Posts during

Nature News – Gut study divides people into three types

Posted on 8th July 2011 | 1 comment
Tags | , , , , , ,

“Just as there are a few major blood types that divide up the world, so too, a study has found, there are just three types of gut-microbe populations. The result could help to pinpoint the causes of obesity and inflammatory bowel disease, and to personalize medicine.” … “A person’s gut type might help to determine […]

BBC Case Notes programme about gut bacteria, including discussions of health claims for yoghurts

Posted on 14th March 2011 | 2 comments

The BBC has recorded an excellent radio programme about gut bacteria, including a discussion of the fundamental uncertainty about the very specific advertised claims for probiotics. You can download it directly in mp3 format (the file is 13Mb) by clicking here: Case Notes – Gut Bacteria

Danon target healthcare professionals for Activia prescriptions

Posted on 27th February 2011 | 3 comments
Tags | , ,

Danon have launched a site called Activia Referral Pad which specifically targets healthcare professionals in an attempt to get them to prescribe Activia, despite losing a class-action lawsuit over their claims that Activia promotes the immune system and the mixed findings that probiotics may be useful in some medical settings, but may be extremely harmful in […]

BBC Radio 4 Food Programme on legislation for health claims for foods

The Food Programme looks at new legislation controlling how food companies can make health claims for their products. There’s a segment in there about a research group who look at prebiotics and probiotics, particularly yoghurts, which is funded by the food industry. Note how, when he talks about the benefits of strains of bifidus, the […]

Food Politics blog on health claims for yoghurts

Posted on 19th November 2009 | 1 comment
Tags | , , , , ,

I like yogurt. But do probiotics – those “friendly” bacteria in yogurt and increasingly added to other foods – do anything for you beyond making yogurt taste good? I wrote about probiotics in What to Eat at some length. Tara Parker-Pope has a quick summary of the state of the research in today’s New York […]

New York Times – certain probiotics can reduce diarrohea

Posted on 19th November 2009 | 1 comment
Tags | , , , ,

Funny that this article suggests that some probiotics can prevent diarrhoea, when the advertising seems to hint much more at alleviating “bloating” – which implies constipation rather than diarrhoea… Read the full article : Probiotics: Looking Underneath the Yogurt Label

Infinite Thought gets to “Y” in her alphabet – Yoghurt

Posted on 19th November 2009 | Add a comment
Tags | , , , ,

This is the sort of yoghurt whose advertisement features middle-class women drinking coffee from a cafetiere and complaining in a sharing sort of way that they feel bloated all the time. Now, I know that this feeling of bloatedness comes from living like a lobotomised, over-propertied seal at the end of history rather than from not […]

Probiotics may be useful in some medical settings, and may be extremely harmful in others

BBC Radio 4’s Case Notes talks to Chakravarthi Rajkumar, Professor of Geriatrics and Stroke Medicine at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, who has a special interest in the use of probiotics to reduce some of the unwanted side effects of antibiotics in his elderly patients. Marnie Chesterton reports from Utrect in the Netherlands, where trials […]

Dannon To Pay $35 Million To Eaters Of Activia And DanActive Yogurts

Posted on 15th October 2009 | 19 comments
Tags | , , , , ,

Here’s an interesting story in terms of the wording of Dannon’s health claims for their DanActive yoghurt – but the compromise wording seems in many ways more misleading.  At least the statement that DanActive has “a positive effect on your digestive tract’s immune system” is something that can be proved or disproved with research – […]

‘Healthy’ yogurt advert banned

A TV advert which asserted that Actimel yogurt supported children’s natural defences against disease has been banned by the advertising watchdog. The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that claims that it could help protect school-age youngsters against illness were not supported by evidence. Full story