May 16, 2012, The Guardian, Denis Campbell
“Fat taxes” would have to increase the price of unhealthy food and drinks by as much as 20% in order to cut consumption by enough to reduce obesity and other diet-related diseases, experts have said. Such levies should be accompanied by subsidies on healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables to help encourage a significant shift in dietary habits, according to research published in the British Medical Journal.
Academics led by Dr Oliver Mytton and Dr Mike Rayner of the Department of Public Health at Oxford University examined the evidence from around the world for what they call health-related food taxes. Denmark has brought in a “fat tax”, Hungary a “junk food tax” and France a tax on all sweetened drinks. Peru intends to add levies to junk food and Ireland may also introduce such taxes. David Cameron last October said the UK should considering following suit.
While it is unclear how such taxes could be brought in and enforced, they could help ensure that poor diet plays less of a role in future in a range of illnesses such as heart disease, type two diabetes and tooth decay, as well as obesity.
Although the less well-off are affected more by health-related food taxes, they may also ultimately benefit because “progressive health gains are expected because poor people consume less healthy food and have a higher incidence of most diet-related diseases, notably cardiovascular disease”, the authors say…
Read the rest of the article via ‘Fat tax’ on unhealthy food must raise prices by 20% to have effect, says study | Society | The Guardian.
May 16, 2012, Bloomberg news, Elizabeth Lopatto
Higher levels of education in the U.S. correlate with longer life expectancy and less obesity, according to the government’s annual health report.
Obesity, which leads to chronic ailments such as diabetes and heart disease, was twice as high among boys and three times as high for girls in families whose head of household lacked a degree compared with more educated households. The report, which included a special feature on socioeconomic status and health, was released today by the National Center for Health Statistics.
Health disparities persist even in the face of efforts to lower them, Amy Bernstein, a health services researcher and lead study author, said in a telephone interview. The Department of Health and Human Services has created programs to help reduce the illness inequalities that appear for certain racial and economic groups. Today’s report suggests the programs haven’t been successful, she said.
“There are huge differences by education,” Bernstein said. “I was surprised to see things haven’t improved.”
As of 2006, a 25-year-old man without a college degree lived 9.3 fewer years than a peer with a bachelor’s degree or higher; for women, the less-educated lived 8.6 fewer years, according to the report. The life expectancy gap by education widened by 1.9 years for men and 2.8 years for women from 1996 to 2006, the report said…
Read the rest of this article via Health of U.S. Tied to Education Gap, Researchers Report – Bloomberg.
May 16, 2012, Voice of America, Lisa Schlein
GENEVA – The World Health Organization reports almost two-thirds of all global deaths are due to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other non-communicable diseases. The World Health Statistics Report provides information on the state of health in 194 countries.
Non-communicable diseases are not just a problem of wealthy countries. The World Health Organization says they mainly affect people in poorer countries, of whom half die before they reach the age of 70. Cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of death, followed by cancers.
Data from 194 countries show one in three adults worldwide has elevated blood pressure, a condition that causes around half of all deaths from stroke and heart disease. In many African countries, it notes, as much as half the adult population has high blood pressure.
The World Health Organization says most of these people remain undiagnosed. As a consequence, they do not get treated with low-cost medications that could prevent disability or premature death from heart disease and stroke.
WHO Department of Health Statistics Director Ties Boerma said preventable risk factors that cause chronic disease are common across the world…
Read the rest of the article via Non-Communicable Diseases Cause Most Deaths Worldwide.
May 15, 2012, Harvard School of Public Health
In 2008, three different studies found that certain genetic variants associated with nicotine dependence and smoking were also associated with lung cancer. The findings raised a question: Were the variants linked with lung cancer only through their association with smoking, a known cause of lung cancer? Or were the variants associated with lung cancer through some other pathway, independent of smoking behavior?
Now, HSPH researchers have found strong evidence suggesting that the variants are directly associated with lung cancer, independent of their effects on increasing smoking.
Even so, for people who have the variants, smoking could potentially be more lethal than for those who don’t have them.
“These genetic variants on their own can lead to increased risk of lung cancer,” said Tyler VanderWeele, associate professor of epidemiology. “What we think is going on is that if you have the variants, you smoke just a little bit more—about one cigarette more per day—but for each cigarette you smoke, you extract more nicotine and tobacco-related carcinogens. Another way of saying this is that carriers of the higher risk variant smoke more intensely and are exposed to more nicotine and toxins than those who don’t carry the variant.”
The researchers, including colleagues from HSPH and elsewhere, used new methodology and data from four case-control studies to conduct their meta-analysis, which was published May 15, 2012 in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
In smokers, about one more cigarette smoked per day is not enough to have a substantial effect on lung cancer risk, VanderWeele said. But the increased levels of nicotine and toxin extraction associated with the variants are indeed significant. “If you have the variants, smoking is even worse for you,” he said. “For the same number of cigarettes smoked, these high-risk individuals are at even higher risk.”
