Caffeine Test

Story at-a-glance

• Pepsi Next claims to have 60 percent less sugar without sacrificing taste. The secret to keeping its sweet taste comes from the use of THREE artificial sweeteners: aspartame, acesulfame potassium, and sucralose.
• Aspartame (Nutrasweet and Equal) is believed to be carcinogenic and accounts for more reports of adverse reactions than all other foods and food additives combined.
• Acesulfame potassium (Acesulfame-K) has been linked to kidney problems, and sucralose (Splenda) has been found to reduce the amount of beneficial microflora in your gut by 50 percentin addition to being associated with many of the same adverse reactions as aspartame.
• Contrary to popular belief, research has shown that artificial sweeteners can stimulate your appetite; increase carbohydrate cravings; stimulate fat storage and weight gain. Diet sodas may actually double your risk of obesity.

A warning for soda drinkers: you may be increasing your overall stroke risk with every gulp. A new study links both diet and regular soda to a higher stroke risk.

Dr. Adam Bernstein is an expert on preventive medicine at Cleveland Clinics Wellness Institute and authored the study. The doctor and his team of researchers studied more than 127,000 soda-drinking men and women for nearly 30 years.

They found an association between those who drank more sugar-sweetened and low-calorie sodas, and stroke. Researchers think the sugar may lead to glucose intolerance and inflammation, which influence atherosclerosis and plaque stability- both risk factors for stroke.

The association between diet sodas and stroke risk is not as clear-cut. Dr. Bernstein says more studies are needed to shore-up the link, but he says you still may want to start looking for other beverage options, like coffee.

Taking sugar sweetened or low-calorie soda out of the diet and replacing it with caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee conferred about a 10 percent reduction in stroke risk, said Dr. Bernstein.

Dr. Bernstein says they saw similar results with skim milk. He says coffee contains compounds that act as anti-oxidants. Complete findings for this study are in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Sweet soda is a drink with bubbles and artificial flavours. And did we miss taste? Armed with a large amount of easily digested sugar, soda leads to higher levels of inflammation and an increase in the lipids in your blood, which could potentially contribute to heart diseases.

The more you consume them, the more the risk increases. To find out more, we took expert inputs from Delhi-based diet and lifestyle nutritionist, Munisha Bhanot. Heres looking at how sweet sodas and heart diseases are connected…

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a non-profit group, found that nearly one in three of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury in high fructose corn syrup sodas, as reported by Washington Times in 2009. (via)

Sugar and fizzy drinks linked to childhood obesity: These days children give more preference to fizzy and sugar drinks than to water or juices. Is this habit good for them? Certainly not. All of these fizzy and sugar drinks are loaded with empty calories. In simple language, these drinks are made up of pure sugar which gives only calories but no nutrition. The basic principle behind calories is that they lead to weight gain if your intake is higher than your usage or energy spent. Hence, it is interesting to note that fizzy drinks alone do not lead to weight gain. Children club fizzy drinks with other junk foods like burger or pizza which result in weight gain and are considered a dangerous combination.

Soda and its links with cardiovascular diseases: This is supported by a study done in the Harvard School of Public Health. 43,000 individuals, between the ages of 40 to 75 yrs, were observed for 22 yrs. During this period they were recording their eating habits. Blood samples were also collected by the researchers from over 18,000 men. The results showed that individuals who consumed sugary beverages very often had higher levels of dangerous blood fats known as triglycerides and proteins linking to cardiovascular diseases. (Via) How heart diseases are directly linked to sugary drink is proved by a research, published in the American Heart Associations Journal Circulation. The research found that 12 ounces of sugar drinks such as soda, or other beverages with added sugar raised the risk of heart disease by 20 per cent.

A study in the Journal Circulation found that middle-aged adults who drink one or more regular or diet sodas daily are more prone to developing metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a combination of several diseases like high blood pressure, weight gain, high cholesterol and insulin resistance. Cancer-inducing sugars, often in the form of high-fructose corn syrup are also present in sodas.

Thus, pick a beverage that brings health and nutrition benefits along with its calories and youre on the right track.

Read more Personal Health, Diet Fitness stories on www.healthmeup.com

1. FAT-FREE

You might think youre making a healthy choice, but eating certain fat-free foods may cause you to gain, not lose weight. In a new study from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., rats fed potato chips containing Olean (a no-calorie, fat-free fat substitute) subsequently put on more weight than rats fed regular chips. More research is needed, but experts think fat substitutes may interfere with your bodys natural ability to regulate how much food is enough, causing you to eat more.

