The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment has issued a 264-page report Our Food Our Health, that is sure to create some heated discussion over which lifestyle habit -- smoking or diet -- actually contributes to the most disease and death. At the heart of the findings the Dutch indicate that a poor diet lacking in an abundance of disease prevention foods, like fish, fruit, and vegetables, cause more disease and death than smoking tobacco. According to these researchers, many scientists agree that at least 75 percent of diseases can be prevented by eating a healthy diet.

The study findings go on to state that each year, inadequate diet causes about 13,000 deaths in The Netherlands due to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Unhealthy diet habits are just as bad, if not worse, as smoking in terms of their effect on risk of disease and death. You hear that cancer diagnosis and death could be reduced by 50 percent with certain lifestyle changes. The emphasis is usually on smoking cessation. However, if these researchers are correct, and researchers worldwide are in agreement with them, then the conversation about cancer prevention will need to shift away from smoking and replace diet and obesity as the number one causes of diseases like cancer. Someone said, not too long ago, that obesity and diet would replace the spot smoking has dominated as the number one lifestyle risk for cancer. With research news like this, you can see the beginning of the new trend.

Over the last two decades, the growing awareness about nutrition and the fact that all foods are not the same when it comes to good health, has spurred the trend of consumers demanding more food value for money spent. Companies vying for those dollars have been paying attention, according to a top ten list of functional foods published in an issue of Food Technology magazine. According to the Institute of Food Technologists, a nonprofit group that promotes sound science in the discussion of food issues, functional foods are foods or food components that provide a health benefit beyond basic nutrition.

Five of the ten functional food trends are:

• Food for kids that are lower in fat, calories, sodium and sugar and higher the nutrients.
• Organic foods that are grown without pesticides or cancer-causing toxic chemicals.
• Phytochemicals that provide the antioxidants known to lower the risks of cancer.
• Good fats in the way of healthier oils, like olive oil, that provide cancer prevention benefit. Foods that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon.
• Small portions of food such as the 100-calorie snack.
  

Basically, the trends in what consumers want, and what the market is beginning to offer to meet that demand, are foods that provide good nutrition, taste good and are fun. To read more about functional food trends, go here.

For a health-informed public that is beginning to demand more nutrition and less fat in the food they are served -- fast food is falling out of its once favored position of popularity as a quick meal for kids. Who doesn't think that McDonald's and the golden arches are the unofficial defining symbol for fast food?

In response to the perception that fast food is not linked to good health, along with the negative image resulting from the book and movie Fast Food Nation -- and now the publication of a children's book Chew On This, which is co-written by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser -- McDonald's has announced the creation of a Global Moms Panel. Nine women from six countries will advise the company on balanced and active lifestyle initiatives, restaurant communications and children's well-being.

Translation? McDonald's wants to find out how to market to moms who are interested in their children living long healthy lives free from obesity and the nutrition-deficient food that can increase the risks for major disease later in life, like cancer. Which has the potential for being a good thing if McDonalds does offer healthier food as a result of the recommendations from moms. If it's just a public relations campaign to improve a business image then I believe the public will see through it and the effort will backfire. According to Mary Dillon, McDonald's global chief marketing officer, "We want to become the best ally we can for moms and a true partner in the well-being of families everywhere." Time will tell.

I like this doctor! At the 2006 Magnolia Tea, the keynote speaker was Dr. William Rayburn. He spoke to 60 women who attended the luncheon, and when I read what he had to say, I wished he had been talking to 600 thousand women. Dr. Rayburn started out by telling the women, that despite all the emerging medical knowledge, it is important for women to listen to their own bodies and to pay attention to anything that does not seem normal. He said the longer he has been in practice, the more he has realized how little he knows compared to how much women know about themselves. "Trust your instincts," the doctor said. Thumbs up for this doctor!

He also challenges some of ways the media explains research findings to the public, and specifically, the study findings of the Women's Health Initiative, WHI, a long-term national health study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. I have questioned some of their findings. Contrary to the WHI stating that diet and exercise do not have an impact on health, Dr. Rayburn believes diet and exercise indeed have a positive affect on health. Of course it does -- what you eat and how much you move is going to make a difference -- it's common sense. You can read more about what the good doctor had to say in the feature Doctor tells women to trust their instincts.

If I were going to join an expedition to explore a remote location of our planet, I would want to know, first and foremost, how much previous experience the expedition leader had in leading teams into unmapped territory. Equally important, would be the amount of common sense the leader practiced in assessment, evaluation and decision-making processes. I see medical research and researchers in much the same way, as expeditions of teams exploring remote and unmapped destinations of medical terrain to make discoveries that benefit cancer patients.

Today, studies differ on fat link to cancer, a UPI news release, suggests that the reason two major studies on low-fat diets differ in study results, is because the groups of women studied were different. No, that is not the reason. The reason is because one of the studies, the eight-year study heralded as the largest and most comprehensive study conducted on the link between fats in the diet and breast cancer, left out the most important factor in determining the affects of fat on health, by not differentiating the type of fat being consumed during the study. At the time, I wondered who had left common sense behind before they started that expedition.

The type of fat matters, plain and simple. As an example, this year, the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, will require food labels to include the amount of trans fat in manufactured foods and dietary supplements, allowing consumers to make informed choices in the food they are willing to buy and consume. Why? Evidence-based scientific research concludes that the excessive consumption of trans fatty acids, or trans fat, and saturated fat have been associated with an increased risk of heart disease, obesity and cancer. Trans fat is often found in the same foods as saturated fat, such as vegetable shortening, some margarines, pastries, crackers, candies, cookies, snack foods, french fries, fried foods, baked goods, salad dressings, energy and nutrition bars. Trans fat is also present in meat and dairy.

"Our choices about our diets are choices about our health, and those choices should be based on the best available scientific information. This label change means that trans fat can no longer lurk, hidden, in our food choices," said Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., commissioner of FDA. "Americans will now be armed with better information to reduce their intake of saturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol." Are the researchers of fat in diet not talking to each other? When the study came out stating a low-fat diet does not protect a woman from breast cancer, I was frustrated and posted Fat doesn't matter?! Today, the latest news release only increases my frustration. Of course, fat matters, and the type of fat included in a diet can influence a woman's breast cancer risks. The wrong fats can adversely affect anyone's health and increase cancer risks, plain and simple.