Severe dieting makes you drunk!

PEOPLE on very low-calorie diets could be accused of drink driving, even if they have not had a drop. The rare phenomenon is documented in the latest issue of the International Journal of Obesity. Researchers at Sweden's Karolinska University Hospital were approached by a 59-year old non-drinker after he registered positive for alcohol when blowing into an in-car ignition interlocking device that would not allow him to drive. As a glider pilot who supervised private aviation, the man had been surprised and upset about the positive result, which occurred while he was undergoing a weight loss program involving a very low calorie diet.

Researchers found the positive test to be the result of a chemical reaction that took place when fat was broken down at a fast rate. When this happened, ketone bodies (acetone, acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate) were produced, which could then be converted to a secondary alcohol known as isopropanol, said the lead researcher, Wayne Jones, who is also on Sweden's National Board of Forensic Medicine.

Edward Ogden, clinical forensic scientist and senior research fellow at Melbourne's Swinburne University, said it was possible that sober people could blow a false-positive test, however they would not be charged with drink-driving. Alcohol ignition interlock devices and roadside random breath testing units measure alcohol on the breath using fuel cells, which cannot distinguish between ethanol and isopropanol. "But with any random breath test, the police would then invite you to the booze bus for a second test using an evidential instrument which measures the presence of alcohol on the breath in three different ways, including the use of infra-red at two different wavelengths," Dr Ogden said. It was almost impossible that further testing would record a positive result, he said. "From the point of view of a police prosecution, it's a non-issue, but if you happened to have an interlocking device, it may pose a problem," he said.

The NSW Police Director of Clinical Forensic Medicine, Anthony Moynham, said the possibility of the alcohol interlock device giving a false positive reading "cannot be discounted". "This reported incident in one obese male subject in Sweden is interesting but not sufficient to change our thinking," he said.

Source





Cannabis: An apology from "The Independent"

In 1997, this newspaper launched a campaign to decriminalise the drug. If only we had known then what we can reveal today... Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago.

More than 22,000 people were treated last year for cannabis addiction - and almost half of those affected were under 18. With doctors and drugs experts warning that skunk can be as damaging as cocaine and heroin, leading to mental health problems and psychosis for thousands of teenagers, The Independent on Sunday has today reversed its landmark campaign for cannabis use to be decriminalised.

A decade after this newspaper's stance culminated in a 16,000-strong pro-cannabis march to London's Hyde Park - and was credited with forcing the Government to downgrade the legal status of cannabis to class C - an IoS editorial states that there is growing proof that skunk causes mental illness and psychosis. The decision comes as statistics from the NHS National Treatment Agency show that the number of young people in treatment almost doubled from about 5,000 in 2005 to 9,600 in 2006, and that 13,000 adults also needed treatment.

The skunk smoked by the majority of young Britons bears no relation to traditional cannabis resin - with a 25-fold increase in the amount of the main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabidinol (THC), typically found in the early 1990s. New research being published in this week's Lancet will show how cannabis is more dangerous than LSD and ecstasy. Experts analysed 20 substances for addictiveness, social harm and physical damage. The results will increase the pressure on the Government to have a full debate on drugs, and a new independent UK drug policy commission being launched next month will call for a rethink on the issue.

The findings last night reignited the debate about cannabis use, with a growing number of specialists saying that the drug bears no relation to the substance most law-makers would recognise. Professor Colin Blakemore, chief of the Medical Research Council, who backed our original campaign for cannabis to be decriminalised, has also changed his mind. He said: "The link between cannabis and psychosis is quite clear now; it wasn't 10 years ago."

Many medical specialists agree that the debate has changed. Robin Murray, professor of psychiatry at London's Institute of Psychiatry, estimates that at least 25,000 of the 250,000 schizophrenics in the UK could have avoided the illness if they had not used cannabis. "The number of people taking cannabis may not be rising, but what people are taking is much more powerful, so there is a question of whether a few years on we may see more people getting ill as a consequence of that."

"Society has seriously underestimated how dangerous cannabis really is," said Professor Neil McKeganey, from Glasgow University's Centre for Drug Misuse Research. "We could well see over the next 10 years increasing numbers of young people in serious difficulties."

Politicians have also hardened their stance. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has changed his mind over the classification of cannabis, after backing successful calls to downgrade the drug from B to C in 2002. He abandoned that position last year, before the IoS revealed that he had smoked cannabis as a teenager, and now wants the drug's original classification to be restored.

Source

****************

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

Cholesterol: You can't win

LOW Cholesterol seems to be bad for your brain

While a high total cholesterol level in middle age is a risk factor for developing dementia later in life, a drop in cholesterol after middle age may also be a sign of later cognitive problems, a study shows. It hints that falling total cholesterol levels after middle age may point to an ongoing disease processes in the brain, and could be a marker for risk of late-life cognitive impairment.

Dr. Miia Kivipelto, from the Aging Research Center at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues investigated changes in total cholesterol levels in relation to cognitive functioning in late-life. The study involved some 2000 people who had their cholesterol level measured in midlife, and were re-examined an average of 21 years later. The team focused on 70 people who developed mild cognitive impairment during follow-up, 48 who developed Alzheimer's disease and a "control" group of 1,203 people who remained mentally intact. "Mid-life total cholesterol represented a risk factor for more severe cognitive impairment later in life," the researchers found, with significant differences between the controls, those with mild cognitive impairment, and those with dementia. On the other hand, a moderate drop in total cholesterol from mid-life to late-life "was significantly associated with the risk of a more impaired late-life cognitive status," the investigators report in the medical journal Neurology.

These findings remained unchanged after adjusting for factors that might influence brain function, including age, sex, education and even the presence APOE-4 gene, which is known to predispose people to develop Alzheimer's disease. Kivipelto and colleagues believe that declining cholesterol after middle age may "reflect ongoing pathological processes in the brain." Nonetheless, they say the relationship between cholesterol and dementia is "controversial," and meanwhile, they point out, high cholesterol "carries risk even in old age, and results from clinical trials in vascular diseases support the benefit of lipid-lowering treatment in elderly patients."

Source






US approves quicker test for meningitis

US health officials have approved a quicker test for meningitis that aims to help doctors more quickly diagnose and treat patients with the potentially fatal infection. The test, made by Cepheid Inc.'s, can determine within 3 hours whether a patient has the viral form of the condition rather than the more dangerous type caused by bacteria, the US Food and Drug Administration said. Other products can take as long as a week. While those with viral meningitis can usually recover within weeks without medical help, those with the bacterial version need urgent treatment with antibiotics to prevent brain damage and possible death, according to the agency. "Because this test is significantly faster than existing methods for diagnosing meningitis, it could minimize delays in treating patients," said Dr. Daniel Schultz, director of FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health. "Swift recognition of the cause and appropriate treatment is critical to patient recovery."

Meningitis, an infection of fluid in the spinal cord and around the brain, can cause fever headaches and neck pain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those younger than two may seem inactive or irritable as well as experience vomiting. There are also several vaccines to help prevent the condition. Although wide outbreaks of meningitis are not seen in the United States, some data has shown it can occur more frequently among college students living in dorms. It is also seen more often overseas.

Dr. David Persing, Cepheid's chief medical and technology officer, said one million tests are conducted nationwide each year for the viral infection. Shares of the company closed more than 9 percent higher at $9.44 on Nasdaq. Cepheid's test is designed to work with its GeneXpert system, which can also diagnose Group B streptococcal infections in pregnant women. Other tests are also being developed for the system, Persing told Reuters. "We think a lot of labs are going to buy a GeneXpert just for this test," he said, referring to meningitis. The disposable cartridges that hold spinal fluid samples cost $69 each and come in packs of 10, Persing said. The system to test the samples can cost between $25,000 and $125,000. The test can identify infections from a class of viruses called enterovirus, which make up about 90 percent of all viral meningitis cases, the FDA said.

