Some cereals more than half sugar

[kebaldwin]

Some cereals more than half sugar

Some breakfast cereals contain the same levels of sugar or salt as a chocolate bar or a packet of crisps, Which? reveals today.

Others give you almost the same amount of fat as a thick pork sausage or a McDonald’s McBacon Roll, while a few contain the same amount of saturated fat as eating two fried eggs.

We looked at 275 cereals from a range of shops and manufacturers and compared the amounts of sugar, salt and fat against the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) proposed ‘traffic light’ labelling scheme.

We have used the red, amber and green colour coding from the FSA’s proposed traffic light labelling criteria to show whether levels of salt, sugar, fat and saturated fat per 100g are high, medium or low.

Of those cereals scoring a red for sugar, both Asda and Morrison’s Golden Puffs were rated the worst offenders and contained the highest amount of sugar at 55g per 100g.

Children's cereals
Nine cereals contained more than four teaspoons of sugar per suggested portion and only 13 per cent scored a green traffic light for sugar.

A worrying 88 per cent of the cereals targeted at children were high in sugar, while 13 per cent were high in salt and 10 per cent were high in saturated fat.

The three worst offenders overall were Quaker Oatso Simple Kids (any flavour), Kellogg’s Coco Pops Straws and Mornflake Pecan and Maple Crisp.

All of these are high in sugar and saturated fat; Kellogg’s Coco Pop Straws contain the same amount of sugar as a two-finger Kit Kat (34g per 100g).

Sue Davies, Chief Policy Adviser at Which? said: ‘While manufacturers have made some efforts to reduce the salt levels in their breakfast cereals, we still found lots of products with high levels of salt as well as high levels of sugar. Despite their healthy image, some cereals also have high levels of fat and saturates.'

Responsible marketing
‘We want manufacturers to make further cuts to sugar and salt levels, reduce fat (including saturates) and sugar and remove all unnecessary trans fats, as well as marketing their products more responsibly,’ she added.

Sue Davies also called on manufacturers to adopt the FSA’s traffic light labelling system so that people can identify cereals high in fat, salt and sugar at a glance. However, some have already snubbed the FSA system and created their own versions.

For a copy of the Which? Cereals Re-offenders Report and to find out which cereals’ contain the most sugar, go to www.which.co.uk/cereals.

http://www.which.co.uk/reports_and_campaigns/food_and_drink/reports/diet_nutrition_and_safety/cereal_offenders_report_news_article_557_89607.jsp

[kebaldwin]

They need to look at how the non sugar carbohydrates are converted to blood sugar (glycemic index).

[kebaldwin]

Diet, Supplements Do Little for Cancer Patients

Editor's note: So vitamins are useless for cancer patients? If so, why do we have to call them vitamins? By definition, vitamins mean something vital to the health. Some news outlets go even far enough to say healthy foods are useless to cancer patients. We can tell you that food is more important than drugs when it comes to cancer treatment. A cancer patient is likely able to live more than five days without using any drug, but he can't live over five days if he does not eat food and drink water. Can you say food is useless for cancer patients? People including many researchers take foods for granted. Researchers do not know much about the effects of nutrition interventions on cancer, but just because you don't know does not mean it does not exist. As far as we know, some people use nutrients and cure some types of cancer. Ever better, many people get better outcomes when they use a healthy diet.

Review of research finds little benefit for vitamins and such, but better studies are needed, experts say

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, July 18 (HealthDay News) -- Nutritional supplements and other dietary changes may do little to help cancer patients alter the course of their illness, according to a major review of research on the subject.

However, because of the limited number and quality of most of the trials studied, the British researchers also said it would be tough to draw definitive conclusions on the effectiveness of such interventions.

"The take-home point is that the field isn't mature enough for us to know if any intervention works," said Dr. John A. Baron, a Dartmouth Medical School professor who authored an accompanying editorial to the findings published in the July 19 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The news about diet isn't all discouraging, added the study's lead author, Dr. Steven Thomas of the University of Bristol.

"There are some promising findings particularly for breast cancer, which suggest a reduction in cancer-specific mortality with healthy diet interventions, although the reviewed studies were small," he said.

Thomas' group of researchers reviewed data from 59 studies in what's known as a "meta-analysis." The research included 25 studies involving patients with cancer and 34 with patients with pre-cancerous lesions. The studies covered dietary interventions including supplements of Vitamins A, C, B6, fiber, calcium, folate and beta-carotene, as well as weight loss, exercise, and calorie-reduction.

