Sugar and Type 2 diabetes

Background: Consumption of sugar, specifically sugar-sweetened beverages, has been widely held responsible by the media for the global rise in Type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Sources of data: Systematic reviews and dietary guidelines relating dietary sugars to T2DM. Areas of agreement: Weight gain and T2DM incidence are associated with diet and lifestyle patterns characterized by high consumptions of any sweetened beverages. High sugar intakes impair risk factors for macrovascular complications of T2DM. Areas of controversy: Much of the association between sugars and T2DM is eliminated by adjusting data for body mass index (BMI). However, BMI adjustment does not fully account for adiposity (r2=0.65–0.75). Excess sugar can promote weight gain, thus T2DM, through extra calories, but has no unique diabetogenic effect at physiological levels. Growing points: Ethical concerns about caffeine added to sweetened beverages, undetectable by consumers, to increase consumption. Areas timely for developing research: Evidence needed for limiting dietary sugar below 10% energy intake

Iodine and pregnancy – a qualitative study focusing on dietary guidance and information

Iodine is essential for thyroid hormones synthesis and normal neurodevelopment; however, ~60% of pregnant women do not meet the WHO (World Health Organization) recommended intake. Using a qualitative design, we explored the perceptions, awareness, and experiences of pregnancy nutrition, focusing on iodine. Women in the perinatal period (n = 48) were interviewed and filled in a food frequency questionnaire for iodine. Almost all participants achieved the recommended 150 μg/day intake for non-pregnant adults (99%), but only 81% met the increased demands of pregnancy (250 μg/day). Most were unaware of the importance, sources of iodine, and recommendations for iodine intake. Attitudes toward dairy products consumption were positive (e.g., helps with heartburn; easy to increase). Increased fish consumption was considered less achievable, with barriers around taste, smell, heartburn, and morning sickness. Community midwives were the main recognised provider of dietary advice. The dietary advice received focused most often on multivitamin supplements rather than food sources. Analysis highlighted a clear theme of commitment to change behaviour, motivated by pregnancy, with a desired focus on user-friendly documentation and continued involvement of the health services. The study highlights the importance of redirecting advice on dietary requirements in pregnancy and offers practical suggestions from women in the perinatal period as the main stakeholder group

'Language is the source of misunderstandings'–impact of terminology on public perceptions of health promotion messages

Background: The high level of premature death due to non-communicable diseases has been associated with unhealthful lifestyles, including poor diet. The effectiveness of public health strategies designed to promote health via messages focusing on food and diets depends largely on the perception of the messages by the public. The aim of this study was to explore public perceptions of language commonly used to communicate concepts linking health, food and the diet.<p></p> Methods: This study is a qualitative and semi-quantitative cross-sectional survey exploring public perceptions of terms used to improve eating habits within public health strategies. We recruited adults with no background in nutrition or health-care, from May to July 2013, from urban areas of varying deprivation (n = 12) in Glasgow and Edinburgh, UK. Four key prompt-terms used to convey the idea of improving health through diet were selected for testing: Healthy Eating, Eating for Health, Balanced Diet and Nutritional Balance. Consumer understanding of these terms was explored using mixed-methods, including qualitative focus groups (n = 17) and an interviewer-led word-association exercise (n = 270).<p></p> Results: The word-association exercise produced 1,386 individual responses from the four prompt-terms, with 130 unique responses associated with a single term. Cluster analysis revealed 16 key themes, with responses affected by prompt-term used, age, gender and socio-economic status. Healthy Eating was associated with foods considered ‘healthy’ (p <0.05); Eating for Health and Balanced Diet with negative connotations of foods to avoid (both p <0.001) and Nutritional Balance with the benefits of eating healthily (p <0.01). Focus groups revealed clear differences in perceptions: Eating for Health = positive action one takes to manage existing medical conditions, Healthy Eating = passive aspirational term associated with weight management, Balanced Diet = old fashioned, also dieting for weight loss, Nutritional Balance = maximising physical performance. Food suppliers use Healthy Eating terminology to promote weight management products. Focus group participants welcomed product reformulation to enhance food health properties as a strategy to overcome desensitisation to health-messages.<p></p> Conclusions: Public perceptions of messages communicating concepts linking health, food and the diet are influenced by terminology, resulting in confusion. To increase individual commitment to change eating habits in the long term, public health campaigns need strengthening, potentially by investing in tailored approaches to meet the needs of defined groups of consumers

Making progress on the global crisis of obesity and weight management

No abstract available

Moving Targets? Texts, language, archaeology and history in the Late Vedic and early Buddhist periods

The Late Vedic and earliest Buddhist texts are investigated to indicate their relative historical layering. Besides the texts themselves, their language, place names, archaeological and inherent historical background are brought to bear. These data and those on some historical contemporaries of the Buddha do not indicate a correlation with late Vedic personalities and texts. A certain period of time separates both corpora.Sanskrit and Indian Studie

Female Rishis and Philosophers in the Veda?