A study of the product using samples from 255 patients, found 96 percent of those who tested positive had viral meningitis, while 97 percent of those who tested negative did not have it, it added.

Source

****************

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

Cardiac arrest: forget the kiss of life

GEORGE BUSH the elder received one from a golfing buddy. Pierce Brosnan as James Bond laid one on Halle Berry in Die Another Day. Now the famous kiss of life - a mainstay of resuscitation for 50 years - should be allowed to slip back into history, a large Japanese study suggests. It shows people who collapsed suddenly with cardiac arrest had a 50 per cent higher chance of surviving if someone gave them heart massage alone rather than alternating it with breathing into their lungs.

There were several reasons why chest compressions might work better than traditional cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), said the study leader, Ken Nagao, from Tokyo's Surugadai Nihon University Hospital. Interrupting chest compression to perform mouth-to-mouth ventilation might do more harm than good if blood flow to the heart was not properly re-established, he said. As well, many people were too squeamish to lock lips with a stranger, whereas more might be prepared to attempt hands-only resuscitation. "This reluctance is partly caused by fear of transmission of infectious diseases," Dr Nagao wrote yesterday in the medical journal The Lancet. "Another barrier to bystanders attempting CPR is the complexity of the technique as presently taught."

Dr Nagao and colleagues studied the medical histories of 4068 people who collapsed with a heart attack while someone else was present. Nearly three-quarters received no resuscitation at all, but of the others, those who were given heart compressions alone were 50 per cent more likely to be alive without brain damage a month later. Nevertheless, only a small proportion survived - 6 per cent in the heart-only group versus 4 per cent of those who also received the kiss of life. The results apply only to cardiac arrest and not to drowning, the other main use of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Dr Gordon Ewy, the chief of cardiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, wrote in the same journal that the results "should lead to a prompt interim revision of the guidelines for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Eliminating the need for mouth-to-mouth ventilation will dramatically increase the occurrence of bystander-initiated resuscitation efforts and will increase survival."

Carol Cunningham, the co-ordinator of a Heart Foundation campaign to improve early detection of heart attacks, said: "Most out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur in the person's home. The person who's on hand is usually a relative or friend and anything that simplifies [resuscitation] is important because it saves lives." But Ms Cunningham said the foundation would follow the advice of the Australian Resuscitation Council, whose chairman, Ian Jacobs, said he was not convinced that recommendations needed further change.

In a revision adopted last year, the council recommends 30 chest compressions followed by two mouth-to-mouth ventilations "in order to increase the number of compressions and reduce the number of interruptions", in line with the Japanese findings, Associate Professor Jacobs said. This advice had superseded guidelines that varied according to whether the patient was a child or adult and how many bystanders were able to assist. Ventilation of the lungs was crucial in children, Associate Professor Jacobs said, emphasising: "Any resuscitation attempt is better than no attempt."

Source






THE POMEGRANATE ENTHUSIASM



They have been a common sight in Brisbane suburban gardens over the years, but now the humble pomegranate is reaching celebrity status in the UK. And it's all because of their supposed health benefits. Demand for the fruit has grown by 76 per cent across stores over the past year, figures from market analysts TNS show. Dubbed a "superfood", the pomegranate has overtaken blueberries as Britain's fastest growing seller, according to supermarket chain Tesco which sold 3.8 million pomegranates in the past year - an increase of two million on the previous year. Other products dubbed "superfoods" because of their health benefits include spinach, broccoli, avocados and fish rich in omega 3 oils.

The pomegranate is a native fruit of the Middle East which grows well in Queensland's tropical conditions. Just one pomegranate provides around 40 per cent of the daily recommended vitamin C intake. They also contain high levels of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents and have been shown to help with the treatment of a range of illnesses including osteoarthritis and cardiovascular disease.

Research from the US also has revealed that eating pomegranates slows down the progress of prostate cancer. Last year, a team at the University of California, Los Angeles found drinking just one glass of pomegranate juice a day could allow a man aged 65-70 years who already has prostate cancer to complete his normal lifespan without harsh medical treatments. More than 2500 men die from prostate cancer in Australia each year.

That US research team found pomegranate juice dramatically slowed prostate cancer in mice. "Our study, while early, adds to growing evidence that pomegranates contain very powerful agents against cancer, particularly prostate cancer," said Professor Hasan Mukhtar who led the study. "There is good reason now to test this fruit in humans, both for cancer prevention and treatment."

Source

Journal abstract follows. Note that the research showed effects only in the test tube and in specially prepared mice. It is a big leap from that to an effect on human lifespan

Pomegranate fruit juice for chemoprevention and chemotherapy of prostate cancer

Arshi Malik et al

Prostate cancer is the most common invasive malignancy and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among U.S. males, with a similar trend in many Western countries. One approach to control this malignancy is its prevention through the use of agents present in diet consumed by humans. Pomegranate from the tree Punica granatum possesses strong antioxidant and antiinflammatory properties. We recently showed that pomegranate fruit extract (PFE) possesses remarkable antitumor-promoting effects in mouse skin. In this study, employing human prostate cancer cells, we evaluated the antiproliferative and proapoptotic properties of PFE. PFE (10-100 æg/ml; 48 h) treatment of highly aggressive human prostate cancer PC3 cells resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of cell growth/cell viability and induction of apoptosis. Immunoblot analysis revealed that PFE treatment of PC3 cells resulted in (i) induction of Bax and Bak (proapoptotic); (ii) down-regulation of Bcl-XL and Bcl-2 (antiapoptotic); (iii) induction of WAF1/p21 and KIP1/p27; (iv) a decrease in cyclins D1, D2, and E; and (v) a decrease in cyclin-dependent kinase (cdk) 2, cdk4, and cdk6 expression. These data establish the involvement of the cyclin kinase inhibitor-cyclin-cdk network during the antiproliferative effects of PFE. Oral administration of PFE (0.1% and 0.2%, wt/vol) to athymic nude mice implanted with androgen-sensitive CWR22Rnu1 cells resulted in a significant inhibition in tumor growth concomitant with a significant decrease in serum prostate-specific antigen levels. We suggest that pomegranate juice may have cancer-chemopreventive as well as cancer-chemotherapeutic effects against prostate cancer in humans.

****************

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

The mega-vitamin mega-myth

This study was mentioned here on March 1st but it is discussed at greater length below by Steven Milloy

Another nutrition myth went down the drain this week. It seems that antioxidant vitamins don't quite live up to their hype. Researchers reviewing 68 studies on the effect of antioxidants on life span reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week that consumption of beta carotene, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E and selenium, whether singly or combined, did not reduce the risk of premature death. If anything, the researchers concluded, there was actually a slight increase in risk of premature death among antioxidant supplement takers (with the exception of vitamin C and selenium).

Antioxidants have been hypothesized to reduce the oxidative damage to the body caused by so-called "free radicals." Some have suggested that antioxidant supplements may reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease. Such claims helped fuel the growth of the multi-billion dollar nutritional supplement industry.

The researchers didn't conduct new experimental research. Instead, they conducted a systematic review of the results of 68 studies involving 232,606 antioxidant supplement users, combing their results using a controversial statistical technique known as "meta-analysis." The conclusion that antioxidant supplements don't appear to help you live longer is likely on a sound footing. Even without statistically combining the studies through meta-analysis, it's fairly clear that antioxidant supplements are ineffective for increasing longevity. Of the 68 studies examined, 66 studies reported no statistically significant association between supplement use and longevity. The remaining two studies actually reported statistically weak increases in premature death with supplement use.

