood absorbs more red light and allows more infrared light to pass through. A photodetector opposite the light emitters measures the ratio of red to infrared light received and from that calculates the amount of oxygen in the blood.

ihealth bmp iHealth Launches New Wristworn Pulse Oximeter, Ambulatory Heart and Blood Pressure Monitors at CES 2014The second device unveiled by iHealth is an ambulatory heart rhythm monitor that is attached to the user’s chest using an adhesive patch. The monitor syncs with an iOS device using Bluetooth connectivity and displays a complete ECG on the user’s phone.

The device is capable of notifying the user of any arrhythmia and will also be able to convey this information to a loved one or a caregiver. The device can save up to 72 hours of ECG data, and may one day serve as an option over Holter monitors for arrhythmia detection and characterization (see related story here[3]).

iHealth blood pressure monitor iHealth Launches New Wristworn Pulse Oximeter, Ambulatory Heart and Blood Pressure Monitors at CES 2014The third device launched by iHealth is an ambulatory blood pressure monitor that connects to a wearable blood pressure vest. The monitor is able to continuously track the wearer’s blood pressure without disturbing the user’s normal activity. It is able to connect to Android and iOS phones through Bluetooth 4.0 and can save up to 200 blood pressure readings. The blood pressure measurements can be registered in preset intervals, starting at every 15 minutes, or the user can have the device measure blood pressures at longer intervals of every 2 hours. The device is targeted at addressing the need for a continuous blood pressure monitoring device to better understand and track hypertension.

Both the iHealth ambulatory heart monitor and the ambulatory blood pressure monitor are not yet cleared by FDA.

Company page: iHealth… [4]

Press release: IHEALTH ANNOUNCES THREE NEW WEARABLE MOBILE PERSONAL HEALTH PRODUCTS AT CES 2014 [5]

business, entrepreneurship, management and leadership, startup

Characteristics of successful innovators

Oaaahhh shucks… had the strange feeling he was talking about me throughout this post, seriously.

http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/the-five-characteristics-of-successful-innovators/

[ALSO THIS RELATED POST:  http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/12/entrepreneurs-brains-are-wired-differently/]

The Five Characteristics of Successful Innovators

by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic  |   1:00 PM October 25, 2013

There is not much agreement about what makes an idea innovative, and what makes an innovative idea valuable.

For example, discussions on whether the internet is a better invention than the wheel are more likely to reveal personal preferences than logical argumentation. Likewise, experts disagree on the type and level of innovation that is most beneficial for organizations. Some studies suggest that radical innovation (which does sound sexy) confers sustainable competitive advantages, but others show that “mild” innovation – think iPhone 5 rather than the original iPhone – is generally more effective, not least because it reduces market uncertainty. There is also inconclusive evidence on whether we should pay attention to consumers’ views, with some studies showing that a customer focus is detrimental for innovation because it equates to playing catch-up, but others arguing for it. Even Henry Ford’s famous quote on the subject – “if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” – has been disputed.

We are also notoriously bad at evaluating the merit of our own ideas. Most people fall trap of anillusory superiority that causes them to overestimate their creative talent, just as in other domains of competence (e.g., 90% of drivers claim to be above average — a mathematical improbability). It is therefore clear that we cannot rely on people’s self-evaluation to determine whether their ideas are creative or not.

Yet there are relatively well-defined criteria for predicting who will generate creative ideas. Indeed, research shows that some people are disproportionately more likely to come up with novel and useful ideas, and that – irrespective of their field of expertise, job title and occupational background – these creative individuals tend to display a recurrent set of psychological characteristics and behaviors. As summarized in a detailed review of over 100 scientific studies, creative people tend to be better at identifying (rather than solving) problems, they are passionate and sensitive, and, above all, they tend to have a hungry mind: they are open to new experiences, nonconformist, and curious. These personality characteristics are stronger determinants of creative potential than are IQ, school performance, or motivation.

Creativity alone, however, is not sufficient for innovation: innovation also requires the development, production, and implementation of an idea. This is why the number of “latent” innovators is far larger than the number of actual innovations, and why we all have at some point generated great ideas that we never bothered to implement. Here are a couple of mine: rent-a-friend – a service that enables tourists to hire locals for advice or simply some company – and location-based dating via an app that finds your nearby matches based on personality profiling. As with most of my ideas, these have since been successfully implemented by others, who also happened to have them.

