1. Breast Cancer: Fibre Diet Lowers Oestrogen An international team has shown that women with a higher intake of dietary fibre have lower circulating oestrogen levels, a factor associated with lower risk of breast cancer. Their findings provide direct evidence of the association between fibre and oestrogen levels and could lead to a dietary strategy for reducing breast cancer risk.
2. Beta Glucan: Improves Immune Response Beta glucan, a form of natural soluble dietary fibre found in grains and mushrooms, appears to help speed up response to infection, which may result in faster healing, report researchers in a new study. The team from the Department of Surgery at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University has discovered that beta glucan can enhance the ability of certain human immune cells to navigate to the site of a bacterial infection.
3. Female Fertility: Soy Unlikely to Have an Effect Soy is unlikely to damage fertility in women according to new research designed to examine the theory that its positive impact on breast cancer risk may have other, unwanted, side effects. Their study also offers insight into how the plant food impacts on breast cancer risk.
Wholegrain labelling: Australia Widening the Scope
Australia is set to widen the definition of 'wholegrain' to allow more foods to include this term on their product labelling. The national food authority, FSANZ, has concluded that the definition of 'wholegrain' should be amended to reflect processing techniques and give bread manufacturers greater opportunity to promote the nutritional value of their products.
General Mills Cereals: Now All Wholegrain
Every single breakfast cereal produced by US-based General Mills, one of the world's largest cereal makers, is to be made with wholegrains as the company strives to benefit from a responsible image in the face of increasing public health concerns.
Porridge: Keeping Obesity at Bay
New research suggests that children who have a constant intake of oatmeal may lower their risk of obesity. Researchers from Columbia University in the US say the percentage of two- to 18-year-olds that are overweight, or at risk of becoming overweight, is almost 50 per cent lower in oatmeal-eaters than in children who do not consume oats.
New North Beach Diet: Big on Carbs
The 'North Beach Diet', developed by an Italian restaurant and bakery company in San Francisco, emphasises the importance of wholegrains, complex carbohydrates and vegetable-based dishes.
Full stories:
1. Breast Cancer: Fibre Diet Lowers Oestrogen (back to contents)
An international team has shown that women with a higher intake of dietary fibre have lower circulating oestrogen levels, a factor associated with lower risk of breast cancer.
They say their findings, which offer direct evidence of the association between fibre and the hormone, could lead to a dietary strategy for lowering a woman's risk of breast cancer.
Breast cancer rates have risen in recent decades to become the most common cancer among women in the European Union, as well as Western countries such as the US and Australia.
Researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, and the University of Helsinki in Finland examined blood oestrogen levels in around 250 Mexican-American women, an ethnic group in which dietary fibre intake is higher on average than in most other populations.
Kristine Monroe, a postdoctoral fellow in the Keck School's department of Preventive Medicine, said Latinas enrolled in the Multiethnic Cohort Study had lower breast cancer rates than any major racial/ethnic group in the US. Even after adjusting for known risk factors, their incidence rate was still 20 per cent less than white women, who have been the focus of the majority of earlier research and whose dietary fibre intake is generally not high.
Speaking at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) conference, 'Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research', the researchers said they found the two female hormones estrone and estradiol dropped sharply as dietary fibre intake increased. In addition, as dietary fat intake increased in the women studied, so did the hormone levels.
"This study provides clear evidence of an association between dietary fibre intake and circulating hormone levels in postmenopausal Latina women, and potentially provides a dietary means for lowering a woman's risk of breast cancer," the researchers concluded.
Beta glucan appears to help speed up response to infection, which may result in faster healing, according to a new study.
The team, from the Department of Surgery at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University, has discovered that beta glucan can enhance the ability of certain human immune cells to navigate to the site of a bacterial infection.
Beta-glucans are a form of natural soluble dietary fibre found in foods, including grains (such as barley, oats).
They report in the August issue of Surgery (136(2), pp 384-9) that soluble beta glucan binds to receptors on neutrophils, the most abundant type of innate immune cell in the body. This both increases the killing capacity of the neutrophils and benefits migration or chemotaxis to the site of an infection.
Neutrophils are attracted to the site of an infection by blood proteins (called chemoattractants) and are among the first cells of the body to respond to a challenge due to infection or injury.