One strength of this analysis is that longevity is perhaps the most objective measure of health. A potential weakness of the study - at least in terms of putting the myth to bed - is that the researchers didn't examine whether supplement use reduced the risk of cancer or heart disease - two diseases often touted as preventable by antioxidant use. This shortcoming may enable the supplement industry to keep making unproven claims about antioxidants preventing those two diseases.

The study's other conclusion concerning the risk of antioxidant supplements increasing the risk of premature death rests on shaky ground, however. The researchers reported that beta-carotene supplements taken singly, vitamin A supplements taken singly or in combination with other antioxidant supplements; and vitamin E supplements taken singly or in combination with other antioxidant supplements were associated with 6 percent, 16 percent and 4 percent, respectively, increases in risk of premature death among the study group.

Although the three reported increases in risk were statistically significant, this is not likely a reason to fret about supplement use. All three results are relatively weak statistical correlations that would require large, well-designed, and carefully controlled clinical trials to confirm. But since there's no apparent health benefit from taking these supplements to begin with, there's probably little reason to take them or to study them further.

It will be interesting to see what impact this study has on the nutritional supplement industry. A Google search on "antioxidant" produced advertisements proclaiming, "Natural Antioxidant = Better Health"; and "Naturally Remove Free Radicals." A search on "beta-carotene" produced, "Reduce Cancer and Disease." A "vitamin E" search produced "Feel Strong. Be Healthy" and "You can look and feel 20 years younger than you actually are."

Then there's the vitamin C industry that's been built around double-Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, perhaps the most prominent promoter of the notion that mega-doses of vitamin C improve health. In his highly publicized 1970 book "Vitamin C and the Common Cold," Pauling claimed that taking 10 times the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C reduced the incidence of colds by 45 percent. In his 1986 book, "How to Feel Better and Live Longer," Pauling claimed that mega-doses of vitamins "can improve your general health . increase your enjoyment of life and can help in controlling heart disease, cancer, and other diseases and in slowing down the process of aging."

As Quackwatch.org's Dr. Stephen Barrett points out, "Although Pauling's mega-vitamin claims lacked the evidence needed for acceptance by the scientific community, they have been accepted by large numbers of people who lack the scientific expertise to evaluate them. Thanks largely to Pauling's prestige, annual vitamin C sales in the United States have been in the hundreds of millions of dollars for many years."

While the jury is probably still out on whether typical use of antioxidant supplements pose any sort of long-term health risk, it is possible to overdose on antioxidants, particularly vitamin A. With respect to Pauling and mega-doses of vitamin C, Dr. Barrett says, "The physical damage to people he led astray cannot be measured."

None of this is to say that no nutritional supplement can have any value under any circumstances. But before falling blindly for claims made by the nutritional supplement industry, you should probably do your own research and check with your physician.

Source





A demented approach to the ageing population

Scary headlines about a 'dementia timebomb' expose today's miserabilist view of the human success story that is longer life.

A report published last week by the UK Alzheimer’s Society, Dementia UK: a report into the prevalence and cost of dementia, confirmed what many people already knew: that dementia is one of the main causes of disability in later life. What was disappointing was the way the research was framed as another ‘ageing timebomb’.

Today, about one-in-five people over the age of 80 has a form of dementia. As a progressive disease, the impact on the individual ranges from mild to severe, so that only a small proportion lose most of their capacity for independent living. But for those worst affected it is extremely distressing for themselves and especially for their caring relatives.

The study could have been greeted simply as a rational contribution to helping society adjust its priorities to an ageing population. With demographic shifts, the types of illnesses that society should focus on change. With substantially reduced infant mortality and more people living to an old age compared to 100 and even 25 years ago, less medical research can be devoted to defeated or contained diseases such as polio, smallpox, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, measles or typhoid, and more can be devoted to heart disease, stroke, cancer and dementia. That’s rational social adaptation.

Unfortunately, a review of the media headlines illustrates a much more alarmist and miserabilist message: ‘Dementia timebomb warning’, ‘The country’s looming dementia crisis’, ‘Dementia timebomb will cost NHS millions’. Such a reaction to the underlying research in this report is not only unjustified but also counter-productive. The Alzheimer’s Society itself warns that such alarmist talk is misleading. It argues with reason that: ‘The use of phrases such as the demographic timebomb, or the view that older people are a burden on our society, does not encourage the view that a sustainable system can be developed.’ (2)

There is nothing new here. The threat of a ‘timebomb’ is frequently invoked in relation to ageing - just look at the debate about pensions. But this fear and anxiety is not a good way to plan transformation and progressive adaptation. Instead, fear-mongering today tends to reinforce a fatalist resignation to the future, epitomised by a naturalist view of ageing: we’re ageing, old age historically brings negative consequences, so we have to put up with it.

Knee-jerk responses in the face of an ‘emerging crisis’ make things worse, more often than not. (That’s also the story of the perverse, counter-productive impact of pension reforms over the past 20 years.) For example, the report draws attention to the ‘starkly different ordering of [research] priorities: cancer 23.5 per cent, cardiovascular disease 17.6 per cent, musculoskeletal disorders 6.9 per cent, stroke 3.1 per cent and dementia 1.4 per cent’. I’m sure it is not the authors’ intention but when legitimate calls for more specific research funding are made in the hyperbolic context of a perceived looming ‘cost crisis’, one can easily imagine the response will be ‘okay, let’s cut funding to these other areas and reallocate to dementia instead’. In the short term, this might seem to support the prospects for potential dementia sufferers, but overall could produce a worse future for old people if other age-related chronic disorders lose funding as a result.

These anxieties about the social and economic impact of ageing are unjustified. We need to challenge an intensifying paradox of our times: that even though we are living longer, healthier and more prosperous lives than ever in human history, we are also more negative about ageing and old age. In the past, old age had both positive and negative connotations – experience and wisdom, not just decrepitude. Today, we only seem to recognise the negative: a timebomb bringing about an intolerable economic and social strain based on millions more dependent people.

Whatever the specific issue, there are always three ways to expose this paradox of ageing.

Firstly, society is getting wealthier all the time. Whatever the extra costs associated with an older population, the trend of rising productivity means that we will have even more resources in the future, so we can bear these costs easily.

History justifies that perspective. There is nothing new or unprecedented about ageing. Developed countries will age over the next half-century at much the same rate that they have for the last hundred years. In contrast to the warnings today that ‘ageing will slow down future economic growth’, this demographic shift hasn’t stopped us from getting more prosperous as a society and older people have benefited from this greater social wealth.

Secondly, a narrow ‘telescope’ view of the future tends to mislead when broader social consequences are drawn. Focusing on one particular feature of the future can fail to incorporate offsetting factors.

The most obvious example as it applies to ageing is that fewer young people necessarily offset more old people. Hence, more absolute spending on old age-related costs is offset by less on younger sections of the population - for example, on education and the specific health costs of the young.

Even in the narrow area of health within wider social spending there are inevitable offsets. Some forms of morbidity rise with age, so more old people mean more illness to be treated. But we are living not just longer lives but longer healthier lives. This trend counteracts the impact of increased health spending related to old age.