The key difference between creativity and innovation is execution: the capacity to turn an idea into a successful service, product or venture. If, as William James noted, “truth is something that happens to an idea”, entrepreneurship is the process by which creative ideas become useful innovations. Given that entrepreneurship involves human agency – it depends on the decisions and behaviors of certain people – a logical approach for understanding the essence of innovation is to study the core characteristics of entrepreneurial people, that is, individuals who are a driving force of innovation, irrespective of whether they are self-employed, business founders, or employees. The research highlights several key characteristics (in addition to creativity):

  1. An opportunistic mindset that helps them identify gaps in the market. Opportunities are at theheart of entrepreneurship and innovation, and some people are much more alert to them than others. In addition, opportunists are genetically pre-wired for novelty: they crave new and complex experiences and seek variety in all aspects of life. This is consistent with the higher rates ofattention deficit hyperactivity disorder among business founders.
  2. Formal education or training, which are essential for noticing new opportunities or interpreting events as promising opportunities. Contrary to popular belief, most successful innovators are not dropout geniuses, but well-trained experts in their field. Without expertise, it is hard to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information; between noise and signals. This is consistent withresearch showing that entrepreneurship training does pay off.
  3. Proactivity and a high degree of persistence, which enable them to exploit the opportunities they identify. Above all, they effective innovators are more driven, resilient, and energetic than their counterparts.
  4. A healthy dose of prudence. Contrary to what many people think, successful innovators are more organized, cautious, and risk-averse than the general population. (Although higher risk-taking is linked to business formation, it is not actually linked to business success).
  5. Social capital, which they rely on throughout the entrepreneurial process. Serial innovators tend to use their connections and networks to mobilize resources and build strong alliances, both internally and externally. Popular accounts of entrepreneurship tend to glorify innovators as independent spirits and individualistic geniuses, but innovation is always the product of teams. In line, entrepreneurial people tend to have higher EQ, which enables them to sell their ideas and strategy to others, and communicate the core mission to the team.

Even when people possess these five characteristics, true innovation is unlikely to occur in the absence of a meaningful mission or clear long-term vision. Indeed, vision is where entrepreneurship meets leadership: regardless of how creative, opportunistic, or proactive you are, the ability to propel others toward innovation is a critical feature of successful innovation. Without it, you can’t attract the right talent, build and empower teams, or ensure that you remain innovative even after attaining success. As Frances Bowen and colleagues recently noted, there is “a vicious circle [whereby] innovation leads to superior future performance, but such investment can also give rise to core rigidities and hence less innovation in a future time period.” In other words, innovation leads to growth, but growth hinders innovation… unless innovation is truly ingrained in the organizational culture, which requires an effective vision.

In short, there is no point in just hoping for a breakthrough idea – what matters is the ability to generate many ideas, discover the right opportunities to develop them, and act with drive and dedication to achieve a meaningful goal.

Ideas don’t make people successful – it’s the other way around.

80-Tomas-Chamorro-Premuzic

Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is an international authority in personality profiling and psychometric testing. He is a Professor of Business Psychology at University College London (UCL), Vice President of Research and Innovation at Hogan Assessment Systems, and has previously taught at the London School of Economics and New York University. He is co-founder of metaprofiling.com. His book is Confidence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt.

business, entrepreneurship, healthcare, management and leadership, policy, politics

HBR Blog: Resolving Health Care Conflicts with a walk in the woods

4 step process to resolving conflict:

  1. Have each stakeholder articulate their “self-interests” so that they are heard by the others. What does each need to get from this exchange?
  2. Look at where the overlap among these self-interests reveals agreement, what we call the “enlarged interests.” In our experience, these agreements always outnumber the disagreements.
  3. Collaborate to develop solutions to the remaining disagreements, or “enlightened interests.” This is the time for creative problem solving.
  4. Certify what has now become a larger set of agreements, or “aligned interests.”

Any outstanding disagreements are held to the side for future negotiations.

[…….]

The inclusion of all stakeholders is essential because people only truly embrace solutions that they help create. Anytime that one party tries to impose something on another, the natural inclination of the imposed upon party is to resist. A little time spent upfront engaging in joint problem solving saves many hours — and headaches — that come with a mandate.

http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/four-steps-to-resolving-conflicts-in-health-care/

We have been engaged in health care negotiation and conflict resolution for two decades. We have worked on conflicts as mundane as work assignments and as complex as hospital mergers. We use and teach a simple four-step structured process that works in cases ranging from simple one-on-one interactions to extended multi-party discussions.

