Picture of "Four Pack", Publisher of "Four Packs For Oggies", on 03/15/09 (15 days before 50th Birthday)

The author of Four Packs For Oggies stepped down from posting because of multiple, multiple allegations of Narcissism….This was an error and posts will now be forthcoming…thank you all for visiting the site in the interim….Four Packs

Obesity is “the single greatest threat to public health in this century,” an expert panel declared in a report Tuesday that urges Americans to slash calories and increase their physical activity.

An advisory committee for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans calls on people to cut back on added sugars and solid fats (butter, marbled meats) and to follow a more nutrient-rich, plant-based diet.

•Reduce excess weight and obesity by cutting calorie intake and increasing physical activity.

•Shift to a more plant-based diet that emphasizes vegetables, cooked dry beans and peas, fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds. Increase the intake of seafood and fat-free and low-fat milk and milk products, and eat only moderate amounts of lean meats, poultry and eggs.

•Significantly reduce intake of foods containing added sugars and solid fats, which contribute about 35% of the calories in the American diet. Cut sodium intake gradually to 1,500 milligrams a day and lower intake of refined grains, especially those with added sugar, solid fat and sodium.

•Meet the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. Those recommend that adults get at least 2½ hours of moderate-intensity physical activity each week, such as brisk walking, or 1¼ hours of a vigorous-intensity activity, such as jogging or swimming laps, or a combination of the two types. Children and teens should do an hour or more of moderate-intensity to vigorous physical activity each day.

The report calls for many changes in the food environment, including:

•Improve nutrition literacy and cooking skills, and motivate people, especially families with children, to prepare healthy foods at home.

•Improve the availability of affordable fresh produce through greater access to grocery stores, produce trucks and farmers’ markets.

•Encourage restaurants and the food industry to offer health-promoting foods that are low in sodium; limited in added sugars, refined grains and solid fats; and served in smaller portions.

For more:   http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/weightloss/2010-06-16-dietaryguidelines16_ST_N.htm?csp=34news

SEVERAL INTERESTING FACTS FROM THIS RESEARCH….IT HAS LONG BEEN ESTABLISHED THAT THE LONG-CHAIN FATTY ACIDS ARE GOOD FOR YOUNG CHILDREN WHEN THEY ARE GROWING AND BRAIN SIZE INCREASES…THIS NOW CONFIRMS THAT IT WAS CRITICAL FOR BRAINSIZE GROWTH IN EARLIER HUMANS…NATURAL WHOLE FOODS SUCH AS FISH ARE IMPORTANT FOR OVERALL DIET TOO…

The real-life caveman diet included crocodiles, and eating the reptiles’ fatty flesh may have helped early humans evolve bigger brains, a new study suggests.

The work is based on bones and artifacts from a prehistoric “kitchen” that make up the earliest evidence that humans ate aquatic animals.

Stone tools and the butchered bones of turtles, crocodiles, and fish were found at the 1.95-million-year-old site in northern Kenya. No human bones were found, but the combination of remains suggests early humans used the site specifically to prepare meals.

That’s because reptiles and fish are particularly rich in long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. Some experts think this so-called good fat was “part of the package” of human brain evolution, said study leader David Braun, an archaeologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Discovering evidence for “brain food” in the late Pliocene (about 3 to 1.8 million years ago) may explain how bigger brains—for instance in our likely direct ancestor Homo erectus—arose in humans and their relatives about 1.8 million years ago, Braun said.

“If people wanted a diet to be cheap, they went to one supermarket,” said Adam Drewnowski, a University of Washington epidemiology professor who studies obesity and social class. “If they wanted their diet to be healthy, they went to another supermarket and spent more.”

The findings held true for the three highest-priced grocery stores in the Seattle region, including Whole Foods, where an average market basket of food cost between $370 and $420, and obesity rates went no higher than about 12 percent.

The percentage of food shoppers who are obese is almost 10 times higher at low-cost grocery stores compared with upscale markets, a small new study shows.

Researchers say the striking findings underscore poverty as a key factor in America’s growing girth.

For more:   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37280972/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/

“…20 ounces of cola on an empty stomach. That’s about the same amount the average American drinks in a day, making it the No. 1 source of calories in our diets,

The glucose in the sugar, or corn syrup, is quickly turned into energy, fructose, which is sweeter, is more likely to turn into fat.

After you drink a soda, the glucose hits your bloodstream, and your pancreas immediately begins making insulin to balance the sugar rush.

My glucose level started at 79, and then it rapidly shot up, because I had just put the equivalent of 16 teaspoons of sugar into my body. That is 10 more teaspoons of sugar than the American Heart Association recommends a woman like me consume in an entire day.

After 40 minutes, my glucose level had reached 107.

“This is the point where the glucose that you drank is really starting to get absorbed into the bloodstream, and this is where the pancreas is really starting to do its maximal work,” said Dr. Mark Schutta, director of the Rodebaugh Center.

By the time he finished telling us that, I was up to 111.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/soda-statistics-empty-calories-add/story?id=10303246

“…The combined ill effects of several negative health behaviors — ranging from suboptimal fruit and vegetable intake to smoking — result in major increases in mortality, according to a study in the April 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.”

“Modest but achievable adjustments to lifestyle behaviors are likely to have a considerable impact at both the individual and population level. Developing more efficacious methods by which to promote healthy diets and lifestyles across the population should be an important priority of public health policy,” the authors write.

Elisabeth Kvaavik, Ph.D., of the University of Oslo in Norway, and colleagues conducted a prospective cohort study of 4,886 adults in the United Kingdom who were at least 18 years of age in 1984 to 1985, calculating health behavior scores based on multiple poor health behaviors: smoking, fruit and vegetable consumption less than three times a day, weekly alcohol intake of more than 14 units in women and more than 21 in men, and less than two hours of physical activity a week.