2. GLUTEN-FREE

If you dont have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, think twice before ditching gluten. Being gluten-free doesnt automatically make a product better for you. Gluten-free products can vary greatly in the amount of fat, protein and other nutrients they contain. Some gluten-free breads have up to 13 times more fat and 16 times more protein than others, according to a recent study that compared 11 different gluten-free breads.

3. DIET SODA

To most, the word diet equals weight loss. But diet soda may not be holding up its end of the bargain. Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio recently found that people who drank two or more diet sodas daily had a six-times-greater increase in waist circumference at the end of the 10-year study than those who didnt drink diet soda at all. Those bigger waist sizes may be due to the I saved here, I can splurge there theory of dieting, says researcher Sharon Fowler, MPH. Or perhaps the artificial sweeteners in diet soda stoked diet-soda drinkers appetite, as other research suggests.

4. ORGANIC

People asked to rate organic vs.conventional yogurt, cookies and potato chips overwhelmingly said they preferred the taste of the organic ones–and thought they were healthier and worth a higher price tag, according to a new Cornell University study. The catch? All products in the study were actually identical, just labeled differently.

5. TRANS-FAT FREE

Since 2006, the US Food and Drug Administration has required food manufacturers to list reportable amounts of trans fat on the Nutrition Facts label. But heres the thing: Food manufacturers dont have to report the trans-fat content if its less than 0.5 gram per serving. So check the ingredients list for the terms hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils even if the Nutrition Facts label reports 0 grams of trans fat.

(EatingWell is a magazine and website devoted to healthy eating as a way of life. Online at www.eatingwell.com.)

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And some of those rushing to file may be fueling up with diet soda. Americans are drinking more diet soda and other artificially sweetened drinks than in years past. And while it may seem like a good idea to cut out extra calories, researchers have found swapping real sugar drinks for zero calorie options hasnt produced the expected results.

Now, as NPRs Allison Aubrey reports, a new study sheds light on why.

ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Americans love affair with diet soda has been decades in the making.

(SOUNDBITE OF DIET COKE AD)

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Just for the fun of it. Just for the one of it. Just for the taste of it, Diet Coke.

AUBREY: Diet Coke was introduced in the early 1980s and heavily marketed. As a nation, we started drinking lots of it, along with other diet drinks. And even in the last 15 years, consumption has continued to rise. People think by drinking it, theyre helping control their weight.

RACHEL JOHNSON: Well, I think they make that assumption.

AUBREY: Rachel Johnson is a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont.

JOHNSON: But what the mistake a lot of people make is that they compensate for the calories that they save in the diet soda with other foods and beverages, rather than eliminating those calories from their diet.

AUBREY: It happens so easily. You go to the vending machine for a midafternoon snack and after you push that diet soda button, you feel youve got a free pass for a bag of chips. This compensatory eating may be the reason that past studies have found that people who drink a lot of diet soda tend to gain weight over time. The weight gain also left researchers wondering if theres something about aspartame or other artificial sweeteners that primes people to want more sweet things, or in some other way makes them more susceptible to metabolic disorder – a condition characterized by excess abdominal fat, elevated blood sugar and high blood pressure. Some research has pointed in this direction.

To help shed light on the relation between diet soda and health, researcher Kiyah Duffey – at UNC Chapel Hill – decided to take a new approach. She says most of the prior studies had not really evaluated diet soda drinkers overall patterns of eating.

KIYAH DUFFEY: We really did think that it was an oversight.

AUBREY: She wanted to know if a healthy eater who has a diet soda habit would end up better off than a person with a bad diet and a diet soda habit.

DUFFEY: You can imagine two different kinds of people – one who orders a Big Mac and a large fry and an apple pie and a Diet Coke; and someone else, who eats a grilled chicken salad and an apple and a Diet Coke.

AUBREY: To unravel the differences, Duffey and her colleagues studied data collected over 20 years from about 4,000 adults who had completed in-depth food frequency questionnaires, which detailed how often, and in what amounts, theyd eaten a hundred different kinds of foods.

DUFFEY: So it will ask something like, how often in the last 30 days did you drink low-fat milk? And then it would go on to ask about potatoes, fruit.

