Americans are spending more and more dollars each year on probiotic supplements, or so-called “friendly” bacteria. Studies have shown that probiotics—which you might purchase in the form of yogurt, capsules, miso, beverages, or powders—can treat a host of conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea caused by viral infection or antibiotics, vaginal yeast infections, hypertension, the common cold, and even acne. Over the past decade, consumer sales of probiotics in the U.S. have nearly quadrupled (growing from $115 million in 1998 to $425 million in 2008), according to Nutrition Business Journal.

But, according to a report released today, many of the most popular probiotic supplements don’t contain the amount of live bacteria listed on their labels. ConsumerLab, a private company that tests health and nutritional products at independent labs across the country, found that at the time a consumer buys a probiotic, it may contain as little as 10 to 58 percent of the amount of viable organisms listed on the label. “It’s shocking how many products really don’t have what they claim on their labels,” says Tod Cooperman, the president of ConsumerLab. “The buyer has to be careful.”

ConsumerLab purchased the probiotics as a consumer would, cultured the products to determine the number of viable cells in them, and compared the results to the amounts listed on the product labels. The company sent any product that did not contain the amount of live cells listed on the label to a second lab for additional testing. “We’re absolutely certain about what we found,” Cooperman says. Despite the misleading numbers, most products contained at least one billion organisms, which is probably enough to provide some—although not necessarily optimal—benefit, according to Cooperman. 

Find out more about the findings after the jump. 

by Liesa Goins

Today, we ran an article about an increase in eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS) among college students. But what does EDNOS really mean?

The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) defines eating disorders not otherwise specified as “disorders of eating that do not meet the criteria for any specific eating disorder.” The EDNOS classification encompasses a wide range of patients: Individuals who are at 87 percent of their ideal body weight instead of the 85 percent required to be considered as anorexic. Females who meet the weight criteria for anorexia but continue to menstruate. People who repeatedly chew and spit out—but do not swallow—large amounts of food. Binge eaters.

“It’s a wastebasket diagnosis,” says Susan Ice, the vice president and medical director of Philadelphia’s Renfrew Center, which specializes in the treatment of eating disorders. “It [EDNOS] is a hodgepodge of things that don’t necessarily belong together, except that they don’t belong anywhere else.”

Still, patients with an EDNOS have a “clinically significant” problem, according to Michael Lowe, a professor of psychology at Drexel University who researches the prevention and treatment of eating disorders and obesity. Indeed, those diagnosed with EDNOS are at risk for many of the same medical complications as those with anorexia or bulimia, including hormone imbalance, osteoporosis, heart attack, and death. In Lowe’s view, the distinctions between EDNOS and full-blown eating disorders are arbitrary. “Someone who would get an EDNOS diagnosis is in need of treatment just as much as someone with a full diagnosis,” Lowe says.

But in most states, insurance won’t cover patients who don’t meet the full criteria for anorexia or bulimia. In order to get around the conservative definition of eating disorders, some therapists exaggerate their patients’ symptoms, according to Lowe. For example, they might say that a patient binged twice instead of once a week in order to meet the criteria for bulimia. People with eating disorders typically also suffer from mental health issues, so therapists might also choose to identify anxiety or depression—both covered disorders—as a patient’s primary health problem. “It doesn’t matter what diagnoses you give them to get them covered—just that you give them an official diagnosis,” says Lowe, who estimates that about four percent of American women have an EDNOS.

Eating disorder specialists expect that the DSM-V, slated to come out in 2013, will reclassify eating disorders so that those in need of coverage can get it. “That’s what needs to happen, and that’s what will happen,” Ice says.

-- Johannah Cornblatt

I don't watch HBO's soapy vampire drama True Blood. I like the idea of the show and always thought I would get around to checking it out, but so far—despite the frequent convincing arguments made by my colleague Joan Raymond—I have yet to do so. Still, I think I get the conceit: vampires are real, they walk among us, and thanks to an artificial blood substitute called Tru Blood, they can feed without having to bite human's necks to do so. But some humans still think that vampires are monsters and shouldn't have equal rights, and the oppression of and intolerance toward vampires can be seen as an allegory about homosexuality, except that some of the vampires are kind of monsters, and also total sluts.

(I fact-checked this with NEWSWEEK TV critic and True Blood agnostic Joshua Alston, who affirmed my summary and also noted that on the show, "vampire blood is used as a drug by humans, much like straight people get high on gay people's blood." Ball, Alston tells me, has made clear that it's not completely allegorical.)

