Expanded Recall Alert

Last week it was reported that Dunkin Donuts has pulled both their hot chocolate and Dunkaccino products from the menu due to possible salmonella contamination from one of its suppliers, Plainview Milk Products Cooperative of Plainview, Minnesota. This week, the recall has widened to dozens of companies that were supplied milk-related products.

The FDA has reported that no actual illnesses have been reported from contamination of products from Plainview Milk Products, which only sells to food manufacturers and distributors, but the potential is there and the recalls will be expanding in the weeks to come. The list of recalled items include nonfat dried milk, whey protein powders, food thickening agents and fruit stabilizers. Caught in the crossfire are such popular products as Malt-O-Meal's Maple & Brown Sugar Instant Oatmeal packets, Meijer Brand Instant Non-Fat Dried Milk, and Land O Lakes International Drinking Cocoa "Madagascar Vanilla."

Here is a basic list of items being recalled. The FDA will be updating this list on a regular basis. To check for new items added to the list, as well as complete lot numbers and product sizes

• Stop and Shop Nonfat Dried Milk
• Bulkfoods.com 41082, 41084, 41086 Instant Non Fat Milk Powder
• Plainview Milk Products 41081 Instant Non Fat Milk Powder
• Giant Nonfat Dried Milk
• Kroger Popcorn Seasoning Movie Theater Butter Flavored
• Kroger Popcorn Seasoning White Cheddar Flavored
• Kroger Fat Free Butter Flavored Sprinkles
• NOW Foods Whey Protein Vanilla w/Glutamine
• NOW Foods Whey Protein Strawberry
• NOW Foods Whey Protein Chocolate
• NOW Foods Whey Protein Vanilla
• NOW Foods Pro Gainer Vanilla
• CPI Foods Non Fat Dry Milk
• Rich, Rich Rich Hot Chocolate Mix
• Meijer Instant Non-fat Dry Milk
• Malt-O-Meal Maple & Brown Sugar Instant Oatmeal packets

Childhood Obesity: A National Health Disaster in the Making?

Despite aggressive public efforts to curb the rise in obesity, Americans in most states are becoming more obese with each passing year, according to the most recent in a series of annual reports from the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). This discouraging trend emphasizes the failure of policies aimed at healthful nutrition and physical activity, and suggests the country is unlikely to achieve the health goals set forth by Healthy People 2010—an effort aimed at reducing the prevalence of overweight and obesity to less than 15 percent among adults and to less than 5 percent among children by the year 2010.

The report, F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing in America 2009, finds that obesity rates for adults in the U.S. rose in 23 states over the past year, and did not decrease in a single state. Sixteen states experienced an increase for the second year in a row, and 11 states experienced an increase for the third straight year. The number of obese adults now exceeds 25 percent in 31 states and exceeds 20 percent in 49 states. To put these numbers into perspective, in 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent, and in 1980, the national average of obese adults was 15 percent.

As in years past, states in the South were found to have particularly high obesity levels, with the region accounting for eight of the top 10 most obese states. Mississippi had the highest adult obesity rate at 32.5 percent, making this the fifth year in a row that the state achieved the dubious honor. Four states, including Mississippi, now have rates above 30 percent; West Virginia at 31.2 percent, Alabama at 31.1 percent, and Tennessee at 30.2 percent. Colorado continued to have the lowest rate, with only 18.9 percent of the adult population classified as obese, and remains the only state in which the adult obesity rate is less than 20 percent.

In addition, the Baby Boomer generation has a higher rate of obesity compared with previous generations. In every state, the rate of obesity is higher among 55- to 64-year-olds—the oldest boomers—than among adults who are 65 and beyond. Estimates of increases range from 5.2 percent in New York to 16.3 percent in Alabama.

