UK Government warns of the dangers of food additives

The Guardian newspaper is reporting that the UK's Food Standards Agency (equivalent of the US Food and Drug Administration) is issuing a revised set of guidelines warning parents to avoid certain common food additives if their children are showing signs of hyperactivity or ADHD.

This follows the largest study in the UK of the effects of food additives on children's behaviour, commissioned by the government and published in the medical journal The Lancet. The additives include artificial colourings and the preservative Sodium Benzoate which is used in many soft drinks.

Critics of the move say that the FSA has missed a golden opportunity to ban these additives, altogether.

The food and drink additive industry is worth more than 25 billion dollars per year world-wide.

I wonder what the cost is, world wide, of the poor learning and ant-social behaviour caused by these products.

Crazy Lives

A couple of thoughts for the day:

Most people spend the first half of their lives sacrificing their health in order to make money, and then in the second half of their lives they spend small fortunes trying to get healthy again.

From a Malaysian friend:

'We borrow money we don't have, to buy things that we don't need, to impress people that we don't like!

Crazy Lives

A couple of thoughts for the day:

Most people spend the first half of their lives sacrificing their health in order to make money, and then in the second half of their lives they spend small fortunes trying to get healthy again.

From a Malaysian friend:

'We borrow money we don't have, to buy things that we don't need, to impress people that we don't like!'

Gender Bender Chemicals Exposure Widespread

Most people are exposed to a wide variety of 'gender bender' chemicals which mimic the female hormones and cause a variety of health problems. In recent years there has been an unexpected drop in the ratio of male births in the USA and Japan - up to a quarter of a million less boys over the last 30 years. Now scientists are linking this to our exposure to hormone-mimicing chemicals in food and cleaning products.

These pollutants include pesticides, dioxin, methyl mercury and bisphenol A. Seafood and fish oil is particular problem because pollutants dumped into rivers and the sea are accumulated and concentrated in fish - especially those nearer the top of the food chain. Food containers are another problem. Bisphenol A is used in food and drink cans, as well as in dental cements. Levels of Bisphenol A were found to be three times higher in women who suffered miscarriages and disfunctino of the ovaries than in other women.

Another group of chemicals, nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs), are widespread in detergents and cleaning products. These are potent endocrine disruptors and are thought to be responsible for the phenomenon of male fish turning into female fish which is observed in waterways throughout the world. European and Canadian regulators have banned NPEs in domestic laundry detergents and other cleaning agents, but they are still widespread elsewhere.

Children aged 3-5 Brainwashed by Fast Food Advertizing

A study of 63 children aged 3-5 in California has revealed the power of advertizing to affect young minds. When presented with identical foods, most children said that it tasted better when presented in a McDonalds wrapper.

"This study demonstrates simply and elegantly that advertising literally brainwashes young children into a baseless preference for certain food products," said Dr. David Katz, the director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.

Although children this young don't have pocket money, the marketing world still targets them recognizing the impact of 'pester power' on parental decisions. This research, reported in Forbes.com, indicated that a third of the children ate at McDonalds at least once a week. More than half the kids had a TV in their rooms.

Lessons to learn:

• Don't give young kids a TV in their bedroom
• If they are already brainwashed, try wrapping their fresh fruit and veggies in McDonalds wrappers
  

Looking after your heart can save your brain

Reuters is reporting a study from the UK which suggests that looking after our cardiovascular system - through exercise and good diet - can also protect from some forms of dementia. Whilst it cannot ward of Alzheimers' disease it can help prevent so-called vascular dementia, another common form of mental impairment in the elderly.

For those of us battling middle-age spread, this is another incentive to get fit and eat healty.

Four times as many children prescribed antidepressants

From The Guardian 23 July 2007:

The number of prescriptions for antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs given to children under 16 has more than quadrupled in the last decade, according to official figures released today.

There were more than 631,000 such prescriptions recorded in the last financial year, according to government figures, compared to 146,000 in 1996-97.

The prescriptions, for drugs including antidepressants and treatments for mental health problems as well as for conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were dispensed outside hospitals in England. Figures from 2000 include prescriptions made out by dispensing GPs.

The article goes on to quote David Laws MP questioning why so many prescriptions are given instead of searching for the root causes of the various problems.

My own answer to this would be to say 'follow the money'. The pharmaceutical corporations have a vested interest in keeping us popping pills. Also, knowing how our own kids have reacted to various food chemicals, I would suspect that diet is one of the reasons for problems like depression and ADHD. But again, the big corporations don't want us to think that and will throw a lot of money to keep us from thinking that.

Women absorb up to 5lb of chemicals per year from beauty products

Various blogs have quoted a story in Britain's Daily Mail (June 2007) reporting that women absorb up to 5lb (that's about 2.3kg) of chemicals through their skin by using cosmetics and skin-care products. The article quotes a biochemist, Richard Bence, who says that the effects of absorbing these chemicals is much more dangerous than swallowing them. “If your lipstick gets into your mouth, it is broken down by the enzymes in saliva and in the stomach. But if the chemicals get straight into your bloodstream, there is no protection.” The chemical cocktail commonly found in these products includes known irritants and chemicals linked to cancer. The irritants, and industrial-strength cleaners (sodium laurel sulphate and related surfactants) strip the skin of its natural defences making it even more susceptible to letting chemicals through.

Although the kidneys do their best to flush these chemicals out (it helps to drink lots of water) it seems that we are absorbing toxins faster than they can be removed - the net effect is a gradual build-up in the body.

Cause of the obesity epidemic discovered?

There is an obesity epidemic in the Western world, and it starts in childhood. Strangely, it isn't directly linked to affluence with children from poorer backgrounds more likely to be obese than children from wealthy families.

Now a Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California claims that a major cause is the widespread use of fructose in processed food. In an interview on ABC's Radio National he explained why. Fructose is metabolised in a different way to glucose, triggering high levels of insulin which result in sugar being taken out of the blood stream and converted to fat. The result: we feel hungry again (low blood sugar) and get fatter.

Fructose is being poured into a huge range of processed foods. In fact our fructose consumption has gone from less than half a pound per year in 1970 to 56 pounds per year in 2003. Want a fast-food burger? That bun is full of fructose. We were never designed to eat fructose in this processed form. Fructose is OK in fruit, when it is accompanied by lots of fibre.

One result of all this fructose is that we keep feeling hungry and so we buy more. Good news for the food companies.

The big question is - do the food companies know about this? And if so, what are they going to do about it?