AUBREY: And, of course, it asked about soda and diet sodas. Duffey explains when she compared people who were eating what she calls a prudent diet – high in fruits and vegetable and low-fat diary – with people who were eating a standard Western diet – heavy on fried foods, fat and sugar – she found that there were very substantial differences. The prudent eaters were significantly less likely to develop the risk factors of metabolic disorder, even if they did drink diet soda.

DUFFEY: This kind of helps to make things a little bit more clear – that its not necessarily the diet beverage that is the problem.

AUBREY: Duffey says the take-home message here is that people should pay attention to their overall diet.

DUFFEY: So what this suggests is that its really the dietary pattern thats driving the association with health, and not the diet-beverage consumption.

AUBREY: Duffey says an important point to note is that the absolute healthiest people in her study were those who drank no diet soda, and had a prudent diet.

Allison Aubrey, NPR News.

A new study by UNC researchers sheds light on the effects of zero-calorie beverages on people’s health.

Though it is still uncertain if diet sodas are definitively good or bad for people’s health, the UNC study found that people who consumed diet beverages tended to be less healthy than people who did not consume them.

Kiyah Duffey, research assistant professor of nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, authored it.

She said it is important for people to focus on their overall dietary habits before deciding to switch to or add diet sodas to their consumption habits.

The findings appear in the April issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

With only a few short weeks left until Dayton to Daytona, how are you preparing your beach body?

Maybe some of you are heading to the RecPlex more often. Others of you may choose to take advantage of the beautiful weather weve been having. As always, there are many great benefits to amping up your activity level. But without healthy nutritional habits, your fitness routine will not give you the best results.

Below are a few common health truths and myths that might be holding you back from getting fit in time for summer.

Myth: Diet soda is better for you than the regular stuff. It may even be worse for you since many of the artificial sweeteners in diet drinks have been linked to various cancers.

If thats not enough to wean off your addiction, think about the impact a Diet Coke will have on your beach body. Diet sodas do not contain any real sugar, which causes your body to anticipate a major leap in blood sugar that never happens. As a result, your body tells you to overcompensate and eat something that provides real sugar, which explains the sweet-tooth cravings you may get after a sip of soda.

In a study at Purdue University, researchers discovered that overconsumption of artificial sweeteners caused rats to overeat. By cutting back on your soda intake – both regular and diet – you will be able to cut back on extra calories. Not to mention, you will avoid a bloated stomach from all the acidity and carbonation.

Truth: There is such a thing as good fats. In fact, these particular fats are essential to proper brain functioning and good joint movement. For the purpose of perfecting your Daytona body, try consuming fats such as omega-3s, which can be found in flax products or cod liver oil. These are best for maintaining lean muscles and waistlines.

Daphne Oz, co-host of ABCs The Chew, swears by one tablespoon of cod liver oil swished in a shot glass of orange juice every morning. It keeps your skin glowing, as well as your hair and nails lustrous.

Myth: Frozen yogurt is a guilt-free pleasure. While most frozen yogurt is nonfat, the calories still add up. According to registered dietician and certified athletic trainer Dana Angelo White, frozen yogurt contains virtually the same amount of high sugar content as regular ice cream. Take into account all of the unhealthy toppings, such as candy and cookies, and the sugar content will increase even more. The next time you head to Marycrest Complex for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up, opt for the smaller size dish and avoid the crushed Oreos.

Truth: You should eat bread before meals. Surprisingly, researchers have found that indulging in a small piece of whole-grain bread dipped in a good fat, such as olive oil, before a big meal will make you less likely to overeat and consume an abundance of calories.

According to Dr. Mehmet Oz, host of The Dr. Oz Show, the fiber and B vitamin content of bread and olive oil helps to slow digestion, keeping you feeling full for longer.

Myth: A tortilla wrap has fewer calories than a regular slice of bread. Dont be fooled by its thin appearance. Wraps are actually a much more condensed form of simple carbohydrates and contain twice as many calories as two slices of whole-grain bread.

According to Eve Kecskes, a registered dietitian in New York City, an average tortilla wrap contains around 300 calories, whereas two slices of normal bread only contains a mere 160 calories.

Truth: Calorie counting is a waste of your time. Lets face it, where is the fun in counting every calorie that goes into your mouth? Eating should be enjoyable, not a chore. What you should focus on is keeping a mental checklist of your daily servings from each food group. On average daily, you will want to consume about three palm-sized servings of complex carbohydrates – such as oatmeal, multigrain bagel or whole-grain crackers – five to eight handfuls of fruits or veggies, two servings of dairy, three palm-sized servings of protein, two teaspoon servings of good fats, and two servings of red meat weekly.

