Category: Health

Hey, protein-obsessed Americans: Starbucks sees you. 

On Tuesday, the country’s No. 1 coffee chain announced it was entering the frenzied protein market by testing a new beverage option: a sugar-free vanilla latte topped with banana foam containing 15 grams of protein. 

The company announced its newest product on Tuesday at a company event in Las Vegas, Bloomberg reported. 

The new protein foam will come from a powder (of an as-of-yet unspecified source), Starbucks told Bloomberg, and customers will be able to add it to any cold foam flavor. It will be tested at five U.S. locations and comes months after CEO Brian Niccols said, in a first-quarter earnings call, “Innovation is going to be a key piece of the puzzle to keep the brand relevant, to keep the menu relevant.”

Starbucks did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for more details. 

The addition of the test product follows the country’s No. 3 coffee chain, Dutch Bros., offering a line of protein lattes that contain anywhere from 13 to 39 grams of protein. Dunkin’, the No. 2 coffee chain in America, does not (yet) offer protein drinks stateside, but does in the U.K., with a Strong Brew coffee containing 20 grams of protein.

Starbucks also has a protein option in the U.K., as it launched a ready-to-drink protein coffee last year. 

The current protein craze has included people sharing protein Diet Coke concoctions, daily high protein goals, and recipes for high-protein ice cream to TikTok, where there are over 204 million posts on “high protein” alone. 

Still, while protein is an important part of building muscle and can help support weight loss, many people tend to focus on its consumption and ignore the body’s other needs, especially fiber, nutritionists told Fortune recently. They debunked the message that people aren’t getting enough protein.

“If you’re meeting your caloric needs … you’re meeting your protein needs,” said registered dietitian Abbey Sharp.

Still, Niccol told Axios that the idea for the protein foam arose from observing Starbucks customers in action.

“I was watching people coming to our stores, they would get three shots of espresso over ice,” he said. “And in some cases, they pull their own protein powder out of their bag, or in other cases, they have a protein drink, like a Fair Life and they’d pour that into their drink. I’m like, well, wait a second, we can make this experience better for them.”

He added, “The good news is now I think we’re right on trend, and we can do it I think arguably better than anybody else.”

More on protein:

• Your protein needs change as you get older. Here’s how much you should be eating at every age
• You might be overdoing it on protein and not getting enough of another vital nutrient, dietitians say
• Here’s exactly how much protein you need based on your workout routine

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Sugar is the enemy. Right? Not always, as it turns out—at least according to a new study, which found it depends on how you consume it.

In analyzing data from over half a million people across multiple continents, researchers at Brigham Young University found something unexpected: that sugar consumed through drinks like soda—and even pure fruit juice, which is high in naturally occurring fructose—appeared to be more harmful than sugar that is eaten in foods.

“This is the first study to draw clear dose-response relationships between different sugar sources and Type 2 diabetes risk,” said Karen Della Corte, lead author and BYU nutritional science professor, in a news release. “It highlights why drinking your sugar—whether from soda or juice—is more problematic for health than eating it.”

Food sugar sources showed no such link and, in some cases, were even associated with a lower risk.

The findings, after correcting for body mass index and various lifestyle risk factors, include:

• Sugary drinks are risky. The risk for developing Type 2 diabetes (T2D) increased by 25% with each additional 12 oz daily serving of sugar-sweetened beverages—including soft drinks, energy drinks, and sports drinks.
• Fruit juice is also a problem. With each additional 8-oz serving of fruit juice per day—including 100% fruit juice, nectars, and juice drinks—the risk for developing T2D increased by 5%.
• Individual responses may vary. The above risks are “relative but not absolute,” note the researchers, and depend on a person’s baseline risk of developing T2D; for example, if the average person’s baseline risk of developing T2D is about 10%, four sodas a day could raise that to roughly 20%, not 100%.
• Sugary food is in a different category. Comparatively, an intake of 20 grams a day (about 1.6 tablespoons) of total sucrose (table sugar) and total sugar (the sum of all naturally occurring and added sugars in the diet) showed an inverse association with T2D, “hinting at a surprising protective association.”

Why is drinking sugar worse?

It may come down to the differing metabolic effects, explains the news release. 

“Sugar-sweetened beverages and fruit juice supply isolated sugars, leading to a greater glycemic impact that would overwhelm and disrupt liver metabolism thereby increasing liver fat and insulin resistance,” it notes.

But dietary sugars consumed in or added to nutrient-dense foods, such as whole fruits, dairy products, or whole grains, do not cause metabolic overload in the liver. “These embedded sugars,” says the release, “elicit slower blood glucose responses due to accompanying fiber, fats, proteins and other beneficial nutrients.”

