Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Ayurvedic Medicine

Nearly half the US populations turns to complementary, alternative and integrative practices to maintain or improve their health. UCSF's Dr. Sudha Prathikanti explores Ayurvedic medicine, ancient wisdom for modern times. Ayurvedic medicine aims to integrate and balance the body, mind, and spirit. Series: "UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public" [12/2007] [Health and Medicine]

Bar Drinks Pack More Punch Than Thought

(HealthDay News) -- If you sidle up to a bar and assume one drink an hour won't make you legally drunk, think again. A new study finds that bartenders pack a lot more booze into common drinks than many people realize.

Researchers visited 80 bars and restaurants in Northern California last year and found that glasses of wine and spirits are often 50 percent larger than the "standard" size used in guidelines. That means people who follow recommendations about avoiding more than one drink an hour may be getting more booze than they bargained for, the study found.

"These things can creep up on someone without their being aware," said study lead author William Kerr, a senior scientist at the Public Health Institute's Alcohol Research Group. "There should be caution."

Kerr and his colleagues launched their study as part of ongoing research into alcohol consumption. "It occurred to me that we didn't know much about what people meant when they said they had a drink," he said.

The researchers visited 80 randomly selected drinking establishments in Northern California, including some in the major cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento. Some were bars, while others were restaurants.

The researchers typically visited in groups of three to four and bought a round of drinks. Then one member of the group would use a cylinder to measure the drinks. Sometimes the researchers would duck into the restroom so they wouldn't be noticed. Bartenders occasionally noticed what the researchers were doing and spoke up, but they never made a major fuss, Kerr said.

An analysis of 480 drinks found that wine, beer and mixed drinks were often 50 percent larger than a "standard" drink. The average glasses of wine and mixed drinks were 42 percent to 43 percent larger, and the average draft beer was 22 percent larger. (Bottled beers weren't measured.)

Glasses of wine, meanwhile, typically packed more alcohol per volume -- 14 percent instead of 12 percent -- than those used to define a standard drink.

Factors like the type of establishment, the region of Northern California and the gender of the bartender didn't seem to affect the sizes of the drinks, Kerr said.

The findings were expected to be published in the September issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and are available online.

Some people use the definition of a standard drink to figure out how much they can drink before becoming drunk.

"If the chart says you can have five standard drinks (before you get drunk), you can only have three to four of these actual drinks," Kerr said.

Dwight Heath, a professor of anthropology at Brown University who studies alcohol consumption, said the study "points out a dirty little secret of alcohol research: The definition of 'standard drink' is inaccurate and out-of-date."

Researchers have failed to recognize and adjust to "changes in culture," Heath said.

More information
Learn more about alcohol and potential health risks at Pace University.

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What Those Fast-Food Calorie Signs Actually Look Like

By Scott Mowbray

Check out these pictures and ask yourself if in-your-face calorie information would change your chain-restaurant eating habits. I snapped these shots in the concourse of our office building to show Health.com users how restaurants have responded to New York City’s requirement that calorie counts be prominently posted (something I first blogged about a few weeks ago). The big question is whether point of impulse information can change the impulse, and I’m interested in what you think—the New York City law may be a model for other public health efforts across the country.

Chain restaurants have until July 18 before they’ll face fines for failing to post (assuming a current appeal, the second, doesn’t squash the law). But some restaurants moved early, and in a typical food court today you find a calorie patchwork—a few establishments have detailed listings on their wall menus, some have calorie counts on promotional posters, others (the majority) post no numbers at all.

The city’s Department of Health & Mental Hygiene (love that name) argues that obesity is epidemic and “common sense and published scientific evidence indicate that making this information readily available at the point of purchase will influence many consumers to make lower-calorie choices.” In a brief to the United States District Court in February, the department cited its own exit poll of Subway (sandwich, not train) customers, in which a third of patrons saw calorie postings and those who did “purchased items containing 48 fewer calories than patrons who did not see it.”

No question, some calorie counts are unsettling, as local media have noted. The modest-looking raspberry scone at Starbucks has 470 calories, for example, and the iced lemon loaf, in the same zone, has produced anecdotal evidence (i.e., from a Health.com editor, and others) that calorie posting causes shopper recoil from tasty favorites. The Subway personal pizzas deliver as many as 830 calories to your person: Jared would not approve.

The more I think about this, the more I like the experiment. The New York State Restaurant Association is appealing, but I hope they lose. Calorie posting has a whiff of nutrition police state, but it puts a bit of power in consumers’ hands. If patrons shy away from calorie bombs, restaurants can respond with alternatives.

You can see the health department’s fascinating timeline of the law on their website. And let me know what you think about the city’s little experiment: Is it a power-to-the-consumer moment or an overreach by the powers that be?