Depending on your body type and activity level, you may need extra calories, which should come from complex carbs and proteins. If you need fewer calories, eliminate one serving of complex carbs and/or a serving of dairy. Refer to http://www.choosemyplate.gov for further information on daily and weekly nutritional servings.

Keep in mind, swimsuit season can be a confidence killer for just about anyone. Focus on the things you love about your body and do not be discouraged if you dont see sudden results. It is most important to feed your body right and to give it the exercise it needs in order to be strong and healthy – not a model.

Riley Quinn is a junior pre-medicine major. She is not a licensed doctor (yet).

Junk food may soon be hard to buy at American public schools as the US government readies new rules requiring healthier foods to be sold beyond the cafeteria – a move most parents support, according to a poll released on Thursday.

With childhood obesity rising, the survey found most people agreed the chips, soda and candy bars students buy from vending machines or school stores in addition to breakfast and lunch are not nutritious, and they support a national standard for foods sold at schools.

The findings from the advocacy group Kids Safe and Healthful Foods Project came as the federal government prepares to roll out a nationwide standard that may set up another battle among health experts, schools and the food industry.

The US Department of Agriculture is expected to issue its guidelines by June, according to some experts. These could limit the amount of sugar, salt and fat foods sold at schools could contain.

Agriculture Department Under Secretary Kevin Concannon said an important step in addressing childhood obesity is to help make the right choice an easy choice while at school.

We look forward to working with parents, teachers, school food service professionals and the food industry to craft workable guidelines so that healthier options are available for our students, he said.

Many states have already enacted their own laws mandating healthier non-cafeteria food options.

Jessica Donze Black, a dietician who leads the Kids Safe and Healthful Foods Project, said the results show growing support for updating standards that surfaced in 1979.

What has changed in the last 30 years is that the childhood obesity epidemic has more than tripled, she said. The school environment has also changed. … Today, there are a lot of other places throughout the day that compete with kids eating a healthy school meal.

Support for higher standards

Eighty percent of the 1,010 adults polled said they would support nutritional standards limiting the calories, fat and sodium in such foods. Seventeen percent would oppose it.

Most also agreed there are now few healthy options. Just 5 percent of adults said vending machines offered totally or mostly healthy choices compared with 10 percent for school stores and 21 percent for a la carte lunch lines.

Changes to school foods may be controversial. New standards for more fruits, vegetables and whole grains in traditional school meals announced in January drew scrutiny when lawmakers blocked limits to french fries and counted pizza as a vegetable because it contains tomato sauce.

Efforts to give students more healthy options to help fight childhood obesity have historically faced pressure from food and beverage companies and even from schools themselves, who rely on such food sales for extra cash.

But health experts, pediatricians and other advocates say that is changing as more companies and school districts come on board at a time when more than one-third of US children are overweight or obese.

Most people accept that soda, candy bars and other unhealthy foods just dont deserve a place in school on a regular basis, said Margo Wootan, head of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

She said there are still concerns that members of Congress and industry lobbyists could water down the proposal.

The American Academy of Pediatrics Laura Jana said new rules are imperative now that kids consume more than half of their daily calories in school. More students are getting most of their calories from snacks and drinks, not meals, she said.

To me, its a no-brainer. … They cant make that healthy choice when we stick all those temptations under their noses, said Jana, a pediatrician based in Omaha, Nebraska and co-author of Food Fights: Winning the Nutritional Challenges of Parenthood Armed with Insight, Humor and a Bottle of Ketchup.

Juice, granola bars

Food and beverage makers have expanded their portfolios to include juice, granola bars and other healthier products. Vending machine companies focused on nutritious offerings have also sprung up.

US drink companies have already taken voluntary steps to keep sodas out of some schools and their trade group says this has cut calories consumed from beverages in schools by 88 percent.

Christopher Gindlesperger, spokesman for the American Beverage Association, said its voluntary guidelines are a good model for the government to follow.

Its a standard thats already in place that is working. It strikes a balance, he said.

ABAs guidelines eliminate soda in elementary and middle schools but allow diet sodas and low-calorie sports drinks in high school.

Companies such as The Coca-Cola Co, PepsiCo Inc, and Nestle SA either had no immediate comment or referred questions to industry trade groups.

