1. Wholegrains: Keeping the Weight Off
People who eat lots of wholegrain foods in the long-term weigh less than those who avoid foods that are rich in fibre, according to a new study. Previous studies have shown that eating wholegrains cuts the risk of heart disease and diabetes in both men and women, but this is the first study to link wholegrains with lower weight.
2. Soy Bread: Cuts Prostate Cancer Risk
Bread rich in soy has been found to reduce levels of the prostate cancer marker PSA in a group of cancer patients, according to a recent Australian study. PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels are commonly used to screen for prostate cancer and for tracking the disease after its diagnosis. The findings therefore lend support to epidemiologic evidence suggesting that soy may reduce the risk of prostate cancer development and progression.
3. Daily Soy Intake: Cuts Cholesterol
In other research on the effects of soy on health, there's now further evidence supporting the cholesterol-lowering function of soy protein, making it a key ingredient in formulations looking to benefit heart health.
4. Obesity: Parents Don't See It
The effectiveness of healthy foods targeted at children may be coming up against a critical barrier - most parents fail to recognise obesity and overweight problems in their children. Researchers surveyed the parents of 277 children and found that only a quarter recognised when their offspring were overweight.
Oats and Cholesterol: Claim in UK
Manufacturers of oat-based products in the UK can now position them alongside cholesterol-lowering foods following the approval of a health claim by the country's voluntary claims body. The generic health claim, only the fourth to be approved by the Joint Health Claims Initiative, follows a similar move by Swedish authorities and is likely to have a major impact on future European health claims regulation, currently under debate.
Fibre: New Trend for 2005
Bread with reduced carbohydrates is unlikely to become a long-term trend, but the bakery sector could do more to capitalise on the rising interest in fibre and wholegrains, according to an industry analyst. Sin Hui Chew, research manager for the global packaged food industry at Euromonitor, believes that bread with high fibre could be one of next year's trends in the bakery industry.
Weight Loss: Back To Basics
Dieters looking for tricks to lose weight are in for more bad news with the publication of a study showing diets that restrict certain food groups do not take any extra weight off. The good news, however, is that adding wholegrains may help. Despite all the controversy about diet, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie.
People who eat lots of wholegrain foods in the long-term weigh less than those who avoid foods that are rich in fibre, according to a new study.
Previous studies have shown that eating wholegrains cuts the risk of heart disease and diabetes in both men and women, but this is the first study to link wholegrains with lower weight.
The trial on middle-aged men found increased consumption of wholegrains to be inversely related to weight gain even after changes in added bran or fibre intakes were accounted for.
"This suggests that additional components in wholegrains may contribute to favourable metabolic alterations that may reduce long-term weight gain," according to the study's authors in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The research team, headed by Harvard School of Public Health, noted that studies investigating wholegrain consumption in relation to weight gain have previously been obscured by methodological inconsistencies in the assessment of wholegrains.
This current study used new quantitative estimates of wholegrain intake to analyse data from a prospective cohort of 27,082 men aged 40 - 75 years old, following them for eight years.
A dose-response relationship was observed between wholegrain intake and long-term weight gain. For every daily 40g increment in wholegrain intake from all foods, weight gain was reduced by 0.49kg. Bran that was added to the diet or obtained from fortified-grain foods, as well as fruit and cereal fibre, further reduced the risk of weight gain, according to the research.
This finding comes from a large study of health professionals at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston in which the diet and health records of more than 27,000 men aged 40- to 75-years were analysed.
Bread rich in soy has been found to reduce levels of the prostate cancer marker PSA in a group of cancer patients, according to a recent Australian study.
PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels are commonly used to screen for prostate cancer and track the disease after its diagnosis. The findings therefore lend support to epidemiologic evidence which suggests that soy may reduce the risk of prostate cancer development and progression.
Prostate cancer is now the second-leading cause of cancer death in men and affects more than 500,000 men worldwide every year.
Research carried out at Monash University in Melbourne tested the effects of specially manufactured bread containing 50g of heat-treated soy grits or 50g of heat-treated soy grits and 20g of linseed. A group of 29 men diagnosed with prostate cancer, and scheduled to undergo a radical prostatectomy, were randomised to receive four slices daily of either the soy-rich bread, the bread with both soy and linseed, or a normal wheat-based bread.