Roughly 56% of people have one or two copies of the smoking- and lung cancer-associated variants, VanderWeele said. Thirteen percent of people have two of them, 43% have one, and the rest don’t have any. The risk of lung cancer is about 30% higher with one copy of the variant and about 70% higher with two copies, VanderWeele said.
Interestingly, geneticist and statistician Ronald Fisher had speculated in the late 1950s that there may be a common genetic cause of both smoking and lung cancer. VanderWeele noted that the new study shows that Fisher was partially correct. While there indeed appears to be a common genetic cause of both smoking and lung cancer—independent of each other—the sizes of the effects on both “are much too small to try to explain away the causal effect of smoking itself on lung cancer,” the authors write.
The new information about the genetic variants could prove useful in the future, said VanderWeele. As genetic testing becomes more prevalent, people who have the variants could be warned that it’s even more important for them to avoid smoking than for others.
May 17, 2012, Harvard School of Public Health
Over the last few decades numerous studies have shown negative states, such as depression, anger, anxiety, and hostility, to be detrimental to cardiovascular health. Less is known about how positive psychological characteristics are related to heart health. In the first and largest systematic review on this topic to date, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that positive psychological well-being appears to reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular events.
The study was published online April 17, 2012 in Psychological Bulletin.
The American Heart Association reports more than 2,200 Americans die of cardiovascular disease (CVD) each day, an average of one death every 39 seconds. Stroke accounts for about one of every 18 U.S. deaths.
“The absence of the negative is not the same thing as the presence of the positive. We found that factors such as optimism, life satisfaction, and happiness are associated with reduced risk of CVD regardless of such factors as a person’s age, socioeconomic status, smoking status, or body weight,” said lead author Julia Boehm, research fellow in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health at HSPH. “For example, the most optimistic individuals had an approximately 50% reduced risk of experiencing an initial cardiovascular event compared to their less optimistic peers,” she said.
In a review of more than 200 studies published in two major scientific databases, Boehm and senior author Laura Kubzansky, associate professor of society, human development, and health at HSPH, found there are psychological assets, like optimism and positive emotion, that afford protection against cardiovascular disease. It also appears that these factors slow the progression of disease.
To further understand how psychological well-being and CVD might be related, Boehm and Kubzansky also investigated well-being’s association with cardiovascular-related health behaviors and biological markers. They found that individuals with a sense of well-being engaged in healthier behaviors such as exercising, eating a balanced diet, and getting sufficient sleep. In addition, greater well-being was related to better biological function, such as lower blood pressure, healthier lipid (blood fat) profiles, and normal body weight.
If future research continues to indicate that higher levels of satisfaction, optimism, and happiness come before cardiovascular health, this has strong implications for the design of prevention and intervention strategies. “These findings suggest that an emphasis on bolstering psychological strengths rather than simply mitigating psychological deficits may improve cardiovascular health,” Kuzbansky said.
The study was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio through the grant “Exploring Concepts of Positive Health.”
via Positive Feelings May Help Protect Cardiovascular Health – April 17, 2012 -2012 Releases – Press Releases – Harvard School of Public Health.
HDL, the "tow truck" that removes cholesterol from the arteries?
May 16, 2012, The New York Times, Gina Kolata
The name alone sounds so encouraging: HDL, the “good cholesterol.” The more of it in your blood, the lower your risk of heart disease. So bringing up HDL levels has got to be good for health.
Or so the theory went.
Now, a new study that makes use of powerful databases of genetic information has found that raising HDL levels may not make any difference to heart disease risk. People who inherit genes that give them naturally higher HDL levels throughout life have no less heart disease than those who inherit genes that give them slightly lower levels. If HDL were protective, those with genes causing higher levels should have had less heart disease.
“We found absolutely no association between the HDL-boosting variant and risk for heart disease,” Dr. Kathiresan said. “That was very surprising to us.”
Researchers not associated with the study, published online Wednesday in The Lancet, found the results compelling and disturbing. Companies are actively developing and testing drugs that raise HDL, although three recent studies of such treatments have failed. And patients with low HDL levels are often told to try to raise them by exercising or dieting or even by taking niacin, which raised HDL but failed to lower heart disease risk in a recent clinical trial.
“I’d say the HDL hypothesis is on the ropes right now,” said Dr. James A. de Lemos, a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who was not involved in the study.
Dr. Michael Lauer, director of the division of cardiovascular sciences at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, agreed.
“The current study tells us that when it comes to HDL we should seriously consider going back to the drawing board, in this case meaning back to the laboratory,” said Dr. Lauer, who also was not connected to the research. “We need to encourage basic laboratory scientists to figure out where HDL fits in the puzzle — just what exactly is it a marker for.”
But Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, who is helping conduct studies of HDL-raising drugs, said he remained hopeful. HDL is complex, he said, and it is possible that some types of HDL molecules might in fact protect against heart disease.
“I am an optimist,” Dr. Nissen said.
The study’s authors emphasize that they are not questioning the well-documented finding that higher HDL levels are associated with lower heart disease risk. But the relationship may not be causative. Many assumed it was because the association was so strong and consistent. Researchers also had a hypothesis to explain how HDL might work. From studies with mice and with cells grown in the laboratory, they proposed that HDL ferried cholesterol out of arteries where it did not belong.
Now it seems that instead of directly reducing heart disease risk, high HDL levels may be a sign that something else is going on that makes heart disease less likely. To investigate the relationship between HDL and cardiovascular risk, the researchers, led by Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, director of preventive cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a geneticist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, used a method known as Mendelian randomization. It is a study design that has recently become feasible with the advent of quick and lower-cost genetic analyses.
HDL, not the holy grail anymore?
The idea is that people inherit any of a wide variety of genetic variations that determine how much HDL they produce. The result is that people are naturally and randomly assigned by these variations in their inherited genes to make more, or less, HDL, throughout their lives. If HDL reduces the risk of heart disease, then those who make more should be at lower risk.
For purposes of comparison, the researchers also examined inherited variations in 13 genes that determine levels of LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol. It is well known and widely accepted that lowering LDL levels by any means — diet and exercise, statin drugs — reduces risk. Clinical trials with statins established with certainty that reducing LDL levels is protective. So, the researchers asked, did people who inherited gene variations that affected their LDL levels, have correspondingly higher or lower heart disease risk?
The study found, as expected, that gene variations that raise LDL increase risk and those that lower LDL decrease risk. The gene effects often were tiny, altering LDL levels by only a few percent. But the data, involving tens of thousands of people, clearly showed effects on risk.
“That speaks to how powerful LDL is,” Dr. Kathiresan said.
But the HDL story was very different. First the investigators looked at variations in a well-known gene, endothelial lipase, that affects only HDL. About 2.6 percent of the population has a variation in that gene that raises their HDL levels by about 6 points. The investigators looked at 116,000 people, asking if they had the variant and if those who carried the HDL-raising variant had lower risk for heart disease.
“We found absolutely no association between the HDL-boosting variant and risk for heart disease,” Dr. Kathiresan said. “That was very surprising to us.”
via HDL ‘Good Cholesterol’ Found Not to Cut Heart Risk – NYTimes.com.
May 16, 2012, AP/NYDaily News
Is it really more expensive to eat healthy?
An Agriculture Department study released Wednesday found that most fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods cost less than foods high in fat, sugar and salt.
That counters a common perception among some consumers that it’s cheaper to eat junk food than a nutritionally balanced meal.
The government says it all depends on how you measure the price. If you compare the price per calorie – as some previous researchers have done – then higher-calorie pastries and processed snacks might seem like a bargain compared with fruits and vegetables.
But comparing the cost of foods by weight or portion size shows that grains, vegetables, fruit and dairy foods are less expensive than most meats or foods high in saturated fat, added sugars or salt.
That means bananas, carrots, lettuce and pinto beans are all less expensive per portion than French fries, soft drinks, ice cream or ground beef.
“Using price per calorie doesn’t tell you how much food you’re going to get or how full you are going to feel,” said Andrea Carlson, scientist at the USDA’s Economic Research Service and an author of the study.
For example, eating a chocolate glazed donut with 240 calories might not satiate you but a banana with 105 calories just might.
In the comparisons, the USDA researchers used national average prices from Nielsen Homescan data, which surveyed a panel of households that recorded all food purchases over a year from retail outlets.
The cost of eating healthy foods has been the subject of growing debate as experts warn Americans about the dangers of obesity. More than a third of U.S. adults are obese, according to the government, and researchers expect that number to grow to 42 percent by 2030.
“Cheap food that provides few nutrients may actually be `expensive’ for the consumer from a nutritional economy perspective, whereas food with a higher retail price that provides large amounts of nutrients may actually be quite cheap,” the study said…
Read the rest of the article via Junk food is more expensive than healthy food: study, says Dept. of Agriculture study – NY Daily News.
May 16, 2012, Los Angeles Times, Mary MacVean
Plenty of restaurants have been advertising their efforts to offer healthful choices, and it’s possible to eat carefully just about anywhere. But researchers say nearly all the entrees they reviewed at 245 U.S. chains fail to meet federal guidelines.
Think about it, and you can figure out some likely culprits: burgers with cheese, bacon and sauce; pastas with four cheeses and sausages; outsize servings of meat; salads covered in fatty, salty dressings.