After assembling representatives of all stakeholders in a conflict, the first step is to have each stakeholder articulate their “self-interests” so that they are heard by the others. What does each need to get from this exchange? The second step is to look at where the overlap among these self-interests reveals agreement, what we call the “enlarged interests.” In our experience, these agreements always outnumber the disagreements.  The third step is to collaborate to develop solutions to the remaining disagreements, or “enlightened interests.” This is the time for creative problem solving. The fourth step is to certify what has now become a larger set of agreements, or “aligned interests.” Any outstanding disagreements are held to the side for future negotiations. We’ve taught people in as little as 30 minutes how to use this approach. (See our book Renegotiating Health Care for more detail on the process.)

We call this process the Walk in the Woods after a play that dramatized a well-known negotiation over nuclear arms reduction. The delegations from the United States and the Soviet Union were at loggerheads. During a break, the two lead negotiators went for a walk during which they unearthed their personal as well as each nation’s deeper, shared interests in peace and security. This understanding enabled them to break the deadlock and move forward.

The same negotiation principles that can reduce nuclear stockpiles can be effectively applied even at the front lines in health care. For example, there is often pressure to change who does what when new technologies are deployed or initiatives are undertaken to lower costs. Consider the situation in a traditional orthopedic practice where a physician sees every patient who comes through the door. Is this really best for the patient, the practice, and the larger system?

Most patients who arrive at an orthopedic office suffer from straightforward conditions such as a simple, non-displaced fracture or a sprain. These can be adequately treated by a properly trained physician’s assistant (PA), and patients can typically be seen much more quickly by a PA than by a specialist. If outcome quality and patient satisfaction can be maintained and costs lowered, this should be an easy move to make. Such shifts in responsibility, however, are often resisted and the resulting conflict can be acrimonious. Why?

Both physicians and patients have come to expect to interact with each other. Doctors prize their clinical autonomy and their relationships with those they treat, and the fee-for-service model rewards them for taking care of patients themselves. Patients, meanwhile, want to be treated by an “M.D.” and often a board-certified specialist rather than their primary care physician (PCP). The PCPs value their relationships with the specialists in the network and focus on their gatekeeper role rather than stretching the scope of care they provide. Insurers want to control costs, of course, and they and others exert pressure to divert simple cases from high-cost specialists to less expensive physician’s assistants or other non-specialist care-givers. No one is happy with the resulting conflict: Orthopods fear losing their patients; patients are anxious about getting lesser care; PCPs worry that their relationships with specialists will erode; and insurers and administrators find the resistance by all parties frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive.

Now, imagine that the physicians in our orthopedic practice host an open house Walk in the Woods discussion that includes referring PCPs, patients, and representatives from insurers. Engaging in the four-step process, the parties would find that high outcome quality, patient satisfaction, and keeping care affordable are on everyone’s list of self-interests. Through the process, the orthopedists could educate both the PCPs and patients on when a specialist’s expertise is truly needed. Patients could articulate how they weigh the trade-off between waiting time and the provider they would see. The insurers could explain some of the cost implications of different options. One can envision the idea of physician’s assistants treating routine injuries emerging from the process as each party identifies the benefits that meet their combined and self-interests:  The orthopods may be freed up to see a greater number of more complex and interesting cases; the PAs are able to work to the level of their ability; the PCPs expand their relationships with more members of the orthopedic practice; the insurer reimburses less for uncomplicated treatments; and patients would get appropriate care, save time, and help keep premiums down.

The two aspects of this approach that can be extrapolated to myriad other conflicts are the use of a structured process and inclusion of all key decision-making stakeholders. The structured process minimizes the ego battles and tangential scuffles by keeping all parties focused on productively resolving the central issues. Depending on the number of parties and complexity of the negotiation a Walk can take from 10 minutes to 10 days or more.

The inclusion of all stakeholders is essential because people only truly embrace solutions that they help create. Anytime that one party tries to impose something on another, the natural inclination of the imposed upon party is to resist. A little time spent upfront engaging in joint problem solving saves many hours — and headaches — that come with a mandate.

facts & data points, healthcare, management and leadership, rapid learning health systems

Health management self-delusion stats…

 

  • Humans are not wired to seek contradictory perspectives.  Instead, we seek to reinforce what we already believe to be true.  No surprise, therefore, that 80.6% of healthcare leaders believe the quality of care at their hospital is better than at the “typical” hospital.  And only 1.2% believe their hospitals are below average in performance.  As a result, most leaders in health care are slow to react to their changing environment because they are convinced that they already outperform their peers.