It is a traditional but common misconception that a considerable number of Ṛgvedic hymns were composed by women. Though female authors and interlocutors are not entirely absent from the Vedas the role of 'literate' women in the Ṛgveda will have to be re-evaluated. The traditional names given for female Ṛgvedic authors include those derived from the wordings of the hymns but also personified Belief, Speech and a bitch.Sanskrit and Indian Studie

Gandhāra and the Formation of the Vedic and Zoroastrian Canons

After several hundred years of text composition and accumulation, from the RV down to the Upaniṣads and the oldest Sūtras, the actual process of canonization remains unclear, just as the time and place where this took place for many individual texts. While the texts of the grammarians Pāṇini and Patañjali provide some inkling of the end of the canonization process, Pāṇini’s date remains uncertain and Patañjali’s (150 BCE) is too late. However, looking at the problem both from a macro-Indian and a comparative Southwest Asian point of view provides indications of when and how canonization took place in Vedic India, and in Zoroastrian Iran. A key factor in this development was the little understood role of Gandhāra, a Persian province from c. 530-326 BCE. The known Persian insistence on collection and formation and writing down of local canons, from Egypt to Israel and Ionia, allows assuming that Gandhāra and neighboring Arachosia played a similar role for the formation of the Vedic and Avestan canons, along with the concurrent normative description of Vedic and Sanskrit grammar by Pāṇini. Mutual interaction and various forms of reactions, such as the stress on oral preservation, between Gandhāra, Arachosia (Zoroastrian canon) and Kosala-Videha area (Śākalya Ṛgveda, Baudhāyana Śrautasūtra) are indicated, and the various local responses to Persian cultural policies discussed.Sanskrit and Indian Studie

The Linguistic History of Some Indian Domestic Plants

Sanskrit and Indian Studie

Pan-Gaean Flood myths: Gondwana myths -- and beyond

Mythological compendia and indexes such as that by Stith Thompson create the impression that flood myths are rare in Africa and Australia. Erroneously, I too thought so in my short summary of Laurasian mythology (2001). A closer look at the worldwide distribution of flood myths tells differently. While they are fairly widespread in the Laurasian Area (Eurasia, Polynesia, the Americas), they are by no means absent from what I like to call the Gondwana belt (sub-Saharan Africa, New Guinea / Melanesia, Australia). The hundreds of recorded flood myths from both areas can be classified into a few major types, region per region. A comparison of the Australian and African versions indicates a strong overlap that goes back to the time of the exodus from Africa, some 60,000 years ago. The Eurasian-American versions are more narrowly confined to a few basic types that can be traced back to the emergence of Laurasian mythology. However, the Laurasian types clearly emerge from the earlier Gondwana prototype. In sum, the flood myth is an ancient inheritance of human mythology. It is part of a very old core of myths connected with the emergence of humans and their early, evil ways – surprisingly echoing the Mesopotamian and Biblical accounts in many respects. Whether this myth has taken shape among the bottleneck population along the shores of E.Africa or even before, in the mind of the African Eve must remain moot, just as the psychological reason for its invention and formulation, which is a topic to be investigated by the study of the human brain and its productions.Sanskrit and Indian Studie

Trades in complex Hadamard matrices

A trade in a complex Hadamard matrix is a set of entries which can be changed to obtain a different complex Hadamard matrix. We show that in a real Hadamard matrix of order $n$ all trades contain at least $n$ entries. We call a trade rectangular if it consists of a submatrix that can be multiplied by some scalar $c \neq 1$ to obtain another complex Hadamard matrix. We give a characterisation of rectangular trades in complex Hadamard matrices of order $n$ and show that they all contain at least $n$ entries. We conjecture that all trades in complex Hadamard matrices contain at least $n$ entries.Comment: 9 pages, no figure