Public Health

A survey carried out earlier this year has found the first evidence of the 'superbug' bacteria Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in sausages and minced pork obtained from supermarkets in the UK.  In February, a team of researchers bought and analyzed a total of 103 (52 pork and 51 chicken) pre-packaged fresh meat products, labeled as being of UK farm origin, from supermarkets in five different locations across England. All of the meat products were frozen at -20?°C and sent to the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge for testing. After thawing…

Let us start with nothing. A naive human has come to stay in your home. Perhaps it's a Tarzan type of character, just arrived from the wild, or, if you like a modern twist, it's a government agent who has been hit over the head and can't even remember his name. In any case, this naive human will, within a few hours of arrival, make his way to your kitchen and begin poking around, because he's hungry. So let's start by recognizing that: Hunger is universal. How we modern,complicated, guilty, preoccupied people talk about hunger may sometimes confuse the point ("I just eat mindlessly") but let…

Put down that honey. Fructose, often in the form of table sugar, is not less harmful than glucose, according to Wilhelm Krek, professor for cell biology at ETH Zurich's Institute for Molecular Health Sciences.  It should be, no one ordinarily considers honey as harmful because, in contrast to glucose,  fructose barely increases blood glucose levels and insulin secretion. This avoids frequently recurring insulin spikes after any glucose consumption, which are judged harmful. And since fructose is sweeter to the taste it requires less to get the same taste, so many foods, and drinks…

The recent craze for human breast milk amongst certain fitness communities and fetishists is ill advised. Like many food fads, from organic to placenta smoothies, the market for adult buyers of human breast milk has become lucrative.  Shady opportunists and nutrition salespeople describe it as a 'clean' super food that can lead to gains in the gym, help with erectile dysfunction and cancer, and some even claim that it is more digestible and contains positive immune building properties. An editorial in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, led by Dr. Sarah Steele of Queen…

A new study in Addiction finds that in England, children's exposure to second-hand smoke has declined by approximately 80% since 1998.  Also, an emerging social norm in England has led to the adoption of smoke-free homes not only when parents are non-smokers but also when they smoke. The proportion of children living in a home reported to be smoke-free increased from 63% in 1998 to 87.3% in 2012. The study gathered data from over 35,000 children who participated in the annual Health Survey for England (HSE) from 1998 to 2012. Children's exposure to second-hand smoke was measured through…

The increasing use of video games is often blamed for children's lack of interest in physical activity and for obesity, but a study in the Games for Health Journal suggests that active video games may actually be a source of moderate or intense physical activity in children five to eight years old. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that children participate in at least 60 minutes of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity each day.  "Our study shows video games which wholly engage a child's body can be a source of physical activity," said Hollie…

Adults who are following the DASH-style eating pattern to lower their blood pressure can expand their protein options to include lean, unprocessed pork, according to research from Purdue University. 'This study supports that the DASH diet can include lean, unprocessed red meats in the appropriate serving sizes,' said Wayne Campbell, a professor of nutrition science. The study compared lean, unprocessed pork with chicken and fish as the predominant protein source in a DASH-style diet. This study applies only to cuts of unprocessed lean pork, such as tenderloin and fresh, uncured ham trimmed of…

After a successful soda tax was passed last year in Berkeley, California, copycat laws are being proposed across the US, often with the support of nutritionists, medical professionals and a majority of the voting public. On May 28, the Illinois chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed an act that would use a tax on sugary drinks. Research has implicated sugar (meaning both table sugar and high fructose corn syrup) in the rising obesity rate and in health conditions like Type 2 Diabetes. Some researchers, including Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist from the University…

During my 25-year-career in drug discovery research, when I told people what I did for a living, I ran into the same response over and over: "How can you work for such an evil industry?"  Yet, after even brief discussions of what the jobs in profession were really like— that being, a fierce devotion to finding treatments for the worst diseases in the face of an overwhelming array of nearly impossible obstacles—virtually everyone I spoke with changed their opinions.  This especially held true in universities, where the anti-pharmaceutical sentiment is quite strong. Over the…

A daily sugar-sweetened beverage habit may increase the risk for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Researchers analyzed 2,634 self-reported dietary questionnaires from mostly Caucasian middle-aged men and women enrolled in the National Heart Lunch and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Framingham Heart Study's Offspring and Third Generation cohorts. The sugar-sweetened beverages on the questionnaires included caffeinated- and caffeine-free colas, other carbonated beverages with sugar, fruit punches, lemonade or other non-carbonated fruit drinks. The participants underwent a computed tomography…