READING PASSAGE 1

 

Questions 1-13

 

Healthy Food?

 

A The shelves of every supermarket are packed with probiotic yogurts that can supposedly ease constipation and fend off infections, butter substitutes that claim to reduce cholesterol, tomato extracts said to keep skin looking young while warding off cancer, infant cereals enhanced with micronutrients essential for development, and so on. Have food companies taken on a higher level of morality or are there other motives for this concern over the health value of their produce?

 

B Food companies have taken to trumpeting the supposed health and nutritional benefits of  their products for several reasons. Such products may appeal both to health-conscious buyers and to people who know they eat unhealthily, but hope that some vitamins here and some probiotics there might compensate for the junk. Best of all, from the food companies’ point of view, these “functional foods”, which blur the line between foods and drugs, hold out the promise of higher margins and faster growth. In western Europe sales of functional foods grew by 10.2% a year between 2006 and 2009, for example, whereas sales of packaged food grew by 6.3%. That is why Nestlé, the world’s biggest food company, is making a big bet on functional foods as a source of future growth.

 

C All this has attracted the attention of regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. They are concerned that some of these health claims may be misleading or unsupported by evidence, and are tightening the rules. On October 20th  America’s  Food  and  Drug  Administration  (FDA)  said  it  would  overhaul  the  rules  for nutritional claims on food labels and issue new standards early next year. It has already rebuked General Mills, the maker of Cheerios, a popular breakfast cereal, for claiming that it is “clinically proven to lower cholesterol”. The European Food Safety Authority is also cracking down, requiring companies to back up health and nutrition claims with scientific studies. Hundreds of applications submitted to its scientific panel have just been turned down. The panel has decided that there is not enough evidence to claim that, for instance, heather helps you sleep, dried cocoa extract helps you lose weight, quinoa makes your hair grow and Jerusalem artichokes make your gut healthy.

 

D Many in the industry are howling that these rules are heavy-handed, given that most of their products are perfectly safe and that some health claims go back decades or more. Demanding expensive studies to justify such claims will stifle innovation, they argue, and tilt the playing field against smaller firms, which will be unable to afford them. Surely, they say, firms that find profit in adding iron, iodine, zinc and vitamins to their products, or cutting levels of high-fructose corn syrup or saturated fat, ought to be applauded, not denounced. Many food brands started off as a means of reassuring customers that products were trustworthy. The desire to defend their brands gives food firms a strong incentive to ensure that their products are safe.

 

E The situation now however is that food companies are claiming their products provide specific benefits—not merely that they are safe to eat. Ordinary folk cannot tell whether health claims made by food marketers are scientifically valid, so there is a case for regulatory scrutiny of such claims. What’s more, even though it is difficult to imagine someone being harmed by eating too much breakfast cereal or yogurt, say, there is a risk of harm if health claims made about functional foods encourage people to see them as substitutes for drugs or lifestyle changes, they may need. A few helpings of vegetables will do better than any probiotic yogurt.

 

 

THE enduring image of Sylvester Stallone's legendary pugilist Rocky Balboa is that of a solitary athlete, braving the elements, and his own demons, to prepare for a big fight. Yet according to a new study he might have done better by having a bit of company on his long workouts.

 

Research by Emma Cohen, an anthropologist at Oxford University, suggests that a better model is provided by Hicham El Guerrouj, a Moroccan middle-distance runner who is the current holder of the world 1,500-metres and one-mile records. Before retiring in 2006 Mr El Guerrouj was known for the throngs of training partners that followed him everywhere in Morocco. This was a good strategy because, as Dr Cohen reports in a forthcoming issue of Biology Letters, training in a synchronised group may heighten tolerance for pain. That, in turn, could allow athletes like Mr El Guerrouj to reach even higher levels of fitness by being able to train longer and harder.

 

The reason is almost certainly the effects of endogenous opioids, better known as endorphins. When these are released in the brain they make a person feel good. What causes their release is, however, more complex. Biologists think it is part of an evolved mechanism which rewards behaviour that may not be immediately pleasant but is ultimately useful to the species.

 

Endorphins show up nearly everywhere. Hunting an animal may be tiresome but necessary, so endorphins are secreted during exertion to numb the discomfort induced by lactic acid production in the muscles. Collaboration makes it easier to kill animals while others set traps.

 

Dr Cohen wanted to see if combining exercise and collaboration would heighten the effect. One of the study's co-authors, Robin Ejsmond-Frey, vowed for Oxford and thought it would be a good activity to study. For one thing, it is easy to spot a crew that is not well synchronised. Secondly, ergometers, machines on which rowers train, provide data on the power exerted on each stroke. In addition, it can be rather painful so the endorphins should be out in droves.

 

The researchers got 12 members of Oxford's heavyweight squad to row on machines in four 45-minute sessions over two weeks. In two sessions they rowed in complete isolation and in the others in groups of six, perfectly synchronised. Immediately following each session their endorphin levels were tested. Because endorphin levels can only be measured directly through an invasive lumbar puncture-unfeasible, even for notoriously pain-hungry oarsmen-the researchers used a readily accepted proxy: they deduced pain tolerance, and hence endorphin levels, by gradually tightening a cuff around each rower's arm. When he said "now" they stopped squeezing and noted the pressure.

 

As expected, the rowers' pain thresholds were significantly higher following the group sessions. This was despite nearly identical power outputs in all four tests and efforts to control for possible confounding variables, such as the time of day.

 

The athletes may be rewarding themselves for their collaboration. Whether heightened tolerance is due specifically to rowing synchronously remains unclear. Data from other studies suggest that co-ordinated physical exercise can heighten social bonds, as in military training. The reverse may also be true. As the rowers had been teammates for nearly a year it is possible that the mere presence of friends explains the observed effect. The researchers are keen to replicate the study to test for such things. Meanwhile, solitary joggers might want to take along a friend or two.

 

READING PASSAGE 3

Questions 28-40

Glue bones