Samenvattingen

Sweet truth: Brown sugar is no better than white - but you can still eat a chocolate bar a day (tekst: zie onderaan)
(Article: 877. Summary: 263. Opinion: 53.)

Summary:
This article is about the effects caused by eating too much sugar. It’s a fact that everyone eats an average of 40 kilogram that is almost 800 kilogram over a lifetime.
Professor John Yudkin, eminent nutritionist, called sugar ‘pure, white and deadly’ in 1972. No one listened to his warning. Nowadays we know the risks of a heart attack by eating too much sugar. We grow op with the sweetness of food. The first sugar we come is breast milk. When we are becoming a child, we love the taste of sweet things.
Sucrose is sugar that is found naturally in fruits and some vegetables. Sugars naturally present in foods are not unhealthy, but the sugar we add to foods or drinks become a really toxic product for our weight and teethes.

It clear that it is important that we can not handle too much. The Food Standards Agency advice that there is a maximum of ten per cent of our total daily energy intake should come from sugars. For woman is that a goal of 50g a day, for a man 80g a day.
There are fairytales about the thing that brown sugar is healthier than white sugar, but it is not the truth. Brown sugar is the same as white sugar, except the added black syrup by brown sugar.
The reason why sugar makes you fat is that the excess calories in sugar-rich food and drinks are converted into fat. If you want to lose weight, you can opt for sugar-free food and drinks. The negative side is that they cause cancer.

Opinion:
It is good that there are sugar-free food and drinks for people who want to lose weight, but eating and drinking too much aspartame is not healthy. Eating and drinking too much sugar is also very unhealthy. So I think you must find a balance between both if you want to live healthy.

The bug that can blast away cancer: Drug made from virus extends patients' lives (tekst: zie onderaan)
(Article: 836 . Summary: 231 . Opinion: 61 .)

Summary:
Big news: a drug who can blast away tumours by cancer patients and boosting their immune system. The drug, a common virus which causes stomach upsets, gives cancer patients hope. Eighty cancer patients are trying the reovirus. Experts hope it may offer a way of extending and give the patients a short time to live. A few patients, who had no good experience with only chemotherapy, have seen astonishing results. All of their tumours shrunk. When the tumours shrink it is much easier to treat with chemotherapy. The negative side of reovirus is that the patient can get a flu-like ache and a raised temperature.
Andrew McManus’ life changed completely when he participated in the trial of the reovirus. McManus has been fighting against cancer for the past four years. He had a lump on his chest and it was diagnosed as cancer. He had an operation to take it out, but it had spread to his lymph. He was opted for chemotherapy or for the reovirus, he has chosen for the last one. After a few treatments his tumours were significant shrunk.

There are not done enough researches to say that Reolysin is a magic drug that will kill cancer, but experts think Reolysin really has potential to be become an effective new treatment to be used alongside chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery to benefit people with some types of cancer.

Opinion:
It is good news to read there is a medicine against cancer. Even it is not official, there is a potential treatment. It is difficult to say what the risks of the reovirus are, but it seems like an innocent drug. I hope they will do more research so there will be more cancer patients who recover in the future.

The DNA jigsaw of America (tekst: Alcuin Magazine 2007/2008 nr.2 ‘DNA Jigsaw’)
(Article: > 800. Summary: 182. Opinion: 75.)

Summary:
The question that is answered in this article is: ‘What is your background?’. Thanks to the Internet many Americans can trance themselves and are finding out where they are from. Sometimes they get a strange outcome, like white persons who are actually 21% black and having slave ancestors.
The racism may be getting less, because the Americans are beginning to see that they are a group of mixed people.
The test results also tell us that skin colour is not a good characteristic of your background, because Jennifer Stokes found out that see has white family while she herself is black.
Sometimes people are shocked by the fact that they have slave owners as ancestors of slaves and some turn into stalkers because they want to have DNA of their newfound family.
The article also shows that Barack Obama has ancestors who were slave owners. Therefore DNA test are good, because the Americans get to know that they are a mixed group with all kinds of backgrounds, but the negative side is that people may judge others on their new known background.


Opinion:
I think it is nice to know who you ancestors are, so I like to do a DNA tests. Especially when you live in America, because there are a lot of people with a different background. Maybe you find thing you don’t want to know, like ancestors who are slave owners or slaves, but it still is family. Besides is does not mean that you are just like your ancestors, you still are an individual.

Sweet truth... Brown sugar is no better than white - but you can still eat a chocolate bar a day

You and I will each eat an average of 88lb of sugar this year. Add that up and you're looking at 1.75 tonnes over a lifetime - the equivalent weight of a medium-sized car. Still want to finish that chocolate bar?
Worldwide, around 180million tonnes of refined sugar is produced each year and the UK market alone is worth nearly £1billion.
Little wonder that no one listened to eminent nutritionist Professor John Yudkin when he called sugar 'pure, white and deadly' back in 1972 and quite rightly warned of the links between excessive consumption and heart disease.

And guess what? Skip nearly four decades and researchers now report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that a high sugar intake - particularly of sugary drinks - increases the risk of heart attack by 30 per cent in post-menopausal women. It's a worrying statistic.
From babies we are conditioned to enjoy the taste - the first sugar we come across being lactose in breast milk (lactose is the only sugar that does not cause tooth decay). Sugars are pure, sweet-tasting carbohydrates that provide instant energy (20 calories per 5g teaspoon) and make our diet more palatable. Imagine the taste of a ripe banana if it had no sweetness? Exactly.
Sucrose, made from sugar cane or beet, is often called 'table' sugar. It's found naturally in fruits and some vegetables, such as parsnips, along with glucose and fructose. Malt sugar (maltose) is found in malted drinks and beer, and milk contains lactose.
Sugars naturally present in foods are not something that concern dieticians. What we do worry about is sugar added to foods or drinks which increase calorie consumption and promote tooth decay.

