Choose Your Poison

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Sugar Blues Sugar provides 20% of calories Canadians consume

Sugar provides 20% of calories Canadians consume - Health - CBC News:

Beverages among top sources of sugar

CBC News

Posted: Sep 21, 2011 9:33 AM ET

Last Updated: Sep 21, 2011

Canadians get about 20 per cent of their calories from sugar, according to a new report.

Statistics Canada reported on sugar consumption of Canadians of all ages on Wednesday.

"The sugar that Canadians consume accounts for 21 per cent of their daily calories," Kellie Langlois and Didier Garriguet of Statistics Canada in Ottawa concluded. "Beverages are among the top sources of sugar."

The sweetener may occur naturally in fruit and milk or be added to foods and drinks.

Since the report didn't distinguish between naturally occurring and added sugars, it isn't possible to compare how much sugar Canadians take in to guidelines from the World Health Organization and the Institute of Medicine, the report's authors noted.

The Institute of Medicine recommends that no more than 25 per cent of total calories come from added sugars. The World Health Organization recommends a daily maximum of 10 per cent of calories from free sugars.

Sugar consumption was lowest among women aged 71 and over, at 20 teaspoons, and highest among teenage boys aged 14 to 18, at 41 teaspoons.

This study reported daily intake of sugar by food group and by the top 10 sources.

For example, the top five sources of sugar intake for Canadians age 9 to 18 were:

Soft drinks: regular 14.3%.
Milk: 14.0%.
Fruit: 10.6%.
Confectionery: 10.3%.
Fruit juice: 9.1%.

The Canadian Sugar Institute said it was pleased that the report will help dispel "misinformation" regarding Canadian consumption patterns.

"In terms of how other countries are doing, we look to be about the same," Langlois said.

On average, Canadians consumed 110 grams of sugar a day, the equivalent of 26 teaspoons.

Overall, 35 per cent of the sugar that Canadians consumed came from the "other" foods category. The percentage peaked at 46 per cent among teenage boys.

Friday, April 15, 2011

John Robbins: Being Fat in America

John Robbins: Being Fat in America:

"A few weeks ago, the 575-pound spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill, a 29-year-old man named Blair River, died. It wasn't a heart attack, it was pneumonia. He had been the public face of the restaurant and the star of its advertising. He was also the single father for a five-year-old girl.

At nearly 600 pounds. Blair River ate all his meals free at the restaurant."

Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso did not deny the link between the young man's excessive weight and his tragically premature death. "I hired him to promote my food," said Basso, "(but his) life was cut short because he carried extra weight." Ironically, the restaurant's motto is "Food Worth Dying For."

Of course, no one is forcing anyone to eat at the Heart Attack Grill or to stuff themselves full of unhealthy food. It's a free country, in theory anyway, and we're free to eat ourselves to death if we want to do so.

Some would say that the Heart Attack Grill steps over a line, to the point of enabling dangerous food addictions. There is certainly nothing remotely resembling healthy on the menu. Customers can purchase cigarettes, but only the non-filtered type. On the wall are prominent displays advertising menu items such as "Quadruple Bypass Burgers" that carry 8,000 calories, and "Flatliner Fries" that are deep-fried in pure lard. Perhaps joking, owner Basso says, "We're in the front lines of the battle against anorexia."

Scantily-clad waitresses will still regularly exhort customers to eat all they can. He's making money, and thinks the restaurant is great fun.

But is it funny that we have become the most obese society in the history of the world? Two-thirds of the residents of the United States are now either overweight or obese. So many children are developing the most common type of diabetes that medical authorities have had to change the name of the disease. What was formerly called "adult-onset diabetes" is now called "type 2 diabetes." It accounts for 90 percent of the diabetes in the country, and the incidence in children is skyrocketing.

It's easy to point our fingers and pass judgment. We can blame fast food companies that aggressively market unhealthy foods to children, we can blame people who overeat for their lack of will power, and we can blame parents for feeding their kids poorly. We can blame harmful ingredients such as trans-fats and high-fructose corn syrup, and we can blame the pressures of modern life that turn people into addicts of one kind or another.

We can play the blame game ad infinitum, but who does that help? Does it help those with weight problems that leave them vulnerable to disease and prone to feelings of shame?

What if we were instead to learn from those people who have taken the arduous, difficult, and ultimately joyful journey from obesity to health?

Eat a healthy plant-based diet, and your body will thank you for the rest of your life.

