Sorting out sweeteners

Just check the label of your favorite cereal or beverage and you’re likely to see sweeteners show up many times, in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, dextrose, cane syrup, maple syrup, fructose, molasses, honey—and even agave, the latest trendy caloric sweetener, which is derived from a plant native to Mexico, reports U. S. News and World Report.

These are all in addition, of course, to plain old table sugar, or sucrose. You might also find some food labels or manufacturers hinting that their source of sweetness is more healthful than the others. Since “healthy” can be an awfully fuzzy claim, let’s put it bluntly.

“All of these are empty calories that offer you no nutrition,” says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a dietitian and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. That doesn’t mean they’re forbidden, just that they should be eaten in moderation, she says.

Some broccoli a day...

A small Japanese study suggests that consuming 2z ounce 1/3 of broccoli sprouts per day may help guard against H. pylori, a bacterium that is tied to ulcers, gastritis and stomach cancer. Fresh broccoli sprouts contain a naturally occurring biochemical called sulforaphane, which has previously been found to work as a potent defense against H. pylori.

“We know that a dose of a couple ounces a day of broccoli sprouts is enough to elevate the body’s protective enzymes,” Jed Fahey, a nutritional biochemist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore), said in a prepared statement. “That is the mechanism by which we think a lot of the chemoprotective effects are occurring.” Still, the researchers caution, eating broccoli sprouts did not cure H. pylori infection, and there is no conclusive proof that eating broccoli sprouts will cure gastrointestinal illnesses or provide protection from stomach cancer.

Smoking worse for women

A recent study suggests that women who smoke cigarettes develop lung disease earlier than their male counterparts, Reuters reports. Researchers looked at a group of 954 current or past smokers with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. COPD, a lung disease in which the airways are damaged or blocked by mucus, makes breathing difficult.

The new findings, presented in May at the American Thoracic Society’s annual meeting in San Diego, Calif., showed that women younger than 60 with COPD had worse lung function than the men their age. Women who were light smokers had also developed more severe disease than men who smoked lightly.

Inga-Cecilie Soerheim, a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. Massachusetts, who co-authored the study, suggests that women may be more susceptible to COPD because their airways are smaller than men’s.

“Many people believe that their own smoking is too limited to be harmful, that a few cigarettes a day represent a minimal risk,” Soerheim said. “However, in the low-exposure group in this study, half of the women actually had severe COPD.”

Compiled from News wire service sources