US tosses Pyramid,lays down Plate The pyramid guide to healthy eating that many Americans grew up with has been scrapped,and in its place the Obama administration is serving a dinner plate icon sliced up by food groups. The new guide,MyPlate,encourages Americans to make half of their meals fruit and vegetables as part of a balanced diet. When it comes to eating,whats more useful than a plate? Whats more simple than a plate? first lady Michelle Obama said on Thursday at the unveiling at the Department of Agriculture. This is a quick,simple reminder for all of us to be more mindful of the foods that were eating, she said. The well-known pyramid which was first introduced in 1992 and stacked foods by suggested number of servings was widely criticized. Nutritionists said it encouraged too many servings of grains,and producers said the bottom-up ranking discouraged Americans from buying foods at the top of the pyramid. The 2005 MyPyramid replaced the hierarchy with vertical stripes correlating to recommended servings and an online program that let users develop a food plan. Health professionals found that complicated and difficult to teach. Drugs war unwinnable,give it up,world govts told The Global Commission on Drug Policy,a high-profile group of global leaders which includes former presidents of Brazil,Colombia,Mexico and Switzerland,said the war on drugs,a decades-long strategy of outlawing drugs and jailing drug users while battling cartels that control the trade,had not worked. The commission urged governments to consider decriminalizing drugs in a bid to cut consumption and weaken the power of organized crime gangs. Its not peace instead of war,it's a more intelligent way to fight . the use of drugs, former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso,chair of the Commission,told a news conference in New York Thursday. In AIDS fight,cure may be better than prevention After 30 years of AIDS prevention efforts,global leaders may now need to shift their focus to spending more on drugs used to treat the disease as new data show this is also the best way to prevent the virus from spreading. The UN General Assembly will take up the issue next week as it assesses progress in fighting the disease first reported on June 5,1981 that has infected more than 60 million people and claimed nearly 30 million lives. Guiding the meeting is groundbreaking new data that shows early treatment of HIV can cut its transmission to a sexual partner by 96 per cent. UNAIDS said at least $22 billion will be needed to combat the disease by 2015. Diabetes may shorten working life,says French study NEW YORK: People with diabetes may leave the workforce sooner than employees without diabetes suggesting,French researchers say,that the disease could be taking a large economic toll. Diabetes can impact individuals ability to maintain employment through different pathways, said senior researcher Dr Rosemary Dray-Spira,of the French national research institute INSERM. For example,diabetes complications such as vision loss and nerve damage can lead to mobility problems or amputations that make it difficult for people to do their jobs. Dray-Spiras team found obesity seemed to explain much of the higher risk of work disability among people with diabetes.