This is even more the case when the main influence on the ageing of society is no longer falling birth rates but longer life. For most of the twentieth century, ageing populations mostly represented a changed ratio between young and old people – falling fertility reduced the size of younger cohorts producing an automatic increase in the average age and in the proportion of old people in the population. More recently, since about the 1960s, greater longevity has become a bigger influence on the age structure. The fact that we are living longer is partly attributable to the defeat, or better treatment, of diseases that used to debilitate or kill off younger people. People, including those who are already old, are living to a greater age. Postponed death of this sort tends to go along with people being fitter and healthier during their lives because they are both reflections of social progress and higher living standards.

Most of us are getting through youth and middle age without requiring much medical support, and much less than our parents and grandparents needed. Lower health costs earlier in life means a healthier society, which is good, and which brings about an inevitable concentration of health resources on the older segment of the population because of the higher probability of disease and death with advancing age. 

A related factor that is often downplayed in discussions of age-related health costs is that the cost of dying is more relevant than the cost of ageing. The highest costs arise in the final six-to-18 months prior to death, whatever the age of death. Focusing on the costs of people with dementia in their final years forgets that this means we are paying the cost of these final months for fewer younger people - and in the context of dementia, ‘younger’ means people below the age of 80. 

In other words, just because there will be more people with dementia in an ageing population doesn’t tell us anything about total social expenditures in the future.

Thirdly, the future is one of transformation and adaptation, not extrapolation. This is the statistical distinction between ‘projections’ and ‘forecasts’, which invariably get mixed up in everyday discussion. This confusion is a boon to those who make fearful speculations about the future. A statistician can make a projection about the future based on certain present-day assumptions and extrapolating from them. But every serious professional statistician will add the warning that this is not a forecast of the future, because things will change - society progresses - and therefore the assumptions made for the projection will become invalid.

This misleading shorthand applies to the dementia study itself. It claims: ‘The total number of people with dementia in the UK is forecast to increase to 940,110 by 2021 and 1,735,087 by 2051, an increase of 38 per cent over the next 15 years and 154 per cent over the next 45 years.’ Hence the alarmist BBC News headline: ‘1.7m “will have dementia by 2051“‘. (3) These figures are really projections, not forecasts, based on the researchers’ assumptions about the numbers of elderly people, the incidence of conditions such as high cholesterol and blood pressure, and levels of exercise. Many of these assumptions will not work out exactly.

More importantly, the prevalence of dementia could fall if some means of preventing or, in the shorter term, postponing dementia were discovered. This is the message of the report that should be heeded – more research can accelerate building upon the existing indications of scientific and medical progress in this area. But this gets a little lost in the hyperbole. 

More broadly we can reasonably expect further improvements in standards of health in the future. The general trend is that in most countries a symptom of living longer healthier lives is that the age of onset of particular illnesses is postponed. The average 65-year-old today is much healthier than one in 1950 due to a combination of improvements in living standards and medical progress; healthy life expectancy is growing with increases in overall life expectancy.

The only uncertainties are the pace of improvements in healthy life expectancy and total life expectancy - and the relation between them. In general, morbidity is being postponed. There are indications for some illnesses, though not yet dementia, of tendencies to their compression as well as postponement. This means that some chronic disorders might be concentrated into a smaller proportion, and even a shorter absolute period, at the end of a person’s life. That’s because the older you are when you become ill, the quicker you may finally succumb to that illness.

This report on dementia is one more example of the unjustified negativity with which an ageing population is perceived these days, alongside the ongoing fears and panics about the cost of pensions and other age-related phenomena such as the cost of long-term care. All this pessimism about the human success story of people living longer older tells us more about society’s collective sense of uncertainty and anxieties about where we are heading, than it does about a rational understanding of any of these age-related issues.

Source

****************

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

WALKING BEATS ADDICTION?

As little as five minutes of exercise could help smokers quit, says a new study. Research published in the international medical journal Addiction showed that moderate exercise, such as walking, significantly reduced the intensity of smokers' nicotine withdrawal symptoms. "If we found the same effects in a drug, it would immediately be sold as an aid to help people quit smoking," said Dr. Adrian Taylor, the study's lead author and professor of exercise and health psychology at the University of Exeter.

Taylor and colleagues reviewed 12 papers looking at the connection between exercise and nicotine deprivation. They focused on exercises that could be done outside a gym, such as walking and isometrics, or the flexing and tensing of muscles. According to their research, just five-minutes of exercise was often enough to help smokers overcome their immediate need for a nicotine fix. After various types of moderate physical exertion, researchers asked people to rate their need for a cigarette. People who had exercised reported reduced a desire.

"What's surprising is the strength of the effect," said Dr. Robert West, professor of health psychology at University College London. West was not involved in the review. "They found that the acute effects of exercise were as effective as a nicotine patch," he said. West cautioned that it was unknown how long the effects of exercise would last. "You could in theory use exercise to deal with short bouts of nicotine cravings, but we don't know if it would help in the longer term," he said. It is likely that exercise would have to be combined with a larger strategy of other anti-smoking techniques to be successful in helping people quit.

Nearly anything that distracts people from smoking is thought to help, but scientists have long suspected that exercise might have a more potent effect. Taylor theorized that exercise could produce the mood-enhancing hormone dopamine, which could, in turn, reduce smokers' nicotine dependence.

Still, experts were not convinced about the study's practical applications. "Doctors can tell patients to do things until they're blue in the face, but the limiting factor may be getting people to actually take up exercise," said Dr. Peter Hajek, professor of clinical psychology at Queen Mary University Hospital in London. Hajek was not involved in the study. Hajek said that if people were taught simple exercises, including isometric exercises they could do at their desk, they could potentially stave off their need for a cigarette break. "When you are dying for a cigarette, you can try to exercise instead," he said.

Source

Journal abstract

The acute effects of exercise on cigarette cravings, withdrawal symptoms, affect and smoking behaviour: a systematic review

Aim: To review the effects of a single session of exercise on cigarette cravings, withdrawal symptoms and smoking behaviour.

Methods: A systematic search and critical appraisal of all 14 relevant studies.

Results: All 12 studies that compared a bout of exercise with a passive condition reported a positive effect on cigarette cravings, withdrawal symptoms and smoking behaviour. Two other studies that compared two intensities of exercise revealed no differences in outcomes. Single and multi-item measures of cigarette cravings, withdrawal symptoms and negative affect decreased rapidly during exercise and remained reduced for up to 50 minutes after exercise. Effect sizes for seven studies that assessed ‘strength of desire to smoke’ showed a mean reduction, 10 minutes after exercise, of 1.1 (SD 0.9). Four studies reported a two- to threefold longer time to the next cigarette following exercise. Cravings and withdrawal symptoms were reduced with an exercise intensity from as high as 60–85% heart rate reserve (HRR) (lasting 30–40 minutes) to as low as 24% HRR (lasting 15 minutes), and also with isometric exercise (for 5 minutes). All but one study involved participants temporarily abstaining for the purposes of the experiment. Distraction was probably not the primary reason for the effects. [What if I say that it probably was and that any distraction would do equally well?]

Conclusions: Relatively small doses of exercise should be recommended as an aid to managing cigarette cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Further research to understand the mechanisms involved, such as stress reduction or neurobiological mechanisms, could lead to development of more effective and practical methods to reduce withdrawal phenomena.





Now living together makes you fat!

It's all men's fault, of course

Men and women might belong to the same species but they can have very different eating habits. Women are generally fruit eaters who are able to eat their fruit whole. Men, on the other hand, tend to eat less fruit unless someone (usually a woman) cuts it into pieces for them. They're also likely to eat fewer vegetables, are more likely to be meat eaters, while women are more likely to eat chicken and fish or be vegetarian. So what happens when they move in together - whose eating habits rule and can it be a recipe for becoming overweight?