Priming the neutrophils with beta glucan increases their ability to sense complement fragments emanating from the site of an infection, according to the researchers. As a result, beta glucan helps neutrophils locate the bacterial mother lode within an infected tissue. This more rapid response to infection results in faster microbial clearance and healing.
3. Female Fertility: Soy Unlikely to Have an Effect (back to contents)
Soy is unlikely to damage fertility in women according to new research designed to examine the theory that its positive impact on breast cancer risk may have other, unwanted, side effects.
Their study, carried out on monkeys, also offers insight into how the plant food impacts on breast cancer risk. Women in Asian countries where a lot of soy is consumed have dramatically lower rates of breast cancer than women in the United States, Australia and Europe.
The results, from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and Emory University School of Medicine, were reported recently at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Philadelphia in the US.
Isoflavones, a plant-based oestrogen found in soy, are thought to play a role in this lower incidence either by increasing menstrual cycle length or reducing ovarian hormones - both of which would reduce lifetime exposure to oestrogen. However, these changes in the menstrual cycle could also impair fertility. But this new study fails to confirm these concerns.
The research team tested the hypothesis on monkeys, chosen because they have menstrual cycles similar to those of women. For one year, half of the monkeys were fed a high-soy diet and half got their protein from animal sources. All monkeys were evaluated during this period for changes in ovarian hormones and menstrual cycles.
Lead researcher, Jay Kaplan, said their study was designed to determine whether a soy supplement containing twice the level of plant oestrogen consumed by Asian women would alter any aspect of the menstrual cycle or ovarian function in monkeys.
They found that soy treatment did not change any characteristics of the menstrual cycle, including length, amount of bleeding or hormone levels. The result suggests that any protection soy may provide against breast cancer does not come from changes in the menstrual cycle.
The researchers said the consumption of a high-soy diet was unlikely to compromise fertility, although further research is warranted to evaluate effects of soy on placenta function and on the foetus.
4. Grains in the news
Wholegrain labelling: Australia Widening the Scope (back to contents)
Australia looks set to widen the definition of 'wholegrain' to allow more foods to include this term on their product labelling.
Australia's food safety authority, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), has concluded that the definition of 'wholegrain' should be amended to reflect processing techniques and give bread manufacturers greater opportunity to promote the nutritional value of their products.
Currently only a few breakfast cereals and crispbreads - but virtually no breads - qualify as 'wholegrain foods'. The grains research body BRI Australia Ltd petitioned Food Standards Australia New Zealand in 2001 for changes to the current definition of wholegrain. BRI said the definition was "too narrow, inconsistent with international practice, severely limiting for food manufacturers and potentially misleading for consumers".
A draft assessment of the proposed changes by FSANZ concludes that it is "appropriate" to amend the definition to include processing techniques that retain all of the original grain components, and to allow for 'dehulling'.
Wholegrain is currently defined as "the unmilled products of a single cereal or mixture of cereals". The definition proposed by BRI would widen the term to encompass the intact grain, dehulled grain, ground grain, cracked grain or flaked grains and include wholemeal. It could be applied to any foods made from grains such as breads, breakfast cereals, pasta, biscuits, oats, rice and grain-based snack foods.
According to FSANZ, this is 'consistent with the growing awareness of the positive nutritional benefits that can be achieved through increased consumption of wholegrains, and the range of foods that can be included in the diet to obtain these benefits'.
There is currently no international definition of 'wholegrain', although one has been established by the American Association of Cereal Chemists (AACC). However the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows food manufacturers to make a health claim on wholegrain food products stating that they may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and some cancers.
Foods making this claim must contain 51 per cent or more of wholegrain ingredients (bran, germ and endosperm) by weight per reference amount, with dietary fibre of 2.3g per 50g. The food must also be low in fat.
However, BRI's request for 'wholegrain' labelling claims, such as 'Good source of wholegrains' and 'Source of wholegrains', were considered to be beyond the scope of application.
Every single breakfast cereal produced by US-based General Mills, one of the world's largest cereal producers, is to be made with wholegrains as the company strives to benefit from a responsible image in the face of increasing public health concerns. Despite these wholesale changes to its product range, the company claims it has not sacrificed taste, a common criticism of wholegrain foods.
