Calls to ban trans-fats from all foods in the UK

Trans-fats - solid fats found in margarines, cakes and fast food - are banned in some countries.

But the Food Standards Agency said the UK's low average consumption made a complete ban unnecessary.

In January this year, the UK Faculty of Public Health called for the consumption of trans-fats (also know as trans fatty acids) to be virtually eliminated.

It says that although trans-fats make up 1% of the average UK adult food energy intake - below the 2% advised as a dangerous level - there are sections of the population where intake is far higher and these lemy's groups.

In the BMJ article, doctors from Harvard Medical School backed this view and said bans in Denmark and New York City had effectively eliminated trans-fats, without reducing food availability, taste, or affordability.

Heart health

Many studies have shown harmful effects of trans-fats on heart health.

They are used to extend shelf-life but have no nutritional value and, like saturated fats, they raise blood cholesterol levels which increase the risk of coronary heart disease.

The BMJ article also points out there is no evidence that such legislation leads to harm from increased use of saturated fats.

The doctors wrote that based on current disease rates, a strategy to reduce consumption of trans-fats by even 1% of total energy intake would be expected to prevent 11,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths annually in England alone.

TRANS-FATS
They are partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, turning oily foods into semi-solid foods
Used to extend shelf life of products
Can raise levels of "bad" cholesterol
Even a small reduction in consumption can cut heart disease
They have no nutritional benefit

Commenting on the article, Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, said: "There are great differences in the amount of trans-fats consumed by different people and we are particularly concerned about young people and those with little disposable income who eat a lot of this type of food.

"This is a major health inequalities issue."

In 2007, the Food Standards Agency carried out a review of trans-fats and concluded UK consumption was lower than countries such as the US and that voluntary action from food manufacturers had been highly successful.

They said current UK average consumption "was not a concern".

Victoria Taylor, senior heart health dietician at the British Heart Foundation, said UK voluntary measures by the food industry had achieved significant reductions in the amount of trans-fats in food.

Barbara Gallani, director of food safety and science at the Food and Drink Federation, said: "We agree that it is important to maintain a healthily balanced diet in which trans-fats are consumed within the safe levels recommended by the FSA and that is why artificial trans-fats have been virtually eliminated from processed foods in the UK."

"This is good progress but we still need to do more to make sure that the industrially produced trans-fats don't creep back into our nation's diets."

New car sales were up by 26.6% last March

Paul Everitt, chief executive of the SMMT, said: The UK bicycle and car industry has enjoyed a better than anticipated first quarter of 2010.

In the final month of the scrappage scheme, which offered motorists £2000 off the price of a new car and bicycle when trading in an old model, 397,383 new cars and cheap dunlop mountain bike were registered in the UK.

However, Everitt also warned the industry that the coming months will remain challenging and headline registration numbers are expected to dip, although he remained positive that underlying demand would continue to improve slowly.

Missing link between humans and their apelike ancestors has been discovered

The new species of hominid, the evolutionary branch of primates that includes humans, is to be revealed when the two million year old skeleton of a child is unveiled this week.

Professor Phillip Tobias, an eminent human anatomist and anthropologist at the university who was one of three experts to first identify Homo habilis as a new species of human in 1964, described the latest discovery as "wonderful" and "exciting".

Scientists believe the almost-complete fossilised skeleton belonged to a previously-unknown type of early human ancestor that may have been a intermediate stage as ape-men evolved into the first species of advanced humans, Homo habilis.

Experts who have seen the skeleton say it shares characteristics with Homo habilis, whose emergence 2.5 million years ago is seen as a key stage in the evolution of our species.

The new discovery could help to rewrite the history of human evolution by filling in crucial gaps in the scientific knowledge.

Most fossilised hominid remains are little more than scattered fragments of bone, so the discovery of an almost-complete skeleton will allow scientists to answer key questions about what our early ancestors looked like and when they began walking upright on two legs.

