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January 2002 Vol. 7 no. 1
One is happy as a result of one’s own efforts, once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness-simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.
GEORGE SAND (1804-1876) Writer
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes
brave men and women to win them.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) Philosopher and writer
Table of Contents: Low-Carb Bars Aren’t What You Think They Are
High Triglycerides Increase Stroke Risk
Want to Avoid Prostate Cancer? Normalize Your Weight
Millions of Elderly Take Harmful Drugs
You Need More Vitamin D Than What You Are Being Told
American Children Are Getting Fatter
Weight-Related Illnesses Kill 300,000 Americans Annually
Soda Consumption Increases Obesity Risk 60%
C is for Crohn’s Disease-from Cow’s that is
Low-Carb Bars Aren’t What You Think They Are
We are trying to raise public awareness about False Labeling by many of the Low-Carb Bar Manufacturers. These manufacturers are deceiving Consumers by NOT counting Glycerine as a carbohydrate within the Nutritional Facts on the back of the packaging. Glycerine is a carbohydrate and is contained in all of the mislabeled bars listed below.
These companies are making up their own rules, and the FDA is NOT enforcing these infractions, which places the onus on the Consumer to make correct buying decisions by NOT purchasing deceptively marketed Low-Carb Bars. We ask, “What is next? Not counting sugars?” Also check the ingredients for TFA’s and in many cases Nutrasweet. Many companies use milk as the primary ingredient as well.
MISLABELED PRODUCTS
(Listed according to the above referenced FDA, Consumer Labs and the National Consumers League Reports)
ATKINS NUTRITIONAL BARS Consumer Labs Research | National Consumer League
RICHARDSON LABS CARB SOLUTIONS - FDA Warning Letter | National Consumer
League
RICHARDSON LABS - MET-RX BARS - National Consumer League | Consumer Labs
Research
EAS CARB CONTROL BARS - FDA Warning Letter
OPTIMUM PROTEIN DIET BARS - FDA Warning Letter
PREMIER & PREMIER 8 BARS - FDA Warning Letter
TWIN LABS PROTEIN FUEL BARS - FDA Warning Letter
WORLDWIDE SPORTS NUTRITION BARS - FDA Warning Letter
UNIVERSAL - DOCTOR’S DIET LOW CARB BAR - FDA Warning Letter
Understandably, the consumption of these bars is prohibitive to weight loss as people are taking in more carbohydrates then they think they are.
Warning Letters from the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
(To View Letters You May Need the Free Adobe Acrobat Reader)
ARTICLES: Reuters Health Article| Consumer Labs | ABC Story | National Consumers League Article
For supporting information, of ir you have any difficulty in opening the links contained herein, please go to our website www.FatWatch.net for a complete listing of references and resources.
Anything you can do to encourage people NOT to purchase these mislabeled bars, such as having a conversation with other professionals, sending an e-mail or fax, posting this website link on a message board or publishing an article, would be greatly appreciated.
High Triglycerides Increase Stroke Risk
For the first time, researchers have linked high levels of blood fats called triglycerides to an increased risk of stroke.
When the researchers accounted for other risk factors for stroke, people with more than 200 mg of triglycerides per dl of blood were nearly 30% more likely to have an ischemic stroke or TIA than people with lower levels of the blood fats.
Ischemic strokes, which occur when a clot or narrowed artery cuts off the brain’s blood supply, account for about 80% of all strokes. The other 20% are due to broken blood vessels in the brain.
High triglycerides and the low levels of HDL, or “good,” cholesterol that usually coexist are important risk factors for the main type of stroke, called ischemic stroke, among patients with heart disease.
Circulation December 11, 2001; 104:2892-2897
Want to Avoid Prostate Cancer? Normalize Your Weight
Higher rates of obesity may help to explain why black men tend to have more advanced prostate cancer at younger ages than men of other ethnic groups.
Black men are known to have higher rates of prostate cancer and higher mortality rates from prostate cancer than whites and Asians. Whether genes or environmental factors such as dietary fat and excess body weight are responsible, however, is not clear.
