Nick Harvey / WireImage

British researchers tested recipes from 26 celebrity chefs, such as Jamie Oliver, finding that 87 percent of the 904 recipes fell substantially short of healthy eating recommendations.

The dabs of butter and splashes of cream in recipes of celebrity chefs may be impressive on the plate, but not necessarily so good for your health.

Research published in the Food and Public Health journal by University of Coventry scientists said on Wednesday that recipes of celebrity chefs were "exacerbating" health problems such as obesity in Britain by encouraging people to eat fatty dishes.

Television shows and top-selling books by chefs such as Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith as well as TV cooking competitions MasterChef and the Great British Bake Off have legions of eager fans testing out recipes.

But researchers at Coventry's health professions department found that 87 percent of the 904 recipes from the 26 cooks they tested fell substantially short of the British government's healthy eating recommendations.

"If people regularly use the recipes found in these cookbooks, it could be that celebrity chefs are exacerbating public health nutrition issues in the UK," study author and Coventry senior lecturer Ricardo Costa said.

The study comes just months after a survey, published in the British Medical Journal, found that recipes by TV chefs, including Oliver and Lawson, were less healthy than ready meals.

The researchers refused to say which chefs' recipes they tested, but said they had sampled randomly from best-selling books and websites in such a way as to ensure a balanced representation of different types of meals.

"This study is not about naming and shaming celebrity chefs. However, given the level of trust the public tends to place in the nutritional integrity of these cooks' recipes it's important to highlight where they're falling short of healthy eating benchmarks," Costa said.

After an analysis of each of the recipes, the academics discovered that only 13 percent used ingredients that presented an overall nutritional composition that would be considered healthy in accordance with benchmarks set by Britain's Food Standards Agency.

The results also indicated that all celebrity chefs whose ingredients were analysed promoted recipes that contained undesirable levels of certain nutrients - particularly saturated fatty acids, sugars and salt - which are linked to obesity and risk factors associated with diabetes and heart disease.

Celebrity chef Annabel Karmel, whose cookbooks for children and families are found in kitchens throughout Britain, told Sky News that some recipes in celebrity books were bound to be indulgent, but people were smart enough to make healthy choices.

"If you want to eat a chocolate cake, yes it will be way above food standards and guidelines and that's OK because you have the choice of eating fruit or chocolate cake," Karmel said.

"I think people are intelligent enough to choose their own recipes."

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By Amy Norton, Reuters

NEW YORK - The number of Americans who are severely obese shot up by 70 percent in the past decade or so, though the increase has slowed down in more recent years, a new study finds.

Between 2000 and 2010, the proportion of Americans who were severely obese - at least 100 pounds overweight - rose from 4 percent to almost 7 percent.

The increase showed signs of slowing after 2005, researchers found. But the bad news is that the severely obese remain the fastest-growing segment of obese Americans, said study leader Roland Sturm, a senior economist at the non-profit research institute RAND Corporation.

More than one-third of U.S. adults are obese, which means having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher. BMI is a measure of weight relative to height.

Recent studies have found that the nation's obesity rate, among adults and kids, may be leveling off. But most of those folks are moderately obese.

"Everybody's talking about obesity leveling off," Sturm said. But what tends to get "lost" in the discussion is the fact that severe obesity - BMIs of 40 or higher - is still rising fast.

That's important, Sturm said, because those are the people who have the highest healthcare costs - about double those of normal-weight Americans.

People with a BMI of 40 or higher would be at high risk of conditions like diabetes, severe arthritis and heart disease. They are also the folks who could be candidates for obesity surgery.

But there are other costs besides the healthcare price tag, Sturm noted. There's the human cost of living with obesity-related health problems, and often a loss to the workforce.

"There's the disability and inability to work," Sturm said. "People may be basically forced into retirement because they can't work."

The findings, reported in the International Journal of Obesity, are based on data from an annual government health survey of U.S. adults. BMI estimates were made based on people's self-reported weight and height.

Moderate obesity, the study found, rose relatively slowly after 2000 and seemed to level off from 2005 on. In contrast, the proportion of Americans with a BMI of 40 or above climbed by more than 70 percent.

That translates to about 15 million U.S. adults with a BMI that high, Sturm said.