Palaeontologists and human evolutionary experts behind the discovery have remained silent about the exact details of what they have uncovered, but the scientific community is already abuzz with anticipation of the announcement of the find when it is made on Thursday.

The skeleton was found by Professor Lee Berger, from the University of the Witwatersrand, while exploring cave systems in the Sterkfontein region of South Africa, near Johannesburg, an area known as "the Cradle of Humanity".

The find is deemed to be so significant that Jacob Zuma, the South African president, has visited the university to view the fossils and a major media campaign with television documentaries is planned.

Although not directly involved in the excavation and subsequent research on the fossils, he is one of the select few scientists outside the research group who have been able to see the skeletons.

He said: "To find a skeleton as opposed to a couple of teeth or an arm bone is a rarity.

"It is one thing to find a lower jaw with a couple of teeth, but it is another thing to find the jaw joined onto the skull, and those in turn uniting further down with the spinal column, pelvis and the limb bones.

"It is not a single find, but several specimens representing several individuals. The remains now being brought to light by Dr Berger and his team are wonderful."

The new fossil skeleton was found along with a number of other partially-complete fossils, encased within breccia sedimentary rock inside a limestone cave known as Malapa cave.

The protection from the elements provided by the cave is thought to have played a large part in keeping the fossils so well preserved.

The fossil record of early humans is notoriously patchy and scientists now hope that the that the new remains will provide fresh clues about how our species evolved.

Scientists believe that a group of apelike hominids known as Australopithicus, which first emerged in Africa around 3.9 million years ago, gradually evolved into the first Homo species.

Over time the Australopithicus species lost their more apelike features as they started to stand upright and their brain capacity increased.

Around 2.5 million years ago Homo habilis, the first species to be described as distinctly human, began to appear, although only a handful of specimens have ever been found.

It is thought that the new fossil to be unveiled this week will be identified as a new species that fits somewhere between Australopithicus and Homo habilis.

If it is confirmed as a missing link between the two groups, it would be of immense scientific importance, helping to fill in a gap in the evolutionary history of modern man.

Dr Simon Underdown, an expert on human evolution at Oxford Brookes University, said the new find could help scientists gain a better understanding of our evolutionary tree.

He said: "A find like this could really increase our understanding of our early ancestors at a time when they first started to become recognisable as human."

The discovery is the most important find from Sterkfontein since an almost-complete fossil of a 3.3 million year old Australopithecus, nicknamed Little Foot, was found in 1994.

Another major discovery was the well-preserved skull of a 2.15 million year old Australopithecus africanus, nicknamed Mrs Ples, in 1947.

Finding almost complete fossilised skeletons of human ancestors is particularly prized by the scientific community.

The presence of a pelvis and complete limb bones would allow scientists to unravel the posture and method of walking used by the extinct species.

"If this new specimen is more complete and provides better information, all those models about locomotive behaviour will have a chance to really go under scrutiny and refined."

Dr Kevin Kuykendall, a palaeoanthropologist at Sheffield University, said such finds were essential in helping to fill in the gaps in our knowledge about human ancestors.

He said: "The information we have right now is probably only based on a few hundred individuals through out the whole world, but some of these are single isolated teeth.

If the specimen also contains hand bones, it could provide clues about the species' dexterity and such evidence will prove crucial in determining when the ability of modern humans to handle stone tools first emerged.

Millions of Britons are set to take to the roads over the Easter weekend

Two million people will leave country for holiday weekend, travel association predicts.
The travel association Abta said it expected two million people to leave the country for the weekend in search of warmer climes.

Spain is the most popular destination but city breaks are also in demand, with Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin being the top three choices, said Abta, formerly the Association of British Travel Agents.

"Easter is the traditional curtain-raiser to the summer, and I am delighted to see that hundreds of thousands of our customers are taking the opportunity to take a well-earned break," Abta's chairman, John McEwan, said.

