The U.S. Food Guidelines Have Always Been Controversial

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Today, the new 2015 Dietary Guidelines were released, recommending Americans eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and varied proteins. This year’s guidelines were the subject of much controversy, including arguments over whether issues like sustainability should be included in recommendations for how Americans eat. The new guidelines did not recommend limits on processed or red meat.

But quarreling isn’t unusual when it comes to American diet recommendations. The guidelines as we know them today—released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) every five years—started from a disagreement.

RELATED: The 50 (New) Healthiest Foods—With Recipes

In 1977, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, led by Senator George McGovern, recommended “Dietary Goals” for the American people: consume only as much energy as you expend, eat more naturally occurring sugars, consume more fruits and vegetables and go easy on eggs and butter. The Dietary Goals received backlash from both industry and the science community over whether they were supported by enough evidence.

From that backlash emerged a decision to have the USDA and HHS partner. They selected scientists from both departments and created what would become the 1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which recommended seven ways to have a good diet, including eating a variety of foods, avoiding too much fat and cholesterol and cutting down on sugar. But once again, the development approach and the guidelines themselves were criticized.

Ultimately, the HHS and USDA were directed to form an advisory committee that would make sure outside advice would be included in future guidelines. A Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee was formed and used for the first time in the creation of the 1985 guidelines. This time, the advice was better received.

RELATED: The War On Delicious

Even before diet guidelines were officially released in the way they are now, federal agencies have long recommended ways for Americans to be better eaters. As TIME reported in 1964, a federal Food and Nutrition Board recommended that an American man and woman cut 300 and 200 calories out of their daily diet, respectively. “The affluent life in the U.S. of the 1960s is also the sweet life, the fat life and the soft life—or so the top U.S. experts have decided,” TIME wrote, adding that “the difference is the caloric content of two average martinis.”

Through the years, diet recommendations in the U.S. have moved away from recommending specific nutrients and more toward food-based recommendations. Even the contentious guidelines released in 1977 marked a shift that focused more on avoiding foods linked to chronic disease. In recent years, there has been significant debate about whether cutting out fat should continue to be a focus (the 2010 guidelines recommend fat-free and low-fat dairy products), and whether cholesterol is still a nutrient of concern.

“Unfortunately, what has remained consistent over the years is that Americans have not followed Dietary Guidelines recommendations,” representatives from the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion at the USDA told TIME in statement. The agency says the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) was created to measure how closely Americans’ diets fall in line with the Dietary Guidelines, and Americans’ HEI score on a 100 point scale has been between 49 and 58 since the 1990s.

With emerging science—processed meat was recently declared carcinogenic—and bickering among industry and the science community, it’s not hard to see how eating healthy can be confusing.

The key recommendations in this year’s guidelines to eat more fruits and vegetables remains advice worth following. As for the rest? Do as Americans always have, and join in the quarreling.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Mexico’s Soda Tax Linked to Reduced Consumption

THURSDAY, Jan. 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — A tax on sugary drinks in Mexico may have led to a significant decrease in sales of the beverages, a new study says.

And that might have implications for the fight against obesity.

The 10 percent sales tax was introduced Jan. 1, 2014. One year later, sales of sugary drinks were down 12 percent while sales of untaxed beverages — mainly bottled water — were up 4 percent, according to the study published Jan. 6 in the journal BMJ.

The short-term impact of taxing sugary drinks appears to be “moderate but important,” said study author Shu Wen Ng, a research associate professor in the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues. Further monitoring is required “to understand purchases longer term, potential substitutions, and health implications,” they said in a journal news release.

Their analysis of data from more than 6,200 Mexican households in 53 large cities showed that, in 2014, the average person bought 4.2 fewer liters of sugary drinks than they would have before the tax.

The reduction in sales of sugary drinks was highest among poor households, falling 17 percent by the end of 2014, according to the study.

But because this was an observational study, the researchers said no definitive conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect.

Mexico has high levels of diabetes, overweight and obesity, and curbing sugar consumption has been an important target for health advocates, the study authors noted.

While taxes on sugary drinks and other unhealthy products might help in the fight against obesity, they are not a “magic bullet,” said Franco Sassi, senior health economist at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development.

Such taxes need to be used in conjunction with other policies, such as government regulation, public education about nutrition, and incentives for research and development in food production, Sassi wrote in an accompanying journal editorial.