A note about fruit juice

While it might be counterintuitive to think that fruit juice could be in the same relative category of harm as soda, the researchers explain why it makes sense. 

Compared to sugars from sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), which provide empty calories, fruit juice, the study says, “can contain beneficial nutrients such as vitamins and phytochemicals; however, our study found that sugar consumption from fruit juice was positively associated with T2D risk. The high sugar content and lack of fiber in fruit juice are similar to SSBs, making it a poor substitute for whole fruits, which provide higher fiber content to support better blood glucose regulation.”

But sugar-sweetened beverages are still worse than sugary foods, as they supply isolated sugars leading to a greater glycemic impact. “Whereas other sources of dietary sugars, particularly when consumed in nutrient-dense foods such as whole fruits, dairy products, or whole grains, may elicit slower blood glucose responses due to accompanying fiber, fats, or proteins,” the researchers note.

Finally, they point out that, while future research is still needed to evaluate the long-term impacts of sugar consumption, the findings suggest the importance of sugar type in determining the association of dietary sugar, “with higher liquid sugar intakes apparently linked to greater harm.”

More on sugar:

• Being obsessed with blood sugar might be a mistake for older adults, research shows
• It’s time to rethink your relationship with sugar. Here’s how
• How much ultraprocessed food is too much? The exact amount that raises your risk of heart disease and cancer

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• A study found that more than 20% of reusable water bottles sampled contained coliform bacteria, or fecal matter. Here’s the best way to clean your water bottle and avoid harmful germs.

Like many people, Carl Behnke regularly totes a water bottle around throughout his day to make sure he stays hydrated. From the office to the gym and back home again, Behnke is rarely without it. But Behnke is also an associate professor in the school of hospitality and tourism management at Purdue University, and when he discovered a “biofilm” on the inside of his water bottle while cleaning it, it got his wheels turning. “I realized I probably wasn’t as diligent about cleaning my water bottle as I should be,” he explains. “And that made me curious: If someone who knows about food safety isn’t diligent, what about everyone else?”

That question led to a study, conducted by Behnke and a cohort of academics and scientists, into how reusable-bottle contamination levels are affected by usage and cleaning behaviors. If you’re regularly drinking water from a reusable bottle, their findings might prompt you to reconsider your own water-bottle handling practices.  

Change your habits

While carrying around a reusable water bottle all day is healthy for you—and good for the environment—neglecting its care could lead to some negative consequences. “Do you wash your dishes after dinner?” asks Behnke. “Yes. But with water bottles, we often take them all over the place and don’t properly clean them.”

You might rinse your bottle out, but if you don’t wash it properly as often as you should, you’d be surprised at what might be growing on the surface and on the inside. The study consisted of two sections of surveys filled out by water-bottle users. The first set of questions centered on the type and age of bottle they used, what they put inside it (water, energy drinks, etcetera), and their frequency of use. The second section focused on cleaning behaviors, from the method to the frequency.

Essentially, said Behnke, typical water-bottle use has all the ingredients to foster bacterial growth: moisture, contamination, and, often, warm temperatures. Dr. Yuriko Fukuta, assistant professor of medicine–infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine, agrees. “We’re constantly touching our water bottles with our mouths and hands, so it’s easy to transmit bacteria to them, and then it just grows,” she says. “In some cases this can make you sick, especially if you have a weaker immune system.”

Fukuta suggested that bacteria might include staph or strep. And there’s this, from the cohort study: “More than 20% of our samples had coliform bacteria, which is fecal matter,” says Behnke.

Proper care and cleaning for water bottles

If all that bacteria has you wanting to do right by your water bottle, there are a few dos and don’ts to follow:

• Stick to just water in your bottles to lessen bacterial growth. Energy drinks, tea, or other powders and add-ins will only increase the likelihood of bacterial growth. 
• Keep your water bottles out of spots where they might heat up. “Don’t leave your water bottle inside your car and then drink from it,” says Fukuta. “Warm temperatures and time accelerate the growth of germs.”
• Rinse it after every day’s use, recommends Behnke. 
• Give it a good washing once a week, preferably by hand and with a special bottle brush. When finished, leave it upside down on a drying rack to dry completely—don’t put your bottles away wet.
• Avoid sharing water bottles with anyone else. “If it’s your saliva and just water, it’s not a big deal,” says Behnke. “But if you share, you’re introducing other contaminants.”

The best type of water bottle for mitigating bacterial growth

According to Fukuta, your best bets are bottles with a wide mouth, which make them easy to clean and dry, and those with a built-in straw that keeps your hands away if possible.

