Dilema de mamífero

Especialistas se dividem sobre tomar leite na idade adulta: para uns, é fundamental; para outros, prejudicial à saúde

Antônio Marinho – O Globo

A polêmica em relação aos benefícios do leite para a saúde de adultos parece não ter fim. De um lado estão os mais radicais, como o Comitê para Educação de Laticínios nos Estados Unidos, que condenam o alimento e o classificam como um veneno capaz de causar cânceres. Do outro, especialistas que afirmam que o leite é bom até para o coração por ser rico em cálcio, proteína e vitaminas.

O único consenso, pelo menos entre nutricionistas, é que ele faz bem quando usado de forma adequada.

Além de anti-hipertensivo, o leite teria efeito reidratante após exercícios, segundo a revista “British Journal of Nutrition”.

Outro estudo mostrou que ele proporciona maior crescimento muscular em comparação com uma bebida de proteína de soja.

— O cálcio ajuda a controlar a pressão. O efeito na massa muscular é associado à boa qualidade dos seus aminoácidos — diz Virgínia Nascimento, diretora da Clínica de Orientação Nutricional.

Mineral é essencial para a contração cardíaca Para Vilma Blondet, do Departamento de Nutrição e Dietética da UFF, não precisamos especificamente de leite, mas do cálcio. E ele pode ser obtido em iogurtes, queijos e outros laticínios. A recomendação para crianças de 1 ano a 3 anos é de 500mg / dia ; de 4 anos a 8 anos é de 800mg/dia; de 9 anos a 18 anos é de 1.300mg/dia.

— No adulto é de 1 mil mg/dia (quatro copos de leite).

Como qualquer nutriente, em excesso é prejudicial. O abuso de cálcio, por exemplo, pode formar cálculos renais — diz Vilma.

Com relação à ação anti-hipertensiva do cálcio, Vilma diz que há controvérsia e não se receita suplementação do mineral nesses casos: — Parece haver correlação entre hipertensão e dieta com menos de 600mg/dia de cálcio.

Hipertensos devem fazer alimentação rica nesse mineral.

A contração muscular, inclusive cardíaca, também precisa de cálcio, segundo Ana Beatriz Rique, co-autora de “Alimentação saudável, tabela de equivalências” (Tecmedd): — Um dos benefícios de consumir laticínios é que eles aumentam a saciedade por mais horas. E muitas pessoas intolerantes à lactose se dão bem com iogurte e queijos.

Mariana Schievano Danelon, da Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz da USP, lembra que o “Guia Alimentar para a População Brasileira”, do Ministério da Educação, recomenda o consumo diário de três porções de leite e derivados. São a melhor fonte de cálcio, mas outros alimentos têm esse mineral, como as verduras escuras, soja, amêndoas, sardinha e laranja.

E apesar de alguns pesquisadores dispensarem o leite em adultos, Mariana diz que ele é essencial para a massa óssea, tendo em vista que há perda de minerais pela urina: — Cerca de 99% do cálcio no nosso organismo está nos ossos e nos dentes. E 1% encontrase no plasma, exercendo funções como coagulação e contrações musculares. Quando os níveis de cálcio começam a baixar no sangue, ele é retirado dos ossos.

O alerta é importante. Um estudo de 1996 em cinco cidades brasileiras continua atual, segundo Mariana. Ele revelou que 48,9% dos homens e 61,3% das mulheres acima de 18 anos ingeriam pouco cálcio. E levantamento recente, de abrangência nacional, da Faculdade de Saúde Pública da USP, confirmou a reduzida ingestão do mineral no país: 700mg, quase metade das necessidades diárias.

Argumentos contra o leite são antigos. O humano adulto não foi programado para digerir este alimento. Isto só ocorreu com adaptações da espécie.

Um estudo britânico na revista “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” comprovou que o homem neolítico tinha deficiência do gene da enzima da lactase. Ela quebra as moléculas de lactose (açúcar natural do leite) na digestão.

Sem o gene nossos ancestrais sofriam de intolerância.

A pesquisa foi feita em esqueletos de adultos que viveram na Europa entre 5.480 a 5 mil a.C.