In a statement released Thursday, the American Heart Association said: “Scientific research shows that overconsumption of added sugars contribute to heart disease and other chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Mexico has paved the way for other nations to decrease sugary drink intake and has shown sugar-sweetened beverage taxes are an effective strategy to make healthy choices easier.

“Reducing consumption as part of a heart-healthy lifestyle will help improve rates of obesity, diabetes, dental caries, and heart disease,” the statement said.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about overweight/obesity prevention.

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New Imaging Technique ‘Lights Up’ Cancer Cells in Early Trial

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Jan. 7, 2016 (HealthDay News) — A new imaging technique that “lights up” cancer cells may eventually help surgeons remove all of a cancer the first time, according to a preliminary study.

“When a patient has cancer, the surgeon tries to find the tumor and cut it out,” explained study senior author Dr. David Kirsch, a professor in the department of pharmacology and cancer biology, and the department of radiation oncology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. “However, there can sometimes be microscopic residual cancer left behind that the surgeon can’t see.

“So this imaging technique,” he added, “is meant to help the surgeon see the cancer during the operation, to avoid the patient having to go in for a second operation.”

The early trial, involving both mice and a small number of human patients, used a preoperative injection of a blue liquid called LUM015 directly into the region where the cancer is located. The liquid then spreads into tumor tissue instead of healthy tissue. According to the study authors, the liquid seeks out a particular enzyme called protease that is believed to be critical to cancer growth, and is found in large quantities in malignant cells.

Once the tumor tissue is removed during surgery, a specially designed hand-held imaging probe is placed at the surgical site. Cancer cells left behind glow roughly five times brighter than healthy tissue, the researchers said. Surgeons can then remove the malignant cells on the spot, theoretically reducing the need for a follow-up operation.

Dr. Stephen Freedland, director of the Center for Integrated Research on Cancer and Lifestyle at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, noted that one of the biggest challenges facing surgeons is determining where is the cancer.

“So better imaging is always needed. Because with a big, massive tumor it’s easy to see the cancer. But when it’s just a few cells or a small tumor, it’s very hard to see and properly target therapy,” said Freedland, who was not involved with the study.

“But if this [experimental approach] pans out, which is still a huge ‘if’ at this point, it holds the promise to do that,” Freedland added. “I do think using these little enzymes, these protease, to tell us where the cancer is absolutely does make sense. And in theory this concept should work for the vast majority of cancers. So although it’s at a very early stage, there’s a lot of promise here. And hopefully they [the study researchers] on the path to something great.”

The new technology was developed through a collaboration between Duke, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Lumicell, a company started by the MIT researchers, involving Kirsch. Findings from the study were published online Jan. 6 in Science Translational Medicine.

The researchers say theirs is the first such approach to specifically use the protease enzyme to guide imaging.

To date, the study has involved research with mice and a group of 15 patients, all of whom were diagnosed with either breast cancer or soft-tissue sarcoma.

With human patients, the research team has so far studied the fluorescent impact on tumor tissue already removed from each patient. Among mice, the team has performed real-time removal of cancerous cells based on identification by the technique.

The study authors said the technique has produced no side effects and appears safe.

A follow-up trial involving 50 breast cancer patients is already underway, and Kirsch said the hope is to make the technology available by 2017.

Dr. Lisa Richardson, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of cancer prevention and control, said the reason people are living longer after a cancer diagnosis is “because of advances in early detection and treatment.”

“[And] a complete and accurate diagnosis of cancer at the time of surgery is always the goal,” she said. “Any new technique to improve cancer diagnosis is a step forward to help improve the desired outcome: eliminating cancer for an individual and improving their chances of surviving. This new technique may help surgeons be sure that cancer is completely removed during the procedure. If it pans out, the need for additional surgeries will also be decreased.”

More information

There’s more on cancer surgery at the American Cancer Society.

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The benefits of concurrent training

 

Speed up your results by incorporating concurrent training into your workouts.

There’s nothing like a double-whammy workout, but if you’re thinking of combining weights and cardio into one session, some caveats apply. “Again, the last thing you want to do is ask your muscles to work at their highest levels and to have your technique fail because you’re already partially exhausted from your cardio,” says exercise psychologist, clinical personal trainer and author Jodie Hopkins. This means that strength training is your main priority here, but don’t overdo it if you’re planning on keeping your gains. A heavy weights session would ideally be followed with body-growing nutrients and some rest, rather than another cardio session, for optimum muscle repair – so keep both trainings short and hard.

