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Watching the television coverage of the health care reform debates and House votes made me think about the possibility of taxing sweetened beverages in order to reduce consumption. Some experts believe the correlation between increased consumption of soda and the rising obesity rates in the US and other countries is important enough that we should consider forcing a reduction of soda consumption by taxing it. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill suggest that increasing the cost of junk foods and soda could reduce obesity.

But is taxing soda or junk food the way to go? What about subsidies? Why not subsidize the production of fruits and vegetables instead of paying farmers more to grow crops such as corn, which is used to make cheap high fructose corn syrup?

Tell me what you think. Should we tax sodas and junk food to reduce consumption? Are there better ways to educate people about what happens when you drink too much sugary, calorie-laden beverages and junk foods?

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Following a diet rich in soluble fiber may help reduce inflammation and boost your immune system, according to a recently published study. In tests on mice, scientists found that soluble fiber (found in foods like oatmeal, broccoli, and psyllium) can rev up production of an anti-inflammatory protein known as interleukin-4.

For the study, researchers fed a group of mice low-fat diets containing either soluble fiber or insoluble fiber. After six weeks, the animals showed significantly different responses when the researchers injected them with lipopolysaccharide (a substance that creates a bacterial-infection-like effect in the body). For instance, the soluble-fiber-fed group became only half as sick as their study counterparts, and recovered 50 percent sooner.

Known to lower cholesterol, soluble fiber is a type of fiber that attracts water and turns to gel during digestion. Found in wheat bran and whole grains, insoluble fiber helps food to pass more quickly through the digestive system.

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“All the sections of the food chain are inter-related in these deep-sea ecosystems, and a small change in any one of the links in this chain can cause great changes in the rest,” says Izaskun Preciado, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Oceanographic Centre in Santander, which is run by the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO).

In order to gain a detailed understanding of the species that inhabit El Cachucho (Spain's first Protected Marine Area located off the coast of Llanes in Asturias), the scientists studied three species of shark that live at depths of between 400 and 1,000 metres, the blackmouth catshark (Galeus melastomus), the velvet belly lantern shark (Etmopterus spinax), and the birdbeak dogshark (Deania calcea).

The researcher says the results of the study, which has been published in the Journal of Fish Biology, showed that “the sharks' diet is opportunist, because they feed off whatever resources are available, in this case small euphausiid crustaceans, benthopelagic prawns and fish.”

The samples gathered between October 2003 and April 2004 made it possible to define two different habitats — the top of the bank, at a depth of 454 to 642 metres and covered with a fine layer of sediments with a low percentage of organic material, and the interior of the inner basin, which separates the bank from the continental shelf, at a depth of between 810 and 1,048 metres.

The study shows that the top of the bank (400-500 metres) is inhabited by two of the three shark species studied (the blackmouth catshark and the velvet belly lantern shark). “However, the velvet belly lantern shark is substituted in the deeper parts of the basin by the birdbeak dogshark,” explains Preciado.

In the deepest waters, the scientists sampled down to a depth of 1,100 metres and found that the blackmouth catshark and the birdbeak dogshark coexist there without any trophic competition between them, “since each one has specialised to eat a particular kind of food,” says the oceanographer.

The team stresses the importance of these studies in monitoring species in the El Cachucho area. “It is likely that the establishment of the Protected Marine Area will cause changes in the abundance of certain species of fish, above all commercial ones. For this reason, understanding the trophic network of these ecosystems will help us to predict future changes in the abundance of species,” explains Preciado.

The researcher warns: “A significant increase in a predator species could lead to a drastic decline in its prey, and so understanding the dynamics of the trophic networks will help us to predict changes in each of the sections of the ecosystem.”

The presence of larger blackmouth catsharks in shallow waters, for example, is a good indicator of higher levels of zooplankton production in these areas.

El Cachucho is an undersea mountain located in the Cantabrian Sea, off the coast of Asturias. At around 4,500 metres in height (measured from its base on the deep-water plain of the Bay of Biscay), it has great faunal and biological wealth. It is the first exclusively marine reserve in Spain. To date, only parks such as Doñana, Cabrera and the Atlantic Islands of Galicia had extended their protection to include part of the maritime environment.

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Organic foods are becoming more popular due to concerns about pesticide use, synthetic fertilizer and herbicide residues in our food. Growing food organically is more work-intensive and so it is more expensive than non-organically grown food, but many people think that going organic is worth the extra price.

Not all foods that have the word organic on the label are completely free of bad stuff. If you want to buy organic foods, take some time to learn what the word organic means when you see in on a label. Read Organic Food Basics to learn more.

More About Organic Foods
What is Organic Gardening?
Can Organic Farming End World Hunger?
Organic Wines
Fruits and Vegetables You Should Buy Organic

Daily Nutrition Tip

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“Risk prediction is a central part of cardiovascular disease prevention and refining prediction strategies remains important for targeting treatment recommendations. One area of potential improvement has been the discovery of genetic markers for cardiovascular disease as well as intermediate phenotypes [physical manifestations] such as cholesterol and blood pressure. Recent efforts using genome-wide association studies have greatly expanded the discovery of genetic markers associated with cardiovascular disease,” the authors write. “While multiple genetic markers associated with cardiovascular disease have been identified by genome-wide association studies, their aggregate effect on risk beyond traditional factors is uncertain, particularly among women.”

