Antioxidant-rich spice mix shows potential for heart health

Cooking hamburgers with a polyphenol-rich spice mix may reduce the content of compounds linked to heart disease and possible cancer, says a new study.

Using a spice mix similar to that used in the East Indian spice blend, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles report that hamburgers were subsequently found to contain significantly lower levels of lipid-peroxidation products, claimed to produce off-flavours and linked to promotion of the processes of atherogenesis and carcinogenesis.

“The ingestion of high-fat foods that contain lipid-peroxidation products can lead to increases in plasma concentrations of malondialdehyde as well as other cytotoxic and genotoxic compounds,” explained the researchers, led by David Heber from UCLA’s Center for Human Nutrition.

Important questions remain unanswered

Commenting independently on the research Victoria Taylor, senior dietician at UK charity the British Heart Foundation, told FoodNavigator: "This is a small study which seeks to identify if the addition of herbs and spices to meat can not only affect its flavouring, but also its potential impact on heart disease.

"More research is needed to confirm the results seen here and to identify whether the same findings are observed for meats other than minced beef. The practicalities of how this would need to be translated into real diets outside of the research setting is also an important question.

"However, in the mean time, adding herbs and spices to food which is already a key recommendation to help people reduce the amount of salt in their diet, may have additional benefits for heart health,” added Taylor.

Spices for health

The study taps into the promotion of the antioxidant-activity of spices. Herbs and spices often come out on top when scientists measure the antioxidant activity of common foods. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 84, pp. 95-135) published in 2006 stated that cloves had the highest antioxidant content, according to the ferric reducing ability of plasma (FRAP) assay. The rest of the top five was also spices, with top-placed cloves followed by oregano leaf, ginger, cinnamon and turmeric.

Added sugar increases heart risks: study

They said people who ate more added sugar were more likely to have higher risk factors for heart disease, such as higher triglycerides and lower levels of protective high-density lipoprotein or HDL cholesterol.

"Just like eating a high-fat diet can increase your levels of triglycerides and high cholesterol, eating sugar can also affect those same lipids," Dr. Miriam Vos of Emory School of Medicine, who worked on the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said in a statement.

The study adds to mounting pressure on U.S. food companies to make their foods healthier as newly passed U.S. health reform legislation shifts the nation's focus on ways to prevent, rather than simply treat disease.

A report by the influential Institute of Medicine released on Tuesday recommended that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration start to regulate sodium intake in foods.

And several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases.

The addition of sweeteners to prepared foods and beverages in recent decades has sharply increased Americans' daily intake of sugar and overall calories, according to Vos and colleagues.

But no major studies have looked at the impact of too much sugar on levels of fat in the blood.

The researchers asked 6,000 adults what they ate and then grouped them by sugar intake and cholesterol levels.

On average, nearly 16 percent of people's daily calories came from added sugar.

The highest-consuming group ate an average of 46 teaspoons of added sugar per day, while the lowest-consuming group ate an average of only about 3 teaspoons daily.

"It would be important for long-term health for people to start looking at how much added sugar they're getting and finding ways to reduce that," Vos said in a statement.

Too much sugar not only contributes to obesity, but also is a key culprit in diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.

The association warned last August that Americans need to cut back dramatically on sugar consumption, recommending that women eat no more than 100 calories per day of added processed sugar a day, or six teaspoons (25 grams), while men should keep it to just 150 calories of added processed sugar per said or nine teaspoons (37.5 grams).

Kelly Brownell of Yale University told Reuters last month a penny-per-ounce (penny-per-28 grams) tax on soft drinks could cut the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks by the average American from 50 gallons (189 liters) annually to 38.5 gallons (146 liters).

He expects such a tax could also cut healthcare costs by about $50 billion over 10 years and raise $150 billion in revenue over the same period.

The American Beverage Association says sugar-sweetened drinks do not pose any particular health risk, and are not a unique risk factor for obesity or heart disease

Berries cut lower type 2 diabetes and CVD risk, claims new research

Berries rich in polyphenols decrease the postprandial glucose response of sucrose in healthy subjects, according to a new study in the British Journal of Nutrition.

Sucrose increases postprandial blood glucose concentrations, and diets with a high glycaemic response may be associated with increased risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and CVD.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 150 million people have diabetes mellitus worldwide, and this number may double by the year 2025 due to population growth, ageing, unhealthy diet, obesity and sedentary lifestyle.