Why you would: It turns out that by combining weights and cardio into the one session you are unlocking some serious fat-burning potential. “Strength training will elevate the metabolism higher and has a longer time to return back down to a normal resting basal metabolic level,” says Hopkins. This means that you’d be burning more fuel than you would by doing cardio alone, and more even at rest. Strength training also begins the process of glycogen depletion, after which you can start burning more fat.

Try it: “I would train strength first to get all its benefits and not sacrifice technique and performance, and then I would do the cardio on the already elevated metabolism to add to the burn,” says Hopkins.

Schedule it: Anytime, but preferably when a post-workout snack is available. This could form part of your splits program, allowing for adequate rest between sessions.

NEXT: For an extra push, try some high intensity interval training.

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No Link Between ‘the Pill’ and Birth Defects: Study

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Becoming pregnant while taking birth control pills doesn’t seem to increase the risk of birth defects, a new study suggests.

Researchers found similar rates of birth defects — about 25 infants out of 1,000 — among women who never used birth control pills and those who took them before pregnancy or took them before realizing they were pregnant.

“Women who become pregnant either soon after stopping oral contraceptives, or even while taking them, should know that this exposure is unlikely to cause the fetus to develop a birth defect,” said lead researcher Brittany Charlton.

“This should reassure women as well as their doctors,” said Charlton, an instructor in the department of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

However, she cautioned that this study can’t prove that birth control pills don’t cause birth defects, only that there appears to be no link.

Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said the study findings aren’t surprising.

“It’s something we have known for a while,” she said. Still, “many women in the United States are on birth control pills, so it’s reassuring to know that they don’t cause any birth defects, and women don’t have to worry about it during pregnancy.”

Although oral contraceptives are highly effective at preventing pregnancy, about 9 percent of women get pregnant the first year of using them. Usually this is because they missed a dose or used other medications — including anti-seizure drugs, antibiotics, antidepressants or some HIV drugs — that can make the contraceptive less effective, Charlton said.

In many other cases, women stop taking “the pill” when they want to conceive and become pregnant within a few months.

Whether the hormones in birth control pills could affect fetal development when used around the time of conception hasn’t been well-studied, the study authors explained in background notes.

For the study, the researchers used national medical registries to collect data from Denmark from 1997 to 2011 on all live births, birth defects and mothers’ medical conditions.

Among more than 880,000 births, 2.5 percent of the babies had a birth defect such as a cleft palate or an arm or leg defect, the researchers found.

Specifically, Charlton’s team found that for every 1,000 births, 25.1 infants of mothers who never used the pill had birth defects, as did 25.0 of infants of mothers who had used birth control pills more than three months before pregnancy. The rate was 24.9 among mothers who used birth control pills within three months of becoming pregnant, and 24.8 among mothers who used the pill before realizing they were pregnant.

“The prevalence of birth defects was consistent across each of the oral contraceptive groups as well as when we added in pregnancies that ended as stillbirths or induced abortions,” Charlton said. “Similarly, the results were also consistent even when we broke down the birth defects into different subgroups, like limb defects,” she added.

In all, the study found that 68 percent of mothers had used birth control pills, but stopped more than three months before pregnancy, and 21 percent had never used them. Also, 8 percent of the women had stopped using oral contraceptives within three months of conception, and 1 percent used them after getting pregnant, the researchers said.

Charlton’s team excluded any infants with defects caused by known factors, such as fetal alcohol syndrome or chromosomal abnormalities.

The researchers also accounted for risk factors that could increase the odds of a birth defect. These included the mother’s age, household income, level of education, history of birth defects, smoking during pregnancy, use of prescription drugs and hospital admissions.

The study findings were published online Jan. 6 in BMJ.

According to Wu, this study shows that women shouldn’t worry that getting pregnant while on a birth control pill will cause an abnormal pregnancy.

More information

For more about birth control, visit the U.S. Office on Women’s Health.

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Virus That Causes Birth Defects Could Spread to Mainland U.S.

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A rare virus spread by mosquitoes linked to severe birth defects in Brazil has spread to Puerto Rico and health officials worry it could travel to the continental U.S.