And some Americans were consistently at greater risk over time than others. The rate of severe obesity was 50 percent higher among women than men, and twice as high among black Americans as among white and Hispanic adults.

What's more, the increases were bigger among people younger than 40 compared with older adults.

Sturm said that doctors once thought of severe obesity as a problem that affected a small and stable percentage of people who were genetically vulnerable to huge weight gain.

"That thinking has been proven wrong," Sturm said. "This is something that can happen to a surprisingly large percentage of the population."

And the implications for the healthcare system could be large, too, Sturm noted.

Experts estimate that obesity, in general, results in an additional $190 billion a year in U.S. healthcare costs - or one-fifth of all healthcare spending (see Reuters story of April 30, 2012 here: http://reut.rs/InjFnP).

Sturm said he doesn't think wider use of obesity surgery is the "answer" to the problem. "Probably the solution is preventing the weight gain in the first place."

By MyHealthNewsDaily

Kidney stones are nearly twice as common now as they were in the early 1990s, according to a new study.

In 1994, one in 20 people in the U.S. had kidney stones, in the years between 2007 and 2010, the rate was one in 11.

"While we expected the prevalence of kidney stones to increase, the size of the increase was surprising," says study researcher Dr. Charles Scales Jr., a urologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Additionally, the researchers found that people with obesity, diabetes or gout were more likely than healthy people to be diagnosed with kidney stones.

While kidney stones can be treated, they can also be prevented by eating a healthy balanced diet and getting plenty of exercise, researchers said. Doctors should shift their focus to prevention, especially now that more people in the U.S. are facing the condition, researchers said.

"People should consider the increased risk of kidney stones as another reason to maintain a healthy lifestyle and body weight," said researcher Dr. Christopher Saigal, associate professor of urology at the UCLA medical school.

The study used data on 12,000 people collected during the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an ongoing study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Survey participants answer questionnaires, and undergo physical exams.

The study was released online and will appear in the July issue of the journal European Urology. 

Have you had kidney stones? What was the treatment? Tell us on Facebook.

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By Judith Graham
Kaiser Health News

Doctors assess patients' breathing, heart rate and blood pressure routinely at office visits. Soon, they may be adding body mass index to that list too.

Tracking this measure – an indicator of whether someone is obese or overweight – as if it were a vital sign at medical checkups is among a new set of strategies recommended for battling obesity, a concern that some experts predict will affect 42 percent of adults by 2030.

Although professional medical societies have said for years that physicians should monitor patients' body mass index, most doctors fail to do so. For example, a 2006 survey of family physicians found that fewer than half checked BMIs for children over the age of 2, even though 71 percent knew this has been recommended.

Just over 40 percent of adult patients in commercial HMOs had documented BMI measurements in 2009 and 2010, according to a survey by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, an organization that evaluates health plans. That figure falls to 12 percent for patients in commercial PPOs, a more common type of plan.

The Institute of Medicine last week called for the medical profession and health insurers to become more rigorous in their approach in a report proposing an anti-obesity campaign that would involve every part of society, from individuals and families to schools, communities, workplaces, the food industry and the media.

Pointing to the more than 90 million children, teens and adults counted as obese, well-established links to medical conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and arthritis, and annual healthcare expenses exceeding $190 billion, the report urged comprehensive and sustained action.

For physicians, monitoring body mass index – a ratio of height to weight – is at the top of the list of priorities because it's the best way to identify people who have a weight problem. (Adults are counted as obese if they have a BMI of 30 or higher; children if their BMI is at the 95 percentile or higher for kids of the same age and sex.)

"We need to normalize the process of obesity screening and lifestyle counseling so they're usual and people expect this," said Dr. Sandra Hassink, a member of the panel that prepared the IOM report and director of the Obesity Initiative at Nemours, a pediatric health system in four states.

Medical groups call for change
Groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have recommended regular BMI checks for years. Several health care systems also have embraced the practice. Kaiser includes BMI as a "vital sign" in electronic medical records for nearly 9 million members, and it is planning to do the same for physical activity, another contributor to the obesity epidemic, said Ray Baxter, the plan's senior vice president for community benefit and health policy.

(Kaiser Health News is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)

So why the problem? Many harried physicians are unprepared to advise people about how to change their behaviors, unconvinced they have time to do so, and therefore look skeptically at screening, said Dr. Robert Kushner, clinical director of the Comprehensive Center on Obesity at Northwestern University.

