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Harmful fats removed from supermarket food By David Derbyshire, Consumer Affairs Editor Last Updated: 2:19am GMT 01/02/2007 Artery clogging trans-fats will have been phased out of almost all supermarket own-brand food within weeks, Britain's major retailers said yesterday. The British Retail Consortium, which represents most of the leading supermarkets, claimed that the voluntary move would cut the rates of heart disease and obesity. Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Sainsbury's and Tesco say they have already removed the potentially harmful fats from own-brand lines, while Asda says it is "very nearly there". Boots, Morrisons, Iceland and Somerfield also confirmed that they were...

Trans Fats Are Bad, Aren't They? Janet Raloff The media have been rife with reports on trans fats since New York City's Board of Health announced it would phase out these fats in restaurants and other food-service establishments. And that's good news for most consumers because trans fats can pose a double whammy for the heart. Not only can they hike a person's bad cholesterol even more than saturated fats can, but they also reduce concentrations of the good cholesterol in blood. CHEESY EXCEPTION. The trans fats known as conjugated linoleic acids (CLAs), which form naturally in animals, show up...

A substance found in fish oil may be associated with a significantly reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s and other dementias, researchers reported yesterday. The scientists found that people with the highest blood levels of an omega-3 fatty acid called docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, were about half as likely to develop dementia as those with lower levels. The substance is one of several omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids found in fatty fish and, in small amounts, in some meats. It is also sold in fish oil or DHA supplements. The researchers looked for a reduced risk associated with seven other omega-3 fatty...

Walnuts 'combat unhealthy fats' The new superfood? Eating walnuts at the end of a meal may help cut the damage that fatty food can do to the arteries, research suggests. It is thought that the nuts are rich in compounds that reduce hardening of the arteries, and keep them flexible. A team from Barcelona's Hospital Clinico recommend eating an ounce (28g) of walnuts a day. The study, which appears in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, also showed walnuts had more health benefits than olive oil. The researchers recruited 24 adults, half with normal cholesterol levels, and half...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - George Johnson, considered California's oldest living person at 112 and the state's last surviving First World War veteran, had experts shaking their heads over his junk food diet. "He had terrible, bad habits. He had a diet largely of sausages and waffles," Dr. Stephen Coles, founder of the Gerontology Research Group at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Friday. The 5-foot-7, 140-pound Johnson died of pneumonia Wednesday at his Richmond home in Northern California. "A lot of people think or imagine that your good habits and bad habits contribute to your longevity," Coles said. "But...

    Perfect Diet? Eat Everything Fat, Carbs, Protein Must Balance, Dietitian Says Shiloh Woolman, Staff Writer Put down the diet book that touts a carb-free, protein-rich diet and tells you all fat is your mortal enemy. Get ready to learn the mystery to permanent weight loss.  Eating everything is the magic bullet, experts say. Variety is the key to not only a good-looking exterior, but a healthy body that can fight disease, according to Ann C. Grandjean, director of Omaha's Center for Human Nutrition, Inc. Grandjean suggests three golden rules for eating: balance, variety and correct servings. Mindful...

CHICAGO, July 14 — In Grant Park, this city’s front yard along Lake Michigan, a dizzying pack of people filled the streets evening after evening, all holding their gazes firmly on the little plates in their hands, loaded with catfish beignets, curly fries smothered in cheese, pirogies with sour cream, beer-battered artichoke hearts, and fried dough buried in berry sauce and whipped cream. This was the Taste of Chicago, an annual rite of summer that ended last weekend and was one more chance to eat in the city of Broad Shoulders — and, in many cases, broader bellies, hips and...

IT'S never pleasant to learn that an artificial substance in your food might be ruining your health. This is what happened with trans fats when they were "discovered" in the food supply a few years ago, after a high-profile lawsuit against the makers of the Oreo cookie (laden with trans fats, who knew?) captured headlines nationwide. The publicity pushed the Food and Drug Administration to require that trans fats be listed on package labels starting this year. Producers of cookies, cakes, crackers, frozen foods and margarines, all high in trans fats, thus had an incentive to eliminate them from their...

