Category: Health

The call has come from Action on Sugar, a group of nutritionists and other health experts at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), who campaign on the health dangers of too much sugar…reports Asian Lite News

Schools in England should be banned from giving pupils cakes or biscuits as part of their lunch because they contain so much sugar, food campaigners say. They want ministers to overhaul the rules that guide schools on the nutritional content of the meals they serve to outlaw such sugary snacks. 

The call has come from Action on Sugar, a group of nutritionists and other health experts at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), who campaign on the health dangers of too much sugar. At the moment schools are allowed under the school food standards to give pupils desserts, cakes and biscuits as part of the lunch they receive on the premises. They include sweet treats that are either bought in or made from scratch, such as cakes, buns, pastries and scones. 

Action on Sugar made its plea after an analysis it undertook of the sugar content of dozens of cakes, chocolates and biscuits that have as much as 12 teaspoons in them. For example, Ritter Sport marzipan has 51g per packet while the same firm’s whole hazelnuts and white whole hazelnuts contain 44g, the equivalent of 11 teaspoonfuls. 

“These findings reinforce the urgent need for a complete ban on cakes and biscuits currently permitted under the school food standards at lunchtime, as they are unlikely to align with current maximum sugar guidelines,” said Dr Kawther Hashem, a lecturer in public health nutrition at QMUL and Action on Sugar’s head of research and impact. 

“We have a duty to every child to make every school a sanctuary from unnecessary sugar, so they can grow up healthier, stronger and free from the risks of diet-related disease.” The campaign group added that “the school food standards may be driving children to exceed their daily sugar limits by allowing cakes and biscuits at lunchtime”. Ministers should also extend the sugar tax from soft drinks to other highly sugared products, such as confectionery, it added. 

It said a child who had a cake at lunchtime, a chocolate bar on the way home from school and two biscuits after dinner could consume as much as 23 spoonfuls of sugar by doing so. 

A government spokesperson said: “We encourage all schools to promote healthy eating and provide nutritious food and drink, and recently launched new training for school governors to increase their understanding of School Food Standards and make sure children have access to nutritious food throughout the school day. 

“More widely, we are determined to create the healthiest generation of children in our history by shifting our focus from treatment to prevention, including by limiting school children’s access to fast food.” 

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Superbugs kill more than a million people each year but neither governments nor the public recognise the scale of the threat, doctors complain..reports Asian Lite News

The rising death toll from drug-resistant bugs is “very scary” and people do not even realise it is happening, the UK’s special envoy for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has said. 

Superbugs kill more than a million people each year but neither governments nor the public recognise the scale of the threat, doctors complain. The crisis is largely driven by the misuse of antibiotics – about 70% of which are given to livestock – which encourages the evolution of microbes too strong for modern medicine to handle. 

“We need to use antibiotics safely and appropriately,” said Sally Davies, who stepped down as England’s chief medical officer in 2019 to champion the UK’s fight against superbugs. 

By 2050 it is projected that drug-resistant bugs will kill nearly 2 million people each year and play a role in the deaths of 8 million people. The figures put AMR in a similar ballpark to the Covid-19 pandemic, which the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates led to 4m excess deaths in 2020 and 10m in 2021. 

Data published on Thursday showed a rise in serious antibiotic-resistant infections in 2023 to 66,730 cases, above pre-pandemic levels. E coli caused 65% of cases in the UK over the past five years. 

“Some people talk about [AMR] being a pandemic – it is,” Davies said. “Is it a slow-developing one, an insidious one, or what? I don’t mind the words you want to use, but it’s pretty awful.” 

World leaders have taken little action to cut AMR-related deaths but they promised to reduce them by 10% by 2030 at the UN general assembly in September. Public health experts are frustrated by the lack of interest from governments and the lack of awareness among the public. 

“It’s clearly a lack of prioritisation – and that must be a failure of our communication,” Davies said. “That’s in part the name, ‘antimicrobial resistance’, AMR, in part the complexity, and the big bit that’s hidden … they [doctors] don’t tell people what they’re dying of.” 

Davies, who has previously served on the executive board of the WHO, lost her goddaughter to antimicrobial resistance two years ago. “It was horrible. She had cystic fibrosis, she knew she had AMR, and she knew she was going to die of it because it was infecting her lung transplant,” she said. 

“She said to me: Sally, you’ve worked on this for years, you must use my case [to raise awareness]. She was very brave.” 

Doctors have urged people to play their part in fighting the rise of superbugs by only using antibiotics when prescribed them and then taking the full course. 

They also point to the large role that animal agriculture plays behind the scenes. The growing hunger for meat is increasing demand for livestock and use of antibiotics – some of which are used to treat animals that are not sick, sometimes as a substitute for keeping them in clean conditions, Davies said. 

“That drives the development of resistance,” she said, “which can then be on the meat when it’s sold, and people pick it up that way. It can be passed to abattoir workers who go home to their families. And it definitely does get to farmworkers and their families.” 

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Wes Streeting spoke out after a spate of deaths among women who had travelled to Turkey for aesthetic treatment such as a Brazilian butt lift (BBL). ..reports Asian Lite News

Britons should resist the temptation to have cosmetic surgery abroad at “rock-bottom” prices in case they are harmed by substandard care, the health secretary has said. 

Wes Streeting spoke out after a spate of deaths among women who had travelled to Turkey for aesthetic treatment such as a Brazilian butt lift (BBL). 

An inquest this week in Winchester, Hampshire, heard that Hayley Dowell, 38, died in October last year after paying £7,000 to have the procedure, as well as liposuction and a tummy tuck. 