Berries are excellent sources of various polyphenols, such as anthocyanins, flavonols, phenolic acids, ellagitannins and proanthocyanidins, said the researchers from the University of Kuopio in Finland.

And, several in vitro and in vivo studies, said the authors, have suggested that polyphenols may influence carbohydrate digestion and absorption and thereby postprandial glycaemia.

“Polyphenols have inhibited intestinal a-glucosidase (maltase and sucrase) activity and glucose transport in vitro,” states the article.

The Finnish researchers hold that reduced rates of sucrose digestion and/or absorption from the gastrointestinal tract are the most probable mechanisms underlying the delayed and attenuated glycaemic response from consumption of polyphenols.

They said that in previous human studies, beverages rich in polyphenolic compounds have shown beneficial effects on postprandial glycaemia: “Delayed absorption of glucose after consumption of apple juice and coffee and attenuated glycaemic response to sucrose consumed in chlorogenic acid-enriched coffee have been reported.”

Method

In the present study, the Finnish researchers said they investigated the glycaemic effect of a berry puree made of bilberries, blackcurrants, cranberries and strawberries, and sweetened with sucrose, in reference to sucrose alone.

And they said that they used a control meal to achieve the similar profile and amounts of available carbohydrates, which included 250 ml water, 35 g sucrose, 4.5 g glucose and 5.1 g fructose.
A total of 12 healthy subjects (eleven women and one man, aged 25–69 years) with normal fasting plasma glucose ingested 150 g of the berry purée with 35 g sucrose or a control sucrose load in a randomised, controlled cross-over design, added the team.

The researchers said the subjects were screened by blood tests and a structured interview on previous and current diseases, current medication, alcohol and tobacco consumption, physical activity and use of nutrient supplements.

Each subject was studied in two three hour meal tests, on separate days, at least five days apart, they explained.

The authors said that the test meals were administered in a randomised order in an open-label design, with the participants advised to keep their medication, lifestyles and body weight constant and to follow their habitual diet throughout the study.

In the evening before the test, the subjects were instructed to avoid berries, and to consume a meal of choice and repeat that meal before the second test.

Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With More Asthma Symptoms and Medication Use

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2010) — Low levels of vitamin D are associated with lower lung function and greater medication use in children with asthma, according to researchers at National Jewish Health. In a paper published online this week in the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, Daniel Searing, MD, and his colleagues also reported that vitamin D enhances the activity of corticosteroids, the most effective controller medication for asthma.

"Asthmatic children in our study who had low levels of vitamin D were more allergic, had poorer lung function and used more medications," said Dr. Searing. "Conversely, our findings suggest that vitamin D supplementation may help reverse steroid resistance in asthmatic children and reduce the effective dose of steroids needed for our patients."

The researchers examined electronic medical records of 100 pediatric asthma patients referred to National Jewish Health. Overall, 47 percent of them had vitamin D levels considered insufficient, below 30 nanograms per milliliter of blood (ng/mL). Seventeen percent of the patients had levels below 20 ng/mL, which is considered deficient. These levels were similar to vitamin D levels found in the general population.

Patients low in vitamin D generally had higher levels of IgE, a marker of allergy, and responded positively to more allergens in a skin prick test. Allergies to the specific indoor allergens, dog and house dust mite, were higher in patients with low vitamin D levels. Low vitamin D also correlated with low FEV1, the amount of air a person can exhale in one second, and lower FEV1/FVC, another measure of lung function. Use of inhaled steroids, oral steroids and long-acting beta agonists were all higher in patients low in vitamin D.

"Our findings suggest two possible explanations," said senior author Donald Leung, MD, PhD. "It could be that lower vitamin D levels contribute to increasing asthma severity, which requires more corticosteroid therapy. Or, it may be that vitamin D directly affects steroid activity, and that low levels of vitamin D make the steroids less effective, thus requiring more medication for the same effect."

The researchers performed a series of laboratory experiments that indicated vitamin D enhances the action of corticosteroids. They cultured some immune cells with the corticosteroid dexamethasone alone and others with vitamin D first, then dexamethasone. The vitamin D significantly increased the effectiveness of dexamethasone. In one experiment vitamin D and dexamethasone together were more effective than 10 times as much dexamethasone alone.

The researchers also incubated immune-system cells for 72 hours with a staphylococcal toxin to induce corticosteroid resistance. Vitamin D restored the activity of dexamethasone.