However, as bad as the rates are for adults, they are even worse for the country’s children. Overall, the percentage of overweight and obese children (10 to 17 years old) is at or above 30 percent in 30 states. The highest rates for children were also found in eight of 10 Southern states, with Mississippi topping the list at 44.4 percent. Minnesota and Utah had the lowest rate at 23.1 percent.

Research has shown that overweight and obese children generally go on to become obese adults, with all the chronic, weight-related health issues, such as heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. “We have in our schools and communities a perfect storm that will continue to feed the childhood obesity epidemic until we adopt policies that improve the health of our communities and our kids,” Dr. Frank Chaloupka, professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said in a statement to Reuters.


Dr. Jeff Levi, Executive Director of the TFAH, says answers to the problems are not easily found but sorely needed. “There has been a breakthrough in terms of drawing attention to the obesity epidemic, now we need a breakthrough in terms of policies and results,” he said. “Poor nutrition and physical activity are robbing America of our health and productivity.” The report sets forth a number of recommendations for addressing the obesity epidemic, including a National Strategy to Combat Obesity that would define roles and responsibilities for federal, state and local governments and promote collaboration among businesses, communities, schools and families

Travel Raises Risk of Blood Clots Threefold

We all know how exciting it is to go on a well-needed vacation, but it has been shown that traveling long distances by bus, train, car, or plane could nearly triple a person’s risk of developing blood clots in the leg veins and lungs. According to recent research published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine, for each two-hour increase in travel time, the risk of getting a clot, also known as venous thromboembolism, increased approximately 18 percent. For the people who travel by plane, the risk rose approximately 26 percent for every two-hour increase in time spent in the air.

According to lead author, Divay Chandra, the review looked at 14 previous studies, which included 4,055 cases, and is the largest and most comprehensive review to find that travel increases the risk of developing blood clots. There are more than 200,000 new cases of venous thrombeombolism occurring each year in the U.S. with a 30 percent risk of death within 30 days, according to the American Heart Association.

Chandra, who is also a fellow in the division of pulmonary, allergy and critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, stated, “People who travel, particularly if they travel long distances, they should be aware of these symptoms. They should not be ignored.”

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, symptoms of a blood clot include, but are not limited to, redness of the skin, pain or soreness in the legs and arms, swelling in the legs or arms or warm spots on the legs. To avoid clots, travelers should drink plenty of water and stop to walk occasionally while on route to help prevent the development of clots.

Studies that were previously conducted have reported conflicting results on whether long-distance travel was actually linked to blood clots. To resolve this question, Chandra and her colleagues at Harvard Medical School compared 14 studies that looked at the rate of blood clots in people that travel to the people who did not travel. Combining the results, the researchers found double the number of blood clots in the group that traveled. According to Chandra, 6 out of the 14 studies did not use the best study design because the comparison group of the people who did not travel had been previously selected for testing to see if they already had clots. Excluding the results from those six studies, they found that the risk of developing a blood clot approximately tripled for the travelers. The researchers also saw that the risk was also higher for those who traveled by plane when compared with those who took ground transportation, however, the increase was not statistically significant.

The analysis drew its conclusions by going over the results of the studies conducted and reported the relative risks, rather than on the number of cases. To help illustrate exactly how high the odds could be for any one traveler, the article cited a previous study estimating that one blood-clot case occurred for every 4,600 airplane flights.

According to the NIH, the blood clots that form in the legs could be fatal if they were to break loose and move to other parts of the body, which includes the lungs. According to the American Heart Association, approximately 20 percent of those that suffer from a clot in the lungs, or pulmonary embolism, suffer sudden death.

Physicians are still researching exactly why traveling could cause blood clots, and some suspect that the lack of mobility may discourage the flow of blood and enable clots to form. Future studies will be need to show if travelers could lower their risks by drinking fluids, stopping to walk along the way or taking other measures before they start on their trip, Chandra said.

People that are considered to be at a high risk for blood clots, which include smokers, cancer patients and those who have suffered from clots before, should speak with their physician and may need to take blood thinners before trying to make a long trip.