Should the Federal Government Develop a New Nutritional Rating System for Food and Beverages?

Yes, according to a new government committee report.

Federal agencies should develop a new nutrition rating system with symbols to display on the front of food and beverage packaging that graphically convey calorie counts by serving size and a "point" value showing whether the saturated and trans fats, sodium, and added sugars in the products are below threshold levels.This new front-of-package system should apply to all foods and beverages and replace any other symbols currently being used on the front of packaging, added the committee that wrote the report.

"Our report offers a path to develop an Energy Star® equivalent for foods and beverages," said committee chair Ellen Wartella, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Communication, professor of psychology, and director, Center on Media and Human Development, School of Communication, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill."A successful front-of-package nutrition rating system would enable shoppers to instantly recognize healthier products by their number of points and calorie information.It would encourage food and beverage producers to develop healthier fare and consumers to purchase products that are lower in calories and food components that contribute to chronic disease."

I have to admit I don't like the government spending money needlessly, but the current nutrition labels are hard to read and I use a computer program (MyFitnessPal.com) to help wade through them.

Easily understood graphics would help you choose foods and beverages in a more expeditious manner.

Now, as to restaurants - can there not be some voluntary compliance?

The Morning Drill: October 12, 2011

A collection of dentistry and health related links/comments for your day.

Christensen: Metal crowns of the past are far superior

During a presentation on restoratives at the ADA's Annual Session on Tuesday, Gordon Christensen, DDS, MSD, PhD, didn't hold back.

"One thing I'll look at is the white stuff [nonmetals] in restorative dentistry," he said during the opening of the Christensen Bottom Line 2011. "Does it perform as well as the gold stuff? I'll tell you candidly that it doesn't."

The shift in materials favored for crowns received particular focus during the first part of his talk. Dr. Christensen shared conclusions that his nonprofit product-testing facility in Provo, UT, had reached about many of them.

He had strong words for what he termed "this white crown business." Of them, he said, "metal crowns of the past are far superior."

Nonetheless, dental practitioners continue to embrace the newer materials. According to data from Glidewell Laboratories, "Metal is dying," Dr. Christensen said. Metal has gone from 12% of all crowns placed from 1997 to 2010 to 5.6% in the year 2010. Porcelain-fused-to-metal (PFM) crowns went from 72% to 49% in the same period. Meanwhile, all-ceramic and composites went from 16% to 49.5%.

His skepticism was plain as he deconstructed the reasons all-ceramic restorations are being chosen.

"The strength of some types appears to be better than in the past," Dr. Christensen said. "But I have a whole drawer of broken crowns. I keep them there to keep me humble."

Nearly 5% of PFMs fail after 10 years, he noted, while many ceramic and composites fail after one.

"When you put a restoration on a patient who is 30, it's going to fail," Dr. Christensen said. "You will replace it."

Then he asked who in the audience had had to cut off a full-zirconia crown. With many hands in the air, he quipped, "You still look tired!"

He dismissed most of the burrs designed for cutting zirconia.

"Our research shows you're better off with a $1 diamond," Dr. Christensen said. "A diamond from Microcopy called Neo is one that continues to prove itself." It comprises extremely sharp diamond pieces leftover from the ring-making process, he explained

City of Malibu Adopts Landmark Resolution: Supports Global Phase Out of the Dental Mercury Filling

The Malibu City Council unanimously passed a landmark resolution on Monday, October 10, taking a proactive step by supporting “national and worldwide efforts to reduce anthropogenic sources of mercury,” which is in many products in common use today - including the dental amalgam filling. Dr. and Mrs. James Rota, 30-year Malibu residents, along with Californians for Green Dentistry, contacted the Malibu City Council to express concern regarding awareness of the toxicity of the mercury amalgam "silver" filling.

Mayor John Sibert sponsored the resolution, which was in response to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) suggestion that cities take an official position in the phase out or global ban of mercury. Malibu is the third city in the United States to do so.

During the City Council Meeting, Mayor Sibert revealed that while conducting environmental studies of soil in Malibu, mercury was found with no apparent source – except that the location in question previously hosted a dental office.

Police: Dentist assaulted

An Idlewood Avenue woman reportedly unhappy with work on her tooth was arraigned Tuesday in Municipal Court on accusations that she pulled her dentist's hair and wouldn't let go.

Cassandra Allen, 21, was arraigned on two counts of assault. Judge Elizabeth Kobly set bond at $10,000, as well as ordering that Allen have no contact with the Small Smile Dental Center on Mahoning Avenue or any of its employees.

