| Top : 2006 : 2006_12_29 |
Universal Studios parks ban trans fatsFri, 29 Dec 2006 00:53:51 GMTBy ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. - The early reviews are mostly positive at the Universal Studios theme park in Hollywood where the menu changed on Christmas Eve to cut unhealthy trans fats from many junk food favorites. Twelve-year-old Jack Xu noticed something different about his french fry. "It tastes drier and not too salty," he said, then added: "I still like it." The self-described junk food addict, an exchange student from Beijing who's visited the park before, was on a field trip this week and enjoying a basket of chicken tenders and fries. Universal Parks & Resorts, home to movie-inspired thrill rides, is the latest theme park operation to ban artery-clogging trans fats and offer healthier menus at its three domestic attractions in California and Florida. The action follows entertainment giant Walt Disney Co., which announced in October it will serve more nutritious kids' meals and phase out the artificial fats at its resorts. Last week, over 90 percent of foods at Universal Studios Florida, Islands of Adventure in Florida and Universal Hollywood were cooked with trans fat-free oils. Others snacks such as the churro, a Spanish fried-dough pastry, will be trans fat-free by the end of next year, said Ric Florell, a senior vice president with Universal Orlando Resort. Customers also have more healthy side options, too, including salads and fruit bowls. Florell said the goal is to give customers options and not dictate what to eat. "If guests come in, they're not forced to have fruit if their little hearts desire french fries," he said. But if they insist on fries, those will be trans fat-free. Trans fats are made when manufacturers add hydrogen to vegetable oil in a process called hydrogenation. Although they're cheaper to produce and give food a longer shelf life, trans fats also increase the risk of heart disease by raising the level of bad cholesterol in the blood. The average American eats almost 5 pounds of trans fats a year. At Universal Studios Hollywood, Xu's teacher Michael Fang welcomed the healthier alternatives. Since his students want to hit as many heart-thumping rides as possible, Fang usually buys them fast food because it's cheap and convenient. Now the food is healthier, and Fang says the taste is just as good. "I can't even tell the difference," he said, munching on a fried chicken leg. The healthy options are also important to Todd Medwed, whose family often visits to ride the rollercoasters and tour the backlot studio. "It's better for everybody. It's healthier," he said as he watched his 6-year-old son Blake eat a salad. Food scientists at Universal experimented for months to find trans fat alternatives, holding blind taste tests with customers and using their feedback to create menus with more variety, including fruit juices and skim milk. Earlier this month, New York City became the first U.S. city to ban artificial trans fats in restaurant foods. Nationwide, trans fats must be listed on packaged foods. Since Disney's venture into healthier eating at its global theme parks, it has received positive feedback from parents, with more than half choosing fruits and low-fat milk over french fries and soda, said Mary Niven, a vice president with the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. The ESPN Zone restaurant there and the ABC Commissary at Walt Disney World Resort currently fry chicken, fish and french fries without trans fats and the ingredient will be cut from all eateries by next year. As for Universal, it will monitor the progress of its trans fat ban in the United States before deciding whether to expand it to overseas theme parks. Universal's Florell declined to say how much the switch in oils would cost the company, but said it would be "a little more expensive." Besides Disney and Universal, SeaWorld Orlando also pledged earlier this year to limit fats and calories in some meals and created a whole food restaurant where food is prepared without trans fats and preservatives. ___ On the Net: Universal Parks & Resorts: http://www.nbcuni.com Brazil transfixed by 4th anorexia deathFri, 29 Dec 2006 00:53:22 GMTBy PETER MUELLO, Associated Press Writer RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The struggle for food has long been a drama for millions of impoverished Brazilians. But these days the nation is transfixed by another sort of starvation: anorexia among the successful and well off. The deaths of four young women in recent weeks from anorexia — a disorder characterized by an abnormal fear of becoming obese, an aversion to food and severe weight loss — have been splashed across the front pages of newspapers nationwide. The subject has become a morbid fascination for Brazilians, and is even the theme of a popular TV soap opera. It has also touched off a debate within Brazil's fashion industry that has long presented the rail-thin model as the paragon of female beauty. The most recent victim was Beatriz Cristina Ferraz Lopes Bastos, a 23-year-old teacher whose death Sunday at a hospital in Jau, 200 miles northeast of Sao Paulo, was reported by national television news programs. Local media reports said she was 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighed just 77 pounds. "Another victim of anorexia," the newspaper Globo said on its Web site Tuesday, alongside a glamorous photo of the blonde Bastos, who was also a skilled pianist, amateur historian and author of a literature column for a hometown Web site. The newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported she described herself as "thin" on an Internet discussion group and friends said they had to "fight with her to eat." A former boyfriend, Leandro Murgo, told reporters Bastos was a chubby teenager and became fixated on losing weight. Anorexia became big news in Brazil last month with the death of 21-year-old Ana Carolina Reston, a successful model who died of generalized infection caused by anorexia nervosa. She reportedly carried just 88 pounds on her 5-foot-8 frame. "Take care for your children because their loss is irreparable," Reston's mother, Miriam, told Globo after her death. "Nothing can make the pain go away. No money in the world is worth the life of your child." Two days later, on Nov. 16, college student Carla Sobrado Casalle, 21, died in the southeastern city of Araraquara, also with symptoms linked to anorexia. She was just under 5-foot-9 and weighed 99 pounds. A third anorexia victim died later in the month. Eating disorders are also a daily subject for viewers of the prime-time soap opera "The Pages of Our Lives," in which a 15-year-old ballet dancer suffers from bulimia, secretly making herself vomit after eating to keep her weight down. Death and illness from malnourishment is not uncommon in this nation of 185 million people, where 26.5 million must survive on the minimum wage of $160 a month or less. According to the IBGE Census Institute, at least 8 percent of Brazilians are underweight. As it has in other