Young people who cook at home eat betterNEW YORK (Reuters Health) — Young adults who frequently make their own meals have much healthier diets than their peers who never set foot in the kitchen, a new study shows.“It’s really important to be preparing food at home,” Nicole I. Larson told Reuters Health. “Those who were preparing foods more often at home had a much higher likelihood of reaching dietary guidelines.”

However, relatively few young people regularly shop for, plan, or cook meals for themselves, Larson, of the University of Minnesota, and her colleagues found. Just 21 percent of young men and 36 percent of young women bought fresh vegetables every week, for example, while 44 percent of the men made a dinner with chicken, fish or vegetables at least once a week.

Larson’s team surveyed 1,710 18- to 23-year-olds about how they shopped for and prepared food. Young adulthood, when many young people move away from home and fend for themselves for the first time, is a key period for building lifetime eating habits, the researchers note in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

Females were more involved with food preparation, the researchers found, with 56 percent making a meal with chicken, fish or vegetables at least weekly and 45 percent making dinner for two or more people at least weekly. While 13 percent of males wrote a grocery list at least once a week, 23 percent of females did.

Study participants with the highest involvement in meal preparation were less likely to eat fast food and more likely to meet Healthy People 2010 dietary goals for intake of calcium, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and fat, Larson and her colleagues found.

Nevertheless, relatively few met these goals; 31 percent of those with high involvement in meal preparation ate at least five servings of fruits or vegetables daily, compared to three percent of those with little involvement in food preparation. Eighteen percent met requirements for eating deep-yellow and green vegetables, while just 2 percent of those with the least involvement in food preparation did.Blood sugar control in pregnancy importantNEW YORK (Reuters Health) — In women with diabetes, increasing haemoglobin A1C levels early in pregnancy — an indicator of poor blood sugar control — are associated with increasing risk of poor pregnancy outcomes, according to a report in the journal Diabetes Care.Lowering of haemoglobin A1C “seems to be associated with a reduced risk of adverse foetal outcome,” Dr. Gunnar L. Nielsen told Reuters Health. Nielsen and colleagues from Aalborg Hospital, Aarhus University Hospital, Aalborg, Denmark investigated the usefulness of first-trimester A1C level in predicting adverse outcomes in 537 pregnancies in women with insulin-dependent diabetes.

Haemoglobin A1C levels averaged 7.4 percent in pregnancies with a good outcome, the team reports, compared with 8.5 percent in the 165 pregnancies that had an adverse outcome, ending in spontaneous or therapeutic abortion, stillbirth, neonatal death, or birth defect.

There was a consistently positive, almost linear association between increasing haemoglobin A1C levels and the risk of adverse pregnancy outcome beginning at an A1C level slightly below 7.0 percent, the results indicate. The American Diabetes Association recommends a target A1C level of 7.0 or lower.

Each one percent increase in haemoglobin A1C corresponded to a 5.5 percent increase in risk of having an adverse outcome.

However, A1C was not very helpful in predicting outcome of individual pregnancies. For example, 21 percent of pregnancies with A1C above ten percent had a good outcome, while 15 percent of pregnancies with A1C less than six percent had an adverse outcome.Treating prostate cancer boosts survivalNEW YORK (Reuters Health) — Survival rates for men with localised prostate cancer are better with either surgery or radioactive seed implantation, a treatment called brachytherapy, compared with no “definitive” treatment, investigators at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City report. This is true even among older men.Based on the research, reported in the journal Cancer, men undergoing surgery or brachytherapy are much less likely to die of prostate cancer or any cause compared with men undergoing no definitive therapy. “This study is the first to demonstrate an apparent overall survival advantage for brachytherapy compared with no definitive treatment, and validates prior reports that document a survival advantage for surgery,” Dr. Jonathan D. Tward and associates write.

Nonetheless, only a small number of men with localised prostate cancer will die of the disease within ten years, the investigators note, and both surgery and brachytherapy are invasive procedures with possible lifetime side-effects.

“Factors other than survival, such as risks, side effect profiles, and quality of life weigh heavily on men deciding to undergo treatment for this disease, which is unlikely to claim their life,” the authors comment. For those who opt for definitive treatment, “both younger and older men should be counselled that either surgery or brachytherapy is appropriate.”

Using the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database of 60,269 men diagnosed with localised prostate cancer between 1998 and 2002, Tward and colleagues assessed the rate of death due to prostate cancer or any cause after a median of 46 months.

Outcomes of brachytherapy, removal of the prostate (prostatectomy) or no definitive treatment were assessed for men less than 60 years of age at diagnosis and those aged 60 years and older.