Cholesterol

and Burger King Holdings Inc.

have said they will phase out trans fat from their products.

Denmark is the only country to have sharply limited trans fats, passing a law in 2003 making it illegal for any food to contain more than two per cent trans fat.

Canada is looking at similar legislation and the Netherlands has encouraged voluntary labelling.

© The Canadian Press, 2007 Continue Article More HEALTH Headlines » Cancer deaths set to exceed cardiovascular disease: StatsCan Cancer deaths may soon surpass deaths from cardiovascular disease, Statistics Canada said Friday in its report on mortality rates.

Workplace-related cancers kill 200,000 a year, WHO says At least 200,000 people die every year from workplace-related cancers such as those caused by inhaling asbestos fibres or tobacco smoke, the World Health Organization said Friday.

Parents not told why babies died at Montreal hospital Quebec public health officials are defending their infection-control policies after a scathing investigation revealed a string of infant deaths from a bacterium in the plumbing pipes at a Montreal children's hospital.

Chinese men smoking themselves to death Lung cancer rates in China have risen by 30 per cent over the last five years, making the disease the leading killer of men in the world's most populous country, medical experts say.

Mumps outbreak hits 1...

All of these measures are linked to metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of risk factors linked to type 2 diabetes and high rates of heart disease.

Researchers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor fed rats tart cherries in a powder form and compared their health to rats that did not receive the cherries but had an otherwise similar diet.

All of the rats in this study were prone to having high E.

Mitchell Seymour, M.S., a research associate and supervisor of the Cardioprotection Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan, told Ivanhoe, "We found that tart cherries, when fed to our research animals, reduced high blood lipids, high fasting glucose and high insulin.

We're excited about the implications of that for metabolic syndrome in humans." The positive effects from the cherries come from a unique combination of high concentrations of antioxidant compounds called anthocyanins and melatonin.

This rat study, funded by a grant from the Cherry Marketing Institute, lasted 90 days.

Seymour says in order to more accurately test the effect it could have on humans, the study would have to be longer to track how a diet rich in cherries affects Seymour said, "It may not be something you can take only a few times and see an e...