Health Care Equipment

University of Illinois researchers Soo-Yeun Lee and Shelly Schmidt are trying to solve a mystery: Why doesn't diet soda taste more like regular soda? Can a well-trained panel of "taste testers" pinpoint the exact problem? And can food scientists do anything to fix it? "If we could make diet soda taste better, it would be a big step in fighting the obesity epidemic," said Shelly Schmidt, a U of I professor of food chemistry. "Many people know they should cut calories, but they won't drink diet pop because they don't like the taste"........

We all know that eating fruits, vegetables and soy products provides essential nutrition for a healthy lifestyle, while obesity leads to the opposite. Yet proving the effect of nutrition, or obesity, on cancer is an experimental challenge and a focus for scientists. According to emerging evidence being presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, eating well might still be one of the more pleasurable ways to prevent cancer and promote good health........

Got milk? Weightlifters will want to raise a glass after a new study observed that milk protein is significantly better than soy at building muscle mass. The study, conducted by a team of scientists at McMaster Universitys Department of Kinesiology, was recently reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It compared how much muscle protein young men gained after completing a heavy weight workout followed by consumption of equivalent amounts of protein as either fluid skim milk or a soy drink........

People watching the Super Bowl who saw how much they had already eaten -- in this case, leftover chicken-wing bones -- ate 27 percent less than people who had no such environmental cues, finds a new Cornell study. The difference between the two groups -- those eating at a table where leftover bones accumulated compared with those whose leftovers were removed -- was greater for men than for women........

Much research has shown that reduced calorie intake can increase health and longevity. Professor Stephen Spindler (University of California) and his collaborators* have discovered that reducing calorie intake during the later part of life can still induce a number of of the health and longevity benefits of life-long calorie reduction. Importantly, this also includes anti-cancer effects. They are using this knowledge to establish a novel screening technique to find drugs which mimic this longevity effect. Right now, there are no authentic anti-ageing drugs capable of extending the lifespan of healthy people. The technique we have developed allows us to screen a relatively large number of drugs in months rather than years. The hope is that these drugs will be able to extend the lifespan of healthy animals, and possibly, after further testing, healthy humans, says Professor Spindler who will present his results at the Society for Experimental Biologys Main Meeting in Glasgow on Monday 2nd April........