The Daily HIT

Today’s Washington Post reports on internal changes at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which appear to be moving toward restoring the integrity of the organics program.

Since 2002, higher-ups at the USDA have overruled professional staff recommendations on numerous occasions, bending organics standards to allow increasing amounts of adulteration of foods labeled “organic.”

The government’s turnaround, from prohibition to permission, came after a USDA program manager was lobbied by the formula makers and overruled her staff. That decision and others by a handful of USDA employees, along with an advisory board’s approval of a growing list of non-organic ingredients, have helped numerous companies win a coveted green-and-white “USDA Organic” seal on an array of products.

Grated organic cheese, for example, contains wood starch to prevent clumping. Organic beer can be made from non-organic hops. Organic mock duck contains a synthetic ingredient that gives it an authentic, stringy texture.

Relaxation of the federal standards, and an explosion of consumer demand, have helped push the organics market into a $23 billion-a-year business, the fastest growing segment of the food industry. Half of the country’s adults say they buy organic food often or sometimes, according to a survey last year by the Harvard School of Public Health.

But the USDA program’s shortcomings mean that consumers, who at times must pay twice as much for organic products, are not always getting what they expect: foods without pesticides and other chemicals, produced in a way that is gentle to the environment.

From a purely economic perspective, the ideal medication for a drug company’s bottom line is one that the patient needs to take daily for the rest of his or her life.

Nexium seems to fill the bill. Moreover, it appears to make the problem it seeks to treat (acid reflux) worse. If the patient doesn’t actually need the drug but is prescribed it nonetheless, changes frequently occur that make it extremely difficult to withdraw from the drug. This is called “rebound acid reflux.”

Proton-pump inhibitors may cause or aggravate the very acid-reflux symptoms they’re used to treat, according to a randomized trial.

After a two-month course of esomeprazole (Nexium), 44% of asymptomatic, healthy volunteers had clinically significant heartburn, acid reflux, or dyspepsia, compared with 15% who had taken placebo (P<0.001), according to researchers led by Peter Bytzer, MD, PhD, of Copenhagen University and Køge University Hospital.

This apparent rebound acid secretion, to a point above baseline levels, could lead to PPI dependence, the group reported in the July issue of Gastroenterology.

Treatment guidelines support the typical primary care practice of initiating a trial of PPI treatment empirically for dyspeptic symptoms, the researchers said.

Increases in 23 states, decreases in none. Mississippi and Alabama have the highest obesity rates, Colorado the lowest. Not really good news for Independence Day.

This is among the more inspiring stories you’ll read this year. Will Allen is a true American hero.

Like others in the so-called good-food movement, Allen, who is 60, asserts that our industrial food system is depleting soil, poisoning water, gobbling fossil fuels and stuffing us with bad calories. Like others, he advocates eating locally grown food. But to Allen, local doesn’t mean a rolling pasture or even a suburban garden: it means 14 greenhouses crammed onto two acres in a working-class neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side, less than half a mile from the city’s largest public-housing project.

And this is why Allen is so fond of his worms. When you’re producing a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of food in such a small space, soil fertility is everything. Without microbe- and nutrient-rich worm castings (poop, that is), Allen’s Growing Power farm couldn’t provide healthful food to 10,000 urbanites — through his on-farm retail store, in schools and restaurants, at farmers’ markets and in low-cost market baskets delivered to neighborhood pickup points. He couldn’t employ scores of people, some from the nearby housing project; continually train farmers in intensive polyculture; or convert millions of pounds of food waste into a version of black gold.

h/t Ezra Klein

This is a concern that a new meta-analysis should lay it to rest.

From a news release today from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

A recent meta-analysis that will be published in the journal Fertility and Sterility showed that neither soy foods nor isoflavone supplements from soy affect testosterone levels in men. Researchers looked at more than 50 treatment groups from articles in peer-reviewed journals for this meta-analysis. Soy foods contain phytoestrogens, including isoflavones, which have weak estrogen-like qualities.

Other research has shown that soy consumption decreases the risk of some forms of cancer and heart disease.

Hamilton-Reeves JM, Vazquez G, Duval SJ, Phipps WR, Kurzer MS, Messina MJ. Clinical studies show no effects of soy protein or isoflavones on reproductive hormones in men: results of a meta-analysis. Fertil Steril. June 11, 2009. DOI:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2009.04.038.

 

 

 

 

The Institute of Medicine suggests beginning at the service academies, with the eventual goal of a smoke-free military.

Tobacco use reduces soldiers’ physical fitness and endurance and is linked to higher rates of absenteeism and lost productivity, the report said.

In 2005, 32 percent of active-duty personnel and 22 percent of veterans were smokers. Rates among active-duty personnel have recently increased — possibly because of growing tobacco use by deployed troops — the report said.