“My strong advice to British travellers is, if the offer looks too good to be true, I suspect it is too good to be true,” Streeting said. “[People should] think very carefully before flying overseas, paying what looks like a kind of rock-bottom attractive price, because you may end up paying the consequences for years to come as a result of injuries, which in the worst cases can be life-changing. 

“So I would urge before travelling abroad, think very carefully before accessing those cosmetic treatments that are currently being marketed at rock-bottom prices, but also, in too many cases, offer substandard care.” 

Streeting plans to work with organisations overseas to try to improve the safety and quality of care at hospitals and clinics that provide medical tourism. “But we also need to send a strong message to the British public to manage the risks, to do their homework and think very carefully before taking up offers that are too good to be true.” 

Prof Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director, also urged caution, and cited the extra pressure that treating victims of botched cosmetic treatment abroad puts on the NHS. 

“It is not fair that the NHS is left to pick up the pieces of botched Brazilian butt lifts. Not only are they potentially fatal, having the highest death rate of all cosmetic procedures, but dodgy procedures mean the NHS then has to repair the damage, landing taxpayers with a hefty bill too,” he said. 

“NHS resources are precious, and I’d urge anyone considering a BBL to think twice before taking up an offer that seems too good to be true.” 

UK government officials met counterparts in Turkey last year after concerns were raised by the death of Melissa Kerr, 31, during a BBL procedure, which is intended to enlarge the size of someone’s bottom. 

The coroner who presided at the inquest into her death ruled that she had not received enough information to enable her to make a safe decision about the procedure before going to Istanbul. 

Figures from the British Association of Aesthetic and Plastic Surgeons show that Turkey is by far the most popular destination for Britons having cosmetic surgery abroad, with 69% of patients going there. Other countries include the Dominican Republic (7%), Brazil (6%) and Tunisia (4%). 

The spate of deaths has prompted the Royal College of Surgeons of England to convene a summit to improve patient safety. 

“After years of inaction from officials, we are now convening an urgent meeting with experts across health, advertising and trade authorities, together with foreign governments, to address this growing crisis”, said Prof Vivien Lees, a consultant plastic surgeon and the college’s vice-president. 

Lees said ministers could help by ensuring that the existing cosmetic surgery board certification scheme, which helps patients choose approved cosmetic surgeons for their treatment, becomes mandatory, rather than voluntary as it is now. 

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The £268bn figure has emerged from the first academic research looking at the cost of Britain’s increasing consumption of food that…reports Asian Lite News

The UK’s growing addiction to unhealthy food costs £268bn a year, far outstripping the budget for the whole NHS, the first research into the subject has found. 

The increased consumption of foods high in fat, salt and sugar or which have been highly processed is having a “devastating” impact on human health and Britain’s finances. 

“Far from keeping us well, our current food system, with its undue deference to what is known colloquially as ‘big food’, is making us sick. The costs of trying to manage that sickness are rapidly becoming unpayable,” the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) report says. 

The £268bn figure has emerged from the first academic research looking at the cost of Britain’s increasing consumption of food that, according to the government’s system of assessing nutritional quality, is deemed unhealthy. 

Of that, £92bn covers the direct costs to the government of tackling the impacts of what the FFCC calls “Britain’s unhealthy food system”. It involves spending by the NHS (£67.5bn), social care services (£14.3bn) and the welfare system (£10.1bn) on tackling the diseases closely linked to diet, such as type 2 diabetes, heart problems and kidney disease. 

The other £176bn is the indirect cost of lost productivity from people who are too sick to work due to diet-related illness (£116.4bn) and “human costs”, such as pain and early death (£60bn). 

“The £268bn cost is staggering. I was shocked by how high it was when I arrived at it,” said Prof Tim Jackson, an economist at the University of Surrey, who undertook the research for the FFCC. He added: “£268bn is a very, very conservative estimate of these costs.” 

His findings will increase the pressure on Keir Starmer to take tough action to limit consumption of unhealthy food and fulfil his promises to tackle Britain’s increasingly sick population and revive the crisis-hit NHS. Labour aims to eradicate smoking and has pledged to ban junk food advertising on TV before 9pm and energy drink sales to under-16s. 

Jackson’s calculations are based on his analysis of a range of publications and projections by the UK government, international bodies such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and thinktanks such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Tony Blair Institute, covering state spending and the costs of treating chronic diseases, including those closely associated with bad diet. 

Households across the UK would each have to spend an extra £38 a week – a total of £57bn a year, on top of the £101.5bn a year they already spend – to ensure that everyone followed the healthy diet outlined in the government’s Eatwell guide. That would involve much greater intake of vegetables, fruit and fibre and far less of crisps, snacks and sauces. 

Doing so would cost the richest households a third more, but for the poorest their weekly spending would double, raising questions about how realistic such expectations are amid widespread food insecurity and the cost of living crisis. 

Dr Dolly van Tulleken, a Medical Research Council-funded Cambridge University expert in obesity, who contributed to the report, said: “This £268bn cost shows us that we have a food system that privatises the profits and socialises the harms from bad food. It puts a price on the failure of the government stretching back over 30 years to regulate big food.” 

Sue Pritchard, the FFCC’s chief executive, urged ministers to bring in robust regulation of the food industry. Food firms have sacrificed the health of consumers as they have taken “the fast track to big profits” by using flavours, packaging and clever marketing ploys to encourage people to buy food that harms their health, she said. 

Ministers should consider giving vouchers to low-income households to buy UK-grown fruit and vegetables, and more support to farmers to produce food, she added. 

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