[NOTE THIS RELATED OBSERVATION: 
We are also notoriously bad at evaluating the merit of our own ideas. Most people fall trap of anillusory superiority that causes them to overestimate their creative talent, just as in other domains of competence (e.g., 90% of drivers claim to be above average — a mathematical improbability). It is therefore clear that we cannot rely on people’s self-evaluation to determine whether their ideas are creative or not.
FROM: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/the-five-characteristics-of-successful-innovators/]

From: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/bringing-outside-innovations-into-health-care/

Bringing Outside Innovations into Health Care

by Mike Wagner  |   9:00 AM October 28, 2013

Spurred by government reforms and market expectations, healthcare leaders are being forced to reinvent their organizations. The model for healthcare is being flipped upside down — from decades of focusing on acute care episodes and encouraging utilization to a future where successful organizations are able to reduce utilization, manage population health, and activate patients in the consumption (and delivery) of their own care.

But, most organizations are likely to fail in this pursuit. History shows that 65% of transformation efforts yield no improvement while 20% of efforts result in worsened outcomes.  Even when there is improvement, performance usually returns to previous levels within a few years.

This failure is not for lack of effort — health systems are making massive investments in new infrastructure, technology, processes and managerial approaches designed to manage change, such as electronic health records, Six Sigma and Lean Management.  But, all of these efforts are dependent on people for both initial implementation and long term execution. The only organizations that will prosper in this environment of disruptive and massive change are those that build a resilient and adaptive culture in which staff members:

  • Welcome and seek change, rather than resist it;
  • Experiment and innovate, rather than maintain the status quo; and
  • Make hard decisions without relying on approval from senior leaders.

There is no simple or single approach to building such a culture. But in our experience helping hundreds of hospitals and health systems manage this transformation, we have found three disciplines that are essential to the effort:  Importing new knowledge, strategically deploying existing skills, and disseminating leadership across the ranks.  This and posts to follow will explore each of these disciplines.

Importing New Knowledge

While businesses in other sectors have become adept at bringing in ideas from outside their walls, health care has lagged behind. A key reason is that healthcare leaders are often blind when it comes to creatively responding to the industry’s challenges.  The source of this blindness is twofold.

  • Humans are not wired to seek contradictory perspectives.  Instead, we seek to reinforce what we already believe to be true.  No surprise, therefore, that 80.6% of healthcare leaders believe the quality of care at their hospital is better than at the “typical” hospital.  And only 1.2% believe their hospitals are below average in performance.  As a result, most leaders in health care are slow to react to their changing environment because they are convinced that they already outperform their peers.
  • The second blinder is more common in health care than in other sectors — leaders often actively isolate themselves from the outside world, believing that their industry’s challenges are entirely unique.  These leaders resist the idea of learning from exemplars outside of health care.  As a result, they are often ignorant of the managerial advances being made in other industries.

To respond to disruptive change, health care leaders need to first acknowledge their blindness and then actively overcome it by learning how other industries are addressing similar challenges. This requires developing creative approaches to finding new ideas from outside of healthcare. While this concept has been around for some time (pioneers like Virginia Mason started importing lean six-sigma practices into health care at least a decade ago) it is still not widely accepted and is rarely done as a matter of routine.

One hospital that has done this well is Memorial Hospital of South Bend, Indiana. They introduced the concept of the “Innovisit” — a routine and structured outreach that sends staff members to visit businesses in other industries.  Support from the top is critical to the success of such initiatives, as it has been at Memorial where president and CEO Phil Newbold has championed the program.

At Memorial, each Innovisit involves a cross-functional team of “Innovisitors” who have been specially recruited and prepared for these events.  Visits are carefully planned with the host organization and key questions are crafted in advance.  Upon their return, innovisitors share their observations during special conferences and educational sessions offered at Memorial’s own “Innovation Café” — a dedicated space that was remodeled to support creative thinking and sharing.  The “Innovation Café” itself is the result of an innovisit to a Whirlpool Corporation facility that included an Innovation Training Center.   