A Humanidade surgiu na África há 200 mil anos e ficou restrita a este continente por dois terços de sua história evolucionária, só tendo saído de lá há 60 mil anos, lembra o professor Sérgio Danilo Pena, da UFMG e do GENE — Núcleo de Genética Médica.

Durante esse período, os humanos eram intolerantes à lactose após o desmame.

Com a domesticação do gado na Europa nos últimos sete a dez mil anos, a capacidade de digerir lactose passou a ser significativa, seletiva, porque o leite era fonte de calorias, proteína e cálcio.

Hoje não temos mais limitações de aporte de calorias e proteínas, a não ser em populações carentes.

— Com abundância de outras fontes de nutrientes, o leite integral perde importância porque contém de 3% a 4% de gorduras animais que aumentam o colesterol. Por outro lado, o desnatado é boa fonte de cálcio para adultos — diz.

A evolução não acabou de vez com a intolerância ao leite, incômodo que afeta metade dos adultos. Hoje já existem até produtos sem lactose.

Outra queixa é a alergia causada pela principal proteína do leite (a caseína), mal que atinge até 5% das crianças. E não são os problemas mais graves.

Segundo o Comitê para Educação de Laticínios, o leite destrói células. Eles até criaram o site www.notmilk.com para alertar os consumidores.

Porém, estudos sobre malefícios do leite precisam de mais análises.

Assim como são inconclusivos dados sugerindo que o alimento reduz o risco de síndrome metabólica (diabetes, aumento de gorduras no sangue e hipertensão). A hipótese foi apontada em artigo na “Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health”. Médicos do Brigham and Women’s Hospital também defendem o leite, e afirmam que meio litro por dia reduz em 12% o risco de câncer de intestino, graças ao efeito protetor do cálcio.

Saiba mais sobre o alimento

NUTRIENTES: O leite é uma das melhores fontes de cálcio e energia, contém proteínas de alto valor biológico e vitaminas lipossolúveis como a D (essencial para a absorção do cálcio) e A (auxilia no crescimento e desenvolvimento ósseo, manutenção da visão normal e na imunidade), e hidrossolúveis, como a B1 e B2 (importantes para a integridade do sistema nervoso e uso de proteínas, gorduras e carboidratos). O leite integral contém 3,5g de gordura em 100ml; o semidesnatado contém até 2g de gordura e o desnatado até 0,5g. Adultos devem optar por desnatados. Para gestantes e crianças recomendase o leite integral, que possui maior quantidade de vitaminas A, D, E e K.

PROTEÇÃO CONTRA DOENÇAS: A professora Mariana Danelon diz que alguns estudos, na maioria epidemiológicos (avaliam a relação entre os hábitos alimentares e a incidência de doenças na população), associam o consumo de leite à redução de doenças crônicas, como hipertensão, diabetes, câncer no intestino e obesidade. Mas o mecanismo pelo qual o leite propiciaria esses benefícios ainda não está totalmente esclarecido.
A seqüência de aminoácidos das proteínas do leite, a cadeia de ácidos graxos poliinsaturados (presentes no leite materno), as propriedades das proteínas do soro do leite e o cálcio teriam ação contra as doenças crônicas.

Hillary Clinton campaigns at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on election day, May 6, 2008. She received an endorsement there from driver Sarah Fisher. (Linda Davidson / The Washington Post)

By Dan Balz – Washington post

If Hillary Clinton hopes to prove she should be the Democratic nominee, today is the day to show it.

The political environment heading into Tuesday’s primaries in Indiana and North Carolina has been ideal from Clinton’s perspective. Barack Obama has been on the defensive over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the issue terrain is better than she could ask for.

Indiana is as close to a toss-up state as the Democrats have seen in a long time, giving Clinton the chance to demonstrate superiority in a head-to-head competition. North Carolina seemingly offers her an opportunity to embarrass Obama — if in no other way than by holding down his expected victory margin — in what should be solid territory for him.

