'Cancer chemical' in soy sauce

What utter nonsense! The Japanese drink gallons of the stuff (Go Kikkoman!) and are exceptionally long-lived

AUSTRALIANS should try to limit their exposure to a "probably" cancer-causing chemical found in many common foods including soy sauce, the food regulator has urged. Food Standards Australia New Zealand said ethyl carbamate (EC) can occur naturally in foods including breads, yoghurt and alcohol that undergo fermentation during processing or storage.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer last year upgraded the risk of EC from "possibly'' carcinogenic to humans to "probably'' carcinogenic. "This knowledge suggests that limiting the consumption of some foods and responsible drinking will reduce EC intake, which would appear advisable in the light of emerging international knowledge about the chemical,'' FSANZ said today.

But the regulator said its own studies on the chemical showed it was not as great problem in Australia as some other countries. The agency last year tested food and alcohol sourced from Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia to measure the EC levels, and thereby estimate dietary exposure and potential risk to Australians' health. Among the 225 food samples tested, the chemical was found only in soy sauce. "Very low levels'' were found in 13 of the 30 types of alcoholic beverages tested, with sake, sherry and port returning the highest readings.

"When compared to overseas studies, EC levels in Australia were lower than those reported in Danish and UK surveys,'' FSANZ said. "The risk to health and safety for Australians from exposure to EC through consumption of food is therefore considered to be negligible. "The risk to health and safety for Australians from exposure to EC through alcoholic drinks, other than sake, is negligible, even for high consumers.''

But the regulator urged drinkers to stick to government guidelines on recommended alcohol consumption to minimise their risk.

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PESKY! Obese fare better after stroke

OBESE and overweight people are less likely to die in the five years after a stroke than are their normal weight peers, a new study shows. In the study, researchers analysed data from 21,884 stroke patients in Denmark who had their body mass index (BMI) determined. BMI is an accepted means of determining how fat or thin a person is.

The patients were placed into one of five BMI groups: underweight (BMI ( 18.5), normal weight (18.5 to 24.9), overweight (25.0 to 29.9), obese (30.0 to 34.9), and severely obese (35 and greater) and were followed for up to five years after their stroke. Compared with the normal weight individuals, the overweight, obese and severely obese subjects were 27 per cent, 16 per cent, and 16 per cent less likely, respectively, to die during follow-up, Tom Skyhoj Olsen, from Hvidovre University Hospital and colleagues found. Underweight patients, by contrast, were 63 per cent more likely to die, they report in the February 29th online issue of Neuroepidemiology.

According to the researchers, the link between obesity and poor disease outcomes, in general, is usually fuelled by the presence of other conditions. Obese people who are otherwise healthy may fare just as well as, or perhaps in the case of stroke, better than their lean counterparts, they conclude.

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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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