The development of Memorial’s Heart and Vascular building is another example of ideas inspired by innovisits. While on one such visit, the innovistor team learned of a design consultancy whose architectural approach seemed like a much better fit with Memorial’s needs than the approach in development. The fact that the planning process was well underway did not deter Memorial from tapping the design consultancy to experiment with new design principles that resulted in a more patient-friendly center, replete with a meditation garden.  Memorial further supports the organization’s innovation effort through its “Wizard School” that trains the entire staff — from parking lot attendants to C-suite executives — to think creatively.

Kaiser Permanente has sponsored similar excursions.  For example, during a tour of a flight school, Kaiser staff took note of the “sterile cockpit” concept — specific times during a flight when no conversations are allowed between pilots unless they are necessary for safely flying the plane.  This concept was adapted to create safer medication administration protocols that reduced interruptions and errors.

At Kaiser, spreading new ideas is a massive undertaking due to the size of the organization — more than 175,000 employees. To meet this challenge, Kaiser’s Innovation Consultancy — an internal consulting group — will routinely run pilot projects in order to test and prove a concept.  The Consultancy will then use the results of those pilot projects to encourage other departments to adopt new ideas and improvements as well: its input in developing the Nurse Knowledge Exchange is an example of that. Working with nurses and patients, and tapping new tracking software for data input, the Consultancy team helped develop a quick, reliable and efficient process for transferring patient information between nurses at a patient’s bedside during shift changes. The impact of the Nurse Knowledge Exchange in boosting the quality of the information exchange and enhancing patient care soon led to its deployment at all Kaiser hospitals. In effect, the Consultancy accelerates the adoption of new ideas by doing much of the legwork required to implement new practices across multiple locations: Line managers are not burdened with the effort and work required to share and spread ideas with others.  (Here’s more on the Consultancy’s approach.)

A leadership team that has been constantly bombarded with mind-stretching ideas from other organizations and disparate industries will possess a treasure trove of proven and practical ideas ready to be adapted and implemented.  Many of the challenges that healthcare leaders will soon face — collapsing prices (consider Blu-Ray players now selling for $49); disruptive technologies (digital photography supplanting film); fierce competition (iPhones stealing the market made by Blackberry); and entirely new business models (Netflix doing what Blockbuster could not) — have already been seen in other industries, and have given rise to adaptive new strategies. Health care leaders would be unwise to repeat the mistakes of others; they would be foolish to overlook strategies and solutions that have already been developed and proven effective elsewhere.

cool

Sleep drug development

Great story about the development of Merck’s novel action sleep drug…

From: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/09/131209fa_fact_parker?currentPage=all

The Big Sleep

A woman recently posted online a description of her Ambien experiences:

  • Ordered 3 pairs of saddle shoes from eBay
  • Sexted my best male friend who is married. I have a BF as well
  • Ordered $35.00 stylus off of amazon, I must have thought it said $3.00 or something
  • Played draw something w/my friend and drew penises and rainbows for every word
  • Tried to legally change my name on the computer

[…..]

Since the seventies, Stanford sleep scientists, led first by William Dement, had bred narcoleptic dogs. This was an achievement in itself. The animals suffered from extreme daytime sleepiness and had a propensity for mid-coital collapse: at moments of high emotion, the dogs, like narcoleptic humans, experienced sudden muscle weakness, or cataplexy. The first Stanford dog was a poodle named Monique. Later, there were other breeds; the Stanford colony, mostly Dobermans, had eighty dogs at its peak. Narcoleptic dogs gave birth to narcoleptic puppies; the disorder in canines has a single genetic cause. In 1999, after a decade-long search, a team led by Emmanuel Mignot, a researcher at Stanford, located the damaged gene, and reported that it encoded a receptor: the same one that had just been identified by the work done in California and Texas. Narcoleptic dogs lacked orexin receptors.

nutrition

Tart cherries to the rescue…!

  • adding “cherry tissue” to ground meatis less expensive than adding protein alone
  • reduces fat content
  • reduces carcinogens
  • improves juiciness
  • doesn’t add flavour

Source: http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Suppliers2/Supplier-of-tart-cherry-ground-meat-enhancer-eyes-retail-market/

“A low-fat burger tends to be drier or had ingredients in there that might not have been pleasing to public and the palate. Adding cherries to a lean ground meat give the consumer the better tasting, juiciness of a higher fat burger, but you don’t get that higher fat content,” claims Pleva International CEO Cindy Pleva-Weber.