Researchers reviewed medical data from 860 patients with advanced prostate cancer, found 21% of the men were obese, and 49% were overweight.
Obese patients were more likely to have undergone radical prostatectomy at a younger average age, to have an elevated Gleason score — a method used to classify the aggressiveness of prostate cancer — and to have had their cancer spread to other organs.
Blacks, who had the highest average body mass index compared to whites and Asians, also had the most advanced cancers. Body mass index is a measurement of weight in relation to height.
Body fat is thought to serve as a reservoir for male hormones and proteins that may promote the growth of tumors. Excess body fat can also inhibit certain immune system cells that normally prevent tumors from progressing.
Urology November 2001; 58:723-728
Millions of Elderly Take Harmful Drugs
More than one in five elderly Americans living on their own takes a medication that could put them at risk for injuries and illness. More than 21% of elderly Americans — representing nearly 7 million individuals — had received at least one of these 33 potentially inappropriate medications in 1996.
Nearly 3% used a medication that elderly people should always avoid, including certain sedatives, long acting drugs to bring down blood sugar levels, pain relievers and drugs to quell nausea. Patients in poor health, women and those who took the most medications were more likely to have been prescribed a potentially dangerous drug.
The findings probably represent “just the tip of the iceberg” because the researchers did not examine interactions between drugs, interactions between drugs and diseases, the misuse of drugs not on the list or the under-use of effective drugs.
JAMA December 12, 2001; 286:2823-2829, 2866-2868
You Need More Vitamin D Than What You Are Being Told
Recommendations for daily vitamin D intake may be too low to prevent deficiencies in some women. The study found that during the winter, many women in Canada had insufficient blood levels of vitamin D despite consuming more than 200 international units (IU) daily, the recommended intake for adults younger than 50 years of age, in milk or dietary supplements.
Vitamin D, which helps the body to absorb calcium, is added to milk and is also made by the body when skin is exposed to sunlight.
But a lack of sunlight in northern countries such as Canada means that dietary intake becomes even more crucial to prevent rickets in children and osteoporosis in adults. Nutritional laws have been grossly wrong about adult needs for vitamin D. A previous study showed that adults need at least 1,000 IU to ensure adequate blood levels of vitamin D.
The researchers measured blood levels of vitamin D in nearly 800 women aged 18 to 35 over the course of a year, and surveyed them about their food and multivitamin intake.
During the winter, low blood concentrations of vitamin D were not related to low vitamin D intake. For instance, 21% of women who consumed no vitamin D were found to have insufficient blood levels of the vitamin, compared with 26% of women who reported some vitamin D intake and 20% of women who said they consumed more than 200 units of vitamin D daily.
During the summer, however, women who took multivitamins had higher blood concentrations of vitamin D. The researchers explain that women who were physically active and engaged in outdoor activities where they were exposed to sunlight were also more likely to take multivitamins.
A woman’s race did not affect her vitamin D levels in wintertime but during the summer, fewer white women had insufficient blood levels of the vitamin. People with darker skin are at greater risk of vitamin D deficiency because they need more sunlight to trigger the reaction in the skin that makes vitamin D. However, all women could benefit from more vitamin D in the diet regardless of their skin tone or country of residence.
European Journal of Clinical Nutrition December 2001; 55:1091-1097
American Children Are Getting Fatter By Lindsey Tanner
American children are getting fatter at an alarming rate, with the percentage of significantly overweight black and Hispanic youngsters more than doubling over 12 years and climbing 50 percent among whites.
By 1998, nearly 22 percent of black children ages 4 to 12 were overweight, as were 22 percent of Hispanic youngsters and 12 percent of whites, according to researchers who analyzed data from a national survey. In 1986, the same survey showed that about 8 percent of black children, 10 percent of Hispanic youngsters and 8 percent of whites were significantly overweight.
“Prior studies show it took 30 years for the overweight prevalence to double in American children,” said Dr. Richard Strauss, a pediatrician at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. This study should be “a call to action”, said Strauss, who conducted the research with Harold Pollack of the University of Michigan.
Among the reasons given for the increase: Children are spending much more time watching television, using computers and playing video games, and busy parents are relying more on fast food to feed their families.