Obama spent last week trying to shake the Rev. Jeremiah Wright off his back. His decision to break with his former pastor won applause from some Democrats and earned him superdelegate support. But Obama strategists know the issue has not gone away. As one Republican put it Monday, when you spend the first 20 minutes of “Meet The Press” answering questions about your pastor, you know you’ve still got a problem.

Economic issues, the staple of Clintonian politics, are at the center of the campaign now. Whenever Iraq dominated the debate, Clinton was on the defensive because of her vote to authorize the war. But Iraq, while important, has receded. Rising gasoline prices, the home foreclosure crisis, fears of job losses and recession, and, as ever, the cost and availability of health care, play to her inherent strengths as a champion of the middle class.

Obama has been dogged with question: Why didn’t he break with Wright sooner? Why can’t he win working-class white voters? Why does Clinton beat him in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania when he is heavily outspending her? The concentration on his problems has turned Indiana and North Carolina into tests he must pass — or face more questions about whether his once high-flying campaign has been permanently brought back to ground.

Clinton has largely escaped intensive scrutiny. Not, of course, on her gas tax holiday proposal. Economists and Obama have roundly criticized that idea, but to her apparent relish. Other ideas she has thrown out — putting OPEC in the dock at the World Trade Organization, for one — have not been well scrubbed. That is what happens when (a) you have won recent contests and (b) your chances of becoming the nominee are seen as remote.

As part of Post’s the “8 Questions” project that runs in Tuesday’s newspaper, I asked a group of strategists a ninth question: Has the emergence of the economy as the dominant issue in the election made Clinton a stronger general election candidate than Obama? Or do her high negatives make Obama the party’s better choice?

More of the respondents said her high negatives remained such a problem that Obama was likely the stronger general election nominee, despite the shift in the issue terrain.

Those who said yes cited the Clintons’ long history on the economy. “What’s left of the Clinton brand remains economic common sense,” wrote one Democrat. “Economy has allowed HRC to shine with her depth of knowledge and feel for the economy [and] has highlighted Obama’s weakness,” wrote a pro-Clinton Democrat.

But they were in the minority. Bill Carrick, who was a top strategist in Dick Gephardt’s 2004 campaign, which was heavily focused on the economy, said Obama is still the party’s better choice. “Senator Clinton has adjusted to the ascendancy of economic issues with great skill but her negatives have gone even higher as the campaign has become nastier,” he wrote. “Obama is still better positioned for the general election.”

“The nominee has to be able to say, ‘John McCain supports all of George Bush’s economic policies. I’m going to make the economy work for the middle class again,’” wrote Steve Murphy, another ex-Gephardt adviser who was part of Bill Richardson’s campaign team this year. “I think Obama can handle that.”

Can Clinton overcome those perceptions, which may be a major obstacle for superdelegates? One Democratic strategist offered this thought on Monday. “If she performs higher than expected [in areas where her negatives are high], it might suggest that folks are starting to believe she is the better general election candidate and are willing to put aside their negative assumptions about her.”

That makes Indiana and North Carolina so important to Clinton. She needs strong performances — victory in Indiana and a close finish in North Carolina — to prompt a reappraisal of her general election prospects by the remaining uncommitted superdelegates.

After Tuesday, there will be no real opportunity for her to change the race. The remaining states offer predictable outcomes and the delegate math remains all in Obama’s favor. Whether she will risk a bloody rules or credentials fight over Michigan and Florida is not clear right now, but as one Democrat put it, Clinton probably doesn’t have the time to overtake Obama and still unify the party.

Still, the past week has played to her advantage and she has campaigned as if she knows it. A slow grind to the final primaries on June 3 is not in her interest. If she cannot capitalize in Indiana and North Carolina, there’s little reason to think she will be given another opportunity like this during the rest of the campaign to demonstrate why she should be the nominee. That’s why May 6 long has been circled on calendars as so significant.

The Brazilian Government launched on Tuesday, 29/04, the 1st National Conference for Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals (LGBT). The event, the first in the world to be convened by a government, is a result of demands made by civil society and the Brazilian government’s support of LGBT people’s rights. The Conference will be held from June 5th to 8th in Brasília (DF), having as its theme “Human rights and public policies: the way forward for guaranteeing the citizenship of Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals”.