If doctors are overweight themselves, they're less likely to recognize the issue in their patients, research shows. What's more, doctors aren't trained in medical school to handle weight issues. They also often aren't convinced obesity treatments work, and many believe there aren't good community programs to which they can refer patients.

"The question is, how many programs are out there for primary care doctors to refer to in the community, and answer is – not many," said Dr. Ned Calonge, a Colorado physician who is the immediate past chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Northwestern is tackling a part of that by weaving instruction in "lifestyle medicine" throughout all four years of a new medical school curriculum being introduced this August.

Another significant problem has been a historic lack of reimbursement from insurers for obesity screening and counseling. That changed last year for seniors, when Medicare said it would cover up to six months of weight loss counseling for obese beneficiaries as part of a package of new preventive services. Nearly 13 million Medicare members are thought to be obese.

Meanwhile, new preventive services guidelines from the government call for all insurance plans to cover obesity screening and counseling without charge to patients.

And insurers are expanding childhood obesity programs following a 2010 recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that endorsed comprehensive weight management programs for youngsters at least 6 years old. Previously, the task force supported BMI screening but not weight loss programs.

Seeking evidence-based programs
For the insurance industry, the challenge now is providing evidence-based programs that can be introduced on a broad scale.

UnitedHealth Group is promoting "Join for Me," a year-long behavioral modification program piloted with the YMCA of Greater Providence, R.I., in which youngsters 6 to 17 years old, accompanied by a parent, learn about healthy eating and exercise in a group led by a coordinator.

"Doctors are in short supply" and it makes sense to conduct intensive behavioral change programs in the community, not in their offices, said Dr. Deneen Vojta, senior vice president of UnitedHealth's Center for Health Reform & Modernization. For overweight and obese adults, the company is looking at offering a version of the Diabetes Prevention Program, a well-studied intensive intervention that has been shown to help people lose weight.

WellPoint has taken a different approach, choosing to work through doctors and with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, an organization that's trying to convince health plans to offer more comprehensive coverage for obesity counseling and treatment. The alliance asks participating plans to offer four visits with a child's primary care doctor and four visits with a dietitian if the youngster is found to be overweight or obese. So far several plans, including WellPoint, Aetna, Humana and Highmark, Inc., have signed up, and 2.4 million children are covered.

WellPoint recently launched a limited pilot study of this type of benefit in California and is learning what physicians need and members want before deciding whether to roll it out more broadly, said Harvinder Sareen, clinical program director for the insurance company.

Insurance companies and some self-insured employers are also exploring the use of financial incentives -- cash payments or reduced premiums or deductibles – to motivate members to keep their weight in check and to adopt other lifestyle changes. One program at UnitedHealthcare offers members up to $250 for reaching a BMI of 25 or less, and similar incentives for not smoking and lowering cholesterol and blood pressure.

"Is there coverage [for obesity] is yesterday's conversation. Today's conversation is how to design coverage to encourage people to use it and continue using it," said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group.

Others disagree that coverage for obesity counseling is adequate.

"The problem is there's no real incentive for the insurance industry to pay for better prevention and treatment, because the costs are immediate while the benefits are long-term," said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the new Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Children's Hospital, Boston. "Although reducing the prevalence of obesity is one of the most profitable investments the healthcare system could make, it doesn't make a lot of sense for individual plans when families change policies every three to five years."

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Men who drink sugar-sweetened beverages, including sodas and non-carbonated fruit drinks, may have a higher risk of heart attack, a new study shows.

Harvard researchers found that men who drank one sugar-sweetened beverage per day had a 20 percent increased risk of heart attack compared to those who eschewed the sugary drinks, according to the study published in the journal Circulation.

And the risk rose with increasing consumption: Two sugary drinks a day was linked to a 42 percent increase in risk, while three was associated with a 69 percent increase.

The researchers also found that sugary drinks were associated with higher levels of inflammatory factors, such as CRP, that are thought to be involved in the development of heart disease.

The bottom line is that Americans need to pay more attention to what they’re drinking, said the study’s lead author, Lawrence de Koning, a research fellow in the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. “The first thing to do is to reduce the intake of sodas and then eventually eliminate them,” de Koning said.