In its own survey of 9,000 people, General Mills said that its wholegrain cereals were just as popular with consumers as previous varieties, though it declined to go into any details about how it had ensured the continuity of taste and texture.
The move also means that General Mills becomes the first major company to make such a commitment to using wholegrains, something which is supported by a number of US health experts.
The scientific evidence is compelling that diets rich in wholegrain foods have a protective effect against several forms of cancer and heart disease. And increasing wholegrain consumption can be expected to prevent a number of premature deaths every year.
General Mills claims that, in a national survey, 91 per cent of Americans said they wanted more wholegrains in their diet. American adults currently consume around one serving of wholegrains daily, while children consume even less. At the end of August this year, a dietary guidelines advisory panel of the US government recommended that people eat at least three servings of wholegrains daily.
This advice is likely to become official next January when the government updates the US dietary guidelines, and the policy is supported by a number of health organisations, such as the American Heart Association and American Society for Clinical Nutrition.
Wholegrains are known to contain a mix of naturally occurring antioxidants, phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, fibre and protein, very similar to fruit and vegetables. Research suggests it is all of the components of the wholegrain that act together to provide its disease-preventing capability.
The company believes that with 93 per cent of Americans eating breakfast cereal, its new policy could add another 1.5 billion servings of wholegrain to American diets every year.
New research suggests that children who have a constant intake of oatmeal may lower their risk of obesity. Researchers from Columbia University in the US say the percentage of two- to 18-year-olds that are overweight, or at risk of becoming overweight, is almost 50 per cent lower in oatmeal-eaters than in children who do not consume oats.
The research, presented at the Experimental Biology 2003 conference held recently in San Diego, California, also found that children who eat oatmeal are about twice as likely to meet fibre intake recommendations, with fibre intakes 17 per cent higher than those who do not eat oatmeal.
"This study found that children and teens who consumed higher intakes of dietary fibre had lower Body Mass Index (BMI) levels or less body fat," said Dr Christine Williams, professor of clinical paediatrics and director of the Children's Cardiovascular Health Centre at Columbia University.
"Our data further suggests children who have diets rich in high-fibre foods, such as oatmeal, as early as age two could help them prevent obesity throughout their lives," she said.
Researchers, funded by Quaker Oats company, analysed data from nearly 10,000 children aged two- to 18-years-old.
"This study is important because it's the first study to use such a large national sample of children and analyse the role of fibre in obesity," according to Priscilla Samuel, senior scientist and director of the Nutrition Research Program at Quaker Oats, and co-author of the study.
"High-fibre foods tend to make kids feel fuller, so they are more likely to eat less. Also, foods that are high in fibre, like oatmeal, are often low in fat and have fewer calories," she said.
The new 'North Beach Diet', developed by an Italian restaurant and bakery company in San Francisco, emphasises the importance of wholegrains, complex carbohydrates and vegetable-based dishes.
Il Fornaio, an Italian restaurant and bakery company based in Corte Madera, San Francisco, has introduced the North Beach Diet at all 24 of its restaurants this month.
Mr Maurizio Mazzon, Il Fornaio executive chef and author of the "Il Fornaio Pasta Book," is the creator of the North Beach Diet which draws its name from a San Francisco neighbourhood and contrasts with the low-carbohydrate South Beach Diet.
"The North Beach Diet at Il Fornaio is a delicious and healthy diet created in response to a world gone low-carb crazy - a diet for the sane," Mr Mazzon said.
The North Beach Diet features:
About 2,500 calories a day
Bread (wheat flour), pasta (housemade or imported from Italy), wine with lunch and dinner
Smaller portions and multiple courses
Emphasis on high-quality ingredients and seasonality and lots of produce
30 minutes of exercise daily
The Il Fornaio restaurants still have low-carbohydrate options on the menu, Mr Mazzon said: "But we have many guests who make pasta, bread and olive oil part of a healthy, well-balanced diet," he said.
"And it's my opinion that those who enjoy a variety of foods are not only healthier, but happier. We will continue to present the authentic foods of Italy, whether or not they fit the diet fad of the moment," Mr Mazzon said.
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