Also, black and Hispanic youngsters are more likely to live in poor neighborhoods where outdoor exercise may be unsafe and where the quickest, easiest foods may not be the most nutritious, Strauss said. The study was based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which followed a nationally representative sample of 8,270 youngsters from 1986 to 1998.
Overweight was defined as having a body-mass index higher than 95 percent of youngsters of the same age and sex, based on growth charts from the 1960s to 1980s. By some criteria, that would be considered obese. Body-mass index is a measurement of weight relative to height.
Disturbing trends also were seen in the number of children who had a body-mass index higher than 85 percent of their peers. In 1986, about 20 percent of blacks, Hispanics and whites alike were in that category. By 1998, those figures had risen to about 38 percent of blacks and Hispanics alike and nearly 29 percent of whites.
“These trends carry enormous public health implications, because of the known effects of excess body weight on the risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other complications,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston.
Dr. Rebecca Unger, a pediatrician and nutrition specialist at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, said small changes in children’s diets could make a big difference. ”If we can catch a 3-year-old who’s still on a bottle, drinks tons and tons of juice drinks, and goes to McDonald’s five times a week, we can stop the bottle, cut out the juice, eat at McDonald’s only two times a week - and you will see a tremendous difference in growth pattern,” Unger said.
Washington Post December 12, 2001
JAMA December 12, 2001; 286:2845-2848
Editor’s Note:
The future health of our country is clearly related to having our children eat healthy. If we want to save them incredible needless grief and suffering then it would be wise to encourage them to eat properly. The first step will be to have them drink nothing but water. Stop drinking “juice drinks”, throw soda away-get away from dairy products, and steer clear of fast foods.
Weight-Related Illnesses Kill 300,000 Americans Annually
By Sally Squires
A staggering 61% of American adults currently meet the scientific definition of obesity, putting them at increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, arthritis, depression and several forms of cancer. Obesity rates among US adults have gone up 30% since the late 1970s. Meanwhile, just one third of US adults meet experts’ recommendations for at least 30 minutes of exercise 5 days per week. ”This is probably the most sedentary generation of people in the history of the world.
The U.S. surgeon general called for sweeping changes in schools, restaurants, workplaces and communities to help combat the growing epidemic of Americans who are overweight or obese.
In outlining the first national plan of action for overweight and obesity, Surgeon General David Satcher recommended that schools make their lunch programs less fattening, restrict students’ access to vending machines that sell calorie-dense foods and soft drinks, and resume daily physical exercise classes for all children and adolescents, as well as recess for elementary school students.
So both adults and children could eat better, restaurants and fast-food establishments — where Americans spend about 40 percent of their food budget — should offer more nutrition information, the report recommends. For their part, employers should include weight management and physical activity counseling in their health insurance coverage and allow employees time to exercise.
Obesity also should be classified officially as a disease, to encourage insurance companies to reimburse for weight-control expenses, the report concludes. ”This is not about aesthetics and it’s not about appearances,” Satcher said. “We’re talking about health.” Communities should create safe playgrounds, sidewalks or walking trails, particularly in inner cities, to encourage physical activity, the report recommends.
Because the surgeon general controls no funding, implementing most of the recommendations would fall to the federal, state and local governments. But the surgeon general’s reports historically have played an important role in focusing attention on health problems and influencing social change.
Obesity is considered by many public health experts to be one of the nation’s most important problems because it is a major risk factor of maladies that include heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes. Nearly 2 out of 3 adults in the United States are overweight or obese, and the number has been increasing.
An Estimated 1,200 People Die Daily From Weight-Related Illnesses
That adds up to 300,000 deaths a year — more than the number killed annually by pneumonia, motor vehicle accidents and airline crashes combined — and nearly as many as the 430,000 who die yearly from tobacco-related conditions. Health care costs for overweight and obesity total an estimated $117 billion annually.
Even children are not immune to obesity or its health effects. Nationwide, 13 percent of youngsters are overweight, but a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the problem is worse among segments of the population: 22 percent of both black and Hispanic youngsters are overweight, compared with about 12 percent of non-Hispanic white children.