The daily diet containing soy favourably influenced PSA levels in the patients after just one month, according to the research paper published in the September issue of the medical journal Urology. Adding soy to the diet resulted in a 13 per cent drop in total PSA levels in men with prostate cancer.
"This work provides some evidence to support epidemiologic studies claiming that male populations who consume high phytoestrogen diets have a reduced risk of prostate cancer development and progression," according to the authors.
In other research on the effects of soy on health, there's now further evidence supporting the cholesterol-lowering function of soy protein, making it a key ingredient in formulations looking to benefit heart health.
The latest study to demonstrate this property in soy showed that soy protein intake was inversely associated with total and LDL-cholesterol concentrations and with the ratio of total to HDL cholesterol, but not with HDL-cholesterol concentrations.
This cross-sectional study included 1,033 pre- and postmenopausal women selected from the Oxford arm of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.
Women who consumed at least 6g of soy protein per day had mean blood levels of LDL-cholesterol 12.4 per cent lower than that in women who consumed less than 0.5g per day, write the researchers in this month's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The findings, from a team at the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit in the University of Oxford, UK, support an already sizeable body of data showing this cholesterol-lowering effect, which has led to a health claim both in the US and in the UK.
Cholesterol remains the single biggest modifiable risk factor for coronary heart disease which is the leading cause of death around the world. Recent predictions from food industry executives polled by Reuters Business Insight suggest that by 2009, cholesterol-lowering foods will be the most profitable health food pushing current trends like low-carb well down the list.
The effectiveness of healthy foods targeted at children may be coming up against a critical barrier - most parents fail to recognise obesity and overweight problems in their children.
Researchers surveyed the parents of 277 children and found that only a quarter recognised when their offspring were overweight. Where children were obese, a third of mothers and 57 per cent of fathers thought their sons and daughters were 'about right'.
The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, underline the challenges facing food manufacturers, under pressure to offer healthier foods and try to stem the rise in childhood obesity.
Some 30 per cent of British five-to-nine-year-olds are overweight or obese and this is expected to rise to 36 per cent by 2008, according to figures from Datamonitor. A recent report from the firm also suggests that there is evidence that parents are now placing greater importance on health as opposed to convenience when making purchase decisions.
Meanwhile food manufacturers appear to have cut advertising of the kind of sugary, 'junk' foods blamed for weight gain in children.
Yet the new survey by a team at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, UK, revealed that some parents showed a lack of concern towards their children's weight problems. Although more than half of obese children's parents expressed some concern over their child's condition, only a quarter of parents of overweight children described themselves as even "a little worried" about it.
However, misjudging weight problems was not confined to their own children. The researchers also found that, of those parents who were overweight themselves, 40 per cent of mothers and 45 per cent of fathers judged their own weight to be "about right".
Contrary to previous findings, the study showed there were no differences between the highest and lowest socio-economic groups for the proportion of overweight parents, or for parents misjudging their children's weight.
Manufacturers of oat-based products in the UK can now position them alongside cholesterol-lowering foods following the approval of a health claim by the country's voluntary claims body.
The generic health claim, only the fourth to be approved by the Joint Health Claims Initiative, follows a similar move by Swedish authorities and is likely to have a major impact on future European health claims regulation, currently under debate.
A Europe-wide approval of the health claim on oats would give the traditional ingredient, which has seen a decline in sales over recent years, a significant boost from growing demand for healthy foods.
The JHCI claim states: "The inclusion of oats as part of a diet low in saturated fat and a healthy lifestyle can help reduce blood cholesterol."
This claim can be used for whole oats, oat bran, rolled oats and whole oat flour that contain at least 0.75 grams of beta-glucan soluble fibre per serving. The decision to allow this claim is the result of a scientific dossier submitted by the Swedish firm Swedish Oat Fibre and its marketing partner, CreaNutrition.
The US Food and Drug Administration first permitted such a claim in 1998, but European oat millers have been slow to develop this marketing opportunity. Functional foods designed to lower cholesterol are gaining significant momentum in Europe, with regulators approving the addition of plant sterols to a number of different applications this year.
It's expected that this health claim will demonstrate a clear understanding of the health benefits of oats among scientific experts. Oats have an advantage over many sterol-containing products as they can be labelled as GM-free. They also contain a number of other nutrients including antioxidants and fatty acids.