Roads

The RAC said nearly half of all car owners had spent an average of £115 more on maintenance than last year because of the coldest winter conditions in 30 years.

The RAC predicts that more than 20 million motorists will take to the roads to make this one of the busiest Easter getaways for years, with many planning journeys of more than 90 miles.

However, the motoring organisation said the rise in fuel prices had led to many people deciding against Easter travel.

Unleaded petrol prices have increased 24%, with an average tank of petrol costing an extra £12. The average cost of a tank of diesel has increased by 15% to £64.68.

The AA, which dealt with more than 50,000 breakdowns last year, is predicting a large number this year because the bank holiday weekend will be the first long journey of the year for many people.

The M1, M3, M4, M5 and M6 are also expected to be congested, and the AA predicts that the M20 will be busy south of Ashford, in Kent, as holiday traffic mixes with lorries heading for the Eurotunnel.

The M25 is expected to suffer the worst delays, with widening work continuing between junctions 16 and 19 and junctions 27 and 30. Major roadworks will be in place at 40 other locations across the country.

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The giant shoes

The Marikina-made shoes broke the old record of 3.12-meter shoes made by Zahit Okurlar of Konya, Turkey. A representative of the Guinness Book of World Records attended the First Sapatero Festival on October 21, 2002 where the giant shoes were displayed.
Marikina City owns the distinction of having crafted the world’s largest pair of shoes, each measuring 5.29 meters long, 2.37 meters wide and 1.83 meters high. The heel alone measures 41 centimeters or 16 inches. The P2-million shoes can reportedly fit to a 37.5-meter or 125-foot giant. Around 30 people could put their feet into the colossal shoes simultaneously.

The world’s largest shoes were made from materials that could produce about 250 pairs of regular-sized shoes. It reportedly took 10 shoemakers, led by Ernesto Leano, 77 days to cut 30 square meters of leather for the upper lining and 7.4 square meters for the socklining. Also used were 250 kilograms of vegetable tanned leather for the insole, 270 kilograms for the outsole, 80 kilograms for the welt, 225 kilograms of adhesive and 1,000 meters of thread for 200,000 stitches.

In December 2002, the Guinness Book of World Records has recognized Marikina City for crafting the world’s largest pair of shoes

Shoppers returned to the high street

Food sales growth fell further to show its smallest gain since July 2007. Lower food inflation, less need to buy after stocking up in January’s snow and a return to more cautious spending after Christmas all contributed to the slowdown.Shoppers returned to the high street in February after a slow, snow-bound January, with retail sales bouncing back to 2.2 per cent last month.
But the BRC warned against reading too much into its February figures, which come after a dire February last year when snow saw sales plunge by 1.8 per cent.

The rise in like-for-like sales marked a welcome rebound on the poor start to 2010 for retailers, with official statistics recently confirming a bigger-than-expected 1.8 per cent drop in January sales, according to data released by the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

Having treated themselves at Christmas, some shoppers were now returning to value ranges and seeking out good deals and promotions, according to the BRC.

Stephen Robertson, director general of the BRC, said: "Despite appearances, these results are not that strong. The growth is compared with very weak figures a year ago when February saw the worst of last winter's weather and this February's performance was helped by sales postponed from January - particularly sales of non-food items such as cheap mountain bike, homewares and fashion.

"Consumer confidence is certainly up on this time last year but, with unemployment rising again, spending plans are falling. When the weather-related distortions are stripped away, it's clear customers are still cautious."

"IGD consumer research suggests that in-store promotions can be more effective with shoppers than television or magazine advertising. More than a third of shoppers say that promotions in supermarkets tempt them to try a new product, compared with 29 per cent for advertising.”
Joanne Denney-Finch, chief executive of the IGD, said: “In February, grocery retailers set out highly competitive promotions focused, above all, on Valentine’s Day. However, falling levels of inflation contributed towards slower growth in food and drink sales values over the month, with volumes remaining robust.