Yesterday, HBO unveiled Tru Blood, the beverage, a blood-orange (get it?) soft drink packaged to look like the blood substitute quaffed by vampires on the show. I've had a sample of it on my desk for about a week, but couldn't bring myself to drink it. It's supposed to be blood, which is not all that appetizing to me. Even fake blood: once, on a dare, I drank the fake corn-syrup blood at a haunted house, a super-thick, obnoxiously sweet concoction, the taste of which haunts me to this day.

Unfortunately, Tru Blood is also pretty sweet, though its flavor comes from cane sugar, not corn syrup. I was hoping it would be more like a delightful Italian soda: heavy on fizz with traces of blood-orange tartness. In actuality, it's kind of like a mix between Orange Crush and Hi-C, another concoction of my youth, this one made possible by the serve-yourself fountain sodas at various fast-food restaurants. Which is to say, if you are a fan of sugary sodas and vampires on cable, you'll be thrilled with Tru Blood, the soft drink.

If you're not a fan of the show, or have a more sophisticated palate, you'll probably be disappointed, as I was. Also disappointing: after drinking about half of the 14-ounce bottle, I am not even a little bit high. 

Tru Blood beverage retails for $16 per four pack at TruBeverage.com.

By Paige Greenfield

By Michelle Allison

Let’s start with this: I identify as fat because, well, I’m fat, and also because I don’t think being fat is necessarily a bad thing─it’s just a thing.

But calling myself a nutritionist feels like a fantastic act of audacity. I’m still technically a student, though I’ve completed the work core to my nutrition degree and am now taking a psychology minor.

I initially got interested in nutrition by going on a diet to lose weight when I was 21. I did it to feel better about myself, because I hated my body, hated being fat. What I told everyone, naturally, was that I was losing weight for the good of my health.

Except I didn’t get healthy. I was constantly injured from overexercising, and I came down with a virus that developed into really nasty pneumonia that I couldn’t seem to shake.

What kept me on the diet was the intoxicating sense that, for the first time in my life, I was following the rules. I was doing it right. I was compliant. I was a model eater and exerciser. My habits were above reproach.

In the end, I lost 30 pounds and gained a bunch of disorder behaviors. And I hated my body more intensely than before.

I knew that wasn’t how it was supposed to work─you were supposed to lose weight and feel great about yourself and be healthy.

But when I asked all of my dieting friends, no one could give me an answer. We were all so focused on eating the right number of calories and getting the right amount of exercise that no one had managed to figure this part out yet─how to actually be healthy? How to stop hating yourself?

Around this time, I stumbled onto fat acceptance and Health at Every Size.

In a nutshell, fat acceptance is the idea that human bodies naturally come in a range shapes and sizes, and that being fat is not necessarily pathological. It recognizes that there is a strong prejudice in our culture against fat people, resulting in yet another form of appearance-based discrimination─which is morally wrong, and requires a political response.

Health at Every Size is complementary to fat acceptance─it’s the belief that people can do positive things for their health (like eat well and exercise) in a positive, compassionate, nonpunishing way, without pursuing weight loss, and that even fat people can be healthy by all other objective measures. It’s the belief that self-acceptance, whatever your size, is good for you─especially when combined with other health-promoting behaviors.
 
After discovering these things, I decided to make nutrition my profession, and no one has ever questioned my credibility or competence based on my body size.

Even when I worked in one of the more traditional areas of nutrition practice, diabetes, my superiors never seemed bothered by my weight. I was hired even after competing against thin applicants, after all. And I believe my presence in the diabetes clinic as a nice-looking, intelligent fat lady, often with doughnut in hand, was perhaps comforting to patients, and deeply subversive to the notion of “nutrition equals weight control.”

I think people assume nutritionists all eat “perfectly.” Well, I don’t, and I don’t know any dietitians, even thin ones, who do. I’ve been lucky to work with dietitians who have all loved food and would never turn down a homemade brownie.

As for myself, I’m genuinely positive about food and my body. I’m no longer at war with either one.

When I stopped dieting, it was extremely difficult to relearn “normal” eating. I read a lot of books and struggled on my own for five years. In the end, it was a dietitian who practiced Health at Every Size who taught me how. I learned to eat lovely, nourishing food without worry and stress, and my weight finally settled into a stable, happy place.