Related story: 5 great reasons to kick the soda habit

The new research found no connection between artificially sweetened drinks -- in other words, diet sodas -- and heart disease risk. “But there are probably better choices, such as water, coffee and tea,” de Koning said. Besides, another recently published study did indeed find a link between a daily diet soda and heightened heart attack risks. 

This study adds to the accumulating evidence that sugary beverages hurt your health, said Dr. Y. Claire Wang, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

The new report looked at data gathered as part of the Health Professionals Follow-up study, which has been gathering information on 42,883 men for the last 22 years. During that time there were 3,683 heart attacks in the men, some fatal and some not. And although this data set focused solely on men, past research has linked women's soda habits with heart disease, too. 

When de Koning and his colleagues looked at sugar-sweetened beverages, they found a strong correlation between sugary drinks and heart attack risk. And that link stayed strong even after the researchers accounted for factors such as smoking, physical activity, alcohol intake, vitamin use, family history and BMI. 

And while link doesn’t absolutely prove that sugary drinks increase the risk of heart disease, there is evidence from other studies showing that these beverages have an impact on risk factors, de Koning said. In one study, for example, volunteers who decreased sugary soda consumption experienced a reduction in blood pressure levels, he added.

“At the end of the day,” Wang said, “the best thing to drink is still water. 

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By Karen Rowan
MyHealthNewsDaily

Eating canned food every day may raise the levels of the compound bisphenol A (BPA) in a person's urine more than previously suspected, a new study suggests.

People who ate a serving of canned soup every day for five days had BPA levels of 20.8 micrograms per liter of urine, whereas people who instead ate fresh soup had levels of 1.1 micrograms per liter, according to the study. BPA is found in many canned foods — it is a byproduct of the chemicals used to prevent corrosion.

When the researchers looked at the rise in BPA levels seen in the average participant who ate canned soup compared with those who ate fresh soup, they found a 1,221 percent jump.

"To see an increase in this magnitude was quite surprising," said study leader Karin Michels, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.

The levels of BPA seen in the study participants "are among the most extreme reported in a nonoccupational setting," the researchers wrote in their study. In the general population, levels have been found to be around 1 to 2 micrograms per liter, Michels said.

The study noted that levels higher than 13 micrograms per liter were found in only the top 5 percent of participants in the National Health and Examination Survey, which is an ongoing study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We are concerned about the influence of [hormone-disrupting] chemicals on health in general, and BPA is one of them," Michels told MyHealthNewsDaily.

The study is published online todayin the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Weigh in on Facebook: Will this finding impact how much canned soup you slurp?

Soup for lunch

The study included 75 people, whose average age was 27. One group of participants ate 12 ounces of fresh soup every day at lunchtime, while the other ate the same amount of canned soup each day. Urine samples were collected from the participants on the fourth and fifth days of the study.

BPA was detected in 77 percent of people who ate the fresh soup, and all of the people who ate the canned soup, according to the study.

Only a few studies had previously looked at BPA levels from eating canned foods, and those relied on asking people how much of the food they usually eat comes from cans, Michels said. The new study was the first in which researchers randomized participants to eat a small serving of canned food or fresh food, and measured the resulting difference in their urine BPA levels, she said.

"We've known for a while that drinking beverages that have been stored in certain hard plastics can increase the amount of BPA in your body. This study suggests that canned foods may be an even greater concern, especially given their wide use," said study researcher Jenny Carwile, a doctoral student at Harvard.

BPA and health

A 2008 study of 1,455 people showed that higher urinary BPA levels were linked with higher risks of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and abnormal concentrations of certain liver enzymes, even after factors such as age, body mass index and smoking were taken into account.

And other studies have linked BPA levels in a woman's urine during her pregnancy to health problems in her child.

It is not known how long the levels of BPA might remain high, according to the study. However, it is also not known whether such a spike, even if it isn't sustained for very long, may affect health, the researchers wrote.

The study was limited in that all of the participants were students or staff at one school, and a single soup brand (Progresso) was tested, but the researchers wrote that they expected the results to apply to canned foods with a similar BPA content.

"Reducing canned food consumption may be a good idea, especially for people consuming foods from cans regularly," Michels said. "Maybe manufacturers can take the step of taking BPA out of the lining of cans — some have already done this, but only a few."

The study was funded by the Allen Foundation, which advocates nutrition research.

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