countries, the attention on eating disorders is renewing pressures on Brazil's fashion industry, whose officials insist they do not urge models to starve themselves to attain an "ideal" body. They noted a fashion show in Sao Paulo already had said it would bar models under age 16 as part of a national effort to raise awareness about eating disorders. "In Paris and Milan, models under 16 years can't participate in these types of events," said Paula Marini, a spokeswoman for the Ford Models agency. "In Brazil, this is a new procedure." Europeans also have stepped up their attention to the sometimes unhealthy aspects of fashionable looks. Organizers of Madrid's Fashion Week, for instance, announced in September that they was banning overly thin models. Organizers of Sao Paulo Fashion Week, held every year in late January, added the minimum-age requirement to a previous rule requiring that agencies present a signed medical certificate attesting that their models are in good health. "Beauty and fashion is about health in the first place," the creative director of Sao Paulo Fashion Week, Paulo Borges, said in a statement in July. Mental health bill to face House voteFri, 29 Dec 2006 00:53:44 GMTBy FREDERIC J. FROMMER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - After years of trying, advocates think they have a good chance of getting Congress to pass legislation next year that would require equal health insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses, if their policies include both. The legislation, named for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Minnesota Democrat who championed the cause, has strong support in Congress but has run into GOP roadblocks. In the last congressional session, 231 House members — more than half of the chamber — signed on as co-sponsors. The GOP leadership, which in the past had expressed concern that the proposal would drive up health insurance premiums, wouldn't bring it up for a vote. In 2003, Senate Democrats tried to win passage of the bill as a tribute to Wellstone, who died in a plane crash the previous year. Republicans blocked an attempt to pass it by unanimous consent. "I'm very optimistic that 2007 will finally be the year that our health care system recognizes that the brain is, in fact, a part of the body," said Rep. Patrick Kennedy , a Rhode Island Democrat who sponsored the bill in the last Congress. "We've had majority support for this legislation six years in a row, and now we have a chance to bring it to the floor and pass it." Kennedy has worked to erase the stigma of depression and other mental health problems. He has been candid about his own mental health, including being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and he has won praise for speaking publicly about suffering from depression since his teenage years, taking antidepressant medication and regularly seeing a psychiatrist. He has also acknowledged being in recovery for alcoholism and substance abuse. Kennedy's lead co-sponsor, Minnesota Republican Jim Ramstad, said a "silver lining" to the Democrats winning both houses of Congress is the increased chances of passing the bill, known as mental health parity. "The Republican leadership would not give us a vote," said Ramstad, a recovering alcoholic who has pushed for improved treatment for those with alcohol and drug dependency. Ramstad said that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has told him the bill will come up for a vote on the House floor, which Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly confirmed. "We need to deal as a nation with America's No. 1 health problem," Ramstad said. "It's not only the right thing to do, but the cost-effective thing do." Prospects have also improved in the Senate. Incoming Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is a big backer of mental health parity, as is Kennedy's father, Massachusetts Democrat Edward M. Kennedy, who will chair the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee next year. Sen. Pete Domenici , R-N.M., who worked with Wellstone on the legislation, called the bill one of his top priorities in the next Congress. A 1996 law already prohibits health plans that offer mental health coverage from setting lower annual and lifetime spending limits for mental treatments than for physical ailments. But backers want to see that expanded to things like co-payments, deductibles and limits on doctor visits. Mohit M. Ghose, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, said that the trade group hopes to tackle the country's challenge of providing coverage to the uninsured in the next Congress. "To accomplish this goal, we believe that consumers and employers must have the ability to choose the type of health care coverage they can afford and that most suits their needs," he said. "We hope that any discussion of mental health and other health care legislation will occur in this context next year." J.P. Fielder, a spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, said his group doesn't support "additional mandates to health care coverage that will drive up these costs to employers." He declined to say whether he considered this bill to be a mandate, saying the group was still reviewing issues that will come up in the next Congress. Andrew Sperling, a lobbyist for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said the bill was not a mandate because it doesn't require insurance plans to provide mental health coverage. "We don't want to get in the trap of making this a mandate," he said. "We believe this is a coverage condition." He added: "We believe the brain is an organ like any other, and coverage should be equitable. Treatment is effective." David L. Shern, president and CEO of Mental Health America , said cost should not be a concern. He pointed to a study this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, which found that the government's decision to provide parity to federal employees in their health insurance plans did not drive up the cost of mental health care. "I'm hoping we have nailed all of the concerns," Shern said. "It's the right thing to do, we have the data that says it's affordable, so our hope is this will be the year to set this benchmark nationally." Herpes treatment fails in animal testingFri, 29 Dec 2006 00:53:31 GMTDOYLESTOWN, Pa. - Quigley Corp. said Thursday its herpes treatment was not effective in treating infections of the eye in an animal model, but that the drug maker's Quigley Pharma unit will pursue other uses for the treatment. The company said animal tests to gauge the effectiveness of QR-435 against Herpes Keratitis, when the herpes simplex virus infects the eye, showed that the treatment did not remain in the eye long enough to penetrate the cells to get to the virus. The treatment has eliminated the virus on direct contact in other studies. Quigley said it will continue developing the compound to treat respiratory viruses. The compound has also been shown to have an effect against influenza viruses, such as the H5N1 strain of the bird flu. |