While some research suggests the first year of living together is a time of increased risk of weight gain for both sexes, a review of research into the eating habits of cohabiting and married couples in the UK, USA and Australia found that in general, women came off worse. Although men often picked up healthier food habits when they moved in with a woman, women ended up eating more foods high in fat and sugar, and put on weight, according to the report by the Human Nutrition Research Centre at the University of Newcastle in the UK.

"It's hard to eat as many vegetables as I'd like because my partner will only eat potatoes, corn, salad leaves, carrot and avocado - unless you count baked beans. He's into English stodge and I like a Mediterranean diet," complains a friend who moved in with her partner last year. "I tend to tailor my choices to what he eats because I don't want to cook two different meals at night - but I'm trying to find more ways to adapt our meals so I get more vegetables."

So far she's not gained any extra kilos, but ask would-be weight losers when they gained weight, and many will tell you it's when they got married. That's the observation of Marie Elliott, who leads four Weight Watchers' meetings a week in Camden in Sydney. "I lost weight for my wedding, but I started gaining it once I was married. Maybe it's because you get a bit more relaxed. If you're cooking for someone else and you want to impress them you might make dessert more often, and whereas you might not drink while you're alone, when you're living with a partner there's always someone to share a drink with. Women who start cooking for a man might also start serving larger portions," she says.

But once the weight is on, men and women need different approaches to getting it off, according to dietitian Karen Miller-Kovach, Chief Scientific Officer with Weight Watchers in the US. "Both men and women are emotional eaters, but women overeat when they're sad, while men tend to overeat when they're happy - when they're out with the boys or they're celebrating an anniversary," says Miller-Kovach, who is the author of She Loses, He Loses: The Truth About Men, Women and Weight Loss (to be published in the US in April).

And while it's common for women to believe they're fat when they're not, it's common for men to think they're not overweight when they are - some men have to be obese before they think they're overweight, she adds. "But the things that inspire men and women to lose weight or to eat healthier are different. While women are more likely to change their eating [habits] to prevent a health problem, men often wait until they get a problem."

If you're a woman who wants to encourage her partner to eat better or lose weight, Miller-Kovach's advice is to give him a problem that can be fixed by having a healthier diet or losing weight. "Men are problem solvers - if you can present him with a problem, like the fact that he now needs clothes in a larger size, or needs to lower his cholesterol or blood pressure, a guy will fix it," she says.

Source

****************

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

Australia: Hip woes hit under-50s

High-impact exercise blamed

More middle-aged people are having hip replacements because high-impact exercise has wrecked their joints. While osteoarthritis used to be a disease of the elderly, it is increasingly common in the under 50s. Road jogging, strenuous aerobics and skiing are just some of the activities that take a toll on joints, leading to knee and hip replacements.

Bill Donnelly, a surgeon at Brisbane Orthopaedic Specialist Services, estimates 90 per cent of the 30,000 joint replacement operations in Australia every year are because of osteoarthritis. "There is an increase of people under 50 having the operations because of an increase in competitive and contact sports and also high- impact activity," he said.

Twenty years ago, patients under 55 were told they were too young lor surgery, but increased demand and improved technology has changed that. The old-style full hip replacement involved a large part of the femur being removed as well as the ball and socket of the hip joint, but a new technique, hip resurfacing, conserves the damaged areas. The operation is recommended for younger patients who want to continue an active lifestyle.

"In six or seven years, this operation has increased from 2 per cent to 10 per cent of the joint-replacement market," Dr Donnelly said. "There are restrictions, however, and if people go back to jogging, and playing contact sports, the joint will become loose. We tell patients to switch their activities to cycling, walking, swimming and golf."

Dianne Dixon is only 43, but has had a knee operation and hip resurfacing, after years of netball and road jogging. A car accident escalated the problem. The mother of four, from Maroochy Waters on the Sunshine Coast, said that without the surgery she would have been in chronic pain. "I've had to give up the netball and the jogging, but I do keep active with low-impact exercise," she said. Dr Donnelly said joint replacements shouldn't be taken lightly. "They're fantastic, but they are a last resort."

The above article by HANNAH DAVIES appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on March 11, 2007





Britain: The exercise craze that crippled a generation

They were promised the body beautiful and their mantra was "No pain no gain". Two decades later they are feeling it again - in their knees, hips and lower backs. They are the casualties of the aerobics boom. The craze began in the late 1970s but it was the actress Jane Fonda who really got people moving. Following her lead, thousands climbed into Spandex, donned headbands and twisted and punched the air in church halls across Britain.

Now they are more likely to be seen in physiotherapy. Nicki de Lyon, of Sports and Spinal Clinics, London, said: "They have knee and hip and lower back problems. It was not just the constant impact on hard floors, which put pressure on joints, but the twisting movements. And in the 1980s there had not been any research into the right footwear."

The fitness industry was in its infancy. Robin Gargrave, of the YMCA, said: "People didn't know what they were doing. They were just following America. Now we know that jogging on the spot waving your arms in the air isn't the best thing for your body."

Derrick Evans, who went on to become Mr Motivator, visited a leisure centre in Harrow in 1981 and saw hundreds of women doing "Popmobility". He hired the two women leading them and set up a class at a church hall in Neasden. "After a few months I decided I could do this," he said. Before long he had become the presenter Gloria Hunniford's trainer and was motivating millions of viewers on This Morning. "In those days it wasn't critical to have qualifications. There weren't really any around." Now 54, he claims to be "fitter than a fiddle" - but his routines were always "moderate". Others were less so. Andy Jackson, of the Fitness Industry Authority, says that, in the first flush of the craze, "a lot of deconditioned people suddenly started exercising with the intensity of Linford Christie".

Disciples were told that pain was good for them. "It's positive pain, just like childbirth," devotees in America shouted. As the craze took off in Britain, Geri Livingston bought a cat-suit and joined an energetic group in a church hall in Cheshire. All through the 1980s she sought out the toughest classes, attending up to four a week. "My knees just kill me now," said Mrs Livingston, now 44. "I can't jog any more, and I have lower back problems."

Hardest hit were the instructors. "I would be taking 20 classes a week," said Ebony Williams, who now teaches Pilates. "My knees are painful and swollen, I'm seeing a chiropractor for my back, and I have to have regular massages. All the instructors I knew have had the same problems with their knees, back, joints and shoulders."

Aerobics is now in decline. In Britain it has been supplanted by a bewildering array of low-impact routines and "conditioning" programmes aimed at people in their mid50s. There, in softly lit studios, next to Japanese fountains and no longer wearing Spandex, the walking wounded of the aerobics boom may seek to soothe their battered bones.

Source

****************

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************

Do cities make us sick?

By Prof. James Woudhuysen

Next Wednesday's spiked seminar `Building for the Future: Housing Need and Sustainability', which I am speaking at, comes at a useful moment. To be held at the London headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects, it comes in the wake of the publication of the twenty-sixth report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP). Titled The Urban Environment, the report came out on 6 March (1). Weighing in at more than 200 pages, it is a remarkable document. It is the first official suggestion, in Britain, that cities, and especially new housebuilding in the South East of England, represent health problems. This medicalisation of cities and housing marks a new low in today's suspicion of mankind's works, and indeed of mankind.

After an opening paragraph eulogising cities as synonymous with civilsation, the tone swiftly changes. We learn in the third paragraph that cities can provide people with `a wide range of services with low personal transport requirements'. Ah, so cities are good because they obviate the human need to move around. We also learn that cities `have the potential to release land for nature': cities - especially `compact' cities - are apparently good because they allow us to preserve the 98 per cent of the world's land surface that is un-urbanised (p2). In other words, to the extent that cities should be cheered, it is only because they get people `off the land' and leave it for trees and plants and wildlife.