Nina P. Paynter, Ph.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and colleagues, constructed two genetic risk scores based on a comprehensive literature-based selection of genetic markers known to be associated with either cardiovascular disease or an intermediate phenotype and tested the scores to assess their predictive ability. The study included 19,313 initially healthy white women in the Women's Genome Health Study, followed up over a median (midpoint) of 12.3 years. Genetic risk scores were constructed from the National Human Genome Research Institute's catalog of genome-wide association study results published between 2005 and June 2009.

A total of 101 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) reported to be associated with cardiovascular disease or at least 1 intermediate cardiovascular disease phenotype were identified and risk alleles (an alternative form of a gene) were added to create a genetic risk score. During follow-up, 777 cardiovascular disease events occurred (199 heart attacks, 203 strokes, 63 cardiovascular deaths, 312 coronary artery revascularizations).

After analysis, the researchers found an absolute cardiovascular disease risk of 3 percent over 10 years in the lowest tertile (group) of genetic risk (73-99 risk alleles) and 3.7 percent in the highest tertile (106-125 risk alleles). However, after adjustment for traditional factors, the genetic risk score was not associated with cardiovascular disease risk. “In contrast, family history of premature [heart attack] remained an independent risk factor for incident cardiovascular disease even after adjustment,” the authors write.

“We believe these data have clinical relevance for several reasons. First, genome-wide testing is increasingly available and marketed to the general public. Our study finds no clinical utility in a multilocus panel of SNPs for cardiovascular risk based on the best available literature. Second, our data confirm the utility of intermediate phenotypes such as total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and blood pressure in as much as genetic risk scores were no longer significant after adjustment for these phenotypes,” the researchers write. “Third, our findings confirm the importance of family history of cardiovascular disease, which integrates shared genetics, shared behaviors, and environmental factors. At the same time, we believe that our data suggest areas for further biomarker research, which may improve prediction.”

“While the importance of genetic data in understanding biology and etiology is unchallenged, we did not find evidence in this study of more than 19,000 women to incorporate the current body of known genetic markers into formal clinical tools for cardiovascular risk assessment.”

Following a low-calorie diet may help you improve your health, lose weight and some experts hope following a low calorie diet will help to you live longer. But following a low-calorie diet takes dedication and some thought – there's not much room for foods with poor nutritional value – every calorie must count. Learn the steps for following a low-calorie diet.

Help For Following a Low-Calorie Diet

Nutrient Density and Superfoods
Seven Basic Tips for Low-Calorie Cooking
Low-Calorie Ingredient Substitutions

Daily Nutrition Tip

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You may have read recent press reports that statin drugs have been linked to the development of type II diabetes. Do statin drugs really make diabetes more likely? And if they do, how big is this risk?

Read all about statins and diabetes here.

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Jan. 13, 2010 – U.S. obesity rates are leveling off for most kids and
adults, new CDC figures suggest.

It does not mean we are getting thinner, although it may mean we're nearly
as fat as we can get.

The sad numbers, according to CDC researchers Katherine M. Flegal, PhD,
Cynthia L. Ogden, PhD, and colleagues:

12.6% of teens ages 12-19 are obese by adult standards.

17% of school-age kids are obese
by child standards.

34% of adults — 32% of women and 35.5% of men — are obese.
68% of adults — two-thirds of us — are overweight or obese.

The good news is that the rise in obesity seems to be leveling off for
children and for women. The same thing seems to be happening in men, although
the leveling off has been too recent for the CDC to call it a plateau.

Bucking the trend are the very heaviest 6- to 19-year-old boys, who are
getting even heavier.

That any of this seems like good news is, well, not good news.

“The results presented here indicate that the prevalence of high body-mass
index in childhood has remained steady for 10 years and has not declined,” the
CDC researchers note. “The prevalence of obesity in the United States continues
to be high, exceeding 30% in most sex and age groups.”

The findings appear in two papers in the Journal of the American Medical
Association. In an editorial accompanying the papers, J. Michael Gaziano,
MD, MPH, a contributing editor of the journal, says we've entered a new and
ominous age of public health.

Gaziano says there have been four previous eras:

The age of pestilence and famine dominated most of human history.
The age of receding pandemics happened in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries.
The age of degenerative and man-made diseases emerged in the mid-20th
century.
The age of delayed degenerative diseases began in the 1960s as people began
to quit smoking and as technological advances delayed heart deaths.

Now, he says, we're in the age of obesity and physical inactivity.

What can be done? Gaziano and the CDC say it's no longer just up to
individuals. They recommend we look at our built environment — and our food
environment — and make big changes in the things that make it easy for us to
consume empty calories and hard for us to exercise.

Surprising
Reasons Why You're Gaining Weight

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