Type II diabetes — which is closely linked to overweight and used to be limited to adults — is increasingly diagnosed in children as young as 10. Satcher said children increasingly have high blood pressure and elevated blood cholesterol levels.
While rates of overweight and obesity are rising across all age, geographic, ethnic and socioeconomic groups, the poor are among those hardest hit, Satcher said.
A study published this year by the NIH showed that trimming just 15 pounds could cut the risk of diabetes by 58 percent in those one-step from developing the disease. That, in turn, could cut treatment costs by about $58 million annually.
“That would pay for a lot of health insurance, wouldn’t it?” said Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, who vowed to lose 15 pounds in the New Year.
Daily exercise — 30 minutes for adults, 60 minutes for children — is one of the most important defenses against overweight and obesity, the report notes. At the same time, Americans should consume five servings of fruits and vegetables a day and follow more closely the government’s dietary guidelines, according to the report.
The report drew praise for shifting the subject of overweight and obesity from a personal problem to a societal challenge.
“What’s unique is to have the government saying that we need to address nutrition and physical activity as a societal issue, much like we did for tobacco,” said Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit, Washington-based consumer group. “We need to put in place policy and change the environment around people so that it is easier for them to eat well and be active.”
Industry groups also praised the report. It shows, noted Lisa Katic of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, “that Secretary Thompson and the surgeon general have examined the obesity issue, and recognized that this is a complex issue and there are no simple solutions”.
But others said the report fell short. “I was hoping that the report would address some of the tough issues, including tax policies, that might make the environment safer for people to live healthier, more active lives”, said Barbara J. Moore, president of Shape Up America, a nonprofit group founded by former surgeon general C. Everett Koop.
“I’m talking about incentives to make fruits and vegetables cheaper, and for physical activity to be safer and more affordable, like building gyms where populations are at particular risk. Why not do that?”
The surgeon general’s report defines overweight as having a body mass index (BMI) of 25 to 29.9 or being approximately 20 to 25 pounds overweight. People with a BMI of 30 or more are considered obese and are roughly 30 pounds or more over their healthy weight. (BMI takes height and weight into account and is computed by multiplying body weight in pounds by 703, and then dividing that amount by height in inches squared.)
Washington Post December 14, 2001; Page A03
Daily Consumption Soda Increases Obesity Risk 60%
For every soft drink or sugar-sweetened beverage a child drinks every day, their obesity risk appears to jump 60%. About 65% of adolescent girls and 74% of adolescent boys consume soft drinks daily. Currently, soft drinks constitute the leading source of added sugars in the diet, amounting to 36.2 grams daily for adolescent girls and 57.7 grams for boys.
The study included over 500 schoolchildren of various ethnic backgrounds who were aged 11 and 12. The investigators found that for every can or glass of sugar-sweetened beverage a child drank during the 19-month study, a child’s body mass index–a measure of weight related to height–and their chance of becoming obese increased 60%.
This is the first long-term study that links soft drink consumption to obesity in children. The study received no financial support from any organization that either promotes or opposes soft drink consumption. Obesity among US children has increased significantly since 1960–by 54% in children aged 6 to 11 and by 40% for adolescents, according to a report on the topic that came out late last year. The consumption of soft drinks has increased 500% in the last 50 years, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
The Lancet 2001; 357:505-508
C is for Crohn’s Disease-from Cow’s that is.
The most serious of bacterial cow diseases for American dairymen is caused by mycobacterium paratuberculosis. This bacterium causes a bovine disease called “Johne’s”. Cows diagnosed with Johne’s disease have diarrhea and heavy fecal shedding of bacteria. These bacteria become cultured in milk, and are not destroyed by pasteurization. These milk borne bacteria will begin to grow in the human host, and irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease results. ”Mycobacterium Paratuberculosis crosses the species barrier to infect and cause disease in humans.” Another reason not to drink your milk!!
British Medical Journal, Feb. 1998, 315
Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 1992, 30[1,12], 1993, May 31[5]
Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 64 [3], Mar. 1998
Proceedings National Academy of Sciences, USA Sept. 1996