HA! I certainly saw this one coming:

Antioxidants 'could raise risk of cancer'. How pesky for the health freaks who have been gobbling them up!

TAKING antioxidant supplements won't reduce cancer risk, and could raise the risk in smokers, according to a new analysis of a dozen studies of more than 100,000 patients. Smokers who took beta carotene supplements could be increasing their risk of smoking-related cancer and death, the researchers said.

While antioxidants have been touted for cancer prevention, different antioxidants have different effects, which may also vary depending on the part of the body involved, Dr Aditya Bardia of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and colleagues noted in their report.

The researchers looked at 12 trials that compared antioxidant supplements with placebo on cancer incidence and mortality. They found that overall, antioxidant supplements didn't reduce the risk of cancer. When they looked separately at beta carotene, they found the nutrient actually increased cancer risk by 10 per cent among smokers. There was also a trend toward a greater risk of dying from cancer with beta carotene supplementation.

Selenium supplements reduced cancer risk by 23 per cent among men, the researchers found, but had no effect on women. While vitamin E had no anti-cancer effect overall, Dr Bardia and colleagues did find that supplementation with the nutrient was tied to a 13 per cent lower prostate cancer risk.

A large study looking at vitamin E supplementation for prostate cancer is underway, the researchers noted. While future studies of beta carotene and vitamin E for cancer prevention were "very unlikely" to show effectiveness, such studies of selenium "could be warranted", the researchers said.

Source




Eating chocolate could give you weaker bones

Chocolate is good for you/bad for you, good for you/bad for you, good for you/bad for you. Will the changes of tack never end? Probably not

Eating lots of chocolate could lead to weaker bones and a greater chance of suffering a fracture, according to a study. Women who ate chocolate every day were found to have less dense bones than women who ate it less than once a week, Australian scientists said. The study comes less than a month after The Lancet journal warned against viewing chocolate as a health food because the antioxidants called flavanols are taken out because they taste bitter

According to the new study, women who ate chocolate daily had an overall bone density 3.1 per cent lower than those who consumed it less than once a week. Critics said the difference was extremely small, and it was likely healthy women ate a generally better diet and exercised more.

Source






Maccas defeats the haters

The self-elected elite despise Maccas but the people know a good deal



The reinvented fast-food chain McDonald's has bounced back from the Super Size Me controversy to serve a record number of Australians in the past year. An average of 1.2million Australians [out of a total population of 20 million] a day walked through the golden arches in 2007. The franchise, which has 762 restaurants across the nation, notched double-digit growth over the calendar year, a McDonald's Australia spokeswoman said. But only 15percent of sales were its healthy eating options such as salads and fruit juices. The top seller was the cheeseburger.

"Last year was simply our best year ever," Helen Farquhar, McDonald's director of marketing and senior vice-president, said. The fast-food giant has prevailed despite the negative publicity generated by Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary Super Size Me, which highlighted the filmmaker's 11-kilogram weight gain and associated health problems after he ate nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. "There's no doubt that there was huge media coverage given to Super Size Me but it applied more to the US than here," Ms Farquhar said.

"The claims made in that film were untrue in Australia because we were already on a journey of reinvention and had already expanded our menu . and put nutritional labelling on our products when that [film] came out in Australia."

A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development revealed last year that Australia had the fifth highest adult obesity rate behind the US, Mexico, Britain and Greece. Dr Linda Schachter, a physician at The Centre for Bariatric Surgery in Victoria, which specialises in the surgical treatment of obesity, said it was "incredibly disappointing" to hear that more people than ever were eating McDonald's. Dr Schachter said while some people might choose healthier options at McDonald's, the fact was many still ordered fries, which were high in fat. "Society is getting more overweight and obese and it's disappointing to think that nearly 5percent of Australians are eating McDonald's every day," she said.

Ms Farquhar said the reason for strong business growth was because McDonald's was "not just about burgers and fries any more. "We've broadened our appeal and are responding to consumers who are demanding high-quality products," she said. The $2.5 billion company has been transformed over the past six years after a decade of declining sales. Its menu now features lighter options such as salads and sandwich wraps and food is cooked in an oil blend that has 85percent less trans fatty acids. Since 2006 McDonald's has had "percentage daily intake" information on its packaging, so that customers can see the energy content and nutrients in its food.

Andrew Koch, director of independent Sydney agency The Marketing Factor, said McDonald's had repositioned itself in the fast-food market by addressing the issues of fatty food and obesity. "Their advertising used to be aimed at kids, whereas now they offer a broader range of products and are bringing the whole family in. They've convinced the parents too now," he said.

Susie Burrell, an obesity dietitian at Westmead Children's Hospital said, "At the end of the day, McDonald's is a fast-food restaurant." She said while there were healthier options available, children were not going to go to McDonald's and choose a deli choice option over a cheeseburger. But Ms Farquhar said: "We actually sell more salads than any other [fast-food] restaurant or convenience store across the country."

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

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