Police reports state that Allen went to the office about 9 a.m. Monday, upset over some work done on her tooth. A dentist tried to help her, but several times during the process, Allen complained, the report states.

Allen then jumped the dentist from behind and pulled her hair, reports state.

The dentist yelled and an employee rushed in and tried to get between them. Allen hit the employee with one hand while pulling the dentist's hair with the other, the report states. The employee had several scratches on her arm, reports state.

Another dentist then stepped between Allen and the first dentist, and the dentist and employee ran out of the room, reports state.

The second dentist then fixed Allen's tooth, police said.

The dentist that was attacked told police she had not fixed Allen's tooth in the first place and she spent 30 minutes trying to fix it before she was attacked.

Allen was taken to the Mahoning County Jail, where she was held pending her court appearance. She appeared as if she had been crying when she appeared via video hookup.

Vitamin Supplements Associated With Increased Risk for Death

In women aged 55 to 69 years, several widely used dietary vitamin and mineral supplements, especially supplemental iron, may be associated with increased risk for death, according to new findings from the Iowa Women's Health Study.

Although many vitamin supplements did not appear to be associated with a higher risk for total mortality, several were, including multivitamins, vitamins B6, and folic acid, as well as minerals iron, magnesium, zinc, and copper.

Jaakko Mursu, PhD, from the Department of Health Sciences, Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, Finland, and colleagues reported their findings in the October 10 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Supplements are widely used, and further studies regarding their health effects are needed," Dr. Mursu and colleagues write. "Also, little is known about the long-term effects of multivitamin use and less commonly used supplements, such as iron and other minerals."

"In agreement with our hypothesis, most of the supplements studied were not associated with a reduced total mortality rate in older women," Dr. Mursu and colleagues conclude. "In contrast, we found that several commonly used dietary vitamin and mineral supplements, including multivitamins, vitamins B6, and folic acid, as well as minerals iron, magnesium, zinc, and copper, were associated with a higher risk of total mortality."

"Although we cannot rule out benefits of supplements, such as improved quality of life, our study raises a concern regarding their long-term safety," the authors add.

In a related editorial, Goran Bjelakovic, MD, DMSc, and Christian Gluud, MD, DMSc, from the Centre for Clinical Intervention Research, Cochrane Hepato-Biliary Group, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark, note that the current study adds "to the growing evidence demonstrating that certain antioxidant supplements, such as vitamin E, vitamin A, and beta-carotene, can be harmful."

"We cannot recommend the use of vitamin and mineral supplements as a preventive measure, at least not in a well-nourished population," they add. "Those supplements do not replace or add to the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables and may cause unwanted health consequences."

Enjoy your morning!

Can the Use of Dietary Supplements Cause Athletes to Fail Drug Tests?

Yes, an unwittingly so at that.

Minute levels of banned substances in some dietary supplements are leaving athletes susceptible to failed drugs tests according to Loughborough University Professor of Sport and Exercise Nutrition Ron Maughan.

Professor Maughan, who chairs the Sports Nutrition Group of the International Olympic Committee Medical Commission, has warned of the dangers of commercially available supplements which could turn athletes into unwitting drugs cheats.

He said: "It is now well established that many dietary supplements contain compounds that can cause an athlete to fail a doping test. In some cases the presence of these compounds is not declared on the product label.

"For some prohibited substances, the amount that will trigger a positive test is vanishingly small and may not be detected by routine analysis of the supplement."

Professor Maughan has raised particular concerns about the presence of the steroid nandrolone (and its metabolic precursors) which are banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Maughan and his team investigated athlete responses to trace amounts of a nandrolone precursor (19-norandrostenedione) where subjects ingested either water or a commercial sports bar contaminated with minute levels of the banned substance.

Despite contamination levels 1,000 times lower than concentrations typically scanned for during supplement manufacture, volunteers' samples still registered a positive doping result for nandrolone.

Professor Maughan added:

"The potential for such low levels of contamination in a sports supplement to result in adverse test results raises significant concerns for the manufacture of dietary supplements intended for consumption by athletes liable to regular doping tests.

"It presents a serious dilemma for sports supplement manufacturers, athletes, and those responsible for the welfare of athletes."

Watch for this to become more of an issue as we go into the Olympic season in 2012. Can you imagine training your entire life, make the Olympic team and then be disqualified because somebody handed you a dietary supplement of some kind?

