Pick a fruit, any fruit, and you know it’s good for you. It’s the same with vegetables and many whole grain foods. They deserve their nutritional halos.

Some foods, however, have gotten the healthy nod, when they’re actually laden with fat, sugar or both.

Some of you may be scratching your heads, wondering, “you mean, frozen yogurt isn’t good for me?”

Well, no. That’s why you should always read the label. To save you some time, here are seven items that you may think are good snacks, but might be better left on the store shelf.

GRANOLA BARS
Granola bars got their wholesome, outdoorsy reputation as the mountain climber’s snack of choice. They’re filled with whole oats, nuts, seeds and bits of dried fruit — how could that be a bad thing?

The downside: Many granola bars are dipped in sugary syrups or loaded with chocolate chips, highly processed or artificial ingredients and aren’t much better than high-calorie candy bars. Even the less sugared-up varieties have only a little protein, a smidgen of fiber and a small amount of vitamins and minerals.

If you can’t resist: Make your own trail mix with whole-grain, ready-to-eat cereals, such as shredded wheat, with whole nuts, seeds and chunks of unsweetened, dried fruit. Otherwise, stick to bars with a short ingredient list, essentially whole grains, nuts, seeds and real fruit. Pick ones with 4 or more grams of fiber, less than 150 calories per serving and no more than 6 grams of added sugars.

TEA DRINKS
Tea has been lauded for its antioxidant power. The phytonutrients in tea leaves may not predict your future, but they may help reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. Tea leaves can calm inflammation in the body and may slow the growth of cancer cells.

The downside: Tea drinks are not the same as brewed tea leaves. Many bottled varieties contain little brewed tea, but plenty of added sugars — enough to rival soda. A recent Consumer Reports review found that all bottled tea beverages had fewer antioxidants than brewed teas. Some of them were made from “concentrates” or “essences,” and likely lack the touted benefits.

If you can’t resist: Brew your own beverage. Chill and flavor it with lemon and a small amount of sugar. If you pick a bottled tea, choose one that lists brewed tea as the first ingredient and no more than 4 grams of added sugars per serving. Studies have health benefits in those who drink 4 cups of brewed tea daily.

PRETZELS
They’re the go-to snack food for school kids. One serving of pretzels contains 1 gram of fat, compared to potato chips’ 10 grams.

Pretzels are lower in fat than chips, but are mostly nutritionally empty.
The downside: Pretzels are mostly nutritionally empty. Sure, they’re lower in calories and fat compared to chips, but they really are not a healthful snack. One serving provides nearly a quarter of the sodium a person needs each day. Because pretzels are basically bland, seasoned varieties pump up the flavor, but also the calories, sodium and fat content.

If you can’t resist: Pick a whole wheat brand. Or, how about a handful of nuts, instead? They offer a variety of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients, plus they pack some protein and fiber. Seeds, such as sunflower or pumpkin, are an option. Or try subbing-in any type of veggie sticks and a dollop of zesty dip.

MUFFINS
The name evokes a warm kitchen and homemade goodness. The bran or berry varieties give them the image of a nutritious breakfast.

The downside: The sheer size of today’s muffins. Years ago, one muffin was 150 to 170 calories, 5 grams of fat and about the size of a racquetball. Today, a muffin averages 500 calories, 20-plus grams of fat, and are closer to the size of a small planet.

Source: msnbc.msn.com

The three-day event brought together leading nutrition researchers from around the world, bearing plenty of both bad and good news. Some highlights:

Bad News:

1. Hunter-gatherers in the Australian outback today live on 800 varieties of plant foods. Modern Americans live principally on three: corn, soy and wheat.

From the presentation, “Phytonutrients: Nature’s Bonus from Plant Foods” by David Heber, M.D., Ph.D. Professor of Medicine and Public Health and Director, UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

2. One third of Americans get 47 percent of their calories from junk foods.

USDA” Trends in the United States - Consumer Attitudes and the Supermarket, 2000. From the presentation, “Phytonutrients: Nature’s Bonus from Plant Foods” by David Heber, M.D., Ph.D. Professor of Medicine and Public Health and Director, UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

3. The average American is eating 300 more calories each day than he or she did in 1985. Added sweeteners account for 23 percent of those additional calories; added fats, 24 percent.

Putnam et al. USDA. From the presentation, “Cultivating the Common Ground of Food, Nutrition and Ecological Health,” by David Wallinga, M.D., Director, Food & Health Program, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy, Minneapolis, Minn.