Four years after being her client, I’m still doing well, and I want to help other people the way she helped me, now that I have the education and experience to do so.

I’ve done some hard thinking about what it means to be healthy. First, I learned to separate a person’s state of health from their value as a human being. Second, I stopped seeing healthiness as an end in itself, or as a reward for good behavior.

Instead, I now define health as a combination of the cards you’ve been dealt, and the way you choose to play them. Even if you’re dealt a s--tty hand that can’t be changed, you can still play your cards well enough to enjoy a meaningful life.

Acceptance─that is, learning to accept the things you cannot change─is key to health. This philosophy is embodied by the Serenity Prayer, by Jean-Paul Sartre’s concepts of facticity and transcendence, by mindfulness theories, and, lastly, by fat acceptance and Health at Every Size.


─Allison blogs at The Fat Nutritionist.

By Jenny Hontz     

      The IRS has ruled that a woman medically incapable of breast-feeding after a double mastectomy may not set aside the cost of infant formula as a pretax medical expense, NEWSWEEK has learned exclusively.

      “To explicitly deny women this deduction is a shameful interpretation of their regulations, especially when they’re interpreting them to accommodate footpads and condoms and Viagra,” says Dan Harrison, 39, of Los Angeles, who asked for the IRS to rule on the issue. “I think women should be pissed off.”

      Harrison’s wife, Libby, 39, had both breasts surgically removed in 2006, two years before the birth of her second daughter, Hannah. While Libby breast-fed her first child, she had no choice but to purchase infant formula for Hannah, which cost about $1,000 over the course of a year.

       Dan Harrison, an executive at NBC Universal, was looking through a list of approved medical expenses under his flexible spending account provided by Ceridian, the company that manages his employee benefits. Flexible spending accounts allow taxpayers to set aside up to $5,000 per year as pretax income for medical expenses not covered by insurance.

       Dr. Scholl’s footpads, sunscreen, birth control, and prescription sunglasses all qualify as medical care for the “diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease,” according to the IRS. People with hearing impairments are allowed to include the cost of equipment to help them watch TV, and anyone who has lost a limb can count the cost of modifying a car as pretax income. Hypnosis, yoga, colon cleansing, massage, and even dancing lessons are also considered medical costs with a doctor’s note. However, infant formula for women medically unable to breast-feed because of breast cancer or HIV is nowhere on the list.

      Harrison wrote to the IRS asking for clarification, and he received a letter last September confirming his suspicions that formula under no circumstances is considered a medical expense. “Food, including infant formula, that satisfies your nutritional requirements is a personal expenditure,” the letter said.  Harrison saw a double standard at work. Breast-milk supplements are considered a medical expense with a doctor’s note, as are breast pumps and hot and cold packs to ease breast-feeding pain. Patients allergic to wheat may also count as a medical expense the difference between the cost of wheat-free and regular foods.

      “This special food is deductible with a doctor’s certification,” Harrison says. “How is infant formula any different?”

      The IRS had never considered a case of a woman who had to purchase formula because of a double mastectomy, and Harrison believed a principle of fairness was at stake. He challenged the IRS by requesting a formal ruling and traveling to Washington to make his case last November.

      Former California governor Gray Davis, a family friend, put Harrison in touch with Rep. Henry Waxman, who wrote a letter to the IRS supporting the Harrisons. The breast-cancer survivor organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure, also urged the IRS to reconsider, and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis took the case pro bono, putting one of its top tax attorneys, Todd Maynes, on the job. Despite having such heavy hitters in his corner, the IRS ruled July 1 against the Harrisons, saying infant formula is food, and because it’s for the baby, it doesn’t mitigate the disease of the mother. The Harrisons received the decision in the mail this week.

      “It’s food for a healthy infant,” IRS branch chief Christopher Kane told Newsweek.com. “The mother is the one with the medical problem. It’s the same expense a [healthy] woman who chooses not to breast-feed incurs,” Kane said.

      That argument doesn’t sit well with Harrison. Buying infant formula was not a choice for his family. Without it, his child could not have survived.

       “There’s no doubt, if you don’t have breast tissue, you can’t breast-feed,” he says. “There is no alternate product to give the baby. It’s not like the baby can eat a granola bar and get developmental nutrition from a prescription product, which would be deductible. It’s breast milk or formula or the kid dies.”