Participants were followed for a mean of 20 years, during which time 1,080 died. The researchers found that adjusted hazard ratios for total mortality associated with engaging in one, two, three, and four poor health behaviors compared with engaging in none were, respectively, 1.85, 2.23, 2.76, and 3.49. Combined health behaviors had the strongest effect on deaths from causes other than cancer or cardiovascular disease; it had the weakest on cancer-related mortality. Having four poor health behaviors compared with having no poor health behaviors resulted in an all-cause mortality risk equivalent to being 12 years older than actual age.

“Soda is the caffeine delivery vehicle of choice for millions of people worldwide, but comes with phosphorous as a passenger” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal. “This research suggests that our phosphorous balance influences the aging process, so don’t tip it.”

New research published online in the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) shows that high levels of phosphates may add more “pop” to sodas and processed foods than once thought. That’s because researchers found that the high levels of phosphates accelerate signs of aging. High phosphate levels may also increase the prevalence and severity of age-related complications, such as chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular calcification, and can also induce severe muscle and skin atrophy.

“Humans need a healthy diet and keeping the balance of phosphate in the diet may be important for a healthy life and longevity,” said M. Shawkat Razzaque, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Medicine, Infection and Immunity at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. “Avoid phosphate toxicity and enjoy a healthy life.”

To make this discovery, Razzaque and colleague examined the effects of high phosphate levels in three groups of mice. The first group of mice was missing a gene (klotho), which when absent, causes mice to have toxic levels of phosphate in their bodies. These mice lived 8 to 15 weeks. The second group of mice was missing the klotho gene and a second gene (NaPi2a), which when absent at the same time, substantially lowered the amount of phosphate in their bodies. These mice lived to 20 weeks. The third group of mice was like the second group (missing both the klotho and NaPi2a genes), except they were fed a high-phosphate diet. All of these mice died by 15 weeks, like those in the first group. This suggests that phosphate has toxic effects in mice, and may have a similar effect in other mammals, including humans.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/foas-pis042610.php

Added-Sugar: It's been clear enough that a high-fat diet can worsen serum lipids, but less so that a diet with a lot of added sugar may do it as well. The case for it is stronger with a cross-sectional look at >6000 US adults that found significant, independent associations between increased intake of sugar-sweetened foods, which typically have added sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup, and elevated triglycerides (TG) and reduced HDL-cholesterol levels....

The dyslipidemia findings echo those from the Framingham Heart Study three years ago that associated elevated TG and low HDL-C, among other markers of the metabolic syndrome, with consumption of at least one sweetened soft drink daily [2]. However, in that study, as reported by heartwire at the time, high intake of soft drinks worsened lipids regardless of whether they contained sugar or artificial sweeteners.

But the NHANES analysis is also consistent with a body of literature linking high-carbohydrate diets with elevated risk of stroke and heart-disease events, prospective short-term studies suggesting that increased sugar consumption promotes dyslipidemia, and the well-recognized worsening effects of greater carbohydrate intake on TG and HDL-C levels, senior author Dr Miriam B Vos (Emory University) told heartwire.

The current study, she said, is noteworthy for extending those prospective observations “to a nationally representative free-living population, people consuming their normal diets.” It may also be the first of its kind to associate cardiovascular risk factors with dietary added sugars, which may be a more easily modifiable source of calories than simply “sugar” or “carbohydrates,” which take many forms naturally in whole foods, according to Vos.

http://www.theheart.org/article/1068299.do

Perez-Jimenez and his colleagues studied how a diet rich in so-called phenol compounds — which are found in olive oil, especially extra-virgin types — affected the workings of genes in 20 people with a common condition called metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome puts people at risk for heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

The heart-healthy effects of the famous “Mediterranean diet” may have something to do with components of virgin olive oil that repress genes that promote inflammation, a new study reports.

“These findings strengthen the relationship between inflammation, obesity and diet and provide evidence at the most basic level of healthy effects derived from virgin olive oil consumption in humans,” study leader Francisco Perez-Jimenez of the University of Cordoba, Spain, said in a news release from BioMed Central, publisher of BMC Genomics. The study was published online April 19 in the journal.

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/638231.html

VISCERAL “BELLY FAT” ACCUMULATES OVER TIME…THE LOSS OF ABDOMINAL FAT WILL COME PRIMARILY FROM DIET…THE MUSCLE IS BUILT UP FROM TARGETED EXERCISE AND CAN REPLACE THE WEIGHT FROM FAT LOSS…USE A TAPE MEASURE AND VISUAL MEASURES….

The problem is, abdominal fat is unique and particularly toxic to the body, but making a few lifestyle changes can have a huge impact. And forget the scale: losing weight doesn’t mean better health. In fact, he said, when people start exercising, they tend to maintain weight or even gain, yet their pants are getting baggy.

He explained exercising increases muscle mass, which is heavier than fat, so toss out that scale and use the measuring tape.

If you’re serious about your cardiac health, buy yourself a tape measure.

That little strip of plastic is the best way to identify whether your waist circumference is expanding and therefore putting you at increased risk for cardiovascular problems according to Dr. Jean-Pierre Despres, PhD, professor of kinesiology and director of research in cardiology at Quebec’s Laval University. Despres is a leading expert in the connection between abdominal fat and cardiac health.

“We have made remarkable progress,” said Despres, keynote speaker at Wednesday’s 2010 Waterloo-Wellington Cardiovascular Respiratory Conference, a joint project between St. Mary’s and Grand River hospitals and designed for health professionals.