4. Vitamin D deficiency is widespread. The following health problems have been linked to vitamin D deficiency: type 1 and 2 diabetes; multiple sclerosis; rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, periodontal disease, increased susceptibility to infection; osteoporosis, low birth weight infants; low seizure threshold; cancers of the breast, prostate, colon, pancreas and ovary; non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; hypertension, myocardial infarction, stroke, congestive heart failure; wheezing in childhood, and compromised muscle strength and falls in the elderly.

From the presentation, “Vitamin D Deficiency: The Cause of Everything?” by Louise Gagne, M.D., Clinical Assistant Professor, Dept. of Community Health and Epidemiology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.

5. In real dollars, the price of fresh fruits and vegetables has risen nearly 40 percent since 1985. In real dollars, the price of soft drinks has dropped 23 percent. The reason unhealthy foods tend to be less expensive on average than foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables has much to do with American farm policy.

Condensed from “Food without Thought: How U.S. Farm Policy Contributes to Obesity” Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Environment and Agriculture Program, from the presentation, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Searching for the Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World,” by Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.

Hopeful News

6. Ten cups per day of green tea delayed cancer onset 8.7 years in Japanese women and three years in Japanese men.

From the presentation, “Beef or Broccoli? Nutrition and Breast Cancer” by Victoria Maizes, M.D., Executive Director, Program in Integrative Medicine, Assoc. Professor, Clinical Medicine/Family & Community Medicine, the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson, Ariz.

7. Three meta-analyses of randomized, placebo-controlled trials found a 5-12 percent decrease in cholesterol levels in hyperlipidemic patients after at least 30 days’ treatment with 600-900 mg of garlic extract.

Warshafsky S., et al Ann Int Med 1993; 19;599-605; Silagy C, et al. JR Coll Phys Longdon 1994; 28:2-8; Ackermann RT, et al. Arch Intern Med 2001: 161: 813-24. From the presentation, “The Medicinal Spices” by Tieraona Low Dog, M.D., Education Director, Program in Internal Medicine, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Medicine, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.

8. Maternal limitation of seafood consumption to less than 340 grams per week during pregnancy did not protect children from adverse outcomes. In contrast, this observational study [Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children] showed beneficial effects on child development when maternal seafood consumption exceeded 340 grams per week, with no upper limit of benefit…

Hibbeln et al., The Lancet, 17 Feb., 2007. From the presentation of Joseph Hibbeln, M.D., Senior Clinical Investigator, Sectional of Nutritional Neurosciences, Laboratory of Membrane Biochemistry and Biophysics, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, Md.

9. “I see a lot of hopeful trends, including the rise of alternative agriculture: organic, local, biodynamic…There are now over 4,000 farmers’ markets in the U.S. The number has doubled in 10 years.”

From the presentation, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Searching for the Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World,” by Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.

10. Chocolate…may have a mild hypotensive [blood-pressure lowering] effect.

From the presentation, “The Medicinal Spices” by Tieraona Low Dog, M.D., Education Director, Program in Integrative Medicine, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Medicine, The University of Arizona, Tucson. Ariz.

BoingBoing links to this cookie that has its Nutrition Facts printed on the icing (in edible ink). Is this the future of food? No. Is it awesome? Yes. —MEGHANN MARCO

Superior Court Judge L.A. McConnell imposed the mandatory sentences on Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31. Their son, Crown Shakur, weighed just 3 1/2 pounds when he died of starvation on April 25, 2004.

The couple were found guilty May 2 of malice murder, felony murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children. A jury deliberated about seven hours before returning the guilty verdicts.

Defense lawyers said the first-time parents did the best they could while adhering to the lifestyle of vegans, who typically use no animal products. They said Sanders and Thomas did not realize the baby, who was born at home, was in danger until minutes before he died.

But prosecutors said the couple intentionally neglected their child and refused to take him to the doctor even as the baby’s body wasted away.

“No matter how many times they want to say, ‘We’re vegans, we’re vegetarians,’ that’s not the issue in this case,” said prosecutor Chuck Boring. “The child died because he was not fed. Period.”

Although the life sentences were automatic, Sanders and Thomas begged for leniency before sentencing. Sanders urged the judge to look past his “perception” of the couple.

“I loved my son—and I did not starve him,” she said.

When the judge told the defendants they could ask for a new trial, Thomas hung his head low.

“I’m dying every day in there,” he said, “and that could take three years.”

Source: www.breitbart.com

Americans are heavier than Mexicans, Australians, Greeks, New Zealanders and the British — and they aren’t too far behind, the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States said.

Americans’ love of water — Americans drank more than 23 gallons of bottled water per person in 2004 — is balanced by a love of sweets. Americans ate more than twice as much high-fructose corn syrup per person in 2004 as we did in 1980.