Supplier of tart cherry ground meat enhancer eyes retail market

By Maggie Hennessy, 13-Dec-2013

Related topics: Fruit, vegetable, nut ingredients, Meat, fish and savory ingredients, Suppliers, Manufacturers

A longtime school foodservice supplier of meat enhancer is looking to get its flavorless, tart cherry-based blend—which it claims can increase product yield, extend shelf life, reduce fat content, lower cost and decrease the carcinogenic effect of cooking—into the meat processing market and ultimately on supermarket shelves.

“For the last 18 years, BLENDit has been in school foodservice in 14 states,” said David Mathia, president of Pleva International, which produces BLENDit, told FoodNavigator-USA. “I joined the company a year and a half ago to help change the strategy to selling ingredients to meat processors in the US. We’ve spent the last 12 months figuring out who to talk to and have been negotiating with several large retail providers—big box and grocery, as well as the processors themselves. Our strategy is to go after both.”

Fat reduction without losing juiciness

Pleva International’s proprietary BLENDit ingredient incorporates fully ripe IQF tart cherries, oat fiber for binding and spices, though the firm declined to specify the exact ratio of BLENDit to meat. It appears on ingredient labels as “cherries”, “oat fiber” and “spices”.

“Ingredient lists run from 10% to 26% of the cherry itself—and that’s the biggest factor—depending on the proprietary formula desire by the client,” Mathia said. “Unlike a powder or concentrate that’s 1 to 1.5% yield, whatever we add gives bulk to the product.”

Materials from the company claim that BLENDit added to beef that is 85% lean will take the beef to 86 ¾% lean.

“Typically, having a product that’s healthy, juicy and tastes good usually couldn’t be said in the same sentence,”said Pleva CEO Cindy Pleva-Weber. “A low-fat burger tended to be drier or had ingredients in there that might not have been pleasing to public and the palate. On the other hand, cherries added to a lean ground meat give the consumer the better tasting, juiciness of a higher fat burger, but you don’t get that higher fat content,” she claimed.

Adding cherries to the ground meat mixture is also less expensive than using protein alone, which Pleva-Weber claims can result in “notable” cost savings to manufacturers over time.

This isn’t the first time fruit has been incorporated into burgers for a reduced fat option. A few years ago, the trend hit big in the higher-end dining segment, with Donald Trump’s Sixteen hotel restaurant in Chicago, the Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, FL, and The Cherry Hut in Beulah, MI,  incorporating blueberries, cherries, cranberries and apple chunks into their burgers for added juiciness and health benefits that even caught Oprah’s attention in a 2009 show. 
But unlike those incorporations, BLENDit’s cherries aren’t meant to be seen or tasted.

“It’s a beautiful thing that one ingredient, the tart cherry, can solve a lot of issues and answer a lot of problems for a vast array of people. Plus, it doesn’t impart a flavor, so you don’t have that issue,” Pleva-Weber said.“We’ve incorporated the cherries into chicken, turkey, pork, bison, venison, even salami with good results. With the ground white meat chicken you’d think you would see the cherries, but you do not.”

If clients do want a flavor profile introduced, “we have several—probably 70 or more that they can choose from,”Mathia added.

Growing number of studies on tart cherry benefits

Recently published research suggests that tart cherries can support healthy imflammatory response, slow lipid peroxidation and increase antioxidant capacity in the blood, as well as boost exercise recovery and improve sleep quality and duration .

Pleva also points to an almost 20-year-old study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry by Michigan State University researchers, which purported that the antioxidant properties of tart cherries can keep pre-cooked meat from having a “warmed-over” flavor—characteristic of fast-onset rancidity in cooked, refrigerated meat—when reheated, as well as extend shelf life in fresh proteins.

“Oxidation was significantly influenced by the addition of tissue from two varieties of tart cherries, Montmorency and Balaton,” the authors wrote. “Thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances values for raw and cooked ground beef patties containing cherry tissue were significantly smaller than those for the control beef patties. Cholesterol oxidation was also influenced by the presence of cherry tissue. After 4 days of refrigerated storage, cholesterol oxides represented 5.2% of the total cholesterol content of cooked control beef patties and 2.0 and 1.7% of the total cholesterol in patties containing Montmorency and Balaton cherry tissue, respectively. The formation of mutagenic/carcinogenic HAAs (heterocyclic aromatic amines) during frying of the patties was inhibited by components in the cherry tissue.

“The results clearly demonstrate that cherry tissue effectively inhibits the development of oxidation and rancidity in both raw and cooked ground beef patties during storage. The antioxidant mechanism of cherry tissue is not completely understood, but recent studies indicate that anthocyanin components have significant antioxidant activity.”