Next, and importantly, an obscure 1973 paper by one Professor Horst Rittel is cited to suggest that UK urban environmental management presents `a classic case' of a `wicked problem'. Defects in urban health - and of course `wellbeing' - cannot be solved definitively, we are told, `but rather must be managed for better or worse'. Indeed, `urban environmental issues owe much of their wickedness to the nature of towns and cities as complex systems' (p5).

Complex they certainly are. In an early diagram (p7), containing no fewer than 33 arrows of causality, increased car ownership and use - familiar villains - are held responsible for flash flooding, property damage, loss of shade, and dodgy impacts on rivers, flora and fauna. But the Royal Commission's main concern is that cities `still appear to be missing from the sustainability agenda' (p10).

Perhaps the Commission's chairman, Professor Sir John Lawton, should get out a bit more. When a biologist at the University of York, it's true, his investigation of the insect fauna of bracken on Skipwith Common, near Selby, stood `as a model of sustained and intensive ecological research' (2). But if this complete non-specialist in urban matters had bothered to read the website of Ruth Kelly's Department of Communities and Local Government, he would find that the words `cities' and `housing' are rarely written nowadays in Whitehall without the adjective `sustainable' in front of each.

Indeed, the RCEP itself indulges in the same kind of monotony. Early on, it identified four `priority themes', these being `sustainable urban transport; sustainable urban management (Local Agenda 21, EMAS, indicators); sustainable urban construction (resource and energy efficiency, demolition waste, design issues); and sustainable urban design (land use-regeneration, brownfield sites, urban sprawl, land use densities)' (3).

I will leave it to the reader to find out more about Local Agenda 21 (a derivative of Agenda 21, the UN's Rio Declaration on Environment and Development) and EMAS (the EU's Eco-Management and Audit Scheme). But this much is clear: for the Commission, the UK's progress towards sustainability is hindered by `the current drive to create new urban areas', and in particular by proposals to build 3.3million new homes in England by 2016 (p15). Rough translation: the move towards being more green is hampered by plans to build more homes in order to house all those pesky people. This gives a telling insight into the priorities of the environmentally-minded.

Again, perhaps Commission members should listen less to Greenpeace, Ken Livingstone's deputy Nicky Gavron, the deep green environmentalist Herbert Girardet or London School of Economics professor Anne Power, who - with the architect Richard Rogers - believes that all new housing in Britain must be built to London densities. Perhaps, instead, they should take more seriously the affordability of UK housing, and the demographic trends that make it so essential that the UK builds more homes. The Commission, however, has not `sought to unpick the rationale behind' such issues, `beyond noting that the predict-and-provide approach has been found wanting in other areas of policy' (p27).

Commission worries

So. Predict a need for more housing, but do not provide for it. Why? Because new housing `is difficult to reconcile with the idea of respecting environmental limits' (p27). Forget about young people - let them live with their parents and grandparents. Rather, we should worry about air quality, despite the fact that, in the case of particulates, there was until 2000 a steady reduction in concentrations in UK cities (succeeded by circumstances in which `concentrations have at best plateaued') (p37). We should worry not so much about the 27,500 additional deaths in the UK caused by cold in 2005, but rather about hotter summers, the `urban heat island effect' and the 2,000 people who supposedly died of heat-related causes in 2003 (p41).

Our old friend, sick building syndrome, gets an outing, too. We are told that SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and avian flu `may pose a particular threat to city dwellers', and that there is strong evidence that, `in some circumstances', the urban environment `can lead to impaired mental health' (p44, mentioned 47 times), as well as that well-known scourge, obesity (p46). Indeed, in a lurid diagram on `the pathways that can link residential environments to cardiovascular risk', it is seriously proposed that cities lead to high blood pressure, diabetes, inflammation, heart rate variability and more besides (p49). All this despite the fact that the report concedes that `the nature of the relationship between health and place is poorly understood. It is difficult to establish whether and how the urban environment causes unfavourable health outcomes.' (p33)

Is there no malady for which cities are not culpable? And if cities are to blame for so much, why is life expectancy rising in the way that it is? The influx of millions and millions of people into cities over the past century and more has gone hand-in-hand with improvements in quality and longevity of life.

However, the Royal Commission does not bother to ask itself difficult questions about the benefits of city life. It is so fearful of the possibility of 3.3million homes being built that it has not stopped to ask whether possibility will lead to actuality, and whether the `proposals' for new homes will result in new homes. Take the Thames Gateway housing development in East London. According to Stan Hornagold, senior partner at management consultants Hornagold & Hills, it will `require building a city the size of Leeds in the most populated part of the country'. But after surveying about 400 firms, local authorities and government officials connected with the Gateway, Hornagold found that almost nothing has actually been done over the past 12 months. About the `additional Leeds' factor, Hornagold stated: `We don't get any sense that is being planned for in some government departments.' (4)

The energy question

Few houses are being built. But those that the Royal Commission imagines are being built will apparently wreck our lives. The Commission completely underplays, too, the fact that, under Ruth Kelly's December 2006 Code for Sustainable Homes: A Step-Change in Sustainable Home Building Practice (two mentions of `sustainable' just in the title!), new houses will be subject to stringent rules on carbon emissions in a way that old houses will not. (5)

There is more. The likely meaning of the DCLG's enormously complex Code is that each new home should be in `balance', partly through supplying zero carbon (ZC) energy to the National Grid … la the David Cameron/B&Q rooftop windmill, partly from drawing Grid energy that is itself ZC. Moreover, some environmentalist zealots will say that ZC is not enough; that we need to generate more Grid-exportable ZC energy from the home than is consumed by it. Some will also argue that ZC energy generated on top of 100 kWh/m2 a year should be used to pay off embodied energy in construction, periodic upgrade, and eventual demolition, within the life of structures that could, perhaps, have lifetimes of just 60 years (6). Indeed, the DCLG is already thinking that it may want to provide some way of accounting for embodied energy. `A probable future development regarding the environmental impact of materials', it says, `is to reward resource efficiency, as well as the use of resources that are more sustainable, by developing "Ecopoints per m2" as a measure for this item' (7).

All the discussion on housing today is not about how many, or how large, but about the need for `zero carbon' homes. Not content with that, however, the Royal Commission wants the Code extended to all new buildings, not just residential ones (p100).

Altogether, it seems, houses are the bad guys. Indeed, if the political economy of UK land and the UK planning system - in its sixtieth year in 2007 - has acted to prevent new build in the past, it seems that official strictures around energy, and the Royal Commission's strictures on health, will join the land as barriers to housebuilding in the future. What is the solution, then? To leave people homeless? To force us all to live in overcrowded accommodation?

The Commission's insouciance is breathtaking. Might multiple generations of a family living together in a cramped setting just lead to mental health problems? Isn't it a problem, as the report notes, that `at current rates of turnover an average dwelling in the UK would have a lifetime of around 1,000 years' (p85)? And why refer to Bill Dunster's tawdry BedZED zero-energy development in East London, and the speculative refurbishments of hip property developers Urban Splash in Manchester and Birmingham? (pp99, 101) These examples of greenness are endlessly repeated in the construction trade. If they're so successful, why are there not more of them?

