Plumpynut, orthopedic payoff and the bipolar explosion - NewsGrabs 11 November 2007

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NewsGrabs

Health Supreme's NewsGrabs are a selection of alternative health and other underprivileged news. Find what you may have missed in your everyday reading - watch out for NewsGrabs on weekends.

Here is another week's worth of interesting stories collected for you:

A Life Saver Called Plumpynut -

Vitamin Pill-Poppers Are Healthier -

Vitamin D 'may help slow ageing' -

A question for the European Commission -

New Zealand: No need to buy in to Aussie rules -

Codex Nutrition Committee meets in Germany -

New natural sweetener could rival aspartame -

Video: The REAL Reasons You Want to Avoid Genetically Modified Foods -

Diet for a Dying Planet -

Replace Drug Monopolies with Prizes -

WHO to Debate Prizes, Not Patents, for pharmaceutical drugs -

Crestor Fails to prevent heart deaths -

Failed anti-cholesterol drug raised heart death rate -

Merck Agrees to Pay $4.85 Billion for Vioxx Claims -

Orthopedic Surgeons’ Buck-raking Exposed -

AIDS: Killing with care - Mbeki regrets dropping AIDS debate -

SSRI in Finnish Shooting case? -

Mental Screening Dragnet -

'Bipolar' Explosion -

Brazilian land activist killed -

UK Government's GM Secrets -

UN Urged to consider 5 Year Biofuels Moratorium -

Video: Danger of wi-fi in schools -

Voting As Political Narcotic

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A Life Saver Called "Plumpynut"
You've probably never heard a good news story about malnutrition, but you’re about to. Every year, malnutrition kills five million children -- that's one child every six seconds. But now, the Nobel Prize-winning relief group "Doctors Without Borders" says it finally has something that can save millions of these children. It's cheap, easy to make and even easier to use. What is this miraculous cure?

Plumpynut is a remarkably simple concoction: it is basically made of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and enriched with vitamins and minerals. It tastes like a peanut butter paste. It is very sweet, and because of that kids cannot get enough of it.

Study Shows Vitamin "Pill-Poppers" Are Healthier
New research indicates that NOT taking supplements may be harmful to your health, and that a single daily multi-vitamin is inadequate. A study of hundreds of persons who take a number of different dietary supplements has found that the more supplements they take, the better their health is. The study authors reported that a "greater degree of supplement use was associated with more favorable concentrations of serum homocysteine, C-reactive protein, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides, as well as lower risk of prevalent elevated blood pressure and diabetes."

Vitamin D 'may help slow ageing'
A vitamin made when sunlight hits the skin could help slow down the ageing of cells and tissues, say researchers. A King's College London study of more than 2,000 women found those with higher vitamin D levels showed fewer ageing-related changes in their DNA.

We know the sun causes the skin to manufacture vitamin D and all kinds of health-enhancing effects are now being attributed to the vitamin. Could it be however that the sun's rays are benefiting us in other ways as well? I am thinking about photons and energy the human body may be capable of utilizing. The flurry of good news around vitamin D brings to mind a man who claimed he survived on sunlight alone for an extended period of time.

A question for the European Commission: Are carrots and brazil nuts more dangerous than vitamin supplements?
The European Commission is currently in the process of finalising methods for the setting of maximum levels of vitamins and minerals in food supplements. Although it claims that it will be taking a scientific approach to this procedure, the reality is that the maximum level for beta-carotene may be set at a level less than that contained in two carrots, whilst the maximum level for selenium may be set at a level less than that contained in a mere two brazil nuts.

New Zealand: No need to buy in to Aussie rules
After five years of fitful debate the Government has given up its attempt to control a wide range of health products - everything from surgical equipment to sunscreens and vitamin pills - through a joint licensing agency with Australia. The proposal, which appears to have come from the New Zealand side, was part of a general effort to extend and deepen our immensely valuable closer economic relations (CER). A few days ago Helen Clark called John Howard to say she had failed...

Codex Nutrition Committee meets in Germany
“Since Codex sets international principles, guidelines, and standards for all types of foods,” said Scott Tips, “it is essential that the voice of vitamin consumers be heard adequately—and this has been our key focus at Codex ever since we’ve been involved. We are here to make a difference at these meetings and we can already see from our attendance at yesterday's Electronic Working Group meeting on risk assessment that a number of delegations are receptive to our ideas. ”

Addressing some serious scientific concerns, Dr Robert Verkerk added, “In yesterday’s meeting, we have managed to make a strong case that risk-assessment approaches presently being used in Europe—which are being pushed as global guidelines to be adopted through Codex—need to be urgently amended if they are not to prevent millions of people in both the less-developed and developed world from obtaining health-promoting levels of nutrients in foods and food supplements.”

New natural HI sweetener could rival aspartame, sucralose
A new plant-derived high intensity sweetener is set to hit the market worldwide, emerging as what could be the first natural sweetener to rival artificial counterparts such as aspartame and sucralose. Brazzein, which is derived from a plant native to Africa, will be marketed globally under the brand name Cweet. The product is touted as being 1,000 times sweeter than cane sugar on a weight basis.

Video: The REAL Reasons You Want to Avoid Genetically Modified Foods
Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception, summarizes the contents of his book, which explains how genetically modified ... all » foods cause health problems, and their potential for creating a vast array of unforeseen and surprising illnesses. He also sheds light on how the corruption within the U.S. government, the FDA, and the GMO industry has allowed, and perpetuated, the cover-up.

Diet for a Dying Planet
In India, the benefits of modern agriculture come with a high price. It's been reported as many as 150,000 Indian farmers over the past decade have committed suicide - many by drinking the pesticides they put on their crops. According to physicist and social activist Vandana Shiva, the farmers' despair is due to the weight of overwhelming debt. They can no longer afford the escalating price of chemicals and bio-engineered seeds, like pest-resistant Bt cotton. Shiva says the suicides in India are only part of a global problem that can be traced to the way food is produced.