If your goal is to keep your water bottle from turning into a germy breeding ground, the simplest approach is Behnke’s, which he changed after conducting the research. “I rinse my bottle once a day,” he says, “and wash it once a week, using good detergent, a bottle brush, and a spray of Clorox bleach.”

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on Aug. 1, 2024.

More health tips:

• It’s not 8 glasses a day anymore. Here’s how much water you should drink each day
• 5 tips for getting enough water if you struggle to stay hydrated
• Here’s how much water is too much water, according to experts

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

In his confirmation hearings to lead the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya pledged his openness to views that might conflict with his own. “Dissent,” he said, ”is the very essence of science.”

That commitment is being put to the test.

On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the Bethesda Declaration, challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”

It says: “We dissent.”

In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things publicly, 92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and scientific review officers put their signatures on the letter — and their careers on the line. An additional 250 of their colleagues across the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names.

The letter, addressed to Bhattacharya, also was sent to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH. White House spokesman Kush Desai defended the administration’s approach to federal research and said President Donald Trump is focused on restoring a “Gold Standard” of science, not “ideological activism.”

The letter came out a day before Bhattacharya is to testify to a Senate committee about Trump’s proposed budget, opening him to questions about the broadside from declaration signers, and it stirred Democrats on a House panel to ask the Republican chair for hearings on the matter.

Confronting a ‘culture of fear’

The signers went public in the face of a “culture of fear and suppression” they say Trump’s administration has spread through the federal civil service. “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources,” the declaration says.

Bhattacharya responded to the declaration by saying it “has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months,” such as suggestions that NIH has ended international collaboration.

“Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive,” he said in a statement. “We all want the NIH to succeed.”

Named for the agency’s headquarters location in Maryland, the Bethesda Declaration details upheaval in the world’s premier public health research institution over the course of mere months.

It addresses the termination of 2,100 research grants valued at more than $12 billion and some of the human costs that have resulted, such as cutting off medication regimens to participants in clinical trials or leaving them with unmonitored device implants.

In one case, an NIH-supported study of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis in Haiti had to be stopped, ceasing antibiotic treatment mid-course for patients.

In a number of cases, trials that were mostly completed were rendered useless without the money to finish and analyze the work, the letter says. “Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million,” it says, “it wastes $4 million.”

The mask comes off

Jenna Norton, who oversees health disparity research at the agency’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, recently appeared at a forum by Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., to talk about what’s happening at the NIH.

At the event, she masked to conceal her identity. Now the mask is off. She was a lead organizer of the declaration.

“I want people to know how bad things are at NIH,” Norton told The Associated Press.

The signers said they modeled their indictment after Bhattacharya’s Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, when he was a professor at Stanford University Medical School.

His declaration drew together likeminded infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists who dissented from what they saw as excessive COVID-19 lockdown policies and felt ostracized by the larger public health community that pushed those policies, including the NIH.

“He is proud of his statement, and we are proud of ours,” said Sarah Kobrin, a branch chief at the NIH’s National Cancer Institute who signed the Bethesda Declaration.

Cancer research is sidelined

As chief of the Health Systems and Interventions Research Branch, Kobrin provides scientific oversight of researchers across the country who’ve been funded by the cancer institute or want to be. Cuts in personnel and money have shifted her work from improving cancer care research to what she sees as minimizing its destruction. “So much of it is gone — my work,” she said.

The 21-year NIH veteran said she signed because she didn’t want to be “a collaborator” in the political manipulation of biomedical science.

Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral fellow with the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, also signed the declaration. “We have a saying in basic science,” he said. “You go and become a physician if you want to treat thousands of patients. You go and become a researcher if you want to save billions of patients.

“We are doing the research that is going to go and create the cures of the future,” he added. But that won’t happen, he said, if Trump’s Republican administration prevails with its searing grant cuts.

The NIH employees interviewed by the AP emphasized they were speaking for themselves and not for their institutes nor the NIH.

Dissenters range across the breadth of NIH

Employees from all 27 NIH institutes and centers gave their support to the declaration. Most who signed are intimately involved with evaluating and overseeing extramural research grants.

The letter asserts “NIH trials are being halted without regard to participant safety” and the agency is shirking commitments to trial participants who “braved personal risk to give the incredible gift of biological samples, understanding that their generosity would fuel scientific discovery and improve health.”

The Trump administration has gone at public health research on several fronts, both directly, as part of its broad effort to root out diversity, equity and inclusion values throughout the bureaucracy, and as part of its drive to starve some universities of federal money.