Like the DCLG, the Commission is exercised by the energy embodied in homes, not just that involved in operating them. But once again it ties itself in knots, trying to prevent new construction. After 60 years, it observes, `the total cumulative energy of the new-build home is significantly less than the total energy consumed in running the existing home. Therefore, the embodied energy in dwellings is no reason not to demolish.' (p104)

That sounds rational. But the report goes on to say, in the same sentence: `. but there may be other reasons why demolition is not appropriate, including social, community or heritage reasons.' (p104) So even if new homes are more energy efficient than old ones, we probably shouldn't have any.

It is impossible to read the next 100 pages of this report without laughing or crying. It provides a striking snapshot of officialdom's reluctance to prioritise people's housing needs, and our comfort, and to build the homes that young people, families, immigrants and everybody else requires. Next Wednesday's debate should allow us to interrogate these issues further, and hopefully to put forward an alternative.

Source






THE TRANS-FAT RELIGION GETS OFFICIAL SUPPORT IN AUSTRALIA

It gives believers the feeling that they are doing something useful -- and hassling big, successful businesses is SO satisfying! No mention that the research findings are consistent only with very weak effects and then only at high levels of exposure. Two reports below:

Nutritionists and health campaigners have welcomed plans by fast-food and baked-goods giants to phase out harmful trans-fatty acids from their products following federal government pressure. A meeting of food industry representatives in Sydney yesterday agreed to come up with a plan by September to remove trans-fats, which are suspected of raising the risk of heart disease and have already been banned in some overseas jurisdictions.

Federal Assistant Health Minister Christopher Pyne, who called yesterday's meeting, had threatened to force food companies to declare trans-fat levels on nutrition information panels if a voluntary reduction were not agreed. At present, information panels only have to include details about trans-fats if the food in question is making a health claim about the fat it contains. Mr Pyne said the agreement was "a major breakthrough" and would bring much greater benefits than simply including trans-fats on labels, which he claimed many consumers did not read. "There are some companies that have moved to remove all saturated fats, and I think most other companies will follow suit," he said.

Companies represented at the meeting included McDonald's, Domino's Pizza, Hungry Jacks, KFC, Pizza Hut, Pizza Haven, Oporto, Red Rooster and Subway as well as the Baking Industry Association.

However, experts called on the federal Government to "keep on the case" to ensure the food industry followed its words with action. Nutritionist Rosemary Stanton welcomed the phase-out plan, but added that the "absurdity is that they (trans-fats) were ever there in the first place". "We just need to make sure this isn't a delaying tactic - McDonald's got kudos for saying several years ago they were going to take trans-fats out of their products, and they are only just doing it now," she said. "The real message to the public ought to be: don't eat these foods."

Trans-fats occur naturally at low levels in meat and dairy products, but they are also made artificially by dissolving hydrogen in oils to make them solidify. Trans-fats extend shelf life and improve texture, and are widely used in fast foods and baked goods. They are thought to be even more damaging to health than saturated fats, because as well as raising levels of dangerous low-density lipoprotein cholesterol they also reduce levels of the good cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein.

Source

One tenth of one percent of trans-fat is "harmful"? So it says below: Totally unproven, to say the least. Lots of foods would naturally have higher concentrations

A leading fast-food company has refused to bow to the Federal Government's demand it remove harmful fats from its products. The Assistant Health Minister, Chris Pyne, hosted a meeting of industry leaders in Sydney yesterday but failed to secure unanimous support from fast-food groups for healthier cooking. Yum! Restaurants, which owns the KFC and Pizza Hut brands, attended the meeting, and according to sources there remained silent throughout, despite being given three chances to speak against an undertaking to meet a September deadline for a plan to remove trans fats from all products and reduce the use of saturated fats.

Yum! Restaurants said in a statement released after the meeting that KFC Australia had been using palm oil - which is 52 per cent saturated fat - "for many years" and had no intention of converting to a healthier cooking oil. "Palm oil has less than 1 per cent trans fats, and as a result our chicken and chips all contain less than 0.1 per cent trans fat," the statement said. "As these levels are already extremely low, we have no plans to change our recipes or processes from this." Yum! Restaurants declined to comment further.

The Australian Heart Foundation says the palm oil used by KFC is far from healthy. Its view is backed by a 2003 World Health Organisation report that found consumption of palm oils contributed to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.

The burger chain McDonald's announced last year it was swapping its liquid canola oil blend for a canola-sunflower blend with about 12 per cent saturated fat content. Palm oil and canola-sunflower oil have identical trans fat content (1 per cent).

Responding to Yum! Restaurants's statement after yesterday's meeting, Mr Pyne said: "Everyone made a commitment to return in September with a plan how to reduce both trans fats and saturated fats. [Yum! Restaurants] were part of that meeting, and they signed up by omission. I will be insisting they, too, return in September with a plan for [reducing] both . We are expecting the industry to co-operate in the removal of unhealthy cooking processes, but [if they don't] there are other tools available to government to achieve this aim."

Mr Pyne denied he had undertaken to also broach the subject of industry disclosure of trans fat content at the meeting. Under present regulations, trans fat content need be declared only if the product makes a health claim such as "99 per cent fat free". This means that trans fats on most food are lumped in with beneficial unsaturated fats, which help lower cholesterol. Trans fats, on the other hand, not only raise cholesterol levels but also destroy the benefits of the "good fats" present in a food.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

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Fish to the rescue -- again

Fish seems to be as popular as McDonalds is unpopular. In the study below, fish oil supplements were shown to alter brain chemistry and behaviour also improved but connecting the two is mere theory. In the absence of a double-blind trial, the behaviour improvement was most likely a "Hawthorne" effect.. Prof. Puri is a fatty acids evangelist with a huge number of academic publications extolling their benefits but I could not find the study mentioned below in the maze of his publication list so I presume that it is as yet unpublished.

Fatty acids can help children in exams and improve their behaviour in class and at home, a study suggests. Overweight children who took fatty acid dietary supplements showed dramatic improvements in concentration, reading, memory and mental agility. The advances that their brains made in three months would normally take three years, researchers found. One teenage boy who was hooked on watching television and hated books before the experiment became an avid reader after and dismissed programmes as too boring to bother with.

Researchers said that the results, while based on a small sample, supported recent findings that fatty acids boost brain development and suggest that fast food may stunt mental growth, because processed foods do not contain these acids.

Improvement were made in every area of academic activity but the most surprising change, said researchers, was in levels of Nacetylaspartate, or NAA, a biochemical indicator of brain development. According to brain scans carried out at St George's Hospital, southwest London, the levels of NAA rose far more than expected in the three boys and one girl taking a supplement containing the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. "The results were astonishing," said Professor Basant Puri, who led the study. "In three months you might expect to see a small NAA increase. But we saw as much growth as you would normally see in three years. It was as if these were the brains of children three years older. It means you have more connections and greater density of nerve cells, in the same way that a tree grows more branches. "For all the children there was a marked change, but in the three boys there was a massive, massive increase in NAA. I was quite startled by what I saw."

The children taking part in the research were classified as overweight. Zach, aged 8, weighed 8st (51kg), George and Rachael, both aged 11, weighed 11st, and Gareth, who was 13, weighed 12st. At the start of the pilot study, the children were given a supplement called VegEPA. They took two capsules a day and were encouraged to cut down on fatty snacks and fizzy drinks and be more active. After three months the children's reading abilities were a year ahead, their handwriting was neater and more accurate and they paid more attention in class.

"Gareth's parents told me how he had suddenly found TV boring, as he wanted to read. Three months earlier he was saying he couldn't understand people who loved books," said Professor Puri, of the Division of Clinical Sciences at Imperial College, London. "The concentration of all the children improved enormously and they seemed a lot calmer and happier. Even before I started testing them their parents were saying how much better they were."