"Our work suggests that vitamin D enhances the anti-inflammatory function of corticosteroids,' said Dr. Leung. "If future studies confirm these findings vitamin D may help asthma patients achieve better control of their respiratory symptoms with less medication."

This study comes on the heels of another paper by National Jewish Health faculty, which showed that low levels of vitamin D in adult asthma patients are associated with lower lung function and reduced responsiveness to corticosteroids.

Lutein plus vitamin A may slow vision loss: Study

A daily supplement of lutein in combination with vitamin A may slow vision loss associated with retinitis pigmentosa, according to the results of a randomized, controlled, double-blind trial.

Writing in the Archives of Ophthalmology, American scientists report that a daily supplement containing 12 milligrams of lutein in combination with 15,000 International Units of vitamin A (retinyl palmitate) was associated with a preservation of mid-peripheral vision.

Rentinitis pigmentosa is a group of inherited eye diseases that affect the retina. It causes the degeneration of photoreceptor cells in the retina, bringing progressive vision loss to about one in 4,000 people worldwide. Previous studies had found that taking vitamin A slows the decline in retinal function and vision loss.

The new data indicates that 40 year olds with the condition who take the vitamin A plus lutein combination would not be expected to lose their mid-peripheral field until the age of 61, which would represent a significant improvement compared with only 51 in people not taking supplements of the carotenoid.

Lutein for eyes

Lutein, a nutrient found in various foods including green leafy vegetables and egg yolk, has a ten-year history in the dietary supplement market as a nutrient to reduce the risk of age related macular degeneration (ADM). It is often used in combination with zeaxanthin.

The global lutein market is set to hit $124.5 million (€93 million) in 2013, according to a 2007 report from Frost & Sullivan.

According to the report, manufacturers need to address this growing maturity in dietary supplements by identifying new and potentially lucrative application segments that offer opportunities for the continued growth of the lutein market.

Omega-3 intakes may improve diabetic kidney health

Increased intakes of omega-3 fatty acids may reduce kidney damage in type-1 diabetics, without impacting the incidence of the condition, says a new study.

Kidney function was improved in type-1 diabetics with the highest average intake of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), compared with people with the lower intakes of the fatty acids, according to findings published in Diabetes Care.

The results are based on data from 1,436 participants in the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial – a trial including people aged between 13 and 39 and funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Type-1 diabetes occurs when people are not able to produce any insulin after the cells in the pancreas have been damaged, thought to be an autoimmune response. The disease is most common among people of European descent, with around two million Europeans and North Americans affected.

In addition, the incidence of the disease is reportedly on the rise at about three per cent per year. The number of new cases is estimated to rise 40 per cent between 2000 and 2010.

Diabetics are known to be at increased risk of kidney disease.

Study details

The researchers, led by Dr Amanda Adler from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the Institute of Metabolic Science in Cambridge (UK), measured the excretion of the protein albumin in urine. Albumin is the most abundant protein in human serum and in people with kidney problems the protein leaks from the kidney into the urine. A level of 30 mg per 24 hours is reportedly representative of sufficient function.

According to the results, people with a higher average intake of omega-3s had albumin excretion levels 22.7 mg per 24 hours lower than people with the lowest average intakes of omega-3.

However, no link was observed with the incidence of kidney damage or raised albumin levels, said the researchers.

The Claim: Milk Makes You Phlegmy

Many people believe milk leads to upper-respiratory congestion, but studies have generally dismissed it as an old wives’ tale. In one well-known experiment, scientists found that even people inoculated with the common cold virus did not exhibit a statistically significant increase in symptoms or nasal secretions when they drank milk.

But a new report suggests a possible explanation: only a small group of people are susceptible. The theory is described in Medical Hypotheses, a journal devoted to publishing bold and sometimes radical biomedical theories.

In their report, the authors point to studies showing that not all milk is the same. Some types of milk, from certain breeds of cow, contain a protein called beta-CM-7, which has been shown in studies to stimulate mucus glands in the digestive tract. These glands are also found in the respiratory tract, where they are known to overproduce mucus in conditions caused by inflammation, like asthma.

The authors assert that consuming milk containing the beta-CM-7 protein may stimulate phlegm in the respiratory tract, particularly in people with chronic lung conditions.