During the conference public policies will be defined for this segment of the population and a National Plan for the Promotion of LGBT Citizenship and Human Rights will also be prepared. An evaluation will also be made of the Brazil Without Homophobia programme to combat violence and discrimination against the LGBT population, launched by the federal government in 2004. The programme of the 1st National LGBT Conference is available at www.conferencianacionalglbt.com.br .

The holding of the Conference coincides with the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and reaffirms the federal government’s commitment to the issue of LGBT human rights. Marta Suplicy, Tourism Minister and a longstanding supporter of LGBT rights, commemorated the initiative. “At long last, after so many years, we are finally able to hold this Conference. It’s a giant’s stride forward for Brazil”.

For the Justice Minister, Tarso Genro, the LGBT Conference is a demonstration of respect for the human condition. “A human rights agenda that does not contemplate this issue is incomplete”. Also present at the ceremony to launch the Conference were the Minister of the Special Department for Human Rights, Paulo Vannuchi; Senator Fátima Cleide, of the Parliamentary Front for LGBT Citizenship; the Minister of the Department for Racial Equality Policies, Edson Santos; the Minister of the Special Department for Women’s Policies, Nilcéa Freire, and the directors of the Ministry of Health’s National STD and AIDS Programme, Mariângela Simão and Eduardo Barbosa.

All the Brazilian LGBT networks were also represented at the launch ceremony: ABGLT (Brazilian Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Association); ANTRA (National Articulation of Trans Persons); National Collective of Transsexuals; Brazilian Articulation of Lesbians; LGBT Afro Network; Brazilian League of Lesbians; ABRAGAY; Grupo E-Jovem (youth).

The Conference was convened by Decree issued by Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and published in the Official Federal Gazette on November 29th 2007. Approximately 700 delegates are expected to take part in the Conference, with 60% civil society participation and 40% governmental participation. The participation of a further 300 observers is also expected. 16 ministries have collaborated with the process of drafting the base-text document on public policies to be discussed during the event and subsequently implemented.

The base-text is available at http://www.conferencianacionalglbt.com.br/view/templates/arquivos/Texto_Base%20Ing.pdf
Prior to the National Conference, conferences are currently being held in Brazil’s 27 states, convened by the state governors, in order to develop complementary proposals for the national policy document, define state-level policies and elect the delegates to the National Conference. More than 100 conferences have also been held at municipal level.

According to Toni Reis, president of the Brazilian Gay, Lesbian and Trans Association (ABGLT), “the Conference will be an unprecedented opportunity for discussion not only within the LGBT movement, but principally with the government so that public policies for LGBT will be put into effect by all areas of the government. It will also pave the way towards the Brazilian Congress taking a more positive stance towards outstanding LGBT issues, such as the approval of the proposed laws to penalize homophobic discrimination and legalize same sex civil union.”

Further information:
Toni Reis – President of ABGLT (Brazilian Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Association):
presidencia@abglt.org.br ; + 55 41 3232 9829 / +55 41 3222 3999 / +55 41 9602 8906 / +55 61 8181 2196.

Léo Mendes – ABGLT Communications Secretary: liorcino@yahoo.com.br ; +55 62 8405 2405

Press Office – 1st National LGBT Conference – President of the Republic’s Office Special Department for Human Rights: www.conferencianacionalglbt.com.br ; Tel: +55 61 3429 3986

Source: ABGLT

Posted by ”Entre Aspas”

From Economist.com

Forty years after the murder of Martin Luther King, is America any closer to realising his dreams?

MARTIN LUTHER KING dreamed of a day when his children would be judged not by skin colour but by character. Black America has moved far since his murder on April 4th 1968, at least on the political front. Four decades ago racists blew up churches and beat civil-rights marchers. Today, at least at the top, black America has found its voice: a black woman, Condoleezza Rice, is secretary of state, and a black man, Barack Obama, may capture the presidency in November.

