Cake, Controversy and Cancer Hope - This Week in Health

This week in my kitchen: Cauliflower, green bean and lentil curry with organic brown rice. YUM!

In lieu of a post with original content I bring you a roundup of some of the most interesting nutrition and women's/children's health stories of the week. What can I say, I've had a busy week. This is a feature I plan on adding to my blog in addition to a weekly original post. I know I like reading collections of news tidbits.

"Bacteria in yogurt could treat cancer, Irish research finds

New research has found that bacteria, commonly found in probiotic yogurt, is an effective way to deliver gene therapies to treat cancer. Researchers at UCC have found that the harmless bacteria has a natural ability to travel through the body and grow inside tumours. The team from the Cork Cancer Research Centre says it can genetically engineer these bacteria to pump out anti-cancer agents specifically inside tumours."

- Irish Examiner

"India Halts Use of Gardasil Vaccine After Four Deaths

The Indian Council of Medical Research has suspended the cervical cancer control vaccination program for girls in India. According to Mercola.com, the program is part of a two year study to look into the "utility of a vaccine in public health programs and acceptability of Gardasil, the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine made by Merck [a US pharmaceutical company]." The suspension was made after four deaths and more than 120 complications were reported by young women who had received the Gardasil vaccine. ¹

Concerns have surrounded the use of Gardasil in the US for years, with more than 17,000 adverse events and 67 Gardasil related deaths in having been reported in the US since the vaccine's release in this country in 2006."

- Mothering Magazine

"Do toddlers need cake as well as carrots?

A new survey shows some nurseries are giving children too much in the way of fruit and vegetables, and not enough starchy carbohydrates to meet their energy needs. Have healthy eating messages left us in a state of confusion about what children should be consuming?
This latest study carried out by the local government regulatory body Lacors focused on children in nursery schools across 29 English councils. While finding that some children were being given portions that were too large and too high in salt, others were simply not being offered enough at all."

- By Clare Murphy, BBC News

"'High GI' carbohydrates increase women's heart risk

A study of over 47,000 Italian adults found that women alone whose diets contained a lot of bread, pizza and rice doubled their heart disease risk.
These foods have a high glycaemic index (GI), meaning they release energy and raise blood sugar quickly. The findings are published in Archives of Internal Medicine.
The experts say much more research is needed to understand why these high GI foods, rather than carbohydrates per se, appear to pose a risk - and why the risk applies to women and not men.
Low GI carbohydrates, such as pasta, which release energy and raise blood sugar far slower, showed no such link with heart disease."

-BBC News

"Nutritional risks of picky eating may be higher in autism

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many kids are picky eaters but new research suggests the trait is even more common in autistic children who tend to refuse more foods and are more likely to restrict their diets to a smaller variety of foods than other children.
Such habits in both autistic and non-autistic children may put them at nutritional risk.
"If children are not eating foods from each of the food groups in sufficient amounts they may be at risk for nutrient inadequacy," Dr. Linda Bandini, of the E. K. Shriver Center, University of Massachusetts Medical School and Boston University told Reuters Health in an email.
Picky eaters were found in both the ASD and typically developing children although the children with ASD "displayed more food refusal and exhibited a more limited food repertoire," the authors report in the Journal of Pediatrics." 

- Rachael Myers Lowe, Reuters