Many Food Labels are Deliberately Misleading!

Food manufacturers are in business to make a profit and, unfortunately, they're going to put everything they legally can on their labels to rope you into purchasing their products. If promoting immunity or heart health or bone strengthening is going to sell more of their product, then that's what they're going to do.

DON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN
Fortunately, concerned consumer advocacy groups are leaning on food manufacturers to 'fess up and tell the truth'. Even the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has gotten into the act, administering a recent slap on Tropicana's corporate hand over dubious claims for its "Healthy Heart" juice.

To give you some perspective on the problem, here are a few recent labeling issues in the news...

· Low-Carb. Just what does "low-carb" mean? No one knows for sure because the FDA has yet to come up with a definition.

· Cholesterol-free. This may be true, but what about the saturated fat content? Saturated fat can be even worse for your heart than dietary cholesterol.

· 90% fat-free. That's the label on the lower-fat ground beef at my supermarket, but 10% still is a lot of fat.

· Fat-free. Remember those notorious fat-free cookies we used to scarf down with abandon? How many inches did we add to our hips with that "guiltless pleasure"? They might have been fat-free, but oh, the calories!

A Recent Example
Tropicana claimed that drinking two to three cups of OJ a day for four weeks would lower systolic blood pressure by an average of 10 points as well as improve cholesterol and homocysteine levels. Noting that Tropicana's claims were unsubstantiated, the FTC prohibited the firm from making them any longer. But since we live in an imperfect world, they're still allowed to label their juice "Healthy Heart."

Label Tips
And even though food manufacturers do not make labels easy for you to read, make it a habit to read the "Nutrition Facts" on product labels. Learn how to decode them and read between the lines. Here are a few helpful tips to start out with:

· Check the ingredients. Ingredients are listed according to their amount in food, with the first three or four making up most of a given product. If sugar or fat are listed here, chances are it is not a healthy choice.

· Watch out for jargon. Labels are rarely so straightforward as to state simply fat or sugar. This is why you need to keep an eye on other names for fat (such as hydrogenated vegetable oil, coconut or palm or other oil, lard, shortening, lecithin and cream solids) and sugar (also know as corn sweetener, dextrose, fructose, fruit juice concentrate, high-fructose corn syrup, malt, maltose, molasses, etc.).

· Pay attention to serving sizes. This is one of the food manufacturers' biggest tricks. A small bag of chips or cookies represents one serving, right? Wrong! There may be as many as four servings in that bag. Check the label, and do the math.

PROMISES, PROMISES
Don't squander your hard-earned dollars on foods that promise to make you thinner or healthier or happier. Packaged, processed foods with alluring labels are not the answer. If the claim is low-fat, they're often packed with sugar and calories. Low-carb? Check the fat content.

In the long run, you can't make up for an unhealthy lifestyle by purchasing foods that make "healthy" or "low-fat" or "low-carb" promises on the label. Packaged, prepared foods have gone through significant processing to be shelf stable and look as good as they do. It is far healthier to stick with the real deal -- fresh, whole foods. It doesn't take long to steam fresh veggies or to cut fresh fruit. The bottom line - there just are no shortcuts to good health…You are what you eat.

Vital Stroke News For All

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If some is good, more is not always better -- no matter what the headlines might have you believe. In this case, there is yet another new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine promoting lowering your cholesterol numbers "as low as you can."

The research, sponsored by Pfizer, maker of the blockbuster statin drug Lipitor, showed that high-dose Lipitor lowered "bad" LDL cholesterol levels more dramatically than standard-dose Lipitor. Pfizer goes on to say that the lower cholesterol levels translate into a lower risk for death from heart attack and stroke. Of course, the headlines did not talk about the increased incidence of harmful side effects to the liver, nor did they talk about the increase in non-heart or non-stroke related deaths for the higher-dose test group.

Frighteningly, thanks to some good marketing and media coverage, chances are that statins -- already used by approximately 20 million Americans -- will be used by even more in the near future. The cost: Thousands of side effects and millions of dollars in increased medical costs, including the compulsory "office visit."

Safe Natural Alternative
Consider our highly effective, affordable and all natural Cholesterol Care™. Guaranteed fast results and NO side effects.

Learn More at: www.menshealthtech.com/cholesterol_care.htm

The Newest Drug Company Mantra

company officials have offered up reasons such as generic competition, overzealous regulators, trial lawyers, bad public relations and the high cost of research.

Neither Safe Nor Effective
Critser proposes a different reason: the pills they offer are neither safe nor effective. He points out that, according to the industry itself, only about half of the new medicines launched since 1990 have shown significant improvements over older and cheaper products.

At the same time, problems from side effects are on the rise, especially now that one in six Americans take three or more prescription drugs daily, often in untested combinations.

The result? Only about half of patients stay on any given regimen.

"Persistence and Compliance"
The industry's response, however, has been to increase efforts to promote "persistence and compliance" -- in other words, ways to keep a patient taking pills, even if the patient doesn't like it.

Few Programs Look at Side Effects
The rise of P&C programs mean that huge amounts of money are spent getting people to ingest pills, and less and less is being spent to discover new ones.

Meanwhile, patients may be encouraged to continue taking a drug that can be harmful, and few P&C programs even bother to look at the reasons patients might stop taking pills, such as side effects, adverse reactions and special individual sensitivities.

--- Los Angeles Times November 20, 2005

Dogs Can Heal Your Heart

Reduces Anxiety and Stress
Anxiety, as measured by a standard rating scale, dropped 24 percent for those visited by the dog and volunteer team, 10 percent for those visited by just a volunteer, and not at all for those who received no visit.

Epinephrine, a stress hormone, dropped 17 percent in patients visited by a volunteer and a dog, and 2 percent in those visited just by a volunteer -- but the levels actually rose about 7 percent in the unvisited group.

Reduces Heart and Lung Pressure
Heart pressure dropped 10 percent after the visit by the volunteer and dog, increased 3 percent for those visited by only a volunteer, and increased 5 percent for those who received no visit.

Lung pressure went down by 5 percent among those visited by a dog and a volunteer, while it rose in the other two groups.

The researchers hope that the study will show that pet therapy is a credible addition to patient care.

---- MSNBC November 15, 2005

• Vital Stroke News For All

• The Newest Drug Company Mantra

• Dogs Can Heal Your Heart