FDA gives ‘health’ food a sweet update
There’s a strawberry yogurt — a supposedly “healthy” food — that’s loaded with 13 grams of added sugar per serving. White bread and highly sweetened cereal have also been allowed to be labeled “healthy” under existing Food and Drug Administration regulations. But water, avocados, nuts and seeds, higher fat fish, such as salmon, and certain oils have been denied the right to declare they’re “healthy.”
What? You might as well decide that up is down, left is right, and night is day.
The FDA established that ridiculous definition of “healthy food” in 1994, allowing manufacturers to add the word “healthy” to products containing a limited amount of total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium and 10 percent of the daily value of at least one of the following: vitamin A, and C, the minerals calcium and iron, and protein or fiber.
Finally, the FDA has proposed a new definition for “healthy” foods. Shifting from having no restrictions on added sugars, “healthy” food will be allowed to contain no more than 2.5 grams (half a teaspoon) per serving for most products. Sodium will be restricted to 230 milligrams per serving; there are limits on saturated fat and the existence of healthy fats (olive oil, omega-3s, etc.) is acknowledged.
The FDA says these new standards may appear on food labels next year. In the meantime, keep reading the nutrition labels and dodge all added sugars and limit saturated fats as you boost your nutrition by choosing greatfor-you healthy fats, unprocessed plants and grains.
Gene control
Your genes can become positively reshaped because of smart daily habits, or be changed so that they fuel your risk for serious health problems. Those changes in your genes involve switching them on or off, and it’s called epigenetics.
You can control about 80 percent of which genes are on or off by your life choices — and that can change your cancer risk. One study found that guys can turn off genes that increase their risk for prostate cancer by adopting an intensive nutritional upgrade, as well as not smoking, managing stress and getting exercise. The same approaches reduce the risk for colon and breast cancers.
Another study found that chronically unmanaged stress from poor physical and emotional lifestyle choices causes a 28 percent increase in the risk of dying from cancer compared to someone the same age without chronically unmanaged stress.