The Zika virus was long thought to be harmless, but recently it has been linked to a neurological disorder called microcephaly, which can stymie brain development in newborn babies. The condition causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and can lead to early death. More than 2,400 suspected cases of the brain condition have been reported in Brazil since the Zika virus was first reported there early last year, according to government documents posted online by CNN. The country’s government has asked that families temporarily hold off on pregnancies.

The disease has appeared elsewhere in South and Central America and recently spread to the U.S. via Puerto Rico in a case reported last week. Now, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have warned U.S. travelers to the region, especially pregnant women, to take special caution to avoid mosquito bites. The disease is likely to follow the patterns of other mosquito-borne illnesses and wind up in the Southern Gulf states and Hawaii, according to a CDC official cited in the New York Times.

Symptoms of Zika, including fever, rash and headaches, are unpleasant, but the virus is not thought to lead to death in healthy adults. There is no medicine or vaccine to treat it. And, while health officials have called on the population to remain vigilant, they ask that people not overreact.

“There is no reason for alarm, and the public should continue to take commonsense steps to avoid mosquito bites,” Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s non-voting U.S. congressman, said in a statement.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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You Won’t Believe How Often Women Criticize Themselves in a Single Day

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As women we are really hard on ourselves, particularly in terms of physical appearance. But just how critical we are may shock you.

When Weight Watchers surveyed 2,000 women in the U.K. ranging in age from 18 to 60, they learned that the typical female criticizes herself a whopping eight times a day, most likely even before she’s had her morning coffee.

The critiques that came up the most included feeling too fat, fretting over messy hair, and thinking their midsection looks way too big. Feeling inferior on social media was also commonly mentioned.

RELATED: Thoughts Every Woman Has During a Bikini Wax

“Today’s hectic and visually driven world has meant that we’re seeing a rise in women being self-critical, from the way they look to the way they feel at work,” said Zoe Griffiths, the head of public health and programme at Weight Watchers, in a statement. “Our research has shown that being unkind to ourselves has been an underlying theme for women for many years, but a set of very modern cultural conditions have increased the intensity of this unkindness which are hard to avoid.”

The survey, which is part of Weight Watchers’ #WomanKind campaign, also found a common quality women wished they had included feeling more confident.

RELATED: 22 Body-Positive Photos of Celebrities in Bikinis

This is so not okay. If ever there was a reason to offer ourselves a little love it’s these incredibly sad findings. We are too amazing to let these thoughts continue to creep into our heads each and every day. Let’s kick those New Year’s resolutions to the curb and start loving who we are right now, because we deserve it.

This article originally appeared on MIMIchatter.com.

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This Smart Skin Patch Can Tell You if You’re Getting Too Much Sun

Photo: courtesy of La Roche-Posay

You know that you’ve got to protect your skin from the sun’s penetrating rays, but have you ever wondered how much sun exposure you’re actually getting? Thanks to a clever new product from the beauty giant L’Oreal, you’ll soon be able to measure your sun exposure with the help of a high-tech sensor called My UV Patch.

The company—more commonly known for its makeup products—unveiled its foray in wearable tech today at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The patch looks almost like a band-aid, and contains photosensitive dyes that change color when exposed to the sun’s skin-damaging ultraviolet (UV) rays, according to a press release. The stick-on is stretchy, disposable, and can be placed anywhere on the body for up to five days.

RELATED: 7 Simple Steps for Head-to-Toe Sun Protection

Wearers can then upload a photo of their patch to the My UV Patch app, and get feedback about exactly how much UV exposure their skin received. The idea is that people can use the information to inform the level of sun protection they need.

The company plans to include the patch free with any purchase of La Roche-Posay brand sunscreens later this year.

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Some Women Face Geographic Barriers to Breast Reconstruction

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Long distances to treatment centers are a significant obstacle for some women seeking breast reconstruction after a mastectomy, a new study finds.

“While greater patient awareness and insurance coverage have contributed to greater breast reconstruction rates in the United States, geographic barriers to access this service remain, particularly to academic centers,” wrote the study’s authors, led by Dr. Evan Matros from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

The researchers used the National Cancer Database to examine the association between breast reconstruction and the travel distance of more than 1 million American women who had a mastectomy between 1998 and 2011.

During this time period, the overall rate of immediate breast reconstruction jumped from about 11 percent to more than 32 percent, the investigators found.