John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers include "The Food Revolution" and "Diet For A New America." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info"

YouTube - Our love is in your cornflakes - Not in my Cuppa

YouTube - Our love is in your cornflakes - Not in my Cuppa: "y wspainternational on Feb 11, 2011
http://www.notinmycuppa.com/takepart
WSPA has teamed up with Adam Miller, the creator of BBC 3's Mongrels, and comedian Kevin Eldon to create Molly's Story (aka: Our love is in your cornflakes) to raise a tongue in cheek awareness of the impact of factory dairy farms.
Please help keep Molly and her sisters out in fields by adding your voice at http://www.notinmycuppa.com/takepart

Sign up to the campaign and share Molly's video with your friends, and while you are at it, why not ask Molly what it is really like to be taken away to a Mega Dairy: http://www.twitter.com/MollyTheCowWSPA
Category:"

Is Sugar Toxic? - NYTimes.com

Is Sugar Toxic? - NYTimes.com

...Public speaker. His critics argue that what makes him compelling is his practice of taking suggestive evidence and insisting that it’s incontrovertible. Lustig certainly doesn’t dabble in shades of gray. Sugar is not just an empty calorie, he says; its effect on us is much more insidious. “It’s not about the calories,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.”

If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.

YouTube - Sugar: The Bitter Truth

y UCtelevision on Jul 30, 2009

Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Series: UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public [7/2009] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 16717]

Category:

Education

Download this video for offline viewing.

LICENSE: Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works).

For more information about this license, please read:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

High Quality MP4

Friday, April 8, 2011

Many cancers avoidable with less drinking: study - Health - CBC News

Many cancers avoidable with less drinking: study - Health - CBC News

Drinking too much alcohol is blamed for a "considerable proportion" of cancer cases, a large new European study suggests.

The study in this week's issue of the medical journal BMJ said current or former alcohol consumption could be blamed for as much as 10 per cent of cancer cases in men and three per cent in women.

The conclusions were based on following more than 100,000 men and 250,000 women aged 37 to 70 in Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark from 1992 to 2005.

"A considerable proportion of the most common and most lethal cancers is attributable to former and current alcohol consumption," wrote lead author Manuela Bergmann of the Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke in Nuthetal, Germany.

"This strongly underlines the necessity to continue and to increase efforts to reduce alcohol consumption in Europe, both on the individual and the population level."

Too much drinking was also blamed for seven per cent of breast cancers in German women and 28 per cent of colorectal cancers in Spanish men, the results show.

"The effect was greater for certain cancers which we already know there's a causal relationship between …like liver, mouth, throat, esophagus and breast cancer," said Dr. Karl Kabasele, CBC's medical commentator.
Standard drink labels

Canada has a national alcohol strategy that covers alcohol pricing and availability. But labelling alcohol bottles better with specific warnings about cancer risk would help reduce its adverse health effects, said Prof. Tim Stockwell of the University of Victoria's Centre for Addictions Research.

Low risk drinking guidelines

"It's a citizen's right-to-know issue," Stockwell said in an interview. "I think it's scandalous that vested interest groups have persuaded governments that it's not necessary to inform consumers about the risks of things like cancer from this product that most of use and love."

People are warned about the risks of tanning salons for example but alcohol's risks are not clearly spelled out, Stockwell.

The Canadian Cancer Society acknowledged that cancer risks of drinking have received little attention.

"I think there's a lot of misconception about the safety of alcohol, " said Gillian Bromfield, a policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society in Toronto. "A lot of people really don't understand the risk of cancer from alcohol intake."

Alcohol labels could also carry more useful information about how many standard drinks of alcohol are found in a bottle of wine or spirits, Stockwell suggested. That way, it would be easier for people to translate upcoming national guidelines on quantity and frequency of drinking that are considered low risk to their personal behaviour.

In the study, researchers used a mathematical model to take factors such as smoking, diet and exercise into account in calculating the number of cancers attributed to drinking more than recommended.

The research was funded by several European health authorities.With files from CBC's Vik Adhopia, Amina Zafar and The Associated Press

Friday, February 25, 2011

Air polution

Air Pollution Rivals Exertion and Booze as a Trigger of Heart Attacks

By Matthew Heller on February 25, 2011

European researchers have concluded that air pollution directly leads to about as many heart attacks as better-known triggers such as physical exertion and excessive drinking.

In a study published in the journal The Lancet, researchers said that the main reason for the widespread impact of air pollution is its pervasiveness. Everyone is exposed to dirty air. So, even though air pollution poses a relatively low risk to any single person, it was estimated to be the trigger for 5 percent to 7 percent of all heart attacks.

Cocaine, by contrast, increases an individual’s immediate heart attack risk by an alarming 2,400 percent. Still, given the comparatively small numbers of people exposed to cocaine, the study found that it accounted for only 0.9 percent of heart attacks.

“The important message here is that while an individual’s risk from air pollution is moderate or small, each of us is exposed, making the amount of risk intolerable for the entire community,” Dr. Andrea Baccarelli of the Harvard School of Public Health, who wrote an editorial that accompanied the study, told The Boston Globe.

