News summary

UK climate “leads to vitamin deficiency”

About a quarter of Britons could be suffer from a deficiency of vitamin D in the winter, according to researchers. They believe lack of exposure to sunlight may lead to a shortfall despite the vitamin?s availability through the consumption of oily fish, eggs and fortified breakfast cereals. Dr Birgit Teucher, of the Institute of Food Research, and Dr Barbara Boucher, of Barts and London Queen Mary School of Medicine and Dentistry, say we need more. They call for more research, while pointing out that supplements including cod liver oil could be a solution.
(Reuters Health Online)
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Folate message getting through

A survey in the US indicates that 40 per cent of women of childbearing age are getting enough folic acid to help prevent birth defects. The research, by the charity March of Dimes, shows that the message on the supplement is getting through; the organisation has been urging for some time that women who could become pregnant take in at least 400 mg of folic acid, or folate, daily. At least one manufacturer of oral contraceptives is looking at he possibility of adding folate to its formulation so that if women become pregnant without meaning to they will at least have a “head start” on their folate supplementation
(HealthScout)
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Diet “gets better with age”

Adults in the UK eat twice as much fruit and vegetables now as they did when they were children, and take in less fat and sugar, according to a study by researchers at University of Newcastle. They say also that close family members can have the most influence on their relatives? diet. Study subjects who claimed a lack of time prevented them from eating properly were the more likely than those who did not cite this factor to have a low fruit and vegetable intake. The study’s lead author, dietician Amelia Lake, says, “We need to examine the availability of healthy food in venues such as the workplace and in shops. Despite all the healthy eating messages, it’s still easier to go to a local shop and buy a chocolate bar rather than a piece of fruit.”
(Reuters Health Online)
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Sweets “do not cause obesity”

Scientists at Harvard University say sweets and snacks, often blamed for the rise in childhood obesity, are not in fact responsible for weight gain in American children. The researchers say data gathered through the monitoring of 16,000 children aged nine to 14 fail to support the hypothesis that snack foods promote weight gain, and show that calories from snack foods account for less than 20 per cent of total intake.
(The Independent)
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Glucose level significant in non-diabetics

High blood sugar levels are not a heart disease risk for diabetics alone, according to a new study suggesting that a high glucose mark is a risk factor in non-diabetics as well. Dr Kay-Tee Khaw, of the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge, says the relationship between cardiovascular disease and mortality is continuous and increases with increasing blood glucose levels, even across the normal, non-diabetic range, in a linear manner. She has found that even in people who do not have diabetes, levels of glycated haemoglobin predicts cardiovascular disease incidence and total mortality. Her results are based on a study of 10,232 men and women aged 45 to 79 living in the general community, who were followed up over six years.
(HealthScout)
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Sweets “help with weight loss”

The latest eating regime to be seized on by health professionals appears to be the sugary snacks and sweets diet. Researchers at London, Edinburgh and Birmingham say a group of overweight taxi drivers who were encouraged to eat more sugary snacks managed to lose an average of 12lb each over 12 weeks. The study, which was funded by the British Sugar Bureau, was carried out by Anne de Looy, formerly of Queen Margaret University College in Edinburgh and now at Plymouth University where she is the UK?s only professor of dietetics, and Sandra Drummond, of Edinburgh. The researchers also found that the more sugar the drivers ate, the less fat they ate, and the more weight they lost, a finding that is congruent with with earlier research showing that people eating the greatest amount of sugar are significantly leaner than those on a low-sugar diet.
(The Times Online)
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Diet and life expectancy

While it is already known that drinking moderate amounts of red wine, and cooking with olive oil, may increase longevity to some extent, it appears that adopting four simple lifestyle measures more than halves an elderly person’s risk of dying. Researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands say a carefully chosen diet, moderation in alcohol, exercise and abstaining from smoking can cut death risk by 65 per cent.
(BBC News Online)
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“Mediterranean” diet may prevent metabolic syndrome

Italian scientists say consumption of a “Mediterranean-style” diet appears to prevent metabolic syndrome and improve sufferers? survival. Dr Dario Giugliano, of Policlinico Seconda Universita di Napoli, and colleagues, say after two years on this diet patients in their study group had a lower omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio than subjects on a “prudent” diet. Perhaps most importantly, 78 of 90 patients in the “prudent” diet group still had metabolic syndrome at the two year point, whereas only 40 out of 90 in the “Mediterranean-style” diet group had it.
(Reuters Health Online)
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Soft drinks “increasingly the source of energy”

Soft drinks are moving ahead of milk as a source of calories for many Americans, according to a study at the University of North Carolina. Researchers say that between 1977 and 2001 the amount of energy consumers get from soft drinks rose from 50 to 144 calories a day, while that from milk dropped from 143 to 99. The greatest reduction in milk consumption ? 13.2 per cent of total energy in 1977 to 8.3 per cent in 2001 ? was among those aged 2 to 18, a group whose soft drink consumption doubled over the study period.
(HealthScout)
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