In social and economic matters across the black population as a whole, however, blacks are still much worse off than whites. They endure far greater rates of poverty, crime and other social ills. Efforts to tackle these problems have produced dismal results, as opposing groups lay claim to King’s dream of colour-blindness.

Schooling shows some of the most intractable difficulties. Last year the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional plans by two school districts to assign students, according to race, to various schools (in an effort to balance the mix of races in classrooms). The court narrowly declared that the plans were against the constitution’s promise of equality before the law.

Yet few tools exist to tackle de facto educational resegregation. Aggressive federal intervention in the 1960s got black and white pupils to mix more. But by the 1980s white parents and conservative jurists had turned against controversial programmes such as the bussing of students to distant schools. Today blacks are again increasingly concentrated, if not legally segregated, into failing schools. Some 73% of black children study where over half the students are non-white, and 38% attend “intensely segregated” schools (over 90% non-white). Those schools get less funding and have less qualified teachers than average. In turn fewer blacks finish their studies. The most hopeful estimate—a 2006 report by the Economic Policy Institute—suggests that 74% of black students graduate. That is still ten percentage points below whites.

Another difficulty on the road to King’s colour-blind America concerns higher education. In 2006, the average white student scored 1063, out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which is widely used for university admissions. The average black score was just 863. A 200-point gap usually means the difference between admission to an excellent university and a decent one, or between a decent one and a mediocre one.

The traditional remedy was “affirmative action”: various measures by universities to ensure higher rates of black enrolment. Here, too, jurisprudence has pushed back, most notably in a 2003 Supreme Court ruling, Gratz v Bollinger. The court found that universities may seek “diversity” in admissions, but the mechanistic system used by the University of Michigan, which gave points to students merely for being black, was unconstitutional. A simultaneous ruling on Michigan’s law-school admissions programme provided some ambiguity, when the court said that an “individualised, holistic” review of each application could consider race as a factor. Voters in Michigan responded by approving a 2006 ballot measure that banned affirmative action. The issue may now arise in the presidential campaign. A prominent (and black) opponent of affirmative action, Ward Connerly, is trying to get an initiative on the ballots of five states that would ban public institutions from considering race, sex or ethnicity when, for example, hiring staff.

Affirmative action—and other efforts—have certainly failed to rid America of sharp inequalities. Past oppression probably counts for much of the persistence of black poverty: in 1967, according to the census, the average black person had an income that was just 54% of the average white one. By 2005 the gap had only closed to 64%. And lingering prejudice makes life harder for many black job applicants. Social experiments have repeatedly shown that employers who are offered two otherwise identical résumés prefer one that carries a typically white name to one with a typically black name. Increasingly it is poorer and less educated black Americans who use “typically black” names, according to research by Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago.

With educational and economic opportunities skewed, no wonder that health and welfare indicators are too: the Justice Department estimates that one in three black men will go to jail at some point. An astounding 68% of blacks are overweight or obese, compared with (a still high) 58% of whites. Black people get cancer slightly more often than whites (despite smoking the same amount), and are more than twice as likely to be shot dead. Overall, black lives are five years shorter than white ones.

King is widely remembered as an inspirational speaker and moral leader. But John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute concludes that his more mundane efforts may end up mattering as much: “I wish more people thought about the long, hard work he did behind the scenes on policy and negotiation.” Rows continue over the relative merits of race-blind policies and the need to level out America’s inequalities. Four decades after King’s death much remains to be done.

Despite the global interest in the rise of China, no one is paying much attention to its ideas and who produces them. Yet China has a surprisingly lively intellectual class whose ideas may prove a serious challenge to western liberal hegemony

Mark Leonard is the executive director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. His book What Does China Think? has just been published by 4th Estate

I will never forget my first visit, in 2003, to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing. I was welcomed by Wang Luolin, the academy’s vice-president, whose grandfather had translated Marx’s Das Kapital into Chinese, and Huang Ping, a former Red Guard. Sitting in oversized armchairs, we sipped ceremonial tea and introduced ourselves. Wang Luolin nodded politely and smiled, then told me that his academy had 50 research centres covering 260 disciplines with 4,000 full-time researchers.