At the White House, Desai said Americans “have lost confidence in our increasingly politicized healthcare and research apparatus that has been obsessed with DEI and COVID, which the majority of Americans moved on from years ago.”

A blunt ax swings

This has forced “indiscriminate grant terminations, payment freezes for ongoing research, and blanket holds on awards regardless of the quality, progress, or impact of the science,” the declaration says.

Some NIH employees have previously come forward in televised protests to air grievances, and many walked out of Bhattacharya’s town hall with staff. The declaration is the first cohesive effort to register agency-wide dismay with the NIH’s direction.

The dissenters remind Bhattacharya in their letter of his oft-stated ethic that academic freedom must be a lynchpin in science.

With that in place, he said in a statement in April, “NIH scientists can be certain they are afforded the ability to engage in open, academic discourse as part of their official duties and in their personal capacities without risk of official interference, professional disadvantage or workplace retaliation.”

Now it will be seen whether that’s enough to protect those NIH employees challenging the Trump administration and him.

“There’s a book I read to my kids, and it talks about how you can’t be brave if you’re not scared,” said Norton, who has three young children. “I am so scared about doing this, but I am trying to be brave for my kids because it’s only going to get harder to speak up.

“Maybe I’m putting my kids at risk by doing this,” she added. “And I’m doing it anyway because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday removed every member of a scientific committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to use vaccines and pledged to replace them with his own picks.

Major physicians and public health groups criticized the move to oust all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Kennedy, who was one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine activists before becoming the nation’s top health official, has not said who he would appoint to the panel, but said it would convene in just two weeks in Atlanta.

Although it’s typically not viewed as a partisan board, the entire current roster of committee members were Biden appointees.

“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. “A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”

When reached by phone, the panel’s now-former chair — Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of Vanderbilt University — declined to comment. But another panel member, Noel Brewer at the University of North Carolina, said he and other committee members received an email late Monday afternoon that said their services on the committee had been terminated but gave no reason.

“I’d assumed I’d continue serving on the committee for my full term,” said Brewer, who joined the panel last summer.

Brewer is a behavioral scientist whose research examines why people get vaccinated and ways to improve vaccination coverage. Whether people get vaccinated is largely influenced by what their doctors recommend, and doctors have been following ACIP guidance.

“Up until today, ACIP recommendations were the gold standard for what insurers should pay for, what providers should recommend, and what the public should look to,” he said.

But Kennedy already took the unusual step of changing COVID-19 recommendations without first consulting the committee — a move criticized by doctors’ groups and public health advocates.

“It’s unclear what the future holds,” Brewer said. “Certainly provider organizations have already started to turn away from ACIP.”

Kennedy said the committee members had too many conflicts of interest. Currently, committee members are required to declare any potential such conflicts, as well as business interests, that arise during their tenure. They also must disclose any possible conflicts at the start of each public meeting.

But Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Kennedy’s actions were based on false conflict-of-interest claims and set “a dangerous and unprecedented action that makes our families less safe” by potentially reducing vaccine access for millions of people.

“Make no mistake: Politicizing the ACIP as Secretary Kennedy is doing will undermine public trust under the guise of improving it,” he said in a statement. “We’ll look back at this as a grave mistake that sacrificed decades of scientific rigor, undermined public trust, and opened the door for fringe theories rather than facts.”

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called Kennedy’s mass ouster “a coup.”

“It’s not how democracies work. It’s not good for the health of the nation,” Benjamin told The Associated Press.

Benjamin said the move raises real concerns about whether future committee members will be viewed as impartial. He added that Kennedy is going against what he told lawmakers and the public, and the public health association plans to watch Kennedy “like a hawk.”

“He is breaking a promise,” Benjamin said. “He said he wasn’t going to do this.”

Dr. Bruce A. Scott, president of the American Medical Association, called the committee a trusted source of science- and data-driven advice and said Kennedy’s move, coupled with declining vaccination rates across the country, will help drive an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases.

“Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” Scott said in a statement.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who had expressed reservations about Kennedy’s nomination but voted to install him as the nation’s health secretary nonetheless, said he had spoken with Kennedy moments after the announcement.

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Cassidy said in a social media post. “I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

The committee had been in a state of flux since Kennedy took over. Its first meeting this year had been delayed when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services abruptly postponed its February meeting.

During Kennedy’s confirmation, Cassidy had expressed concerns about preserving the committee, saying he had sought assurances that Kennedy would keep the panel’s current vaccine recommendations.

The webpage that featured the committee’s members was deleted Monday evening, shortly after Kennedy’s announcement.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com