Merry Xmas and watch your in- take

The latest mobile offering?

You can now track your alcohol consumption courtesy of the NHS and an I-Phone app.

James Glick at the Next Web reports that

With accurate unit calculations, feedback and FAQ it’s a neat and well formed application for dissecting your alcohol intake during a period when it can be a difficult to take stock of how much your drinking.
It’s the first foray into the iPhone application world for the NHS and hopefully not the last with the ever useful NHS Direct surely a potential app itself in the future.

What the media commentators are saying.

In the Independent,Stephen Glover questions the BBC's decision to axe What the papers say.For him it is a

clear an indication as you could have that the Corporation is losing sight of its public service remit

and questions why

it has dumped the programme we can only guess. It certainly wasn't because of low ratings. Despite being buried in a dead slot, What the Papers Say usually attracted around a million viewers, about the same as Newsnight, and more than virtually any programme shown on BBC3 or BBC4

Peter Wilby in the Guardian looks at how the media reports on health stories.

newspapers believe health coverage attracts readers

he says adding

At some level, newspaper reports must influence eating, drinking and buying habits, and affect the wellbeing of readers and their families. Yet the press, sceptical about anything politicians say or do, becomes credulous when faced with medicine.

In the same paper Jeff Jarvis takes a look at the social networking site Facebook saying that it

is standing at a critical juncture. If it turns one way, it could reach its grandest ambition - to be the Google of people. If it turns the other way, it risks becoming the next AOL or Yahoo - the next has-been.

Social networking sites are looked at in the Indy as well which asks

Are ads on children's social networking sites harmless child's play or virtual insanity?blockquote> reporting that

with more than 100 youth-focused virtual worlds now either up and running or about to launch – over half of which are aimed at under-sevens, according to one estimate – regulators and parents are struggling to keep up.

Finally staying with the children's market,Alice Wignall asks in the Guardian

The tweenage mag market is growing ever stronger on a diet of princesses, ponies, pals and puzzles. But how long will parents continue to fund the pre-teen boom?

The bug that never was.

Apparently the three million people that were confined to their beds over Xmas and New Year with the Norovirus was a figment of certian parts of the media.No prizes for guessing which ones.

The epidemic which regulary appears every winter and affects between 600,000 to a million people was no worse this year than in previous years.

So why did those certain parts ramp in up so much.Was it simply something to fill the empty pages over the holiday break or perhaps something more sinister.I think that we should be told

When should a paper run an international lead

The Spectator's blog is rather critical of the news values of the Times this morning.

The paper ran as its main lead this morning yet another report about the nation's health
Parents of fat children to be given a warning rather than what the Spectator believed should have been its main lead,a scoop interview with Turkey's Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan

According to the blog,this represents its tabloid credentials

when The Times chooses to lead with an insignificant development on child obesity in Britain rather than with its own scoop on globally-significant events in Turkey, then you know Rupert Murdoch's tabloid values have won, not just when it comes to the paper's size but, sadly, to its content as well.

It is an interesting point.As mentioned on this blog lkast week the papers have been obsessed with health stories over the last couple of weeks.An imminent outbreak of hostilities in Northern Iraq you would think would take precedent,at least in a quality paper

Nationals covering health

The news that the Middle classes are drinking themselves into oblivion is a continuation of the nationals seeming obsession with health over the last few days.

On Sunday we had obesity,yesterday it was dentists and today alcholol.

The Times leads the way with a front page splash on the latest health crisis

Drinkers in middle-class areas are more likely routinely to consume “hazardous” amounts of alcohol than those in poorer areas, research published today shows.
Social drinkers who regularly down more than one large glass of wine a day will be told they risk damaging their health in the same way as young binge drinkers.

Followed by the Mail's

Epidemic of middle-class drinkers damaging health with 'hazardous' levels of alcohol.

Whilst the Independent reports

Figures for local authorities in England have shown the percentage of adults drinking at "hazardous" levels - regularly drinking between 22 to 50 units a week for men and 15 to 35 for women - ranges from 14.1 per cent to 26.4 per cent.
The figures show Runnymede, covering Surrey towns such as Chertsey and Virginia Water, topped the league table, alongside Harrogate, in North Yorkshire, at 26.4 per cent of adults drinking at hazardous levels - a rate of more than one in four.

Yesterdays news on lack of dentists is followed up in the Sun which finds its own example

DESPERATE Susannah Houghton ripped out a rotten tooth with her false nails because she could not get to see a dentist.
The mum-of-four resorted to DIY this month after NHS staff told her she was not an emergency.
Susannah, 39, could not eat, sleep or even talk with the pain.
Staff at her local out-of-hours centre in Bury said she was not a priority as she had not been in pain for 48 hours.

The Mirror reports that

Gordon Brown yesterday promised to tackle child obesity, saying: "It's a huge problem and we've got to deal with it."He added: "There are more school playing fields now. There is a wider range of sport in schools."
And he said the Government had reached its target of getting pupils to do two hours of PE every week.
The Prime Minister, speaking at a girls' academy in London, said: "I want to see a young nation growing up that's healthy and fit."

With the continuing problems in the health trusts expect much more coverage over the next few weeks

Watch what you eat

The subject of health becomes an obsession with three of the papers,(Times,Telegraph and Express leading with seperate health stories.

Perhaps I can just about understand the Telegraph's "Dental patients in CJD alert" which claims

"Dentists have been told not to re-use instruments for root canal work because they could infect patients with the human form of mad cow disease."

But the Times uses its front page to announce "Scientists prove that salty diet costs lives" telling us that

Eating less salt reduces the chances of suffering a heart attack or stroke, the first long-term study of salt’s impact on health confirms today.
The findings, from a 15-year study, offer the clearest evidence yet that cutting salt consumption saves lives by reducing the risks of cardiovascular disease. People who ate less salty food were found to have a 25 per cent lower risk of cardiac arrest or stroke, and a 20 per cent lower risk of premature death. The results, published in the British Medical Journal, underline the need for population-wide salt reductions in the diet, the scientists conclude.

Maybe I have missed something here but just as a long time ago we were warned about animal fats ,I am certain that salt came under the heading of things not to eat in great quantities.I have certainly avoided it for many years if at all possible.

Then the Express attacks just when you werent expecting eat,suggesting that perhaps fruit is also dangerous,"NEW ALERT OVER DANGERS IN FRUIT

"TOXIC chemicals have been found on fruit given to millions of schoolchildren every day under a Government healthy-eating scheme.
Three quarters of the fresh produce provided free to youngsters is contaminated with potentially harmful pesticides, tests revealed yesterday. Apples, bananas and pears were among the most polluted."