Mathia noted that research on the health benefits of tart cherries is ongoing, more recently at Central Michigan University, adding that BLENDit may offer a “clean label, cost saving” solution for meat processors and ultimately the end consumer.

“The thing to remember is, nature provided us this solution without taking away whatever flavor profile client is trying to achieve, that is just going to make it juicier and healthier with the added benefit of antioxidants,” he claimed.

healthy habits, nutrition

NEJM: Daily small amounts of nuts leads to reduction in all cause mortality

  • 20% reduction in 30-year all cause mortality
  • portion size critical given energy density
  • lower body weight
  • 11% cancer reduction
  • 29% heart disease reduction
  • from the Nurses’ Health Study

Eating nuts daily tied to lower overall death rate: Harvard study

By Maggie Hennessy, 26-Nov-2013

Related topics: Fruit, vegetable, nut ingredients, Suppliers, R&D, Health & Wellness, Markets, Manufacturers

People who ate a daily handful of nuts were 20% less likely to die from any cause over a 30-year period than those who didn’t, according to the largest study of its kind by scientists from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Bringham & Women’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health.

The report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week, also showed that those who ate nuts daily also weighed less.

“I think the results are very exciting,” said Peter Pribis, assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics at the University of New Mexico, applauding the “extensive adjustments” made by the researchers during the study in order to best represent a long-term diet and minimize individual variations.

“The message is getting slowly through that nuts are very healthy and something we should eat in small amounts every day. And it’s very easy to do. We talk about exercise, and it can be hard for a lot of people to commit to doing it. But eating nuts takes a few seconds. And look at the huge benefits this group of food can do for us health wise.”

For the study, the researchers analyzed nut consumption with total and cause-specific mortality among 76,464 women in the Nurses’ Health Study and 42,498 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Consumption of a handful of nuts—which included both groundnuts such as peanuts and tree nuts including almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios and walnuts—was inversely associated with total mortality in both men and women, independent of other predictors for death.

In this case, a “handful” translated to 1 ounce or three tablespoons, seven or more times per week. This shouldn’t be hard to achieve, according to the NPD Group, which recently found that 77% of U.S. households have nuts or seeds on-hand and 19% of individuals eat nuts at least once in a two-week period.

In addition, the study found that there were significant inverse associations for deaths due to cancer (11% reduction), heart disease (29% reduction) and respiratory disease. And those who regularly ate nuts also tended to have a healthy lifestyle, such as smoking less and exercising more.

Nuts contain an optimal lipid profile, but portion size is important

“One truth is that all nuts contain a very optimal lipid profile,” Dr. Pribis noted. “They have done careful studies to examine the weight issue. Looking at the Nurse’s Health Study, when we age, we tend to gain weight. Those people who ate nuts tended to gain less.”

Indeed, Jenny Heap, MS, RD, manager of global health and nutrition communications at the Almond Board of California, said that the study “adds to the strong body of evidence showing that eating tree nuts regularly is part of a healthy lifestyle.” She also pointed to recent research published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which showed that participants eating 1.5 ounces of dry-roasted, lightly salted almonds every day experienced reduced hunger and improved dietary vitamin E and monounsaturated fat intake without increasing body weight.

But portion size is key, said Dr. Pribis. “Nuts are very energy dense, so they can curb hunger. But also in realizing that they’re so energy dense, if you exceed two servings per day, then you might start to gain weight. It’s about balance.”

This could also have implications as food manufacturers may look to incorporate more nuts into formulations on the heels of such strong positive results. 
“It definitely has implications for food manufacturers,” Dr. Pribis noted. “I am afraid we’ll see some of them take junk food and add nuts to it and try to sell it like it’s ‘healthier’. On the other hand, maybe we’ll see more items like cereal with nuts incorporated. But again, consumers would need to eat less of it to get the benefits”—a variable that could prove difficult for manufacturers to control.

Source: New England Journal of Medicine 
“Association of Nut Consumption with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality”
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1307352
Authors: Ying Bao, M.D., Sc.D., Jiali Han, Ph.D., Frank B. Hu, M.D., Ph.D., Edward L. Giovannucci, M.D., Sc.D., Meir J. Stampfer, M.D., Dr.P.H., Walter C. Willett, M.D., Dr.P.H., and Charles S. Fuchs, M.D., M.P.H.