Strawberries as a "Sunscreen" ? Not exactly, but new studies show a UV Light blocking effect.

New study from European research scientists have shown a link between chemical compounds in strawberries and protection from dangerous UV rays in daylight, the same sort of light spectrum linked to sunburns and skin cancer. 

The researchers speculated that the protective powers may lie in strawberries' anthocyanins (previously linked with adecreased diabetes risk), which are what make strawberries red.

"These compounds have important anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anti-tumour properties and are capable of modulating enzymatic processes," study researcher Sara Tulipani of the University of Barcelona, said in a statement. However, "we have not yet found a direct relationship between their presence and photoprotective properties."

"At the moment the results act as the basis for future studies evaluating the 'bioavailability' and 'bioactivity' of anthocyanins in the dermis and epidermis layers of the human skin, whether by adding them to formulations for external use or by ingesting the fruit itself," Tulipani added.

In the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry study, researchers added strawberry extract in different doses -- 0.05 milligrams per milliliter, 0.25 milligrams per milliliter and 0.5 milligrams per milliliter -- to skin cell cultures. They also had a control extract added to the skin cell cultures.

Then, the researchers exposed those skin cell cultures to ultraviolet light that is equivalent to 90 minutes of mid-day sun in the summertime.

Soft Drinks: Public Health Enemy #1 with links to obesity and more.

In stories we ran some time ago, we noted various studies that link soft drinks containing high Fructose Corn Syrup to Obesity, and many of the numbers are staggering. Additionally, Diet sodas have a corrolation with other health issues. While it's easy to opine that it's just better to drink water or juice (it is), remember that originally most soft drinks were served in small cups, often no more than a couple ounces over ice, or occasionaly as an apertif. This development of drinking liters of cola is a recent thing, and the links to health woes are too prevalent to ignore. 

CNN- NY TIMES 

(CNN) -- Pushing her meal cart into the hospital room, a research assistant hands out tall glasses of reddish-pink liquid, along with a gentle warning: "Remember, you guys have to finish all your Kool-Aid."

One by one, young volunteers chug down their drinks, each carefully calibrated to contain a mix of water, flavoring and a precisely calibrated solution of high fructose corn syrup: 55% fructose, 45% glucose.

The participants are part of an ongoing study run by Kimber Stanhope, a nutritional biologist at the University of California, Davis. Volunteers agree to spend several weeks as lab rats: their food carefully measured, their bodies subjected to a steady dose of scans and blood tests. At first, each volunteer receives meals with no added sugars. But then, the sweetened drinks start showing up.

For the final two weeks of the study, volunteers drank three of the sweet concoctions daily -- about 500 calories of added sugar, or 25% of all calories for the adult women in the study. Within just two weeks, their blood chemistry was out of whack. In one striking change, the volunteers had elevated levels of LDL cholesterol, a risk factor for heart disease.

While force-feeding junk food may sound extreme, this controlled diet is not so far from the real world. A 20-ounce regular soda contains 227 calories, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). That single drink is more than 10% of the total calories an adult woman needs to maintain a healthy weight, according to USDA diet guidelines. Meanwhile, about 1 in 4 Americans gets at least 200 calories a day from sugary drinks. These numbers, along with work like Stanhope's, gives ammunition to doctors and public health officials who say soda should be treated as public health enemy No. 1.

"Soft drinks and sugar-containing beverages are the low hanging fruit in public health today," says Dr. David Ludwig, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center, at Children's Hospital in Boston. "Many children are consuming 300 calories per day or more, just in sugar-containing beverages. Compare the challenge of giving up three glasses of sugary beverages, versus getting them to do two hours of moderate physical activity."

"If you switch from Coke to water, that's easy," says Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, a professor at the University of North Carolina and a recent president of the American Diabetes Association. "You don't have to make big complicated changes in how you cook, and shop, and all that. And the number of calories you can save, can be substantial."

Related story: Are sugar substitutes worse than the real thing?

Some in the soft drink business say their product has been unfairly singled out. "Consumption of added sugars is going down," says Karen Hanretty, Vice-President of Public Affairs for the American Beverage Association. "Soda consumption has declined, even as obesity has increased. To say that sugar is solely responsible for obesity, doesn't make sense."

Coca-Cola has adapted to meet consumer demand, says Rhona Applebaum, the company's Vice President and Chief Scientific Regulatory Officer. More than ever, she says, those consumers choose low-sugar products. Today, Diet Coke and Coke Zero make up 41% of Coke's North American soda sales, up from 32% a decade ago. "Our products are part of a balanced, sensible diet, and they can be enjoyed as a valuable part of any meal, including snacks," says Applebaum.

Buried in the flood of horror stories about America's obesity crisis, are a few hopeful signs. Not only is sugar consumption going down, but obesity rates among girls and women have actually stayed flat since 1999, according to Cynthia Ogden, a scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For boys and men, those levels have increased only modestly since around 2006, Ogden says.

Coincidentally or not, the leveling off of obesity coincides with a drop in the amount of soda that Americans consume. Consumption of soda -- both regular and diet -- has fallen by 17.3% since 1998, according to Beverage Digest.

Read the original Story here: http://us.cnn.com/2012/04/27/health/soda-obesity/index.html?c=homepage-t

European study: Mammograms don't effect breast cancer mortality.

Data recently made available from six European Countries shows findings that mammography screening has had no effect on breast cancer mortality.

from a recent NY Times Article: 

Researchers took advantage of a natural experiment in three pairs of countries. Some had instituted regular mammography screening significantly earlier than the others, but their health care systems and socioeconomic levels were nearly identical. The countries matched for comparison were Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; the Netherlands and Belgium; and Sweden and Norway.

The study, published online July 28 in the British medical journal BMJ, found that in all three cases, earlier implementation of screening had no effect on mortality. For example, in Northern Ireland, screening was introduced in the early 1990s, and by 1995, 75 percent of the women were getting mammograms. In the Republic of Ireland, screening was not introduced until 2000, and it was not until 2008 that 76 percent of the population was screened. Yet from 1989 to 2006, breast cancer mortality decreased by 29.6 percent in Northern Ireland and by 26.7 percent in Ireland.

“We were surprised and quite sad to find that breast cancer screening doesn’t work,” said Dr. Philippe Autier, the lead author. “We were expecting to find the reverse.”