Indeed, recent research has found more than a third of children in England and Wales have decayed teeth or fillings by the age of five.

So how much can we handle?
The Food Standards Agency recommend that no more than ten per cent of our total daily energy intake should come from sugars - that's about 50g to 60g, or ten to 12 teaspoons a day of added sugars for the average adult. This goal allows us to include foods naturally providing sugar, such as fruits, plus some added sugars, say one small chocolate bar, without compromising long-term health.
Yet the 2001 National Diet and Nutrition Survey showed the main sources of added sugars in our diet to be table sugar, fizzy drinks, beer and chocolate for men, and table sugar, fizzy drinks, chocolate and fruit juice for women.
While women slightly exceed the 50g goal, men consume an average 80g a day - 25 per cent above their target. Young men in particular have an average 96g (19 tsp) of sugar each day, mostly from drinks, added sugar and confectionery.

Brown sugar is the same as white
It's a common misconception that brown sugar and honey are healthier alternatives to white sugar. They're not.
Both contain a smidge of essential minerals, but in such tiny amounts as to contribute nothing to our diet. Brown sugar is white sugar with added molasses - a black syrup by-product of sugar refining. Light brown sugar contains about three per cent molasses, dark brown sugar about six per cent.
Fructose - found in table sugar, honey and high fructose corn syrups used as sweeteners in the food industry - is metabolised differently to glucose. It's readily converted into fat, raising blood cholesterol level as well.
The small amounts found naturally in fruits are not a risk, but a fructose intake of more than 50g per day from two or three soft drinks or fruit juice boosts uric acid levels and increases the risk of gout. It can also worsen irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).


Why will sugar make me fat?
The more sugar-rich soft drinks, such as carbonated drinks, squashes, juices or smoothies, that you consume, the heavier you will be.
Studies have consistently proved the excess calories provided by these drinks are converted into fat. And if you change to drinking more as you get older, as research suggests we do, the more middle-age spread you'll add. This, in turn, increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Are sweeteners any better to use?
There have been concerns that sweeteners cause cancer - from Fifties studies linking saccharin with bladder cancer risk, to current concerns regarding aspartame and brain cancer. However, there is no scientific research to prove this.
Scientists have dismissed any safety concerns for humans, and population studies of cancer incidence and the use of sweeteners have also failed to show a link. It is worth opting for sugar-free gum, low-calorie drinks and artificial sweeteners instead of sugar if you care about your teeth or your waistline.
It's totally safe at the levels we regularly consume - and losing weight helps reduce our risk of certain cancers as well.
However, if you suffer from IBS or abdominal bloating you may want to avoid sorbitol (E420), mannitol (E421) and xylitol (E967) which are used in chewing gum and some powdered sweeteners. They can be fermented by our gut bacteria, increasing gas production.

The bug that can blast away cancer: Drug made from virus extends patients' lives

Andrew McManus says Reolysin has extended his life expectancy - see case study below
A common virus which causes stomach upsets is giving hope to cancer patients - by boosting their immune system and blasting away tumours.

Almost 80 patients with advanced forms of liver cancer, head and neck tumours and breast cancer are taking part in trials using a drug made from the reovirus.
A number, who have struggled to benefit from chemotherapy, have seen astonishing results, with tumours shrinking and in one case disappearing altogether.

Experts say it is too soon to say if Reolysin is the 'magic bullet' that will kill off cancer, but they believe it may offer a way of extending the life of patients given a short time to live.
Reolysin appears to kill off cancer cells by rupturing their walls, creating a chain reaction of 'explosions' which rip through tumours. As the tumours shrink they become less harmful and more easily treatable by chemotherapy.
At the same time, Reolysin seems to 'wake up' the immune system so it can recognise cancer cells as invaders, prompting the body to mount an attack on harmful cells.
One liver cancer patient, Andrew McManus, 65, said last night: 'To put it bluntly, I could well be dead by now without this treatment.'
Reovirus infection occurs often in humans, but most cases are mild - causing a stomach upset. Its role in human disease is uncertain.
Canadian firm Oncolytics Biotech Inc, which created Reolysin, is working on trials with researchers from St James's Hospital in Leeds, the Royal Marsden Hospital in London and the Royal Surrey County Hospital.
The drug is administered intravenously via a drip, with a patient receiving eight fiveday courses of treatment spread over six months. The only side-effects appear to be a flu-like ache and a raised temperature.

Lead researcher Professor Alan Melcher said: 'We have had a few dramatic responses to Reolysin but we still have to be very cautious about getting up too much hope. We cannot say people have been cured. However, it is exciting and has got real potential.'

One man, Henry Nelson, 74, of Halifax, with cancer of the head and neck saw a lump the size of a tennis ball in his neck almost disappear after chemotherapy plus Reolysin.
Professor Melcher said: 'It is a completely different approach to treating cancer. It is not just another drug. It is a virus and it seems to be very well tolerated in combination with chemotherapy.
'There is no magic bullet with cancer, but these combinations seem to be working.'
Experts say larger trials are needed before Reolysin can be widely available to patients. That could take up to five years.
In UK trials, 15 head and neck cancer patients have been treated so far. Of 12 for whom results were available, five have had a partial shrinkage of their tumours and in four the disease stabilised for between two to six months.
Oncolytics also announced positive results from its other UK trials, for patients who have tumours which have failed to respond to standard therapy. Of 17, 15 experienced stable disease or better.
Liz Woolf, of Cancer Research UK, said 'If it proves successful in larger trials, the reovirus could one day become an effective new treatment to be used alongside chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery to benefit people with some types of cancer.