Study says West Virginians continue to get fatter

[CoolBreeze]

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia's obesity rate has edged over 30 percent despite national and statewide efforts to slim down, according to a new federal study.

West Virginia is one of nine states in which about one-third of adults are obese -- triple the number of states since 2007, according to a report released Tuesday from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The report was based on 2009 statistics.

In 2000, no state had an obesity rate of 30 percent or more, according to the CDC report.

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201008030757


Meanwhile...


Low-carb diet trumps low-fat on 'good' cholesterol

NEW YORK – Over the long term, a low-carb diet works just as well as a low-fat diet at taking off the pounds — and it might be better for your heart, new research suggests.

Both diets improved cholesterol in a two-year study that included intensive group counseling. But those on the low-carbohydrate diet got a bigger boost in their so-called good cholesterol, nearly twice as much as those on low-fat.

In previous studies, low-carb diets have done better at weight loss at six months, but longer-term results have been mixed. And there's been a suggestion of better cholesterol from low-carb eating.

The latest test is one of the longest to compare the approaches. At the end of two years, average weight loss was the same for both — about 15 pounds or 7 percent.

The key difference was in HDL, or good cholesterol: a 23 percent increase from low-carb dieting compared to a 12 percent improvement from low-fat, said Gary Foster, director of Temple University's Center for Obesity Research and Education, who led the federally funded study.

He said the low-carb boost is the kind one might get from medicines that improve HDL.

"For a diet, that's pretty impressive," Foster said.

The findings, published in Tuesday's Annals of Internal Medicine, are based on a study of 307 adults, two-thirds of them women. Participants were obese but didn't have cholesterol problems or diabetes.

Half followed a low-carb diet modeled after the Atkins' plan and half went on a low-calorie, low-fat diet. All attended group sessions to help them change bad eating habits, get more active and stick to their diets.

The volunteers had periodic checks of their weight, blood, bone density and body composition. After two years, there was no major differences between diet groups, except in good cholesterol. Why the low-carb diet had a bigger effect on good cholesterol isn't known, the researchers said.

As low-carb plans became popular, experts feared the diet would drive up the risk of heart disease because it allows more fat. The latest results suggest those concerns are unfounded, Foster said. In the low-carb group, there was an early rise in "bad" cholesterol, the kind that builds up in arteries. But after two years, both groups ended up with similar improvements to bad cholesterol.

The study's strengths include its size, length and its multiple locations — Denver, Philadelphia and St. Louis, said Dr. William Yancy, of the Durham VA Medical Center in North Carolina.

"These are results we should have a lot of confidence in," said Yancy, who has done similar diet research but was not involved in the study.

Foster, the study leader, said dieters should be less concerned about which diet to use, and focus on finding the support or technique — like writing down what they eat — that keeps them on track.

"It doesn't make a difference for weight loss how you get there," he said.

With the current obesity epidemic, more than one way is needed to attack the problem, Yancy said.

"Both of these are options. These diets work," he said.

[CoolBreeze]

* Findings challenge common wisdom about sugars

WASHINGTON Aug 2 (Reuters) - Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

"These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation," Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

"They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth."

Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods.

Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.

Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.

Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola (KO.N) and Kraft Foods (KFT.N) have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda. [ID:nN12233126]

The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.

Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.

Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. "Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different," Heaney's team wrote.

"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets," Heaney said in a statement.

Now the team hopes to develop a drug that might stop tumor cells from making use of fructose.

U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

[Bob Campbell]

Good news for West Virginians. ALL Americans are getting fatter too. See you in the cardiac ward.