Most of the statistical tidbits provided by the abstract come from a variety of sources, including the government. In releasing the abstract Friday, the Census Bureau said the information is presented raw, without explanations, interpretations or cautions.

Source: physorg.com

A poll of 1000 US citizens published on 6 December reveals that only a quarter realise they’re eating GM food, and 60 per cent have no idea it’s in their diet.

“60 per cent of Americans have no idea they are eating genetically modified food”

“It’s not completely off the radar, but it’s not at the top of the mind for US consumers, and never has been,” says Michael Fernandez of the Washington DC-based Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, which commissioned the survey. Public ignorance might be down to the fact that most GM material is effectively hidden, he says. It may be present, for example, as soybean lecithin or maize syrup in cookies, without labelling.

So what would it take to increase awareness? As always, a good food scare. The unexplained presence of GM material in imported food, for example, would play on people’s prejudices, says Fernandez.

“Once we show that the mosquito receptors function in the same way as the fly receptors, we take a hint from drug companies–once they have a protein target in mind, [we] can screen for inhibitors of it.” says neurogeneticist Leslie Vosshall, the lead author on the study, published in this week’s issue of Nature.

It has been known since 2001 that when neurons in the fruit fly’s antennae sense carbon dioxide, they release the chemosensory receptor protein Gr21a. Based on her research, and that of others, however, Vosshall knew that insects need two receptor proteins to detect common smells like fruits and flowers. “One of them binds to the smell,” she says, “and the other one is critically important to make the [binded protein] function.”

By examining other taste receptors in the fly’s antennae, Vosshall’s team discovered that one particular protein–Gr63a–is coexpressed with Gr21a in both larvae and adults. By genetically engineering flies that only released one of the two proteins, the Rockefeller group determined that a combination of the two is necessary to get the antennae neurons buzzing. For instance, a strain of fly with a mutated version of Gr63a could not detect concentrated carbon dioxide mixtures that normal flies–which are carbon dioxide-averse–would flee from.

Vosshall then turned to the mosquito genome to search for genes akin to those of flies. The team found two strong candidates: GPRGR22 and GPRGR24. “They are 62 percent and 48 percent identical, which, in the world of chemosensory receptors, is very similar,” Vosshall notes. “There’s very little in common between the fruit fly and the mosquito as regards other taste receptors and smell receptors, so these are pretty strongly conserved.”

Unlike the flies, however, mosquitoes have their carbon dioxide-sensing neurons in their maxillary palps (specialized sensory organs located on either side of the insect’s proboscis, which the female uses to draw blood from her host). Greg Suh, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology whose lab first identified the fruit fly’s carbon dioxide-sensitive neurons, believes the locations of the neurons may explain a major behavioral difference between the insect species: “That’s maybe the reason why,” he speculates, “mosquitoes are attracted to CO2 whereas fruit flies are repelled by it.”

Vosshall now wants to disable these receptors–at least in the case of mosquitoes–by developing an effective repellant. The current industry-standard compound in bug spray is DEET but, according to Vosshall, no one knows exactly how it works. She believes that her lab will be able to improve on DEET by inhibiting GPRGR22 and GPRGR24. “Whatever we devise would need to be safe, cheap & so that it can be used in the developing world,” Vosshall says. “They would have to be the kinds of molecules that would sit safely on your skin, but also form a cloud around you and act on the mosquitoes that are about to bite you.”

Source: ww.sciam.com

The researchers from Germany, the UK, Switzerland and Italy measured the patients’ brain volume at the beginning of the study and again after about 38 days of sobriety, and they found that it had increased by an average of nearly two per cent during this time. In addition, levels of two chemicals, which are indicators for how well the brain’s nerve cells and nerve sheaths are constituted, rose significantly. The increase of the nerve cell marker correlated with the patients performing better in a test of attention and concentration. Only one patient seemed to continue to lose some brain volume, and this was also the patient who had been an alcoholic for the longest time.

The leader of the research, Dr Andreas Bartsch from the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, said: “The core message from this study is that, for alcoholics, abstinence pays off and enables the brain to regain some substance and to perform better. However, our research also provides evidence that the longer you drink excessively, the more you risk losing this capacity for regeneration. Therefore, alcoholics must not put off the time when they decide to seek help and stop drinking; the sooner they do it, the better.”

Dr Bartsch, who is senior neuroradiology resident and head of the structural and functional MR-imaging laboratory of the Department of Neuroradiology at the University of Wuerzburg, said the study was one of the first to be able to integrate data that showed how the brain regained volume and function early on, once alcoholics, who had no complicating factors, had stopped drinking alcohol. It was carried out in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Oxford’s Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB) and from the University of Siena’s Institute of Neurological and Behavioural Sciences.