Bread with reduced carbohydrates is unlikely to become a long-term trend but the bakery sector could do more to capitalise on the rising interest in fibre and wholegrains, suggests an analyst.
Sin Hui Chew, research manager for the global packaged food industry at Euromonitor, believes that bread with high fibre could be one of next year's trends in the bakery industry.
"Fibre is a big issue and breads with high fibre could be the next trend. It is certainly something that manufacturers are turning their attention to," Sin Hui Chew said.
This trend may be due to the recognition that promoting the healthy ingredients in bread could gain more sales than a reduction in components like salt and carbohydrates, which have a major impact on taste.
Ms Chew noted while some manufacturers have focused on reducing the salt content in the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, for example, these products have a tiny percentage of the overall market. In France, such breads make up a mere 0.1 per cent of sales. Reduced carbohydrate breads have had a similarly low penetration of the market.
"Bread itself has a good image as a healthy product and is not something that people have a lot of resistance too. Negative impact on sales comes more from changing eating habits - like the decreasing amount of time spent at the breakfast table - than trends like Atkins," Ms Chew said.
But it's believed that the low-carb dieting trend will leave consumers with greater awareness of types of carbohydrate and the benefits of wholegrains over refined carbohydrates on heart health. Several ingredients firms have expanded sales of high fibre ingredients in the wake of this trend.
Dieters looking for tricks to lose weight are in for more bad news with the publication of a study showing diets that restrict certain food groups do not take any extra weight off.
A study of 80 overweight or obese people showed that they all lost the same amount of weight regardless whether they were on an extra low-fat diet or one targeted at the so-called glycaemic index, which aims to cut foods that affect insulin.
"Despite all the controversy about diet ... a calorie is a calorie is a calorie," according to Dr. Ernst Schaefer, from Tufts University in Boston, who led the study.
The American Heart Association has stuck with its recommendations that weight loss requires a boring but effective approach - eating less, exercising more, and basing the diet on vegetables, fruits, wholegrains and little fat or meat.
But the group regularly supports research aimed at seeing if there may indeed be quicker ways to weight loss, because losing weight is one of the best ways to prevent heart disease - the number one cause of death in the United States and much of the rest of the world.
Schaefer told a meeting of the heart association that he put his 80 volunteers, with an average age of 54, on various carefully controlled diets for three months. One diet provided 15 percent of calories from fat, another was closer to the US. average with 30 percent of calories from fat, and another had a low glycemic index.
All the dieters cut their usual intake by about a third, but they could ask for snacks.
After the first three months they were told to stay on their diets but were not watched so carefully, and followed for a year. All the dieters lost six per cent to eight per cent of body weight, and all improved their cholesterol levels, Schaefer told the heart meeting in New Orleans. The average weight loss was 7kg to 8kg, but the low-glycaemic diet was harder to follow.
The theory behind diets to control glycaemic index is that some foods affect the ability to process sugar more than others.
"It is not as simple as one might think," Schaefer said. "For example, high glycaemic index foods are a baked potato, French fries. An apple would be a low glycaemic index food. White bread and processed sugar have a high glycaemic index while wholegrains have a low glycaemic index."
* Go Grains is a joint initiative of BRI Australia Ltd., an independent grains research centre, and the Grains Research and Development Corporation, which plans and invests in research and development on behalf of grain growers and the Federal Government. Privacy : Subscriber details will be used expressly for the Go Grains E-News Service and will not be provided to any other company or used for any other purpose. Each edition of the Go Grains E News Service will contain information on how to unsubscribe from future editions. Unsubscribe : If you wish to subscribe to, or unsubscribe from, this service, please email the E-News Service Coordinator at gge-news@bri.com.au . Disclaimer : The Go-Grains E-News Service is a collection of articles published by the sources identified. Go Grains and BRI Australia Ltd has collated and distributed these articles to update recipients on the latest scientific research and news concerning the nutrition and health benefits of grains and legumes. The articles may relate to products not yet approved, licensed, registered or available in Australia . Go Grains and BRI Australia Ltd accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of the information in the articles and cannot endorse the conclusions reached by researchers and/or the authors of these articles. We acknowledge NutraIngredients.com and FoodNavigator.com for providing some of the content for this edition of E-News.