For a study published online in the journal Public Health Nutrition, researchers looked at the nutritional content of 30,923 menu items, including those from children’s menus, from 245 brands of restaurants. They found that 96% of them failed to meet recommendations for the combination of calories, sodium, fat and saturated fat set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The restaurants included fast-food, buffet, takeout, family style and upscale restaurants, said Helen Wu, one of the authors and an assistant policy analyst at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica. The study was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The majority of the entrees did not exceed 667 calories – one-third of the calories the USDA estimates the average adult needs each day, said Wu and Roland Sturm, senior economist at Rand. They looked at restaurants’ websites from February to May 2010.
But they found that few of the entrees met recommended limits when considering calories, sodium, saturated fat, and fat combined.
“Many items may appear healthy based on calories, but actually can be very unhealthy when you consider other important nutrition criteria,” Wu said.
The sodium count often put a restaurant over the limit. (The USDA’s daily recommended limit for most adults is 2,300 milligrams.)
The entrees in family style restaurants — places such as Pizza Hut, Red Lobster and Denny’s — had higher levels of the items studied than fast-food restaurants: 271 more calories on average, and 16 grams more fat and 435 mg more sodium, Wu said.
Serving size counts, too.
Pizza restaurants often listed an entrée as one slice — good luck with that. Or a single piece of fried chicken. Really? “This could end up being very confusing for consumers,” Wu said in a telephone interview.
And of course, the diner determines the size of a meal from buffet restaurants. “People don’t typically go to buffets to have a light meal,” she said…
Read the rest of the article via Chain restaurants dont meet U.S. nutrition guidelines, study says – latimes.com.
May 9, 2012, BBC News, Michelle Roberts
One in six cancers – two million a year globally – are caused by largely treatable or preventable infections, new estimates suggest.
The Lancet Oncology review, which looked at incidence rates for 27 cancers in 184 countries, found four main infections are responsible.
These four – human papillomaviruses, Helicobacter pylori and hepatitis B and C viruses – account for 1.9m cases of cervical, gut and liver cancers.
Most cases are in the developing world.
The team from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France says more efforts are needed to tackle these avoidable cases and recognise cancer as a communicable disease.
‘Preventable’
The proportion of cancers related to infection is about three times higher in parts of the developing world, such as east Asia, than in developed countries like the UK – 22.9% versus 7.4%, respectively.
Nearly a third of cases occur in people younger than 50 years.
Among women, cancer of the cervix accounted for about half of the infection-related cancers. In men, more than 80% were liver and gastric cancers.
Drs Catherine de Martel and Martyn Plummer, who led the research, said: “Infections with certain viruses, bacteria, and parasites are some of the biggest and preventable causes of cancer worldwide
“Application of existing public-health methods for infection prevention, such as vaccination, safer injection practice, or antimicrobial treatments, could have a substantial effect on the future burden of cancer worldwide.”
Vaccines are available to protect against human papillomavirus (HPV) – which is linked to cancer of the cervix – and hepatitis B virus – an established cause of liver cancer…
Read the rest of the article via BBC News – ‘One in six cancers worldwide are caused by infection’.
May 10, 2012, South Coast Today, Anika Clark
Modern kids are growing up in a world of soaring childhood obesity where soda in public school vending machines has become a four-letter word.
But new state regulations to de-whoopie pie school bake sales and de-candy class celebrations put the icing on the cake.
“I actually got quite a few phone calls from my district from organizations that were very upset about this — obviously, football, boosters, folks who raise money through bake sales,” said Rep. Bradford Hill, R-Ipswich, who introduced a measure in the House to keep bake sales, concession stands and classroom parties under school districts’ control.
“I think a lot of people felt the (Department of Public Health) overstepped its boundaries.”
The new standards, most of which are set to go into effect in August, grew out of a school nutrition act the Legislature passed in 2010. Staff from DPH developed them in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and other partners, according to DPH spokesman John Jacob.
Passed by the state’s Public Health Council, the standards apply to on-campus “competitive” foods and drinks — items ranging from cafeteria sales and snack bars to concession stands, booster sales and fundraisers. Except for vending machines, which must always follow the rules, the regulations apply to any food or beverage given to students from 30 minutes before school to 30 minutes after.
At East Fairhaven Elementary School, birthdays used to be marked with parent-provided cupcakes, according to Principal Geraldine Lucas.
“You can imagine a class of 22 would have at least 22 of those celebrations in a year’s time,” she said, adding that holiday shindigs likewise tended to involve food. “This year, we took a proactive approach because we knew this law was coming, and we decided that we were not going to do birthday celebrations” with food.
The new standards don’t expressly put the kibosh on food at festivities but ban artificial sweeteners and set limits on calories (200 per item), sugar, sodium and fat…
read the rest of the article via Oh fudge! State nutritional standards could take the sweets out of school | SouthCoastToday.com.