Cook more at home to reduce ultra-processed food intake, say cardiologist groups
Want to reduce your intake of ultra-processed food? If so, cook at home more often, don’t eat late at night and chew your food more slowly.Those are among some of the tips doctors have offered to help people limit the amount of UPF they consume given the acute and growing danger it poses to human health worldwide.Their recommendations also include eating plain rather than flavoured or sweetened yoghurt, replacing sugary drinks with water and reading the nutrition label and list of ingredients on any tin, packet or sachet of food before buying anything.Those are some of the things specialist heart doctors are being urged to advise patients to do if they already have heart disease or are at risk of developing it.An estimated 8 million people in the UK are estimated to have been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease, which claims about 170,000 lives annually and is one of the country’s biggest killers.
That means they are at risk of having, or have already suffered, a heart attack or stroke or have a condition such as atrial fibrillation.The advice is outlined in a new “clinical consensus statement” on how to tackle UPF drawn up by the European Society of Cardiology and European Association of Preventive Cardiology.They have set out steps they think cardiologists should take when talking to patients about their health.For example, they should “encourage patients to cook at home more frequently”, “discuss with patients the potential benefits of avoiding late eating” and “advise patients to prefer high-fibre, minimally processed foods and practice slower, mindful eating to enhance satiety and reduce overeating of UPFs”, according to the paper, published in the European Heart Journal on Thursday.Cardiologists should start to include discussion of UPF when talking to patients.
They should routinely ask how much UPF they consume and then “apply UPF counselling in outpatient clinics and during routine lifestyle assessment, particularly in preventive cardiology”,Showing patients images of UPF foods for sale in shops to remind them which products they are is better than relying on merely verbal explanations of such foods, which are of little or no nutritional value, the statement adds,“Doctors should be having much more practical conversations with heart patients about the food they eat every day,In simple terms, that means encouraging people to cook more at home where they can, although this can often be difficult, choose more fresh or minimally processed foods, and cut back on products such as sugary drinks, packaged snacks, processed meats, ready meals and takeaways that are often high in salt, sugar and unhealthy fats,” said Dr Kawther Hashem, a senior lecturer in public health nutrition at Queen Mary University of London and head of research and impact at Action on Salt and Sugar,Doctors should advise people with existing heart problems to eat less salt in particular, because it raises blood pressure, a leading cause of heart disease, stroke and kidney disease, she added.
“For people with heart problems, reducing salt is especially important because it helps lower blood pressure, one of the biggest risk factors for heart disease, stroke and kidney disease.Cutting sugary foods and drinks can also help reduce excess calorie intake and the risk of weight gain and type 2 diabetes.”Prof Luigina Guasti, a co-author of the paper, said: “Evidence shows that people who cook more meals at home tend to have better overall diet quality and eat less ultra-processed food.Even small and gradual increases in home-prepared meals can improve health over time.”Consuming fewer sugary drinks, packaged snacks and processed meats – which are common types of UPFs – would be “a good first step towards a healthier diet overall”, she added.
The paper is based on a review of the existing evidence about UPF’s risks to health.It confirmed the known danger that eating such foods too often increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease and dying from cardiovascular disease.Tracy Parker, a senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, said that individuals could only achieve so much on their own in a quest to consume less UPF and that the government should do more to create a healthier food environment.
‘Being human helps’: despite rise of AI is there still hope for Europe’s translators?