“We found that the adverse effects of tobacco use on military readiness, the health of both smokers and non-smokers and the financial cost of the medical care of smoking-related illness in military and veteran populations are a sound basis for moving systematically toward a tobacco-free military,” Stuart Bondurant, of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and chairman of the committee that wrote the report, said in a statement.

Not exactly what the good doctor ordered.

The government wants kids to eat more fruits and vegetables but doesn’t seem to be putting its money where its advice is.

For every dollar that the U.S. Department of Agriculture spent buying commodities for school lunches last year, 55 cents went to beef, chicken and cheese vs. about 23 cents for fruits and vegetables.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack stumped a group of Iowa business leaders recently by asking them what was the single food item for schools that the USDA spent the most on. His answer: mozzarella cheese …

Critics have long linked the federal school lunch program to the nation’s childhood obesity problem.

There’s a bill in Congress to force the government to obey its own nutrition guidelines. Will it pass? Only if enough citizens make their views known. Otherwise those profiting from current policies will win again.

No surprise here, just a further addition to the mounting evidence that animal fats (which generally contain a high percentage of saturated fat, the kind that is solid at room temperature) are something to avoid or, at the very least, keep to a minimum.

From MedPage Today:

“We observed positive associations between pancreatic cancer and intakes of total, saturated, and monounsaturated fat overall, particularly from red meat and dairy food sources,” wrote Rachael Z. Stolzenberg-Solomon, PhD, of the agency’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, and colleagues.

 ”We did not observe any consistent association with polyunsaturated, saturated, or monounsaturated fat from plant food sources. Altogether, these results suggest a role for animal fat in pancreatic carcinogenesis,” they concluded.

From a UCLA study on long-term meditators:

In a study published in the journal NeuroImage and currently available online (by subscription), the researchers report that certain regions in the brains of long-term meditators were larger than in a similar control group.Specifically, meditators showed significantly larger volumes of the hippocampus and areas within the orbito-frontal cortex, the thalamus and the inferior temporal gyrus — all regions known for regulating emotions.

“We know that people who consistently meditate have a singular ability to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability and engage in mindful behavior,” said Eileen Luders, lead author and a postdoctoral research fellow at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging. “The observed differences in brain anatomy might give us a clue why meditators have these exceptional abilities.”

Research has confirmed the beneficial aspects of meditation. In addition to having better focus and control over their emotions, many people who meditate regularly have reduced levels of stress and bolstered immune systems.

Wendell Potter, the former Cigna public relations man who testified in Congress this week against the industry he long served, was interviewed by Trudy Lieberman for the Columbia Journalism Review. It’s worth reading in full.

Some excerpts:

WP: A couple of years ago I was in Tennessee and saw an ad for a health expedition in the nearby town of Wise, Virginia. Out of curiosity I went and was overwhelmed by what I saw. Hundreds of people were standing in line to get free medical care in animal stalls. Some had camped out the night before in the rain. It was like being in a different country. It moved me to tears. Shortly afterward I was flying in a corporate jet and realized someone’s insurance premiums were paying for me to fly that way. I knew it wasn’t long before I had to leave the industry. It was like my road to Damascus.

TL: What was so upsetting about the industry that pushed you over the edge?

WP: I was in a unique position to know how companies made money—what they had to do to satisfy shareholders—and how the industry has been able to kill reform in the past. I had been part of those efforts and didn’t want to be part of them again.

Referring to the insurance industry’s very successful “Harry and Louise” ads that helped sink the Clinton reform effort in 1993, Potter warns that a much subtler strategy is being employed this time around. 

TL: Will we see a reprise of Harry and Louise?

WP: No. The industry knows its image is at an all-time low. So the industry can’t be as obvious in attacking a plan as it was in 1994. They will work through front groups and allies to attack it through ads and commercials.

TL: So what’s happening now with all these ads we’re seeing?

WP: What’s happening now is what happens in primary campaigns. We’re seeing a lot of targeted advertising by advocates of reform, aimed at members of Congress who might be persuaded on the wisdom of a public plan. That’s why you’re seeing a lot of advertising in Maine aimed at Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Later in the summer we’ll see more national advertising attacking or supporting aspects of the reform bills. It will be like a political campaign, and it will be very expensive.

TL: How should journalists be covering this middle and last phase of the campaign?

WP: They should be looking at what insurers, drug companies, and organized medicine said during earlier reform efforts, and then report on how well they’ve delivered on those promises. Instead of just reporting costs estimates from the Congressional Budget Office about how much a certain plan will cost taxpayers, which is easy to do, they should write investigative and analytical pieces on the costs to society and the economy if reform is not enacted. Is reform an expense we can’t afford, or an investment we can’t afford not to make? What is the ROI—the return on investment?