The children were asked to change their diet but there was no evidence that they did to any great extent and Professor Puri believes that the changes were caused by the supplement, which is derived from oily fish and evening primrose oil. It contains an essential fatty acid called EPA, but significantly, another type of fatty acid, DHA, is absent. Previous studies by Professor Puri have shown this formula can improve brain function in adults. His study features in a Five TV documentary, Mind the Fat: Does Fast Equal Food Slow Kids?, to be broadcast on Thursday.

Professor Kishore Bhakoo, of the the Clinical Sciences Centre at Imperial, said: "The thing that amazed me was how much change in biochemistry you could see in three months . . . You'd expect some variation, but they were all going in the same direction." He said that the results had implications for the "junk food" debate: "Processed food doesn't contain these substances."

Source





Taking the drugs out of ADHD

An about-face by the godfather of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has renewed debate about medicating children, writes Angela Kamper below. The Dore program mentioned below got a critical mention here on Feb. 16th.

US Professor of psychiatry Dr Robert Spitzer has been a saviour for thousands of parents around the world who want answers for their child's frequent outbursts of clumsiness and bad behaviour. While others just called them brats he gave parents a label for the erratic symptoms, placing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), attention deficit disorder (ADD) and other conditions on a chart they could all follow. The groundbreaking classification table, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III), meant doctors could diagnose with greater confidence and prescribe medication that would produce instant results.

Now, more than 25 years since his global revelation, Dr Spitzer's own attitude towards doctors using his chart has taken a dramatic turn. He says 30 per cent of children diagnosed with a mental disorder don't actually have it and are instead showing perfectly normal signs of being happy or sad. "Many of these conditions might be normal reactions which are not really disorders," Dr Spitzer said. He also acknowledged that some parents could pressure doctors to diagnose and prescribe drugs. "We don't know to what extent that's been happening inappropriately," he added.

His latest views have renewed debate over the diagnosis of children and use of prescription drugs as well as questions whether DSM-III, designed to be more specific and objective, still has major flaws.

About one in every 100 Australian kids are on medication for ADHD. The two main stimulant drugs are dexamphetamine and methylphenidate, or Ritalin. Some are also on the adult depression drug Risperdal.

Many scientists argue ADHD is a genetic disorder that continues into adulthood. However others say it is an excuse - developed from a culture that is too eager to medicate any supposedly antisocial behaviour. Glynis Howard, medical services manager for Sydney's Dore Achievement Centres, which use a drug-free alternative approach, says you cannot diagnose a child based on filling out a form with the right criteria. "The whole picture needs to be taken into account," she said. "You need to look at the child's environment or things that have recently occurred that may have caused the disorder."

The registered nurse says a death in the family, parents separating or even an allergy can trigger some of the supposed symptoms. "His (Dr Spitzer's) comments are very significant for us," Mrs Howard said. "When we started what we were doing it was really taboo. We were treated like outcasts but now people are starting to see the results and question things."

The Dore method, which has been available for five years, addresses the issue by taking the child through ten-minute daily exercises which stimulate the cerebellum in the brain instead of using drugs. The process is believed to increase the child's ability to process information more rapidly. Mrs Howard said the centre, which has no government funding, has more than 10,000 children on its books and boasts an 80 per cent success rate. "It's alarming when you see these kids - it amazes me that they have been given this medication," she said. "About three out of 10 kids can go off this medication and stay off it."

Don Ulich says his 12-year-old daughter Kristina has returned to mainstream school having used the Dore program. Kristina was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome - a type of autism-dyspraxia - and ADHD. She had a short memory span, difficulty expressing herself verbally, poor co-ordination and difficulty making friends. When first diagnosed she was more than four years behind other kids in her school year. But after six months on the program her parents noticed a dramatic improvement. "In her most recent assessment she was learning at the same rate as the other kids in her year," Mr Ulich says. "We didn't want to put Kristina on any drugs so we're very happy with her improvement. We've noticed a dramatic change in her confidence, having friends, participating in sport and generally opening up."

Sydney Children's Hospital paediatric psychiatrist Florence Levy says we have to be careful how we medicate - and there must be guidelines. "I've always been a conservative medicator. I believe there certainly has to be a rule for medication and it has to be carefully administered," Dr Levy said. She also argues we cannot generalise between Australia and the US because in NSW only paediatricians and psychiatrists can diagnose a child, while in the US, most GPs are permitted to diagnose. "Diagnosis is not restrained in the way it is here," she said.

Dr Levy does not discount the Dore program but says she needs to see more evidence before making any comment. She admits medicating is a much cheaper alternative for parents instead of using methods like Dore. "I haven't seen any evidence that any of it works," she said.

Despite the debate over his controversial chart, Dr Spitzer says he is not too concerned about children being misdiagnosed. "By and large the treatments for these disorders don't have serious side effects," he said. "I mean some do but they're not that serious, whereas the failure to treat can often be very hard on the child and on the family." [Making a kid into a druggie is not a serious side-effect?]

Source




Britain: Most spiking cases 'just drunk'

Most patients who believe they have had their drinks spiked test negative for drugs, research at Wrexham Maelor Hospital has found. The study aimed to assess the scale of drink-spiking in the area and identify problems at specific clubs and pubs. But the year-long investigation of hospital patients found fewer than one in five showed any trace of drugs. The research concluded the patients' symptoms were more likely to be the result of excess alcohol.

So-called "date rape" drugs include ketamine, Rohypnol and GHB. During the 12-month study there were 75 alleged cases of drink-spiking. Patient samples were analysed for alcohol and drug levels, and information was recorded about where the alleged spiking had happened. The alleged incidents took place in 23 different locations, although two locations accounted for 31% of the cases. Only 14% of the patients had informed the police. The research, which was published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, found 65% were twice the legal drink-driving limit, and 24% were three times the drink-drive limit.

Dr Peter Saul, a GP in Wrexham, said the report's findings "should not belittle the danger" people faced either from drink-spiking or drinking too much alcohol. He told BBC Radio Wales: "There had always been a suspicion that people would say that their drinks had been spiked when perhaps they had misjudged how much alcohol they were taking. "If you go home and your parents are there, and you are vomiting on the path, and you come in in a terrible state, you get sympathy if you say 'oh, my drink was spiked.' "You don't get sympathy if you say 'we spent too long in the bar'."

Dr Saul said the report did not make it clear if people's drinks had been spiked by alcohol, as opposed to drugs. He said: "It could explain the figures of people with very high alcohol levels." He added: "The message has to be to be careful, not just about having your drink spiked but the total amount of alcohol you have when you are going out for the night."

Professor Jonathan Shepherd is a Cardiff-based surgeon who has pioneered a method for hospital casualty units to compile statistics on the drink-related assaults. He told the same programme: "It really puts to bed a myth that's very widely held that drinks are spiked when in reality they are not." Prof Shepherd's research has included breathalysing up to 900 late-night drinkers in Cardiff city centre. He said: "There is certainly a sizeable minority who are drinking huge amounts of alcohol. "For all of us, it's a cautionary tale - we ought to be deciding beforehand how much are going to drink on a night out."

However, Prof Shepherd acknowledged that drink-spiking was a still a risk, which he said was easier to prevent by drinking from a bottle rather than a large glass. Dr Hywel Hughes, who led the study at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital, said the survey's results should not obscure the risks of drink spiking, as one-in-five people tested showed signs of "drugs of abuse". He said: "The bigger picture is probably the alcohol but spiking does go on, so people do need to take precautions against that."

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

*********************