Uncle Tobys recently announced that from January 2013 its entire range of 44 breakfast cereals will meet the nutrition requirements of the new food standard, designed to ensure that health claims only appear on healthy foods.

The announcement is the culmination of a five year program to reduce saturated fat, sugar and sodium across the Uncle Tobys cereal range, while increasing wholegrain and fibre.

Uncle Tobys Nutrition Manager, Nilani Sritharan, said ‘by the end of January our entire range of Uncle Tobys cereals will meet the nutrition eligibility criteria of the new standard, meaning that every one of our cereals could carry a health claim.’

She said that changing cereals to improve their nutritional value while maintaining the taste and texture consumers prefer has been a challenge: ‘We made a series of small changes to our cereals over the years to allow consumers to adjust slowly.’

Announcement of the approval of the Standard for Nutrition, Health and Related Claims, which will become law in early 2013, creates stricter controls about on-pack health claims, including the need to provide scientific evidence to support claims and meet specific eligibility criteria including nutrition criteria.

Source: Nestle

Australian Fitness Network
Right NOW Fitness – Personal Training based in Mornington News

Green tea always gets great press, but black tea also has many health benefits – as recent analysis has illustrated.

Researchers studied data from 50 countries and discovered that the nations with the highest consumption of black tea had lower rates of type II diabetes than other countries. Although the finding appears to corroborate previous research results, the correlation seems to be something of an anomaly with regards fighting diseases, as higher rates of black tea consumption were not linked to lower incidence of respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, infectious disease or cancer.

Although the researchers highlighted potential inconsistencies arising from the comparison of data from countries with different data collection methods, they expressed confidence in the findings, saying ‘These original study results are consistent with previous biological, physiological, and ecological studies conducted on the potential of [black tea] on diabetes and obesity’.

Source: British Medical Journal

Australian Fitness Network
Right NOW Fitness – Personal Training based in Mornington News

Those with small children, look away now. Researchers have found that people who are able to get 10 hours sleep each night may enjoy reduced pain sensitivity and improved alertness.

For the American Academy of Sleep Medicine study, 18 participants who had undergone mild sleep deprivation were divided into two groups. The first group proceeded to have four nights’ sleep of their usual duration, and the second group extended their sleep time by an average of nearly two hours to 10 hours per night.

The resulting increase in alertness among the extended sleep group may come as no surprise, but the reduced pain sensitivity was an interesting effect. After enjoying extended sleep, study participants were able to keep their fingers on a heat source by an average 25 per cent longer than the shorter sleep group. This represented a greater tolerance of pain than that achieved by participants in a previous study who took 60 milligrams of the painkiller codeine.

Study lead author Timothy Roehrs said ‘Our results suggest the importance of adequate sleep in various chronic pain conditions or in preparation for elective surgical procedures. We were surprised by the magnitude of the reduction in pain sensitivity, when compared to the reduction produced by taking codeine.’

So, it appears as though those for whom blearily-eyed treading on Lego blocks is an early morning ritual are destined not to benefit from the pain reducing effects of a good night’s sleep.

Source: Sleep

Research from the US has found evidence that working out with a partner you perceive to be stronger than yourself can spur you on to exercise for longer.

In addition to finding that partner training increased the amount of exercise done compared to solo workouts, a small study of 58 female students at Michigan State University also found that despite working out for longer, the study participants who did so did not register higher feelings of tiredness.

Study author Brandon Irwin, assistant professor of kinesiology at Kansas State University said ‘When the goal is to exercise longer, a partner who is a little better than you are can make a big difference. It gives you a goal, and may even inspire you to raise your goals.’

After undertaking a series of sessions to establish baseline data, participants were allocated indoor cycles and told they were working out with a partner in another lab that they could view on a screen. The ‘partner’ was actually a pre-recorded video. The participants were informed that their partner had performed 40 per cent better in initial sessions than they actually had done. The consequence of this was that the participants then doubled the duration of their cycle sessions compared with their pre-study baseline times. Further misinformation about their ‘partner’s’ performance in subsequent challenges also led to improved performance of between 160 and 200 per cent compared to baseline.

Putting the findings in the context of wider behaviour-modification research, Cedric Bryant, chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise said ‘Just as with eating habits, if you’re in the company of individuals who make prudent choices, you will make better choices yourself. To me, the real nice message here is that hanging out with people who model positive behaviour – in this case virtually – probably will have a positive effect on what you do as an individual.’

Source: Annals of Internal Medicine