      Harrison also takes issue with the idea that formula is merely food. “Infant formula is so highly regulated, in my mind, it’s closer to a medicine,” he sasys. “They tell you what ingredients must be in infant formula [and in what amounts]. There’s a real care that goes into the manufacture and oversight that you don’t have in the traditional food chain.”

       To Kane’s assertion that formula doesn’t mitigate the mother’s disease because it’s for her child, Harrison points out that the health of mothers and young infants is intertwined. “This has a lot of support in medical literature and even in government hospital regulations,” he says. “It is called the mother-child dyad.”

      The tax code, however, treats mothers and infants as separate people, Kane says. “We’re constrained by the law. That’s our job.”

      Harrison isn’t giving up. He’s taking his case to Congress and has a receptive ear in Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), herself a breast-cancer survivor. "This ruling clearly shows a lack of understanding of the medical implications of breast-cancer treatment in young women," Wasserman Schultz says.  "I am exploring options that will allow women adversely affected by this ruling to utilize the money they've set aside in their FSA accounts for what is clearly a medically necessary expense."

 

courtesy of Lee Ann Wong

Lee Ann Wong, the fan favorite from season one of Bravo's Top Chef, has a lot going on: she's now the executive chef for Kogi New York: the original Kogi, in LA, is the insanely popular Korean BBQ truck locatable only via Twitter. On Sunday, she was working along side Justin Timberlake as he launched his new tequilla, 901 Silver, in New York City. (She, along with former contestants Sam Talbot and Huang Huynh, created some drinks and snacks made with 901 that were served at the event). And somehow, in the middle of all this, she's lost 55 pounds.

Wong says she enlisted the help fellow contestant Andrea Berman (the health food enthusiast) and lost the weight despite "never setting foot in a gym." Prior to spending her days in a kitchen and her nights in the late-night burger bars frequented by New York's culinary set, Wong was a size four, and notes that "keeping the weight off is not all that hard." The ease with which she says the weight came off, and the with which she's maintaining the weight, lends credence to the idea that one's body wants to clock in at a certain size, and will settle into that amount quickly with the right nutrition. Wong says she's virtually eliminated dairy (including cooking with butter) and is relying on the strong flavors found in Asian foods to keep her pallet happy and the meals she makes interesting. (Of course, not all of us have a size-four set point, which means that working out is a necessity if the end goal is squeezing into skinny jeans.) She also stressed the importance of eating slowly. "Food should be an event. Half the pleasure is taking the time to eat it," she says. "I really learned how to slow myself down."

Hopefully, some of her healthier cooking tricks will make their way into Kogi's wares when the trucks start rolling in New York.

Catchy, no? Too bad it’s all lies. There aren’t too many fish in the sea: we've eaten them.

Find out why it matters—and what you can do—after the jump. 

Baltimore-based artist Hugh Pocock's new art exhibit, "My Food, My Poop," attempts to represent the complex relationship between the food we take in, the energy we expend, and the waste we create.

This post was initially going to be filed as a "Without Comment" because, come on: poop=funny.  But the exhibit does hit on some pretty intriguing themes. According to the Baltimore Sun, for 63 days Pocock measured everything he put into his body and all the waste that came out. The exhibit represents those numbers with wooden blocks of corresponding weight. Pocock's equation is pretty simplistic: there's a lot more going on with digestion besides Weight of Food-Weight of Waste=Energy Burned, and "energy" is a pretty ambiguous category. Still, it's interesting to see some of the observations he makes about his body's relationship with the calories it consumes:

"I really became aware of what it takes to fuel my daily life," he said. "A week I cut out carbs for Passover, my energy equivalent went way down. ...When I was working on sawing the wood blocks, my intake went way up. I've become aware of our intimate relationship with energy."

Keeping a food diary is one of the oldest tricks in the weight-loss book, but it's an good experiment for everyone, just because most Americans eat so mindlessly. (You can view some of Pocock's intake and outtake logs here). We tend to consume things without even realizing it, and aren't particularly aware of how our body processes the food we eat. Sure, some things give us heartburn and other things makes us collapse in an allergic fit, but what food makes us sleepy two hours after we eat them? What leave us hungry almost as soon as we're done?  What corresponds with a stellar performance on the basketball court or poor performance in the restroom?

Despite the initial ick factor, there's a lot you can learn about your body by studying its waste. Casually studying, that is—unless you're trying to get an art show, there's no need to weigh and measure. However, for you statistics fans out there, here's Pocock's final tally:

"My Food, My Poop" is on display at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore until August 16, 2009.