More sophisticated and regular testing will be the answer. And, testing of the products.

Marathon Training Does Not Always Mean Losing Weight

Me finishing the 2011 Disneyland Half Marathon

Ask me how I know?

If you've ever trained for a marathon, you probably expected to lose weight. And why not? Long runs that last two, three, and four hours burn a serious number of calories. But many runners step on the scale just before race day and discover that instead of dropping pounds, they've added some. Runners sometimes gain weight because they change their diets along with their mileage, or because other factors, such as hormonal fluctuations, come into play. And occasionally extra pounds are actually a sign things are going right. Here's why the numbers on the scale go up during training, and how to fuel yourself so you get to the start at an ideal weight.

From my experience since beginning marathon both in walking and running, if you do not watch your diet closely, it is easy to gain body weight.

Most training programs say do not diet during your training and keep everything the same. Well, I say BS to that.

YOU WILL GAIN WEIGHT.

I am using My Fitness Pal on my PC and Android phone (myfitnesspal.com) and am monitoring all of my training (for calories expended) and dietary intake (calories in). I am so making sure I have sufficient carbohydrates in my diet to replace the muscle glycogen used on my long runs and protein to help repair muscle fibers.

I have lost 11 pounds in about 11 weeks (which is my goal). I have a long way to go but my body appreciates not lugging around the extra pounds on Saturday morning when I go out for at least 6 miles and now ramping up to 26.2.

Why do you gain weight?

YOU'RE HUNGRIER!

Marathon training almost always requires more mileage, which boosts the number of calories you burn as well as your appetite. "Your body is trying to help fuel your increased activity," says Jenna Bell, Ph.D., R.D., a nutrition consultant and coauthor of Energy to Burn. "One of the ways it does this is by making you hungry." It's worse for women: Researchers at the University of Massachusetts discovered this heightened sense of hunger is stronger in women than men because exercise accelerates the production of appetite-regulating hormones, prompting them to eat more; men, it turns out, aren't as susceptible to these changes.

YOU'RE OVEREATING!

You go for a 10-mile run, come home starving, and inhale a stack of whole-grain pancakes, a smoothie, eggs, bacon, toast, and a few well-earned cookies. Oops, you've eaten 1,200 calories—a few hundred more than you burned on the run.

To limit overcompensation—that is, eating above and beyond what you need for recovery and erasing the calorie deficit achieved during a workout—you need to make smarter food choices all day. Bell recommends eating mostly whole, minimally processed foods rich in carbs, fiber, and protein. The latter two take longer to digest, keeping hunger at bay and helping you avoid eating more than you should. Sabato also warns runners against falling into the "I deserve it" mind-set. "Going for a long run does not give you license to eat an entire batch of cookies," she says.

By using a system to monitor your daily NET calories, you can set a body weight goal and lose weight while training for a marathon. Do not use the marathon as a crutch for weight loss.

It is all about the calorie math.

Besides, aren't you training for the marathon for other reasons?

The Daily Drill: September 9, 2011

A collection of dentistry and health related links/comments for your day.

As Sports Medicine Surges, Hope and Hype Outpace Proven Treatments

Until she tore her hamstring a year and a half ago, Tina Basle ran marathons. Since then, she has been on a desperate search for a cure.

It took her from doctor to doctor, cost her thousands of dollars and led her to try nearly everything sports medicine has to offer — an M.R.I. to show the extent of the injury, physical therapy that included ultrasound and laser therapy, strength training, an injection of platelet-rich plasma (or P.R.P.), a cortisone shot, another cortisone shot.

Finally, in February, she gave up.

“I decided this is never going to heal, so let’s get on with it,” she said.

And so Ms. Basle, a 44-year-old digital media consultant who lives in Manhattan, started running anyway. She has lost a lot of speed and endurance. And, she added, “the stupid hamstring is really no better.”

Medical experts say her tale of multiple futile treatments is all too familiar and points to growing problems in sports medicine, a medical subspecialty that has been experiencing explosive growth. Part of the field’s popularity, among patients and doctors alike, stems from the fact that celebrity athletes, desperate to get back to playing after an injury, have been trying unproven treatments, giving the procedures a sort of star appeal.

But now researchers are questioning many of the procedures, including new ones that often have no rigorous studies to back them up. “Everyone wants to get into sports medicine,” said Dr. James Andrews, a sports medicine orthopedist in Gulf Breeze, Fla., and president-elect of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine.