The upward trend may reflect the Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act of 1998, which requires insurance companies to pay for breast reconstruction after mastectomy, the researchers suggested. Implant-based reconstructions increased the most, but breast reconstructions involving patients’ own tissue also rose, the study found.

The researchers found that treatment travel distances for patients having breast reconstruction increased from 1998 to 2011, but the same was not true for women who didn’t have the surgery.

The findings were published in the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

“Patients who underwent mastectomy with immediate reconstruction had to travel significantly greater distances than patients who did not undergo reconstruction,” the study authors wrote in a journal news release.

“The greater distance traveled by women undergoing breast reconstruction, as compared to mastectomy without reconstruction, suggests the presence of a geographic disparity,” they concluded.

Roughly 14 percent of the women who traveled less than 20 miles underwent reconstruction, compared to almost one-quarter of the women traveling between 100 and 200 miles, the study found.

Women treated at academic hospitals were most likely to undergo breast reconstruction. The study revealed 26 percent of these women had the procedure, compared to 20 percent treated at comprehensive community hospitals and 10 percent treated at community hospitals.

The average travel distance for women treated at both types of community hospitals was about 20 miles, but women treated at academic hospitals traveled an average of 47 miles, the researchers found.

Travel distance for women who underwent reconstruction with their own tissue at high-volume hospitals more than doubled over the study period to 53 miles. The study authors said this reflects the concentration of specialized centers in metropolitan areas.

The researchers suggested that more needs to be done to eliminate the barriers preventing women from accessing breast reconstruction after mastectomy. “Greater numbers of plastic surgeons, especially in community [hospitals], would be one method of addressing this inequality,” they wrote.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more about breast reconstruction after mastectomy.

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Antibody May Lower Rejection Rates After Stem Cell Transplant in Leukemia Patients

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — People with acute leukemia who were given antibody therapy before a stem cell transplant fared better than those who didn’t receive the treatment, a small study found.

Stem cell transplantation allows doctors to give higher doses of cancer-killing chemotherapy, according to the American Cancer Society. However, the odds of the body rejecting the transplanted stem cells are very high — a condition called graft-versus-host disease, the study authors explained.

By treating patients first with animal-derived antibodies, called antihuman T-lymphocyte immune globulin (ATG), the researchers were able to lower the threat of rejection in patients.

“Graft-versus-host disease is the most serious complication after stem cell transplantation,” said lead researcher Dr. Francesca Bonifazi, from the Institute of Hematology at Bologna University in Italy.

“Using [ATG] reduces the risk of complications of stem cell transplants without increasing the risk of leukemia recurrence and infections,” she added.

After an average follow-up of two years, 32 percent of the patients given ATG had chronic graft-versus-host disease. But, almost 69 percent of patients who weren’t given ATG had graft-versus-host disease, Bonifazi said.

“Stem cell transplantation is a curative option for several blood diseases and for acute leukemia in particular, which represents the most frequent indication for transplant,” she said.

“The risk of severe complications that can be life-threatening or severely affect the quality of life can be significantly reduced without decreasing transplant efficacy,” Bonifazi said.

The findings was published Jan. 7 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study included 168 leukemia patients treated at 27 different centers. The volunteers were randomly assigned to receive ATG or not.

At two years, the survival rate was similar in patients who received ATG or didn’t. But, the rate of survival in which they were free from chronic graft-versus-host disease and cancer recurrence was significantly better among patients given the antibody — 37 percent versus 17 percent, the researchers found.

“Here, by using [ATG] prior to transplant, we show that the risk of chronic graft-versus-host disease is significantly reduced without an increase of cancer relapse,” said study co-author Dr. Nicolaus Kroger. He is director of the department of stem cell transplantation at University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.

Lee Greenberger is chief scientific officer for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, based in White Plains, N.Y. Commenting on the new research, he said that “chronic graft-versus-host disease, which can occur after transplantation for the treatment of leukemia, continues to be a major limitation to conventional transplantation therapy. This study demonstrates that this antibody appears to significantly reduce the incidence of chronic graft-versus-host disease, and may improve the quality of life without a negligible effect on survival.”

Greenberger added that “this advance, coupled with previous studies and other ongoing trials with this antibody in transplant, may be of significant benefit to patients with blood cancer in need of a bone marrow transplant.”

More information

Visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute for more on leukemia.

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