“These prerequisites,” they write, “could explain why only a subgroup of the population, who have increased respiratory tract mucus production, find that many of their symptoms, including asthma, improve on a dairy-elimination diet.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

There may be a link between milk and phlegm in some people, but for now it is only hypothetical.

White bread, rice, and other carbs boost heart disease risk in women

Women who eat more white bread, white rice, pizza, and other carbohydrate-rich foods that cause blood sugar to spike are more than twice as likely to develop heart disease than women who eat less of those foods, a new study suggests.

Men who eat lots of those carbohydrates -- which have what's known as a high glycemic index -- do not have the same increased risk, however, perhaps because their bodies process the carbs differently, the researchers found.

Only carbohydrates with a high glycemic index appear to hurt the heart. Carbs with a low glycemic index -- such as fruit and pasta -- were not associated with an increased risk of heart disease, which suggests that the increased risk is caused "not by a diet high in carbohydrates, but by a diet rich in rapidly absorbed carbohydrates," says the lead author of the study, Sabina Sieri, of the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, a national institute for cancer research in Milan, Italy.

The glycemic index ranks on a scale from 1 to 100 how quickly (or slowly) carbohydrates affect your blood-sugar levels. (White bread scores 100.) Foods that rank below 55 are considered to have a low glycemic index and produce only small fluctuations in blood glucose and insulin levels; foods that rank above 70 are said to have a high glycemic index and tend to cause unhealthy spikes in blood sugar.

Health.com: 10 best foods for your heart

In the study, published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Sieri and her colleagues analyzed data from a large, ongoing study of nutrition and cancer risk. The researchers surveyed roughly 48,000 Italian adults about their diets in detail, noting the amount and types of carbohydrates they consumed on a regular basis. (People with diabetes, who have abnormal levels of blood sugar and insulin, were excluded.) Not surprisingly -- the study was conducted in Italy, after all -- bread, pasta, and pizza were common sources of carbs.

Health.com: 25 diet-busting foods you should never eat

During the eight-year follow-up period, 463 people in the study -- 65 percent of them men -- experienced heart problems (including heart attacks), had angioplasty or bypass surgery, or died of heart-disease-related causes.

The women who reported eating the most carbohydrates had twice the risk of developing heart disease as their counterparts who consumed the fewest carbs.

When the researchers broke the carbs into high and low glycemic index categories, the increased risk was even more apparent: Women who ate the most high glycemic foods had about 2.25 times the risk of developing heart disease than women who consumed the fewest. (To isolate the effect of the carbs on heart health, the researchers took body weight, physical activity, saturated fat intake, smoking, and a range of other health factors into account.)

Men, by contrast, were not at increased risk for heart disease regardless of how many -- or what type of -- carbs they consumed. Although the researchers aren't certain why this is, they suggest that it may be in part because carbohydrates with a high glycemic index lower HDL (or good cholesterol) and raise triglycerides less readily in men than they do in women.

Health.com: 20 meals that won't kill your cholesterol

Previous studies have shown a similar link between glycemic index and heart disease risk, and a similar discrepancy between men and women. "We hope to be able to repeat this analysis on...more than 500,000 subjects in order to confirm our results," Sieri says.

Joanna McMillan Price, a nutritionist in Sydney, Australia, and the author of The Low GI Diet, says that the new study provides yet more evidence to support a diet that favors low versus high glycemic index foods. "That means cutting out processed carbs and choosing instead minimally processed whole grains and low-GI starchy vegetables, fruits, and legumes," she says.

Health.com: Heart-healthy recipe of the day

There are many benefits to limiting foods with a high glycemic index, Price adds. People who do so "will find their appetite easier to control, making weight control easier in turn," she says. "They will help to keep energy and mood steady over the day, and they reduce their risk of several chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers."

According to Price, the best low glycemic index foods are whole-grain breads, barley, quinoa, beans and chickpeas, low-fat dairy products, fruit, and sweet potatoes.

Diet alone will not likely lead to significant weight loss

PORTLAND, Ore – Newly-published research by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University demonstrates that simply reducing caloric intake is not enough to promote significant weight loss. This appears to be due to a natural compensatory mechanism that reduces a person's physical activity in response to a reduction in calories. The research is published in the April edition of the American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.