Some studies did show some benefit. One study suggested that dietary changes might help reduce the risk for breast cancer recurrence. And two studies that focused on increased calcium intake each pointed to a reduced risk of recurrence of colorectal polyps, which can lead to colon cancer.

Of course, eating well is always important for health, Thomas said. "Encouraging a healthy diet is certainly important for general well-being because many patients with cancer will live for along time with increasingly effective medical treatments."

Baron said the U.K. review included studies that are quite broad, involving people with cancer as well as people with benign lesions. While overall the studies failed to show any value for most supplements in reducing cancer recurrence, Baron agreed that there is some evidence that calcium -- which he has studied -- looks promising as a way of preventing the return of colorectal polyps.

The U.K. report is a "very good paper," said Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, a cancer specialist at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. But he stressed that trials that focus on disease prevention, such as those reviewed in the analysis, have inherent limitations.

"They can't last long enough [to obtain definitive answers]," he said. It's also difficult to get study participants to comply with specific interventions over an extended period of time, he added.

Still, the common-sense advice to eat right still holds.

"Diet still works," Trichopoulos said, although its effect on cancer recurrence and prevention may not be as great as experts once believed. "My guess is, diet could reduce cancer by 10 to 15 percent," he said. Trichopoulos suggests a diet with little red meat and high amounts of fruits, vegetables and plant based foods.

A second study, published in the same issue of the journal, found that garlic and vitamin supplements did not reduce the prevalence of precancerous stomach lesions or gastric cancer.

In the study, researchers at the Beijing Institute for Cancer Research and the U.S. National Cancer Institute tracked more than 3,000 Chinese adults, ages 35 to 64, who were assigned to one of three treatment groups or a placebo group.

The study did find that one-time use of an antibiotic to kill off the Helicobacter pylori stomach bacteria -- suspected of causing ulcers and stomach cancer-- did reduce the severity and progression of precancerous gastric lesions, however.

More information


For more on healthy eating, head to the American Dietetic Association.

SOURCES: Steven Thomas, M.D., Ph.D, consultant surgeon, and senior lecturer, department of maxillofacial surgery, University of Bristol, Bristol, U.K.; Dimitrios Trichopoulos, M.D., Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention, and professor of epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston; John A. Baron, M.D., professor of medicine, community and family medicine, biostatistics and epidemiology, Dartmouth Medical Center, Hanover, N.H.; July 19, 2006, Journal of the National Cancer Institute

Last Updated: July 19, 2006

http://www.foodconsumer.org/777/8/Diet_Supplements_Do_Little_for_Cancer_Patients.shtml

[kebaldwin]

I agree - Eating right and taking supplements during surgery do not help much.

Diet and supplements do help prevent cancer, stroke, heart attack, type 2 diabetes and many other diseases.

[MyJourney]

It scares me to think that as a kid I would eat already sugary cereals and I would ADD more sugar to them. I wouldnt even measure, I would take the sugar bowl and pour until I had a mountain of sugar and watch it dissolve into my milk. I liked scooping up all the sugar from the bottom when I was done. When I was really good as a treat my mom would give me a bowl of cereal and then add sugar and then add ice cream to it and sometimes nestle quick on top of that and mix it in and let me eat it for breakfast. Now I know where my sugar addiction comes from lol.

[Angeline]

I believe that children are genetically programmed to like sweet. But as we grow older our taste evolves and we start to appreciate other tastes, and our preference and tolerance for very sweet things fades.

But in America, because the industry literally puts sugar into EVERYTHING, that childhood preference is maintained.

Everyone who comes to America from elsewhere comments on how sweet everything is. And if you do travel abroad, you'll notice that sugar isn't as prevalent.

Except for sweets, pastries and the like, obviously.

[jazzfan]

As a mother of an 11-month-old baby, I can tell you that preference for sweet flavors starts the second you give that baby fruit juice. Even though it's diluted, it's still sweet, and for many babies it's their first experience with something other than milk or formula. I have two older boys who had small, infrequent amounts of juice as babies, and they do get an occasional sweet tooth but not too bad. My youngest has yet to have a drop of juice, and I prefer it that way!

