Health

National panel on childhood obesity takes aim at marketing of junk food

WASHINGTON - To fight the epidemic of childhood obesity, the nation must launch a massive campaign enlisting virtually every aspect of society to reduce the amount of junk food children eat and get them exercising more, the National Academy of Sciences said Thursday.

In the most comprehensive assessment to date of what the country should to do counter the explosion in obesity among American youngsters, the academy called for an unprecedented national campaign that would involve parents, schools, food companies and local, state and federal governments.

"We must act now and we must do this as a nation," said Jeffrey Koplan of Emory University, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who chaired the 19-member panel convened by the academy's Institute of Medicine. "If we are not willing to make some fundamental shifts in our attitudes and actions, obesity's toll on our nation's health and well-being will only worsen."

The committee issued more than a dozen recommendations, including:

Establish a high-level task force to coordinate all federal childhood obesity activities.

Develop new nutrition standards for all foods and beverages sold in schools.

Make sure children get at least 30 minutes of daily moderate to vigorous physical activity.

Convene a national conference to draft new guidelines aimed at curbing advertising and marketing of junk food to children. Congress should empower the Federal Trade Commission to police the guidelines.

Update food labels to give consumers more useful information.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said he would immediately introduce a bill to implement the report's recommendations, adding that it would go further in many areas. It would, for example, ban soda and vending machines selling unhealthy foods in schools receiving federal funds.

LONDON - In another blow to the belief that antioxidant supplements improve health, an authoritative analysis has concluded there is no evidence the vitamins ward off common digestive cancers.

Some experts say, however, that the findings do not mean the cancer-fighting potential of antioxidant pills should be written off just yet.

In the report, published this week in the Lancet medical journal, scientists pooled the results of 20 years of research involving more than 170,000 people considered at high risk of developing gastrointestinal cancers. Antioxidant supplements investigated included vitamins A, C and E, as well as selenium, in a total of 14 trials.

"The antioxidant pills - except selenium - are useless for prevention of gastrointestinal cancers," said Dr. Goran Bjelakovic, who led the study for the Cochrane Heptao-Billary Group at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.

WASHINGTON - Hormone therapy comes with clear risks but remains the most effective treatment for hot flashes and night sweats, say recommendations issued Thursday.

Women who try estrogen should use the lowest possible dose for the shortest time, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stressed.

About 10 percent of women will suffer these menopausal symptoms for longer than the average four years - and if hormone therapy offers them relief, it shouldn't be withdrawn, the new recommendations conclude.

ACOG issued the new guide because of continuing confusion stemming from a major 2002 study that found hormones not only didn't keep postmenopausal women generally healthy - once a top reason for using them - but they could spur heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses.

Millions have since quit hormone therapy. Those who get no relief from alternatives often have a hard time persuading a doctor to provide estrogen, said Dr. Nanette Santoro of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who co-wrote the guide.

"There was such a fear of hormones that they began to be viewed as poison," Santoro said. "Yet for some women, nothing works better."

WASHINGTON - Two vaccine companies won government contracts totaling more than $200-million Thursday to produce a possibly safer smallpox inoculation.

Acambis Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., and Denmark's Bavarian Nordic A/S are researching a smallpox vaccine that would be made with a modified version of the virus in today's shots.

Today, the only smallpox vaccine available isn't safe for people with weakened immune systems and can even seriously harm some healthy people because it's made with a live virus called vaccinia that can spread through the body. The modified strain under development doesn't replicate inside cells, and therefore shouldn't pose such a risk.

BERKELEY, Calif. - The University of California-Berkeley and the Samoan government agreed to split profits from any AIDS drug that researchers derive using a rainforest tree.

The pact, announced Thursday, involves the gene sequence of prostratin, an experimental anti-HIV compound extracted from mamala tree bark that helps expose dormant HIV cells so they can be attacked by other AIDS drugs.

Samoan healers traditionally use the extract to treat hepatitis.

Berkeley researchers plan to clone tree genes and insert them into bacteria to create a microbial source of the drug.

Samoa's half of any profit will go to the government, villages and the families of healers who first taught an American ethnobotanist, Dr. Paul Alan Cox, about the plant's medicinal properties.

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