The patients’ brains were scanned using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and proton MR-spectroscopy upon admission and after short-term sobriety. Only the patients that managed to abstain from alcohol without receiving any psychotherapeutic medication were included in the study, and those with secondary alcohol-induced disorders, as well as heavy cigarette smokers (more than 10 cigarettes a day), were excluded. Ten healthy volunteers (six men, four women), matched for age and gender, were recruited as controls for the study. The data were analysed and evaluated using FSL, a sophisticated software package developed at the Oxford FMRIB Centre, and LCModel (a computer program that analyses spectroscopy data) to give estimates of changes to brain volume, form (morphology), metabolism and function.

The technology enabled the researchers to superimpose the images of the patients’ brains upon follow-up on to the images of the brains at the start of the study so that they could see any morphological changes. They also measured how levels of various chemicals, including N-acetylaspartate (NAA) and choline, changed between the two time points. NAA can indicate how intact the brain’s nerve cells are (i.e. it is a metabolic marker of neuronal integrity), while choline provides hints at how cell membranes are being broken down and repaired.

In addition, the neuropsychological performance of the patients was tested at the beginning and end of the study, using a specific test (the d2-test) that primarily measures attention and concentration.

Dr Bartsch said: “After short-term sobriety of less than two months, we found that brain volume had increased by an average of nearly two per cent (1.82%), with a range of -0.19 to 4.32%. Only the one patient with the longest history of alcohol dependence (25 years) had a slightly reduced brain volume (-0.19%), but that value is within the margin of measurement error. Volumetric brain recovery was signified by the patients’ brains expanding beyond their previous limits, with an outward brain edge shift for the outer regions and an inward shift for the inner ones.

“In addition, on average across all the patients, cerebellar choline levels increased by about 20%, while levels of NAA in the cerebellar and frontal region of the brain and frontal choline significantly increased by about 10%. Brain volume regeneration correlated with the percentages increase in choline, indicating that volume regain is driven primarily by rising choline levels, while the more the NAA recovered, the better the patients performed on the d2-test.”

There were no significant changes in the controls.

Dr Bartsch and his colleagues were confident that the increase in brain volume and form was not simply due to rehydration of the brain, as concentrations of choline and NAA increased even when water levels and other metabolites did not change significantly.

“Our results indicate that early brain recovery through abstinence does not simply reflect rehydration. Instead, the adult human brain, and particularly its white matter, seems to possess genuine capabilities for re-growth. Our findings show the ways that the brain can recover from the toxic insults of chronic alcoholism and substantiate the early measurable benefits of therapeutic sobriety. However, they also suggest that prolonged dependence on alcohol may limit rapid recovery from white matter brain injury.

“Modern neuroimaging enables us to monitor morphological, metabolic and other functional brain changes. Usually this has been applied to evaluate the degree and speed of brain degeneration in illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease or multiple sclerosis. Here, we show that neuroimaging can also demonstrate and quantify brain regeneration in substance and function. Data analysis is crucial to these endeavours, and modern software such as the tools delivered by the Image Analysis Group at the FMRIB centre in Oxford provides us with the utilities necessary for such studies. For instance, I am able to inform a specific patient how much exactly his or her brain has benefited from sobriety and, as a clinician, I believe this may be a very supportive part of their treatment,” he concluded.

In an accompanying commentary, Professor Graeme Mason, wrote that the study was important not just because it unified several previously separate lines of research but because it might give doctors the tools to motivate their alcohol-dependent patients to stay sober.

“Doctors treating or studying alcoholism should be made aware of the research of Dr Bartsch because it may provide a motivational tool that is a broad set of concrete, tangible, and rapid benefits of sobriety: cognition, chemistry and brain volume,” wrote the associate professor of diagnostic radiology and psychiatry at Yale University. Prof Mason believed this was a particularly valuable contribution of the study because “patients often become discouraged from the physical and cognitive difficulties of achieving and maintaining sobriety.”

Source: physorg.com

Usually brought on by a life-threatening episode such as a car accident or a heart attack, the NDE includes euphoric feelings of extraordinary peace and calmness, a sense of being lifted out of your body and seeing an intense light at the end a tunnel of darkness.

This does not gel well with the extremely awful view of death and dying that people have. For some, NDEs validate the existence of the paranormal — of a peaceful continuum rather than a wrenching termination. For others, NDEs are the ultimate anodyne, meant to buffer your brain from the bodily trauma of extinction.

Since life seems to have programmed us so elaborately for the drama of birth and development, they argue, NDEs could well be life’s way of providing for the final exit in a graceful manner. But it does not answer why only 20% of the heart attack survivors recall some elements of the NDE.