"In the midst of America's obesity epidemic, physicians frequently advise their patients to reduce the number of calories they are consuming on a daily basis. This research shows that simply dieting will not likely cause substantial weight loss. Instead, diet and exercise must be combined to achieve this goal," explained Judy Cameron Ph.D., a senior scientist at OHSU's Oregon National Primate Research Center, and a professor of behavioral neuroscience and obstetrics & gynecology in the OHSU School of Medicine, as well as a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.

To conduct the research, Cameron and OHSU post-doctoral fellow Elinor Sullivan, Ph.D., studied 18 female rhesus macaque monkeys at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. The monkeys were placed on a high-fat diet for several years. They were then returned to a lower-fat diet (standard monkey food) with a 30 percent reduction in calories. For a one-month period, the monkeys' weight and activity levels were closely tracked. Activity was tracked through the use of an activity monitor worn on a collar.

"Surprisingly, there was no significant weight loss at the end of the month," explained Sullivan. "However, there was a significant change in the activity levels for these monkeys. Naturally occurring levels of physical activity for the animals began to diminish soon after the reduced-calorie diet began. When caloric intake was further reduced in a second month, physical activity in the monkeys diminished even further."

A comparison group of three monkeys was fed a normal monkey diet and was trained to exercise for one hour daily on a treadmill. This comparison group did lose weight.

"This study demonstrates that there is a natural body mechanism which conserves energy in response to a reduction in calories. Food is not always plentiful for humans and animals and the body seems to have developed a strategy for responding to these fluctuations," added Cameron. "These findings will assist medical professionals in advising their patients. It may also impact the development of community interventions to battle the childhood obesity epidemic and lead to programs that emphasize both diet and exercise."

Toxic Fish Expose Greater Concern of Imported Foods into U.S.

The American seafood industry is being flooded with products imported from developing countries, much of which have proven to be contaminated with banned chemicals, poisons, carcinogens and high levels of antibiotics, according to a report by ABC News.

The report found that over 80 percent of the seafood sold in America today is imported, much of it from Third World nations such as China, Vietnam and the Philippines, none of which are known for their food safety standards.

The Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with promoting public health through regulation and supervision of food safety, inspects less than one percent of the nation’s imported seafood. Alabama, one of the few states with stringent seafood safety testing, regularly rejects 50 to 60 percent of imported seafood due to safety concerns, ABC News reported.

But, the FDA’s lack of regulation of food imports is no surprise given how understaffed and underfunded the agency is. In 2007, the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees 80 percent of the nation’s food supply, estimated that it would conduct border inspections of just 0.6 percent of the food it is supposed to regulate. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, another agency charged with supervising food safety, conducted inspections on roughly 11 percent of imported foods in 2007.

It is no wonder then that the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that every year 76 million Americans are afflicted by food poisoning. Of those, an estimated 5,000 will die each year. The Trust for America’s Health found that foodborne illnesses caused by major pathogens cost $44 billion annually in medical care and lost productivity.

The seafood case is just one of many episodes in the ongoing saga of America being invaded with toxic, faulty or dangerous foreign imports.

Recently, over 60 million cans and pouches of dog and cat food originating from China were recalled after, by some estimates, 3,600 American pets died from eating foods contaminated with the toxic chemical melamine.

The blood thinner Heparin manufactured in China was also recalled recently by the FDA after it was found to have caused the deaths of 81 American citizens. Authorities believe that the contaminant, oversulfated chondroitin sulfate, a substance that mimics heparin but costs 99 percent less, entered the drug’s supply chain in China.

In the latter half of 2007, over 25 million childrens toys manufactured in China were recalled after they were found to be contaminated with toxic amounts of lead.

In that same year, roughly 450,000 tires were purchased from a Chinese manufacturer and sold in the U.S after they were found to be faulty and pose dangers to drivers.

Most recently, millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall were recalled after it was found to emit sulfur gases that ruined numerous air conditioner and refrigerator coils, microwaves, computer wiring, faucets and copper tubing. In addition, rashes, allergic reactions, asthma and sore throats were reportedly caused by exposure to the substance.

U.S. officials have also had to contend with a rash of foodborne illnesses caused by imported peppers, spinach, peanuts and most recently pistachios. And more than 20 countries and markets have banned or recalled milk products from China because of melamine contamination.

The only way to prevent an influx of contaminated imports is better regulation and oversight at the federal level, experts say.

“Consumers may be getting a dose of antibiotics with their seafood dinner, and that’s something that the government should stop,” Caroline Smith DeWaal, a member of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told ABC News.