Baccarelli said air pollutants may trigger heart attacks by promoting inflammation and increasing blood clotting. Pollutants also appear to attach to lung cell receptors, sending a signal to the heart that the body is in trouble.

The researchers from Belgium and Switzerland who conducted the study reviewed 36 epidemiological assessments to assess the importance and relevance of “final straw” risk factors for heart attacks — as opposed to their longer-term causes.

Traffic exposure was judged to be the top factor, accounting for 7.4 percent of heart attacks. Researchers acknowledged that the traffic figure could be related to exposure to air pollutants, or to other commuting issues such as stress and noise, but said they lacked the data to clarify the possible connections.

Along with traffic exposure and air pollution, physical exertion, alcohol and coffee were rated among the leading triggers, all thought to account for 5 percent or more of heart attacks. As for sexual activity, it rated well behind, accounting for 2.2 percent.

The study was published Thursday, a day after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was easing rules to crack down on air pollution from industrial boilers and incinerators

Source

http://www.fairwarning.org/2011/02/air-pollution-rivals-exertion-and-booze-as-a-trigger-of-heart-attacks/

Monday, February 14, 2011

How to wean your child off junk food - Parentcentral.ca

by ALISON JOHNSON

MCCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE

Kids used to a steady diet of sugar and fat can change — and parents can help make the switch less painful. “It’s about balance,” says Babs Benson, R.N., director of the Healthy You weight management program at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, Va. “Frequency and quantity are key.”
Emphasize moderation. Offer junk food occasionally — not daily — and keep portion sizes as small as possible.
Educate kids. Explain that you’re making a change not to punish them but to help them be stronger and smarter.
Continually introduce healthier snacks. Instead of Oreos, offer sweetness in the form of graham crackers or small boxes of raisins. Try fun shapes—like celery stalks with peanut butter and raisins, a.k.a. “ants-on-a-log”—and healthy dips such as hummus.
Make homemade versions of favourites. Create pizzas with whole-wheat muffins, tomato sauce and low-fat mozzarella cheese, or cook “fries” by spraying potato wedges with olive oil, sprinkling on salt and baking at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes per side.
Don’t cut out snacks. Kids need them to maintain energy. Just put out healthy choices when you know they’re hungry, perhaps with a small treat on the side.

Get rid of junk. If big bags of chips and candy aren’t in your pantry, no one can raid them.

Involve kids in food preparation. They’ll be more likely to try new foods if they have helped select recipes, pick out foods and cook.

Make family meals a priority. Serve plenty of lean protein, fruits and vegetables and whole grains. You’ll be setting a good example and reducing the temptation to grab junk on the fly.
Offer nonfood rewards. Stop using junk food as a prize for good behaviour.

McClatchy News Services

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Alcohol claims 2.5 million lives a year: WHO

Alcohol claims 2.5 million lives a year: WHO

GENEVA, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- The use of alcohol causes approximately 2.5 million deaths a year, and young people were especially vulnerable to its harms, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday in a report profiling 193 countries on alcohol controls.

"One third of deaths (from alcohol) are among young people," said Dr. Shekhar Saxena, director of the WHO's Mental Health and Substance Abuse department, adding that alcohol is responsible for 9 percent of all deaths that occurred to people aged between 15 and 29.

"Alcohol is also a causal factor in 60 types of diseases and injuries," the WHO expert stressed.

Saxena said alcohol consumption may lead to liver cirrhosis, epilepsy, poisonings, and mental disturbance which very often causes road accident or violent behavior.

Recent research even proved the links between alcohol abuse and cancers.

Vladimir Poznyak, the head of WHO's substance abuse unit who collaborated the report, said: "Six or seven years ago we didn't have strong evidence of a causal relationship between drinking and breast cancer. Now we do."

Restrictions on alcohol marketing and on drink-driving were tightened in some countries through the past few decades, but there are still many with weak alcohol policies and insufficient prevention programs.

The Global Strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol, endorsed by WHO member states in May 2010, promotes a range of proven effective measures for reducing alcohol-related harm.

These measures include taxation on alcohol to refrain from harmful drinking, restraining availability through reducing alcohol distribution, raising age limits for the buyers and imposing effective drink-driving prohibitions.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Drink Up: Booze Doesn’t Kill Brain Cells After All -- Grub Street New York

Drink Up: Booze Doesn’t Kill Brain Cells After All

Photo: iStockphoto

First, science tells us that drinking alcohol will make usbetter at working out. And now! The Atlantic tells us that alcohol won't kill any of our precious brain cells, despite what our parents may have told us. This great quote comes from a book called Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine: " ... alcohol does many things to the brain, one thing it clearly doesn't do is wipe out neurons indiscriminately." The news is especially welcome today, because it is cold here in the northeast and we are looking forward to fortifying ourselves with a hot toddy (or two!) later. [Atlantic]

By: Alan Sytsm