This brings you to the more down-to-earth explanations including falling levels of oxygen or hypoxia of the brain triggering the vivid images associated with an NDE. Some scientists speculate the brain may contain a novel molecule called ‘endopsychosin’ that binds neurons to protect them from hypo-oxidative damage.

Others point to a flood of body’s feel-good chemicals released from the amygdala, which is the emotional centre of the brain. As to the re-run of past events that’s traditionally associated with an NDE this could be due to epilepsy-like electrical changes in the memory circuits.

Recent research indicates a more mundane explanation: A new study from University of Kentucky in Lexington finds that people who have had NDEs are more likely to have difficulty separating sleep from wakefulness. The scientists led by neurologist Kevin Nelson found that as many as 60% of those who had been through an NDE, had the rapid-eye movement (REM) state of sleep intruding into their regular consciousness while awake.

These subjects were habituated to weird experiences such as waking up and not being able to move, sudden muscle weakness in their legs, and hearing sounds that no one else hears upon waking or falling asleep, both before and after their traumatic event.

Source: indiatimes.com

He picked up a sponge soaked in antiseptic and began scrubbing the shaved skull of Chris Ratuszny, 26, a mechanic from Lindenhurst, N.Y.

Mr. Ratuszny lay on the operating table, anesthetized and oblivious. His head jutted out past the end of the table, supported by four pins that had been screwed into his skull. The pins were attached, like spokes in a wheel, to a semicircular frame — surreal but standard, the hardware typically used to immobilize the head for brain surgery. A thick purple line had been drawn from his neck to the top of his head, to guide the scalpels.

He was about to become the first person in the United States to undergo an operation involving the use of an excimer laser to treat a giant brain aneurysm, a dangerous ballooning of an artery that could burst and kill him or leave him with devastating brain damage. The aneurysm was too big for the most common treatments, which involve clips or metal coils; it required bypass surgery on an artery in the brain.

The laser is not approved for brain surgery in the United States, but Dr. Langer got permission from the Food and Drug Administration to use it on an emergency basis for Mr. Ratuszny (ra-TOOSH-nee) last Tuesday at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. The Dutch neurosurgeon who devised the laser procedure, Dr. Cornelius Tulleken, flew in from the Netherlands to help. He has performed the operation on about 300 patients in Europe.

Dr. Tulleken’s technique involves a seemingly small variation on the standard procedure and takes just a few minutes in an eight-hour operation. But it could make all the difference for patients like Mr. Ratuszny, said Dr. Langer, who traveled to Utrecht in 1999 to learn the procedure from Dr. Tulleken. The advantage of the laser is that it lets surgeons operate without clamping a major artery in the brain — a step required in the standard operation, but one that can cause a stroke.

“It’s a high-risk operation in the best of hands,” Dr. Langer said.

He estimated that the laser could reduce the risk of stroke from bypass surgery for aneurysms to 12 percent, from 15 percent. But comparative studies have not been done. Some surgeons are skeptical, while others are eager to learn the technique, and it has begun to catch on in Europe, Dr. Tulleken said. A neurosurgeon from Chicago came to New York just to see how Mr. Ratuszny’s procedure was done.

The laser definitely makes the operation easier, Dr. Langer said, because just knowing that the brain arteries are still open takes enormous time pressure off the surgeon during critical parts of the operation. To him, that alone makes it worthwhile.

“If it was me, my head, and there was a new device that would allow me to have this operation without occluding an artery, that’s what I’d want,” Dr. Langer said.

Besides making operations easier, the laser may make surgery possible for some aneurysms that would otherwise be inoperable, Dr. Tulleken and Dr. Langer say. Hoping to get the device approved in the United States, Dr. Langer plans to direct a study of it at several medical centers in the United States starting in March. The hospital invited The New York Times to observe and report on the operation, whatever the outcome. Even if the device is approved, it is unlikely to come into widespread use, he said. It costs about $500,000, and giant aneurysms like Mr. Ratuszny’s are rare. Dr. Langer estimated that no more than 1,000 patients a year in the United States would need operations like Mr. Ratuszny’s.

The equipment is made by Elana, a company started by the University Medical Center in Utrecht, where Dr. Tulleken teaches. He owns no stock, he said but relatives do, as does Dr. Langer.

Three million to six million people in the United States have brain aneurysms but do not know it, according to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation in Boston. Aneurysms form when artery walls weaken, but the underlying cause is unknown. Most do not rupture.

But 30,000 people a year do suffer ruptures, with dreadful results. Half die within a month, and many survivors wind up with significant brain damage.

Source: www.nytimes.com