Mars Inc, maker of the iconic MMs chocolate candies, said it has already agreed to withdraw branded vending machines from schools and does not offer traditional candy in those settings. Mars said it has instead developed other, lower-calorie products.

As for schools, most now realize vending machines can help teach students about healthy habits and boost learning even though money does loom large, said Whitney Meagher, project director for the National Association of State Boards of Education.

If you have a choice between a cookie and an apple and the cookie is going to sell better, its hard not to make that decision as a business decision, she said.

The Kids Safe and Healthful Foods Project is a joint venture by the nonprofit policy group The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a private organization that aims to improve Americans health.

Its poll surveyed 1,010 registered voters by telephone in mid-January and has a margin-of-error of plus-or-minus 3.1 percentage points.

If you saw the recent 60 Minutes segment by Dr Sanjay Gupta on the dangers of sugar, you might be scared off the sweet stuff for good. But if you think you are avoiding sugar by switching to diet soft drinks, think again. Consumption of diet drinks has increased 400 per cent since 1960. While the debate whether these drinks cause cancer continues, there is mounting evidence that they lead to weight gain.
Those who consume diet drinks regularly have a 200 per cent increased risk of weight gain, a 36 per cent increased risk of pre-diabetes or metabolic syndrome, and a 67 per cent increased risk of diabetes. A study of 400 people found that those who drank two diet sodas a day or more increased their waist size by five times.

The Doctors Health Press, a publisher of various natural health newsletters, books and reports, including the popular online Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin, is lending its support to a new health study showing that drinking sugary drinks can up the risk not only for diabetes, but heart disease as well.

Boston, MA (PRWEB) April 03, 2012

The Doctors Health Press, a publisher of various natural health newsletters, books and reports, including the popular online Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin, is lending its support to a new health study showing that drinking sugary drinks can up the risk not only for diabetes, but heart disease as well.

As reported in Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin on Friday, March 30, 2012 (http://www.doctorshealthpress.com/heart-health-articles/the-effects-of-sweetened-drinks-on-your-heart), researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health think people should be more careful about the beverages they choose to drink.

The Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin article reports that researchers conducted a study that involved 42,883 men. They looked for a link between consumption of sugar-sweetened (eg sodas) and artificially sweetened (eg diet sodas) beverage intake with fatal and non-fatal coronary heart disease.

There were 3,683 heart disease cases over 22 years of follow-up in this large study. Participants in the top percentage of sugar-sweetened beverage intake had a 20% higher relative risk of heart disease than those in the bottom intake. These statistics remained true even after adjusting for age, smoking, physical activity, alcohol, multivitamins, family history, diet quality, energy intake, body mass index, pre-enrollment weight change, and dieting.

The Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin article also reports that the study determined that artificially sweetened beverage consumption, it wasn’t significantly associated with heart disease. The researchers concluded that intake of sugar-sweetened (but not artificially sweetened beverages) was significantly associated with:

- Increased triglycerides: Triglycerides are the major form of fat stored by the body. Elevated triglyceride levels are considered to be a risk factor for atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and coronary heart disease. This is because part of the job triglycerides do is helping transport cholesterol.

- Increased C-reactive protein (CRP): When someone have atherosclerosis, the number of plaques in their arteries is directly related to the amount by which CRP levels are elevated. Basically, the levels of CRP in thebody will rise in response to any type of inflammation, including the type that leads to heart disease.

- Decreased HDL (the “good” cholesterol).

- Increased leptin: Leptin is a hormone produced by fat cells. It helps to regulate body fat by interacting with the areas in the brain that control hunger. Elevated levels of leptin are also associated with inflammatory diseases.

(SOURCE: De Koning, L., et al., Sweetened Beverage Consumption, Incident Coronary Heart Disease and Biomarkers of Risk in Men, Circulation, Mar. 12, 2012..)

Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin is a daily e-letter providing natural health news with a focus on natural healing through foods, herbs and other breakthrough health alternative treatments. For more information on Doctors Health Press, visit http://www.doctorshealthpress.com.

Victor Marchione, MD is the Chairman of the Doctors Health Press Editorial Board. He is also the editor of The Food Doctor and has released a new video revealing 12 fighting foods to help virtually all of your current health problems. To see the video, visit http://www.doctorshealthpress.com/12-fighting-foods.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/4/prweb9345761.htm