Health Options Alan Titchenal  & Joannie Dobbs                   Wednesday, November 25, 1998

A potpourri of thanks

With Thanksgiving tomorrow, we have been reflecting on this year's food and nutrition advances that promise to make the world a better place. Much has happened this year that deserves our thanks. Here are a few things that come to mind.

Early this year, folic acid was added to the nutrients that are used to enrich white flour. This change will help prevent many cases of infant neural tube defect such as spina bifida. Not only will this save a great deal of money spent on health care, but more importantly, it will prevent a great deal of suffering by infants and their families. Folic acid supplementation may also decrease heart disease in individuals with a certain genetic predisposition.

Food safety issues have been taken much more seriously during 1998. Congress allocated $5 million to research in food safety. Food labeling laws also are evolving. For example, even though pasteurized juices are safer than fresh juices, fresh juices have a special appeal. New laws require manufacturers of fresh unpasteurized bottle juices to warn the consumer of possible risks of bacterial contamination and this encourages the fresh juice industry to maintain as safe a product as possible and inform their consumers about proper handling.

The Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine has established values for some nutrients for safe “upper levels” of nutrient intake of “ULs.” These ULs provide values of intake considered unsafe to exceed. With so many people consuming fortified foods and taking multiple nutrient supplements, the risks of getting too much of a nutrient are increasingly substantial.

There is a growing interest and focus on funding research in areas that have been considered “alter­native.” Consumers and practitioners of alternative medicine will both benefit from research that either supports beneficial practices or debunks those that are worthless or harmful.

Baby boomers are striving for a quality of life that requires maintenance of good health and maintenance of good health and prevention of disease. Conventional medicine has primarily focused on disease treatment, but the economic value of prevention grows more obvious as health care costs climb. Therefore, there appear to be more medical and nursing schools increasing their focus on disease prevention.

The Internet has become a major resource for information on nutrition and health. Although it is difficult to quantify, it appears to us that Web sites providing reliable scientific information have increased over this year. At the same time, sites offering questionable information have probably grown in number even more rapidly. It's still a “consumer beware” environment.

In Hawaii , researches from the University of Hawaii 's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Cornell and the U.S.D.A. have developed two new papaya varieties resistant to the virus that has been devastating our papaya supplies. Farmers who stopped growing papaya because of the Papaya Ringspot Virus can resume producing crops and consumers will be able to find U.H. Rainbow and U.H. SunUp varieties in markets within a few months.

This year, two other science developments occurred that will likely affect the length and/or quality of our lives. They are: 1) how “telomeres” control the aging process of our cells and 2) the multiple cloning of mice accom­plished here at the University of Hawaii . No doubt, both of these basic research developments will lead to the application that will change our world forever.