Health briefs

Sales of low-fat candy quadruple since 2000

Kathleen Connors isn’t getting rid of her sweet tooth, but she is trying to be smarter about it.

At a Russell Stover Candies shop in suburban Kansas City recently, the Chicago resident looked over the display of sugar-free candy, including peanut butter cups and licorice. She snatched up a bag of sugar-free toffee squares to try them out.

“I’m trying to diet and yet enjoy myself,” said Connors, 38.

A recent study says U.S. sales of low-sugar and low-fat candies quadrupled between 2000 and 2004.

Last year, consumers bought an estimated $495 million in diet candy, compared with $118 million four years earlier, said the report by Packaged Facts.

While the growth slowed over the past year as the low-carbohydrate diet craze cooled off, experts said they expect diet candy to remain a key piece of the $26 billion industry.

“People, adults and kids, are getting heavier, and there are well-publicized efforts to crack down on junk food advertising and availability, particularly in schools,” said Don Montuori, an editor of the study. “In this climate, as a marketer, you can make a stronger case for a sweet that is ‘low’ in something better than a sweet that is full-bore caloric and fattening.”

Burn, baby, burn

Newsweek magazine reports that a device that measures your resting metabolic rate with a breathalyzer test is moving into medical centers and health clubs. To find one near you, go to www.metabolicfingerprint.com.

It tells you how many calories you burn when your body is at rest. For most people, it’s between 1,000 and 2,000 per day, the magazine reports. You add that resting number to the number of calories you burn while you’re active on a typical day. And then decide whether to look at the doughnut.

Health care costs drag on company’s profits

Employees are facing a double whammy when it comes to health care costs: Many companies are likely to ask workers to pay more for their insurance while rising health care costs means companies may dole out lower raises.

Half of large U.S. companies said that increased health care costs have contributed to slower profit growth, and as a result more than 75 percent may ask employees to bear an even greater share of the cost, according to a new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Twenty-five percent of the companies said double-digit health care cost increases may force them to lower wage hikes for employees, and one in five expects to slow hiring of new permanent workers in the year ahead. The executives at the 150 companies surveyed said per-employee health care costs had risen 12 percent over the last year and were expecting an 11 percent increase in the coming year if no changes are made to the plans.

Listen up: iPods can damage your ears

Jeff Hurst, 24, and Gianni Lee, 19, love their music so much they listen to it on their iPods for hours — maybe too many hours.

Hearing experts wonder whether the frequent use of these devices, particularly with the inserts that sit within the ear, are contributing to noise-induced hearing loss.

About 12 percent of children and teens in the country — more than 5 million — have noise-induced hearing loss. Hearing loss in general has doubled in the United States in the last 30 years.

One recent study examined several commercially available portable compact-disc players and found that the volume ranged from 91 to 121 decibels. Adding earphones that fit inside the ear increased the volume by 7 to 9 decibels.

Even the low end is considered over the threshold for safe, extended listening, which is 85 decibels for eight hours, according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.

Group calls for changes in mental health care

Mental health advocacy groups urged House and Senate members to forget about the stigma surrounding mental illness and look at changing its health care system just like they would for any other disease.

The Campaign for Mental Heath Reform — a coalition of 16 organizations — released a report listing 28 steps in which mental health care can be changed.

“We need to send the message that recovery is the expectation, not the exception,” said Charles Curie, a SAMHSA administrator.

Among the campaign’s requests are one to permit eligibility for supplemental security income and Medicaid for homeless who suffer from mental illness, another to provide treatment for veterans at risk of post-traumatic stress disorder and another to divert criminals with mental illness away from jail and into treatment.

Study says women skimping on care

More than a quarter of American women are delaying or forgoing medical care because of costs, and one in seven say they’re skipping doses of medicine or taking smaller doses to make their medicines last longer, according to a health report released last week.

The Kaiser Family Foundation report “Women and Health Care: A National Profile” also noted that a majority of women rely on their doctors as primary sources of health information, but only half say they’ve discussed diet, exercise and nutrition with a doctor or nurse in the past three years.

Alina Salganicoff, vice president and director of women’s health policy at the Kaiser Foundation and an author of the study, says those findings might also be rooted in costs.

“We don’t really reimburse health care providers in our current system to provide this basic counseling,” she says.

— Wire services