U.S.
Food and Drug Administration
FDA Consumer magazine
November-December 2002
Table of Contents
Consumers continue to improve their food safety practices, according to the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). The results of a nationwide telephone survey of 4,500 adults indicated that the dramatic improvement in food handling practices between 1993 and 1998 continued between 1998 and 2001.
Under the "clean, separate, cook and chill" safety messages stressed by the FDA and the FSIS since 1997, most consumers reported using improved food handling practices that reduce cross-contamination after contact with raw fish, meat or chicken. The number of consumers eating pink hamburger, steak tartare (ground sirloin or tenderloin prepared uncooked), and raw eggs, however, stayed relatively the same.
But findings from another agriculture department study that measured changes in consumer knowledge and safe food handling practices show that, although consumers say they are more knowledgeable about food safety and have improved their practices, some are still using unsafe practices.
For example, while more people reportedly are purchasing food thermometers and their usage has doubled, the percentage of consumers who use food thermometers remains low, according to the study. The research included not only the survey data, but also observational studies of consumers preparing food as well as informal discussions with small groups of consumers.
The 2001 Food Safety Survey and related documents can be found at www.cfsan.fda.gov under the listing National Food Safety Programs.
A Mayo Clinic study indicates that optimists report a higher level of physical and mental functioning than their pessimist counterparts.
"How you perceive what goes on around you and how you interpret it may have an impact on your longevity, and it could affect the quality of your later years," says Toshihiko Maruta, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic Department of Psychiatry and Psychology in Rochester, Minn., and the principal author of the study.
Patients originally assessed in the 1960s with a personality test completed a follow-up self-assessment of their health status 30 years later. In the health survey, pessimists reported poorer physical and mental functioning. The results come two years after another Mayo Clinic study of the data found that optimists live longer than pessimists do.
Researchers looked at the health survey results reported by 447 patients during the 1990s. This group had originally completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) between 1962 and 1965. The MMPI is an assessment that helps researchers classify personality traits.
Using the MMPI scale of optimism and pessimism, Maruta and his colleagues classified 101 as optimistic, 272 as mixed, and 74 as pessimistic.
The researchers found that pessimists scored below optimists on quality-of-life assessments. Participants also scored lower than the national average on five of the eight scales that were measured: physical functioning, physical role limitations, bodily pain, general health perception, vitality, social functioning, emotional role limitations, and mental health.
"Our study provides documentation for beliefs commonly held by patients and health-care practitioners about the importance of optimistic and pessimistic attitudes," Maruta says. "However, questions remain about the practical significance of these findings for health-care practitioners."
The study appears in the August 2002 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Pennsylvania State University mechanical engineers, working with medical and pharmaceutical researchers, have developed the first computer-generated "virtual stomach" to follow the path of extended-release tablets that are designed to remain in the stomach for hours while slowly releasing medicine.
According to the researchers, many medications are prepared in extended-release form; however, the details of exactly how the pills break down and release medicine in the stomach are largely unknown. The new "virtual stomach" has shown that tablet motion and mixing are highly sensitive to the pill's location in the stomach and to the coordination between the stomach's contractions and the opening and closing of the valve leading to the intestines.
"We can simulate the tablet breaking down with our new approach, watch the slow release of medication happen in a computer movie, and analyze the process," says James G. Brasseur, Ph.D., Penn State professor of mechanical engineering and leader of the project. "Computer simulation allows us to 'control' the stomach and therefore provides more detail than you could get with human or even animal experiments."
In fact, Brasseur says, computer simulation may be the only way to observe the stomach's mechanical processes in such fine detail.
The researchers expect the new information provided by the virtual stomach to aid in the design and delivery of new extended-release tablet formulations, to shed light on diseases involving stomach motility, and to help explain basic gastric function.
The virtual stomach combines a sophisticated computer program with a realistic stomach geometry model derived from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) movies of the human stomach. The resulting computer simulations are presented as colorful, cartoon-like movies of the human stomach showing pressures, the motion of gastric fluid, and the path and breakdown of tablets. These computer simulations revealed that the stomach has three very different zones: one very gentle, one moderately stressful to tablets and conducive to mixing, and a third highly active zone where a tablet can break down rapidly and mixing is accelerated. The researchers also found that buoyancy affects longer-time mixing and drug release.
You've seen the ads in the back of magazines. Endorsements of miracle weight-loss plans, complete with before-and-after pictures and breathless testimonials from people who went from huge to petite in a few short weeks. A new report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reveals how often those claims are just too good to be true.
Released by the FTC in September, "Report on Weight-Loss Advertising: An Analysis of Current Trends" concludes that false or misleading claims are widespread in ads for weight-loss products, and appear to have increased over the last decade.
Many marketers, the report states, use false claims, misleading consumer testimonials, and deceptive before-and-after photos to market their products. According to the report, nearly 40 percent of the ads in the study, including ads that appeared in mainstream, national publications, made at least one representation that is almost certainly false, and 55 percent of the ads made at least one representation that is very likely to be false. Often ads promised weight-loss results beyond what is possible. Nearly half of the ads claimed that the users could lose weight without dieting and exercise. In one ad, for example, the headline proclaimed: "LOSE UP TO TWO POUNDS DAILY WITHOUT DIET OR EXERCISE!" Other ads cited rapid, prolonged weight loss, such as claims that consumers can lose eight to 10 pounds per week over an extended period of time.
"We have known for some time now that there is a serious problem with weight-loss product advertising. This report demonstrates the extent of that problem," says FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris.
The report, which examined 300 promotions that appeared in all major forms of media between February 2001 and May 2001, was prepared with the assistance of the Partnership for Healthy Weight Management (PHWM). The partnership is a coalition of representatives from science, academia, the health-care professions, government, and others whose mission is to promote sound guidance on achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.
"There is no such thing as a miracle pill for weight loss," Surgeon General Richard Carmona says. "The surest and safest way to weight loss and healthier living is by combining healthful eating and exercising."
According to the report, a comparison of current ads to those that ran in 1992 suggests that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of weight-loss products and the amount of deceptive weight-loss advertising during the last decade. The report noted two major trends: 1) a shift away from weight-loss products advertised as "low-calorie meal replacements" in 1992 to pills and other products that commonly claimed to work without dieting or exercise in 2001; and 2) that although ads from both 1992 and 2001 contain deceptive or false claims, the recent ads were much more likely to make specific misleading performance promises.
Since 1990, the FTC has filed 93 cases challenging false and misleading weight-loss claims involving over-the-counter drugs, dietary supplements, commercial weight-loss centers, weight-loss devices, and exercise equipment. Despite the unprecedented level of FTC enforcement over the last decade, misleading and deceptive ads continue to saturate the market.
According to health and nutrition experts, many of the weight-loss products and programs most heavily advertised are either unproven or unsafe, and they frustrate efforts to promote healthy weight-loss efforts by promising unrealistic results.
"As health professionals, we are concerned about the epidemic of obesity and are equally concerned about false and misleading claims in advertising of weight-loss products and services," says George L. Blackburn, M.D., Ph.D., chair in nutrition medicine at Harvard Medical School and a member of the PHWM. "The use of deceptive, false, or misleading claims in weight-loss advertising is rampant and potentially dangerous."
The weight-loss report, as well as resources for consumers, businesses and others, is available at www.ftc.gov/dietfit/. For more on weight loss, see "Losing Weight: More Than Counting Calories," January-February 2002 FDA Consumer.