Food & Nutrition
Court seeks Coke, Pepsi reply to petition in India
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Local arms of cola giants Coca-Cola and PepsiCo were asked by India’s Supreme Court on Friday to respond to a petition seeking to force them to list all chemicals present in their drinks on bottles.
The move comes two days after a local environmental group, the Centre for Science and Environment, said it had found pesticide residues in the companies’ drinks in excess of international guidelines.
But Friday’s hearing had been scheduled weeks before the findings were released.
Pesticides still found in Coke, Pepsi - Indian study
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An environmental group said on Wednesday bottles of Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. soft drinks in India still contained traces of pesticide, highlighting weak food safety laws in the country.
“If soft drinks are the choice of millions, the least that can be done is that these drinks are regulated,” said Sunita Narain, director of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), at a news conference.
A 2003 study by CSE briefly dented the companies’ sales when it said it found levels of pesticide in the companies’ soft drinks in excess of international standards.
Ice cream illusions: bowls, spoons, and self-served portion sizes
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Picking out the perfect bowls and spoons sounds like a concern solely for brides-to-be, but a new study of eating habits suggests that selecting right-sized serving utensils may help dieters avoid unconscious overeating.
Using willing colleagues as guinea pigs, the researchers threw an ice cream social to test whether oversized bowls and extra-large ice-cream scoops caused partygoers to dish up more dessert.
“Just doubling the size of someone’s bowl increased how much people took by 31 percent,” said lead author Brian Wansink, a consumer researcher who studies the psychology of food choice. “We also saw that giving people a scoop that was a little bit larger increased things by about 14.5 percent,” said Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University.
More Cadbury chocs may be tainted
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The scare over salmonella infected chocolate has gathered momentum with another thirty of Cadbury’s products now being tested for the nasty bug.
Officials from Birmingham City Council, UK, say there is a possibility that the initial list of salmonella infected brands did not include several other suspect items.
Last week the company withdrew over one million chocolate bars from the market after salmonella had been identified in some of them.
Vegetables may help arteries stay clear
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A healthy dose of vegetables every day may help keep the heart arteries clear, a study in mice suggests. Researchers found that lab mice given a diet full of broccoli, carrots, green beans, corn and peas developed far less artery narrowing than those reared on a veggie-free diet.
For humans, the findings offer more support for the advice health experts and mothers have long given: eat your vegetables.
Discounting French fries, most Americans aren’t adequately heeding that advice, noted the study’s lead author, Dr. Michael R. Adams of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Coffee Drinking Associated with Lower Risk for Alcohol-Related Liver Disease
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Drinking coffee may be related to a reduced risk of developing the liver disease alcoholic cirrhosis, according to a report in the June 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Cirrhosis progressively destroys healthy liver tissue and replaces it with scar tissue. Viruses such as hepatitis C can cause cirrhosis, but long-term, heavy alcohol use is the most common cause of the disease in developed countries, according to background information in the article. Most alcohol drinkers, however, never develop cirrhosis; other factors that may play a role include genetics, diet and nutrition, smoking and the interaction of alcohol with other toxins that damage the liver.
Arthur L. Klatsky, M.D., and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, Oakland, Calif., analyzed data from 125,580 individuals (55,247 men and 70,333 women) who did not report liver disease when they had baseline examinations, between 1978 and 1985. Participants filled out a questionnaire to provide information about how much alcohol, coffee and tea they drank per day during the past year. Some of the individuals also had their blood tested for levels of certain liver enzymes; the enzymes are released into the bloodstream when the liver is diseased or damaged.
Antioxidant-rich coffee may have health benefits
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Coffee seems to provide more than a quick pick-me-up. A new study suggests that drinking 1 to 3 cups of coffee per day may help protect against cardiovascular disease and other illnesses characterized by inflammation.
“The findings tend to suggest that there may be some benefit to drinking modest amounts of coffee,” Dr. David R. Jacobs, Jr., one of the study’s investigators, told Reuters Health.
“But I would very much like to see the finding replicated in other studies by other investigators before making a very strong statement in favor of coffee drinking,” he cautioned.
Research puts something extra in your grapes
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Researchers at the University of Adelaide have discovered a potential way to increase the amount of Vitamin C in grapes.
Senior lecturer Dr Christopher Ford and postgraduate student Seth de Bolt from the University of Adelaide’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine have made the significant breakthrough, in collaboration with their US colleagues at the University of California.
The researchers have identified an enzyme in grapes that helps convert Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, into tartaric acid. Tartaric acid accumulates in grapes as they ripen and contributes greatly to taste, tartness and aging potential.
Drinking more water does no harm in elderly men
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Increasing fluid intake by about a liter per day appears to have no negative effects in healthy older men, Dutch researchers report.
Dr. Mark G. Spigt of Maastricht University and colleagues note in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society that older people are often dehydrated, partly because their sensation of thirst may be blunted. On the other hand, the elderly can easily become overly hydrated, because their kidneys tend to work less efficiently. Retaining excess water can dilute the level of sodium in the body, which can have serious consequences.
“We did this analysis,” Spigt told Reuters Health, “because it was unknown whether it could do harm to hydrate elderly people. Despite the lack of evidence on this topic many people assume all kinds of effects; some claim positive effects, others warn against overhydration.”
Calcium, dairy may curb colon cancer risk
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Men with high levels of calcium and dairy foods in their diet have a lower risk of colorectal cancer, research suggests.
Recent studies have generally reported a “modest inverse association between calcium intake and the risk of colorectal cancer,” Dr. Susanna C. Larsson, of Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, and colleagues note in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “However, findings pertaining to specific subsites in the colorectum have been conflicting.”
The researchers studied the association between calcium and dairy foods and colorectal cancer risk in 45,306 Swedish men. The men were between 45 and 79 years of age and free of cancer at baseline.
Green tea may protect the aging brain
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People who regularly drink green tea may have a lesser risk of mental decline as they grow older, researchers have found.
Their study, of more than 1,000 Japanese adults in their 70s and beyond, found that the more green tea men and women drank, the lower their odds of having cognitive impairment.
The findings build on evidence from lab experiments showing that certain compounds in green tea may protect brain cells from the damaging processes that mark conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
US top court allows religious hallucinogenic tea
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U.S. followers of a small Brazilian-based religion can import and use hallucinogenic tea in their ceremonies, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday in a case pitting religious freedom against federal drug laws.
The top court in an opinion written by new Chief Justice John Roberts rejected the U.S. government’s effort to stop the importation and use of sacramental hoasca tea by the New Mexican branch of the religion called O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal.
Heavy drinking tied to worse eating habits
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The more alcohol a person drinks, the less likely he or she is to be eating a healthy diet, a new study shows.
“People who drank the largest quantity, even infrequently, had the poorest diets,” Dr. Rosalind A. Breslow of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Maryland, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.
A number of studies have linked moderate alcohol consumption with a lower risk of dying from heart disease, Breslow and her colleagues note in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
India plans to take tea out of tea and biscuits
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For the country’s health conscious, the everyday Indian ritual of sweet, milky tea and snacks could be about to lose something—the tea.
Scientists in the world’s largest tea producer are developing “tea biscuits” containing only the life-enhancing qualities of the country’s favorite brew.
Britons turn to olive oil as cooking styles change
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Olive oil is becoming ever more popular in British kitchens, with more money spent on it than on all other types of cooking oils for the first time, a survey showed on Friday.
Sales of olive oil have risen by almost 40 percent since 2000 to hit 104 million pounds, according to research by market analyst Mintel.