Weight Watchers Produces Bigger 'Losers' Than Standard Weight-Loss Care

Dieters may be more likely to slim down if they are referred to a commercial program such as Weight Watchers than if they battle the bulge with primary health care providers alone, a new study finds.

Overweight adults in Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom who were referred to Weight Watchers by a primary health care provider lost about twice as much weight over a year as dieters assigned to standard weight-loss care, according to the study, which was funded by Weight Watchers and published Sept. 8 in The Lancet.

"The greater weight loss in participants assigned to the commercial program was accompanied by greater reductions in waist circumference and fat mass than in participants assigned to standard care, which would be expected to lead to a reduction in the risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease," the researchers said in a journal news release.

The study involved 772 overweight and obese adults who were randomly assigned to a year of diet care overseen by a primary care professional or to 12 months' free membership at a local Weight Watchers group.

Fifty-four percent of the standard-care dieters completed the 12-month study, compared to 61 percent of the Weight Watchers group.

Those who stuck with their standard diet lost an average of about 7 pounds, while those who attended Weight Watchers shed nearly 15 pounds on average. Also, the Weight Watchers participants were more than three times as likely to have dropped 5 percent or more of their body weight compared to the standard dieters, said the researchers.

A quarter of those randomly assigned to work with a primary care professional did lose 5 percent of their body weight, however -- a feat the researchers said confirmed the capability of primary care professionals to deliver the support and care needed for people to lose weight and keep it off during a year's time.

The researchers suggested that the structure of the commercial program -- including group support, weekly weighing, instruction about diet and physical activity, and motivation -- can be a clinically useful tool for battling overweight and obesity on a large scale. However, they acknowledged that a cost-benefit analysis and further research is needed to see if the gains (or, in this case, losses) could be maintained over time.

The researchers also said the findings suggested that overweight people were more likely to lose weight if they were referred to a commercial weight-loss program by a physician or another primary care provider than if they enrolled on their own.

Kids who live with smokers have more ear infections

Kids whose parents smoke are more likely to get ear infections and have hearing problems, according to a new review paper.

When moms lit up, kids were also almost twice as likely to need surgery for recurrent ear infections or similar problems, researchers reported.

The findings come from a combination of 61 past studies. While they can't prove that smoke exposure causes ear infections, researchers suggested that if that's the case, hundreds of thousands of ear infections may be due to parents' smoking each year.

"It's pretty impressive, especially since ear infections cause enormous pain," said Dr. Michael Weitzman, who studies the effects of parental smoking at New York University Medical Center and was not involved in the study.

The new paper "once again highlights a common child health problem that is profoundly influenced by mothers' smoking," he told Reuters Health, "and it focuses our attention more than previous studies have on it resulting in surgical procedures for children."

Taken together, the studies showed that kids living with a smoker had a 37 percent higher risk of any "middle ear disease," including ear infections and hearing problems -- and a 62 percent higher risk if the household smoker was their mom.

When mothers smoked, kids were also 86 percent more likely to get surgery for a middle ear condition, including recurrent ear infections, than if no smokers were in the house.

About three out of four kids have had an ear infection by the time they are three years old.

Enjoy your morning!

Latest USA Nutrition Guidelines Reinforce Need to Restrict Salt

I like salty foods like a good number of people, but lately have been restricting my intake. Good! Yes?

So, says the federal government.

The latest nutrition guidelines released Monday by the federal government reiterate much of the advice from previous years: eat less salt and saturated fats, eat more fruits and vegetables and whole grains.

But in perhaps the starkest terms yet, the government urged Americans to avoid sugary drinks and drink water instead, and to read food labels to pick soup, bread and frozen meals with less salt.

If there is a primary takeaway from the guidelines, it is this: Enjoy your food, but eat less.

“I like ‘enjoy your food,’ ” said Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University and a frequent critic of government nutrition advice. “I like the clarity of what to reduce.”

Among the recommendations: that anyone 51 or older, all African-Americans, children, and adults with hypertension, diabetes and chronic kidney disease should cut their salt consumption to 1,500 milligrams a day; the recommendation for everyone else is 2,300 milligrams.

In addition, the guidelines recommend consuming less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fatty acids, replacing them with so-called good fats like monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.

The guidelines suggest making fruits and vegetables half of a plate, choosing fat-free and low-fat dairy products, and eating more whole grains and seafood. The Department of Agriculture revises the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a thick booklet that lays out an ideal diet to maintain health, every five years. The panel produces a draft that is then reviewed and tweaked by government regulators and eventually made public.