
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 20, 1993                   TAG: 9310190149
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By CAROLE SUGARMAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NOT ALL EXPERTS ARE BUYING HER CLAIMS ABOUT YOGURT

In her book "Food - Your Miracle Medicine" Jean Carper says that yogurt is "strongly anti-bacterial and anti-cancer" and also boosts immune functioning, reduces colds and other upper-respiratory infections, helps prevent and cure diarrhea, prevents vaginitis, helps fight osteoporosis and is safe for people with lactose intolerance.

In the Diarrhea and Diet chapter, the section on "Yogurt: The Safe Food" begins like this: "What's the safest food you can eat to prevent diarrhea? Yogurt, according to tests by Drs. Dennis Savaiano and Michael Levitt of the University of Minnesota."

The paragraph ends, "As the authors note, the fact that yogurt is used instead of milk in many underdeveloped areas probably comes from long experience demonstrating that eating yogurt does not cause diarrhea - but drinking milk does."

When read the paragraph, Savaiano, a professor of food science and nutrition at the university, had this to say: "It's a little bait and switch. Preventing diarrhea is not the same as not causing diarrhea. Yogurt is the most unlikely food to cause diarrhea, but it's unlikely to prevent you from getting diarrhea from other foods." Other than that, the paragraph "sounds very accurate," he said.

As for the other reputed benefits of yogurt, Savaiano said that the only area where there's "very sound data" is yogurt's safety for lactose-intolerant individuals. The rest of the data "is not convincing; it's difficult to interpret and not consistent."

I called Georges Halpern, an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of California School of Medicine at Davis, who has conducted a number of yogurt studies, also cited in Carper's book. He had a different view.

As for yogurt preventing diarrhea, Halpern said, "It's true for yogurt with active cultures." As for yogurt's powers in bolstering the immune system, Halpern said he has "very good evidence" to support the contention.

Carper discusses one of Halpern's studies that found that eating 6 ounces of yogurt daily prevented colds and hay fever in young and elderly adults. Halpern also gave the thumbs up to yogurt for preventing vaginitis and for people who are lactose-intolerant.

Then I called Sherwood Gorbach, a professor at Tufts University, who was also mentioned in Carper's book, and who has likewise conducted a number of studies on yogurt and health. He and a colleague had developed a special strain of bacteria, Lactobacillus GG, to make a new yogurt designed expressly to cure and prevent diarrhea, Carper writes. It is being sold in Finland.

"There's no evidence of diarrhea prevention with yogurt" that is currently available in the United States,Gorbach said. There are some very interesting papers on yogurt and the immune system, and there are some unequivocal results of Lactobacilli and colon-cancer prevention in animals, but "I've always been unwilling to take a leap forward" to humans, Gorbach said. There's only one proven benefit from conventional yogurt, he said, and that's for those with lactose intolerance.

But Gorbach also had this to say: "It's quite clear that diet impacts health enormously. We are becoming very aware that food plays a major role in human health. We've made it national policy. There's something to this. But I'm not willing to flog Lactobacillus."

by CNB