A group of university researchers said today that they had created what sounds like a nutritional holy grail: cloned pigs that make their own omega-3 fatty acids, potentially leading to bacon and pork chops that might help your heart. For now, the benefits of the research are highly theoretical. Omega-3 fatty acids, which have been linked to a lowered incidence of heart disease, are primarily found in fish. No one knows whether they would have the same effect if people ate them in pork instead. And government approval for such genetically modified foods is certain to face opposition from consumer...

News Analysis In an early 19th-century best seller, a famous food writer offered a cure for obesity and chronic disease: a low-carbohydrate diet. The notion that what you eat shapes your medical fate has exerted a strong pull throughout history. And its appeal continues to this day, medical historians and researchers say. "It's one of the great principles — no, more than principles, canons — of American culture to suggest that what you eat affects your health," says James Morone, a professor of political science at Brown University. "It's this idea that you control your own destiny and that it's...

By Greg Arnold, DC, CSCS, October 19, 2005, abstracted from “Anticancer properties of propofol-docosahexaenoate and propofol-eicosapentaenoate on breast cancer cells” in the June 7, 2005 issue of Breast Cancer Research   Despite increases in technology, research, and education, breast cancer incidence in the U.S. has increased from one in twenty people in 1960 to one in eight today, with a woman being diagnosed every three minutes. In addition to the 216,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer expected to be diagnosed in 2004, 59,390 new cases of non-invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed, both expected to claim the lives of...

NEW ORLEANS — Visiting his home for the first time since he was rescued from rising floodwaters in a boat, Fats Domino found his piano overturned among mud and debris and his house in ruins. Despite the destruction, the 77-year-old legendary musician found a few bright spots during last week's tour, arranged by WWL-TV: a favorite shirt that survived unblemished and a bust that made it through the storm unbroken. Those were the exceptions. His electric keyboard sat against a wall covered in dried mud, mildew and mold, and his white grand piano was overturned, broken and stained with the...

BOSTON -- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers have identified a molecular mechanism in the liver that explains, for the first time, how consuming foods rich in saturated fats and trans-fatty acids causes elevated blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides and increases one's risk of heart disease and certain cancers. In the Jan. 28 issue of Cell, scientists led by Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, report that the harmful effects of saturated and trans fats are set in motion by a biochemical switch, or co-activator, in liver cells called PGC-1beta. Until now, scientists lacked a detailed explanation of how saturated and trans fats caused...

The Mediterranean diet, which includes olive oil, vegetables and pasta, has long been considered beneficial to health, particularly heart health. However scientists now claim to have discovered why this diet also appears to protect women from breast cancer. According to the researchers, the answer lies in olive oil, or more specifically, one of the ingredients of olive oil - oleic acid. They found that this fatty acid significantly reduced the levels of a gene - Her-2/neu - which is thought to trigger breast cancer. This gene is found in high levels in around one in five breast cancer patients and...

The road changes just past the Starr County sign. The shoulder disappears, the grass is left uncut and the black-eyed Susans and big pink Texas sage have to compete with the orange traffic cones set out by the border patrol. Just two counties up from the Texas tip, where the flood plains along the Rio Grande change to rolling hills and eroding cliffs, Starr County, largely Mexican-American, is one of the poorest counties in the nation. Fifty-nine percent of its children live below the poverty level, and in the strange new arithmetic of want, in which poverty means not starvation...

Yesterday, Michael Moore publicized a photo mosaic portrait of George W. Bush predictably made up of pictures of U.S. war dead. In response, a contributor to my blog has created a portrait of Moore using small photos of meat products, terrorists and failed Democratic Presidential Candidates. Enjoy.

Washington(Reuters) - Young women who eat more red meat and full-fat dairy products such as cheese may be raising their risk of breast cancer (news - web sites), researchers reported on Tuesday. They said their study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (news - web sites), provides yet another incentive for women to shun fatty foods and consume fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains. "When we compared the women in the highest fat intake group with women in lowest intake group, those with the highest intake had a 33 percent greater risk of invasive breast cancer," Eunyoung...

<p>Oreo cookies should be banned from sale to children in California, according to a lawsuit filed by a San Francisco attorney who claims that trans fat -- the stuff that makes the chocolate cookies crisp and their filling creamy -- is so dangerous children shouldn't eat it.</p>