June 23, 2011, Bloomberg News, Oliver Renick
Newly diagnosed cancer cases cost the global economy $300 billion in 2010, as illnesses once believed to be largely confined to wealthier countries took hold in developing nations, a Harvard University economist said.
Tobacco use, alcohol intake, obesity and decreased physical activity have grown in poorer countries, causing the rise of cancer and diabetes, said David E. Bloom, professor of economics and demography at Harvard’s School of Public Health in Boston. Bloom and other researchers held a briefing today in advance of the United Nations …

June 21, 2011, Press release, Harvard School of Public Health
A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and University of California, San Francisco, researchers suggests that men with prostate cancer who smoke increase their risk of prostate cancer recurrence and of dying from the disease. A link also was found between smoking at the time of prostate cancer diagnosis and aggressive prostate cancer, overall mortality (death) and cardiovascular disease mortality.
“In our study, we found similar results for both prostate cancer recurrence and prostate cancer mortality,” said Stacey Kenfield, …

Associated Press, December 1, 2010
Lugging around a few extra pounds? One of the largest studies to look at health and weight finds that you don’t have to be obese to raise your risk of premature death. Merely being overweight carries some risk, too.
Go to the BMI-calculator to see if you’re overweight.
Obesity increases the risk of death from heart disease, stroke and certain cancers. But whether being merely overweight contributes to an early death as well has been uncertain and controversial. Some research has suggested being a little pudgy has …

Food and Health News, November 22, 2010
Eating five portions of fruit and vegetables per day is one of the means that experts most frequently recommend for preventing cancer. Now, the European EPIC study carried out by researchers from 10 countries has shown that, in the case of lung cancer, the important thing is not just the quantity but also the variety of fruit consumed, which can reduce the risk by up to 23%.
“This research looks more deeply into the relationship between diet and lung cancer”, María José Sánchez Pérez, …

The New York Times, Duff Wilson, November 13, 2010
As sales to developing nations become ever more important to giant tobacco companies, they are stepping up efforts around the world to fight tough restrictions on the marketing of cigarettes.
Companies like Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco are contesting limits on ads in Britain, bigger health warnings in South America and higher cigarette taxes in the Philippines and Mexico. They are also spending billions on lobbying and marketing campaigns in Africa and Asia, and in one case provided undisclosed financing for …

Food and Health News, November 13, 2010
In the second paper in The Lancet Series on Chronic Disease and Development, experts show that in the UK everyone eating a healthy diet would deliver big health effects with minimal knock-on effects to domestic agriculture and trade. But in a middle-income country like Brazil, it’s a different story. There, healthier eating (both in Brazil or the UK) could have a major impact on agriculture, trade, and, by definition, jobs. The second paper is by Professor Richard Smith, London School of Hygiene and Tropical …

Food and Health News, November 13, 2010

In a Comment linked to the Series, federations representing the four priority chronic diseases (cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes) say that “If governments and aid agencies continue to ignore this threat, we will sleepwalk into a future in which healthy people will be in a minority, obese and unhealthy children die before their parents, and economic development and already vulnerable health systems are overwhelmed. Non-communicable diseases have no borders or boundaries—they are the world’s number one killer and devastate the bottom …

The New York Times, November 10, 2010
Federal drug regulators unveiled 36 proposed warning labels for cigarette packages on Wednesday, including some that are striking pictures of smoking’s effects.
Designed to cover half of a pack’s surface area, the new labels are intended to spur smokers to quit by providing graphic reminders of tobacco’s dangers. The labels are required under a law passed last year that gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products for the first time.
The proposed labels include pictures of a man smoking from a …

Food and Health News, November 6, 2010
Older Americans are less healthy than their English counterparts, but they live as long or even longer than their English peers, according to a new study by researchers from the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London.
Researchers found that while Americans aged 55 to 64 have higher rates of chronic diseases than their peers in England, they died at about the same rate. And Americans age 65 and older — while still sicker than their English peers — had a lower …

AFP, Yannick Pasquet, October 13, 2010
Chronic illnesses like obesity and diabetes, generally seen as “Western”, are making worryingly rapid inroads in the developing world, health experts warned at a meeting in Berlin this week.

Around 80 percent of new cases of cancers, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases are now being recorded not in the rich West, but in poorer parts of the globe, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) figures.
[Image by Sophie van Schouwen]
The explosion is a “consequence of importing lifestyles from Western countries,” Francis Collins, head of the US-based National Institutes …