[ItsTheWooo]

The difference between starch and sugar are a few metabolically irrelevant chemical bonds. Ironically, sucrose is actually better than a lot of starches:
a) it's intake-limiting (sugar has taste; taste reaches a tolerance thresh hold).
b) so much of sucrose is fructose, which will not spike blood sugar (whereas most starches affect blood sugar more gram for gram, because of more glucose).

I would rather take a vitamin and eat a funsize snickers than measure out a portion of bran cereal for breakfast. The snickers at least has protein and fat, and sugar is it's source of carbs... I wouldn't spike and crash so quickly, the way I would with the cereal.

[refmls]

I believe that children are genetically programmed to like sweet. But as we grow older our taste evolves and we start to appreciate other tastes, and our preference and tolerance for very sweet things fades.



Human milk is noticeably sweeter than cow's milk, so much so, that sugar must be added to formulas to make them attractive to babies. Human milk is also much richer in saturated fats and cholesterol than cow's milk. When I was teaching natural childbirth classes, I always told my students "human milk is for baby humans, cow's milk is for baby cows, and soy milk is for baby soys." The reason human milk looks thinner than cow's milk is that it is lower in protein and calcium. There is a REASON for this. Baby cows need to be able to put on large amounts of bone and muscle quickly, since they must be able to walk immediately after being born. Baby humans don't.

[bigpeach]

Makes you wonder if the grain industry, USDA, AMA, and all the other groups that campaigned against eggs for decades will face the same fate as the tobacco companies for putting out such an unhealthy product, lying about it, and lobbying for government subsidies.

[kebaldwin]

Makes you wonder if the grain industry, USDA, AMA, and all the other groups that campaigned against eggs for decades will face the same fate as the tobacco companies for putting out such an unhealthy product, lying about it, and lobbying for government subsidies.

I have been preaching the same thing. The AMA, FDA, big pharma are publishing scientific studies stating that natural rememdies are ineffective, a waste of money, and could even be dangerous (Fear Uncertainty Doubt). While publishing studies that pharmaceuticals are safe and they kill all kinds of people. Advising people to avoid protein and fat, eat trans fat, eat carbohydrates, etc.

The USDA is in collusion with these groups plus grain and sugar growers -- the whole food pyramid thing.

This will make the tobacco lawsuits look like chump change.

[Angeline]

This is an except from a book by Mary Enig "Eat fat, loose Fat". It relates the industry's reaction to her research on trans-fats


My paper rang alarm bells throughout the food industry. In early 1979, a representative from the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers came to see me. Visibly annoyed, he explained that both his association and the Institute for Shortening and Edible Oils (ISEO) kept careful watch to prevent articles like mine from appearing. My paper should never have been published, he said, since ISEO was supposed to be “watching out.” As he put it, “We left the barn door open, and the horse got out.”
He also challenged the data from the USDA that the committee and I had both used. He knew this data was incorrect, he told me, “because we give it to them.” He didn’t say the data was intentionally incorrect, but I had my suspicions.
A few weeks later, the same fellow met with me and the other members of the lipids group at the University of Maryland, this time accompanied by an ISEO adviser who also represented Kraft Foods, plus representatives from Central Soya and Lever Brothers (manufacturers of margarine and shortening). Clutching a two-inch stack of newspaper articles reporting on my article (including one in the National Enquirer), he shook them at me indignantly.
When I repeated this earlier admission that the margarine lobby had given the Department of Agriculture incorrect food data, his face flushed red with anger.
He also warned our lipids group that we would never get any more funding if we continued our current research: a survey of trans fats levels in supermarket foods. Incredibly, we were alone in attempting to gather this data since government databases at the time contained no reference to trans fats.
We continued nevertheless, and eventually published a paper on our findings, but the industry was true to its word. The lipids group at the University of Maryland never got another penny for trans fat research, and as the professors retired, the group’s effort was gradually abandoned, except for some ongoing analysis for the USDA.
During his initial visit, the rather indiscreet National Association of Margarine Manufacturers representative also revealed that he had dropped in on the FASEB office in an attempt to pressure them to publish letters to refute my paper without giving me the chance to respond, as was customary. But the editors resisted the pressure and allowed me to reply to a series of letters criticizing my paper.
My reply stressed the correlation between vegetable fat consumption, especially trans fat consumption, and serious disease, including heart disease. I noted that the data warranted more thorough investigation, but no one was doing it.