As he said this, I could feel myself shrink into the seams of my vast chair: Britain’s entire think tank community is numbered in the hundreds, Europe’s in the low thousands; even the think-tank heaven of the US cannot have more than 10,000. But here in China, a single institution—and there are another dozen or so think tanks in Beijing alone—had 4,000 researchers. Admittedly, the people at CASS think that many of the researchers are not up to scratch, but the raw figures were enough.

(mais…)

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The United States spends far more on health care per person than any other nation. Yet we have lower life expectancy than most other rich countries. Furthermore, every other advanced country provides all its citizens with health insurance; only in America is a large fraction of the population uninsured or underinsured.

You might think that these facts would make the case for major reform of America’s health care system — reform that would involve, among other things, learning from other countries’ experience — irrefutable. Instead, however, apologists for the status quo offer a barrage of excuses for our system’s miserable performance.

So I thought it would be useful to offer a catalog of the most commonly heard apologies for American health care, and the reasons they won’t wash.

Excuse No. 1: No insurance, no problem.

“I mean, people have access to health care in America,” said President Bush a few months ago. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.” He was widely mocked for his cluelessness, yet many apologists for the health care system in the United States seem almost equally clueless.

We’re told, for example, that there really aren’t that many uninsured American citizens, because some of the uninsured are illegal immigrants, while some of the rest are actually entitled to Medicaid. This misses the point that the 47 million people in this country without insurance are an ever-changing group, so that the experience of being without insurance extends to a much broader group — in fact, more than one in every three people in America under the age of 65 was uninsured at some point in 2006 or 2007.

Oh, and finding out that you’re covered by Medicaid when you show up at an emergency room isn’t at all the same thing as receiving regular medical care.

Beyond that, a large fraction of the population — about one in four nonelderly Americans, according to a Consumer Reports survey — is underinsured, with “coverage so meager they often postponed medical care because of costs.”

So, yes, lack of insurance is a very big problem, a problem that reaches deep into the middle class.

Excuse No. 2: It’s the cheeseburgers.

Americans don’t have a bad health system, say the apologists, they just have bad habits. Overeating and teenage sex, not the huge overhead of America’s private health insurance companies — the United States spends almost six times as much on health care administration as other advanced countries — are the source of our problems.

There’s a grain of truth to this claim: Bad habits may partially explain America’s low life expectancy. But the big question isn’t why we have lower life expectancy than Britain, Canada or France, it’s why we spend far more on health care without getting better results. And lifestyle isn’t the explanation: the most definitive estimates, such as those of the McKinsey Global Institute, say that diseases that are associated with obesity and other lifestyle-related problems play, at most, a minor role in high U.S. health care costs.

Excuse No. 3: 2007 is better than 1950.

This is an argument that baffles me, but you hear it all the time. When you point out that America spends far more on health care than other countries, but gets worse results, the apologists reply: “Sure, we spend a lot of money on health care, but medical care is a lot better than it was in 1950, so it’s money well spent.” Huh?

It’s as if you went to a store to buy a DVD player, and the salesman told you not to worry about the fact that his prices are twice those of his competitors — after all, the machines on offer at his store are a lot better than they were five years ago. It is, in other words, an argument that makes no sense at all, yet respectable economists make it with a straight face.

Excuse No. 4: Socialized medicine! Socialized medicine!

Rudy Giuliani’s fake numbers on prostate cancer — which, by the way, he still refuses to admit were wrong — were the latest entry in a long, dishonorable tradition of peddling scare stories about the evils of “government run” health care.

The reality is that the best foreign health care systems, especially those of France and Germany, do as well or better than the U.S. system on every dimension, while costing far less money.

But the best way to counter scare talk about socialized medicine, aside from swatting down falsehoods — would journalists please stop saying that Rudy’s claims, which are just wrong, are “in dispute”? — may be to point out that every American 65 and older is covered by a government health insurance program called Medicare. And Americans like that program very much, thank you.

So, now you know how to answer the false claims you’ll hear about health care. And believe me, you’re going to hear them again, and again, and again.