In February 2022, while he was plugging away at rendering the US writer Dana Spiotta’s novel Wayward into French, the literary translator Yoann Gentric decided he needed a bit of light relief. He would test whether AI could put him out of work.Gentric had been grappling with a short non-verbal sentence that described the book’s protagonist’s feelings upon opening a window: “Bright, sharp night air, bracing.” He put the prompt into DeepL, a neural-network-powered machine translation engine that regularly outperforms Google Translate in accuracy assessments.The proposed translation was reassuring, with his job security in mind: L’air de la nuit, vif et vif, était vivifiant (The night air, lively and lively, was enlivening
UK schools should remove pupils’ online photos as AI blackmail threat grows, say experts
UK schools should remove pictures of pupils’ faces from their websites and social media accounts because blackmailers are using them to create sexually explicit images, experts have said.Child safety experts and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) warn that criminals are using AI to manipulate photos of children and then demand cash not to publish them.They are recommending educational institutions remove identifiable pictures of children from their websites and social media accounts – or consider not using them at all.The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said an unnamed UK secondary school had recently been subjected to a blackmail attempt after criminals used the institution’s website or social media accounts to take photos of schoolchildren and then, using AI tools, turned them into child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The blackmailers sent the images to the school and threatened to publish them online if they did not receive money
Meta sues Ofcom over fines regime for breaches of Online Safety Act
Meta has launched a legal challenge against the UK’s media regulator over the fees and fines regime it is enforcing under landmark digital safety legislation.The Facebook and Instagram owner is claiming that Ofcom’s methodology for calculating the charges is flawed and should not be based on a company’s global revenue. Breaches of the Online Safety Act can be punished by fines of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue (QWR) or £18m – whichever is higher.In the case of Meta, which reported revenues of $201bn last year, Ofcom could in theory impose a fine of $20bn for breaches. Under regulations introduced in September, Ofcom’s fees will also be based on a proportion of an organisation’s QWR and apply to businesses that made more than £250m of this revenue a year
‘No one has done this in the wild’: study observes AI replicate itself
It’s the stuff of science fiction cinema, or particularly breathless AI company blogposts: new research finds recent AI systems can independently copy themselves on to other computers.In the doom scenario, this means that when the superintelligent AI goes rogue, it will escape shutdown by seeding itself across the world wide web, lurking outside the reach of frantic IT professionals and continuing to plot world domination or paving over the world with solar panels.“We’re rapidly approaching the point where no one would be able to shut down a rogue AI, because it would be able to self-exfiltrate its weights and copy itself to thousands of computers around the world,” said Jeffrey Ladish, the director of Palisade research, a Berkeley-based organisation which did the study.The study is one more entry in a growing catalogue of unsettling AI capabilities revealed in the past months. In March, researchers at Alibaba claimed to have caught a system they developed – Rome – tunnelling out of its environment to an external system in order to mine crypto
Europe’s AI translation industry told it risks reputation by partnering with US firms
AI companies in Europe risk losing their world-leading status in the field of machine translation, industry figures have said, after the decision by one of the continent’s leading startups to partner with Amazon’s cloud computing division provoked alarm.While businesses in the EU have generally lagged behind the US and China in AI adoption, a small group of European companies have cornered the global market for high-quality machine translations for professional use.The biggest success story is Cologne-headquartered DeepL, an online translator that regularly outperforms Google Translate in accuracy assessments. Used by governments, courts and half of the Fortune 500 list of highest-earning US companies, last year it was reported to have recorded revenues of $185.2m
Shivon Zilis, mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, testifies in OpenAI trial
Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive and the mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, took the stand on Wednesday as one of the most highly anticipated witnesses in Musk’s case against OpenAI. The ChatGPT maker has argued that, while Zilis worked with OpenAI from 2016 to 2023, she was also involved in a secret relationship with Musk, acting as an informant for him.Musk’s case against OpenAI alleges that the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, and president, Greg Brockman, co-founders of the company with Musk, broke a founding agreement when they restructured it from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise. The Tesla CEO accuses Altman and Brockman of unjustly enriching themselves and wants both removed from their positions at the startup, one of the most valuable in the world. He is also seeking the undoing of the for-profit restructuring and $134bn in damages to be redistributed to OpenAI’s non-profit arm
Great Western Railway to be nationalised in December
US added 115,000 jobs in April in surprise gain amid Iran war uncertainty
Iran war costs Toyota £3bn as prices of materials soar and sales fall
British Airways fares to rise in attempt to offset £1.7bn fuel cost hit
GameStop CEO opens eBay storefront to pay for potential eBay acquisition
Gas-fired power still looks a safe bet for Centrica in the renewables era